The chess world is looking for a successor for their tired king from Easter Sunday. After Norway’s Magnus Carlsen lost interest after ten years on the throne, Jan Nepomnyashchi, a Russian under neutral status, and China’s Ding Liren play for the world title. The title fight in Astana/Kazakhstan is a novelty in chess history.
In all previous duels after the premiere in 1886, the roles were always clearly divided when there was a duel for the title. On one side of the board a champion, on the other side the challenger. But this time the world champion no longer wanted. Carlsen is not defending his title, he had already announced last year that he lacked “the motivation” for another duel.
Nepomnjaschchi (32) can understand that well. “A world championship fight is a very energy-intensive undertaking. You have to subordinate everything to that for half a year. And he played these world championship matches more than once,” he said in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung. In December 2021, Nepomnjaschtschi lost the duel against Carlsen, now after winning the Candidates Tournament he has the next chance at the World Cup.
As the first Russian after Vladimir Kramnik (until 2007), Nepomnjaschtschi can win the title, Ding would be the first Chinese world champion if he won. The 30-year-old is already the first Chinese player to play for the title. But whoever prevails: He will stand in Carlsen’s shadow. He remains number one in the ranking – and also champion in blitz and rapid chess.
Former long-time world champion Garry Kasparov (Russia) therefore described the duel between Nepomnyashchi and Ding as an “amputee event. I can hardly call it a world championship match. For me, the world championship match should be played by the strongest player on the planet – and that’s here not the case,” said Kasparov.
And yet Kasparov expects “a big show”. The world association FIDE exaggerated the duel to the fight of the “unstoppable minds” – loosely translated the “unstoppable brains”. These compete in a maximum of 14 games and possibly in an all-important tie-break on April 30th. The game is played daily at 11 a.m. German time, with a total of seven rest days planned.