The Week in Chess

The FIDE World Chess Championship between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren got underway in Astana, Kazakhstan on Easter Sunday.

Nepomniachtchi with white played the rare DERLD which is the Delayed Exchange of the Ruy Lopez Deferred. The variation isn't that dangerous theoretically but has its points against the unprepared. 7...Bg4 is a known equaliser but it involves a piece sacrifice, not something you want to do against a well prepared opponent, 7....Nd7 was also fine but Ding was clearly pretty much on his own. 11...Bg4 instead of the known 11...Ne6 was not liked by Anand as it introduced problems for black. The computers continued to say black was fine but there were complicated variations I'm not sure a human would ever play. By move 18 it was clear white was better and had lots of options to cause problems. A key moment was after 24.Rd3, black could swap the final rook either on move 24 or 25 and be slightly worse, Ding should have traded on move 25 as his c6, probably as a result of a miscalculation placed him under severe pressure.

The key moment probably came on move 29. Bd6 was pretty good but most likely 29. Bc7 Ne6 30.Bxa5 winning a pawn was the way to go. The win was still some distance away but Ding would have been under severe pressure. 31.f4 was not a good move, most likely 31.Nf5 was the best option, and the computers started to evaluate the position as equal. 32...c4 was also perhaps not the best with 32....h4 being better but that's not completely clear to me as the computers liked white's 33.h4 yet it led to complete equality fairly quickly. By first time control a draw was all but inevitable and that was agreed on move 49.

A tense first game. Ding spent much of his time in the rest room away from the board returning just to make his move but as time pressure ramped up he had to stay there. The time control is 40 moves in two hours 20 in one hour followed by 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment. Players can't offer a draw before move 40. After the game Ding said that he had real trouble concentrating early on and had intrusive thoughts nothing to do with chess and was very nervous. Such is the pressure of playing a World Championship match.

Game 2 10am BST Monday 10th April.

Score: Ding Liren 0.5 Ian Nepomniachtchi 0.5. 14 games in total.