Former world champion Magnus Carlsen waits for matches to begin in the recent Global Chess League. (PHOTO: GCL)
In less than three weeks, Ding Liren will defend his world championship crown against India’s D Gukesh. The 18-year-old from Chennai is bidding to become the youngest-ever world champion in history at Singapore in a battle that starts this month.
In sharp contrast to Gukesh’s form going into the world chess championship battle, Ding Liren has been in a wretched rut ever since he became the world champion in 2023. Grandmasters who have played him have even speculated that he does not seem to enjoying the feeling of playing chess at all.
Ding Liren’s predecessor on the throne, Magnus Carlsen, has offered some insight into what has gone wrong with the Chinese grandmaster.
“I think people realise that the World Championship is a very tough thing. It’s one thing to prepare for the world championship. But I don’t think you can quite prepare for the intensity of the championship without actually playing it. A lot of people find it tough both to play but also to recover. What I think happened with Ding is that he has not completely recovered from that World Championship yet. You could argue that maybe the only thing that could make him recover completely is to win this one,” Magnus Carlsen said on the newly-launched Take Take Take app.
Ding Liren earned a spot at the last world championship because Magnus Carlsen chose to forfeit his crown. Ding Liren outlasted Ian Nepomniachtchi to become the 17th man in history to wear the crown.
Magnus Carlsen spoke of Ding Liren’s issues on the board.
“You can sense when Ding plays that he is lacking confidence. He’s apprehensive in his play. It feels like he’s making some steps. Like he’s trying to play more aggressively, trying to play more of the chess that he can play. But he’s still struggling. He’s still finding it hard to make the decisions he needs to make when the chips are down. He tends to really gravitate towards the safer choices. Often those can be very dangerous to make. Because if you make enough of those safe choices, at some point, your opponent is going to take over. If he has that mentality when he plays the match, it’s going to be hard to win games. So I feel like that’s where the difficulty really lies for Ding. Because he’s going to get chances against Gukesh. Gukesh is an extremely strong player. But he doesn’t have that experience yet to be not giving away chances at all,” assessed Magnus Carlsen.
Magnus Carlsen was also asked what advice he would give to Ding Liren, if he were to ask him.
“I haven’t talked to Ding about that. I feel like I don’t want to pry. So obviously if he asked me I would give my very best advice. But I haven’t talked to him about it,” Carlsen said before adding what his advice to Ding would be: “I would say it’s not easy. In his position, I would try and think that everything that’s happened the last few years, none of it matters if he wins the World Championship. All of that will be quite quickly forgotten. He has very little to lose. And just treat every game like it’s a normal game. Try to put himself in a position like he would have done five years ago. And everyone knows that Ding is capable.”
