The Ding Liren Affair

Let's return to The Karjakin Affair (March 2022), where I wrote,

I added the FIDE announcement about GM Karjakin's ban to my page 2022 Candidates Tournament. Why is this important to the Candidates event, scheduled to start in June?

The answer to that question was because Karjakin had earlier qualified as one of the eight candidates to challenge Magnus Carlsen in the next title match. Earlier this week we learned that the Russian Karjakin had been replaced by the Chinese Ding Liren.

We learned not via a formal announcement on the FIDE site, but via a tweet on the world's largest chat room. Even then, Karjakin's replacement wasn't identified by name in the tweet, but by a photo with an embedded caption.

Mark your calendars! We are a month away from the start of the #FIDECandidates in Madrid, Spain... (twitter.com; 16 May 2022)

I hope we get a FIDE announcement so that I can add it to my page on the 2022 Candidates Tournament (m-w.com), due to start at Madrid in less than a month. I also hope they replace Karjakin's photo, which is still on what appears to be the official site for the tournament, FIDE World Championship. Cycle 2021-2023 (wcc.fide.com). I looked at that subdomain in my previous post on the cycle, 2022 Candidates; 2023(?) Title Match (May 2022), and nothing has changed since then.

So how did Ding Liren qualify for the second most important event in chess? He qualified by rating. The nitty-gritty was explained in two reports by Chess.com's Peter Doggers:-

• 2022-05-06: Karjakin Appeal Dismissed: Door Open For Ding To Enter Candidates
• 2022-05-16: Ding Liren Officially In the Candidates As FIDE Announces Participants

As the comments to that second report testify, many chess fans aren't happy with the rating method of qualification, but rules are rules. Better to fix anomalies by updating the rules for the next time than to make stuff up as you go along.

For the nittier-grittier on the rating, see Ding, Liren CHN Individual Calculations Chess Ratings FIDE, period=2022-05-01 (ratings.fide.com). He gained 7.2 rating points for the period.

A Giant Among GMs

Earlier this week, in Yuri Averbakh, 1922-2022 (chess.com), Peter Doggers reported,

GM Yuri Averbakh, the world’s oldest grandmaster, a trainer, international arbiter, chess composer, endgame theoretician, writer, historian, honorary member of FIDE, and the last living participant of the famous Zurich 1953 Candidates Tournament, has passed away, three months after turning 100. His death has been confirmed by the Russian Chess Federation and FIDE. Averbakh was one of the few strong players who managed to simultaneously reach significant heights in chess theory, literature, journalism, history, and chess politics.

Of the dozen photos of GM Averbakh in my eBay photo archive, this was my favorite. From an eBay auction in February 2012:-

The description informed,

Original Soviet chess press photo. The 26th Championship of USSR in Tbilisi 1959. Grandmasters from left to right: Tigran Petrosian, David Bronstein, Mikhail Tal, Yuri Averbakh.

The photo pictures a former World Championship challenger (Bronstein) and two future World Champions (Tal, Petrosian). GM Averbakh competed in the 1952 Saltsjobaden Interzonal (5-8th/21), the 1953 Zurich Candidates (10th-11th/15), and the 1958 Portoroz Interzonal (7-11th/21) a half point behind the group that qualified for the 1959 Yugoslavia Candidates (all links m-w.com).

Averbakh has figured many times on this blog, as well as on my main blog, e.g. in these related posts:-

• [WCCB] Averbakh on the World Championship (July 2013)
• [CFAA] Averbakh's 'Index of Names' (August 2013)

Many of the posts on my main blog were related to his contributions to endgame theory. This post is all Averbakh:-

• [CFAA] A Brief History of Endgame Theory (December 2011)

In another post on that blog, Friendly Chess Players (July 2013), I mentioned,

Near the end of the book ['Centre-Stage and Behind the Scenes: A Personal Memoir'], GM Averbakh divides great players into six groups. Here are quotes from Averbakh describing each group [...]

Another obituary from this week, Yuri Averbakh, Chess’s First Centenarian Grandmaster, Dies at 100 (nytimes.com), by the NYT's top chess writer, Dylan Loeb McClain, referenced the same categories:-

Though Mr. Averbakh was talented, he said he knew he lacked the necessary qualities to become a world champion. In his autobiography, he wrote that great players fall into six categories: killers, fighters, sportsmen, people who like to play games, artists and explorers. All of the world champions came from the first four groups, he said. He put himself in the sixth category -- that of an explorer.

GM Averbakh was a World Champion chess explorer, possibly the greatest ever. Who else comes close?

2022 Candidates; 2023(?) Title Match

The 2022 Candidates Tournament; Madrid, VI-VII (m-w.com) starts next month. I updated that page to include the latest announcements.

The eighth player is still unknown. A Fide.com subdomain that I had never seen before, FIDE World Championship. Cycle 2021-2023 (worldchampionshipcycle.fide.com), includes Sergey Karjakin as a participant, but with an asterisk against his name:-

World Cup runner-up; (* : Suspended by a decision of FIDE EDC. Subject to appeals.)

See a previous post on this blog, The Karjakin Affair (March 2022), for background. I could have written a companion post, 'The Ding Liren Affair', but decided that it was premature. See Ding Liren on his way to the Candidates (chessbase.com), for a different opinion. Instead of speculating on the eventual outcome, I'll just wait for FIDE's decision. It should come soon.

For a comprehensive explanation of the current status of the Candidates tournament and of the subsequent title match, see

• 2022-04-28: FIDE Candidates Chess Tournament 2022: All The Information
• 2022-05-03: FIDE World Chess Championship 2023: Everything We Know So Far

Both pages are from Chess.com. The WCC title match is not yet listed on the FIDE calendar. Although the previous title match, 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi (m-w.com), was held at the end of last year in Dubai, it was originally scheduled for end-2020.

It's Not an April Fool's Joke

You've seen the publicity: Announcing The $1,000,000 Chess.com World Championship (chess.com). Now watch the trailer!

Announcing The $1,000,000 Chess.com World Championship (?:??) • '[Published on] Apr 21, 2022'

Hey, wait a minute! Now it says, 'Video unavailable; This video is private'. I watched the clip yesterday and recorded the description, which said,

With $1,000,000 in prizes, we are excited to announce the Chess.com World Championship! Prepare for open qualifiers, play-in and knockout rounds featuring the world's best chess players, and you! Take part in this record-breaking event by verifying your Chess.com profile!

Yes, the video was sort of silly. It started with an inside joke -- 'World Hess Hampionship' -- seen in Chess.com's broadcasts of the last *real* World Championship, the 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi match. If you don't get the joke, see the 'CHR' column in a post from my main blog, A Trio of World Championship Video Makers (December 2021). Sorry I can't be more specific about which round the joke appeared. It was worth a smile at the time, but that was nearly six months ago.

My guess is that someone pulled the plug on the video because the subject is serious, but the video wasn't. It's not every day a chess site announces a World Chess Championship of its own. Why would they turn around and make fun of it? As an April Fool's joke maybe, but they missed that by three weeks. A few days after the Chess.com announcement, there was a similar announcement from another online chess play site: Announcing the Lichess World Championship (lichess.org).

Are these real World Chess Championships? In my opinion, no, they aren't, but I'm just one voice in the court of public opinion that decides such matters. I think they're more like site championships. I'll come back to the subject if public opinion eventually disagrees with me.

2022 Grand Prix, Wrapup

2022 Grand Prix; Berlin / Belgrade, I've already posted six times:-

• 2022-02-02: 2022 Grand Prix & Candidates
• 2022-02-23: 2022 Grand Prix Regulations (cont.)
• 2022-03-02: 2022 Grand Prix, 1st Leg (Berlin)
• 2022-03-16: 2022 Grand Prix, 2nd Leg (Belgrade)
• 2022-04-06: 2022 Grand Prix, 3rd Leg (Berlin)
• 2022-04-13: 2022 Grand Prix, Final Actions

At the end of that last post, 'Final Actions', I noted,

Not done: Add the 25 players to the Index of Players.

Consider it done -- see World Chess Championship : Index of Players -- and that's a wrap! Congratulations to World Chess for the most interesting of the six Grand Prix events that started with the 2008-2009 Grand Prix.

2022 Grand Prix, Final Actions

In the previous post, 2022 Grand Prix, 3rd Leg (April 2022), I left myself with three actions: 'Still to do on my page'. First I added the PGN and total Grand Prix points to 2022 Grand Prix; Berlin / Belgrade (m-w.com).

Then I created the chart shown on the left. It lists the 25 players who participated in the three legs of the 2022 Grand Prix, their total score across the events in which they played ('Tot'), and the number of games played in the events ('Gms').

The last column shows the number of events in which each player participated ('Tnmt'). Two players participated in a single event and were substituted in their second event. I should say more about the substitutions, but I'll save that for another time.

Not done: Add the 25 players to the Index of Players. I had hoped to do that for this post, but I ran out of time. I'll schedule one last post for this long and complicated event.

2022 Grand Prix, 3rd Leg (Berlin)

Three weeks after 2022 Grand Prix, 2nd Leg (March 2022), the third and final leg concluded in Berlin. I added the various crosstables for the last leg to my page 2022 Grand Prix : Berlin / Belgrade, II-IV (m-w.com). Following the lead set in the '2nd Leg' post, here are TWIC introductions ('by Mark Crowther') from the weeks when the event took place:-

• TWIC1428, 2022-03-21 • 'Russian players are competing under the FIDE flag in the final leg of the FIDE Grand Prix series which starts tomorrow.'
• TWIC1429, 2022-03-28 • 'The three event FIDE Grand Prix is not over but the main issue has been decided, Richard Rapport and Hikaru Nakamura take the final Candidates places. Nakamura was in a group with Levon Aronian and lost his first game to him but came back to score 4/5 including a revenge win against Aronian.'
• TWIC1430, 2022-04-04 • 'Wesley So defeated Hikaru Nakamura in the final of the final FIDE Grand Prix but the two Candidates places had long been decided in favour of Nakamura and Richard Rapport.'

Still to do on my page:-

• Add the PGN for the third leg.
• Add the spreadsheet showing total Grand Prix points allocated.
• Calculate the total score for each player over the three legs.
• Add the event to the Index of Players for all participants.

TWIC1430 had another comment on the current cycle:-

Ding Liren scored 10.5/12 in a tournament entirely arranged to produce enough games with the right results to qualify him for the Candidates if Sergey Karjakin is suspended for the event. Whilst Ding does belong in the Candidates and seems to have been one of the worst affected players by the Covid-19 crisis this whole event was really not a proper tournament at all.

I'll look at that in another post.