Carlsen, his hair pulled into a topknot, sat at a table at the Hustler Casino, playing poker. And so the question became, would everyone else?įour days later, when Game Four began, at 3 P.M. He had simply decided that chess was changing and that the world championship, with its sclerotic format, had not kept up. But Carlsen, the reigning world champion since 2013, had not retired from chess-in fact, he was more visibly involved in the game than ever. Star athletes get injured people retire luck counts some out. Championships don’t always feature the top competitors, of course, in any endeavor. It was an uncomfortable and unavoidable fact that Carlsen, the undisputed best player in the world, was absent.
During the three weeks of the match, Ding spoke openly about feeling immense pressure.īut what was at stake for chess? At the start of the tournament, at least, it was unclear what, exactly, the outcome of the game’s premier tournament would signify, or how much it mattered. For Ding, the third-ranked player, it was the chance to bring the first world championship to China, and fulfill the promise he’d shown ever since he stunned the chess world, at sixteen, by winning the Chinese championship before he’d even become a grand master. For Nepomniachtchi, the second-ranked player in the world, it was the chance to redeem himself after a horrendous showing as the challenger in the previous world championship, in 2021, when he was trounced by Magnus Carlsen. The winner would become only the seventeenth champion in nearly a hundred and fifty years. “I’m struggling with my feelings, my emotions,” he said.įor the two players, the stakes of the match could not have been higher: the most august title in perhaps the world’s most august game. His mind, he would say later, after managing a wobbly draw in the first of fourteen games, was distracted. Finally, he settled a black pawn on the square opposite Nepomniachtchi’s white. His right index finger flicked nervously.
Nepomniachtchi had taken three seconds to make his first move.
He’d had nine months to think of what his opening would be. Nepomniachtchi had made his typical first move, but still Ding hesitated. Ding Liren sat at the table, staring at a white pawn that Ian Nepomniachtchi had thrust into the center of the board. The World Chess Championship, in Astana, Kazakhstan, began in fitting fashion: with a flutter of uncertainty.
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