2024 World Chess Championship

[Kyng]

Apparently, the head of the Russian Chess Federation has accused Ding of losing the final game deliberately. However, Gukesh has defended Ding from those accusations:

Anyone who understands high-level sports, it's clear that if you play 13 games at a high-level, in high-intensity, prepare for six months and if you come for the last game at a World Championship, you are pretty much dead at that point. We are basically two dead people playing chess and mistakes happen in those moments.

And in any case, why would Ding do that on purpose? He'd mounted some herculean defences in some of the previous games that ended in draws; why would he purposely throw that away in the last game? And even if he did, why not do it in a less obvious manner, by making a smaller mistake earlier in the game, when the position was more complicated?

It's also worth noting that most of the commentators (who are themselves IMs and GMs) didn't even notice why Ding's move was losing, until he played it and they saw the eval bar drop. And they weren't playing under immense time pressure, with a World Championship on the line. It's entirely reasonable that someone in Ding's shoes would make a mistake like that (even if they're a world-class chess player!)

[Cool Cory]

The people claiming Ding lost the match deliberately are idiots and don't properly understand chess. Ding's mistake was entirely reasonable, and he'd have no real reason to lose the match deliberately.

[Kyng]

Yeah, agreed on that.

Also, I'd like to add a bit more context to his mistake:



This is the position in which Ding played 55. Rf2??. As those of you who watched the video I posted earlier will know, this is a blunder because it allows 55...Rxf2 56. Kxf2 Bd5!, after which a bishop trade is forced, and Black has a winning king and pawn endgame.

However, consider the following (very similar-looking) position:



Not much has changed: Black's rook and White's bishop have been shuffled one square across. But in this position, Rf2 is completely fine! That's because, after the rook trade and Bd5, White isn't forced to trade bishops: they can simply move their bishop to a8 or c6.

In fact, for quite a long time in the game, the bishop was on b7. It was only on move 53 - two moves before the blunder - that Ding moved it to a8. So, it's entirely possible that Ding thought about Rf2 back when his bishop was still on b7; figured out it was completely fine; and then played that move without realising that it no longer worked because he'd moved his bishop.

Very easy mistake to make, even for a top grandmaster!