Ding Liren was set to make it a staggering five wins for White in a row, but a combination of missed chances, a semi-bluff, and brilliant defence from Ian Nepomniachtchi saw Game 8 of the World Championship match end in a draw. Ian now leads 4.5:3.5, while Ding has to deal with the fallout of his "anonymous" pre-match training games being discovered online.
Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi continue to serve up wild games | photo: Stev Bonhage, FIDE
Watch the live show for Game 8 of the World Championship match in Astana, including the post-game press conference, with commentary from Tania Sachdev, Anish Giri and Robert Hess.
Replay Game 8 with computer analysis
Ian Nepomniachtchi now leads the FIDE World Championship 4.5:3.5 after holding a draw in Game 8, but the wild encounter could just as easily have been a fifth win for White in a row.
The opening was once again intriguing and unpredictable, as Ding Liren went for a 4.e3 and 5.a3 version of the Nimzo-Indian championed by Fabiano Caruana. He chose a line with a very long pedigree.
Ding said of Fabiano's influence:
I know it was his opening style to play something very sharp and to attack at any cost sometimes… But today this idea was not his idea!
Ding Liren keeps generating chances | photo: Stev Bonhage, FIDE
Ding unleashed a beautiful move, 9.Ra2!, and revealed it was one he was pinning his hopes on.
This idea I considered some kind of cannonball in my opening preparation, because it can be very powerful, and it’s very, very long preparation, a very deep idea behind this.
It seems to be have been something of an open secret for top-level players. Ian Nepomniachtchi commented, “As artificial as this Ra2 looks somehow, I think it’s the top engine choice in certain positions, so I was more or less aware of this sacrifice”. Other players were licking their lips.
Aram Hakobyan’s games, including one against Parham Maghsoodloo in the recent Airthings Masters Play-In, were not the most notable predecessors, however.
That prize would go to an obscure game played a month earlier between 1471-rated opqrstuv and FVitelli (1540) on lichess. Their 70+ encounters also included over a dozen featuring the 4.h3!? shocker in Game 2 of the match. The conclusion was obvious, making this the biggest World Championship preparation fail since the Saint Louis Chess Club accidentally filmed and broadcast Fabiano Caruana’s database in 2018.
Hikaru Nakamura instantly explained there was “zero chance” this wasn’t the accounts of Ding and his second Richard Rapport, describing it as “very sloppy”.
In some ways they’d been unlucky, since internet sleuths also uncovered the same players had first tried to play on chess.com, where the games would have been much harder to find, but had fallen foul of the anti-cheating system detecting something unusual in their play.
More impressive was the crisis management, since as in 2018 with Caruana, Team Ding had clearly communicated what had happened to their man. For once, Ding showed an impressive poker face.
It hadn’t killed the bromance.
Ding had no idea about the developing storm during Game 8, which reached the same position as in the earlier game after 12.h4!, offering a sacrifice of the g5-bishop.
Nepomniachtchi had his first serious think of the game and accepted with 12…hxg5, saying he knew Black was ok after 13.hxg5 g6. It's possible, however, that his preparation had been to include 12…cxd4 13.cxd4 first. The reason why became clear after 15.e5!
Giri in fact suspects both players had assumed 12…cxd4, when this e5-pawn push would simply lose, and both dug deep around this point. Ding explained of the time he was spending:
Of course, the best way is to play quickly and as good as possible, but the position after the opening is very, very unclear, and there are so many options for me, so I have to figure out which one is the best way to continue, and it cost me a lot of time. And I think the time spent during the first half of the game was needed, because I guess I played some good moves, maybe not the best, but at least I was not worse.
Both players were on top form as they went for the complex sequence of 15…dxe5 16.d5 Ne7 17.d6! Nf5 18.Ne4 Qd8 19.Qd3 Kg7! 20.g4! Bb7! 21.Rh3!
After the game, Ian felt this was the moment he could have saved himself a huge amount of suffering.
I felt over-ambitious, and I think I made some awful moves, which almost cost me the game… It was a simple choice after Rh3 just to capture on e4 and capture on d6 with the queen: 21…Bxe4 22.Qxe4 Qxd6 [22…Nxd6! may be better] 23.Rd2 Qc7 24.gxf5 [24.Rhd3! is trickier] 24…exf5, and this should never be worse.
Ian Nepomniachtchi is potentially within 3 games of becoming the 17th World Chess Champion | photo: David Llada, FIDE
Ian instead spent 21 minutes on 21…Nh4!?, only for Ding to respond immediately with 22.g5!
Black was in fact still ok after 22…Rh8!, but that was an only move, and in the 12 minutes Ian thought about his options Giri saw the potential for a masterpiece.
It could also have been a miniature, since 22…Bxe4? was now a mistake, and after 23.Qxe4 Nf5 Ding didn’t take on e5 but played the much more powerful quiet move 24.Rd2!
That entrance of the a2-rook should have been decisive. Ian understood his predicament.
I just completely, completely forgot about the move Rd2, and after Rd2 suddenly I think Black is lost.
“Forgot” is well-known top-level chess player jargon for “missed”, but after 24…Rh8 25.Rxh8 Qxh8 Ding suffered a huge miss of his own.
Another quiet rook move, 26.Rd3!, almost forces resignation, since there’s no defence against the threats of Rh3-h8 and also pushing the d-pawn. If Black tries to blockade the d-pawn with the rook then we might get e.g. 26…Rd8 27.Rh3 Qg8 28.Qxe5+ Kf8 29.Rh8, while 26…Qd8 27.d7 f6 runs into another simple tactic.
28.Qxa8! Qxa8 29.d8=Q.
Ding had a full 25 minutes at this point, but he played 26.d7!? in just two seconds. His speed of play suggested he simply knew he was winning long-term and didn’t want time to be a factor, and maybe he would have been right, if not for a wild 31st move by Ian, 31…Qh4!?
Ian played that after thinking a mere three minutes and later noted, “I guess I was very lucky to bluff with this Qh4 move!” He explained he initially thought he’d found “a brilliant way to save the game”, but as Ding was pondering his move, Ian saw the flaw.
White can take the rook, since after 32.Qxd8! Qe4+ 33.Re2 Qb1+ 34.Kd2 Qb2+ 35.Kd3 Qb1+ 36.Rc2 Qd1+ White isn’t forced to take a draw by perpetual check.
The winning move is in fact 37.Ke4!!, giving up the rook with check to 37…Qxc2+ when after 38.Bd3! there’s suddenly nothing for Black (e.g. 38…Nd6+ 39.Ke5!). That was a brilliancy you could of course easily miss…
…but it was a completely forced line and Ian said it took him an extra minute of thinking to see it. For a second game in a row he’d seen a perpetual which wasn’t.
Ding confessed that the Qh4!? move left him “very disappointed”, and that the way he’d lost the previous game because of disastrous time management was weighing on him.
I briefly checked the line, but I stopped, I think at maybe Qb1+ Rc2. I didn’t calculate any further, so I just stopped there, maybe because my time was not so much, considering yesterday’s loss, so I want to play quickly in time trouble, and that’s another story.
32.Kd1?! still kept winning chances alive, with Ian noting there was “a lot of mess” in what followed. Mistakes were made.
The last and crucial one was 37.Bf3?, which not only completely overlooked the point of the last knight move to g4, but also set up the blow that followed perfectly.
Nepomniachtchi triumphantly executed 37…Nxf2! 38.Rxf2 e4! and suddenly it was White who had to be very careful. Vishy felt this was a miss that could have been avoided.
Ian said he was getting “very optimistic” about his position at this point, and with reason, since it was now Ding Liren who had to be very careful. Once again he spent his last five minutes on a single move, but at least this time it was the last move he needed to make before reaching the safe haven of an extra hour on the clock on move 40. He made it with four seconds to spare.
Ding’s 40.Qxb6 was a good move, but it was cuttings things close, with Ian noting that it was somewhat lucky for White still to have the only defence after 40…Qxd7 of 41.Rg2!, threatening checkmate by capturing on g6.
The players took some time to calm down before a draw was agreed on move 45.
The recappers did their thing, including with one all-Peter show.
It had been another phenomenal struggle.
If there was one comforting thing in the post-game press conference it was that Ding Liren remained unbroken. He smiled, for instance, when asked about discussions with his second.
He was keeping his feet on the ground.
I missed at least two wins, maybe even more. I feel very bad, also very, very tired after the long game, but still there are six games, I have three White pieces, so anything can happen.
Before getting the white pieces, however, he needs to at least hold on with Black in Game 9. With no rest day, there’s not a lot of time for what is likely the immediate damage limitation exercise of finding an opening that wasn’t exposed in the training games.
Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren analysed afterwards | photo: Stev Bonhage, FIDE
With just six games to go the price of any mistake is only increasing, so that you don’t want to take your eyes off the games.
Don’t miss all the action from 15:00 local time (5am ET, 11:00 CEST, 2:30pm IST)!
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