Ding Liren self-destructed in time trouble in Game 7 of the World Championship match, freezing in a position where he seemed to have done all the hard work and was the one pushing for a win. Ian Nepomniachtchi now leads 4:3, with Ding Liren needing to come back from a heartbreaking loss in the 2nd half of the match. The good news is he’s done it twice before.

Ding Liren collapsed in time trouble | photo: Stev Bonhage, FIDE

Replay the day's live commentary with Anish Giri, Tania Sachdev and Daniel Naroditsky, as well as the post-game press conference.

Replay Game 7 of the FIDE World Championship in Astana with computer analysis

We’ve now had an incredible four wins for White in a row, and five decisive games in seven, which is almost unprecedented at World Championship level.

For similar madness you need to go back to the 1961 rematch between Mikhail Botvinnik and Mikhail Tal, which started with three wins and at one stage featured seven wins in a row.

Ian Nepomniachtchi lived very dangerously, but he's now taken the lead for a 3rd time in the match | photo: David Llada, FIDE

The drama never stops in Astana, and after playing the London System for the first time in a World Championship match in Game 6, Ding Liren came armed with a new surprise in Game 7, the French Defence.

It hasn’t been a regular guest on the big stage.

Nepomniachtchi himself had done something to change that, however, employing the opening in the 2020 Candidates Tournament. He commented:

I’d say the French Defence is completely ok. It’s nothing wrong, perhaps the only problem is that if White expects the French Defence it could be tricky, as White could dig somewhere deeply and try to test Black in some critical lines.

The 45 seconds Ding took on his move (45 seconds that would loom incredibly large by the end of the game) gave the impression he was just making things up as he went along…

…but he explained he’d decided on 1…e6 on the rest day, and Richard Rapport wasn’t uninvolved in the decision.

During a walk with Richard back in Hangzhou, I told him I might play the French Defence, but it was a half-joke, half-serious, and he took it seriously. Today he insisted I could try the French Defence to surprise my opponent and I took his advice. I prepared a lot for this game.

Ding Liren said he no longer knows what his style is, since he's playing all kinds of lines and ideas | photo: David Llada, FIDE

The way openings have developed so far in this match, however, has looked haphazard, with the players usually claiming to have left their theory behind in the early stages. Ian dodged a head-on struggle with 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2, commenting:

I honestly felt that this is some very safe, small edge for White... You’ll get crazy if you prepare each and every opening for every game, so I had an idea in case of the French, I’ll play my stuff, which I used to play a lot online.

Ian mentioned online games against Alexander Grischuk, while his most recent public game was a draw from Division II of the Airthings Masters against Vladimir Kramnik, who rumour has it is currently working for Ian.

It was hard to know who emerged with the most bragging rights from the opening. Ding seemed to land the first novelty, although the game would later transpose back to a position seen once or twice before.

Ding revealed that his preparation had ended 9.Nxc6 bxc6 10.0-0 0-0, and there was no reason not to believe him, since 11.Qe2 led to his first long think of the game — 17 minutes over 11…Bb7.

The quiet manoeuvring was somewhat interrupted by Ian threatening mate-in-1.

Here, in practical terms, it felt like Ding could have massively eased his task — and avoided what eventually became a traumatic day — by responding equally crudely with 13…g6, preventing any quick attack on his king.

Instead he played the subtler 13…Nf6!? only to think over 20 minutes after 14.Qh4! appeared on the board. When he went for 14…c5 15.Bf4 Qb6?! (15…Qd8! was a very tough to find best move) 16.Ne5! he was suddenly in trouble, since a Nd7 fork is threatened. The knight on f6 is unable to capture on d7 without allowing checkmate on h7. Ding dug deep and, after 16 minutes, found the only good reply 16…Rad8!

That’s a move you can only play if you realise 17.Bxh7+ Nxh7 18.Qxe7 f6 is actually no more than a draw for White, since the queen is stuck, but there’s far more to calculate, including 17.Ng4!? The computer was suggesting 17…Rxd3!, while Ding revealed afterwards he would have played the second-best move 17…h5!?

In the end after 17.Rae1 g6 Ding was finally stabilising, however, and with 18.Bg5 Rd4 19.Qh3 Qc7 20.b3!? Nh5! the momentum shifted Black’s way.

21.f4!? was a fine move, against which the computer’s suggested 21…Bxg5!?, opening the f-file and leaving gaping outposts on f6 and h6, looked insanely risky.

Instead Ding Liren found what Ian Nepomniachtchi called the “superb move” 21…Bd6!, preparing 22.c3 Nxf4!

Ding was catching up on the clock and Ian admitted afterwards “I didn’t really see what to do”. It turns out he could keep an edge with a fantastic resource of his own, 23.Rxf4! Bxe5 24.Bxg6!, but instead he went for what he realised was a “slightly worse” position after 23.Bxf4 Rxf4 24.Rxf4 Bxe5 25.Rh4 Rd8 26.Be4.

Ding was getting down to 15 minutes for 15 moves at this point, so that there was little time to ponder strategic decisions. It seems keeping the bishop pair, e.g. with 26…Ba6!, was well-worth another pawn, with 27.Rxh7 Bg7 giving White nothing — in fact one of the computer’s top choices is just to give back the exchange with 28.Rxg7+.

Instead Ding gave up his light-squared bishop with 26…Bxe4!?, with Giri commenting, “I sense huge long-term danger for Black”. We would later learn that similar fears were paralysing Ding, but in concrete terms he kept finding good moves. Play continued: 27.Rhxe4 Rd5 28.Rh4 Qd6! (Nepo’s suggestion of 28…Bf6 was also good, and perhaps more practical, but Ding’s was the computer choice) 29.Qe3 h5 (finally solving the issue of the h7-pawn) 30.g3 Bf6 31.Rc4.

Ding had 9 minutes 13 seconds to Nepo’s 12 minutes 21 seconds when this position appeared on the board — mutual time trouble, but nothing Ding should have been unable to handle. Ian explained the rational approach.

I guess Black has all reasons to be ambitious here, but I would say it would be quite normal to make some solid moves, like Kg7, just Rf5, repeat once or twice, and then pass the time trouble, because Black has endless moves, basically. Black could never be worse because my king is so weak and the d-file is controlled.

What makes World Championship matches even tougher is that you can't just get out of there fast after a loss | photo: Stev Bonhage, FIDE

Instead Ding let his time drop to under six minutes as he went for 31…h4!? His explanation for the move revealed that his evaluation of the position was failing him.

When he played 31.Rc4, suddenly I realised maybe I was slightly worse after that. I cannot go 31…Rd3, he can take on c5 and then he has Rc8+, and if I just wait with Kg7, he will just play Rf1. He’s stabilised, maybe he’s going to be better, so I want to take immediate action, so I play h4.

31…Rd3 32.Qxc5 is likely drawn, while after 31…Kg7 32.Rf1 Ding would have e.g. 32…Bg5! 33.Qf3 f5! and be significantly better. In other words, he was already seeing ghosts. The move he played in the game, 31…h4, was also perfectly good, if impractical for time trouble.

Nepo mentioned that after 32.gxh4 he felt he was playing for three results, not two, with the position sharpening and the open files on the kingside potentially good for his rooks. What followed, however, was less about chess logic than chess madness, fuelled by time trouble and the stress of what Ian called, “an extremely, extremely sharp and extremely tense” game.

As chess fans watched in mounting shock, Ding’s time dropped and dropped, in a position vastly simpler than the ones he'd successfully navigated earlier. Eventually he'd spent 4 minutes and 54 seconds to leave himself just 45 seconds for eight moves, something physically difficult to perform. Worse, he’d played an unimpressive move, and one it turns out had been his plan five minutes earlier.

Ding had suffered the time-trouble nightmare of suddenly realising he’d miscalculated, and, like a rabbit caught in headlights, had completely failed to switch to one of the many alternative paths to safety.

He commented:

I played 31…h4 with the idea of 32.gxh4 Rd2, but I totally missed 33.Re2 and 33…Rd1+ 34.Kg2, so after gxh4 I started to think again, and I couldn’t find any way to continue.

Best was 32…Be5!, forcing the white queen to a worse square, since 33.Rd2? just loses to 33…Bxh2! But if Ding set himself the less ambitious goal of just holding the status quo, he had numerous options, including 32…Rd2 as played in the game. After 33.Re2 he could simply have retreated the rook to d5, defending the c5-pawn, but realising how desperate his time situation was, he blitzed out the losing 33…Rd3?

The chess world looked on in horror, at least with the exception of Ian Nepomniachtchi (“surely I didn’t mind”).

The players came to the press conference raw from the game without the chance to check with chess engines, and things had happened so fast that Ian wasn’t sure if Ding could still have escaped at the end. He suggested meeting 34.Qxc5 with 34…Bd4+!? 35.cxd4 Rd1+ 36.Kg2 Qf4.

“I wasn’t sure if there is a win for me, because my king is so exposed and Qf1 is an idea and so on”, said Nepo, but it turns out 37.Qe5! holds everything together and after 37…Qf1+ the king will finally escape from checks e.g. on c2 (37…Qg4+ wins the h4-pawn, but that’s the end of Black’s achievements).

That would certainly have been a better try, but one imagines Ian would still have calculated the win if he had to. Instead after 34…Rd1+ 35.Kg2 Qd3 36.Rf2! it was all gone. Ding played another couple of moves, but then in a hopeless situation, with just three seconds left on his clock, he resigned.

A fourth decisive World Championship game in a row was not the signal for the celebrity recaps to end.

“I played the game I think not so bad, but just at the end I messed things up”, was Ding’s accurate and understated assessment of what had happened, but, once again, you wonder how someone can come back from such a blow. The commentators speculated the proximity to taking the lead for the first time in the match had seen Ding freeze, but to lose the game, so abruptly, must have hurt.

Perhaps not since Vasyl Ivanchuk in the 2013 Candidates have we seen such a meltdown from a top player | photo: Stev Bonhage, FIDE

There’s now a rest day before Game 8, when the second half of the match begins. Once again, Ding is trailing and needs a comeback, but after what we’ve witnessed so far no-one can rule that out. Anish Giri once again had a pep talk.

I feel if Ding will resist now, this might come as a surprise for Ian, who feels that I punched him, he came back, I punched him, he came back, I punched him. And maybe this was Ian’s last punch as well. Maybe Ian put all his strength into this punch, and now he thinks, that’s it, you are down, but maybe it’s enough for Ding to get up! Just maybe it’s enough for him to get up, and then it would turn out that Ian no longer has the strength to punch again. We’ll never know…

What’s certain is that you don’t want to take your eyes of this match! Game 8, where Ding Liren has the white pieces, will be live on Thursday, when Robert Hess joins Anish Giri and Tania Sachdev.

Don’t miss all the action from 15:00 local time (5am ET, 11:00 CEST, 2:30pm IST)!

See also:

• Official website
• Nepomniachtchi-Ding Liren World Championship match games
• The Ding-Nepomniachtchi Opening Press Conference
• Ding Liren survives scare in Game 1
• Nepo wins World Championship game at 13th attempt
• Ding Liren passes acid test in World Championship Game 3
• Ding Liren pounces on blunder to win Game 4
• Nepomniachtchi retakes the lead with Game 5 win
• Ding wins Game 6 of World Championship rollercoaster