Barely a couple of weeks away from the FIDE World Championship match in Singapore, defending champion Ding Liren of China has admitted that he is ‘worried about losing very badly’ to India’s D Gukesh.
“I’m worried about losing very badly. Hopefully, it won’t happen,” Ding said in an interview posted on chess app Take Take Take‘s YouTube channel.
“I will be the underdog approaching this match. I hope I could become a totally different player,” Ding said, in the interview which was done after the Chess Olympiad in September.
Why is Ding worried?
Well for starters, he hasn’t won a game of classical chess in 10 months – his last win in classical chess came back in January in Wijk Aan Zee.
“I’m feeling not so bad, but also not so good. I have tried to find my best shape, but actually I didn’t manage to do that. My game has many mistakes in every part of the game. Sometimes I manage to create many chances. I get winning positions, but I don’t convert them. It’s the same problem, time from time,” he said.
Is he scared then, of playing Gukesh in this form? No, he said, and even pointed out that he’s unbeaten against Gukesh in classical chess. But he did point out that Gukesh has recently been in top form, and called him the best player at the Olympiad, which India won.
French Grandmaster Maxime Vachier-Lagrave noted the difference in Ding’s levels before and after the pandemic. “I played him in Sinquefield Cup. He was looking nervous, jaded and simply not happy,” Vachier-Lagrave said.
“Maybe I’m not so eager to play. I don’t have this ambition to win the game,” Ding said. “Every time I came to the playing hall, maybe I was not in a very good mood. And after the game, especially if I drew the game, I realized I missed a huge chance. I’m not so happy with the results. This goes in a circle from time to time.”
What are Ding’s ambitions in Singapore?
“To fight, to slow down his pace, to have some winning chances,” Ding said.
It’s rare for a defending champion to sound so alarmingly low on confidence, but that is Ding’s reality at the moment. But all is not lost by any means for Ding. British Grandmaster David Howell said that he had seen Ding’s level improve in the last couple of months, compared to what it was earlier in the year.
Howell said that at the Olympiad, Ding played much better than his tournaments earlier in the year. However, even though he finished the Olympiad without a win, he managed comfortable draws, which Howell said could be his strategy in the World Championship match, in a bid to frustrate Gukesh.
Gukesh and Ding a study in contrasts
Even though Ding has called himself the underdog for this match, an advantage he has is the familiarity of being an underdog. He was just that before the start of the last World Championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi. He was even more of an underdog halfway through the match but ended up winning it.
Even with that knowledge, though, it’s hard to overlook the contrasting build-ups the two players are having before the big match.
Despite it being Gukesh’s first time on the big stage, he has struck a confident note in the build-up to it. He has been in fine form on the board, which obviously helps, but he’s also confident that his preparation will stand him in good stead through the duration of the match.
Although Gukesh has stopped short of making any predictions, he had previously mentioned how Ding was an excellent all-round player. It’s clear that despite all of Ding’s trials and tribulations throughout the year, Gukesh knows a tough challenge awaits him when they begin their clash on November 25.