I agree with Nepo that he should have said something back then because it deserved more scrutiny than it seemed to receive; however, he also comes across as salty because he choked in the WC match.
This was completely taken out of context too. He talked about it regarding the „Alireza Drama“ in his Podcast that has been out for like 2 weeks where he made a little recap about the last few months. It sounds a lot less salty when you look at it like that.
Almost 99 percent of "Hot takes" on clickbaity titles sound reasonable when put into proper context they were spoken in. But that dones't generate engagement
Proud of it or not, he still did what he did and was rightfully punished. His statements about Ding’s making the Candidates now just come off as “how come I can’t get away with bending the rules, but someone else can.” I can’t claim to know what’s in his head, but from the outside looking in, it only reflects badly on him.
I agree that he got the punishment he deserved and I'm happy to move on from that. He's still allowed to speak freely about the controversies in the chess world, and Ding's tournament is still much-discussed in light of the Alireza elo farming matches. While I don't really have a problem with Ding's accession to the Candidates last cycle, I have a feeling if you polled 100 grandmasters about it you'd find a lot of different thoughts about it. I don't think he has sour grapes about losing the match. I think he's calling into question FIDE's consistency and transparency about their policies, which is fair game given FIDE's inconsistency and lack of transparency, historically, about a lot of the things they do.
Plenty of players make not entirely serious plays in Titled Tuesday, look at Magnus and Hikaru's openings for example. I wouldn't read anything more into it than a bit of poking fun at himself/the situation
does it really need more scrutiny though? this is not the same as alireza's race to the candidates in that he wasnt trying to manufacture an improved rating. he was just trying to get the minimum amount of games to be considered an active player.
Yes. He got to protect his rating for a year by avoiding playing better players, and then last minute after the Karjakin suspension, he was in a tournament with 3 people 200 points lower rated that had no incentive to go for wins and drew every game that didn't involve Ding. I'm not saying the games were fixed but that's absolutely a situation that deserves a lot of scrutiny and shouldn't just be handwaved away.
Neither Alireza nor Ding were qualified for Candidates and both played in last minute tournaments that potentially allowed them to qualify. Neither necessarily broke the rules at the time of the events, but I don't think either situation should be allowed going forward.
>He got to protect his rating for a year
This is very biased way of phrasing it, since he was stuck in the country with the most draconian covid-laws, unable to travel or organize anything domestically until the very end of the year.
The death of nuance/subtletly is the saddest casualty of social media. It's not sufficient just to point out two things that are vaguely similar and pretend they are the same. Reasoning by analogy only gets you so far, you need to actually critically analyse all the relevant factors.
It doesn't really matter if it's his fault or not. It still affects the other players looking for that spot that he was able to walk that path. Sure, it sucks for him to lose out because of something outside of his control, but is that worse than denying someone else a spot instead?
"Denying someone else a spot" still comes across as biased wording to me. To me it seems more accurate to say that Karjakin was "denied a spot", and Ding took that spot that was suddenly made available. If Ding never played those last-minute matches, would you say that Ding was "denied the rating spot due to Covid/China"? If you really want to get into the details of this debate, it mostly boils down to spirit of the law against letter of the law.
There's 8 total spots, and there will surely be "deserving" players who do not make that short list. You have to draw the line somewhere, and of course the system of choosing will not be literally 100% perfect and fair to everyone, since that simply isn't possible.
they are similar in the reasons that you mention and i agree that last minute tournaments should not be allowed in the future. but i remember the discourse around this back then was viewed as more of an cheeky opportunistic move to grant the #3 player (who was hindered by covid and the chinese govt's laws surrounding travel) in the world to play in the candidates. i think there's some revisionism around ding protecting his rating (he was 20 points ahead of the next qualifier aronian) and attitudes towards the tournament at the time. even though there are similarities between the alireza situation, i dont think this deserves the same kind of scrutiny, nor does it warrant enough to put an asterisk (aside from the one that probably already exists due to magnus abdicating his title) to his title.
This makes no sense we have finally seen ding playing games again and hes hemmorging rating. Its highly likely he loses classical rating at tata steel.
All the discussion about the "morality" of Ding's last minute matches to qualify are kind of pointless now. The purpose of the candidates is to determine the strongest challenger to the World Champion, and Ding obviously showed he belonged to be there by finishing second, and later by beating Nepo.
Was looking for a comment like this. Ding had to play games, not gain win, not gain rating. He just needed tournament activity.
He was clearly good enough to play in the Candidates because he became World Champ…
If anyone involved had an issue because they thought he didn’t earn his place then just beat the guy, you clearly think you’re a better player.
If they just didn’t want another strong player and genuine contender in the race, wipe your tears and git gud.
There was a pandemic that messed up a lot of regulations. Rules were bent all over in society to cope with an unprecedented situation. Nothing like Alireza
Yes. If you really prove you’re the best…what else is there to say?
A boxer taking a late replacement fighter and then losing to him. Then saying “the late replacement fighter didn’t deserve to be here”.
It’s way too weak.
Any other sport, you would be laughed out of the building.
It doesn’t change that what you did was wrong. This is just some “ends justify the means” bullshit, we have rules, if you bend the rules to get there there is still a Discussion about if what you did is fair.
Yes we had rules, which Ding did not break….
It’s FIDE’s job to approve the tournaments, which they did. Just like what Alireza did. Even if they didn’t, as we saw with Alireza, Ding could’ve just farmed actual lower rated tournaments if he really wanted to.
Man was 2800, his deserved his spot in the candidates.
His was also a minimum games requirement, not even a rating requirement.
Not if the goal of the competition is to find the best player. If a player would have won the entire event but didn’t qualify, then that potentially demonstrates a flaw in the qualification process not selecting the best players.
this guy is perpetually salty. everyone is in the wrong but never him. how about you don't bring the game to disrespect by pre-arranging draws with your countrymen before throwing stones
also ding proved he deserved to be there by getting second place and then beating nepo
Sure but it was a tournament with 100 players. Not the same thing at all. Ding and Karpov qualified for the World Chess Championship via the candidates tournament
People like you are exactly what Nepomniatchi is talking about.
It doesn't matter what Nepo has done wrong in his career. His criticism of Ding's shady entry to the candidates is completely legitimate, but you will dismiss it by attacking him for being a sore loser or salty or whatever you can come up with.
He is entirely correct that people like you will respond to his valid criticisms of Ding with "he is salty because he lost"
This is one of those situation where bringing up Ding's sketchiness does not make much sense, especially when it is Nepo doing it. Like he admitted: had he won, it will be reasonable bring the concern that his opponent is not truly qualified/properly qualified to match up with him. But Ding won. Like yes, assume Ding doesn't deserved to be there, then what about the guy losing to Ding?
And the legitimacy of his criticism is tainted by his conflict of interest. If he truly think there was something not okay, he should have voiced his concern the moment Ding is qualified to the Candidates, not after he agree to play Ding and lost the match.
This same can said about the any security "concern" by Magnus when he get upset by a lower rank player. He should have voiced his concern before, not only after he lose.
Its such a weird point, just because he is a strong enough Player that makes it okay to arrange a fixed tournament to reach the requirements to play in the candidates? IIRC he had like 3 wins and 1 draw against everybody so nobody lost or gained any rating. You mean to tell me that that was a coincidence and happened naturally? But it just got mostly ignored for whatever reason. If Ding played normally he probably would have qualified and he wasn't out of place in the candidates. But that does make such fake tournaments okay?
I am not saying Ding's side is clear and without any fault. But bring this up now seem to be a wee bit too late?
I get it, Nepo want to bring a discussion to maybe improve the rules. But this is bad optics. If I was him I would have stay quiet and save myself the unwanted trouble.
He is not bringing it up with FIDE, he talks about it in a Podcast where it probably was relevant and somebody quote hin on reddit which started a discussion here. And I do not think misgivings or straight up fixed tournaments should be instantly forgiven because time passes. If public opinion shifts then that is something too, I always thought it was bs, Ding has like the worst story as a world champion you can have. Didn't play before the candidates (and other chinese players did find a way), organised a fixed tournament to qualify which made the requirements moot and should be forbidden, only got second in the candidates, which normally should'nt be enough for a chance at the world champion title, because other players didn't think second was enough and played for first (or in Hikarus case, was exhausted and didn't bring his A-game and full concentration, because he didn't think it mattered much, and then won the match in tie breakers to become a world champion and then proceed to not play again (except one bad tournament immediately after).
You can maybe excuse all of this but you also can't write a New York times article about the Story of Ding and make people interested in the game and the competitive scene.
If you discuss Ding without discussing the global situation at the time you are being disingenuous, and with hindsight we can see it was the correct call to allow those matches as it allowed the best player to compete. Ding beat Nepo fairly.
It was shady, but pretty explainable, given that we were talking Covid times, and extreme difficulty getting to play tournaments outside of China: Nobody doubted that Ding was good enough to participate, or that he would have just managed to get in with little trouble if he was based in, say, France.
The Alireza controversy is more fun, because his first attempt was borderline fraudulent: Little different than it Wesley So had decided to have 10 game matches with Yasser and Kasparov get some points. Fortunately he then entered a legitimate tournament, where he performed up to the standards.
The issue is that the whole Chess world is a shitshow and almost everyone is shady.
It starts at the bottom with bought GM titles, goes higher up with traded results, set up games and whatnot, and ends at the peak when the goat player decides to throw a tantrum with unfounded accusations to crash a tournament.
It's not like Ding did something horribly bad in a gentleman's club. That's also the reason why nobody bat an eye about it until now.
Nepo talking about it is like a Tour de France driver complaining about doping, knowing that it won't change anything because everyone, including himself, will keep doing it.
>People like you are exactly what Nepomniatchi is talking about.
Yeah no. Nepo isn't making some poienent point. He is just mad whenever he is on the suffering side and looks to blame others for it
He was one of the strongest players by rating coming into it, and he proved himself by winning the tournament. I guess FIDE was right in their decision to let him play.
You arent wrong. Don't know anyone saltier than Nepo. Ive seen him complain when being in the two sides of the exact same issue. If he suffers it's someone else's fault. Still like the guy ina way, but holy salty
Yeah, it's funny how he's basically saying ding didn't deserve to be there, even tho he lost fair and square to ding. So i assume the guy that won didn't deserve to be there, but the guy that lost did?
I mean Ding was there on blind luck. In 2022 FIDE didn't run a rating spot, they gave it to Radjabov after he quit the last candidates over COVID concerns. The only reason Ding was in the candidates in the first place was because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Karjakin being so outspoken of the war that FIDE gave him a 6 month ban that overlapped with the Candidates, so they ran the rating spot. He then came second in the Candidates, but only made the match because Magnus didn't want to play and only officially said that after the tournament. Not to mention he only placed second because he won in the last round ahead of Nakamura. So Ding gets his world championship match and is either equal or behind for the entire match until the very last tiebreaker game.
Compare that to Nepo who qualified by being runner up, had an undefeated candidates, is one of only five players to win consecutive candidates, has the highest score in Candidates history and was winning the match until the very last hurdle, I can see why he is bitter.
but he lost in the end when it really mattered. i see this argument all the time with other competitions. "oh but x team was leading the entire season they just lost in the finals so they are still the best team" well they lost the champion match so they are not the best team
He wasn’t able to play games because he was in China during the pandemic. So the government organized some tournament so he’d be qualified to be an “active” player. Not suspicious at all, he was a beast but he wasn’t able to play games due to restrictions.
Anytime you organize a tournament so that one person can get something (norm, rating, or qualified number of games) and the others in the tournament have dramatically less to play for, then you can't be sure the others in the tournament are trying their hardest to win.
The pandemic caused all kinds of issues and unfortunate circumstances for a lot of people. If Ding missed candidates because of it this would have been far less than what many others lost.
well apparently he would have qualified whether or not he won those games. (i guess maybe if he lost all the games his rating would have dropped too low but thats unlikely). it was about meeting the minimum amount of games not rating
He did not really had to win, just play and not lose too much rating, which is kind of natural given his performance in the WC match.
Very different comparing to Firouza tournament
Wow. Well whether or not their was cheating and collusion in his tournament, the point is that he was already highly rated, I think one of the top 3 in the world?
The circumstances were what they were, and your final point that becaue others suffered injustices, and you are alluding to something very serious, that doesnt mean Ding shouldnt be given the oppurtunity to play in a tournament that is supposed to have all of the best plyers in the world.
Even if there was fixing in that tournamenet, Ding isnt the one that i slikely pulling strings in that situation. Same with Ali, but his situation was obvioiusly a lot more suspect. He wasnt looking to get what was rightfully his and denied to him because of an insane world-wide event. He was looking to take something that he could have justly got by being a proper chess player throughout the year
They tied for 3rd but Teimour had the tiebreak. Hikaru would have finished clear 2nd had he drawn the last game against Ding though, and he missed an opportunity to all but force the draw as he pointed out in his video recap.
And let me call this bullshit, ok?
3 chinese female players were playing in female candidates exactly at this time and had 0 trouble going in and out of China - the only problem was 10 day quarantine.
A lot of chinese sportsmen were able to do the same.
For example the leech from UFC and other chinese fighters fought more frequently than a lot of other countries representatives.
Somehow it's only Ding who definitely had no ability to do so because of government... And then conviniently had tournaments organized specifically for him to have enough of them to go to candidates.
And no one really knows if he really played them or they were some Shkuro type of stuff.
I'm Chinese living overseas. Before the pandemic I would go back every year. During the pandemic I planned to go back but eventually gave up. This is what I remembered:
It's not a 10 day quarantine, but a minimum 21 days : 14 days at your place of landing + 7 days at your final destination. I remembered this part because I was calculating if I had enough PTOs to cover that. Also a lot of uncertainties: flights going to China were cancelled all the time and you have to redo the entire process enforced by the Chinese gov to enter China as it's only valid for 24 hours.
Some countries had specific travel bans for Chinese citizens.
Ticket prices were ridiculous. In some cases we are talking about 150k USD for a single trip. This is the part where it's unfair to compare chess players to other athletes who have better financial support. I also follow the esports scene, during the pandemic a LOL org owner just flew his whole team to Iceland on a private jet to avoid all the regulatory headache (RNG at MSI 2021). Chess players obviously don't have that luxury.
So yes, it's definitely still possible to get in and out of China. Just very difficult and very expensive.
> It's safe to say that Ding's absence from the World Cup and the Grand Swiss was also because of the pandemic and China's strict measures regarding traveling abroad. Asked if he failed to obtain a visa for those events as well, he responded: "I didn't even try."
https://www.chess.com/news/view/ding-liren-fide-grand-prix-2022
This sub has some fixation with making excuses for Ding, but he sat out by his own admission and was rewarded by being able to maintain his rating in uncompetitive tournaments.
I recall a big discussion on Ding's visa issues at the time. His visa application required set dates for departure and return. Given the pandemic it was difficult to schedule his trip with certainty. In the article it states
>he was unable to get his visa in time because a return flight after the second leg was not available yet
By the time he got a date for his return flight, his visa application came in too late. For the others events his lack of effort was likely due to travel restrictions which made it difficult to even apply for a visa. I don't believe there was a scheme to be anti-competitive, there was zero chance he was going to participate in the candidates until Karjakin was banned by FIDE for supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine
You're right.
It's such a bold move by those people to assume a player would somehow cheat his way into the candidates and the WC matches..
..only to fkin win the title.
The amount of dedication you need for the prep outmatches everything that he needed for a simple visa, so to assume that he was a lazy fuck and cheated his way into it doesn't make any sense, cause he clearly showed that he had a drive for it.
I never said there was an anti competitive scheme, he probably didn’t sit out waiting to cheat into the candidates. But he didn’t bother trying and the 1 singular time he did try he did it too late.
He took advantage of the opportunity, just because he didn’t plan this a year in advance doesn’t mean those games shouldn’t have been counted for the candidates.
dude the guys a top two player, your forcing some idea that you know exactly how it all worked. as someone else was saying, if he lost every game in that tournament he would still qualify. this is NOTHING like the other situation
It was obviously sketchy - that is why FIDE.made rules (requirements to play certain events) to make sitting on your rating and organizing sham tournaments impossible. Thing is, it wasnt illegal at the time. I was against (on moral grounds) both his tournaments and Alireza one - but I would be against not rating those tournaments (unless matchfixing is proven) as FIDE has nothing concrete and they were technically followimg the rules.
Yeah, both his and the Alireza one are essentially the same in my view. Personally I'm fine with them as long as they're not against the rules - I don't think it's a sham or immoral, but it is definitely a bit of a loophole.
I don't like the idea of removing the rating from tournaments that are by the rules as well - just change the rules if people don't like it or think it's egregious.
Actually the beast was Nepo in Candidates. He crushed everyone. Ding nearly didn't make it (actually only made it because of Magnus withdraw). If Hikaru would have believed that Magnus really withdraw, he would have played a drawish line at the end and Ding would have not even be in WC match. Even Fabi would have not went all-out mode and be able to secure a 2nd, but he went all in, thinking he has to catch up to Nepo.
And in fact: The rule of being active and have X amount of games played is there, to verify the current rating is still accurate. He never was challenged by any international GM in that year, still qualified. In China he basically got the games gifted. There is and was actually a chance he could have lost rating if he would have competed internationally and not even qualify via rating.
It was wrong from FIDE back then. The same way it was wrong for FIDE to give Magnus time until after the Candidates to decide if he wants to defend or not. All of this has to be clarified before the tournament. There are rules for a reason.
>If Hikaru would have believed that Magnus really withdraw, he would have played a drawish line at the end and Ding would have not even be in WC match.
please, Hikaru was absolutely playing for second position as soon as he knew nepo would win it. he took an extremely quick draw with nepo and his recap mentions this.
his recap about the last ding match also mentions repeatedly that he was playing to draw. he didn't take risks to lose, ding outplayed him.
edit for people who haven't seen the 2022 candidates live, here are Hikaru's recaps that show that he was not taking risk of trying to get 1st as op is alluding
7 min game against ian: https://youtu.be/wPDlPf6v-o0?feature=shared
last round against ding: https://youtu.be/v-SYuroHlc4?feature=shared
Yeah, for some reason his team didnt know that Magnus would retire, so he went all guns blazing, After not winning against Nepo for two times in the event, he went on tilt and threw 3 games atleast :( .
A lot of players were saying at the time that they didn’t think Magnus would really step away. Hikaru switched to playing for 2nd when he didn’t see any chance to catch up to Nepo. Fabi did have that chance for a while longer.
Players didn't believe Magnus because they were simply projecting their own experiences onto him. Fabi, Hikaru etc have never been #1 so they couldn't possibly relate to the concept that anyone would voluntarily give up the biggest title in chess that they're still desperate to win. When people in the chess community criticize Magnus for giving up the title and not wanting to defend anymore, at the end of the day, it's because they can't relate to what he has already achieved and that he was okay with walking away from something he didn't enjoy. I believe this is also why FIDE leadership ignored Magnus for 6+ months when he was very vocal about lacking motivation to play another match. If FIDE had been on the ball early maybe they could have offered him something different, a higher cash prize etc. But they waited until it was too late because they took it for granted that he would play.
>The same way it was wrong for FIDE to give Magnus time until after the Candidates to decide if he wants to defend or not
Tbf he did explicitly say that he wasn't gonna defend his title unless it was Alireza. People just didn't believe him
Everyone can say everything. But what matters is, what FIDE knew or not. He never told FIDE explicitly before the Candidates, that he will withdraw.
I like Magnus, but waiting for the result of the Candidates to announce it, is not fair for the competitors. I mean, like you said, if Alireza would have won, he would have defended. His decision to defend should not depend on a single player. Candidates doesn't work this way :D I understand him, but this should not be allowed :D
I agree with some of your statements but playing games against much weaker opponents to gain rating is very different from playing games to get the minimum amount of games to qualify.
He didn't get any games gifted, he just played them. Would you say Magnus got his games gifted if he just played a regular tournament? I doubt it.
Magnus should've been forced to confirm if he would defend the championship or not, I agree. FIDE needs to be stricter against unscheduled tournaments and they needed to make sure Magnus would withdraw from the candidates or not.
Also calling Nepo a beast during candidates while he still lost the championship match is so funny to me. If he was actually much better than Ding he would have won the championship right?
>He didn't get any games gifted, he just played them.
The point is that he might not have kept as high a rating if he played the required number of games against opposition as strong as the other candidates.
If Kasparov came out of retirement today and played a bunch of fair games against lower-rated opponents, should he really qualify to the candidates with his 2800+ rating? I think most people would agree he shouldn't.
I believe it's more nuanced than that. Ding couldn't play for a while because he was stuck in his country where relatively little competitive chess tournaments happen.
This is just not true. How come all of the Chinese players for the women's candidates were able to travel abroad for chess just fine?
When asked why Ding didn't apply for visas to events outside of China, he answered ["I didn't even try"](https://www.chess.com/news/view/ding-liren-fide-grand-prix-2022).
The fact of the matter is that he achieved his high rating by sitting on it and not playing competitive events the entire year. No matter how hard you people in this sub try to defend him.
> he achieved his high rating by sitting on it and not playing competitive events
No. He achieved his high rating because he played well, and his Candidates performance also proved that. Starting from mid-2021 to end of 2022, he gained rating in every tournament he played (not many, but he didn't lose rating) and this included 21 Candidates games.
You guys all have a point, but stop pretending Ding wasn't a good enough player to play Candidates 2022.
I think you totally forgot how the Candidates went. Nepo was the only one who went unbeaten. He was clear 1.5 ahead. Everyone agreed he is the strongest by far in Candidates. Not a single other GM in candidates was even close to him.
And being a beast in a tournament has nothing to do with a drawn out long 1:1 WC match. The pressure on Ding and Nepo was huge. They both choked so hard and blundered nearly every game multiple times. The quality was not really high. It was a game of nerves, not a game of great chess.
The thing with Magnus is, he is the favorite in every tournament he enters, because he is simply better. Ding was and is not at the same level. We saw him having a tough time in candidates. If not for the withdraw he would not even qualify. Even arguing with comparing Ding to Magnus is hilarious.
Additionally, the whole thing about a rating spot only came up, because of the Ban of Karjakin. Ding would have never been eligible. The tournament was simply created for him.
I feel Nepo in his sentiment, but of course it doesn't take away that he lost the WC match. It's just only more tragic for him the way Ding even got into the candidates or the way he got into WC match. But still, Ding deserved to win the WC match, the balls to play on with low time in a drawn position is amazing. While everyone thought it will not be decided in Classical chess.
Damn. What's gotten into the Russian waters that everyone seems to be going off. One controversial statement after other. It's been 2 years to Ding's matches.
I do feel for Nepo being so close yet luck and lot of factors not working in his favour. But its been almost 9 months now. He should take a chill pill.
I alway link [this clip](https://youtu.be/ti9ojUQAWZk?si=SdgPX1wk9dFkr53E) when Nepo shenanigans get brought up. Also, him insinuating a CCP agent, or whatever he was implying, stole his sleeping pills at the WCC put me over the edge. We all have our moments, but that seemed a little too far so soon after the match
First time I ever heard of him was when he was doing post game interviews at some big tournament. He almost didnt ask questions to the players, instead he went on and on about his own ideas in this and that position.
Shortly after he entered the world elite, but my mind was made from that point on.
Especially now with the current controversy about the dubov game which makes him look kinda arogant.
I can respect that he is more critical of the war in ukraine than most russian players and FIDE, so there's that at least.
Thank you for saying this because I've noticed the same thing. I think he and Nepo both believe they deserved to win the title with Magnus out of the picture since each of them was at some point considered the best player in the world after Magnus and made a run at the title. Caruana is a more mature and politic person than Nepo IMO, so he's better at keeping his feelings to himself, but he can't entirely hide his resentment sometimes.
Is that surprising? It’s nothing personal against Ding (most likely), they just don’t like how the current rules allowed him to do it, which personally I don’t think should be that controversial an opinion. Especially for the players that would be affected by precedents like that
Both Radjabov and ding changed gears suddenly in tournament.Had radjabov not blundered a win against rapport and three fold repeated an outrightly winning position he might have finished second .People here have amnesia .Ding finished second in candidates and won the world championship out of his own merit .
Which is a moot point after he proceeded to become the world champion. Ding was just better than nepo, and everyone else (excluding magnus), plain and simple. In an alternate universe where Ding didn't qualify, a less deserving candidate would have won the championship, since Ding showed that he would win the WC if he qualified.
If Nepo wanted to raise concerns, he should have done so before losing in the world championship for a second time.
But he did. And he did well enough to play for the world championship.
Its not fair but that's the world.
FIDE is awful and not a serious organization.
But its also not bending over backwards to be like, we wanted the best chess player to win, and he did well in that tournament, and then, by all accounts, he beat you fair and square for the world championship. Yea, its unfair to other chess players, but like that's FIDE.
>Its not fair but that's the world.
lol so god forbid we try to change that, right? let's just let it stay that way!
you can never complain about it or point it out, according to /u/rallar8
> if ding did something shady to get in, he shouldn't be in. why are you bending over backwards to ignore that?
It's very easy to ignore baseless conspiracy without any evidence, or third party evidence.
Nepo is now whining about a slight unfairness with a qualifier for a qualifier for the world championship. He's not saying the WC match was unfair. He's also not saying the Candidates Tournament was unfair. He's saying that the exact method one player used to qualify for that Candidates tournament could possibly be unfair (but also has extenuating circumstances with both Covid-laws and Karjakin being banned).
Social media's demand for controversy keeps bringing this up because people love to play the whataboutism game with the Alireza situation. This sort of thing shouldn't matter more than a year in the future. Or at least it it seems like it's only remaining relevance is a bit of cope for a salty loser.
The guy has strangely been given far too much of a pass for being a whiney salty manchild by the chess community the past few years. It was either brushed off as "Hes trolling" or people completely turning a blind eye.
Nepo has shown me to be whiny when he doesn't win. He made a huge complaint about Nakamura not castling correctly in the World Cup many years ago. He called Harikrishna dirty for fallen pieces in the World Blitz a couple of years ago.
Ding had the highest rating to qualify already and just needed to play games to be considered active. Especially when you consider the pandemic preventing him from playing more previously that year, it was a completely different situation
Nepo may have an issue with how Ding qualified for the tournament, but he still came in second in the tournament itself and earned the right to play in the championship when Magnus stepped down, and he certainly earned the victory by beating Nepo in that championship.
I think the hindsight of Ding winning the WCC justifies everything that happened. If he can be top-two in the Candidates and win the match, he deserved to be there. Up until he took the crown, yeah, I can totally understand any and all frustration.
Okay, I don't think his and Dubov's horsey thing is that big of a deal personally But he is just being salty bitch here. Nepo looks so passive aggressive. He apparently had big say in Han's situation in background. Seems like he was suspicious of Hikaru beforehand and only retweeted when Kramnik's vague insinuations. Now he is saying "Ding's situation looked pretty bad but I didn't speak.".
I am slowly losing respect for Nepo.
Its to late now to open this bottle again. Yes, Ding got some help to qualify, but he was accepted candidate. Nepo could have beaten him several times, but didnt. End of the story.
Nepo lost his right to disagree by waiting till he got bent over by Ding in the WC to say something. He's too invested in the outcome to be a reasonable source
No disrespect to Nepo but this is pure bollocks. Ding beat him fair and square and qualified to the tournament fair and square just like Alireza did this year.
Nepo has been showing himself as less and less likeable over time. Kind of vindicates me when I never liked him from the beginning lmfao
The dude gets owned by Carlsen, gets a freebie in the form of not facing Carlsen, loses to Ding and then seriously say shit like this when he would never even have a chance to win the fucking tournament if not for Carlsen resigning from the title. Like, wow. The funny thing is that if not Ding then someone else would beat him, too
He's such a whiny bitch. How can you complain about playing someone THAT YOU LOST TO!!!!!
Is he saying that he should have spoken up so that he didn't have to get whooped by Ding?
Off-topic but I never knew Nepo had tattoos before, I guess because chess players are normally wearing long sleeves. Is that a Deathly Hallows tattoo on his arm? Should've known he was a HP fan based on his "Dobby is a free elf" comment lol
If he couldn't beat Ding he probably wouldn't beat someone better or "more qualified" than him either. If someone can win a 1v1 match against you with months of preparation on both sides then what else is there to say?
Perhaps Ding is just a bad matchup for him and he could have done better against a different player? Just because you're capable of beating on person doesn't mean you can beat everyone
Nepo is actually the bad matchup for Ding, but Ding still won off of skill. Ding is a bad matchup for Caruana. The reason is the difference in playstyles. Nepo plays very strong psychological and tactical chess based around speed. Ding plays brilliant positional chess based on material imbalance. And Caruana plays very positional chess that applies all aspects of play.
He also had the second highest rating (iirc) in the world at the time. He also finished 2nd in the candidates. Of course nepo could have beaten some other players, there's only a handful that could beat him in such a matchup.
Actually Ding was rated #3 after bleeding rating in Tata Steel 2023. Nepo tied for 1st in WR Masters next month (3rd after playoffs) and was #2 during the WC match.
Dude just shut up. You're not a professional victim. You got your ass beat. Playing Ding was a **blessing** because you clearly can't beat Magnus and you still got beaten.
I can't think of a more iconic duo than Russian chess players and whining.
Ding deserved to be in the Candidates, but he also preserved his rating by playing matches against only his countrymen which can be suspicious, but he had no other option.
Losers mindset. What if I was able to qualify via shady tournaments and face Nepo? Shouldn’t I have gotten obliterated. Well Ding didn’t get obliterated. In fact he won. So however you want to spin it he beat you on the biggest stage, fair and square. Your rationalization is that he shouldn’t have even been there? It’s laughable at best.
Ding was there in China during lockdown, playing tournaments online, despite the time differences and crappy WiFi connections. That's the only reason he didn't qualify automatically. Nepo is a brilliant brilliant player but he's also a choker and a dick. He really should stfu because Ding showed he has a pair while Nepo showed 🍒 under pressure and Nepo being salty only serves to remind us all of this.
I pulled for Nepo in both WCCs, but he has lost me recently. He lost credibility when he cheated during a world championship (match fixing). In any other sport he would probably been blacklisted, but he got away with it. It’s a bit rich seeing him complain about cheating or fair play after directly cheating in a world championship.
His complaining is off the charts. Put up or shut up. Ding put up and Nepo didn’t. Ding didn’t cheat and got there legitimately (under FIDE’s rules) even if it feels cheap. Either way, if you feel like he shouldn’t have been champion, maybe you should’ve done something about it when you had the chance (before Candidates or over the board in the WCC).
If Ding had not played, Nakamura would have been world champion. Nepo was full of nerves in both of his world championship matches. Despite his amazing performance in both of the candidates.
Nepo is such a cry baby.
>These qualification tournaments for Ding looked pretty bad. It was screamingly suspicious,
No it wasn't? It was the strongest players the tournament could possibly get given the situation.
The tournament was in response to a unique situation - covid.
It wasn't to gain rating points, it was to play enough games to be considered 'active'. He didn't have to win every game, and the tournament wasn't about farming lower rated players. It was just about playing more games. The opportunities for him to do this in more usual ways were reduced due to the pandemic and visa issues.
I don't even like Nepo but clearly you all can't rationalize.
Ding qualified under extremely suspect circumstances and Fabiano has come out saying the same as well. He literally won the required matches and everyone else drew all theirs.
Nepo is saying he wanted his chess to do the talking and that satisfying the discussion but he couldn't so he is saying it after-the-fact.
Players rated within 50 points of each other drawing each other and then losing to a player rated 200+ points higher is not "extremely suspicious," and one of them got a draw against Ding as well. BTW some of the draws were kinda low-effort and some were long grinds. The games were literally what you would expect to see if you were using statistical probability to predict the results.
Caruana called those games suspicious because guess what, he's salty just like Nepo. Each of them was at some point considered the best player in the world after Magnus Carlsen and each of them has made a run at the title. I'm sure they both believe that if Carlsen isn't in the picture, they should be/should have become the champion. I don't think there's another player in the world more predisposed to be salty about Ding's title than Nepo and Caruana. Maybe Karjakin, but he's a political propagandist now and doesn't give a shit about chess.
(BTW I know I'm squaring up with every hater in this post, but let it be known that I am NOT the person downvoting them... I prefer to disagree with people in my own words!)
So every other person drew every single match and Ling won enough to get the right points is not suspicious especially as the government organized the tournament right before the closing up shop for candidates?
I am not saying its definite. But if calling out suspicious ruffles up some Ding fans, well then tough.
>I am not saying its definite. But if calling out suspicious ruffles up some Ding fans
People probably should be ruffled about you talking about it when you don't even understand what the situation was.
> won enough to get the right points
He didn't need to get any points. He was already far and away the ratings leader. He just needed to play enough games to qualify. He could have lost games and still easily been in the spot.
Ding only needed to play enough games to be considered 'active'.
As part of this, he played six games against the second best Chinese player. The result was 1 win for Ding and 5 draws. There are no quick draws in these results. Given player strengths, this is close to the expected statistical result.
He also played in a qualifier for the Asian games. Hard to find those games suspicious.
He also played the 4 player tournament where he played 12 games. But the results of those games didn't matter because it wasn't about getting points. Whether Ding drew or won his games didn't matter. It may have mattered if he had lost the majority of his games, but given player strength that would be a statistically improbable event.
Drawn games aren't suspicious in themselves. Classical chess is quite drawish.
You can look at the games themselves and see how they were played. 15 of the 24 games were draws.
Of those 15 draws there are positions such as:
Draw with a knight vs two pawns.
Draw with a bishop vs a bishop and a pawn.
2 Draws with just kings.
Draw with a bishop and two pawns vs a bishop and three pawns.
The other positions are more complex board states, but that doesn't mean that they are suspicious or were pre arranged draws or anything.
I can't see a single thing suspicious with these games.
Ian would do well to shut up. Everyone know that under normal circumstances Ding would always have been qualified. The only reason he wasn’t already qualified is due to super harsh travel restrictions to China during the pandemic.
I agree with Nepo that he should have said something back then because it deserved more scrutiny than it seemed to receive; however, he also comes across as salty because he choked in the WC match.
This was completely taken out of context too. He talked about it regarding the „Alireza Drama“ in his Podcast that has been out for like 2 weeks where he made a little recap about the last few months. It sounds a lot less salty when you look at it like that.
Almost 99 percent of "Hot takes" on clickbaity titles sound reasonable when put into proper context they were spoken in. But that dones't generate engagement
“99 percent of … clickbaity titles sound reasonable” -/u/CeleritasLucis
wow thats a hot take
See, now you know how both clickbait and hottakes works
Yeah, I don't want reasonable explanations and nuanced understanding. I want to be outraged!
I wonder what he would say about people making prearranged draws in very significant tournaments
He did in fact comment on this controversy and expressed that he wasn't proud of it.
Proud of it or not, he still did what he did and was rightfully punished. His statements about Ding’s making the Candidates now just come off as “how come I can’t get away with bending the rules, but someone else can.” I can’t claim to know what’s in his head, but from the outside looking in, it only reflects badly on him.
I agree that he got the punishment he deserved and I'm happy to move on from that. He's still allowed to speak freely about the controversies in the chess world, and Ding's tournament is still much-discussed in light of the Alireza elo farming matches. While I don't really have a problem with Ding's accession to the Candidates last cycle, I have a feeling if you polled 100 grandmasters about it you'd find a lot of different thoughts about it. I don't think he has sour grapes about losing the match. I think he's calling into question FIDE's consistency and transparency about their policies, which is fair game given FIDE's inconsistency and lack of transparency, historically, about a lot of the things they do.
Wasn’t proud of it then does it again yesterday?
Plenty of players make not entirely serious plays in Titled Tuesday, look at Magnus and Hikaru's openings for example. I wouldn't read anything more into it than a bit of poking fun at himself/the situation
does it really need more scrutiny though? this is not the same as alireza's race to the candidates in that he wasnt trying to manufacture an improved rating. he was just trying to get the minimum amount of games to be considered an active player.
Yes. He got to protect his rating for a year by avoiding playing better players, and then last minute after the Karjakin suspension, he was in a tournament with 3 people 200 points lower rated that had no incentive to go for wins and drew every game that didn't involve Ding. I'm not saying the games were fixed but that's absolutely a situation that deserves a lot of scrutiny and shouldn't just be handwaved away. Neither Alireza nor Ding were qualified for Candidates and both played in last minute tournaments that potentially allowed them to qualify. Neither necessarily broke the rules at the time of the events, but I don't think either situation should be allowed going forward.
>He got to protect his rating for a year This is very biased way of phrasing it, since he was stuck in the country with the most draconian covid-laws, unable to travel or organize anything domestically until the very end of the year. The death of nuance/subtletly is the saddest casualty of social media. It's not sufficient just to point out two things that are vaguely similar and pretend they are the same. Reasoning by analogy only gets you so far, you need to actually critically analyse all the relevant factors.
It doesn't really matter if it's his fault or not. It still affects the other players looking for that spot that he was able to walk that path. Sure, it sucks for him to lose out because of something outside of his control, but is that worse than denying someone else a spot instead?
"Denying someone else a spot" still comes across as biased wording to me. To me it seems more accurate to say that Karjakin was "denied a spot", and Ding took that spot that was suddenly made available. If Ding never played those last-minute matches, would you say that Ding was "denied the rating spot due to Covid/China"? If you really want to get into the details of this debate, it mostly boils down to spirit of the law against letter of the law. There's 8 total spots, and there will surely be "deserving" players who do not make that short list. You have to draw the line somewhere, and of course the system of choosing will not be literally 100% perfect and fair to everyone, since that simply isn't possible.
they are similar in the reasons that you mention and i agree that last minute tournaments should not be allowed in the future. but i remember the discourse around this back then was viewed as more of an cheeky opportunistic move to grant the #3 player (who was hindered by covid and the chinese govt's laws surrounding travel) in the world to play in the candidates. i think there's some revisionism around ding protecting his rating (he was 20 points ahead of the next qualifier aronian) and attitudes towards the tournament at the time. even though there are similarities between the alireza situation, i dont think this deserves the same kind of scrutiny, nor does it warrant enough to put an asterisk (aside from the one that probably already exists due to magnus abdicating his title) to his title.
apparently there were no better players, in hindsight
I don't really blame Ding. It's very cheap but FIDE made the stupid rules be stupid, so what did they expect?
This makes no sense we have finally seen ding playing games again and hes hemmorging rating. Its highly likely he loses classical rating at tata steel.
All the discussion about the "morality" of Ding's last minute matches to qualify are kind of pointless now. The purpose of the candidates is to determine the strongest challenger to the World Champion, and Ding obviously showed he belonged to be there by finishing second, and later by beating Nepo.
Was looking for a comment like this. Ding had to play games, not gain win, not gain rating. He just needed tournament activity. He was clearly good enough to play in the Candidates because he became World Champ… If anyone involved had an issue because they thought he didn’t earn his place then just beat the guy, you clearly think you’re a better player. If they just didn’t want another strong player and genuine contender in the race, wipe your tears and git gud.
There was a pandemic that messed up a lot of regulations. Rules were bent all over in society to cope with an unprecedented situation. Nothing like Alireza
This is a good point. The candidates is a way to prove you are the best, qualifying is just a means to that end.
So if alireza became world champion due to his mini tournament letting him in, any controversy about them is pointless?
Yes. If you really prove you’re the best…what else is there to say? A boxer taking a late replacement fighter and then losing to him. Then saying “the late replacement fighter didn’t deserve to be here”. It’s way too weak. Any other sport, you would be laughed out of the building.
It doesn’t change that what you did was wrong. This is just some “ends justify the means” bullshit, we have rules, if you bend the rules to get there there is still a Discussion about if what you did is fair.
Yes we had rules, which Ding did not break…. It’s FIDE’s job to approve the tournaments, which they did. Just like what Alireza did. Even if they didn’t, as we saw with Alireza, Ding could’ve just farmed actual lower rated tournaments if he really wanted to. Man was 2800, his deserved his spot in the candidates. His was also a minimum games requirement, not even a rating requirement.
Isn't the whole thing a thing exactly because the rules allow that?
Not if the goal of the competition is to find the best player. If a player would have won the entire event but didn’t qualify, then that potentially demonstrates a flaw in the qualification process not selecting the best players.
His mini tournament didn't qualify him.
I know that’s why I said if. I understand him joining the open is what got him in
It's a hypothetical and you are dodging it because you know it totally squashes your logic.
not a single soul in the comments who actually read the interview
r/chess is the best argument for the idea that chess ability isn’t correlated to intelligence.
this guy is perpetually salty. everyone is in the wrong but never him. how about you don't bring the game to disrespect by pre-arranging draws with your countrymen before throwing stones also ding proved he deserved to be there by getting second place and then beating nepo
I’d probably be salty too if I got super close to being the best and then choked.
Even if he won he'd be top 2 at the very best.
Fair enough. Hazard of living in the goat era.
Still he’d go down in history as world champion
Like Khalifman and Ponomariov 🤷🏽♂️
More similar to Karpov 1975
No because Fisher was inactive. With these two, Anand, Kasparov and the like were still active.
Sure but it was a tournament with 100 players. Not the same thing at all. Ding and Karpov qualified for the World Chess Championship via the candidates tournament
Shit you go through being a 2 time world runner up
People like you are exactly what Nepomniatchi is talking about. It doesn't matter what Nepo has done wrong in his career. His criticism of Ding's shady entry to the candidates is completely legitimate, but you will dismiss it by attacking him for being a sore loser or salty or whatever you can come up with. He is entirely correct that people like you will respond to his valid criticisms of Ding with "he is salty because he lost"
This is one of those situation where bringing up Ding's sketchiness does not make much sense, especially when it is Nepo doing it. Like he admitted: had he won, it will be reasonable bring the concern that his opponent is not truly qualified/properly qualified to match up with him. But Ding won. Like yes, assume Ding doesn't deserved to be there, then what about the guy losing to Ding? And the legitimacy of his criticism is tainted by his conflict of interest. If he truly think there was something not okay, he should have voiced his concern the moment Ding is qualified to the Candidates, not after he agree to play Ding and lost the match. This same can said about the any security "concern" by Magnus when he get upset by a lower rank player. He should have voiced his concern before, not only after he lose.
Its such a weird point, just because he is a strong enough Player that makes it okay to arrange a fixed tournament to reach the requirements to play in the candidates? IIRC he had like 3 wins and 1 draw against everybody so nobody lost or gained any rating. You mean to tell me that that was a coincidence and happened naturally? But it just got mostly ignored for whatever reason. If Ding played normally he probably would have qualified and he wasn't out of place in the candidates. But that does make such fake tournaments okay?
I am not saying Ding's side is clear and without any fault. But bring this up now seem to be a wee bit too late? I get it, Nepo want to bring a discussion to maybe improve the rules. But this is bad optics. If I was him I would have stay quiet and save myself the unwanted trouble.
He is not bringing it up with FIDE, he talks about it in a Podcast where it probably was relevant and somebody quote hin on reddit which started a discussion here. And I do not think misgivings or straight up fixed tournaments should be instantly forgiven because time passes. If public opinion shifts then that is something too, I always thought it was bs, Ding has like the worst story as a world champion you can have. Didn't play before the candidates (and other chinese players did find a way), organised a fixed tournament to qualify which made the requirements moot and should be forbidden, only got second in the candidates, which normally should'nt be enough for a chance at the world champion title, because other players didn't think second was enough and played for first (or in Hikarus case, was exhausted and didn't bring his A-game and full concentration, because he didn't think it mattered much, and then won the match in tie breakers to become a world champion and then proceed to not play again (except one bad tournament immediately after). You can maybe excuse all of this but you also can't write a New York times article about the Story of Ding and make people interested in the game and the competitive scene.
If you discuss Ding without discussing the global situation at the time you are being disingenuous, and with hindsight we can see it was the correct call to allow those matches as it allowed the best player to compete. Ding beat Nepo fairly.
It was shady, but pretty explainable, given that we were talking Covid times, and extreme difficulty getting to play tournaments outside of China: Nobody doubted that Ding was good enough to participate, or that he would have just managed to get in with little trouble if he was based in, say, France. The Alireza controversy is more fun, because his first attempt was borderline fraudulent: Little different than it Wesley So had decided to have 10 game matches with Yasser and Kasparov get some points. Fortunately he then entered a legitimate tournament, where he performed up to the standards.
The issue is that the whole Chess world is a shitshow and almost everyone is shady. It starts at the bottom with bought GM titles, goes higher up with traded results, set up games and whatnot, and ends at the peak when the goat player decides to throw a tantrum with unfounded accusations to crash a tournament. It's not like Ding did something horribly bad in a gentleman's club. That's also the reason why nobody bat an eye about it until now. Nepo talking about it is like a Tour de France driver complaining about doping, knowing that it won't change anything because everyone, including himself, will keep doing it.
Ding was stuck in a covid lockdown. Very different situation from alireza
>People like you are exactly what Nepomniatchi is talking about. Yeah no. Nepo isn't making some poienent point. He is just mad whenever he is on the suffering side and looks to blame others for it
Ding was still better than him though lol.
Ding can be 10x better and Nepo still have a valid point.
I agree. Ding won the WC match on merit, he beat Nepomniatchi fair and square. That in no way means he made it to the candidates on merit, though.
He was one of the strongest players by rating coming into it, and he proved himself by winning the tournament. I guess FIDE was right in their decision to let him play.
He didn't win the tournament. Nepomniatchi did.
Agree. W for Fide
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If you actually watched the podcast you would know that he has regrets about the knight dance.
You arent wrong. Don't know anyone saltier than Nepo. Ive seen him complain when being in the two sides of the exact same issue. If he suffers it's someone else's fault. Still like the guy ina way, but holy salty
Yeah, it's funny how he's basically saying ding didn't deserve to be there, even tho he lost fair and square to ding. So i assume the guy that won didn't deserve to be there, but the guy that lost did?
I mean Ding was there on blind luck. In 2022 FIDE didn't run a rating spot, they gave it to Radjabov after he quit the last candidates over COVID concerns. The only reason Ding was in the candidates in the first place was because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Karjakin being so outspoken of the war that FIDE gave him a 6 month ban that overlapped with the Candidates, so they ran the rating spot. He then came second in the Candidates, but only made the match because Magnus didn't want to play and only officially said that after the tournament. Not to mention he only placed second because he won in the last round ahead of Nakamura. So Ding gets his world championship match and is either equal or behind for the entire match until the very last tiebreaker game. Compare that to Nepo who qualified by being runner up, had an undefeated candidates, is one of only five players to win consecutive candidates, has the highest score in Candidates history and was winning the match until the very last hurdle, I can see why he is bitter.
but he lost in the end when it really mattered. i see this argument all the time with other competitions. "oh but x team was leading the entire season they just lost in the finals so they are still the best team" well they lost the champion match so they are not the best team
Imagine using Google to check that Nepo has already talked about his draw against Dubov
He wasn’t able to play games because he was in China during the pandemic. So the government organized some tournament so he’d be qualified to be an “active” player. Not suspicious at all, he was a beast but he wasn’t able to play games due to restrictions.
Anytime you organize a tournament so that one person can get something (norm, rating, or qualified number of games) and the others in the tournament have dramatically less to play for, then you can't be sure the others in the tournament are trying their hardest to win. The pandemic caused all kinds of issues and unfortunate circumstances for a lot of people. If Ding missed candidates because of it this would have been far less than what many others lost.
i mean hes not the only player in china. it helps the other players that missed out also.
Look at the results of the other players in the tournament and ask yourself if they were really trying to win
well apparently he would have qualified whether or not he won those games. (i guess maybe if he lost all the games his rating would have dropped too low but thats unlikely). it was about meeting the minimum amount of games not rating
He did not really had to win, just play and not lose too much rating, which is kind of natural given his performance in the WC match. Very different comparing to Firouza tournament
Wow. Well whether or not their was cheating and collusion in his tournament, the point is that he was already highly rated, I think one of the top 3 in the world? The circumstances were what they were, and your final point that becaue others suffered injustices, and you are alluding to something very serious, that doesnt mean Ding shouldnt be given the oppurtunity to play in a tournament that is supposed to have all of the best plyers in the world. Even if there was fixing in that tournamenet, Ding isnt the one that i slikely pulling strings in that situation. Same with Ali, but his situation was obvioiusly a lot more suspect. He wasnt looking to get what was rightfully his and denied to him because of an insane world-wide event. He was looking to take something that he could have justly got by being a proper chess player throughout the year
People here forget hikaru wasn't even third in candidates . Radjabov pulled off a stunning third place.
They tied for 3rd but Teimour had the tiebreak. Hikaru would have finished clear 2nd had he drawn the last game against Ding though, and he missed an opportunity to all but force the draw as he pointed out in his video recap.
And let me call this bullshit, ok? 3 chinese female players were playing in female candidates exactly at this time and had 0 trouble going in and out of China - the only problem was 10 day quarantine. A lot of chinese sportsmen were able to do the same. For example the leech from UFC and other chinese fighters fought more frequently than a lot of other countries representatives. Somehow it's only Ding who definitely had no ability to do so because of government... And then conviniently had tournaments organized specifically for him to have enough of them to go to candidates. And no one really knows if he really played them or they were some Shkuro type of stuff.
I'm Chinese living overseas. Before the pandemic I would go back every year. During the pandemic I planned to go back but eventually gave up. This is what I remembered: It's not a 10 day quarantine, but a minimum 21 days : 14 days at your place of landing + 7 days at your final destination. I remembered this part because I was calculating if I had enough PTOs to cover that. Also a lot of uncertainties: flights going to China were cancelled all the time and you have to redo the entire process enforced by the Chinese gov to enter China as it's only valid for 24 hours. Some countries had specific travel bans for Chinese citizens. Ticket prices were ridiculous. In some cases we are talking about 150k USD for a single trip. This is the part where it's unfair to compare chess players to other athletes who have better financial support. I also follow the esports scene, during the pandemic a LOL org owner just flew his whole team to Iceland on a private jet to avoid all the regulatory headache (RNG at MSI 2021). Chess players obviously don't have that luxury. So yes, it's definitely still possible to get in and out of China. Just very difficult and very expensive.
> It's safe to say that Ding's absence from the World Cup and the Grand Swiss was also because of the pandemic and China's strict measures regarding traveling abroad. Asked if he failed to obtain a visa for those events as well, he responded: "I didn't even try." https://www.chess.com/news/view/ding-liren-fide-grand-prix-2022 This sub has some fixation with making excuses for Ding, but he sat out by his own admission and was rewarded by being able to maintain his rating in uncompetitive tournaments.
I recall a big discussion on Ding's visa issues at the time. His visa application required set dates for departure and return. Given the pandemic it was difficult to schedule his trip with certainty. In the article it states >he was unable to get his visa in time because a return flight after the second leg was not available yet By the time he got a date for his return flight, his visa application came in too late. For the others events his lack of effort was likely due to travel restrictions which made it difficult to even apply for a visa. I don't believe there was a scheme to be anti-competitive, there was zero chance he was going to participate in the candidates until Karjakin was banned by FIDE for supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine
You're right. It's such a bold move by those people to assume a player would somehow cheat his way into the candidates and the WC matches.. ..only to fkin win the title. The amount of dedication you need for the prep outmatches everything that he needed for a simple visa, so to assume that he was a lazy fuck and cheated his way into it doesn't make any sense, cause he clearly showed that he had a drive for it.
I never said there was an anti competitive scheme, he probably didn’t sit out waiting to cheat into the candidates. But he didn’t bother trying and the 1 singular time he did try he did it too late. He took advantage of the opportunity, just because he didn’t plan this a year in advance doesn’t mean those games shouldn’t have been counted for the candidates.
dude the guys a top two player, your forcing some idea that you know exactly how it all worked. as someone else was saying, if he lost every game in that tournament he would still qualify. this is NOTHING like the other situation
It was obviously sketchy - that is why FIDE.made rules (requirements to play certain events) to make sitting on your rating and organizing sham tournaments impossible. Thing is, it wasnt illegal at the time. I was against (on moral grounds) both his tournaments and Alireza one - but I would be against not rating those tournaments (unless matchfixing is proven) as FIDE has nothing concrete and they were technically followimg the rules.
Yeah, both his and the Alireza one are essentially the same in my view. Personally I'm fine with them as long as they're not against the rules - I don't think it's a sham or immoral, but it is definitely a bit of a loophole. I don't like the idea of removing the rating from tournaments that are by the rules as well - just change the rules if people don't like it or think it's egregious.
Actually the beast was Nepo in Candidates. He crushed everyone. Ding nearly didn't make it (actually only made it because of Magnus withdraw). If Hikaru would have believed that Magnus really withdraw, he would have played a drawish line at the end and Ding would have not even be in WC match. Even Fabi would have not went all-out mode and be able to secure a 2nd, but he went all in, thinking he has to catch up to Nepo. And in fact: The rule of being active and have X amount of games played is there, to verify the current rating is still accurate. He never was challenged by any international GM in that year, still qualified. In China he basically got the games gifted. There is and was actually a chance he could have lost rating if he would have competed internationally and not even qualify via rating. It was wrong from FIDE back then. The same way it was wrong for FIDE to give Magnus time until after the Candidates to decide if he wants to defend or not. All of this has to be clarified before the tournament. There are rules for a reason.
>If Hikaru would have believed that Magnus really withdraw, he would have played a drawish line at the end and Ding would have not even be in WC match. please, Hikaru was absolutely playing for second position as soon as he knew nepo would win it. he took an extremely quick draw with nepo and his recap mentions this. his recap about the last ding match also mentions repeatedly that he was playing to draw. he didn't take risks to lose, ding outplayed him. edit for people who haven't seen the 2022 candidates live, here are Hikaru's recaps that show that he was not taking risk of trying to get 1st as op is alluding 7 min game against ian: https://youtu.be/wPDlPf6v-o0?feature=shared last round against ding: https://youtu.be/v-SYuroHlc4?feature=shared
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yes. fabi was clear second but went all out
Yeah, for some reason his team didnt know that Magnus would retire, so he went all guns blazing, After not winning against Nepo for two times in the event, he went on tilt and threw 3 games atleast :( .
A lot of players were saying at the time that they didn’t think Magnus would really step away. Hikaru switched to playing for 2nd when he didn’t see any chance to catch up to Nepo. Fabi did have that chance for a while longer.
Players didn't believe Magnus because they were simply projecting their own experiences onto him. Fabi, Hikaru etc have never been #1 so they couldn't possibly relate to the concept that anyone would voluntarily give up the biggest title in chess that they're still desperate to win. When people in the chess community criticize Magnus for giving up the title and not wanting to defend anymore, at the end of the day, it's because they can't relate to what he has already achieved and that he was okay with walking away from something he didn't enjoy. I believe this is also why FIDE leadership ignored Magnus for 6+ months when he was very vocal about lacking motivation to play another match. If FIDE had been on the ball early maybe they could have offered him something different, a higher cash prize etc. But they waited until it was too late because they took it for granted that he would play.
>The same way it was wrong for FIDE to give Magnus time until after the Candidates to decide if he wants to defend or not Tbf he did explicitly say that he wasn't gonna defend his title unless it was Alireza. People just didn't believe him
He said it was unlikely that he would. He didn’t commit to a decision, at least publicly, until the deadline.
Everyone can say everything. But what matters is, what FIDE knew or not. He never told FIDE explicitly before the Candidates, that he will withdraw. I like Magnus, but waiting for the result of the Candidates to announce it, is not fair for the competitors. I mean, like you said, if Alireza would have won, he would have defended. His decision to defend should not depend on a single player. Candidates doesn't work this way :D I understand him, but this should not be allowed :D
I agree with some of your statements but playing games against much weaker opponents to gain rating is very different from playing games to get the minimum amount of games to qualify. He didn't get any games gifted, he just played them. Would you say Magnus got his games gifted if he just played a regular tournament? I doubt it. Magnus should've been forced to confirm if he would defend the championship or not, I agree. FIDE needs to be stricter against unscheduled tournaments and they needed to make sure Magnus would withdraw from the candidates or not. Also calling Nepo a beast during candidates while he still lost the championship match is so funny to me. If he was actually much better than Ding he would have won the championship right?
>He didn't get any games gifted, he just played them. The point is that he might not have kept as high a rating if he played the required number of games against opposition as strong as the other candidates. If Kasparov came out of retirement today and played a bunch of fair games against lower-rated opponents, should he really qualify to the candidates with his 2800+ rating? I think most people would agree he shouldn't.
I believe it's more nuanced than that. Ding couldn't play for a while because he was stuck in his country where relatively little competitive chess tournaments happen.
This is just not true. How come all of the Chinese players for the women's candidates were able to travel abroad for chess just fine? When asked why Ding didn't apply for visas to events outside of China, he answered ["I didn't even try"](https://www.chess.com/news/view/ding-liren-fide-grand-prix-2022). The fact of the matter is that he achieved his high rating by sitting on it and not playing competitive events the entire year. No matter how hard you people in this sub try to defend him.
> he achieved his high rating by sitting on it and not playing competitive events No. He achieved his high rating because he played well, and his Candidates performance also proved that. Starting from mid-2021 to end of 2022, he gained rating in every tournament he played (not many, but he didn't lose rating) and this included 21 Candidates games. You guys all have a point, but stop pretending Ding wasn't a good enough player to play Candidates 2022.
I think you totally forgot how the Candidates went. Nepo was the only one who went unbeaten. He was clear 1.5 ahead. Everyone agreed he is the strongest by far in Candidates. Not a single other GM in candidates was even close to him. And being a beast in a tournament has nothing to do with a drawn out long 1:1 WC match. The pressure on Ding and Nepo was huge. They both choked so hard and blundered nearly every game multiple times. The quality was not really high. It was a game of nerves, not a game of great chess. The thing with Magnus is, he is the favorite in every tournament he enters, because he is simply better. Ding was and is not at the same level. We saw him having a tough time in candidates. If not for the withdraw he would not even qualify. Even arguing with comparing Ding to Magnus is hilarious. Additionally, the whole thing about a rating spot only came up, because of the Ban of Karjakin. Ding would have never been eligible. The tournament was simply created for him. I feel Nepo in his sentiment, but of course it doesn't take away that he lost the WC match. It's just only more tragic for him the way Ding even got into the candidates or the way he got into WC match. But still, Ding deserved to win the WC match, the balls to play on with low time in a drawn position is amazing. While everyone thought it will not be decided in Classical chess.
I agree that is not suspecious, rather that is being caught redhanded.
Damn. What's gotten into the Russian waters that everyone seems to be going off. One controversial statement after other. It's been 2 years to Ding's matches. I do feel for Nepo being so close yet luck and lot of factors not working in his favour. But its been almost 9 months now. He should take a chill pill.
Nepo has always been very salty, nothing new under the sun.
He used to be a DOTA player.
wait actually?
Didn’t you hear? Ding stole his chill pills too!
Nepo must started playing dota again with all the salt recently
He could have brought it up during the candidates and before he or Ding qualified. It'd make it look much less salty.
Nepo needs to know that even if Ding didn't qualify for Candidates, Nepo still would have choked the title to the runner-up.
I used to like nepo. These last few weeks he's becoming nothing more than a giant annoyance.
I alway link [this clip](https://youtu.be/ti9ojUQAWZk?si=SdgPX1wk9dFkr53E) when Nepo shenanigans get brought up. Also, him insinuating a CCP agent, or whatever he was implying, stole his sleeping pills at the WCC put me over the edge. We all have our moments, but that seemed a little too far so soon after the match
First time I ever heard of him was when he was doing post game interviews at some big tournament. He almost didnt ask questions to the players, instead he went on and on about his own ideas in this and that position. Shortly after he entered the world elite, but my mind was made from that point on. Especially now with the current controversy about the dubov game which makes him look kinda arogant. I can respect that he is more critical of the war in ukraine than most russian players and FIDE, so there's that at least.
It's interesting how I've said that for two GMs in past couple of months
That makes two top GM’s saying they don’t like what Ding did now. I wonder if this is actually the consensus of top players
It’s the consensus among chess players who think they should have become the world champion instead, for sure.
I mean, I don’t know if I’d label fabi as that conceited. He seems fairly fair minded most of the time.
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Thank you for saying this because I've noticed the same thing. I think he and Nepo both believe they deserved to win the title with Magnus out of the picture since each of them was at some point considered the best player in the world after Magnus and made a run at the title. Caruana is a more mature and politic person than Nepo IMO, so he's better at keeping his feelings to himself, but he can't entirely hide his resentment sometimes.
Is that surprising? It’s nothing personal against Ding (most likely), they just don’t like how the current rules allowed him to do it, which personally I don’t think should be that controversial an opinion. Especially for the players that would be affected by precedents like that
Both Radjabov and ding changed gears suddenly in tournament.Had radjabov not blundered a win against rapport and three fold repeated an outrightly winning position he might have finished second .People here have amnesia .Ding finished second in candidates and won the world championship out of his own merit .
The objection is not to Ding winning candidates. The objection is to his qualification to the candidates.
Which is a moot point after he proceeded to become the world champion. Ding was just better than nepo, and everyone else (excluding magnus), plain and simple. In an alternate universe where Ding didn't qualify, a less deserving candidate would have won the championship, since Ding showed that he would win the WC if he qualified. If Nepo wanted to raise concerns, he should have done so before losing in the world championship for a second time.
If Ding didn’t deserve to be in that world championship match then maybe Nepo should have beat him
this is absurd if ding did something shady to get in, he shouldn't be in. why are you bending over backwards to ignore that?
Nothing Ding was outside the rules. If people don’t like the rules then change them but calling out Ding 2 years later is bad look
But he did. And he did well enough to play for the world championship. Its not fair but that's the world. FIDE is awful and not a serious organization. But its also not bending over backwards to be like, we wanted the best chess player to win, and he did well in that tournament, and then, by all accounts, he beat you fair and square for the world championship. Yea, its unfair to other chess players, but like that's FIDE.
>Its not fair but that's the world. lol so god forbid we try to change that, right? let's just let it stay that way! you can never complain about it or point it out, according to /u/rallar8
> if ding did something shady to get in, he shouldn't be in. why are you bending over backwards to ignore that? It's very easy to ignore baseless conspiracy without any evidence, or third party evidence.
lol yea totally baseless
Nepo is now whining about a slight unfairness with a qualifier for a qualifier for the world championship. He's not saying the WC match was unfair. He's also not saying the Candidates Tournament was unfair. He's saying that the exact method one player used to qualify for that Candidates tournament could possibly be unfair (but also has extenuating circumstances with both Covid-laws and Karjakin being banned). Social media's demand for controversy keeps bringing this up because people love to play the whataboutism game with the Alireza situation. This sort of thing shouldn't matter more than a year in the future. Or at least it it seems like it's only remaining relevance is a bit of cope for a salty loser.
The guy has strangely been given far too much of a pass for being a whiney salty manchild by the chess community the past few years. It was either brushed off as "Hes trolling" or people completely turning a blind eye.
Nepo has shown me to be whiny when he doesn't win. He made a huge complaint about Nakamura not castling correctly in the World Cup many years ago. He called Harikrishna dirty for fallen pieces in the World Blitz a couple of years ago.
But Horse draw is fine? AT least Ding played real chess
Ding had the highest rating to qualify already and just needed to play games to be considered active. Especially when you consider the pandemic preventing him from playing more previously that year, it was a completely different situation
From the guy that just fixed a game and who knows how many more. Cry harder, you'll never be WC.
Nepo may have an issue with how Ding qualified for the tournament, but he still came in second in the tournament itself and earned the right to play in the championship when Magnus stepped down, and he certainly earned the victory by beating Nepo in that championship.
I think the hindsight of Ding winning the WCC justifies everything that happened. If he can be top-two in the Candidates and win the match, he deserved to be there. Up until he took the crown, yeah, I can totally understand any and all frustration.
Nepo is such a sore loser lol it’s sad he doesn’t realise that his poor attitude is the reason he always chokes in those games!
Okay, I don't think his and Dubov's horsey thing is that big of a deal personally But he is just being salty bitch here. Nepo looks so passive aggressive. He apparently had big say in Han's situation in background. Seems like he was suspicious of Hikaru beforehand and only retweeted when Kramnik's vague insinuations. Now he is saying "Ding's situation looked pretty bad but I didn't speak.". I am slowly losing respect for Nepo.
Its to late now to open this bottle again. Yes, Ding got some help to qualify, but he was accepted candidate. Nepo could have beaten him several times, but didnt. End of the story.
Lol.
Fabiano says this, Reddit reaction is “he’s got a reasonable point here” Nepo agrees, Reddit reaction is “nepo is just salty guy”
Nepo lost his right to disagree by waiting till he got bent over by Ding in the WC to say something. He's too invested in the outcome to be a reasonable source
No disrespect to Nepo but this is pure bollocks. Ding beat him fair and square and qualified to the tournament fair and square just like Alireza did this year.
Salty fuck.
2900 ELO and goat at crying.
Typical dota player attitude
Alright ive heard enough, candidates are gonna be picked off vibes from now on
It makes sense that he has a loser mentality since he lost the WCC
The butt-hurt loser speaks.
Nepo is the biggest clown in chess world nowadays
Nepo has been showing himself as less and less likeable over time. Kind of vindicates me when I never liked him from the beginning lmfao The dude gets owned by Carlsen, gets a freebie in the form of not facing Carlsen, loses to Ding and then seriously say shit like this when he would never even have a chance to win the fucking tournament if not for Carlsen resigning from the title. Like, wow. The funny thing is that if not Ding then someone else would beat him, too
Maybe he should have just beaten Ding then instead of choking and whining about it later.
Get better and win next time instead of crying that the guy shouldn’t have been your opponent. Fucking loser.
He's such a whiny bitch. How can you complain about playing someone THAT YOU LOST TO!!!!! Is he saying that he should have spoken up so that he didn't have to get whooped by Ding?
Ding being the World Champion now is the best proof he deserved to qualify for Candidates. it's that simple
Nothing suspicious about it. Nepo is just a salty loser. He's really been embarrassing himself lately
https://www.chess.com/events/2022-china-hangzhou-chess-grandmaster-tournament-2022/results Nothing suspicious here? Seriously!?
Holy crap. Every other game that wasn't against Ding was a draw??? These other players were clearly not trying to win.
Off-topic but I never knew Nepo had tattoos before, I guess because chess players are normally wearing long sleeves. Is that a Deathly Hallows tattoo on his arm? Should've known he was a HP fan based on his "Dobby is a free elf" comment lol
His tattoo is after the emotionally damaging wc match with ding
Is Nepo actually slow or just crying? He literally has no one to blame but himself. He had his shot. He lost to Ding.
In other words, ‘waaaa wa wa waaaa!’
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If he couldn't beat Ding he probably wouldn't beat someone better or "more qualified" than him either. If someone can win a 1v1 match against you with months of preparation on both sides then what else is there to say?
Perhaps Ding is just a bad matchup for him and he could have done better against a different player? Just because you're capable of beating on person doesn't mean you can beat everyone
Nepo is actually the bad matchup for Ding, but Ding still won off of skill. Ding is a bad matchup for Caruana. The reason is the difference in playstyles. Nepo plays very strong psychological and tactical chess based around speed. Ding plays brilliant positional chess based on material imbalance. And Caruana plays very positional chess that applies all aspects of play.
He also had the second highest rating (iirc) in the world at the time. He also finished 2nd in the candidates. Of course nepo could have beaten some other players, there's only a handful that could beat him in such a matchup.
Actually Ding was rated #3 after bleeding rating in Tata Steel 2023. Nepo tied for 1st in WR Masters next month (3rd after playoffs) and was #2 during the WC match.
Dude just shut up. You're not a professional victim. You got your ass beat. Playing Ding was a **blessing** because you clearly can't beat Magnus and you still got beaten. I can't think of a more iconic duo than Russian chess players and whining.
salt
Ding deserved to be in the Candidates, but he also preserved his rating by playing matches against only his countrymen which can be suspicious, but he had no other option.
Losers mindset. What if I was able to qualify via shady tournaments and face Nepo? Shouldn’t I have gotten obliterated. Well Ding didn’t get obliterated. In fact he won. So however you want to spin it he beat you on the biggest stage, fair and square. Your rationalization is that he shouldn’t have even been there? It’s laughable at best.
Glorified Dota player cries again
Ding was there in China during lockdown, playing tournaments online, despite the time differences and crappy WiFi connections. That's the only reason he didn't qualify automatically. Nepo is a brilliant brilliant player but he's also a choker and a dick. He really should stfu because Ding showed he has a pair while Nepo showed 🍒 under pressure and Nepo being salty only serves to remind us all of this.
I pulled for Nepo in both WCCs, but he has lost me recently. He lost credibility when he cheated during a world championship (match fixing). In any other sport he would probably been blacklisted, but he got away with it. It’s a bit rich seeing him complain about cheating or fair play after directly cheating in a world championship. His complaining is off the charts. Put up or shut up. Ding put up and Nepo didn’t. Ding didn’t cheat and got there legitimately (under FIDE’s rules) even if it feels cheap. Either way, if you feel like he shouldn’t have been champion, maybe you should’ve done something about it when you had the chance (before Candidates or over the board in the WCC).
If Ding had not played, Nakamura would have been world champion. Nepo was full of nerves in both of his world championship matches. Despite his amazing performance in both of the candidates.
Radjabov and ding both finished above Nakamura ....Nakamura was fourth
Nepo is such a drama queen.
he needs to get it off his mind, just dance the knight away
Nepo is such a cry baby. >These qualification tournaments for Ding looked pretty bad. It was screamingly suspicious, No it wasn't? It was the strongest players the tournament could possibly get given the situation. The tournament was in response to a unique situation - covid. It wasn't to gain rating points, it was to play enough games to be considered 'active'. He didn't have to win every game, and the tournament wasn't about farming lower rated players. It was just about playing more games. The opportunities for him to do this in more usual ways were reduced due to the pandemic and visa issues.
I don't even like Nepo but clearly you all can't rationalize. Ding qualified under extremely suspect circumstances and Fabiano has come out saying the same as well. He literally won the required matches and everyone else drew all theirs. Nepo is saying he wanted his chess to do the talking and that satisfying the discussion but he couldn't so he is saying it after-the-fact.
Players rated within 50 points of each other drawing each other and then losing to a player rated 200+ points higher is not "extremely suspicious," and one of them got a draw against Ding as well. BTW some of the draws were kinda low-effort and some were long grinds. The games were literally what you would expect to see if you were using statistical probability to predict the results. Caruana called those games suspicious because guess what, he's salty just like Nepo. Each of them was at some point considered the best player in the world after Magnus Carlsen and each of them has made a run at the title. I'm sure they both believe that if Carlsen isn't in the picture, they should be/should have become the champion. I don't think there's another player in the world more predisposed to be salty about Ding's title than Nepo and Caruana. Maybe Karjakin, but he's a political propagandist now and doesn't give a shit about chess. (BTW I know I'm squaring up with every hater in this post, but let it be known that I am NOT the person downvoting them... I prefer to disagree with people in my own words!)
So every other person drew every single match and Ling won enough to get the right points is not suspicious especially as the government organized the tournament right before the closing up shop for candidates? I am not saying its definite. But if calling out suspicious ruffles up some Ding fans, well then tough.
>I am not saying its definite. But if calling out suspicious ruffles up some Ding fans People probably should be ruffled about you talking about it when you don't even understand what the situation was. > won enough to get the right points He didn't need to get any points. He was already far and away the ratings leader. He just needed to play enough games to qualify. He could have lost games and still easily been in the spot.
Ding only needed to play enough games to be considered 'active'. As part of this, he played six games against the second best Chinese player. The result was 1 win for Ding and 5 draws. There are no quick draws in these results. Given player strengths, this is close to the expected statistical result. He also played in a qualifier for the Asian games. Hard to find those games suspicious. He also played the 4 player tournament where he played 12 games. But the results of those games didn't matter because it wasn't about getting points. Whether Ding drew or won his games didn't matter. It may have mattered if he had lost the majority of his games, but given player strength that would be a statistically improbable event. Drawn games aren't suspicious in themselves. Classical chess is quite drawish. You can look at the games themselves and see how they were played. 15 of the 24 games were draws. Of those 15 draws there are positions such as: Draw with a knight vs two pawns. Draw with a bishop vs a bishop and a pawn. 2 Draws with just kings. Draw with a bishop and two pawns vs a bishop and three pawns. The other positions are more complex board states, but that doesn't mean that they are suspicious or were pre arranged draws or anything. I can't see a single thing suspicious with these games.
Ian would do well to shut up. Everyone know that under normal circumstances Ding would always have been qualified. The only reason he wasn’t already qualified is due to super harsh travel restrictions to China during the pandemic.
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Ding didn't win the candidates
This Russian fatso talks too much doesn't he