14 April 2023

Ding Liren Outplays Ian Nepomniachtchi in Game Four

The match score has become level – 2:2.

The World Championship Match in Astana has seen yet another debut – the English Opening. Thursday, April 13, game four between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren took place at the St. Regis Hotel. Playing White, the GM of China opened the game with the c-pawn. Following 1...Nf6 he could have followed in the footsteps of game two by playing 2.d4. However, he insisted on the English Opening instead, which Ian accepted via 2...e5. The opponents opened rather quickly into a rather interesting and unorthodox tabia, which had occurred in the game practice of both opponents only a limited number of times.

Only players and their closest assistants know the end point of home preparation (or when this prep fades from players' memory). However, they will never let us in the know of this top secret information. When commenting on the game on chess24.com, a well-known Dutch GM Anish Giri came up with a guess that Ian blundered his preparation on move 9 and continued to play quickly to mislead his opponent about this fact. It is hard to confirm or deny it. Your correspondent was under the impression that both players were out of book by move 14-15.

White formed a strong pawn center out of the opening, but to set it in motion required Ding to sacrifice a pawn. The pawn tandem on d5 and e5 looked spectacular, but Ding lacked resources to crush through the center. Ian set up a strong blockading position and rerouted his long-idle knight to the central d6-square from the rim of the board. The engines' evaluation never deviated from zero. The position was reminiscent of the famous picture "Great Stand on the Ugra River," when the troops of the Horde Khan and the Moscow prince would face each other for months on end, limiting themselves to small skirmishes and calling it a day with the onset of cold weather. Game four was seemingly nearing its peaceful outcome as well.

However, with about half an hour remaining on the clock on move 28, Nepomniachtchi came up with needless activity and centralised his knight in lieu of modestly returning it to its blockading outpost.

Ding immediately sacrificed an exchange, upon which a position with a far-advanced and well-protected passed e6-pawn proved to heavily favour the white knight over the black rook.

Soon the powerful white knight made its way to f5, at which point Black literally remained with to moves to make. Ding Liren undertook a break in the center, winning back the exchange and keeping alive his powerful passed pawn on the 7th rank. Black's defences collapsed as a result.

Ding Liren, "I'm happy to have won the game. I am no less happy to have improved on my game quality. Of course, I was lucky that 29.Rxd4 cxd4 30.Nb3 Black had no follow-up of 30…c5 because it fails to 31.d6 Rxe6 32.d6".

Ian Nepomniachtchi: "I must have misevaluated the position in this very tense game. I should have perhaps just retreated the knight to d6 and take it from there. The position is most likely equal, but White's play is easier as he has potential to strengthen his position further. I lost focus of the game at a certain moment.

Thus, the overall match score has become level – 2:2 Friday, April 15, is a scheduled rest day at the match. Game five is taking place on Saturday, April 15, with the Russian GM having the white pieces. The game begins at 12.00 Moscow time.

You can follow the match live broadcast on Match TV channels. Nornickel is the company that sponsors the broadcast in Russia.

The fan area sponsor for the World Championship Match is Rosseti Centre.

General partner of the CFR is PhosAgro.

Tournament page