Many years later, when Ding Liren remembered the scene on April 30, 2023, in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, after 14 slow chess games and 4 fast chess playoffs, defeated Russian player Nepomnyaki with a total score of 9.5:8.5 and won the world championship, I don't know what kind of memories will there be.
At the end of the match, the opponent politely shakes his hand and leaves. Xiao Ding didn't seem to have come out of the game yet, sitting there alone, his left hand supporting his forehead, and his right hand playing the chess pieces in front of him aside. Like a soldier who had just finished the war, his face was full of exhaustion and sadness, and he could not see a trace of the excitement and ecstasy after victory. After sitting for a moment, he let out a long breath and turned to leave.
Facing the media after returning from the lounge, he confessed that he had just cried. "It's really hard to believe." Ding Liren said that because he was not ready, he initially resisted the competition and thought about quitting halfway, but in the end, with the encouragement and help of the team, he defeated himself and became the first chess king of Chinese men's chess in one fell swoop.
In 1986, the Chinese Chess Association was established, and the chess national training team came into being, Ye Jiangchuan, Xu Jun and others were the first generation of chess players of the Chinese men's chess national team. In 1988, Chinese chess first proposed the "four-step" plan, and "winning the men's individual world ranking" was the last step of the plan. In 1996, the goal of "good standing" changed to the more specific goal of "winning the men's individual world championship".
After four generations of chess players, this dream has finally come true 35 years later. The crown belongs to both Ding Li and everyone who has left footprints on this long road of struggle.
▲ Ding Liren at the competition site.
Shock players
In a 14-game slow chess match, Ding Liren and Nirbo fought 7-7. During this period, he staged 3 times to fall behind and 3 times to tie. The match was dragged into fast chess overtime, and the first 3 sets were all draws. If there is another draw in the fourth set, it will enter the Super Speedy Playoffs.
In the 46th round of the fourth set, the opponent walked out of the back e4. If Ding Liren seeks stability and goes king, the two sides will most likely continue to draw, which is the judgment of many outsiders. However, he chose to change his moves and got off the G6, a bold choice that not only disrupted his opponent, but also surprised Xu Jun, the head coach of the national team who was at the scene of the game, and he believed that there was bound to be a risk in forcing changes at this time.
The master-apprentice duo specifically communicated about this choice after the game. Ding Liren told Xu Jun that he really didn't calculate how to win at that time, but he had calculated that he would definitely not lose, so he made a bold attempt.
"He's an idea-minded chess player, especially thoughtful." Xu Jun told Lazy Bear Sports that Ding Liren has an adventurous spirit in his bones, which is an adventure built on thinking clearly. "He was given only half a minute to calculate and judge, and he made the right choice."
It is precisely because of this critical, somewhat unreasonable choice that the opponent is confused. Ding Liren succeeded.
Ye Jiangchuan, president of the Chinese Chess Association, publicly stated in 2017 that anyone who can win a world championship must be a shocking chess player.
"Is Ding Liren a shocking chess player?" In the face of such a question as Lazy Bear Sports, Ye Jiangchuan did not think, "Sure, his ability to understand chess games is higher than that of other chess players." ”
In Ye Jiangchuan's view, both Ding Liren and Xie Jun, the chess queen he brought out before, have the same characteristics - excellent psychological quality, super sense of competition and the ability to seize opportunities at key moments.
Ye Jiangchuan believes that in addition to strength, the key to Ding Liren's success is that at a critical moment, "dare to move the knife and dare to release the winning hand". "Russian players are characterized by solidity and step-by-step, and if you can take some seemingly adventurous, less perfect chess in a limited time, the effect will be better."
In Ding Liren's winning team, in addition to his family, coaches, and association staff, there is also a special assistant - Laporte, a grandmaster born in 1996 and ranked 12th in the world in terms of rating, from Hungary. He and Ding Liren are both rivals and good friends. Before this competition, he took the initiative to join the team and be Ding Liren's assistant.
In Xu Jun's view, Laporte is a very creative chess player, and he even walks four or five steps to start "not following the right path" when he himself plays. "It's like two people walking, he has his own way, and usually doesn't take the main road."
▲Shocking chess player Ding Liren.
A chess king who loves football
Analyzing the reasons for Ding Liren's success, Wang Wenhao, who once coached him on the Zhejiang provincial team, believes that hard work and persistence are far greater than talent, and he even believes that Xiaoding "did not belong to the players with outstanding talent" when he first started playing chess.
"When he participated in the 'Lee Sung-chi Cup' National Junior Championship when he was a child, he only won the championship once, and many of his peers won the championship more times than him." Wang Wenhao told Lazy Bear Sports that those children who had good childhood talents later gave up one after another, but Ding Liren insisted.
Since the second grade of primary school, Ding Liwen has arranged his own time after school every day. He would draw a table and write down what he would do after school, usually doing homework when he got home, playing two quick games after dinner, and researching a situation. According to Wang Wenhao's recollection, when he was a child, Ding Liren would sit there and think for an hour because he couldn't find an answer that satisfied him with one move.
Born in 1986, Bu Xiangzhi was promoted to chess grandmaster at the age of 13, and is the youngest male international grandmaster in history, known as "prodigy" and "genius boy". He remembers that around 2007, he fought Ding Liren in a national competition, and his rating was close to 2700 at that time, and Ding Liren was about 2200 points.
At that time, Xiao Ding left the impression of Bu Xiangzhi as calm and calm, and it was difficult for outsiders to easily understand his inner world. "He was an attacking type when he was younger. It gives me the feeling that no matter how high or low the rating is, he will play the next game with you. Bu Xiangzhi said to Lazy Bear Sports.
Later, the two became teammates in the national team, and when participating in the team competition, Ding Liren always played the first one, giving Bu Xiangzhi the feeling of only one word, "stable". "No matter what kind of master the opponent is in Europe and the United States, we think he will definitely get points and even win." In the chess competition of the Asian Games in September this year, Bu Xiangzhi will continue to play side by side with Ding Liren.
▲ Ding Liren after winning the championship.
Perseverance and hard work enabled Ding Liren to win the men's national championship in 2009, and at the age of 17, he became the youngest men's individual chess champion in Chinese history. However, Wang Wenhao believes that Ding Liren's success at that time had a certain element of luck, and his real strength had not yet reached the level of "the first in the country".
For a long time after that, Xiaoding's results were not satisfactory, and he lost some "games that he thought he could win". Wang Wenhao said that at that time, Ding Liren entered a "bottleneck period".
But he is still moving forward, going to high school and competing at the same time. As the number of matches increased, his experience points and rating slowly climbed. In August 2014, his rating score rose to 2,742 points, overtaking the previous number one player Wang Yue and rising to the first place in China for the first time. Wang Wenhao said that at that time, Ding Liren had basically reached the level of the domestic male number one.
In August of that year, the Chinese men's chess team composed of Ding Liren, Wang Yue, Yu Yangyi, Ni Hua and Wei Yi won the Olympic men's team championship for the first time in the 41st Chess Olympiad team competition held in Norway with an undefeated record of 8 wins and 3 draws in 11 rounds. Since then, Ding Liren has officially become the number one in Chinese men's chess. In 2018, his rating exceeded 2,800 for the first time, and he has been in the top three in the world rankings for a long time in the past few years.
In addition to loving chess, Ding Liren also likes to read philosophy books, detective novels, and is also good at football, basketball, tennis and other sports.
His position on the football pitch is striker, and his favourite team is Juventus, who have won 36 Serie A titles. Juventus have a calm and sophisticated style of play, even known as the "old woman", but they can use it to win the title. Strikers on the football field need to have the ability to break through, impact and give the opponent a fatal blow.
These two preferences of Ding Liren seem to confirm his character to some extent - to win steadily, but also dare to break the rules at critical moments.
Before going to Astana for the final, Ding Liren and his teammates trained in Hangzhou. One day before departure, he told coach Xu Jun that he "wanted to play football." Xu Jun immediately discussed with several other coaches and changed the training plan for that day, allowing everyone to "accompany" Xiaoding to play on the court. Xu Jun said, "Other children want to play football too." But he knew in his heart that Xiaoding got to where he is today, in addition to personal efforts, it is also closely related to the efforts of everyone in the team.
Preservation of the throne
For such an excellent chess player as Ding Liren, the Chinese Chess Association attaches great importance to it. According to Wang Wenhao, the association and the national team will take the initiative to create opportunities for them to compete abroad, "some competitions can only be played with wild cards, and most of such opportunities are given to Ding Liren."
Ye Jiangchuan told Lazy Bear Sports that in order to improve the level, Chinese chess has adhered to the policy of "please come in and go out" for more than 20 years.
"Going out" is to push outstanding chess players abroad, participate in various open tournaments and invitational tournaments, and train in exchange for competition; "Please Come In" is a competition held in China, inviting the world's top players to participate, Ding Liren's opponent in this final, Nie Bo, has come to China to participate in the Hainan Super Master Cup.
The Hainan Super Master Cup has been held for 13 consecutive sessions, and Ding Liren has participated in 11 sessions. In addition, chess masters tournaments in places such as Nanjing and Shenzhen also adopt the same concept of holding tournaments.
Domestic chess leagues allow foreign aid to participate. Ye Jiangchuan stressed that the Chess Association adheres to the idea of simplifying procedures and flexible operation on the issue of foreign aid participation. "After the foreign chess player and the club have negotiated, they can participate in the competition as long as they go to the association to make a record." During the competition, foreign aid can only compete with Chinese chess players, in order to give Chinese chess players more opportunities to exercise.
"Ding Liren's success today is a process of accumulation and the result of a combination of internal and external factors." Ye Jiangchuan said.
▲ Ding Liren thinks during the game.
In the 1980s, Chinese chess had a weak foundation. In order to achieve results as soon as possible, the Chinese Chess Association decided to break through from the women's team first and adopt the strategy of "men helping women", allowing excellent male chess players to help female chess players train and improve their level.
It worked. In 1991, Xie Jun won the first world championship for Chinese chess, and Ye Jiangchuan was his coach.
In Ye Jiangchuan's view, Xie Jun's success has served as an example and promoted the development of chess in China. In the next 30 years, Chinese women's chess appeared in 6 chess.
Before Ding Liren won the individual championship, the Chinese men's chess team had won the Chess Olympiad team championship twice in 2014 and 2018. Ye Jiangchuan believes that Ding Liren's international ranking has been stable in the top three in the world for a long time, and it is inevitable to win the individual championship, and he hopes that this championship can drive the continued development of Chinese men's chess and let more people like and participate in this sport.
"It's not that after Ding Liren wins the championship, all the other champions come, and we must do a good job in popularization." Now what worries Ye Jiangchuan the most is the reserve force and the strength of the new generation of Chinese men's chess, "Male chess players under the age of 20 can rank in the top 50 in the world, and there are very few." "He hopes that Xiaoding can stay on the throne longer." Xie Jun won the world championship 4 times, and after ruling for 10 years, the talents behind came out one after another. ”
▲ Ding Liren in formal clothes looks gentle and elegant.
Penetration of AI technology
With the continuous advancement of science and technology, the impact of AI (artificial intelligence) on chess and card sports is increasing. Last September, Carlson's 53-game unbeaten slate was ended in a 53-game unbeaten run by losing to 19-year-old Nieman, who said after the match that his opponent was suspected of cheating using AI and that the World Chess Federation did not regulate cheating effectively. Carlson gave up the International Go World Championship, which led to Ding Liren's later qualifying to compete with Nebo for the title.
The earliest penetration of AI technology into chess dates back to 1996, when Russian chess grandmaster Kaparov competed with IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue. Deep Blue is a supercomputer developed by IBM that can calculate 200 million moves per second and has a database of 700,000 masters, including Kasparov. In the end, the master was defeated by Deep Blue. Twenty years later, the new AI AlphaGo defeated South Korea's Lee Sedol and China's Ke Jie, the world's strongest Go player at the time.
In this battle between the mind and the machine, humanity is completely defeated.
Ye Jiangchuan is not disgusted by the reality that the chess field is infiltrated by AI technology, he said that today's world champion-level chess players, second- and third-tier chess players, and amateurs all rely on the power of AI when training and preparing for matches. "It is precisely because of the development of AI technology that young chess players have grown rapidly."
In 2014, the Chinese men's chess team won the Olympic championship for the first time, and Ding Liren, Yu Yangyi and Wei Yi were all post-90s chess players. "Young people already have some experience in competition, but they haven't done quite a bit of accumulation, but AI technology has helped them get a lot of information when training, so that they quickly rose to the world's top level." Ye Jiangchuan said.
Although AI technology has played a key role in helping chess players grow, how to extract more valuable information from this technology and achieve a better combination of human brain and computer has become a new topic. Ye Jiangchuan used the final set match between Ding Liren and Nirbo as an example. He believes that Ding Liren's choice at the last moment will bring turmoil in the chess game, and the strategy at that time may not be the first choice if it is put into AI technology, and the judgment of the human brain plays a key role at this time, and the human brain can choose different strategies according to the different opponents. "Nepo is afraid of chaos, and after pressure, his defense is not as confident as it used to be, and he makes mistakes in the melee."
"Are you worried that AI technology will take the sport off track?" In response to Lazy Bear Sports' question, Ye Jiangchuan said: "Don't worry at all, just like people definitely can't run cars, but they can drive cars." ”
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