Ding Liren becomes first-ever Chinese male world chess champion

On Sunday, Dīng Lìrén 丁立人 was crowned the 17th world chess champion, becoming the first Chinese man to win the title and ending a nearly 10-year reign by world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen.

The 30-year-old grandmaster from Wenzhou went head to head against Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi for three weeks in the World Chess Championship, held by the International Federation of Chess — commonly known by its French acronym FIDE — in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan.

According to championship rules, the first to reach 7.5 points in the 14 scheduled games would win — but the two players came to a 7-7 draw. They went into tiebreaker playoffs on Sunday, consisting of shorter-format games with 25 minutes each at the start and 10 seconds added for every move played. The first three of these rapid games came to tense draws.

In the final game, Ding, playing black, rejected Nepomniachtchi’s offer for a repetition (which would have ended in another draw and taken the match to a new round of blitz games) and pushed through. Nepomniachtchi resigned on Move 68. This was the first time Ding led in points during the championship, and also the first time he won with black against Nepomniachtchi.

“I’m quite relieved,” Ding said in the post-match press conference. “The moment Ian resigned the game was a very emotional moment. I couldn’t control my feelings. I know myself, I will cry and burst into tears. It was a tough tournament for me.”

With Ding’s win, China now holds both the men’s and women’s titles, with Jū Wénjūn 居文君 as the reigning women’s champion. Ding was the first Chinese man to compete for the world title.

“I feel good, I think [my gaining the title] will inspire a lot of Chinese youth players to play chess,” he said when asked how it feels to win the coveted title.

Ding dedicated the victory to friends, his mother, and grandfather. “I think I did everything. Sometimes I thought I was addicted to chess, because sometimes without tournaments, I was not so happy,” he said. “Sometimes I struggled to find other hobbies to make me happy. This match reflects the deepness of my soul.”

His victory was celebrated on Weibo, where it instantly made the top 50 trending list with the hashtag #丁立人夺国象世界棋王 (“Ding Liren wins world chess champion crown”). In just a few hours, it achieved nearly 7 million reads.

Social media users remarked that Ding’s journey to the title could form the basis of a movie, because he faced so many obstacles getting there.

Ding lost several crucial opportunities to play over the last three years due to the pandemic and China’s isolation from the world. In 2020, Ding experienced lockdown in Wenzhou during the initial outbreak of the coronavirus, and had limited opportunities to play. In 2022, he initially failed to obtain a visa for competitions leading up to qualification for Candidates, and only got his spot in the tournament after FIDE disqualified Sergey Karjakin for his support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Chinese Chess Association stepped in to ensure Ding could play the number of rated games required for qualification (he had been unable to travel outside China to play during the pandemic).

It was after that tournament that Carlsen announced he would not be defending his title, clearing the way for the first-place finisher, Nepomniachtchi, and the second-place finisher, Ding, to enter the championship.

The previous world chess champion tweeted to congratulate Ding, highlighting a rook move hailed as courageous and the one that ultimately led to his win. “Self-pinning for immortality. Congrats Ding!!” Carlsen said.