Good to read that. Maybe it’s more than a feeling. 😎

👍

I believe they're attempting to reduce pressure on the c-file by trading rooks and to prevent Ndc4. Note that after Ndc4 the knight is getting into the outpost anyway since both of them are now able to hop into it.

Maybe to stop Nc4. and in some lines the black knight could jump to c4 itself, but Ding played it perfectly there

How do you find the line where bishop is defended? It can be more easily assumed if you pretend the bishop and knight are already exchanged and see the open B file

@@looinrims and next Tuesday it will rain at exactly 3 o'clock when a marching band out front plays a specific song.

@@KF1 what? Did you just compare random timings of positioning of people their activities and the weather to calculating basic chess lines of forced sequences?

He has the fish, but maybe he saw this one himself He has as long as he wants to analyze, especially as a master

@@looinrims did you just fail to understand a rhetorical comparison of causal with non-causal? Robotic, man. Have a soda

That was probably before everyone found out his challenger was Gukesh, who has been dominated by Ding and never beaten him in classical or anything, and even lost to Ding at tata 2024 during Dings bad slump in form. Ding is the overwhelming favourite vs Gukesh. No one thinks Gukesh would dominate Ding and that Ding would "lose his title easily" unless he wanted to lose and thus threw the title away himself. If anything it's the opposite. Ding will defend it easily. Even with Dings bad form era, I have Ding crushing Gukesh. Ding has shown his mettle over years/decades, longest unbeaten streak before carlsen broke the record, and also in the WC match vs Nepo. Ding could have already been in bad form already during the match but he just outplayed nepo with strength of will alone rather than him being in the best form. Like who is to say that his slump started after the match and not during or even before, since he only had to play better than Nepo. maybe he has a good matchup vs nepo and performs better vs nepo than vs many different superGM in Swiss or round robin tourney format.

People think a lot of things about Ding's mental state. We'll see. It's clear he had some kind of crisis of confidence following his WCC win. In recent interview he says he's better or getting close to better now.

@@ex0duzz This is a great take. Ding was already in bad form when he played Nepo. When he was at his best, he's arguably top 3 best classical player in the world. He could have played better against Nepo if his form didn't dip during the pandemic.

@ex0duzz Hulk Hogan would beat the shit out of Ding, now or 30 years ago brother. Can you smell what the rock is cookin?

🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴⭕

does a bishops range not add to its value?

In endgames with 4 or 5 pawns for both players on both sides of the board, you will prefer a bishop. The knight is too slow to cross an empty board and can give support to the king on one side while forgetting pawns on the other flank

Implying he's supposed to reveal his face by asking "when" is kind of disrespectful. Why is him showing his face important to you anyway?

Why?