Introduction
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Davorin on Ding Liren’s Best Games. We talked about his inspiration for the book, the process of writing it, and about Ding as a chess player. I can’t help but feel a bit sad considering what has happened with Ding’s professional career since the book came out. Let me explain what I mean.
On April 30th 2023, in Kazakhstan, Ding Liren defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi and became the 17th world champion. He played remarkably well, and, even though the match was close, he seemed like the more confident of the two players and better prepared, both physically and mentally. I don’t think many were expecting Ding to win, it may have come as a surprise to most of them to see him perform so well. His performance at the Tata Steel tournament earlier in the year was less than promising. And that was the only classical event he’d attended before the match in 2023.
The book came out in November of 2023. By that point, it was becoming clear that Ding wasn’t playing a lot of chess, and the tournaments he had attended didn’t go well. In May, a month after the match, he had a poor performance in Romania, scoring 4/9.
So he played a great World Championship Match, before and after which he had very poor performances at two elite tournaments. Apart from those three events, the only classical events Ding played in 2023 were Chinese League games.
Then 2024 came along. Ding’s first event was the Tata Steel, where he scored 6/13. His next tournament was Grenke, where he finished 5th out of 6 players, ahead of only Daniel Fridman, who was rated more than 150 ELO lower than every other participant. At the Norway Chess in May he finished in last place. At the 2024 Sinquefield Cup he finished 9/10.
Ding’s final event before the 2024 World Championship against Gukesh was the olympiad, where he scored 3.5 out of 8 with no wins.
In December Ding faced Gukesh for the title. The chess world was almost unison in predicting an easy victory for the Indian. Now, imagine being Ding, having had a very poor year and a half, with the exception of his win over Nepo, no convincing tournament performances, and bleeding both respect of his opponents for him as well as rating points.
I was in his camp. I rooted for him and couldn’t wait for the match to start. And then game 1 started. A French! I remember feeling scared and anxious because I have no respect for the opening (or at least I didn’t at the time; I recently started playing it myself).
Ding won! He won with black, with the French, from a position that was supposed to perfectly suit Gukesh’s aggressive, dynamic style. I remember calling my mom (who’d begun rooting for Ding after I’d described him to her) and telling her that he won game 1. We were both ecstatic. During the press conference he was happy and likeable as always. Gukesh, despite being struck after the loss, managed to show maturity that many very experienced Grandmasters do not possess. We all know how the match ended and what happened next.
Since the match, Ding has only played a handful of games and didn’t attend any major events.
During my conversation with Davorin, we had discussed Ding’s career. Davorin mentioned that his peak was in 2019, at the time when his crazy streak of 100 undefeated games began. In his opinion, his decline began in 2020, after which his confidence was shaken, and he never played his best chess again. Ding suffered from insomnia, and perhaps even had other psychological problems he did not discuss publicly. In any case, Ding Liren’s Best Games was published, so it seems, at the very end of Ding’s professional career. That made me sad. And it makes reading the book slightly nostalgic. As if I were reading about an Alekhine or a Botvinnik who had stopped playing, but is still alive. Most of the great heroes of chess I admire are either dead or very old and retired. Ding may be the only exception.
Ding Liren’s Best Games covers the happy period of Ding’s career, beginning with 1996, and his early years, and ending with his win over Nepo in 2023 and being crowned the World Champion.
“Few chess greats can boast that they reached first place in both the blitz and rapid world rankings and became World Champion in classical chess. Even fewer can claim an unbeaten streak of 100 classical games. That’s how special Ding Liren is. In 2023, Ding Liren not only became the 17th World Chess Champion, but he also won the hearts of chess fans across the globe with his incredible fighting spirit and disarming interviews. At the final press conference, the new champion said the match ‘reflected the deepest of his soul’.” – New in Chess
Structure of the Book
The book is divided into 10 chapters. The first two chapters are on Ding’s biography and on the core qualities a world champion should possess in order to reach the top. The next 6 each cover a period in Ding’s career, and the final, 10th chapter, consists of exercises the readers can solve.
The core chapters, those covering his games, follow his development as a player, from a promising young player to world champion and include his ascent to 2700, to the top 10, to 2800, to being the challenger for the crown, and, finally, becoming the 17th World Chess Champion.
Each chapter begins with a brief description of Ding’s career at the time, providing context, and is followed by several annotated games that best reflect his genius during each period. The biography and Ding’s life, as I’ve said, is covered in the first chapter, so the ones with games talk of most important events briefly, and are an addition in a sense.
That’s why the book feels more like a game collection than a biography. I couldn’t decide on that for a while. That being said, some chapters begin with great descriptions that provide a lot of context to the games, as is the case with chapter 8.
Quality of annotations
I read the electronic, interactive version of the book. That makes it very difficult to judge the quality of the annotations when compared to reading a physical copy. I could simply press arrows and follow each game along on a diagram. That makes annotations not redundant, but less crucial when compared to standard books. I can understand without having to visualize, and I don’t need every move described to me in order to follow the game.
Davorin’s annotations were wonderfully instructive, and very well written. He’s not only a great coach and chess teacher, but he speaks and writes like an educated, well-read man, a feat only a handful of chess authors can boast about.
The only downside I can see is the quantity of the annotations. Almost every move of the main line is covered, and most important points of the majority of the sidelines as well, but Davorin could have added much more. I think a book becomes easier to read as the amount of text increases. He did a great job though, and most games are very easy to understand with what he had written.
Difficulty
Ding Liren’s Best Games is not a workbook, although it does contain a chapter with exercises. It consists of 18 problems, all (it’s no surprise) from Ding’s games. I’m very happy to say that I managed to solve all of them successfully! There were only 18, but I’m still proud, as this is the only time I ever had a 100% completion rate while going over a chess book.
That doesn’t mean that they were easy. It had taken me 15 minutes to solve the one above. I saw the idea immediately, but working out all the variations was difficult. And it was one of the easiest in the chapter. I think the problems themselves wouldn’t be an issue for any advanced player to solve, say 1800 FIDE and above.
The games and the rest of the book are, of course, much easier. I think anyone with a FIDE rating could follow along easily. Those of you who are just starting out would probably struggle, but you have more important things than Ding’s games to cover anyway!
Conclusion
A great game collection which, I think, sadly, already has historical significance. Davorin has managed to encapsulate the final years and final successes of Ding Liren’s professional career in 58 of his best games. He has also provided a great insight into the development of a prodigy into a World Champion and has managed to bring the nicest chess player in history closer to his fans.
