Shakhriyar Mamedyarov vs Ding Liren, Queen’s Gambit Declined, Semi-Tarrasch Defense, D41
2018 Chess Candidates Tournament, Round 12
Ding Liren finally broke his drawing streak! After drawing 11 consecutive games he played a brilliancy in the Semi-Tarrasch. He was black against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, and they played a very well known theoretical line in the Queen’s Gambit Declined in which white ends up with a formidable central structure, but black aims to destroy it as soon as possible and has relative compensation with active pieces.
Ding Liren had a two to one pawn majority on the queenside in the resulting middlegame and he had a clear plan of pushing his pawns and creating a passer. Mamedyarov must have seen his plan, but he failed to stop it in time! He allowed the pawns to get too close to the first rank which made his position significantly inferior and, in the end, just losing! Ding didn’t fail to convert and he now has his first full point of the Candidates Tournament! The situation on the scoreboard is so complicated that more than half the field still has a chance at the title, so it yet remains to be seen whether his today’s victory will bare any significance score-wise. But he is now at 6.5/12, right behind Caruana and Karjakin with 7 points.
And the scoring system is ruthless, and I’m not sure, but it seems that if Caruana doesn’t score at least 0.5 more than Karjakin, Karjakin will be in clear first due to the buholtz system.
Stay tuned for the rest of the Candidates as I will be covering all the games! Cheers!