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Who Is Better: Magnus Carlsen or Ding Liren?
Who do you think is better?

Who Is Better: Magnus Carlsen or Ding Liren?

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ChessKing_1223
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Hello! I introduce you to my blog. This blog will be about 2 World Champions.

I personally think that Ding Liren is better than Magnus Carlsen. But that is my opinion.

Who do you think is the GOAT at chess? ( Don't you dare say Magnus)

Magnus Carlsen

GM Magnus Carlsen is the current chess champion. Carlsen's father first taught him how to play chess at the age of 5 years old and he played his first ever tournament at the age of eight years old.

When Magnus Carlsen was 13 years old, he drew Kasparov and defeated GM Anatoly Karpov at the same even in 2004, one month before he became the second youngest GM in chess history and he still is the eighth youngest as of 2021.

In September and October 2009, Carlsen had one of his best performances ever at the Pearl Spring Chess Tournament. The annual tournament was held from 2008 to 2010 and was a double round-robin event that featured six excellent grandmasters.

As you can see, this game took place in Reykjavík, Iceland. The tournament was named Reykjavík Rapid. The opening that they play is called Queen's Gambit Declined.

Magnus Carlsen plays smoothly until Garry Kasparov makes a few mistakes, but they still continue.

The further you go into the game, the more you realize that no one will ever win because clearly they have studied their openings very well.

At the end, they most decided that no one was going to win, so they drew. I bet Garry Kasparov wasn't prepared for a draw.

Ding Liren

Ding won his first Chinese Chess Championship at the age of 16, making him the youngest to ever do so. In the 2017 and 2019 Chess World Cup, he became the first player in history to reach the finals twice in a row. The latter result means that Ding would play in the 2020 Candidates Tournament, which decided who gets a shot at the world title. 

Having only turned 30 in October 2022, Ding has already amassed an impressive chess resume. His three Chinese titles are joined by two team gold medals and one individual gold medal at the Chess Olympiads (plus one team gold medal at the World Team Championships).

From August 2017 to November 2018, Ding held a 100-game unbeaten streak in top-level chess competition—the longest in history until GM Magnus Carlsen broke it in October 2019. In 2018, Ding entered the world’s top-five chess players (May) and broke the 2800-rating mark (September), and he remains in those categories today. 

Early in 2017 Ding won the Shenzhen Longgang Chess Masters in Shenzhen, China. He finished 6.5/10 points and one point ahead of both Giri and Peter Svidler, who shared second place. Then in May, Ding won the Moscow Grand Prix over Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and a field including nine players rated at least 2750.

Most notable was Ding’s performance in the 2017 FIDE World Cup. The 11th-ranked Chinese player had a strong tournament, reaching the finals of the 128-player tournament after taking down second-ranked So in the semifinals. Ding faced Levon Aronian in the finals, and after four draws in the classical portion of the match, Aronian edged Ding in rapid tiebreaks 2-0.

One of Ding Lirens' best games he has played:

Ding Liren starts off with playing the Nimzo-Indian Defense. His opponent (Bai Jinshi) plays really good against Ding Liren and prevents any harmful attacks.
Bai Jinshi makes a really disappointing move and he did Ke2 which is a mistake. The next few moves, Ding Liren goes crazy and played an brilliant move which is Rd4! Then he gets tired and wanted more action so Ding Liren played another brilliant move which is h5 that is on the move to attack the queen.
Ding Lirens' opponent makes a silly mistake and plays Nxf7 which leads to checkmate in 5 moves. Finally, his opponent resigns and Ding Liren takes the victory.

Grand Finale

Both Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren have astonishing achievements and are very successful. But for the last debate on who is better, we will look at their win rate.

First off, we have Ding Liren!!!

That was with white pieces, but now is black pieces.

Ding Lirens' statistics are really good! I'm surprised he didn't have more than 300 losses in total.

Now that we've seen Ding Lirens' statistics, we'll move onto Magnus Carlsen!!

It's not too bad but I would expect more from the world champion. Now onto the black pieces!

Results

From my point of view, I think Magnus Carlsen performed way much better than Ding Liren. Magnus played 2x as many games as Ding Liren, so I'm surprised by the statistics. Ding Liren performed well but not good enough to beat Magnus Carlsen.

In my opinion, after looking at their best games and tournaments I think Ding Liren might become #1 soon if Magnus Carlsen doesn't pick up the pace. Who do you think is better? 

I hope you enjoyed this blog. Join the comments to discuss the important and one and only debate.

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