"Leaked Prep"

Today in the Chess World, while Ding was trying to convert a winning position against Ian Nepominiatchi, internet detectives on r/chess were solving the mystery behind the suspected accounts Ding Liren and his second Richard Rapport were allegedly using to prepare for the World Championship match. This new development in an already dramatic World Championship match, if proven to be actually Ding's prep, may become a huge issue for Ding's World Championship contentions.

What Happened?

On Thursday, April 20th at 5:30 am EST, a Reddit user named LudwigDeLarge posted a Reddit thread showing two accounts that he suspected to have been Ding Liren and Richard Rapport's training accounts for the World Championship. This post garnered a lot of attention, and Ding was even asked about the suspected prep after the game.

Now what could have they even found in the Reddit post to cause all of this? Well, they found some damning evidence, to say the least. 

The Reddit Post

Initially, the poster found accounts on Lichess named FVitelli and opqrstuv that had the EXACT openings played by Ding Liren in Game 2 and Game 8.

Furthermore, these accounts were mostly playing many rapid games against each other with very high accuracies. With only that, the correlation might seem loose. MAYBE just maybe, those accounts were made by two very high leveled players who coincidentally played many openings that were played in the World Championship. However, soon after, an account on Chess.com @FVitelli (now renamed @ggwhynot) was discovered to most likely have been the same account of FVitelli on lichess. 

FVitelli on Chess.com, similarly to FVitelli on Lichess had also only been playing games against a singular member, this time named @autumnstream. These accounts again raised many eyebrows. @autumnstream has a CHINESE flag, plays great games, and the Lichess accounts FVitelli and opqrstuv were made only 1-2 days after @autumnstream was banned. Seeming a little suspicious?

What does this mean for the Match?

No matter what, even if these accounts aren't Ding and Rapport's accounts, the leak will still have a huge influence on the match and Ian's camp. For example, let's say Hans Niemann was told that Magnus Carlsen was going to play a Catalan with Nc3 against him a day before they were supposed to play. With that knowledge, Hans can analyze every plausible variation Magnus can play up to like 20 moves. 

Now, Ian obviously has a huge team helping him for this World Championship match. What he also has is multiple rest days throughout the match, giving him the perfect time for him and his team to sift through the games played on the suspected account. From there they can at least come up with some preparation for the rest of the match based on their findings. In this situation, if the accounts are really Ding's, Ian will either have an upper hand against Ding Liren during games because of his newfound knowledge, or Ding will be forced to hastily switch his lines and go for something he might not know as well. Of course, this could also be a devilish plot by Ding Liren and Richard Rapport to trick the world and Ian into thinking they accidentally had their "prep" leaked... If that is so, then they are the biggest geniuses in the world, but the probability of that is so low that it's probably more likely that Anish Giri WON'T accept a draw in a winning position.

Final Thoughts

All in all, this situation is crazy. It seems everything lines up and in my opinion, those were his camp's training accounts, but what does my opinion mean? On the topic of opinions, Ian in 13.

Anyways, thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

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