Ding's Prep has been Leaked

For those who don't know, Ding's opening prep for the World Championship match was discovered by a viewer, who was searching for Game 8's position in Lichess' database.

That viewer found two random accounts that had played the same position a month ago. These accounts had also played other lines that have appeared in the current WC match.

https://lichess.org/@/opqrstuv

https://lichess.org/@/FVitelli

Apparently, these were the secret training accounts of Ding Liren and his second: Richard Rapport.

(Accounts were also made on chess.com:

https://www.chess.com/member/ggwhynot

https://www.chess.com/member/autumnstream

But the quality of play was so high that chess.com closed one of the accounts for Fair Play)

Now these games are public knowledge.

If this is true (which it seems to be), it means Ding won't be able to play this repertoire anymore - which he and Rapport would have prepared and trained on for nearly a year.

He'll, almost certainly, have to avoid these lines, and rely on previous knowledge, instead.

This also means an additional possibility: Nepo and his team could intentionally steer games toward these lines, in order to force Ding to play something else ...

What do you think of this turn of events?

Is Ding done? Or can he prevail?

Man whoever leaked that is a real jerk. They could’ve at least waited until after the matches were over to share their discovery, then it would be some neat trivia. I don’t know enough about nepo as a person to accurately predict how he would respond, and having never played such high stakes games I can only say how I like to imagine responding…

It would be extremely gentlemanly and sportsmanlike to discard his own opening prep instead of taking advantage of the leaks. Maybe they could agree on an opening that’s sound but unfamiliar to both players, or something unsound but entertaining like the double bong cloud.

Very careless if it is true, and it seems that it is.

Is he done? Not necessarily. Opening prep is important, but in the end, one have to outplay his opponent after the line is done. Remember that someone like Magnus always aim to get some playable position against these guys just in order for him to start playing against the human .

All that being said, this could impact him psychologically more than anything else. And we saw that both players seems to be nervous because this is their golden opportunity to win the crown. Something like this can push Ding over the edge.

And it seems to me Ian has the edge so far in the match, even before this reveal. So we will have to wait and see.

I agree - the psychological toll of this could have big ramifications.

Ding is a strong enough player to play well without any specific prep - but it would certainly put him at a disadvantage.

My prediction is that Ding will have no new opening novelties to uncork, which (if true) is unfortunate, as he probably had a few big surprises planned, to catch Nepo off-guard ... Now those likely will not happen.

Perhaps he and Rapport are scrambling in the background now, to quickly slap together a "Plan B" repertoire ...

It leaked because in the middle of one of the games in the WCC, someone realized that that very strange set of moves had been played ONCE before. On Lichess... and so it goes on......

Perhaps not everything he has in store is on that accounts. So maybe, only a part of the preparation is leaked.

It is not likely that we will find out.
But very sloppy on their part, that is for sure.

Could be a deliberate trap though. Pretty common subterfuge.

@IronSteam1 Thanks for a very interesting post! It's news to me, I'll check out the links. Ding's definitely now at a disadvantage. The moral and ethical decision of the person who publicized this information boiled down to..."Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers." The ethical decision would have been to wait and publish it after the competition, assuming the person who did this fully understood what they had found and their actions were doing. A year's preparation loss is definitely a major blow. I don't know what can be done on Lichess (not familiar with it) but I'm going to review all of the games on the chess.com accounts, for a glimpse into a different world of the chess elite.

I agree with that.

I just hope that it won't affect Ding's performance.

I'm more a Nepo fan but this just sucks.

Thats actually scary how somebody found Dings Alts, This world never doesnt excite me

I hope this isn't true. But it appears that if any high-rated GM in this day and age that isn't creating their opening database in Chessbase instead of an online explorer like Lichess or Chess.com is asking for trouble

Nepo had match point today, had a winning position, then he started messing up and the icing on the cake is that suicidal f5 blunder. I mean, not only that it gives up a pawn, it just weakens the diagonal where his king and Ding's queen were.

The opening prep issue seems to be irrelevant. The match is tied after 12 games.

It seems to be no issue. Ding is now WCC!!