Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a New Champion

There is no such thing as Mrs. Ding. Chinese women do not take on the husband's last name. Also, please stop making a big deal out of the name order. Chinese culture is not the only one where the surname precedes the given name.

Regarding "Ding Lizhen", I just looked up that video. The pronunciation that the interviewer made was not exact, and sometimes the R in Mandarin can sound a little different than the English rhotic R. As an example, you can look up how Ashin pronounces 人 (the same character in Ding's name) at around 1:16 of the MV of 黑暗骑士. It's not a rule, just the r can be pronounced that way and it's correct. (I've caught myself pronouncing R like that in English, haha.)

They used to call me Car Philter. That was only slightly irritating. I've had worse. Can Ding's name be swapped around to mean something else?

There's a new VICE world champion. Ranked #3 in world rankings.

I was hoping for Nepo to win for 3 reasons. Firstly, it's the optics of the whole match in the eyes of the general public. Since Magnus beat him soundly in the last wc match there's no question of Magnus still being the best. Secondly, since Magnus and Ding didn't play a match there are those that will question whether Magnus or Ding is better (I'm referring to the non chess playing public). And lastly, Nepo won the candidates back to back, proving it wasn't a fluke. Ding got in the candidates only because Karjakin was kicked out.

What an entertaining WC match

@pcwildman what does that even mean? "swapped around to mean something else". If you mean calling him 立人丁 instead of 丁立人 then to me that just sounds odd just as Ding Liren may sound odd to non-Chinese people. However, in English speaking contexts people use the Western word order for names and it doesn't mean anything different

As in they swapped my name around to mean another object. Just wondering. You clarified it.

DING CHILLING

Karpov was world #6 when he won in 1998.

Kramnik was #3 when he won in 2000.

Anand was #5 when he won in 2008 ... (and others that I can't recall, at the moment).

The World Champion doesn't have to be the world #1.

It only seems that way because Magnus had the unusual place of being both the WC and the world #1 for many consecutive years - which is uncommon. The last player to do something similar was Kasparov, I believe ...

Ding made such a gutsy move by declining the repetition and it paid off handsomely. Best of luck to the new world champion!

He made it! Now let's see if he can defend it. I think he can.

I was hoping Ding would win.

Nepo proved in the Carlsen match that he doesn't have the psychology to be a champion. I think he proved it again in this match, throwing it away in game 12 by blitzing out moves. His position went from completely winning to lost when he played it like a blitz game even though he had ~30 minutes on the clock. Pathetic.

As for Karjakin and the candidates... as far as I'm concerned, every time they kick out a Russian something good happens (I'm still mad they denied MVL a spot and gave it to Kramnik for no reason, then Kramnik went on to perform poorly and retired). MVL got to play next cycle and was leading... then COVID interrupted the tournament and Nepo eventually won with MVL finishing 2nd (just saying MVL was a much better choice than Kramnik in the previous cycle).

Karjakin is ~#10 in the world. Why TF should he get in over Ding who is consistently #2-3? Tired of all these undeserving Russians... Ding was "lucky" only in the sense that the rules worked against him. In terms of chess skill he deserved to be there.

(Same for MVL who for most of that year was world #2 and had won some major tournaments that year... but they let Kramnik in who had won exactly nothing that year)

Carlsen will win the next candidates tournament and reclaim the world champion title

Yeah, I'm surprised at how many people don't realize that about half the time the WC is not the undisputed strongest player. Botvinnik famously called himself "first among equals" and lost the title 3 times (Smyslov, Tal, and Petrosian).

In the interim between Kasparov and Carlsen we had players who spent their careers as #2 (Anand and Kramnik were perpetually behind Kasparov). They were just keeping the title warm until he next generation. Everyone understood...

Now that the Carlsen era is over we wait for the next dominant world champ. It might be 10 years, it may only be 2. We'll just have to wait.

Until then, Ding's name goes down in history. His enterprising play may inspire some fighting chess... can't believe he played the French in a WCC and almost won I hope he stays around for a while instead of musical chairs till the next era.

Carlsen may very well win the title back but just remember that Magnus has only been able to win one game out of the nine classical games he's played against Ding. I've heard people say that Magnus is still the legitimate world champion but I believe Ding would give him a very competitive match. There should be no asterisks beside Ding's name.

Not the same situation. Maybe, Carlsen prefers the new formats- double elimination and Armageddon. With the time invested, he gets to win more money. The games are forgettable, so who cares if you lose occasionally? It's time for Magnus to get married, have kids, and even enjoy his fame as a Texas Hold'em player. There are so many lovely, eligible WGM and WIM's that this is an ideal time to be a celebrity of Magnus' standing.