Where to rank World Champion Nepo/Ding?

Now that it’s finally official that the next World Champion will be Nepo or Ding, where would the next World Champion be ranked among the greatest players ever? It may be early to compare them with older top players, but Nepo is 32 while Ding will be 30 in a couple of months. Caruana is still in his 20s and was ranked as #19 here already two years ago:

https://chess24.com/en/learn/advanced/video/hall-of-fame-the-50-greatest-chess-players-of-all-time/intro-50-great-players

So what about Nepo and Ding? Many World Champions had already won quite a lot in their early 30s. Carlsen is 31 with a dozen years as #1, and his predecessors Anand, Kramnik, Kasparov, Karpov and Fischer also achieved a lot in their 20s. Ding has played three Candidates and finished 2nd, 4th and 5th. Nepo won twice in a row, like Korchnoi, but was never in the top three until just now. He has been top ten only for a couple of years. Compared to the mentioned previous World Champions they have less of top results.

On that top 50 list above, where would you place Ding  and Nepo today?

One thing is for sure, he's disqualified from the GOAT competition.

Comparing Ding to Karjakin at #49, it feels as if Karjakin might still be ahead. He won the Candidates, unlike Ding, and was the one of the two that qualified for it also this time, even if he eventually was replaced by Ding. Karjakin won Wijk aan Zee, the World Cup and also Norway Chess twice. He only lost the title match to Carlsen in rapid tiebreak. Which, if one instead would compare him to Nepo, was a much more impressive result than the latter scored in his match. Nepo has played many top tournaments since Dortmund 2008 and won his share of them. Still not enough to reach top ten until a couple of years ago. Maybe ahead of Karjakin thanks to the double Candidates win, but hardly with much. One could maybe just as well make a case for Karjakin due to a much better title match result. 

Maybe this is the first title match ever where a case can be made for ranking none of the participants among the 50 greatest players ever at the time of the match. Has there ever been a title match where none of the participants were considered top ten among the greatest ever? Maybe Kramnik vs Leko 2004, or Petrosian vs Spassky 1966, but in 1966 both Petrosian and Spassky must have been very close, and in 2004 Kramnik was still more remembered for beating Kasparov than for his later less impressive results. 

My opinion about Nepo is he's #2 in the world no matter what the ratings say. If a player can win the top tournament in the world back to back he's proven he's better than everyone but The Magster. Ding still has a lot to prove other than rating. He's gotta win a lot of big tournaments.  I think winning the candidates is equivalent to winning like 4 or 5 other big events. 

well we gotta take into account that ding actually mentioned the leaving of magnus to be a repeating factor throughout chess history dating back to Alekhine when he died up to fischer and now of course carlsen leaving. when alekhine died they had to choose a different world champion which was kinda depressing at the time considering everyone in the era was basically living without their best player and we got used to the new one so it counts regardless that they be featured along the greats as the same thing happened during alekhines era unfortunately

There’s Leko at #44 on the list above. When he was 25 he had won not only all the top tournaments Linares, Wijk and Dortmund, but also the Candidates and drawn a title match (without even losing a tiebreak). Such results should be enough to rank ahead of Nepo and Ding at the moment.

Short is one of the players to miss out on a top 50 spot. Still he did beat Karpov convincingly in a Candidates match when winning a tough Candidates match series, and was unlucky to also have to beat Kasparov at his peak to win the title. He won a bunch of top tournaments against very strong opposition, like Amsterdam 1991 ahead of both Kasparov and Karpov. He didn’t have consistent top performances, but should he be placed behind Ding and Nepo? Maybe behind Nepo after the latest Candidates, but it can probably be debated. And having to beat both Ks in matches (when both were close to their peak, and many considered them the two greatest players ever) was more difficult than ”just” beating Ding/Nepo.

Winner of the Sinquefield Cup and Grand Chess Tour 2019. Grand Prix winner. He has been 2800 since 2017-2018 and current #2 in the World. 

If he Wins the WC match, Ding is automaticly in the top 50 all time. I love Leko but lets remeber he also didnt face the World n1 for the title. Ding (#2) is going to face world #3 and two times candidates champion. 

I think we were very lucky given the circunstances. A match between #2 and #3 in the world. One dominated the candidates, the other was considered the greatest manace to Carlsen's title since Caruana (before covid removed him from professional chess for praticly 3 years).

Top 50 isn’t that high for a World Champion though, at least not one that will be in his 30s. He has been 2800 now and then, but was below it on every list two years in a row 2020-22. He won one Grand Prix event in 2017 when finishing fourth behind Mamedyarov, Grischuk and Radjabov, and for a series without for example Carlsen and Caruana it was not something all that amazing. He sure is a great player, but given his results overall I don’t think he will be seen as one of the greater World Champions.

Listing Ding’s latest international events together with winner:

Candidates 2022: Nepomniachtchi

Candidates 2020: Nepomniachtchi

FIDE World Cup 2019: Radjabov

Sinquefield Cup 2019: Ding in rapid playoff after +2-0=9 in classical

FIDE Grand Prix 2019: Carlsen

Du Te Cup 2019: Giri

Gashimov Memorial 2019: Carlsen

Tata 2019: Carlsen

Du Te Cup 2018: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

Norway Chess 2018: Caruana (Ding withdrew after three draws)

Gashimov Memorial 2018: Carlsen

Candidates 2018: Caruana

FIDE Grand Prix Mallorca 2018: Jakovenko

World Cup 2017: Aronian

Danzhou 2017: Wei Yi

That’s one won tournament in 15, in rapid playoff. If one would go a dozen tournaments further back, he has three wins in all. The remaining two being a Grand Prix Swiss ahead of Mamedyarov and Szenzhen 2017 where no top ten players participated.

Results like these are rather unusual for a player the years leading up to the World Championship title. Kramnik and Anand won around a dozen of their latest 25-27 tournaments before winning the title, Carlsen 17 of his latest 24. Of course, it’s not as if any of this makes Ding Liren anything else than a great chess player, but as far as World Champions go most of them had considerably more on the CV when they were 30.