Ding Leads Final: Chessable Masters, Day 7
GM Ding Liren took a first step to winning the 2022 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour's Chessable Masters. The Chinese grandmaster beat GM Praggnanandhaa R in their first mini-match on Wednesday and needs only a tie on Thursday to win the $25,000 first prize.
The games of the 2022 Chessable Masters' knockout phase can be found here as part of our live events platform. The rounds start each day at 9 a.m. Pacific/18:00 CEST.
Andras Adorjan's Black Is OK! would be a fitting title for the first day of this final, with black victories in the first three games followed by a draw. It was Ding who won twice and thus won the first of two mini-matches.
After he was slowly outplayed in the first game, Praggnanandhaa impressively won the second from the black side of an English Four Knights. The game wasn't decided until the very end in a rook endgame:
For the next game, Ding dusted off the Cambridge-Springs Variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined, named after a tournament played in 1904 in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania. The Chinese top GM got a majority on the queenside that was quickly decisive:
Ding's reaction was obviously positive: "It was a tough match. I'm very happy with my performance. My strategy is to avoid any complicated lines and any long or forced lines."
Asked about the school exam that he had to take that morning before the match, Praggnanandhaa said: "It went decent. It went well, I could say. Probably it shouldn't be a problem. I guess I will pass!"
All Games Day 7
Chessable Masters Knockout Results
The 2022 Champions Chess Tour's fourth event, the Chessable Masters, runs May 19-26, 2022 on chess24. The preliminaries are a 16-player round-robin from which the top eight qualify for the knockout stage. The time control is 15 minutes plus a 10-second increment; the scoring system is three points for a win, one for a draw, and zero for a loss. The prize fund is $150,000.
Previous reports:
- Ding, Praggnanandhaa Reach Final: Chessable Masters, Day 6
- Carlsen-Ding, Giri-Pragg In Semifinals: Chessable Masters, Day 5
- Giri Undefeated Entering Knockout: Chessable Masters, Day 4
- Giri Grabs Lead; Carlsen Tries 1.h4: Chessable Masters, Day 3
- Carlsen Blunders Piece vs. Pragg: Chessable Masters, Day 2
- Wei Yi Leads, Mishra Shines: Chessable Masters, Day 1
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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