Ding Liren China’s first world chess champion

PARIS: Ding Liren became China’s first world chess champion on Sunday after a rapid-play tie-break victory over Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi in Kazakhstan.

Ding, 30, takes over as winner of the World Chess Championship from Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, who chose not to defend his title after a 10-year reign. He and Nepomniachtchi had finished on seven points each after the 14 first-stage games played in the Kazakh capital Astana. Each won three, while the other eight ended in a draw.

For the tie-break stage of the match, also in Astana,. The contenders then played a tie-break round, in which they had only 25 minutes to make their moves, plus an additional 10 seconds for each move played. Ding is rated higher than Nepomniachtchi in the faster formats of the game but had played very little such chess in official competitions since January 2020.

Carlsen, considered one of the greatest players of all time, had held the World Chess Championship title since 2013 and will remain the world’s top-rated player. The two-million-euro ($2.2-million) prize would have been split 60-40 between the winner and the runner-up if the match had been decided in the initial 14-game series. Because it reached the tiebreak stage, the prize money will be split 55-45.