Ding surprised Nepomniachtchi again, this time by choosing the French Defence as black. Nepomniachtchi chose the Tarrasch Variation 3.Nd2 which is what he has been playing recently online and both players seemed to be on their own around move 10.
Ding was probably fine but he had to be careful as Nepomniachtchi developed a dangerous looking attack. After 16.Rad8 Ding had just 43 minutes to reach move 40, already dangerous territory. Nepomniachtchi praised 21...Bd6 by Ding and the game entered a new phase where black gave up the exchange and had got some chances of his own. 29...h5 was excellent but with 11 minutes left Ding didn't have any room for surprises. 31...h4 was based on a miscalculation, 31...Bd8 was better but even 31...Kg7 was sensible. It was perhaps here Ding lost his composure entirely. 32....Rd2 was effectively the losing move, not only was 32....Be5 a better choice but Ding took 5 minutes over it and only had 44 seconds to make it to move 40, no real chance in such a sharp position and 33...Rd3 blundered the position away, Ding resigned with 3 seconds left on his clock to make three moves and in a hopeless position.
This was a very bad defeat for Ding, almost entirely due to bad clock handling, which surely also indicated bad nerves. The only slight piece of good news is there is another rest day tomorrow for Ding to recover.
Ian Nepomniachtchi: “The whole game was extremely sharp and extremely tense. I felt that I should be doing quite fine. But after …Bd6, which is a superb move, I didn’t really know what to do. There were a lot of sharp lines, but I couldn’t figure out what to do, so I went to this position where I was slightly worse.”
Ding Liren: "I think I played not so bad, but just at the end I messed things up."
Ian Nepomniachtchi 4 Ding Liren 3. Best of 14.
Rest day Wednesday 19th April.
Game 8 Thursday 20th April.
