Ding Liren’s shocking streak of showings continued at the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T Challenge’s group stage, where the world chess champion scored a single draw after six defeats against fellow members of the chess elite.
One of the biggest Fischer Random chess tournaments of all time began with a dominant showing of the young chess generation, with Nodirbek Abdusattorov topping the field ahead of Vincent Keymer in the group stage portion. While all this was just the prologue for the knockout stage, with the first two days of rapid play serving as bracket seeding for the classical playoffs and no one getting eliminated, the results already made waves in the chess community.
With the older cohort of players getting off to a slow start, despite the youngsters’ relative lack of high-level tournament experience in Fischer Random chess (a variant where the pieces are shuffled on the first rank), it made for another good argument for an impending generational shift in the chess world. Even mighty Magnus Carlsen only came in at fifth with a score of 3.5/7.
However, the biggest surprise had to be Ding Liren’s shocking performance, as the world champion lost six games on the trot before getting a straightforward draw from Alireza Firouzja in the final round of play. Ding Liren has been mostly absent from the tournament circuit since his title win last year, and his return has been nothing short of disastrous so far, with a poor performance at Tata Steel Chess followed up by this stinker.
He does have a chance to redeem himself in the playoffs, though, as the group stage play had no eliminations on the line.
The 2024 edition of the Candidates Tournament, which will determine Ding Liren’s challenger, will take place from April 3-22 in Toronto. If these performances are anything to go by, each of the eight qualified players will salivate at the prospect of taking on the Chinese grandmaster in match play.
