By Guillermo Benavides Beijing, May 12 (EFE).- When chess grandmaster Ding Liren earned the sport’s most prestigious title on April 30, he ended China’s decades of quest to gain a global recognition marked by centuries of tradition. Ding’s historic triumph over Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi in a tiebreaker at the World Chess Championship in Astana, Kazakhstan, …
The oldest war game can always generate novelty. As it did last weekend, when, after an exhausting 18-game struggle, a 30-year-old Chinese grandmaster, Ding Liren, defeated his slightly older Russian opponent
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A chess powerhouse
The Candidates Tournament will resume a bit over a week from today, with the two highest-rated Chinese players in the world ready to get back into the fray in Yekaterinburg. While Ding Liren (world #3) did not have a good first half, Wang Hao (world #12) is still well within range to catch up with the leaders.
Having two players from China in the eight-player field should not catch anyone by surprise, as the Asian country has greatly developed his chess stars in the last two decades or so although most likely the results began to show only after a period of deliberate attempts to rise the status of the sport in the country.