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Peter Svidler, before round 7 started: "I don't think you will find very many examples of the reigning World Champion not playing board 1 in an absolutely critical central match of the #ChessOlympiad... For him not to want to play Gukesh in a match, China absolutely needs to win.... show more
78,967 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr •via X (Twitter)
9 Kommentare

Gukesh is slow poison, Pragg is constrictor boa, Erigaisi is that monster who likes to smash his way through. This trio are like Haedes, Zeus and Poseidon.

Ding has scored 2 out of 5 so far without any wins, if China wants to win the match, the players need to win. Maybe it's a good decision.

he is the champion but by recent performance, Wei Yi it's in a better moment, I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually the Chinese Fed. who decided the change, in a must win situation they choose the higher rated avoiding at the same time any chance of ding losing to gukesh

It's basically a full on declaration that Ding is not confidential, which is perfectly okay. I just hope he somewhat regains his confidence before the critical WC match.

I remember an Olympiad (Luzern 1982) where reigning wch Karpov did not play vs Korchnoi and was Kasparov who played. It's not the first time!

Absolutely right. It doesn't reflect good on Ding to back down of a challenge. He is the champion of the world after all.

Why is he assuming this is Ding's decision? The captain makes the choices with the input of the entire team, Ding isn't selfish, he doesn't put his ego above his team. I think China had the right strategy.

It’s not the same as this but in 1970 Soviets put Stein in instead of Spassky versus Larsen. In another Olympiad Petrosian refused to play Fischer because the schedule was changed to suit the American and Spassky then got a draw with black vs Bobby

Maybe he doesn't want to give any prep away before the world championship 🤔

