GM Ding Liren took a first step to winning the 2022 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour’s Chessable Masters. The Chinese grandmaster beat GM Praggnanandhaa R in their first mini-match on Wednesday and only needs a tie on Thursday to win the $25,000 first prize.

Andras Adorjan’s Black is OK! would be a fitting title for the first day of this final, with black victories in the first three games followed by a draw. It was Ding who won twice and thus won the first of two mini-matches.

After he got slowly outplayed in the first, Praggnanandhaa impressively won the second game from the black side of an English Four Knights. The game was decided all the way at the end in a rook endgame:

For the next game, Ding dusted off the Cambridge-Springs variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined, named after a tournament played in 1904 in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania. The Chinese top GM got a majority on the queenside that was quickly decisive:

Ding’s reaction was obviously positive: “It was a tough match. I’m very happy with my performance. My strategy is to avoid any complicated lines and any long or forced lines.”

Asked about the school exam that he had to make in the morning before the match, Praggnanandhaa said: “It went decent, it went well, I could say. Probably it shouldn’t be a problem. I guess I will pass!”

All Games Day 7

Chessable Masters Knockout Results

The 2022 Champions Chess Tour’s fourth event, the Chessable Masters, runs May 19-26, 2022 on chess24. The preliminaries are a 16-player round-robin from which the top eight qualify for the knockout stage. The time control is 15 minutes plus a 10-second increment; the scoring system is three points for a win, one for a draw, and zero for a loss. The prize fund is $150,000.

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