The world No 3 is on form and has established himself as the clear favourite to become Magnus Carlsen’s 2020 challenger

Ding Liren’s impressive triumph in last weekend’s Grand Tour final at London Olympia has made China’s world No 3 the firm favourite to win the eight-man Candidates Tournament next March which will decide Magnus Carlsen’s world title challenger later in 2020.

The 27-year-old’s win against France’s Maxime Vachier-Lagrave has been praised as one of the finest games of recent years, with deep and subtle strategy leading to an imaginative sacrificial checkmating finish.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ding Liren celebrates with the Grand Tour trophy. Photograph: Lennart Ootes/Image courtesy of Grand Chess Tour

White’s a1 rook was man of the match, making 20% of all Ding’s moves. The key moments were 15 Nd2! from where the knight dominates the key central light squares c4 and e4, and later 38 Ra4! suddenly switching the rook across the board to h4 and enabling White’s queen and both rooks to join the final attack. Rook lifts are well known, but they normally occur on the third rank and rarely on the fourth.

Ding has a classical and dynamic playing style with echoes of Mikhail Botvinnik, the “iron logician” who became the first USSR world champion. For a Botvinnik parallel, look at his famous 1968 win against Lajos Portisch where the f1 rook makes five moves out of 21 before its capture allows a forced win.

Long ago chess was banned by Beijing for the first eight years of the Cultural Revolution. Then in 1975 the Malaysian patron Dato Tan, in partnership with Chinese officials, conceived and financed the “Big Dragon” project to make China a global chess power. Its model was the USSR’s state-run strategy in the 1930s and 40s which led to victory over the US in 1945 and a hegemony which, Bobby Fischer apart, ended only with the breakup of the Soviet Union.

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First China captured the women’s world title from the previously dominant Georgians; then they advanced in the biennial team Olympiad until winning it in 2014; and finally, after many years when Chinese grandmasters stalled in the top 20 or 30, they found Ding, who in the second half of 2019 has won both the Sinquefield Cup and the Grand Tour ahead of Carlsen.

Carlsen himself has not lost a classical game in the whole of 2019, and his current unbeaten streak now stretches to 107 games. Four more are needed at Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee in January to break Sergei Tiviakov’s record of 110 against weaker opposition in 2004-05. No 107, Carlsen’s second classical game against Levon Aronian at Olympia, took the Norwegian close to the brink before a miraculous escape saved half a point. Afterwards Carlsen called it “an awful game, quality wise”.

Carlsen, who dropped from third to fourth in a field of over seven million at Fantasy Premier League last weekend, explained his cryptic response: “In fantasy football I’m both an optimist and an Optamist,” by adding that he relies on a mix of statistical data and his own intuition.

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Though the Grand Prix final won by Ding Liren and the British Knockout championship, where Michael Adams beat David Howell in the final, were the major events at Olympia, the Fide-rated Open produced a result for the future. Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, already one of the youngest ever grandmasters at 12 and the youngest ever major tournament winner at 13, reached another milestone, a 2600 rating, when at 14 years and three months he bettered Wei Yi’s mark of 14 years and four months. The official holder of this record is John Burke at 14 years and two months, but that was a statistical oddity aided by new coefficient rules.

Next up for Praggnanandhaa is the age record for a 2700 rating, also held by Wei Yi at 15 years and eight months followed by Alireza Firouzja of Iran at 16 years and one month and Carlsen at 16 years and seven months. It is no guarantee for a future world champion, though. Wei Yi’s results have now been stuck in the low 2700s for more than three years.

A year ago Shreyas Royal and his family were fighting extradition after his father’s work visa ran out. A campaign led by chessplaying MP Rachel Reeves and the personal intervention of the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, saved the day.

At the Fide Open the 10-year-old from Woolwich scored 5/8 against mostly higher rated opponents, reached a 2400 rating at one point, and became the youngest qualifier for the British championship since David Howell 20 years ago. There is a way to go, though, before he catches the world No 1 for his age.

3649 1 Bf8+ Kh5 2 Qe7! wins with the double threat Qh4 mate and Qxh7+ followed by mate.