MOSCOW, April 18, Alena Sulizova. Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi acted more practical than the Chinese Ding Liren, which helped him win the seventh game of the match for the world crown in Astana, Russian chess player Sergey Karyakin said.
On Tuesday Nepomniachtchi won the game with White on the 37th move. The score in the confrontation was 4-3 in his favor. The eighth meeting will take place on Thursday, Ding Liren will have the white pieces.
“Ian Nepomniachtchi played fast enough, of course, there were inaccuracies on his part too. In fact, Dean played very well and, moreover, seized the initiative. With all this, he made one very serious practical mistake — he played too slowly and because of this, he got into a very strong time trouble. He did not have time to make the right decision. He literally ruined his position, which was in principle with an advantage, in just a few moves. Jan acted more practically, not to say that his game was perfect, but unlike Dean, he spent his time more prudently,» Karjakin said.
«In terms of the quality of the game, in general, I would say that the opponents are wrong, Ian looks a little more cold-blooded now, he does not make such inevitable mistakes as Dean. Even despite the fact that Dean won two games, they were so laborious, but today Ian, we can say, was lucky, and Dean did not have such luck in this match.In general, Ian looks more interesting.Even if we imagine that the main part of the match will end in a draw and there will be a tie-break, then Ian would be a favorite for tie-break. He plays faster in rapid chess — even today's game showed this. I think that Jan has a very comfortable situation in the match now, but let's see, still half a match is ahead, «added the source of the agency.
The winner of the match will be the player who first scores at least 7.5 points. A total of 14 games are planned with classical time control, after every two games there is a day of rest. In case of a draw after 14 games, the winner will be determined by a tie-break.