Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Friendly Mistake
The prestigious Tata Steel tournament traditionally takes place in January in the city of Wijk aan Zee.
It is an annual chess event taking place since 1938 and many World Champions have played in it.
In the edition of 2023, apart from top players like Carlsen, Ding, Caruana, So and Giri, five of the strongest newcomers took part: Gukesh D, Arjun Erigaisi, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Vincent Keymer and Praggnanandhaa R.
In round 12 Ding faced Rapport. It is known the friendship between those both players because Rapport helped Ding during his match against Nepomniachtchi in Apr-2023.
The game proceeded fluently after trading many pieces and everyone expected a draw as a final result. However, Ding unnecessarily weakened his pawn structure after trading queens. Eventually Rapport found a devilish knight tactics in the endgame.
Could you find the winning combination missed by Ding Liren?
Despite Rapport didn’t let his friend escape, three months later after Tata Steel both worked closely together through the world match Ding – Nepomniachtchi. As a result of their fruitful collaboration, Ding became the 17th FIDE world chess champion.
Maybe you play chess but are unable to attend a local club. If that is your case, then join our virtual Chess.com club. On our site, we regularly play online tournaments and team matches. More than 1650 members enjoy that chance and new players join every week. We have new tournaments scheduled for the coming months waiting for players! Join now! Additionally, we have a puzzle section and we have recently started to practice the variant of ‘Vote Chess’. Although not very popular, ‘Vote Chess’ is an effective educational tool for learning together.
