The Grandmaster of solidness Ding Liren

The GM Ding Liren is a Chinese prodigy that has an interesting story to tell and great talent. He is a chess player that has shown incredible strength along with his chess career.

He was also into chess at the same time he was studying laws in a Chinese university at Pekin. This is one of the strong points and something we need to acknowledge of him.

He was playing chess at a very high level of competition and in the university simultaneously. This isn’t easy to do, and you will be surprised with his lifestyle and behaviors.

GM Ding Liren is the man who surpassed Mikhail Tal’s record of won official chess games in tournaments. Achieving 95 FIDE rated classic games without losing in a row in 2018, but this is not all.

He is also the player who played that famous games against the world champion, in which Ding Liren beat Magnus Carlsen in just 4 moves. He surely is a box full of surprises.

We will have a glance at the interesting life of one of the greatest chess players of these times.

Ding Liren’s inspiring childhood with chess

The young Chinese learned to play chess thanks to his mother, who taught him to play chess when he was 4 years old. It looks like his mother had a good eye to spot his passions because she took her son to the Wenzhou chess school.

There he started to develop more interest in the game and discover his natural talent to play chess. He started very young, but Ding Liren kept his training and playing tournaments organized by the chess school he was in.

The first master he had was the renowned Chen Lixing in the chess Wenzhou school he started playing. Zhu Chen was also a pretty tough chess master who was willing to teach Ding Liren his secrets to prepare him better.

His improvements quickly gave their rewards when Ding Liren became the kid who always dominated the Li Chengzhi cup. Something that he got used to winning every year in the different groups.

It was one of the toughest adolescent tournaments in china but Ding Liren’s preparations and discipline were very good that he never had trouble.

His amazing success in chess

From 2002 to 2009 he was gathering some nice successes, achieving good-looking scores to his image as china’s chess promise. In 2009, when he was 19 years old he started to achieve his first grandmaster norms.

For example, In the Individual china chess championship celebrated in Xinghua, in which he got the incredible ELO performance of 2811 and 8.5 points out of 11.

Ding Liren has indisputably grown his chess performance and polished his talents to the point of being able to compete in the highest level of competition.

Nowadays, Ding Liren has turned himself into the GM Ding Liren and is representing the federation of china in tournaments. He has become the second player in china’s history to achieve an ELO rating over 2800, his peak ELO rating is 2816.

His most recent success was in the 2019 Siquenfield cup where Ding Liren won first place after defeating the world champion Magnus Carlsen in tiebreaks.

These amazing features of the Chinese player make him a legend that is also known as a prodigy. Ding Liren is still playing chess currently, and he is one of the strongest players in the world.

Maybe we will have the opportunity to see another Ding Liren vs Magnus Carlsen match but in the world championship!

The playstyle of Ding Liren

Ding Liren is the type of player that will strain your abilities bit by bit and see how much you can resist. This kind of play is a little similar to Karpov’s and even Smyslov’s but with a slight difference.

GM Ding Liren tends to gain little positional advantage and finally turn it into a decisive initiative that ends up in disaster for his opponent. With deep and well-calculated lines, Ding Liren squishes every bit of juice out of the position he plays.

Have a look at this game in which Liren sacrificed the exchange to get GM Levon Aronian condemned to watch his king getting mated. Can you find the move?

37.Bxg7!! Kxg7 38.Qg5+ Kf8 39.Qf6 Kg8 40.Qg5+ Kf8 41.Qf6 Kg8 42.Re1 axb4 43.Re5 h6 44.Rh5 Qxa 34 5.Qxh6

Black's king will be mated soon

An absolutely exquisite combination by the Chinese player, a very interesting approach to this position against the master Levon Aronian. This was one of the most interesting games in the tournament, for the moment, Ding Liren had just crossed the line of a 2700 ELO rating.

However, this didn’t stop him to play magnificently against a pretty renowned player for his strength, GM Levon Aronian.

I recommend you to review Ding Liren’s games, you will surely learn a lot from his playstyle, a refined balance between positional approach and aggressive nature.

How Ding Liren lives

You will be surprised by the routine and manners the chess superstar has!

He is the kind of person who likes to sleep early, around 12 and 2 A.M, and he has a very relaxed and humble personality. He says he likes to wake up late in the morning, like at 9 A.M and he starts to train his chess at around 10 A.M

He then goes to eat and takes a break at noon, he likes to do some exercise and goes to play some basketball games with his friends.

He also has a pretty fancy and interesting group of friends like Wan Yunguo and Wei Yi as his friends. There is also another interesting fact about Ding Liren, do you know what he does with all the money he wins as a chess GM?

Every time he wins a considerable sum of money he gives it to his mother, he says he is happy with simple things. He doesn’t like to spend too much money so he prefers to give the money to his mother, would you do the same?

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