Ding Liren Crushes Navara in Rapid Match
Saturday, June 22, 2019 at 10:07PM
Dennis Monokroussos in David Navara, Ding Liren

The match was close most of the way, but in the end David Navara collapsed or Ding Liren showed his mettle - or a bit of both - and Ding closed out his undefeated 7-3 victory with three consecutive wins. This was the latest installment of the David Navara portion of the annual CEZ Chess Trophy festival in Prague. He has been playing matches against elite opponents every year since 2003, starting with Viktor Korchnoi and facing opponents like Anatoly Karpov and Vladimir Kramnik along the way. He has lost almost all the matches, which is a tribute to the brutally strong opponents he is facing; he is of course a fantastic player in his own right, consistently rated over 2700. (More info on the Chess24 website, here.)

Among the concurrent events, there was also a similar 20' + 10" rapid match between Dutch chess legend Jan Timman and Thai Dai Van Nguyen, won by the latter, also with a 7-3 score. (Unlike Ding, he did lose one game along the way but won five. Like Ding, he also won the last three games. By the way, don't be fooled by the winner's low rapid rating. He's a GM, and almost certainly hasn't played in enough rapid events since becoming a GM to rectify his rating.)

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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