Ding Liren is the current and 17th official world chess champion, 3 times Chinese Champion and Chinese highest rated player.
He was born on October 24, 1992 at Wenzhou, China. His father taught him about chess at the age of 4, using chess guidebook also from watching his grandfather games and later on beat his dad when he was elementary player.
At the age of 9, he won the Chinese U-10 national champion. His family give him unwavering support in his chess career. One of his coaches was Zhu Chen, a former women chess champion giving him an inspiration support and a lot of chess knowledge.
In 2009, he got the Grandmaster title by winning the Chinese National Chess Championship and repeated on 2011 and 2012. He was the youngest national champion at the age of 16.
In 2012, he was ranked 3rd in the World Junior Chess Championship with 9.5/13 behind Alexander Ipatov and Richard Rapport both 10/13.
In 2014, he was represent China in the Olympiad and the team went on to win the title for the 1st first time and repeated on 2018. After a year, he went onto top 10 in FIDE August rating list with 2770, he was the 2nd Chinese player to reach in top 10, first was Wang Yue on May 2010 with 2752.
In July 2016 FIDE blitz rating list, he got the ranked 1 with 2875, ahead of Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura.
In 2017, he reached the finals of World Cup, but lost to Levon Aronian and didn’t get the title.
In 2019, he won Sinquifield Cup, a prestigious chess tournament winning the tie-break from Magnus Carlsen.
In 2022, Sergey Karjakin was disqualified in the Candidates for supporting the Russian evasion with Ukraine giving chance for Ding to qualify via highest average rating but he needed the required number of games, at that time Chinese Chess Federation settled 3 matches for Ding and became successful. In the Candidates, despite the slow 1st half, he managed to bounce back on the 2nd half with 4 wins 1 loss and 2 draws placing 2nd with 8/14 points behind Ian Nepomniachtchi with 9.5/14.
In 2023, Carlsen did not defend his title in A rematch with Ian Nepomniachtchi by withdrawal. Therefore the 2023 World Championship match took place between challenger Ian and runner-up Ding. He won the title with 4 wins 3 losses and 11 draws and named as the 17th world chess champion. Both current men and women chess champions are Chinese.
Ding Liren is known for his innovative play and strategic acumen. His unique playing style, endgame skill and creative approach to chess have garnered widespread recognition and respect among fellow players and chess enthusiasts worldwide.
There are 1632 games listed in the chessbase2021.
Let’s look of his best games which feature in our GMG page.