[davidguetta]

Thanks to the commentators to make the game accessible to us 1100 elo ><.

It's funny because at my level I thought it made 100% sense to decline draw and go Rg6. With two beautiful passed pawns and a bishop in the middle ding had a clear plan and very low risk (to me) to lose while Nepo had to do so many super accurate queen moves to defend... which seemed impossible (to me) in time pressure. It's basically (to me, again) the same problem than the super long game 6 in 2022 against carlsen.

[bionsystem]

Rg6 is an amazing decision (note that I didn't say it's the right one as clearly I wouldn't know). Think about it, after months of preparation and a couple weeks of playing long games, and getting so much pressure, he can take a draw with black and then play blitz. Nobody would have blame him for it.

But he realized that he has some chance for pressure, and that Ian has spent his extra time on the clock. So he puts his gloves on for the last fight. Whether or not it is the right strategy, both in this particular game and regarding the situation of the match, it shows incredible courage and fighting spirit.

Also earlier in the same game he canceled an attack realizing that he would be overextending and Ian has everything to defend. That is really really hard to do when you are attacking and had an advantage a couple moves ago, to just hold back like that.

[davidguetta]

Ding played really well at many points and absolutely deserves the title. I just think saying "it shows incredible courage and fighting spirit." might be an exagération when the decision was 100% logic to me.

The point is that he had 0 reason in fact to accept the draw. First, if Ian initiates a draw, its because he thinks its good for him so why help Ian ? Secondly it was either fighting now, or later in blitz. So just why delay the fight ? Literally why ? Theres no reason to. At the end of the day you win when the other makes mistake, and his position plus time control was really likely to make ian make errors also.

If anything i thought it was very a bit careles from ian to assume he would accept, and for what is worth Hikarus more or less said something in his recap along these lines and that he could have simplified a lot more before to make a draw more likely. I hope my point is clear despite my english

[ninepoints]

It was only low risk in hindsight. Yes the two pawns looked good, but the black king wasn't exactly completely secure either.

[__s]

Hence they said (to me) because low elo players are going to underestimate value of activity & king safety

[ninepoints]

Yea that's a fair rebuttal. At higher ELOs, you start to develop a sense of paranoia about the King. For example, opening the center before castling feels very wrong intuitively, and in this case, pinning one of your few remaining pieces against your own King with an envelope of only two pawns is one of those "maybe I should be concerned" types of scenarios.