The 12th game of the World Chess Championship match ended with the defeat of Ian Nepomniachtchi, who played with black pieces against the Chinese grandmaster Ding Liren. Thus, the total score for all games played is 6:6.
For the debut, the opponents chose the Zukertort system for the first time in this match. The beginning of the game turned out to be quite tense: Liren got a steady advantage after Nepomniachtchi's move with the bishop to d7, however, after a few moves the Chinese grandmaster lost the advantage. Nepomniachtchi's move surprised spectators and experts alike. Here is how, for example, American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana reacted to his non-obvious decision:
“I can think of only one explanation for this move, which is that while he was moving the bishop, he suddenly wanted to sneeze, and before he could go to f5 or g4, he dropped the bishop on d7, where it does absolutely nothing” .
After some time, Liren made an inaccuracy (he transferred the queen to e3, due to which the computer estimate of the position changed by -3.5 in favor of Nepomniachtchi). After that, Yang made a lucky pawn move to b5, defending himself from the queen's attack. After that, Fabiano Caruana noted Nepomniachtchi's great advantage:
“Black has super high chances of winning! I am sure that Black will win this game by more than 50%.
Immediately after that, Yang began to make mistake after mistake, losing all his advantage and completely giving the initiative to the Chinese:
A few more moves later, the situation is equal on the board:
And then Dean's advantage skyrockets to +10:
After a while, Nepomniachtchi gave up with Dean's advantage of +17.1:
The final, 14th game is scheduled for April 29th. If at the end of all games there is a draw, then on April 30 a tie-break will take place.