FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

A lot of people (me included) thought this series was dire for Ding after watching him get crushed a few days ago by his opponent Nepo where Ding visibly froze and was in a state of total mental disarray after he couldn't decide on his move, wasted a ton of time, and ended up making a bad move anyways.

Commenters said that this was Nepo's strength, even if he doesn't make the absolute greatest move he makes a good enough move relatively quickly compared to his competition and we saw the advantage of that play out.

But ironically that game being successful for Nepo's fast style might've cost him the championship in the end as he tried to replicate the time pressure on Ding every game after to pretty poor results. He might've done better if he didn't get such a dramatic victory that game.

Great match by Ding and Ian both, and I honestly think Ding deserves the win in the end.

I think Ian got a bit too results oriented and pragmatic towards the end of the match, playing too imprecisely and quickly in key positions and always a little too happy with a draw. Ding was just playing chess.

And as often happens in chess, this ended up being the decisive psychological factor. Ian, going for a repetition, And Ding says no, let's play. This seemed to shock Ian so much that he was unable to find the correct moves. Ding was ruthless and punished his mistakes, showcasing his superior calculation(at least in that moment) and concentration.

This is a good point. Ding's time management has actually been excellent in this match besides that one moment where he froze. But that was literally one move. In most of the games he's just close to serious time pressure, but never gets there. He's just very fastidious about actually spending all his time.

Ian definitely slowed down in the latter half of the match as well, but he still played too quickly in key positions.

chess.com are still streaming if you want to see the analysis coverage: https://www.twitch.tv/chess

He tweeted 30s after Ian resigned though.

Edit: https://nitter.net/MagnusCarlsen/status/1652663581542891531#...