Chess: Ding misses wins and his prep leaks as Nepomniachtchi keeps the lead

Russia’s Ian Nepomniaachtchi, 32, has a fortunate 4.5-3.5 lead over China’s Ding Liren, 30, as their €2mn world championship match in Astana, Kazakhstan, moves into the second half of its scheduled 14 games. Ding stood better in game seven before he collapsed under time pressure, with eight moves to make in 45 seconds, and had a dominating advantage in game eight, where Nepomniachtchi escaped defeat by a mixture of bluff and brilliant defence, aided by his opponent’s miscalculations. Game nine starts on Friday at 10am BST and the official website is worldchampionship.fide.com.

White’s three best opportunities were 26 Rd3! transferring the rook to the h file, 32 Qxd8! when White’s king can escape perpetual check, and 37 Bc6! followed by Qxb6 and advancing the a pawn.

It also emerged that some of Ding’s prep with his aide Richard Rapport was allowed to reach the lichess online database, as the opening of a game between two anonymous players in February exactly anticipated Thursday’s Nimzo-Indian 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 along with Ding’s novelty 9 Ra2! Another of the anonymous games included the 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nf3 d5 4 h3?! of game two, which shocked the chess world.

Earlier, Nepomniachtchi went ahead when Ding, with the better position in game seven, suffered what has been described as a freeze, meltdown, or collapse at moves 31-32.

The opening was a French Defence 1 e4 e6, appearing in a world title match for the first time since 1978. It proved a good choice, as Ding repelled White’s dangerous early attack and took the initiative until calculating the complications ate into his time.

Black could have kept his edge by 31…Bd8! regrouping the bishop to c7. After that, Ding still had six minutes on his clock for eight