Is Ding Liren good for chess?

It is not Ding's fault that he has been sick and can not win tournaments. However I think that it is bad for the promotion of chess if the World Champion is not only *not* the best player in the world but he can't even come close to winning a major tournament! I wish Ding well and I hope that things turn around for him before his next World Championship match. Otherwise, the chess world may have a situation where Ding finds enough strength to defeat his next challenger but win no other major events after that for another two year cycle.

Blame Magnus not him. Your champion refused to defend his title.

Magnus may never win the championship again and fall back on, "oh I'm better than everyone though I refused to play and prove it. I let the plebians play so I could do bullet and poker online."

Your comment is ridiculous. He is not my champion, I am not even a fan. He is a 5 time world champion that doesn't feel that he has a moral obligation to keep defending the title until he is too old to! He gave a lot more to the prestige of the World Champion title than Fischer did (who promised that he would be an active champion). You blaming him for this sorry state of affairs makes as much sense as blaming Nakamura for not trying harder to draw his game against Ding (Nakamura said that he didn't try as hard as he might have because he was confident that Carlsen would choose to defend his title).

@drSabrotna said in #2:
> Blame Magnus not him. Your champion refused to defend his title.
>
> Magnus may never win the championship again and fall back on, "oh I'm better than everyone though I refused to play and prove it. I let the plebians play so I could do bullet and poker online."

You r ridiculous for complaining in the first place.
Grow up. Or show them how it's done.

For all we know this Canidates and nxt championship could be most exciting in the whole history. Do u prefer a 14- 4 blowout and the next God revealed?

I@drSabrotna said in #4:
> You r ridiculous for complaining in the first place.
> Grow up. Or show them how it's done.
>
> For all we know this Canidates and nxt championship could be most exciting in the whole history. Do u prefer a 14- 4 blowout and the next God revealed?

If someone chooses to respond to this thread then I would prefer coherent replies instead of non-sequiturs.
Read carefully, I have not attacked Ding by pointing out that he is not up to the job. Caruana also made this observation on a Russian podcast. You however have blamed Carlsen for not choosing to defend his title for the fourth time as if he has a moral obligation to do so. Is that what you think?

I guess 90% of all Wch were weaker^^

@Sarg0n said in #7:
> I guess 90% of all Wch were weaker^^

I don't think that's the point though
That's like saying that a physicist today is better than 90% of all physicists in history, when in reality that is simply a consequence of time, and learning from past physicists

A world Champion's strength is measured by those around him, how much better is he than this competition?

Regardless, my own take is, candidates is happening, there will be challenger, if he wins, we will have new Champ, if he loses Ding deserves to keep the title. Pointless to discuss it.

The standards we set through the years for who is, or isn't, a good World Champion are inconsistent.

I think if we're honest what it really boils down to is the question: is the World Champion an interesting person, and do they excite us?

Tigran Petrosian was World Champion for 6 years but was widely disapproved of despite being a prolific competitor through his career, including while he was champion. The problem was his playing style. He got results, but people saw his play as boring and his personality as uninteresting (or worse).

Bobby Fischer, on the other hand, stopped competing in international events when he became World Champion, and then failed to defend his title when it came to the show-down with Anatoly Karpov. Yet lots of pundits seemed to long for him to come back while at the same time suggesting that Karpov, who had gone through the Candidates like everyone else and who went on to defend his title for almost 10 years, was somehow unworthy.

Ding Liren is the World Champion and should be welcomed as such for as long as he retains his title.

@ChessInSingapore said in #1:
> It is not Ding's fault that he has been sick and can not win tournaments. However I think that it is bad for the promotion of chess if the World Champion is not only *not* the best player in the world but he can't even come close to winning a major tournament! I wish Ding well and I hope that things turn around for him before his next World Championship match. Otherwise, the chess world may have a situation where Ding finds enough strength to defeat his next challenger but win no other major events after that for another two year cycle.

I think Ding is a deserving champion and if he would have been unable to win a major tournament, he would not have won against Nepo. Carlsen should not have defended his world championship title in such a boring format.

saying that the best in the world must be the winner is a phenomenon of our society which aims to push athletes to the maximum, without thinking about their health.

don't forget that the French football team was not the best nation in the world in 2018, yet they won the World Cup while not even being favorites.

we must stop believing that Ding was a lucky person who should never have been there. we must blame Fide for not knowing how to listen to the advice of such a great player as Carlsen, and congratulate Ding who was able to win a world championship even though he was not in good health ideal.

Certainly, it was not the most beautiful or the most memorable of the world championships, but we are in an era where we will see this more and more, of the overall strategy (when to draw and when to play a particular opening ), rather than flashes of genius on the chessboard