In this lesson, the “Game of The Year 2017”, features the number one Chinese Grandmaster, Ding Liren. Later this game would be dubbed as the Chinese Immortal.

Chess never fails to make someone completely baffled! Or is it the chess players who do that? 😊 The history of chess has seen several astonishing and mind-blowing games. Games played by Tal, Fischer, Morphy, Kasparov, Carlsen, and so on have been immortalized. These games are from different players from different periods and generations.

See more of the Immortal Games including the original in this lesson.

In this game from the Yingmei Cup, the Chinese Team Championship 2017, Ding proved to the world that he has the ability to demolish his opponents with his aggressive play. He was playing Black against Bai Jinshi, and the way Ding Liren played is truly spectacular.

What’s so special about this game? What exactly happened? Well, here we go, jumping into the core of the game. The following position arrived in what could be called as the opening-to-middlegame stage, because White has not yet castled his king.

Black to play

And how would you play here as Black? To give you a little context, Black has almost finished his development; only his c8-bishop is yet to come out. He has also ‘opened up’ his kingside by playing g5 in the process of kicking White’s dark-squared bishop away from that annoying diagonal. With the pawn on d4 and knights aiming to fly to the center, one could say that Black is targeting the not-yet-castled white king in the center of the board.

Suggested: You may like to study our lesson “How to Attack Your Opponent’s King?”

The Chinese Immortal by Ding Liren

After calculating all possible variations of this game, you can watch the video analysis of our Academy Manager, Aggelos Kesaris. Aggelos Kesaris is also one of the authors of the course “Exchange Pieces like a PRO”. Find out why this was the game of the year 2017 and hailed the as the Chinese Immortal.

You can also download the PGN of this game below: