Good Spot with the Knight tour - I might nick that for Tuesday's intro. The Ding finish was a treat for the viewers, showed he was in control and thoroughly enjoying himself.

Hi Teyss,

I think it's probably because I (and no doubt many others here) can understand and predict what was going on in most of the games so far.

My worry now is Ding has spotted a way to go - no risks, look for positions that encourage Nepo's impetuous play and Kramnik advising his man to rein himself in, settle down and get the job done.

Still hard to predict who is going to win this and TBH I don't mind either way.

My first thing was to "invent" as system, playing a kind of K.I. system and getting e5 in, and that worked, but I soon found that my "invention" was, in various more "accurate" forms, already played by GMs etc. After a while the openings seemed to be known by everyone but me.

One idea or way for a weaker player is to play unusual openings and for a short while I found that a) meant I thought about the positions in new and more "inspired" ways and b) my opponents were often put out.

One game online I played 1. e4 c6 2. Nc3...there was a pause, a message came that 'your opponent has left the game' [to study the two knights var and the best plan, he or she found it]

Kasparov vs Karpov, 1986

This suggests the question of how to handle a Queen's gambit exchange variation.

If for example Ding was vs Carlsen, and played the London against him, most probably Carlsen would not have allowed that dark squares domination. He would have neutralize Ding's activity and would have got an easy draw.

Then everybody would have said that Ding tried the boring London that doesn't give white anything, out of desperation, and just wasted another white game. But vs Nepo we see that London is far from boring, and we got this highly interesting game, both positionally and tactically, that Ding ended with a touch of genius.

Of course this cannot go on. Six sexy games. We have to remember them when the one or two dull games sneak in as the players catch their breath.

What may be making this so interesting is there is no challenger playing v a champ so no 'been there done that' syndrome and no pressure of losing the title which IMO is one reason amongst others why Nick the Norwegian walked off into the sunset.

FIDE could be considering reshuffling the candidates format and the title.

On the first day of the candidates the title is vacant. The top two play a match for the title 6 months later. The title match must remain. 'You know who' might be interested enough to return to the fold.