Ding Liren's 2022 Candidates

This next post in the series on Ding Liren, last seen in Ding Liren's 2010-11 TWIC-ipedia (April 2023), coincides with the start of the title match that I'm following on my World Chess Championship Blog, last seen in 2023 Nepomniachtchi - Ding Liren, First Week (April 2023). Two days after I wrote that 'First Week' post, Ding evened the match score in the fourth game.

I featured a Ding interview in the runup to the 2018 Candidates Tournament, Berlin. The post was cleverly titled Interview Videos : Ding Liren (February 2018), and started with some advice:-

NB: Ding Liren is a soft spoken guy. Turn up the volume on your speakers!

The following video, by ChessBase India, discusses Ding's performance in last year's 2022 Candidates Tournament, Madrid.

The Ding Liren Interview | Candidates 2022 (45:43) • '[Published on] Jul 6, 2022'

The video's description explained,

Ding Liren had a very tough start at the Candidates 2022. He lost his first game and then a series of seven draws ensued. It was not looking like he would be able to achieve anything special at the Candidates when the Chinese GM started scoring one win after another. Before you knew it, Ding was on 8.0/14 and had taken the sole second spot in the tournament. We discussed the critical moments of all of his games from the tournament.

Some interesting segments in the video start at:-

• 32:00 Ding Liren - Nakamura, the game that eventually allowed Ding to qualify for the title match
• 43:40 'No man ever walks into the same river because the man is not the same man and the river is not the same river.'

The more than 100 comments to the video were favorable to both the interviewer, Sagar Shah, and the interviewee, Ding Liren. A few months later, we learned, Ding Liren gets official invitation to take part in FIDE World Championship match 2023 (October 2022).