Ding Liren（丁立人）was born into a middle-class family, his father was an executive in the energy sector, his mother in a nursing profession. Life was fairly comfortable, they have time and motivation to pursue their hobbies and things they wanted to. Ding's development as a chess player was step by step, during which his parents did not need making too great a sacrifice to help their child learn chess, unlike many families at that time, nor had they narrowed their child's future to just playing chess only. They gave support and guidance to their young child when it was needed and always at the right moment.
Previously, generations of players who earned their living have had one option only, that if they want to succeed in the game, to give up normal school life early on to just concentrate on their chess. Most of them had not experienced life in junior high school or high school, which is quite regrettable. At the same time, many of them when leaving their homes early on to study chess in far away places, without their parents by their side, facing a lot of pressure in training, in never ending competitions, added to these they also had to endure isolation and great psychological hardship.
This is where Ding Liren and many other children who will be engaged in a chess career are lucky nowadays, they can learn step by step at home like other ordinary students, and pursue chess projects that they are passionate about, which was almost unimaginable before. In the next few lines, Ding Liren is to talk about some of his experiences in chess study and normal school learning, hoping that other children and parents can draw some helpful conclusion.
How often Ding study chess and how much opportunities to participate in chess as a child
When Ding Liren was a child, he learned chess like most children, basically attending special classes three times a week, on Saturdays and Sundays from 2p.m. to 5p.m., and on Wednesday evenings. The content of the class were generally that the teacher first gave lectures, and then arranged game-playing exercises, each side has a time limit of about one hour, and immediate reviews of the game after playing, and finally they got 3 to 4 tactical exercises to solve for their homework.
At that time, the main competition that the children could be participating in was the Li Chengzhi Cup, plus some other local children's competitions in Wenzhou. In the third grade, because of his excellent performance in the competition, Ding was admitted to the Zhejiang Provincial Team for advanced training. However, during the first six months of the year, only chess training were given, with nothing like cultural lessons taught, and when Ding's mother went to visit him, she was of the opinion that this was not an ideal situation, and promptly decided to bring her child home to continue his normal schooling. From then on until 2009, when Ding won the national championship at the age of 17 and started his chess career path, he carried on attending schooling on weekdays, chess training on weekends, and more training with the provincial team before a competition.
Attending junior and high school was a much more severe test
During the junior high school, Ding pursued his chess study after finishing his school homework every day. By the second and third years of junior high school, the academic pressure was increasing more and more, Ding felt that playing chess was much easier than going to school. If he could choose by himself, he very much wanted to go for chess because that would avoid the heavy homework every day, and that he need not have to deal with frequent difficult tests and exams too. But Ding's mother stood firm and insisted he must finish his junior high school first.
After going to high school, Ding was getting more tiresome of studying, he had a full schedule every day, had to complete a lot of homework when he went home, thus he had very little time at his disposal. Unlike his friends in the provincial team, their training is not so strict and severe, and if they sleep a little late at night, they can still have free time at their disposal. At that time, it happened that the chess performance of Ding was always excellent, in Li Chengzhi Cup competition he can easily win a top three ranking with confidence. By comparision the junior and senior high school tests and exams are very stressful and sometimes can even cause a failure, so it was really not easy to choose school studying and to persist into it.
Although it was very difficult to play chess well and to study at the same time during the three years in junior high school, Ding was fortunate that due to his excellent performance in both schooling and chess, he was accepted to a leading high school. During the time at high school, in order to be able to carry on playing chess, the families of several outstanding young chess players in Wenzhou City got together and decided to set up a small "family club". The members met every weekend to play chess at an agreed location, usually they and the families having a meal together after a full day of game practice and analysis. Occasionally they held competition among themselves, with prizes and rewards prepared and offered by the parents for the young chess players, sometimes the prizes can be as high as 1,000 yuan, which is a great encouragement. After a year of perseverance, these young chess players have made good and great progress. Among them, Wang Chaoran successfully passed the entrance exam of Peking University Winter Training Camp, and Jia Haoxiang and others later became professional chess players and competed in the National League Category A.
The sweet and bitterness of playing chess
Ding Liren's early chess playing was smooth and did not encounter any difficulties. His secret was to be eager to play and be open in style whenever possible, his parents never put pressure on him, so he plays chess actively and never be afraid of facing his opponents. Winning the national championship in 2009 was one of Ding Liren's most satisfying achievements to date (6 wins and 5 draws in 11 high level games, in 4 of which there were spectacular piece sacrifices). Winning the national championship also laid the foundation for his career path advancement.
However, after participating in the First Division's League competition, the results were not satisfactory, mainly because he was a bit confused of his own strength standing. Facing opponents whom he was afraid of before, now the situation has changed where he has a thinking that he should be able to beat them, yet the result was a bitter loss, and he couldn't bear the huge gap psychologically and wanted to have a pause or even to escape chess. At that time, Ms Xu Yuhua was the coach of the Zhejiang team, and she suggested that Ding should stick to the game anyway, he should go out to do some exercises, and he should not back down because of fear or adversity. So Ding Liren summoned up the courage to play the last game for his team, but unfortunately it backfired and still ended in a defeat. Really no one in competitive sports is a victorious general all the time, and learning to face defeat is a compulsory course for chess players.
Ding Liren frankly said that the real cruelty and pain of playing chess can only be experienced after engaging in the profession. In the past, when he played chess while still learning at school, he didn't care so much, but now that playing chess is everything, it's not so easy to let go after defeat. In the face of losing, his solution was to come back to it and summarize and analyse the game, to accumulate more experience and then participate in the next games and to start all over again. When the mood is particularly sombre, look back on the previous wonderful matches, see how imposing and convincing you have won, and cheer yourself up.
At a critical point to choose playing chess or to go to school
Many middle school chess players face an important choice, that is, what situation is suitable for choosing a career playing chess, and for what kind of students to better choosing further study. Ding Liren believes that this was not so easy to define, as it is mainly based on their personal feelings and circumstances. He suggested that if they really like playing chess, they may consider choosing to play chess regardless of other things, because after all, professional chess players later can turn into excellent coaches and earn a good living. Of course, it is good also to choose to be at school for academic study, however, students with other pursuits and interests may also consider to follow their hearts and the family wishes. In Ding's opinion, learning and studying make people efficient and good at thinking, especially when learning and studying subjects like mathematics, physics etc, they will think of researching when they encounter problems, which is more or less similar to chess playing.
A little advice for young chess players
I've been playing chess since I was a kid, said Ding Liren, and I'm not very good at traps or anything underhand. If you much inclined to take the routine of speculative checking the opponent's King when you start learning chess, it is not very good. When I was young, I encountered professional chess players with a more systematic opening, and I kept playing the Lieji Defense (?) 1.Nf3 2.g3 in order to get out of the book. Until one day for the first time at Li Chengzhi Cup I began to play d4, and from then on I learned a lot about the opening of d4, I began to understand the opening system is something solid, which is a necessary condition for going further in the game's development. If you want to play chess well, there is no short cut, you still have to go right at the very beginning. There are many branches of the opening system. Choosing an unorthodox or untried opening (the left-hand side door in popular saying) from a small age, it will be of limited range of use in the future. By the way, before a game, one can do solving some tactical problems or puzzles, or playing some fast chess games online, all these can be helpful. It's like warming up for the mind, and for relax.
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Source : Sina Website, Authors: Chaoyue Chess Club
Dated: 10th October 2020
~ a XIANGQI EN BLOG translation ~
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