Chinese no. 1 Ding Liren on the Danzhou Super-GM tournament

Chinese no. 1 Ding Liren leads the 11th edition of the Danzhou Super-GM tournament at the half-way stage after following up a Round 1 loss to Richard Rapport by beating Wei Yi, Wang Hao, Alexander Grischuk and Anish Giri. The event is being held online, but with the Chinese players all gathered together in one venue. The same was true of the “Belt and Road” women’s tournament which, for a second year in a row, was won by women’s no. 1 Hou Yifan.

The tournament in Danzhou, a city on the South China Sea island of Hainan, was first held as a Chinese supertournament in 2010. Since its fifth edition in 2014 it’s been pitting the best Chinese players against strong foreign players, and on paper this year’s 11th edition is one of the strongest yet.

Another Chinese event to switch from over-the-board to online was the 2nd edition of the Belt and Road Women’s Summit that was first held in Xi’an in 2019. Back then it was an 8-player 25+10 rapid tournament, while this year it was a 10-player event at a faster 15+5 time control. Once again, however, the Chinese players were on site in Xi’an!