'Game of the Week #745': The Giri–Abdusattorov Game Isn't There — And That's the Real Story

Delhi International Open, 2026. I had spent three days sitting at boards 1–10, recorder running, pencil on the scoresheet. On the fourth evening I walked down to board 217. A twelve-year-old was playing the London System. His coach pulled a laminated sheet out of his pocket with the 'plans' typed on it: Nf3, e3, Bd3, Nbd2, c3, then wait six moves. The kid was doing exactly that. He lost in 24 moves, because his opponent played …Bd6 and …Ne4 in that order and the sheet had no answer for it.

The kid had a plan. He did not have a line.

That is the market a product page is pricing itself against — 'Game of the Week #745: Giri vs Abdusattorov' — and that is exactly where it falls down. The page names eight opening systems, promises six videos, and contains zero moves. Zero evaluations. Zero result. No event name, no date. The game advertised in the headline does not exist in the body.

The premise that is correct, and should be treated as correct

Let me first write the strongest version of the mainstream read, because this time it holds up.

After 1.d4 d5, if White plays 2.c4, Black has to prepare the Slav, the Semi-Slav, the QGA and the Orthodox QGD — four families at once. That is a mountain of memory, and at 2700+ the mountain gets taller every year. For a club player with two hours a week, avoiding 2.c4 is not laziness; it is a rational decision. The London System is not merely 'unsound' today — it is a genuine weapon for top-10 players, a tool for generating pressure on low theory. On that axis the product's thesis is not hollow. The market is real, and it is large.

The question is not whether the market exists. It is whether the product being sold into it is honest against its own claims.

Eight names, six videos, two errors

A taxonomy check is necessary here, because the catalogue count is the only hard number on the entire page — eight systems, six videos.

The list includes the London, the Colle, the Torre, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, the Trompowsky, the Richter-Veresov and the Catalan. But the framing is: 'after 1.d4 d5, White is avoiding 2.c4.' Four systems fit that frame cleanly. Two do not.

The Catalan is, by definition, a 2.c4 opening — 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2. A page whose entire angle is 'White does not play 2.c4' lists the Catalan as the cure for the very condition it is a symptom of. That is not a minor move-order imprecision; it is catalogue-filling.

The Trompowsky (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5) and the Richter-Veresov (1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Bg5) arise mainly against 1…Nf6, not against 1…d5. So the page is selling systems that sit outside its own sentence.

Second, and more expensive: the Colle, the Torre, the London and the Richter-Veresov are transpositionally entangled. A single Black setup — …e6, …Bd6 or …b6, …Nbd7, then …c5 or …c6 — answers all four. A coach building a professional repertoire folds them into one scheme. A product selling 'a plan for each opening' sells six videos where two would do. The 400-board classroom is where scale starts to hide the story — and here there are only eight boards, and the count is still hiding it.

'Unambitious' and 'extremely dangerous' in the same breath

The page trips over its own language. White's approach is called 'not very ambitious' and, in the same breath, 'extremely dangerous.' In chess terms those two cannot both be true. A system that is objectively unambitious is precisely not dangerous against a prepared opponent. A system that is dangerous is, in practical terms, ambitious.

The resolution is that 'dangerous' here means dangerous to an unprepared Black, not dangerous in the engine's estimation. That distinction is legitimate. Concealing it while selling is not — because the buyer reads that sentence as the engine's voice and pays accordingly.

And the truth is that only the London survives at 2700+. The Trompowsky is a good surprise weapon. The Colle and the Torre are mainly club and rapid systems. The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit is objectively dubious at master level — a clean pawn sacrifice for development alone. The Richter-Veresov, very little. All seven are fine in their place. The problem is that they are packaged under one headline, one adjective, 'extremely dangerous,' and the buyer is never told which box is elite-grade and which is club-grade.

The real hard datum is #745

The most informative thing on this entire page is not a rating or a move — it is the series number. #745.

At one instalment a week, that is roughly fourteen years of continuous output. This is not one person's hobby; it is an industrial pipeline. And it is the most honest part of the whole story: for a sub-elite titled player, the 'IM-as-publisher' model is more reliable than tournament income. That is not bad news. It is one of the most successful structures in chess's knowledge economy.

But look clearly at who pays. The fee comes from the amateur's anxiety, and the page itself inflates that anxiety — 'extremely dangerous,' 'you have to be prepared.' Who rests? The publisher, who can resell a fourteen-year-old framework under a new number. And who gets left out? The buyer who gets no sample, no date, no price, no publisher name. When there are too many boards, watch the hands, not the scores. Here there is no score at all — only hands, and they are counting money.

Anand was the gate, not the house. Apply the same distinction here. Giri and Abdusattorov are the gate — the door in the headline that you open, walk through, and find a video bundle. Do not mistake the gate for the house.

Where I could be wrong

Now the strongest objection, because that is my whole method.

I am weighing a product page against the standards of a tournament report — and that is the category error I am accusing them of. A catalogue listing does not claim to be a game report; it sells a product, and in the language of products, bundling is normal. From cricket coaching manuals to football training DVDs, the same structure runs everywhere: sell four plans where one would do. If the buyer knows they are buying an ideas survey rather than a repertoire, the imbalance disappears.

Second, 'the London is the only elite-grade system' is my claim, not a ruling. The people who call the London unambitious have a point: at the top level, winning with it is hard and holding with it is easy. If that is true, the product's 'extremely dangerous' label is overstated not just for seven systems but for the eighth as well.

Third, and fastest: I am writing this entire argument about a page where I was not in the room. My method is venue-first — the board, the arbiter, the scoresheet. Here there is no board, no date, no nameplate. So do not take a single word of this as a comment on either player's form. This article is not about the two players. It is about the page that borrowed their names.

My bet, with a date on it

I am filing a prediction you can check.

If, within the next six months, the next instalment of this series — #746 or #750 — does not put a single sample game above the paywall with moves, evaluations and the event name, then the value of this entire catalogue will be set not by its analysis but by its continuity alone. If that happens, I will concede the error on tape.

A second, cleaner bet: of the eight systems on this list, the only one that will appear in a 2700+ classical game inside 2026 is the London — the other seven will stay in club and rapid. A buyer who knows what he is buying is not cheated. A buyer who thinks he has bought a 2700-grade coin ends up back at board 217 — sheet in hand, no answer.