Serial Number 745: The Giri–Abdusattorov Game, Six Videos and Zero Moves

The screen said: “Game of the Week #745 — Giri vs Abdusattorov.” I clicked. Any meeting between Anish Giri and Nodirbek Abdusattorov is the kind you set an alarm for. In December 2026 I set one for 3 a.m. Riyadh time and watched Viswanathan Anand, 48 years old and six years past his last world title, take the World Rapid crown at 10.5/15. At 3 a.m. in Riyadh, speed became a kind of prayer, and by dawn I had all fifteen rounds and every hour on the clock written into a notebook. This time I got six videos, eight opening systems, the name of a Bulgarian trainer, and zero moves. No result, no event, no date, no engine line, no price, no sample. I kept hearing the stadium inside the sixty-four squares. I found a catalogue, and a serial number stamped in the corner: 745.

What is being sold inside is an opening course, and its premise is sound. After 1.d4 d5, if White plays 2.c4 he walks into the Slav, Semi-Slav, Queen's Gambit Accepted and Orthodox QGD complex, where twenty-five moves of theory are expected to sit in memory. Rather than carry that, a large number of White players avoid 2.c4 altogether — London System, Colle System, Torre Attack, Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, Trompowsky, Richter-Veresov. As Black you need an answer to each. IM Valeri Lilov, a Bulgarian trainer, sells exactly that: one plan per opening, six videos, eight systems.

Whether this is a service to chess knowledge or a business is an argument for later. First, register what the page does not carry: no date, no price, no named publisher and — most importantly — no sample. The buyer is asked to spend money on lines whose first move he has not seen. In 2026 I sat through a comparable gap: the FIDE Online Olympiad final, the server died, and India and Russia were declared joint champions. Sixty thousand of us were on one stream that night, and I knew what was happening because the score-sheet was in front of me. Here there is no score-sheet.

Eleven years of watching this market has taught me to read the list of names first, because the list is where the crack shows before the copy covers it.

Three of the eight names sit outside the frame the entire product is built on. The Catalan is by definition a 2.c4 opening — 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2. A page whose whole claim is that White dodges 2.c4 puts the Catalan on the menu. That is either move-order carelessness (a Catalan-like setup via 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.g3) or catalogue padding. The Trompowsky (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg4) and the Richter-Veresov (1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Bg4) arise mainly against 1...Nf6, not against 1...d5. When a list starts leaving its own frame, it stops being a repertoire and becomes a catalogue.

The real technical point is nowhere on the page. Colle, Torre, London and Richter-Veresov are one family by transposition. Colle (2.Nf3 and 3.e3), Torre (2.Nf3 and 3.Bg5), London (2.Nf3 or 2.Bf4, then 3.e3), Richter-Veresov (2.Nc3 and 3.Bg4) — in all four White builds roughly the same house and changes the window. A single Black setup answers all four: ...e6, ...Bd6 or ...b6, ...Nbd7, and ...c5 or ...c6. An honest repertoire teaches them together because they arrive together on the board. The “one plan per opening” structure sells six videos where two would do the job. The buyer purchases four different names and receives the same scheme four times.

Now the question that matters: how many of these are real threats at 2700+? London — yes. It is no longer a club habit but a low-theory, high-pressure weapon used by top-10 players. Trompowsky — half yes, a creative grandmaster's surprise. Colle — low at elite classical level, fine at club and rapid. Torre — low. Blackmar-Diemer — close to useless above 2200, because the development bought with a clean pawn sacrifice does not survive a prepared opponent. Richter-Veresov — very low. Of eight names on the list, exactly one carries elite-grade danger, and it is the London. The other seven are club-market goods — commercially legitimate, never disclosed to the buyer.

The page contradicts itself. One line calls the approach “not very ambitious”; another calls it “extremely dangerous.” In chess language those two cannot travel together — a system that is objectively unambitious is precisely not dangerous against a prepared opponent. The only reconciliation is that “dangerous” here means dangerous to the unprepared, not dangerous in the engine's estimation. That distinction is legitimate, and it is withheld, because the copy first validates the reader's fatigue, then magnifies the threat, then sells the remedy.

Giri and Abdusattorov exist only in the headline. The reference coordinates, pending verification against the live FIDE list: Giri around 2745–2750 in late 2026, career peak in roughly the 2795–2805 band; Abdusattorov around 2740–2760, born 2026, 2026 World Rapid champion. Giri is a coherent choice, since his public identity is extreme solidity and low-risk White play — the natural poster child for a theory-light approach. Abdusattorov belongs to the generation for whom engine-perfect preparation is the default. Theory avoidance is therefore not the rising generation's attack; it is everyone else's defence — and that is the fuel this market runs on.

Then there is the serial number. 745 means this is not one evening's effort but a running line: at a weekly cadence, roughly fourteen years of continuous output. The most reliable information on the entire page is the number that speaks least — 745. I retire the factory image here; from this point the argument is chess and its market.

The conventional view deserves its strongest form: no era of chess has grown its reach the way the last eight years did — streamers, ChessBase India's channel, the online Olympiad, sixty thousand viewers on a pandemic night. The conclusion looks obvious: more popularity, more content, a healthier ecosystem.

Volume grew. The layer that did not grow is verification — the page that attaches a date, a sample and an engine check to the claim. Production became industrial; accountability did not. The buyer is still purchasing reassurance rather than analysis, and reassurance never depreciates, which is why the market feels no urgency to improve.

A second reversal: theory avoidance is often dismissed as a beginner's crutch, and that reading is wrong. The faster main-line theory inflates, the faster demand for sidelines inflates — so this market does not shrink as the new generation raises the theoretical ceiling; it expands. A product that accepts this and delivers samples, dates and verified lines will outlast any claim.

In three to five years, “a plan against X” is the most easily machine-generated category in chess publishing. What survives is not the plan but the accountability attached to it: a checked line, a printed date, an open sample. On the day that becomes the standard, some catalogue will still carry 746 in the corner — and some buyer will still ask where the moves are.