Item #745: Giri and Abdusattorov in the Title, Not a Single Move on the Page

The first thing I did after opening the page was the thing I always do — I went looking for the moves. What did White play after 1.d4 d5, at which point did Black slip under pressure, what was the result? Three questions, three blanks. The page offered eight opening names, a count of six videos, and one sentence declaring that all these systems are "extremely dangerous." The headline carried Anish Giri and Nodirbek Abdusattorov.

I learned chess in a hall of 214 boards and started writing on a blog nobody requested. That hall gave me one habit: look at the board before you look at the scoresheet. There was no board on this page. Material that claims to be about a game while offering no moves, no evaluations and no result is not a game — it is a product listing wearing a game's headline.

The real part of this listing is elsewhere, and it is worth taking seriously. Opening theory over the last two decades has become expensive. After 1.d4 d5, playing 2.c4 is White's straightest road, but that road carries the Slav, the Semi-Slav, the Queen's Gambit Accepted and the Orthodox QGD — enough branches that a club player loses to memory alone. So a large number of White players avoid 2.c4 altogether: the London, the Colle, the Torre, the Trompowsky, the Blackmar-Diemer, the Richter-Veresov. Black is then left with a single question: what is the answer to these theory-dodging setups?

Six videos by Bulgarian IM Valeri Lilov sit on that question, published as item #745 of a running series. Lilov is a prolific instructional producer whose peak rating sat in the 2400s — a coach-creator coordinate, not a competitive one. That is not a flaw in itself; a large slice of chess's teaching economy runs on exactly this model. It does, however, set what a reader should expect: not fresh 2700+ preparation, but practical club-level understanding.

The first technical point is taxonomy. The listing says White avoids 2.c4 after 1.d4 d5. The London, Colle, Torre and Blackmar-Diemer fit that frame cleanly. The Catalan does not: it is a 2.c4 opening by definition — 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2. Placing it inside a bundle whose entire premise is avoiding 2.c4 is either move-order carelessness or catalogue padding. Likewise 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 after 1...d5. Two of the eight systems sit outside the frame the bundle is sold on.

The second point matters more — redundancy. The Colle (2.Nf3 and 3.e3), the Torre (2.Nf3 and 3.Bg5), the London (2.Nf3 or 2.Bf4 and 3.e3) and the Richter-Veresov (2.Nc3 and 3.Bg4) are transpositionally entangled; one Black scheme — …e6, …Bd6 or …b6, …Nbd7, and …c5 or …c6 — answers all four. A unified repertoire covers them together. Selling "one plan per opening" means selling six plans where two would do the job. That is the buyer's most concrete exposure: not bad analysis, but the same analysis resold under new names. I keep a 214-board ledger for every list that forgets its own noise.

The third point is a contradiction. The copy calls these systems "not very ambitious" in one place and "extremely dangerous" in another. In chess language those two cannot stand together: a system that is objectively unambitious is precisely not dangerous against a prepared opponent. What "dangerous" actually means here is dangerous to the unprepared, not dangerous in an engine's estimation. That distinction is legitimate, and the listing never makes it — because making it would cost sales. Validate the reader's frustration, magnify the threat, sell the remedy.

As for level: only one name on this list holds at 2700+, and it is the London System. It survives at the top because several top-10 players use it as a low-theory, high-pressure try. The Trompowsky is a surprise weapon. The Colle and Torre are club and rapid-hall systems. The Blackmar-Diemer is regarded as objectively doubtful at serious level, and the Richter-Veresov is rarely seen. None of this appears on the page. It was the most necessary information there.

One line on the Giri–Abdusattorov pairing: analytically, the casting is right. Giri's public identity is extreme solidity and low risk; Abdusattorov represents dynamism and rapid-format dominance. As a teaching frame for how Black generates play against a low-risk White setup, the stylistic clash is well chosen. The game itself simply is not there.

What the criticism of this listing usually misses is the obvious move — call it clickbait and scroll on. Redundancy is not one product's lapse; it is the business model of the whole category. When you buy "eight openings," you are often buying one Black scheme four times over. And the series number is 745 while no publication date appears anywhere. Assume a weekly cadence and that is roughly fourteen years of continuous output — meaning the material may be old, and London and Trompowsky lines shift quickly in the engine era. A buyer cannot tell whether the preparation is current or a decade stale. A purchase does not end a tournament; the question belongs to the next morning.

So what comes next? "A plan against opening X" is the most easily automated category in chess education; machine-generated personalised repertoires will commoditise this segment within three to five years. The question is not whether this bundle is good or bad. It is who audits the claim, and from what date. The day instructional products start carrying revision dates the way sports carry injury reports, this page will read differently. Until then the page is open and the board is empty.