Giri vs Abdusattorov: Not a Game but a Course Sale — The Truth of the Chess Opening Market

Whenever I land on a chess video course page, the first thing I check is how many moves are printed on it. Last week a page opened titled 'Game of the Week #745: Giri vs Abdusattorov'. The headline carried two super-GM names; the body had not a single move, not a single evaluation, not a single result. This was not a game report; it was a sales post for a six-video bundle. That is the biggest fact of this whole matter, and the least noticed one. There is a quietly growing market in chess over the past few years — the market for 'anti-theory' openings. When main lines like the Slav, Semi-Slav, Queen's Gambit Accepted and Orthodox Queen's Gambit Declined have inflated so much that preparation at 2700+ level demands dozens of hours, club-level players naturally want to avoid lines that require less memorisation. The London System, Colle System, Torre Attack, Trompowsky, Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, Richter-Veresov — these are all weapons of that avoidance strategy. This page is selling Black a 'plan for each opening' against these very weapons. The problem is that the page's own taxonomy is muddled. The Catalan is placed in the 'avoids 2.c4' list, whereas the Catalan is by definition a 2.c4 opening (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2). The Trompowsky and Richter-Veresov arise primarily against 1...Nf6, not against 1...d5. That is, at least three of the eight systems sit outside the very frame the page places itself in. This is not technical carelessness; it is the haste of catalogue-padding. The real technical finding is bigger still, and it appears nowhere on the page. Colle (2.Nf3 + 3.e3), Torre (2.Nf3 + 3.Bg5), London (2.Nf3/2.Bf4 + 3.e3) and Richter-Veresov (2.Nc3 + 3.Bg4) are transpositionally entangled with one another. A prepared Black repertoire can meet all four with a single setup: …e6, …Bd6 or …b6, …Nbd7, and …c5 or …c6. That is, work that two plans could do is being sold as six videos. This is the most important thing about the product's design, and the buyer is not told. In 2026, during the Tata Steel Chess India in Kolkata, I timed 216 moves. From that exercise I learned one thing: trust a claim only when there is an instrument behind it. This page has no instrument. No engine match rate, no ACPL, no sample game, no publication date, no price. Only six videos and the names of eight systems. A buyer cannot know before purchase what the analysis is like. There is an interesting contradiction here. The page itself says avoiding 2.c4 is 'not very ambitious', and in the same breath says it is 'extremely dangerous'. In chess language both cannot be true at once. A system that is objectively unambitious is precisely not dangerous against a prepared opponent. In reality 'dangerous' here means 'dangerous to the unprepared', not dangerous in the engine's estimation. That distinction is legitimate, but it is not made explicit — because making it explicit would reduce sales. Look at the real standing of these systems at 2700+ and the picture clears. The London System is the only system that is genuinely played at elite level and a serious challenge to a prepared Black repertoire. The Trompowsky is a medium-level surprise weapon. The Colle and Torre are mainly club and rapid systems. The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.e4) is objectively dubious — it sacrifices a clean pawn for development, which does not work at 2200+. The Richter-Veresov is also very rarely played at master level. That is, only one system in the list is elite-grade; the rest are club-market products. That is fine for sales, but the buyer should be told. Now the part most deserving of discussion and least discussed. The headline carries the names of Anish Giri and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, but the body has neither their rating, nor their head-to-head record, nor any game. Both names are pure brand assets. Giri's image is that of an extremely solid, low-risk player — an ideal exemplar for low-theory systems like the London/Colle. Abdusattorov's image is that of a fast-rising player at world-champion level in rapid. Stylistically this is the classic solidity-versus-dynamism matchup, which in principle could have been a good teaching example of 'how Black plays against a low-risk White setup'. But the page never showed that game. Let me be clear on one point: this page is not part of any tournament. It is not in the FIDE cycle, no title is at stake, no prize fund. 'Game of the Week' is a running series, and the number #745 is the strongest evidence that behind it is a mature, industrial content pipeline. If it is a weekly series, that implies roughly fourteen years of continuous publication. This is the most informative datum in the entire source — not about the game, but about the economy of chess education. One aspect of this economy is that a sub-elite player — say an IM — can earn far more from selling training material than from tournament income. This is not new, but a number like #745 shows the model is now running at industrial scale. IM Valeri Lilov is a Bulgarian trainer, and his credibility is built on volume of output, not on peak rating. This is a normal and legitimate configuration in the chess coaching economy, but it should reset expectations: from 'latest elite analysis' to 'practical club-level guidance'. Now the angle least seen. The bigger error in this whole matter is not technical but marketing. The headline sells one thing and the body another. This is not an editorial slip but the common practice of SEO-driven indexing — placing a product page under an entertainment heading. The consequence is that the reader looking for elite game analysis is disappointed, and the club player who is the actual target probably never reaches the page. In my experience the biggest risk in chess content sales is not analytical error but redundancy. A buyer most often pays for things he already has. Buying four separate plans for the Colle, Torre, London and Richter-Veresov when a single Black setup can meet all four is the most common buying mistake in this category. To know what is inside, the buyer should ask for a table of contents and check for transpositional overlap. The biggest long-term threat to this whole category is AI. 'A plan against opening X' is the most easily automated content in chess education. When personally generated repertoires become mainstream, the value of survey-level video bundles like this will fall sharply. That is a three-to-five-year horizon, but the direction is clear. So what can be learned from this page? That theory inflation itself creates a market — the more main-line theory grows, the more demand there is for low-theory systems. That demand is permanent, because theory never shrinks. But the quality and transparency of the products meeting that demand lag far behind. Next time you see a 'Game of the Week' headline carrying two super-GM names, first ask: where is the game? If there is no answer, understand that you are not buying a game but a course.