The world’s top players prepare their openings in astonishing detail. Powerful chess computers, accessed via the cloud and thus available to everyone, make the process of analysis vastly more efficient than it used to be. Positions which once would have taken days to analyse ‘by hand’ can be explored exhaustively in an hour or two.
Of course, that doesn’t mean they all pack up by lunchtime and adjourn to the beach. The paradox of technology applies in chess as in life: the workload multiplies to fill the time. The top players still work harder, on the whole, but they distinguish themselves not only with the depth of their knowledge, but also its breadth.
When everyone has the same tools, there is no ‘edge’ in following 30 moves of computer analysis and reaching a sterile position. For the stronger player, far better to get off the beaten track early, though that is easier said than done. Anyone can find an offbeat opening move which has never been played before, but most of those will fail to pose original problems. The art is in finding offbeat moves which lead to rich middlegame play. It takes a deep expertise to suss these out; if the computer could flag them up, someone would have found them already.
World no. 3 Fabiano Caruana used a couple of such innovations on his way to winning the recent US Championship, held in St Louis last month.
Fabiano Caruana-Grigoriy Oparin
US Championship, St Louis, October 2025
1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 Qc2 d5 5 a3 Bxc3+ 6 bxc3! A fresh direction, tried in only about 1 per cent of games. Conventional wisdom has it that 4 Qc2 is played in order to recapture with the queen. c6 7 Nf3 b6 8 Bg5 h6 9 Bh4 Nbd7 10 e3 O-O 11 g4 Initiating a fierce attack. The ‘hook’ pawn on h6 ensures that g4-g5 will open lines toward the king. Qe8 12 g5 hxg5 13 Nxg5 e5 14 cxd5 cxd5 15 Bb5 e4 16 Rg1 Bb7 17 Nh3 Nh7 18 Qe2 Qc8 19 Kd2 Nc5 20 dxc5 Qxh3 21 Qh5 g6 22 c6 Bc8 23 Rxg6+ fxg6 24 Qxg6+ Kh8 25 Rg1 Bg4 26 Rxg4 Rf7 27 Bg3 Black resigns Bg3-e5 can’t be stopped.
Hans Niemann-Fabiano Caruana
US Championship, St Louis, October 2025
1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 d6 Already an extremely rare choice at top level, compared with 3…Bc5 and 3…Nf6 4 c3 f5 5 d3 Qf6 6 O-O f4 Closing the centre allows Caruana to pursue the coming kingside attack, which is appealingly primitive in its execution. 7 b4 Nge7 8 a4 g5 9 b5 Nd8 10 d4 g4 11 Ne1 h5 12 Na3 Ne6 13 b6 c6 14 Ba2 Ng5 15 Nd3 Ng6 16 Nc4 Be6 17 Ba3 Bxc4 18 Bxc4 f3 19 g3 h4 20 Qc2 axb6 21 Rae1 Rd8 22 d5 Rd7 23 dxc6 bxc6 24 Bc1 Rdh7 25 Bxg5 Qxg5 26 Qb3 hxg3 27 Qxb6 Qh4 28 Qb8+ Ke7 White resigns as 29 Qc7+ Kf6 30 Qd8+ Be8 and the checks expire.
Comments