From Baguio 2026 to Today's Chess Feed: Opening Preparation Has Become a Shelf of Products

In October 2026, in Baguio, the world championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi closed after thirty-two games with twenty-one draws. What stays with me when I reread the record today lies outside the board: a man in the audience suspected of hypnosis, an argument about seating, a glass of water belonging to the opponent scrutinised second by second. The part that actually decided the order on the scoreboard — who had prepared the opening more thoroughly — happened behind a closed door, with no camera running.

Nearly half a century later, that closed room has become a shop counter. And it is being sold with a headline about somebody else's result.

Context: two lines of type, wildly unequal in weight

This week's chess feed places two lines side by side, and they lean in opposite directions. The top line: David Antón Guijarro, the Spanish Grandmaster born in 2026, moving into the sole lead at an event called “Legends & Prodigies”. The line below: the body of the page is devoted to a video course by IM Valeri Lilov, an International Master from Bulgaria, on plans for Black against the low-theory 1.d4 cluster.

Readers click to learn whom Antón beat, over how many games, how far clear he stands. They receive a product page instead: no games, no scores, no opponent names, no round numbers. Two unrelated subjects are welded into one story by headline technique.

The technical side of the course is real and worth discussing. The cluster Lilov targets covers the Colle System, the Trompowsky Attack, the Torre Attack and the London System — four setups in which White deliberately declines 2.c4, sidestepping the heavy theory of the Queen's Gambit: the Slav, the Semi-Slav, the Queen's Gambit Accepted and the Orthodox QGD. The course also pulls in the Catalan, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit and the Richter-Veresov. In total: eleven opening systems, packed into six videos.

Analysis: a map sold as an itinerary

That ratio deserves a pause — roughly half a video per opening system. A serious course on the London System alone for Black typically needs six to fifteen videos to cover the resulting middlegame structures. Here, the Catalan — a queenside fianchetto story with an entirely different tempo — shares a plate with the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, a sharp pawn sacrifice; the Richter-Veresov is yet another offbeat development scheme. Bundle them together and the buyer receives a map, not an itinerary.

Read the promotional text closely and an argument contradicts itself. The same paragraph calls this anti-theory cluster “not very ambitious” for White and then “extremely dangerous” for Black. Those two statements hold together only in a narrow sense: these are drawish, low-risk systems for White, and precisely for that reason annoying for Black. But “annoying” gets pushed up into “dangerous”, and that is the fingerprint of a copywriter, not an analyst.

The real value of the anti-theory cluster lies in what it strips from Black: the most expensive commodity in the analysis room — time. A Black player who has invested three months in the Slav and the Semi-Slav gets dragged into games where he knows he is not losing, yet cannot see how to win — and after the third such game, what erodes in the fourth is confidence. That is the genuine power, and it requires no exaggeration.

What stands out is that the whole argument is built without a single line of data. No sample games, no engine evaluation, no win-draw-loss ratios per system. For an opening instruction product, that is the most serious technical gap of all, because the buyer has no way to verify the promise before paying.

Based on my experience tracking matches, I keep the habit of cross-checking two independent sources before trusting any opening claim. That habit came from one failure: in 2026, while an intern in Da Nang, I commentated an U21 match online at Hoa Xuan stadium and misread the opposing number 9's name three times in a row. Viewers in the central-region group said I “talked like someone reading a newspaper”. I spent a full month rewatching the tournament tapes, transcribing nearly two hundred players' names correctly, and from then on I kept two notebooks in parallel: one for verified facts, one for personal impressions. When I write, the two are never sloppily merged.

Mistakes in front of a microphone taught me that perfection is only a draft of sincerity. They also taught me that sincerity without facts is just a pleasant voice guessing out loud.

A view against the wind

The blame here does not sit with Lilov. An International Master earning a living by teaching is normal, healthy professional practice. What matters is the income structure that pushed him there: below Grandmaster level, open-tournament prize money rarely sustains a living, while paid content platforms do. When most professionals at this tier earn from courses rather than from the board, writers are forced to learn headline craft like salespeople. The root lies in the ecosystem, not in one individual.

The blame sits higher up: a news page using Antón's result as bait toward a product that has nothing to do with him. The cost does not fall on the seller — it falls on the reader's trust. After a few such lures, an honest reader starts doubting even the honest reports.

This is also a familiar blind spot in chess's collective memory. We remember the winners' names, the scores, the immortal games, but almost nobody records who prepared what, or how many hours were spent in the analysis room. Baguio 2026 entered history through disputes away from the board, while the preparation that decided the standings drifted away. That gap in memory is fertile ground for inflated marketing, because there is nothing to check against.

What to carry forward

For Black players struggling with the Colle, the Trompowsky, the Torre and the London: study structures, not moves. This cluster does not kill you with a brilliant blow; it tires you out. And for readers: before paying for any opening promise, demand a sample game with evaluation, a win-draw-loss ratio, a verifiable source.

A microphone does not make a storyteller. It is the silence of the stands that signs beneath every line. Sport does not promise victory; it promises only a heartbeat willing to continue — even when that heartbeat happens in a room without spectators, over a board no camera is filming.