The quarterfinal between India’s lone hope and second seed, Arjun Erigaisi and China’s Wei Yi would have been a dream summit clash at the FIDE World Cup. After the carnage that eliminated 17 of the top 20 seeds by just the fifth round, this was the most anticipated last-eight clash. But the first Classical game, which began at 3 PM in Goa, was already over by 3:59 PM with Arjun and Wei Yi rushing through their exchanges, racing from the opening through the middle game and agreeing to a draw after just 31 moves. Arjun-Wei Yi was a prime example of objective perfection, with both players playing with over 99% accuracy, without giving an inch to the other.
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While the result was anticlimactic, it was hardly surprising. The players followed the tournament’s prevailing trend, and their expected line was to minimise risk and play it safe. Two more quarterfinal clashes ended in a draw, with just the lone decisive result of the round coming in favour of Uzbek GM Nodirbek Yakubboev, who beat Germany’s Alexander Donchenko. And with that, the trend to avoid playing for a win in the Classical rounds also continued.
Playing for a draw is not inherently a problem, nor is it unfair. The problem lies in the repeated failure to find an edge with new, creative ideas out of the opening. It leads to the question: Is classical chess over-theorised?
INTERACTIVE: Arjun Erigaisi vs Wei Yi 1st Quarterfinal Game
This sentiment was echoed by former World Rapid Champion Daniil Dubov of Russia. After defeating India’s R. Praggnanandhaa in the fourth-round tiebreaks, Dubov revealed that his preparation for their two Classical games consisted of just five to ten minutes, without even using a laptop. This pattern had defined his entire World Cup campaign, with all of his victories having come in tiebreaks, without a single classical win. He attributed his approach to the current state of the game rather than a personal preference. “Maybe it’s not about me. It’s probably about chess,” Dubov told FIDE.
“I have to say, generally I’m not the biggest fan of classical chess. I like chess a lot, and it’s not that I hate thinking. It’s just that with this amount of preparation, what’s the point? “Everybody knows everything. I personally don’t know how to really get out of the opening with white and how to get an advantage. People don’t like it, but then suddenly, when I face Pragg, someone who probably spends day and night looking at stuff, he still fails to pose a single problem with white,” he explained.
Understandably, as the stakes increase with each round, a more cautious approach takes over. Players increasingly opt to bide their time, waiting for the right moment to strike, a strategy that intrinsically pushes more games into tiebreaks.
The statistics bear this out. The fifth round saw only four decisive classical games out of 16 matches played over two days, a 75% draw rate, with half of the clashes going to tiebreaks. The fourth round was even more pronounced, with 84% of games ending without a decisive result, forcing 11 out of the 16 matches into the shorter time controls.
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This has created a fundamental contradiction. The FIDE World Cup, a Classical event, is seeing players attempting to win the title without necessarily winning the Classical games.
Praggnanandhaa’s trainer, Grandmaster Vaibhav Suri, explains the rationale behind this collective approach from a player’s perspective, pointing to the narrow gap in players’ abilities as a key reason for the high number of draws. ““The World Cups are a fairly unique tournament where you have to play Classical, then rapid in tiebreak, and then even two blitz if required. The nature of opening preparation is that you have to create ideas. But creating new ideas every time is not easy. If everyone were able to do this, then there would be no differentiation between players. So, you do have to create ideas, and typically that comes with assessing how much risk you have to take,” he told The Indian Express.
