Anish Giri's chess, by the numbers
November 12, 2026 · 99 classical games, August 2025 to October 2026, from the Chennai Grand Masters 2025 to the European Club Cup 2026
Giri's 99 classical games from August 2025 to October 2026, from the Chennai Grand Masters 2025 to the European Club Cup 2026, every move checked by Stockfish, counted the way anyone's games are. Here is what the count found.
Giri is playing the Total Chess World Championship Tour pilot in Budapest from November 10 to 20, 2026, in a group with Magnus Carlsen and Abhimanyu Mishra. The group games there are fast classical, 45 minutes and 30 seconds a move, and are not counted here. This page counts the 15 months before it: 99 classical games across the Chennai Grand Masters 2025, the FIDE Grand Swiss, the European Team Championship, two European Club Cups, the World Cup, Tata Steel, the Candidates, the Superbet Classic Romania, the Sinquefield Cup and the Olympiad, every move checked by the engine, with the same questions a club player's games get asked.
How they play
Every player gets one of four profiles from two measures: how often they force matters with a check or a capture, against what the position asks for, and how rarely one of their pieces is left loose. Giri sits exactly on the forcing line at 52 (the line is at 52), and their pieces are almost never loose (97 of 100; the line is at 64). That makes the profile the Striker by the narrowest margin, with the Steady Hand one point away: checks and captures about as often as the position asks for. The other scores: closing 97, accuracy 93. The average loss per move against the engine's choice was 0.10 of a pawn: 0.05 in the opening, 0.10 in the middlegame and 0.12 in the endgame.
50 classical games as White, and no losses.
0 losses in 50 classical games with the white pieces: 16 wins, 34 draws
With the white pieces Giri won 16 of 50 classical games and drew 34. All 12 losses in the 99 games came with the black pieces, where the count is 14 wins, 23 draws and 12 losses in 49: they lose 24% of their games as Black and 0% as White. The opponents with White were much the same as with Black: a median rating of 2697, against 2698 across all 99 games. No other player on this site went unbeaten with White in their classical games; the nearest are Sindarov, with 1 loss in 35, and So, with 1 in 32.
Against Caruana: four classical games, a win with Black and three draws.
4 classical games against Caruana since August 2025: a win and three draws
Giri and Caruana played four classical games in these 15 months, a small sample. Giri won with the black pieces in 43 moves in round 9 of the Candidates 2026, an Italian Game. The other three were drawn: in round 2 of the Candidates, at the Superbet Classic Romania 2026 and at the Sinquefield Cup 2026. Against everyone else rated 2738 to 2845, around Caruana's rating, Giri scored 52% in 29 games: 5 wins, 20 draws, 4 losses. Against the other players on this site in the same games: a win with Black over Gukesh in 37 moves at Tata Steel 2026 and a draw; five draws in five with Sindarov; a win, three draws and two losses in six with Praggnanandhaa.
Once meaningfully up, they won 29 of 30 and lost none.
97% of decisive advantages converted in classical
Giri was meaningfully up, three pawns' worth or more by the engine, in 30 classical games and won 29 of them (97%). The one that got away was a draw with Wei Yi in 77 moves, with the black pieces, in round 12 of the Candidates 2026. Counted the same way, Caruana won 25 of 25 in 84 classical games, Praggnanandhaa 26 of 28 in 108, and Gukesh 21 of 25 in 79.
All 12 classical losses came with no blunder in them.
12 of 12 classical losses had no blunder in them
Giri lost 12 of the 99 classical games, and in all 12 no single move was a blunder: they were outplayed a little at a time. The engine found no blunder in any of the 99 games. Three of the losses were at Tata Steel 2026, two each at the Sinquefield Cup 2026, the Olympiad and the European Club Cup 2026, and one each at the World Cup, the Candidates and the Superbet Classic Romania. The field: a median opponent rated 2698, 65 games against players within 100 points (scoring 53%) and 34 against players 100 or more points lower (71%). For scale, Caruana's count is 10 of 11 losses, from 84 games, and Praggnanandhaa's 13 of 14, from 108.
As White, three first moves: 1.d4 in 18 games, 1.e4 in 16 and 1.c4 in 13.
36% of 50 classical games as White opened with d4, the most common of three first moves
As White, Giri opened 1.d4 in 18 of 50 classical games, 1.e4 in 16, 1.c4 in 13 and 1.Nf3 in 3: no first move in more than 36% of the games. As Black against 1.e4 the answer was the Sicilian in 14 of 20 games, the Najdorf in 7 of them, scoring 79% there; against 1.d4, 1...Nf6 in 14 of 19. For contrast, Vachier-Lagrave opened 1.e4 in 32 of 38 classical games and Nepomniachtchi in 28 of 37.
The full reports
- Giri's classical report
99 classical games, August 2025 to October 2026: the Chennai Grand Masters 2025 (9), the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 (11), the European Team Championship 2025 (9), the European Club Cup 2025 (5) and 2026 (5), the FIDE World Cup 2025 (4), Tata Steel 2026 (13), the FIDE Candidates 2026 (14), the Superbet Classic Romania 2026 (9), the Sinquefield Cup 2026 (9) and the Olympiad 2026 (11), from Lichess's broadcasts. 30 wins, 57 draws, 12 losses. Download the games (PGN)
Each report opens as a deck of slides, one finding to a slide, with the positions behind every number. A blunder is a move that cost 30 or more points of winning chances; winning chances are the engine's estimate of how likely a player is to win, from 0 to 100.
How this was measured
Plysight analyzes games the same way for everyone: Stockfish evaluates every move, and the findings are counted from those evaluations. The reports compare a player with others at their rating where a fair comparison exists; at Giri's rating there is none, so those lines are left out. Advice lines, written for a player reading their own report, are left out too. Giri's online blitz is not on this page: it stands on the classical games. The Budapest games of November 2026 are fast classical and are left out. Other players' numbers on this page come from their own pages and reports on this site, the same checks on the same kind of games. The six house words the reports use are defined on the report's last slide.
Classical games from Lichess's broadcasts, August 2025 to October 2026. Plysight is independent of Lichess, chess.com and Giri. Giri's FIDE profile. Published November 12, 2026; updated November 12, 2026.
Piece art by Cburnett, CC BY-SA 3.0.