Awonder Liang's chess, by the numbers
October 16, 2026 · 252 games: the last 200 blitz on chess.com, July to October 2026, and 52 classical, 2025 to 2026
Liang's last 200 blitz games on chess.com and their classical games of 2025 and 2026, every move checked by Stockfish, counted the way anyone's games are. Here is what the count found.
Liang beat Levon Aronian in round 6 of the 2026 U.S. Chess Championship on October 15, 2026, their fourth win against one loss and seven draws in their games, and joined a four-way tie for the lead. On how the game was won: "He kind of loses the f6 square, and then he's kind of getting checkmated, surprisingly" (chess.com's round-6 report, by Anthony Levin, October 15, 2026). They is 23, a grandmaster since they were 14, and made their Grand Chess Tour debut this year.
This page counts how they play: their last 200 blitz games on chess.com and 52 classical games from 2025 and 2026, from the Olympiad and the Chennai Grand Masters to the Washington International, 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. Liang's pieces are rarely loose (87 of 100 in blitz, 99 in classical; the line is at 64), and on forcing they sit under the line, 45 in blitz and 42 in classical, the quietest of the five players counted this week (Carlsen 50, Mishra 54): the Steady Hand. The other blitz scores: closing 85, accuracy 81, recovery 69; in classical, accuracy 91 and closing 96.
1.e4 in 90 games of 101.
89% of 101 blitz games as White opened with e4
As White in blitz, Liang opened 1.e4 90 times in 101 games; 1.Nf3 five times, 1.d4 four and 1.b3 twice. It is the narrowest first move of the five players counted this week: Caruana's 1.e4 is 58%, Carlsen's biggest first move 40%, So's 41%. Half of all their games go into the Ruy Lopez (50 of 200, scoring 66%), and the report finds one habit the others lack: their king castled long on 6.3% of their moves, 1.7x as often as titled players online.
And 1…e5 against it, 45 times of 48.
94% of replies to 1.e4 as Black were e5
Facing 1.e4 as Black, Liang answered 1…e5 in 45 of 48 games, 1…c5 twice and 1…Nf6 once. Against 1.d4 it is 1…d5 18 times and 1…Nf6 eight. The Closed Ruy Lopez is their most-played line with Black, 15 of 99 games, scoring 60%. So, for comparison, has five replies to 1.e4 in regular use; Carlsen plays 1…c5 more than half the time.
36 of 47 losses had no blunder in them.
36 of 47 blitz losses had no blunder in them
Of their 47 blitz losses, 36 have no single move that cost 30 or more points of winning chances: outplayed a little at a time, 73% of the time, the highest share of the five players counted this week (Carlsen 15 of 28, So 20 of 32, Caruana 21 of 37, Mishra 32 of 68). They plays half their blitz against their own rating band, 101 of 200 games within 100 points, scoring 57% there and 81% against players 100 or more points weaker. In 52 classical games from 2025 and 2026 it is 8 losses of 8 with no blunder, and not one move in the 52 that cost 30 points; the average loss a move against the engine's choice is 0.12 of a pawn.
Once winning, the blunder rate goes up six times.
6.2x the blunder rate of a level game, once they are winning
Liang blunders on 0.4% of their moves when the game is level, 1.7% when clearly better, and 2.5% when winning: six times the level-game rate, in 281 winning-position moves. The cost is small, 5% of the winning chances they gave away, and most of the games are won anyway. Caruana's and So's rates stay flat across the bands; this is the finding the engine marks as Liang's own.
Once clearly winning, they finish it.
85% of decisive advantages converted in blitz
Liang reached a decisive advantage in 123 blitz games and won 104 of them (85%); 11 were drawn and 8 lost. For scale: Carlsen 93%, So 88%, Caruana 89%, Mishra 78%; Lichess blitz players rated 2000 and up, 79%. On the clock they are almost never the one to fall: 19 wins on time against one loss. In classical, 23 of 24 decisive advantages were won and the other drawn.
In classical, the Black games are the harder half.
0.73 points a game as White in classical, against 0.56 as Black
In 52 classical games from 2025 and 2026 (the Chennai Grand Masters among the sources) Liang scores 0.73 points a game as White and 0.56 as Black. The first move is worth about 0.05 in most players' games, so most of the gap is their own, and it is made of losses: 6 of 26 games as Black were lost (23%), 2 of 26 as White (8%). As White 1.e4 again, 21 games of 26; as Black 1…e5 and 1…c5 share the replies to 1.e4 (6 and 5 of 12). Caruana's classical gap is the same shape: 0.66 as White, 0.49 as Black.
The full reports
- Liang's blitz report
200 blitz games (mostly 3+0) on chess.com as rednova1729, July to October 2026: 116 wins, 35 draws, 49 losses. Download the games (PGN) - Liang's classical report
52 classical games, 2025 to 2026: the Chennai Grand Masters 2025 (9), the Washington International (4), the Chicago Open, the 2026 Olympiad, the President's Cup, the Italian league, the Rubinstein festival and the classical games of the Niemann match (4), from Lichess's broadcasts. 23 wins, 21 draws, 8 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 Liang'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. The six house words the reports use are defined on each report's last slide.
Blitz games from chess.com's public archive of rednova1729; classical games from Lichess's broadcasts. Plysight is independent of chess.com, Lichess and Liang. Liang's FIDE profile. Published October 16, 2026; updated October 16, 2026.
Piece art by Cburnett, CC BY-SA 3.0.