Carissa Yip's chess, by the numbers
October 16, 2026 · 74 classical games, 2024 to 2026, from Lichess's broadcasts
Yip's 74 classical games from the last two years, from the 2024 Olympiad to the 2026 Cairns Cup, every move checked by Stockfish, counted the way anyone's games are. Here is what the count found.
Yip is the defending U.S. women's champion, with four titles, and the 2026 championship in St. Louis has been a hard one: one point from the first five games, then a first win in round 6 on October 15, 2026. "I think in general I can be a bit of a streaky player," they said that day (chess.com's round-6 report, by Anthony Levin, October 15, 2026). The last two years hold the other kind of streak: the 2024 Olympiad gold on board 2, the 2025 Cairns Cup won outright.
This page counts how they play across both: 74 classical games from the Olympiads of 2024 and 2026, the Cairns Cups of 2025 and 2026, the 2025 Grand Swiss, the Saint Louis Masters and three open tournaments, 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. Yip's pieces are rarely loose (91 of 100; the line is at 64), and on forcing they sit under the line at 46, near Liang (42) and Caruana (47): the Steady Hand. The other scores: closing 90, accuracy 87.
The Black games are the better half.
0.69 points a game as Black in classical, against 0.55 as White
In 74 classical games from 2024 to 2026 Yip scores 0.69 points a game with the black pieces and 0.55 with the white, the opposite of the usual shape: the first move is worth about 0.05 to White in most players' games, and Caruana, Liang and Mishra all score 0.15 or more better as White. The gap is made of losses: 13 of 37 games as White were lost (35%), 6 of 37 as Black (16%). As Black the King's Indian is the most-played defense, 9 of 37 games, scoring 67%; against 1.e4 it is 1…e5 in half the games.
1.e4 in 33 games of 37.
89% of 37 classical games as White opened with e4
As White, Yip opened 1.e4 in 33 of 37 classical games, 1.Nf3 three times and 1.c4 once: the Liang shape (89% in blitz) rather than Caruana's three moves. The White games go most often into the Sicilian (15 games, scoring 53%), the Italian (10, 70%) and the Ruy Lopez (7, 79%).
17 of 19 losses had no blunder in them.
17 of 19 classical losses had no blunder in them
Of the 19 losses in 74 games, 17 have no single move that cost 30 or more points of winning chances: outplayed a little at a time, 89% of the time; only four moves in the 74 games cost 30 points. The field is strong for the losses to count against: a median opponent of 2386, with 38 games within 100 points (scoring 50%), 27 against players 100 or more points weaker (85%) and 9 against players 100 or more points stronger (44%). In the set: Tan Zhongyi 1 of 3, Koneru Humpy 2 of 3, Alexandra Kosteniuk 2 of 2 (the 2026 Cairns Cup among the sources).
Once clearly winning, they finish it: 37 of 41.
90% of decisive advantages converted in classical
Yip reached a decisive advantage in 41 classical games and won 37 of them (90%); 2 were drawn and 2 lost. When a trade left an opponent's piece with no defender, the engine's count of real slips among 320 loose-piece moments is 13. Average loss a move against the engine's choice: 0.19 of a pawn, 0.07 in the opening and 0.24 in the endgame, with the first serious mistake typically on move 36.
The full reports
- Yip's classical report
74 classical games, 2024 to 2026: the Olympiads of 2024 (11) and 2026, the Cairns Cups of 2025 (9) and 2026, the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 (11), the Saint Louis Masters 2026, the Reykjavik Open 2026, Menorca 2026 and Lecce, from Lichess's broadcasts. 37 wins, 18 draws, 19 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 Yip'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. Yip's blitz on chess.com was pulled and left out: 110 games across six years are not their chess now. The six house words the reports use are defined on the report's last slide.
Classical games from Lichess's broadcasts, 2024 to 2026. Plysight is independent of Lichess, chess.com and Yip. Yip's FIDE profile. Published October 16, 2026; updated October 16, 2026.
Piece art by Cburnett, CC BY-SA 3.0.