Ian Nepomniachtchi's chess, by the numbers
November 12, 2026 · 78 classical games, January 2024 to July 2026, from Tata Steel 2024 to the UzChess Cup 2026
Nepomniachtchi's 78 classical games from January 2024 to July 2026, from Tata Steel 2024 to the UzChess Cup 2026, every move checked by Stockfish, counted the way anyone's games are. Here is what the count found.
Nepomniachtchi 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 classical games Lichess broadcast before it: 78 of them across Tata Steel 2024, the Candidates 2024, the Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2024, the Bundesliga, the UzChess Cups of 2025 and 2026, the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025, the World Cup 2025 and the Dole Open 2026, 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. Nepomniachtchi sits under the forcing line at 43 (the line is at 52), and their pieces are almost never loose (95 of 100; the line is at 64): the Steady Hand, quiet play with the pieces kept safe. It is the corner Carlsen's blitz games sit in too. Accuracy is 94 of 100, and the average loss per move against the engine's choice was 0.09 of a pawn: 0.05 in the opening, 0.11 in the middlegame and 0.10 in the endgame.
78 classical games, and not one blunder.
0 moves in 78 classical games cost 30 or more points of winning chances
In Nepomniachtchi's 78 classical games the engine found no blunder. They lost 11 of the games, and all 11 were lost a little at a time. The costliest single move in the 78 games cost 25 points, in a 24-move draw with Praggnanandhaa at the Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2024. The field: a median opponent rated 2712, 54 games against players within 100 points (scoring 53%) and 24 against players 100 or more points lower (50%). For scale, the same count finds 2 blunders in Praggnanandhaa's 108 classical games and 4 in Gukesh's 79.
Nearly six pawns down against Caruana at the 2024 Candidates, and drawn in 109 moves.
109 moves to a draw against Caruana in the last round of the 2024 Candidates, from nearly six pawns' worth down
In the last round of the Candidates 2024, with the black pieces against Caruana, Nepomniachtchi stood three pawns' worth or more down by the engine between moves 32 and 38, and nearly six on move 36, checked again at depth 22. The game was drawn on move 109. In 12 games they stood that far down at some point; this is one of the 2 they did not lose, the other against Alexander Donchenko at Tata Steel 2024. The three classical games against Caruana in these 78 were all drawn: twice at the Candidates 2024 and once at the Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2024.
With White they lost 3 of 37. With Black, 8 of 41.
8 of 11 classical losses came with the black pieces
With the white pieces Nepomniachtchi won 11 of 37 classical games, drew 23 and lost 3. With the black pieces the count is 3 wins, 30 draws and 8 losses in 41: they lose 20% of their games as Black and 8% as White. The first move is worth about 0.05 of a point a game to White in most players' games; here the gap is 0.17 (0.61 a game as White, 0.44 as Black). Across both colors, 53 of the 78 games were drawn.
When the best move was a hard one, they almost always found it.
353 of 354 times the best move was a retreat, in 78 classical games, they played it
The reports keep count of the moves club players miss most: a sacrifice, a retreat, declining a recapture. In Nepomniachtchi's 78 classical games, when the best move was a retreat, they played it 353 of 354 times; a declined recapture, 71 of 72; a sacrifice, 23 of 25; a quiet move, 1,599 of 1,601. The yardsticks, from the same checks: Carlsen, retreats 199 of 200 in 57 classical games; Praggnanandhaa, 417 of 417 in 108.
As White, 1.e4 in 28 of 37 games.
76% of 37 classical games as White opened with e4
As White, Nepomniachtchi opened 1.e4 in 28 of 37 classical games, 1.d4 and 1.c4 in 4 each and 1.Nf3 once. As Black against 1.d4 the answer was 1...Nf6 in all 15 games; against 1.e4 it was the Sicilian in 11 of 21 and 1...e5 in 10. Praggnanandhaa spreads the first move more: 1.d4 in 24 of 53 classical games, 1.e4 in 20.
The full reports
- Nepomniachtchi's classical report
78 classical games, January 2024 to July 2026: Tata Steel 2024 (13), the FIDE Candidates 2024 (14), the Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2024 (9), the Bundesliga 2024/25 (5), the UzChess Cup 2025 (9) and 2026 (9), the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 (11), the FIDE World Cup 2025 (2) and the Dole Open 2026 (6), from Lichess's broadcasts. 14 wins, 53 draws, 11 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 Nepomniachtchi'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. Nepomniachtchi'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, and so is the 2026 match with Hans Niemann, played at 60 minutes and 30 seconds a move. 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, January 2024 to July 2026. Plysight is independent of Lichess, chess.com and Nepomniachtchi. Nepomniachtchi's FIDE profile. Published November 12, 2026; updated November 12, 2026.
Piece art by Cburnett, CC BY-SA 3.0.