Wesley So, Awonder Liang and a Perfect Score That Hasn't Earned Its Name Yet

In a playing hall without applause, where the only sound is the ticking of a chess clock like the heartbeat of a heart that has beaten for four decades, two names stand at the summit of perfection. Wesley So and Awonder Liang sit in the leading group with a perfect score at the US Chess Championship. I sit before a screen in Da Nang, replaying a recording of pieces touching the board that I have kept from an old tournament, and I ask myself what makes a “perfect” number both beautiful and suspicious. I thought I had understood chess; it turns out chess is still teaching me how to read a news item.

The US Chess Championship does not sit inside FIDE's Candidates qualification cycle. It is a national event, its value lying in the title, in rating points, and in prestige with sponsors. That Wesley So — a player at the top for nearly two decades — is in the leading group is no surprise. He is the model of a player who lives on stability, who plays low-error games and wins by accumulation. Awonder Liang is the more interesting signal: a young American grandmaster, part of the next generation of American chess.

The United States has long been one of the world's leading chess powers, with a dense elite tier: Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Leinier Dominguez, and Wesley So himself. Behind them is a rising generation of young players. The presence of both a veteran class and a young class in a single national event shows the depth of this country's chess, while raising the question of how fast the generational handover is happening. What is interesting is that American chess strength today does not come only from the federation. It comes from online platforms, from player-streamers, from a commercial ecosystem that has turned chess into entertainment content. That is a different model from how India or China builds its forces — where the state and corporations play a larger role. In America, the money flows through the screen.

In the original news item I read, one detail made me stop: the result line “Mark Paragua beats Yip.” Paragua is a veteran grandmaster, while “Yip” most likely belongs to the women's field. The appearance of both in the same result line suggests the open and women's events are running in parallel — a customary arrangement at the US Championship. But it also shows something else: when news items are stitched together carelessly, a reader easily mistakes a harmless detail for a paradox. This small detail, to me, matters more than the scoreboard.

The technical part of the story lies in another direction, and this is where I want to linger longer. A training resource being promoted revolves around Black's plans after the move 1.d4 d5. Specifically, it discusses how Black deals with systems in which White avoids main-line theory: the Colle System, the Trompowsky, the Torre Attack, the London System — along with the Catalan, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit and the Richter-Veresov.

This is a real niche. After 1.d4 d5, if White does not play 2.c4, they are refusing to enter the main branches such as the Slav, the Semi-Slav, or the Queen's Gambit. Systems like the London or the Colle give White a solid setup, light on theory and light on risk — and precisely for that reason they appear very often at club and intermediate level. A serious Black player must have an answer to them, or every game becomes a battle without a map.

I have told students many times that chess is not a game of beautiful moves, but a game of correct moves. The London System may look modest, but it is a patient trap: it invites you to attack, then punishes you with a tight structure you cannot break. The Colle System is different — it is a quiet challenge in the center, where White accepts slow-but-sure. The Trompowsky and the Torre strike at Black's pawn structure in ways rarely taught in textbooks. Each system is a different question, and the player holding Black must have a separate answer to each question.

The resource consists of six videos, one plan per video. This packaging is not a theoretical invention. It is a systematization of what already exists — something anyone who has sat analyzing with a student knows. The real value of an opening resource lies not in inventing new moves, but in shortening the time a learner must grope through the dark alone.

Adding both the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit and the Richter-Veresov shows an ambition for completeness. But this is also a point to weigh: these are rarely encountered branches with limited practical value, while the study cost is high. For a busy Black player, time spent on rare branches can be time taken away from more important ones.

I remember evenings at an old club, when a fourteen-year-old student asked me why he kept losing to a London System player. He did not lack talent. He lacked a plan. Chess, from one angle, is the sport of people looking for a map.

But this is where I must say what I think few want to hear. The way that resource describes the Colle, Trompowsky, Torre or London as “extremely dangerous” is not a technical conclusion. It is a sales technique. A system is only truly dangerous when it forces the opponent to abandon their plan; calling it “dangerous” to sell a defensive video set is the language of the market, not of the board. The confusion between the two is the familiar blind spot of collective memory: we remember a slogan longer than we remember a game.

And there is something more worth noting. The original news item I read contains an internal contradiction: the title and first two lines concern the US Championship, but the body is a promotional piece for six opening videos. Two different articles were merged into a single feed line. To a hurried reader, that does not matter. To someone in the trade like me, it is a warning: when a news item contradicts itself, the perfect number standing beside it also loses part of its weight.

The unbeaten run of So and Liang must be read for what it is. A “perfect” score over a few early rounds is a small sample, not a final result. It says they are playing well; it does not say they will win. Football taught me this, and chess confirms it: people remember a winning streak, but forget how long that streak was. I thought I was exiled from the pitch; it turns out the board took me deeper into myself.

What is worth tracking, if I must pick one point, is not the familiar name. Wesley So at the top is a story already written. Awonder Liang — if he holds this rhythm to the end of the event, with a performance rating above his own — is the signal of a generation knocking at the door. As for the opening-content market, the existence of resources like this reminds me that chess has become a knowledge economy: people do not only play, they also sell maps to players.

The board is always fair in that it does not care what you remember. It only cares what move you play. And perhaps the biggest lesson from a messy news item like this lies not in the result, but in how we learn to ask questions in front of a number called perfect.