Dear Chess Community family,
There’s a myth floating around the chess world that I’ve been wanting to address for a while now. It goes something like this: "Artificial intelligence has refuted the Dragon." Or the Caro-Kann. Or the King's Indian. I hear it from club players, I read it in forums, and frankly, it's time we set the record straight.
No opening, no defense, no variation has been refuted by any engine. Not a single one. Let that sink in.
The Sicilian Dragon is still played. The Scheveningen? Still there. The Pelikan, the Najdorf, the Classical — all alive and kicking. The French Defense hasn't gone anywhere. The Caro-Kann, which some say is "drawish," remains a perfectly respectable weapon at every level. So what has changed? Simple: the engines have enriched our understanding. They've opened up a vast universe of new possibilities, like a massive fan of variations that unfolds with every move. They've shown us resources we never imagined, tactical nuances hidden in plain sight, and strategic depth that would have taken years of human study to uncover.
But here's the thing — they haven't killed anything. They've deepened everything.
So why do some openings fall out of fashion at the elite level? Not because they're refuted. It's because certain lines, like the Caro-Kann, have a statistical tendency to lead to draws. And when you're fighting for tournament wins, for rating points, for your place in history, you don't play for half a point. You need sharp, tactical battles where the game can be decided. You want blood, not peaceful handshakes.
That doesn't mean the Caro-Kann is dead — it just means GMs sometimes prefer more ambitious weapons. And let's be honest: when two top players are exhausted from a long tournament, sometimes there's a silent agreement to head into a quiet line and split the point. That's human strategy, not algorithmic determinism.
I speak from personal experience here. Back in the 1990s, when I was playing official events, we had the Informants — those massive books that collected the best games of the year. Each game had annotations, and whenever a player introduced a new move, a theoretical novelty, it was marked with a bold capital "N" — novelty. You could study those novelties for weeks, but you couldn't generate them instantly. You had to prepare them with your team of seconds — other GMs, strong coaches — and then unleash them at the board like a secret weapon.
Today, those same grandmasters still have their seconds, but now they also have engines. And that fusion — human creativity guided by computational power — has taken preparation to a level we couldn't have dreamed of in the 90s. The engines don't replace the human. They're a tool, just like the Informant was. What matters is how you use them — ethically, creatively, and with your own ideas leading the way.
Because let's not forget: the engine doesn't feel the pressure. It doesn't sweat in a time scramble. It doesn't know what it's like to be down a pawn in a rook endgame with a hostile opponent across the board. It shows you the path, but you're the one walking it.
So the next time someone tells you that the Dragon is dead, or that AI ruined the King's Indian, smile and tell them to look again. The Dragon is still breathing fire. The King's Indian is still a psychological weapon. The Najdorf is still as sharp as ever.
Computers have made us better, faster, and more informed. But they haven't taken away our creativity. They've just given us more room to play.
I'd love to hear your thoughts. How has the engine era shaped your own relationship with the game? Are you still loyal to your old openings, or have you embraced the new lines?
Keep playing, keep studying, and never stop questioning the myths.
Sincerely, a chess lover from the 90s who still believes in human over machine. See you later my friends.
