A young man with a classic style

Andrey Esipenko (FIDE/Russia)

* Date of birth: March 22, 2002 (24 years old)

* Age as a GM: 15 years, 6 months

* Ranking: 3rd place in the 2025 FIDE World Cup

* Maximum ELO rating: 2723

* Profile: Solid, technical, and with enviable positional intuition. He is a pure positional player.

Beating strong players with simple chess

In my opinion, Esipenko's chess is very transparent. He has excellent positional awareness and chooses his piece exchanges very well. If you look at some of his games without knowing anything about the players involved, you'd probably assume he was a player from another era.

Are you in a hurry? Order something sugary, this might take a while.

Like any positional player, Esipenko tries to get the most out of seemingly simple positions. To do this, he must be patient and create small problems that gradually lead his opponent to collapse. If he sets the pace, the game could be long.

Victory over Magnus Carlsen in classical chess.

Predictions about Esipenko

Esipenko is a very solid player who isn't easy to beat. Given his playing style and his less-than-positive results in head-to-head matches against each of the players involved in the tournament, I don't imagine him winning many games. I assume he would benefit from a tournament with fewer wins and no players pulling away from the pack, so that +2 would be enough to qualify.