Unpopular opinion: Leaked prep will not be a major issue soon. Deep analysis of players tendencies and style will be essential at the top level

Following Sindarov's allegedly "leaked" prep yesterday (see related post), I wanted to share a prediction: in the near future, serious players will not consider this a major issue.

First of all, yes, publishing your studies/prep does give information away. But there’s a key observation: no one can be sure whether that information is actually true.

In that sense, leaked prep can also function as a kind of bluff. Like in other competitive settings, a bluff doesn’t just give "no information", it actually can mislead. For example, opponents might waste time, compute, and mental energy analyzing lines that are irrelevant or intentionally deceptive. Even worse, it can lead to wrong conclusions, i.e. garbage in, garbage out.

Second, I think that preparation will shift toward analyzing opponents’ tendencies, playing into their weaknesses, and exploiting their game-theoretic suboptimal style. I’m not aware if this is being done seriously at the top level just yet, but my prediction is it will be essential very very soon. I’ve experimented with it in the past with a top20 player and saw some promising results, but they’re still very preliminary.

I'm hoping this post can start a real discussion.