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I want more of this metagaming in chess. That's one of the things I find interesting about Hans. His interviews suggest he's taking a sort of meta game approach. He suggested once a move of his against Alireza was a bluff because Alireza doesn't like attacking chess.

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This is extremely common in high level chess. Every chess player will study their opponents history and recent play patterns and practice against that.

Hans claimed he studied against Magnus' opening because Magnus had played it a few months ago. It turns out Magnus has never used that opening in a recorded game. The dialog has now changed to "well by move 20 the board state became identical to a previous Magnus game" but Hans didn't say he spotted the similarities at move 20, he said he studied that specific opening.

Magnus did have the same opening, but not the same sequence of moves (transposition) in several games. So that's just wrong.

It only became identical by turn 20, that's midgame, not an opening.

So what? What does that matter? 20 moves of prep is not unusual. Also opening/midgame/endgame is not defined by # of moves. This was still very much in the opening, and it was still very much "known theory" as in games have been played in that same line.

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