When Chess Analysis Returns N/A: Silence Is a Signal Too

At dawn, before the city turned on its lights, I opened a deep analysis report that had just arrived in the newsroom inbox. The report bore a confident title: Comprehensive Assessment. Eight large sections stretched from opening technique, engine match rate, tournament system, competitive landscape, governance, and risk to the pulse of the public. For a sports journalist, it looked like a promising garden in which to begin the morning. I scrolled down. There were no charts. There were no chess player names. There were no rating figures. There was no tactical content. Every cell displayed the same cold three-letter cluster: N/A. At first I thought it was a technical error in the data extraction system. I pressed refresh, waited thirty seconds, then opened it again. Still the same. A whole comprehensive assessment had chosen to remain silent. If this were a match, it would be like an empty stadium where one hears only the wind and one’s own breathing. I remember writing in a pandemic diary: when there is no audience, football returns to its own breath. That morning, this report breathed in the same way. It did not say which player was stronger, which tournament was worth watching, or which tactic had become outdated. It only said: I do not have enough information to conclude. In a sports newsroom that always feels pressure to publish fast, this attitude is almost an act of rebellion. Modern media does not like empty boxes. Audiences want to know who won, who lost, who caused a shock, and who is about to be sold. A sports story without a victory, without a defeat, without a goal, without anyone to praise is often treated as a defective product. But I sat with that N/A box longer than I expected, because it reminded me of an old journalistic principle: do not turn missing information into a fabricated story. The report was built on a two-stage process. Stage one scanned the original text to isolate the title, source, information points, and related entities. Stage two then performed deep professional analysis. The document I received was the result of stage two, but the stage-one input was empty. There was no article title, no source, no original story. Therefore, the algorithm and the analyst chose to return N/A instead of inventing a chess player. That may sound dry, but it is actually a respectable act of honesty. In more than two decades of following Vietnamese sports, I have seen many people try to fill empty spaces with emotion rather than facts. In 2026, I spent three weeks with forward Nguyen Anh Duc of Becamex Binh Duong. His team finished eighth in the V-League, a result with no special significance on the table. But I did not write about the standings. I wrote about his ritual of lighting incense before his mother’s photograph before each match, and about nine minutes of silence in the dressing room. The article contained no tactical analysis, yet it reached a readership number that the young newsroom had never seen. At that moment I understood: a football pitch is never only about the ball; it is also about the calluses of human life. An N/A report can easily be called useless, but it resembles a photograph of a player sitting alone after a defeat. There is no action, no words, no dramatic expression, yet the viewer still feels the weight of the pause. In 2026, I worked in Volgograd during the World Cup. Iceland lost to Nigeria 0-2 and were eliminated. In the stands, about fifteen thousand Icelandic supporters still stamped their feet and clapped in the Viking clap rhythm for seven full minutes after the final whistle. There was no tactical analysis there, no statistic measured by goals. It was a pure emotional signal rising through defeat. I suddenly understood that football does not promise victory, but it can promise dignity. If I were to rewrite that match report, I would place two images side by side: the silent N/A columns on the analysis report and the clapping of the Iceland fans. Neither provides an answer, yet both say a great deal. There is a strong temptation in sports journalism to deliver a definitive verdict. This team played badly. That player is past his prime. This tactic is outdated. Conclusions are always easier to read than open questions. But a regular season lasting nine months does not always need a sentence. Some matches end in draws, and the most valuable thing a writer can leave for readers is a legitimate hesitation. If we do not know how far a chess player can go, let us say that we do not know yet. If we do not understand why a team lost its rhythm in the final twenty minutes, let us dare to say that the data are insufficient. I also remember the spring of 2026, when the V-League was suspended because of the pandemic. I wrote a diary series called Empty Stadium. For sixty days there was no football. After the third week, I was exhausted from writing about things that were not happening. I locked the door of my apartment in Binh Duong, turned off my phone, and every night watched the 2026 AFF Cup final second leg between Vietnam and Thailand. I replayed the missed shot over and over. Not because I wanted to blame anyone, but because I wanted to learn how to look at an unsuccessful moment without rushing to explain it. During those sixty days, football had no goals, no fans, and no league table. Yet football remained alive in the memory of millions of people. When the cheering stopped, people began to hear themselves. If an N/A analysis also makes us stop and listen, then it is not entirely meaningless. The emptiness of that report may be caused by a simple technical problem. Perhaps the source document was not synchronized, perhaps the system could not find the chess player’s name, or perhaps the data were entered on a day when the platform failed. But in a world where artificial intelligence can write fast, produce images fast, and make predictions fast, the fact that a system chooses to return N/A rather than invent an answer becomes a valuable signal. It reminds us that accuracy always matters more than speed, and that writer’s humility is part of professional ethics. I have met many young Vietnamese chess players who dream of reaching the world stage. They train for hours at the board, study classic games, and analyze moves with computers. What impresses me most, however, is not their victories but how they face a position with no clear solution. Some positions are equal according to the engine, yet both sides still have to sit until the end. Some games do not show who is winning until the final move. Chess is like football, and it is also like journalism: there is not always an immediate answer. Learning to accept ambiguity is part of growing up. That comprehensive assessment stayed silent on my screen for an hour. I planned to delete it and write another article, faster, easier to read, full of star names and impressive numbers. In the end I chose to keep it. I wanted to look closely at how an information system could be humble enough to say that it does not know. Perhaps in an age of noise, we need such moments of silence. The match ended, but the applause still echoes in my memory. And a data page full of N/A can be a truthful sports report if we are willing to read it slowly. As I write these lines, the season is still unfolding ahead of us. There will be brilliant analyses with charts, breathless title races, and goals replayed thousands of times. Yet I believe sports journalism is not only the craft of answers. It is also the craft of questions, of incomplete data, and of moments when a writer must be brave enough to admit not knowing. The pitch can be empty, the stands can be quiet, and an analysis report can be filled with N/A, but honesty is never empty. One day, when technology develops further, perhaps we will have algorithms that can process human emotion, read the pain of athletes and the nostalgia of supporters. Until then, I still want to keep for myself the right to say: I do not have enough evidence to conclude. That is not an escape; it is a way of respecting the truth. The season is long, and not every question must be answered in the same night. Let those N/A cells remain as a reminder: in a world crowded with hasty declarations, saying that we do not yet know is also a form of courage.