The Netflix documentary about Carlsen and Niemann is out.
I found the documentary pretty balanced. What surprised me:
- The Carlsen team feeling chess.com put them on the wrong foot
- Carlsen settling because of the US legal system
- The dislike of chess.com mngt for Niemann
youtu.be/4k7lkMdZorE
Thanks for sharing!
Happy to hear that you tried it yourself and were able to make it work.
Curious to hear what kind of application you built.
I created a website that analyzes your online games, finds exactly where you deviated from my Chessable courses, and generates a custom PGN file ready for Chessable spaced repetition training. Built with Claude!
🔗 Website: hanschut.pythonanywhere.com
youtu.be/ezXQzEYUKfo
Honored to be back after 7 years at the legendary Perpetual Chess Podcast!
www.perpetualchesspod.com/new-blog/202...
The puzzle rating is in the PGN file that you can download.
The current format is the game truncated after the first move of the puzzle with the solution in the ‘annotator’ field and the game ID in the ‘site’ field.
For visibility in ChessBase you could put the rating in the ‘tournament’ field.
New In Chess 2026#1 is out with Timman's last column, tournament reports on Tata Steel, WC Rapid, Blitz and Freestyle, interviews with Abdusattorov & Bluebaum, Gelfand analyzes recent games, Speelman on Hastings, Ntirlis shares opening novelties and Castellanos' Killer Chess Training
Now 140 pages!
Dutch chess legend Jan Timman passed away on February 18 at the age of 74.
In this video, I discuss three of his latest books:
- Timman's Studies
- Timman's Triumphs
- The 100 Endgames Studies You Must Know
youtu.be/jhf1GDHj5QM
Using Claude, I created a program to search from any opening position for related opening puzzles.
For example, any puzzles which games incl. the moves 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Nf6 3.Bb5+ c6.
You can download the 1.2 million games-puzzle-database through the link in this article.
lichess.org/@/HanSchut/b...
I haven't written a line of code in 40 years. In less than 2 days, I built two advanced chess software tools entirely through conversation with Claude AI.
In this video, I share the joy of "conversational coding" and demonstrate the two powerful tools we built from scratch.
youtu.be/GSj69yLmwMg
Would You Sacrifice Your Bishop with $100,000 and the GM Title on the Line?
My latest video covers a crucial moment in the game between Carissa Yip and Daniil Yuffa from the Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2026.
youtu.be/pVHn8Uwpe70
I think ChessBase can make AI work if ChessBase feeds ChatGPT with the right information. My example of Gemini 3 Pro + mini analysis tree shows the potential. And with Buddy Engine, LiveBook, and Plan Explorer, ChessBase has all the info available.
I agree with you on the value of Monte Carlo.
In this video, I show how you can sometimes win straight from the opening—not just by following general principles, but by being alert, recognizing typical themes, and calculating concrete lines.
For all positions, these opportunities were missed in most Lichess games.
youtu.be/D-S3FOD-kY4
Yesterday, ChessBase '26.5 was released.
Time to revisit my review from 73 days ago and to check which bugs and flaws have been fixed in:
- AI consult
- Opening Report
- Monte Carlo simulation
- Game filtering classical, rapid, and blitz
youtu.be/pcyJiNbVgyY
Gemini 3 Pro has arrived with "reasoning" capabilities, but can it actually analyze a chess position without hallucinating? In this video, I test the new model on tactical & positional puzzles and reveal the one specific prompt strategy that turns it into a valuable chess coach.
youtu.be/o6uAlfQvao0
1kb3r1/1p5p/B3p3/7q/3RQ3/2P4r/PP6/1K1R4 b - - 0 28
28.Bxa6!
What a move by Wei Yi, especially as he had less than 5 minutes left and had to see the only move 31.Qa4 in advance.
The game continued:
28. Bxa6 e5 29. Rd8 Rxd8 30. Rxd8 Ka7 31. Qa4 bxa6 32. Rd7+ Bxd7 33. Qxd7+ Kb6 1/2-1/2
lichess.org/@/TotalNoob69/blog/how-t...
I thought you were TotalNoob69 from Lichess
Video on the new Opening Report functionality in ChessBase '26:
- Style Report
- Tactics
- Illustrative Games
Matthias Wüllenweber, CEO of ChessBase, missed the review of that new functionality in my first video.
youtu.be/5xYd2SXmPh4
Very interesting!
Is the theme-based position evaluation heuristic (mobility, space, king safety, and other positional and tactical factors) the same as the one in the Lichess tools?
Yes! I 100% agree.
Great that he took the time to watch the video and provide feedback without being defensive.
Thanks!
I need to delve deeper into Monte Carlo to fully understand your point. So far, I have not found it helpful in developing my chess skills.
Matthias Wüllenweber, CEO of ChessBase, was kind and open enough to reply to my video.
My review of the new functions in ChessBase '26
- AI consult
- New Opening Report
- Monte Carlo simulation
- Filtering of Blitz, Rapid, and Classical games
youtu.be/EP_k_NtXQH4
Yes, 4...d6 is rarely played.
I never came across a correspondence game in my local Mega DB.
My chess tools:
- CB and Hiarcs as DB programs
- Mega DB with weekly CB updates
- Corr DB with monthly ICCF updates
- Hiarcs openings book
- SF and LcO
- Forward Chess
- Chessvision.ai
- Qchess.net
- Lichess
- Chessable
Correspondence players spend days analyzing a position with the strongest engines. You can still find interesting ideas as L’Ami showed in the NIC Yearbooks.
I only look at games post SF-NNUE and use the corr DB to see if there is consensus on the strongest move and any new ideas from top players.
23... Nf6 24. d6?
(24. Rg4+! Nxg4 25. Qxg4+ Kh8 26. Qd4+ f6 27. d6 Bxg3 28. Qd2 Rf7 and wins.)
24... Bxg3
(24... Qc8! with equality.)
25. Rg4+ Nxg4 26. Qxg4+ Kh8 27. Qd4+ f6 28. Qd2 Rf7 29. Bxf7 Kg7 30. Qd3 1-0
Aronian saw the idea but chose the wrong move order but won after all.
rq3rk1/pp3p2/5n1p/3P4/4R3/1B4P1/PP5b/3QR2K w - - 0 24
White to play and win.
From the game Aronian - Aronyak Ghosh after 23... Nf6 at the FIDE World Cup 2025.
Solution in my reply.
The knight came from g6.
33. Bf6! Bxf6 34. Qxf4 and mate is unavoidable.
4r2k/1b4b1/1q1p4/pnpr2Bp/P1Q2p1P/1P1B1P2/6R1/6RK w - - 0 33
Caruana just played 32... Nxb5.
Gukesh played an elegant move to finish the game.
Can you find it?
(The answer is in my reply.)
6k1/5pp1/P6p/3p4/3P1n2/3Q2Pq/5P2/r2R1NK1 w - - 0 35
Carlsen played 34... Nf4 and Gukesh resigned in this equal position!
What did both Carlsen and Gukesh overlook?
What should Carlsen have played instead of 34... Nf4?