Blog GilaChess

What do Mas, Kavin and Yi Chen have in common?

2026-06-10T09:20:31.461+08:00

CM Chow Yi Chen, IM Mas Hafizulhelmi and FM Kavin Mohan

Yes all of them are National Champions (too obvious) but other than that they were all record breakers in terms of age when they became champions.

1. IM Mas Hafizulhelmi (The 31-Year Benchmark)
Year He Won: 1994 (Malaysian National Closed Championship)
Age When He Won: 13 years and 11 months (Born January 1, 1981)
Context: Set a monumental record that stood unchallenged for over three decades as the absolute gold standard for young Malaysian prodigies.
2. FM Kavin Mohan (The Modern Era Breaker)
Year He Won: Early 2025 (Malaysian Chess Championship 2025)
Age When He Broke the Record: 13 years and roughly 2 to 4 months
Context: Safely edged past Mas Hafizulhelmi's 13-year, 11-month milestone, landing him directly into the Malaysian Book of Records.
3. CM Chow Yi Chen (The Current Record Holder)
Year He Won: 2026 (Malaysian Chess Championship 2026)
Age When He Broke the Record: 11 years and 6 months
Context: Completely rewritten chess history by cutting down the standing youth record by nearly two full years.
They are getting younger and younger. Hard to believe anyone can break the current record !!

What is the CAS dispute all about?

2026-06-10T07:40:33.401+08:00

FIDE posted this on their site

In accordance with the CAS decision in case CAS 2024/A/10911, the Chess Federation of Russia was required to comply with the decision by 9 June 2026.

The FIDE Council has therefore formally requested the Chess Federation of Russia to provide evidence of its compliance with the decision.

In line with Article 20.9 of the FIDE Charter, a meeting of the FIDE Council has been scheduled for 17 June 2026 to assess the implementation of the CAS decision and to take any decisions in accordance with the FIDE Charter.

I thought it was something to do with Russian players getting sanctioned from international events.

So I dug deeper and it turns out it is not about sanctions.

shaded red -Russian occupied and contested area

Ukrainian Chess Federation took legal action because the CFR (Chess Federation of Russia) had been organizing thousands of chess tournaments and registering players in internationally recognized Ukrainian territories that are occupied by Russia (specifically Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Sevastopol).

In late March 2026, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland ruled that these actions violated Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty, which goes against the fundamental principles of international chess governance.

The CAS Ultimatum

The CAS gave the Chess Federation of Russia an ultimatum:

The Demand: The CFR had 90 days to completely cease organizing chess activities and exercising control in those occupied regions.
The Consequence: If they failed to comply, they would face an automatic suspension from the International Chess Federation (FIDE) for up to three years.

The problem with Malaysian Chess Organisers

2026-06-10T03:25:46.902+08:00

Malaysian chess organisers love flyers. tournaments distributed via image-only flyers and that's a problem : Search engine indexing and overall event visibility.

The core problem is real. When organisers post tournament information exclusively as graphic flyers—JPEG or PNG files—the text inside those images is not treated the same as HTML text on a webpage. A search for "catur terbuka Selangor 2026" or "rapid chess Kuala Lumpur July 2026" will not retrieve that tournament through a standard web search unless the information is also published in crawlable, indexable form.

One would argue that Google Gemini can do OCR easily meaning Google has developed limited ability to read text embedded in images using its Gemini architecture, and there is documented evidence that character recognition is applied to some images. However, this capability remains inconsistent, unreliable for tournament discoverability, and carries less ranking weight than proper HTML text. The SEO community strongly advises against relying on it.

The problem is compounded by where Malaysian chess flyers are typically shared. WhatsApp messages and group chats remain entirely private and are never indexed by any search engine. While Facebook has allowed Google indexing of public posts from brands and creators since July 2025, this applies primarily to post captions—not to text inside flyer images. Without a text caption, the flyer itself remains effectively invisible.

So the solution is simple. Duplicate the information in the flyer as plain text also.

Plain text ensures full, reliable indexing by every search engine, every time. Beyond searchability, it provides additional benefits: accessibility for screen readers, the ability to copy-paste dates and addresses, machine translation, direct linking to specific details.

The flyer should remain for its visual appeal. The text is for the machines. This is best practice not only for Malaysian chess but for any community organisation seeking to make its events discoverable.

One positive here is websites like Catur Malaysia takes the trouble to make sure that there are text description information despite organisers only giving graphics flyer. This ensures that the particular tournament will be index by search engines like Google and be found more easily. Catur Malaysia should be commended based on this fact alone.

Bringing Catur back to life again

2026-06-09T17:36:17.211+08:00

Before catur there was GilaChess

I lost GilaChess.com in the late 2000s because I procrastinated in renewing the domain and totally lost the name, coupled with my disappointment with Exabyte my webhost that allowed malware to attack their computers. It was a nightmare experience.

I have not recovered gilachess.com until today but I have registered .org and .net multiple times (again forgot to renew a few times) - but these websites never regained the type of traffic and readership of the original .com.

Anyway, I had moderate success with catur.org, my new website. It acted as an aggregator for local blogs, bringing in over 30 blogs' content into one space. But that too didn't last because blogging lost it's steam and almost all the local blogs stopped posting.

I never gave up. I kept my blog, and it has lasted 21 years. I don't blog for eyeballs or followers. It's more like a diary of events I want to save and remember.

Catur lost traffic and became dormant for more than a year. Last month, I did the unthinkable - I deleted the root directory of the website, effectively losing years of content.

Anyway, last month I started rebuilding the site, and with the help of AI, it has been "too easy". So easy that a lot of things that I wanted to do but could only dream of because of lack of funds and ability - now was possible because of AIs like Gemini, Claude, and DeekSeek (I don't like ChatGPT).

The result is this:

Rebranded it as "Malaysia's Chess Portal".

Catur comprise:

CaturNews
The core function of the old Catur website to aggregate and pull in contents from other blogs. Since local blogs are almost non-existant, I pull the news headlines from international websites like FIDE, Chessbase, LiChess, Chessdotcom etc.
CaturEvents
Malaysian chess tournament calendar and event dates.
CaturSkor
An interactive version of data pulled from chess-result showing extra details like opponents played, colours and results in ONE screen. This was a web app I wrote pre-Covid and now further developed with AI.
CaturFestival
A subsite for the Malaysian Chess Festival.
CaturGym
Structured lessons, daily puzzles, and an official learning syllabus.
CaturELO
Tool to incremental search a name in the FIDE database and return the ELO rating.
CaturReplay
Tool to replay your chess game on a 2D board. Just cut n paste your PGN.

From the early traffic stats, it is promising and that encourages me to work at completing more Catur.

PIP

2026-06-08T08:41:48.745+08:00

♟️ P · I · P philosophy

structured chess event coverage · GilaChess framework

📌 PIP is his philosophy for structured chess event coverage, standing for three essential stages: Opening (Pre-Event), Middlegame (In-Event), and Endgame (Post-Event).

🧠 What PIP stands for

“P‑I‑P” as the stages needed for a well‑covered chess event:

🎯 Opening Pre‑Event

Advance hype, announcements, registration info, previews — set the stage before the first move.

⚡ Middlegame In‑Event

On‑site updates, results, photos, pairings, stories as the tournament happens.

🏆 Endgame Post‑Event

Final results, prize‑winners, summaries, follow‑up content.

💡 It's like a game: if you only do one phase (for example, live updates with no build‑up or follow‑up), the “coverage game” is incomplete.

🛠️ How I apply it

📘 I have to admit I am not a good blogger, more of a hobbyist who likes to take pictures and writing is not really my strength in the least. Only in the 20th Malaysian Chess Festival did I come close to this complete coverage methodology. Not saying I did a perfect job but it was the most complete for each of the 3 stages. Compared to previous years, the work done was embarrassingly poor or non-existent for one or more stages.

🤖 To be truthful, the festival workflows did involve AI‑assisted content generation, I just couldn't write all of the reports in time - though I kept those to a minimum.

Chess in Teluk Intan

2026-06-07T18:11:40.793+08:00

This is the 2nd chess event I've seen in my hometown Teluk Intan. I found out only because I was working on the #CaturEvents website (https://catur.org/events) and was surprised when I saw this flyer.

Anyway, pretty good turnout for a 15min+0 tourney with 48 players - mostly juniors. I am surprised by the number as it shows a healty "gilachess" community here even though Teluk Intan is a relatively small town in Malaysia. Did not stay to chat with the organiser "Coach Danish" as he looked very busy.

6 rounds. 15+0 time control. RM 30 entry.

Of course less than ideal environment as the tourney was held in a foodcourt in Lotuss supermarket. But for a casual fast time control event with kids, it can't be more ideal :)

Photo Album

Phuket Tourney

2026-06-07T09:58:20.039+08:00

5th Blue Chevaliers International Open 2026

🏆 FIDE-rated | 9 rounds | 413,000 THB prize fund

Phuket's premier classical chess event – strong international field, resort venue, and Bami's Blitz side tournament.

📅 September 7–13, 2026 📍 Novotel Phuket Resort, Patong Beach ♟️ 90'+30" classical · FIDE rated

📋 Event Essentials

🏆 Tournament: 5th Blue Chevaliers Open

📅 Dates: 7–13 September 2026

📍 Venue: Novotel Phuket Resort, Patong

♟️ Format: 9‑round Swiss (classical) + Blitz

⏱️ Time control: 90 min + 30 sec/move

💰 Prize fund: 413,000 THB (~$13,000)

👥 Player limit: 130 players

🎫 Entry Fees

🏅 Rated 2000+: 3,500 THB (~RM 450)

📉 Rated below 2000: 4,500 THB (~RM 580)

⏰ Late surcharge (after Aug 15): +500 THB

🎁 Free entry: 2400+ / GMs / WGMs / defending champions

⚡ Bami's Blitz (envelope): 500 THB (late 600 THB)

🏨 Accommodation (Novotel)

🛌 Superior Room (double/twin): 2,400 THB/night

🌊 Deluxe Seaview: 3,700 THB/night

🍳 Breakfast: Included + all taxes

📧 Booking code: “Blue Chevaliers Participant”

🏆 GM special rate (2450+ Elo): 2,000 THB / night

💰 Prize Fund — 413,000 THB guaranteed

🏆 Open Championship

Place	Prize (THB)
1st	70,000
2nd	40,000
3rd	30,000
4th	20,000
5th	15,000
6th	12,000
7th	10,000
8th	9,000
9th	8,000
10th	7,000
11th	6,000
12th	5,000
13th	4,000
14th	3,000

👩 Female Championship

Place	Prize (THB)
1st	25,000
2nd	15,000
3rd	12,000
4th	10,000
5th	8,000
6th	6,000
7th	5,000
8th	4,000
9th	3,000

🎯 Sectional Groups (3 groups)

Place	Prize
1st	7,000 THB
2nd	5,000 THB
3rd	3,000 THB

⚡ Bami’s Blitz Prizes

Open Blitz	Prize
1st	8,000
2nd	6,000
3rd	4,000
4th	3,000
5th	2,000
6th	1,000
Female Blitz
1st	5,000
2nd	3,000
3rd	2,000
4th	1,000
Under 1800 Blitz
1st	3,000
2nd	2,000
3rd	1,000

📅 Tournament Schedule

Date	Time	Event / Round
Monday, Sep 7	11:00 – 15:30	Player registration
Monday, Sep 7	16:30	Round 1
Tuesday, Sep 8	14:00	Round 2
Wednesday, Sep 9	09:30	Round 3
Wednesday, Sep 9	15:00	Round 4
Thursday, Sep 10	09:30	Round 5
Thursday, Sep 10	17:00	Bami’s Blitz (10 rounds)
Friday, Sep 11	09:30	Round 6
Friday, Sep 11	15:00	Round 7
Saturday, Sep 12	14:00	Round 8
Sunday, Sep 13	09:30	Round 9
Sunday, Sep 13	15:00	Prize ceremony

* Up to two half‑point byes allowed in rounds 2–7 (request before pairings).

📝 Registration & Payment

📧 Contact emailpeter.frost3@yahoo.com.au

🏦 Thai bank transferKasikorn Bank 062-1-75111-5
Red Knight Chess Co. Ltd

✈️ International playersConfirm with flight booking by July 7, then pay cash on Sep 7

⏳ Refund deadlineFull refund before Aug 15, 2026

📢 Final entry: September 7, 15:30 or when 130-player cap is reached.

📍 Venue & Transport

🏛️ Novotel Phuket Resort282 Phrabaramee Rd, Patong, Phuket

✈️ AirportPhuket International Airport (HKT)

🚐 ShuttleTuk‑tuk from hill base before each round

🏖️ NearbyPatong Beach, restaurants, local transport

📌 Rules & Info

📱 ElectronicsMobile phones / smartwatches not allowed at board

👕 Dress codeSleeved shirts in playing area

📸 PhotographyNot allowed once play starts (official photographer only)

♟️ Live boardsTop 10 boards online within 24h after round

🏨 Book your discounted stay at Novotel Phuket Resort Email: H1965-RE1@accor.com or H1965-RE@accor.com — quote “Blue Chevaliers International Open Participant”
Special rates valid until August 15, 2026 (subject to availability).

♟️ Chess-Results →

⚡ Bami’s Blitz — September 10, 2026

🎯 Format10 rounds · 3'+2" · FIDE Blitz-rated

💰 Entry fee500 THB (envelope) / 600 THB late

⏰ Envelope deadlineSep 10, 09:30

🏆 PrizesOpen, Female, U1800 categories

🏅 Sectional Groups & Fairness

From the 21st seed, players are split into three equal Elo groups, each competing for separate prizes (7,000 / 5,000 / 3,000 THB). This guarantees broad prize distribution and competitive balance.

🏆 Trophies & medals also awarded for Open, Female, Seniors (50+), Junior, and Sectional categories.

For more information check out Blue Chevalier International Chess Open Facebook Page

Phuket or Johor tourney? Which one I'd pick?

2026-06-07T07:59:14.443+08:00

There are 2 chess tournaments held at the same time on Sept 7-14. The Blue Chevaliers in Phuket and Berjaya Global in Johor Bahru.

So I told Gemini AI to evaluate and help me choose.

Gave Gemini the fact that I am an ELO 1870 rated player and asked it to choose mainly based on cost:

♟️ 7‑night chess tournament · precise financial breakdown

Blue Chevaliers (Phuket) vs Berjaya Global (Johor)

Head‑to‑head cost analysis: entry fees, 7‑night accommodation, travel & flexible budget options

Expense Category	🏝️ Blue Chevaliers — Phuket Official tournament venue · Novotel Phuket Resort	🏨 Berjaya Global — Johor Bahru Malaysian Chess Federation · value hub
🎫 Tournament Entry Fee	~RM 515	~RM 350
🏨 Official Hotel (7 nights)	~RM 2,170 (16,800 THB)	~RM 1,820 (RM 260/night)
✈️ / 🚌 Travel & Transit	~RM 450+ (Flight + Phuket taxi)	RM 50 – RM 100 (Bus or drive to JB)
💡 Budget Alternative Hotel (7 nights)	~RM 1,050 (Outside resort zone)	~RM 630 (RM 90/night nearby)
📦 Estimated Total Package (official hotel + entry + travel)	~RM 3,135	~RM 2,220
🏨 If using budget hotel option	✅ Save ~RM 1,120 (compared to official Novotel rate)	💰 Save ~RM 1,190 (vs official hotel package)
⚡ Key Note / Flexibility	⚠️ Off‑site Phuket hotels require steep local taxi fees — net savings may reduce.	🚗 JB area packed with highly-rated budget hotels (RM 80–RM 120) within short Grab ride of venue.
🏆 Budget stay + local transit (approximate total)	~RM 2,015* (entry + budget hotel + flights/taxi)	As low as ~RM 1,130* (entry + budget hotel + local travel)

📌 Entry Fee Rationale

Blue Chevaliers (Phuket): Your 1870 rating → standard bracket 3,500–4,500 THB (~RM 450 – RM 580). Mid estimate ~RM 515.

Berjaya Global (Johor): MCF sanctioned events set Challenger division fees between RM 250 – RM 350 → ~RM 350.

💡 You save ~RM 165 just on registration with Johor.

🏨 Accommodation & Hidden Transit Savings

Phuket: Official Novotel rate 2,400 THB/night (~RM 310) → total RM 2,170 for 7 nights. Budget off-site hotels exist but steep local taxi fees erode savings.

Johor: Official Berjaya Waterfront ~RM 260/night but JB area offers budget hotels RM 80–120/night. Plus, choosing Johor eliminates international flights, baggage fees, and tourist inflation on daily meals — easily save RM 350+ on travel vs Phuket's flight + taxi.

💰 Total Savings Snapshot

✔️ Entry fee: ~RM 165
✔️ Official hotel 7‑nights: ~RM 350
✔️ Travel/flights: ~RM 350+
✔️ Budget alternative potential: ~RM 420

🎯 Total Estimated Savings (official baseline): ~RM 915

✨ With budget hotels in JB, total package can drop below RM 1,200 — massive value without compromising convenience.

🔍 Detailed savings breakdown & flexible accommodation analysis
🎯 Your Savings (Official Hotel basis)	Blue Chevaliers (Phuket)	Berjaya Global (Johor)
🏨 Official 7‑night price	RM 2,170	RM 1,820 (Save RM 350)
✈️ Transport / Flight impact	RM 450+ (flight + taxi)	RM 50–100 (bus/drive) → Save ~RM 350+
🏆 Entry fee comparison	~RM 515	~RM 350 → Save ~RM 165
⭐ Total minimum savings (standard)	~RM 915 saved by choosing Johor
🏨 Alternative budget hotel (7 nights)	RM 1,050 (outside zone, taxi adds cost)	RM 630 (RM 90/night nearby) → Extra RM 420 potential
💡 Lowest possible total package	~RM 2,015 (budget hotel + flights + entry)	~RM 1,130 (budget hotel + entry + local transit)

📊 Methodology & References: Exchange rate 1 THB ≈ RM 0.1285 (market average). Blue Chevaliers entry based on MyChess.events 2026 details (4,000 THB midpoint for 1870 rating). Berjaya Open entry derived from Malaysian Chess Federation sanctioned Challenger division precedents (RM 250–350). Hotel rates: Novotel Phuket Resort official player rate 2,400 THB/night; Berjaya Waterfront Johor ~RM 260/night; alternative budget hotels sourced from JB market rates (RM 80–120/night with short Grab ride). Travel estimates reflect real flight + taxi costs (Phuket) vs bus/drive to JB (RM 50–100).

♟️ Final recommendation: Berjaya Global in Johor delivers superior financial efficiency — eliminating international flight expenses, lowering entry fees, and providing flexible accommodation from RM 90/night, all while keeping daily costs low. Estimated total savings exceed RM 915 compared to the Phuket official package, with even greater margins when choosing local budget stays.

*Budget alternative totals include tournament entry + 7 nights budget accommodation + lowest projected travel cost (Phuket: min flight+taxi ~RM 450 + RM 1,050 hotel + RM 515 entry ≈ RM 2,015; Johor: RM 350 entry + RM 630 hotel + RM 100 travel ≈ RM 1,080 – RM 1,130). Actual savings may vary based on exchange rates and personal choices.

Of course all of the above is AI generated so may have some hallucinated facts and is not accurate. Disclaimer here that the above may contain errors so to not take this at face value. Still it's interesting and I believe I'd save more by going to Johor for the Berjaya tourney.

However, that's taking into consideration I go as a chess player. In reality, I'd go to either event not as a player but as a blogger. Therefore, it's totally different. If you ask me which one I'd pick. it'll be Phuket for the simple fact that I like chess on the beach ! In addition, writing articles about chess beside a beach is more interesting and is a big difference in casualness and relaxed atmosphere - at least that's what I expect :)

Sadly, however, in all likelihood I won't go to either because I just can't afford any one of those tourneys. Perhaps next year...

Which would you pick ? Or maybe none at all?

Pragg beats Magnus.. TWICE!!

2026-06-06T13:29:00.593+08:00

This is rare that I post any featured games on this blog but here goes...

Praggnanandhaa vs Carlsen — Norway Chess 2026: Two Games That Made History

Round 3 — May 27, 2026 (Pragg with White)

Praggnanandhaa came out swinging with a rare 6.h4 in the Sicilian Najdorf — only the 13th most popular sixth move in that position. The surprise worked immediately: Carlsen spent 28 minutes on move 8 alone, visibly unsettled. Pragg built a controlled advantage through the opening and middlegame, but the game turned into a rollercoaster. Carlsen, as only he can, fought his way back from a losing position and actually seized the advantage around moves 35–36 with the powerful 35...Ne5 and 36...g5, putting Pragg on the ropes.

Then came Norway Chess's notorious time pressure. With no increment until move 41, Carlsen's clock ran dangerously low. On move 39 he played the speculative 39...Nxd6, giving up his rook. The critical error came on move 44 — instead of pushing 44...g2 to promote his passed pawn, he played the passive 44...Kg7. Pragg pounced instantly with 45.c7, and after 46.Rb8 Carlsen resigned. A game he should have won ended in defeat. Pragg's own assessment was characteristically humble:

"In these time scrambles it's basically like tossing a coin."

Round 8 — June 2, 2026 (Pragg with Black)

By Round 8, Carlsen was already in crisis — three classical losses and sitting in fifth place. Pragg arrived with a secret weapon: a French Defense with 5...Nh6, preparation originally developed for the FIDE Candidates Tournament and held in reserve specifically for this moment. It hit Carlsen like a truck. He burned through 30 minutes by move 7 and nearly half his two-hour clock by move 10, while Pragg played quickly and confidently.

Despite the catastrophic time deficit, Carlsen defended superbly and reached what should have been a drawable endgame. Then, with just 14 seconds on his clock, he played 48.Kf4 — stepping his king directly into a forced checkmate net — when 48.Ke2 held the draw. Pragg, with 44 seconds remaining, found the winning line immediately: 48...Qd4+ 49.Kf3 Qd3+ 50.Kf2 Qd2+, and Carlsen resigned. He later admitted:

"It was completely, incredibly talentless that, once I actually saved myself, I just forgot that he could move the bishop that had been pinned for ages."

Why These Two Games Matter

A 19-year historical milestone. Pragg became the first player since Viswanathan Anand at Linares 2007 to beat Carlsen twice in the same classical tournament. That year, Carlsen was 16 years old. The fact that it took nearly two decades for anyone to repeat the feat says everything about Carlsen's dominance — and about what Pragg has become.

The preparation story. Both wins weren't accidents. Round 3's 6.h4 was a deep opening novelty designed to take Carlsen out of his comfort zone. Round 8's French Defense was preparation held back from an entire previous tournament, deployed at precisely the right moment. This is elite-level chess strategy — winning not just at the board, but in the preparation room.

Time pressure as a weapon. Norway Chess's no-increment time control (120 minutes, increment only after move 40) is brutal, and Pragg weaponized it in both games — not by playing fast, but by arriving at the board better prepared, forcing Carlsen to spend time he didn't have. In both games, Carlsen's clock became his worst enemy.

The psychological dimension. Carlsen is, arguably, the greatest player in chess history. His rating of 2840 is unprecedented. Yet Pragg has now beaten him three times in classical chess — and twice in the same event. After the Round 8 win, Pragg said: "It's more important for the tournament that I get this win than thinking that it's Magnus." That sentence alone captures how the new generation has rewired its relationship with the Carlsen aura.

Pragg went on to win the tournament. These two wins weren't just personal milestones — they were the backbone of Pragg's run to become Norway Chess 2026 champion, making him the first Indian player to win the prestigious event. The double over Carlsen gave him the momentum and points to overtake Wesley So in the final rounds.

In short, these two games mark a generational statement: that the era of Carlsen being psychologically untouchable is over, and that Praggnanandhaa — at just 20 years old — is the one making that point loudest.

In this game Pragg is black

in this game Pragg won as White

By Choice

2026-06-06T04:25:23.827+08:00

Read in mcf.news that it appears that at least the final Men/Open slot is being filled through an application-and-evaluation process rather than a structured qualifying tournament. And if the Women's Team was similarly assembled without an open qualifying event, then potentially multiple Olympiad representatives are being selected through administrative channels rather than competitive merit.

Before anyone raises eyebrow on this, it is nothing new and MCF has done this before. To be fair, many federations — including stronger chess nations — do use ratings-based or committee-based selection for Olympiad squads, especially when the top-rated players are obvious choices.

If I had a choice, of course I would prefer people fight for the coveted places. But the numbers and the fire to fight for it, is not there. So it is what it is :(

Pragg takes Norway Chess 2026

2026-06-06T03:41:05.429+08:00

In a tournament all time chess legend Magnus Carlsen surprisingly got beaten senseless by many players, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa is the Champion of Norway Chess 2026! The 20-year-old from Chennai, India delivered one of the most remarkable performances in the history of the prestigious tournament, finishing with 18/30 points after a must-win classical victory over Vincent Keymer in the final round.

The tournament and the title race

The 2026 edition was the 13th edition of the Norway Chess super-tournament, held in Oslo. The final round set up a three-way thriller, with Wesley So on 15.5 points, Praggnanandhaa on 15, and Alireza Firouzja on 14.5 — all three players with a realistic shot at the title. In the decisive final round, Firouzja faced So on the top board while Praggnanandhaa had the white pieces against Keymer. Firouzja's result against So opened the door, and Praggnanandhaa delivered, sealing the championship with a classical win.

The historic double over Carlsen

Praggnanandhaa defeated Magnus Carlsen once with the white pieces earlier in the tournament, then repeated the feat with the black pieces in Round 8 — marking two classical wins over Carlsen in the same event. This was the first time in 19 years that Carlsen had been beaten twice by the same player in a single classical tournament. The last to achieve it was Indian legend Viswanathan Anand at Linares in 2007. With these victories, Praggnanandhaa also joined an elite group of players to have beaten Carlsen three times in classical chess overall.

After Round 8, Praggnanandhaa kept his composure about the historic feat, saying: "More than beating Magnus, I think winning a game in this tournament is more important at this stage. So I'm happy that I managed to do that." He also praised Carlsen's tenacity: "He was actually playing really well and defending extremely well. I think many other players would start making small positional mistakes here and there, but he kept finding all the right moves."

The four-game classical win streak

Praggnanandhaa's closing surge included victories over Alireza Firouzja in Round 7, World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen in Round 8, and World Champion D. Gukesh in Round 9 — before sealing the title against Keymer in Round 10. Beating the World No. 1, the World Champion, and one of the top contenders in three consecutive rounds, all in classical chess, was an extraordinary sequence by any standard.

Historic first for India

No Indian player had ever won Norway Chess before. Praggnanandhaa aimed to replicate the monumental success of his compatriot Roman Dehtiarov, who clinched the European Individual Chess Championship earlier in 2026 at age 17. The win also comes just over a year after Praggnanandhaa won the Tata Steel Masters 2025, becoming the first Indian since Viswanathan Anand in 2006 to claim that prestigious title — and he had previously won Tata Steel in 2024 as well, making him a back-to-back champion there.

Who is Praggnanandhaa?

Praggnanandhaa became a grandmaster at just 12 years and 10 months, and first made global headlines two years earlier as the youngest International Master in history. He later became the youngest player ever to reach a FIDE World Cup final, earning qualification for the 2024 Candidates. He and his sister Vaishali Rameshbabu are the first sibling pair in chess history to both hold the full Grandmaster title. His peak rating was 2785, reached in September 2025 when he was World No. 4.

A huge congratulations to Praggnanandhaa, his team, and his family — this is undoubtedly the biggest achievement of his career so far, and what a way to get there!

Anastasiia Hnatyshyn, 15, wins European Women's Chess Championship 2026

2026-06-06T03:25:21.164+08:00

15-Year-Old Anastasiia Hnatyshyn Wins the 2026 European Women's Chess Championship!

Chess News

📍 Batumi, Georgia 👥 165 Players (32 Federations) 🏆 11 Rounds (Swiss System)

Entering as the 76th seed with a 2207 rating, Hnatyshyn's run was one of the great underdog stories in recent chess history.

After defeating the lower-rated Aneta Kedelidze in the opening round, she took down IM Marina Brunello (ITA, 2346) in round two, defeated IM Sabrina Vega Gutierrez (ESP, 2375) in round three, and beat IM Mai Narva (EST, 2426) in round four — all higher-rated opponents. By round six, she had scored six consecutive upsets and held a flawless 6/6 lead going into the rest day.

Her perfect run was finally stopped in round seven by 2023 European Women's Champion IM Meri Arabidze of Georgia, who caught her at the top of the standings — but Hnatyshyn bounced back. She defeated IM Eline Roebers (NED, 2389) in round ten to enter the final round with a half-point edge over the rest of the field, holding an outstanding score of 8.5/10 points.

2580 Performance Rating

+214 Elo Gained

No. 18 Women's World Rank

Beyond the Title: A Remarkable Tournament

The tournament delivered a remarkable collection of side achievements for the young champion:

By round four, Hnatyshyn had already completed the requirements for the WIM title and qualified for the Ukrainian National team for the Chess Olympiad 2026.
She secured an IM norm and earned a spot in the next FIDE Women's World Chess Cup.
At her peak mid-tournament, she was playing at a staggering performance rating of over 3000!
Her result drew comparisons with compatriot Roman Dehtiarov, who won the (open) European Individual Chess Championship in April at age 17 despite starting as the 126th seed in a 521-player field — making 2026 a remarkable year for young Ukrainian chess.

Free Swiss Manager Alternative | Open Source Chess Tournament Software

2026-06-05T03:15:11.159+08:00

Time to have a better and FREE version of Swiss Manager?

🧩 An open-source, free alternative to Swiss-Manager would democratize chess tournaments, eliminating cost barriers for grassroots clubs, reducing reliance on proprietary licensing, and enabling community-driven feature upgrades like seamless web integration.

            📌 VEGA limitation: We do have VEGA — but the free version supports up to only 20 players, which is severely limiting for real tournaments. A true FOSS alternative is long overdue.
        

Developing a robust, free, and open-source (FOSS) pairing program to rival Swiss-Manager would bring significant advantages to the global chess community.

⚠️ Over-reliance on a single maintainer — Swiss Manager's reliance on a single maintainer (Hans Herzog) creates significant bottlenecks, resulting in a Chess-Results server that is routinely overtaxed and "server busy" response. To make matters worse, despite a steep licensing fee of roughly RM 1000, the platform still serves intrusive ads. It begs the question: if the software is so expensive, why is ad clutter still necessary to keep it running?

✨ Why open-source pairing software wins

1 Cost Accessibility & Grassroots Growth

Lower Barrier to Entry: A ~RM 1000 is just too much for local school clubs, rural associations, or community organizers. Free software allows these groups to host professional, FIDE-rated tournaments without paying for software.
Broader Participation: Organizers could redirect their budgets toward venue rentals, prizes, and player development rather than administrative overhead.

2 Community Innovation & Modernization

Continuous Updates: Proprietary software often relies on a single developer or small team, resulting in slower updates. An open-source project can leverage a global community of volunteer programmers to add features quickly.

3 Localization & Customization

Tailored Formats: A FOSS tool can be freely modified by local federations (like the Malaysian Chess Federation) to handle custom scoring systems, unique unrated formats, or school leagues.
Multilingual Support: Open-source communities can quickly localize the user interface and rulesets into local languages. Imagine a Bahasa Melayu version.

4 Open Standards & Data Transparency

No "Vendor Lock-in": Swiss-Manager is deeply tied to the Chess-Results platform. Open-source solutions empower organizers to control their tournament data, host it on their own servers, and share it across platforms without restriction.
Community Auditing: Open-source pairing algorithms are transparent. If there are bugs or issues, the community can find and fix them immediately rather than waiting for an official patch from a commercial vendor.

With cost of paying for Swiss Manager out of the way, organisers can focus on other costs such as getting qualified arbiters, paying for tournament help etc.

⚡ Why the sudden call to action?

It's because AI has made this possible. Every Tom, Dick and Harry can code whatever they can imagine. And I am imagining a better Swiss Manager! 🚀

Modern LLMs and AI-assisted development radically lower the barrier to build sophisticated tournament management systems — from pairing engines to live result dashboards. The community no longer needs to wait for proprietary vendors; we can collaborate, fork, and build the future of chess tournament software today.

♟️ I am just watiing for someone to build the free, open‑source Swiss‑Manager killer.

```

Why do people call Divya Deshmukh "CEO" ?

2026-06-03T22:01:27.816+08:00

People call Indian Grandmaster Divya Deshmukh "CEO" as a playful, affectionate nickname within the chess community. It started as a meme by fans and popular chess channels (like ChessBase India) due to her composed, corporate-like demeanor during interviews and her sharp, business-like focus at the board.

The title is often used to highlight her "boss" mentality in major tournaments:

The Mastermind: It signifies how she controls games and outplays top opponents with clinical efficiency.
Fan Culture: The nickname is heavily utilized on platforms like YouTube and Reddit to describe her confident approach and authoritative style of play.
Trolling/Memes: Fans and commentators even use it humorously during livestreams when she turns the tables on opponents or "takes charge" of a tournament.

OK those were definitions pulled from Gemini AI and Google. I asked because I didn't understand why until today. So from now onwards this blog will also refer to her as CEO :)

Desperado Swindle by Shin Azwan

2026-05-31T08:47:04.647+08:00

I am reposting this article from Dec12, 2015 (link here) because I wanted to put this game in an annotated video on YouTube but cannot find it. Then the man himself, Shin Azwan, coincidentally posted a link to this old article on his Facebook. (YouTube video coming soon..)

So here it is again. The story and the game:

Normally I never give attention the the Challenger's section of the Penang Open but this swindle is too interesting to ignore.

It occured in the last round and I let you judge for yourself the following game:-

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. e3 g6 4. Nf3 Bg7 5. Bd3 O-O 6. O-O d5 7. Nc3 cxd4 8. exd4 Nc6 9. c5 Bg4 10. Be3 Bxf3 11. Qxf3 e5 12. dxe5 Nxe5 13. Qe2 d4 14. Rad1 dxe3 15. f4 Nxd3 16. Rxd3 Qa5 17. Qxe3 Ng4 18. Qf3 Qxc5+ 19. Kh1 Nf6 20. Rfd1 b5 21. b3 Rac8 22. h3 Rfe8 23. Kh2 a6 24. Ne2 Ne4 25. Rc1 Qf5 26. g4 Qe6 27. Rcd1 Ng5 28. fxg5 Qxe2+ 29. Qxe2 Rxe2+ 30. Kg3 Rxa2 31. b4 Be5+ 32. Kh4 Rc3 33. Rd8+ Kg7 34. Rg8+

As a result of this game Norazwan went on win the 17th prize (RM 300).

P/S: Norazwan also happens to be a full time coach working in Kedah.

Update : He is now a qualified IA as well as active as a chess promoter, broadcasting live matches all over Malaysia as well as overseas in Indonesia and Philippines.

National rating is important

2026-05-28T17:44:43.207+08:00

National rating systems remain important because they serve goals that FIDE ratings cannot fully cover: they support mass participation, local development, and flexible experimentation in a way a global system never will. Malaysia, unfortunately, has done away with national rating. I know, there is MCF rating that serves to replaced the abolished previous national rating. But MCF rating is slightly different.

But let's discuss why this national rating is very much needed:

1. Accessibility and entry into rated chess

Many national systems are designed to give a rating quickly, sometimes after just one or a few games, which is much more welcoming for beginners and casual club players than FIDE's higher entry threshold and stricter event requirements.
This fast entry makes it easier to motivate school kids, new adults, and rural players who may never travel to a FIDE-rated event but still want a concrete measure of progress.
There is a fee to be borne by either the player of the country chess federation to have their tournament rated.

2. Supporting local and small tournaments

FIDE rating regulations impose requirements on arbiters, reporting formats, and time controls; these can be overkill for small, low-budget or experimental events, especially in developing chess regions.
There are so many local tournaments that are very informal and never qualify to meet any of the formal FIDE requirement.
A national list lets organizers rate local weekend events, club leagues, school circuits, or "fun" formats that don't fully fit FIDE criteria, keeping those events meaningful without extra bureaucracy or fees.

3. Development pathway inside the country

National ratings create a clear internal ladder: school → district → state/region → national level, even before players are strong or active enough to appear meaningfully in the FIDE list.
Federations can use their own ratings for local seeding, qualification spots, and training squad selection, tuned to their specific player pool rather than global rating inflation/deflation patterns.

4. Inclusion and fairness where FIDE access is limited

In many places, players have few opportunities to play FIDE events due to cost, travel distance, or limited arbiters, so a pure FIDE-only system creates inequality between big-city players and those in smaller towns.
A robust national list gives those underserved groups a fair way to gain recognition and track their level, instead of being "invisible" just because they cannot reach FIDE-rated tournaments.

5. Federation control, incentives, and community building

With their own rating database, federations can build local incentives: awards for most active players, biggest rating gainers, and most active organizers, which help grow the national ecosystem, not just a handful of FIDE aspirants.
National lists also strengthen federation membership and governance; ratings and event access often tie into membership, giving players a stake and a voice in how chess is run in their country.

6. Complement, not competitor, to FIDE

National and FIDE ratings are usually independent but can be run in parallel: the same event can be both nationally and FIDE rated, or only one, depending on goals and practical constraints.
This dual structure lets federations protect their grassroots while still aligning their top events and strongest players with the international system, combining global prestige with local relevance.

In short, FIDE ratings are essential for international comparison and titles, but national ratings are essential for broad participation, local fairness, and sustainable chess development inside each country. MCF rating is not the same as the previous cheaper National Rating but it's the best and closest we got.

A better chess-results.com

2026-05-27T21:21:03.081+08:00

Well according to me anyway.

I always hated chess-results final crosstables because it only gives the basic information like standings and total scores of the winners. I want to know who each player played with at a glance without clicking more links.

Hence I came out with my own web app - "Catur Skor". It takes the results and let's you mouse over the name to see all the names of the opponent that particular player has played against and what is the result.

mouse over reveals opponents and results

Ok, if you want, it's easier to just go to a sample page to see it in action here:

https://catur.org/skor/?fed=MAS&tnr=tnr1402077

To try out for yourself go to:

https://catur.org/skor

Online face to face tournaments

2026-05-25T10:53:08.586+08:00

I am intrigued by a unique tournament seen on Facebook organised by a Philippines organiser. It functioned like a typical amateur chess tournament you find at weekends with the sole difference phones are used instead of physical chess boards and clocks.

This concept is similiar to EWC (Esport World Championship) for chess but that tourney used PCs and mouse and was high staked, high prize event.

The amateur version is less flamboyant and expensive instead relying on the player's own phones. One interesting aspect is there is great costs savings here. No rental of chess sets or chess clocks. You don't need many arbiters, one or two is enough to ensure rules are followed. You do not need pairing arbiters as systems from Chess.com, LiChess or PlayChess is used.

You can argue this is no different from playing at home on your bed against online opponent. The difference here is organisers feel safer to put money or trophies because anti-cheating is built in and one requirement is that you are face to face with your opponent.

I don't play face-to-face chess (OTB) much nowadays but I would definitely turn up for such an "online face-to-face" tourney.

You can structure it like a swiss tournament or you can follow the eSport route like this:

Breakdown of this steps:

The core concept

No boards, no clocks, no arbiters walking the aisles - well maybe at least one arbiter to walk around to see no engines are used. Every player brings a phone. The platform — Lichess, Chess.com, or PlayChess — becomes the arbiter, the clock, the board, the pairing system, and the anti-cheat engine simultaneously.

Online qualifier phase

Registration opens on the platform of choice. Players get assigned to a time-control bracket — bullet, blitz, or rapid — and the platform seeds them by their live ELO or rapid/blitz rating. Nobody needs to do anything manually. When a round starts, the server pairs players and pushes the game link directly to both phones. The players just tap "accept" and play.

Time control specifics matter a lot here:

Bullet (1+0 or 2+1) is the most spectator-friendly online but requires impeccable pre-move discipline on a phone screen — fat-finger errors become real tactical events. Blitz (3+2 or 5+0) is the sweet spot: fast enough to be exciting, slow enough for phone interfaces to be reliable. Rapid (10+0 or 15+10) is better suited to serious qualifiers or the later bracket stages where deliberate play matters more than speed.

Swiss rounds

Swiss is good here because it doesn't eliminate anyone early, maximises the number of games each player gets, and produces a clean ranked leaderboard at the end. Even weak players get to enjoy the rounds and not kicked out immediate.

Tiebreaks like Sonneborn–Berger (SB) or Buchholz score, both calculated automatically by the platform, resolve ties. No arbiter needed. The platform posts live standings between rounds.

Anti-cheat is non-trivial in a phone-based format. Chess.com's anti-cheat engine and Lichess's Irwin/Kaladin systems flag suspicious move correlation with engine lines in real time. And that would be more than enough. Supplementary rules — all games must be played at the venue for the knockout stage, phones must be visible on camera, no earbud use, etc.

Qualifying for the live stage

After Swiss rounds conclude, the top 8 or top 16 players — depending on the event scale — receive invitations to the live stage event ala esports!

Live knockout stage

With a nice big monitor and chairs for spectators to watch - way better than the typical thing that happens at any local tournament where a huge group of people crowd around one table suffocating the players.

The spectator experience:

The evaluation bar swings dramatically during tactical complications - of course monitors placed facing the spectators but behind the players.

I am posting it here first because I know such a format is easily picked up as the overhead is low and the rewards is high. When (not if) this becomes popular, I can say "See - I called it first" :)

What is "CaturVerse"?

2026-05-25T08:36:46.829+08:00

CaturVerse (found at catur.org) is Malaysia's Chess Gateway — a community-driven hub for chess enthusiasts in Malaysia and beyond. The word CaturVerse essentially means "Chess Universe".

Here's what the platform offers:

CaturNews — the latest headlines from across the Malaysian chess circuit.
CaturCal — the definitive Malaysian chess tournament calendar and event dates.
CaturDB — a select database of games played in Malaysia
CaturBlogs — expert strategies and curated Malaysian chess community writings.
CaturFestival — a hub for local chess festivals, large-scale news, and celebrations.
CaturAkademi — structured lessons, daily puzzles, and an official learning syllabus (available at academy.catur.org).

It's essentially a one-stop platform for the Malaysian chess community — covering news, events, learning, game databases, and community blogging all in one place.

It's main purpose to exist:

Malaysia historically had fragmented chess information spread across social media, club pages, and separate organizers. CaturVerse appears to be aiming to unify those resources into a more modern and searchable infrastructure for players, coaches, organizers, and fans.

Alireza Ankle Injury : Continued play and Final Withdrawal

2026-05-23T10:17:52.194+08:00

Tournament: Super Chess Classic Romania 2026 · Grand Chess Tour · Bucharest

The Injury and Attempts to Continue

Alireza Firouzja suffered an ankle injury after Round 3 of the Super Chess Classic Romania 2026 (part of the Grand Chess Tour) in Bucharest. The exact circumstances of how the injury occurred were not publicly disclosed by tournament organizers, though GM Anish Giri mentioned after their Round 3 game that both players were "very shaky" during the match and that he heard Firouzja "even fell over".

Fortunately, medical evaluation confirmed the ankle was not broken or fractured. However, the injury was severe enough that Firouzja could not play his scheduled Round 4 game against Fabiano Caruana.

Accommodation Efforts

This impressed me about the organisers on how they made really extraordinary efforts to allow Firouzja to continue playing. After consulting with his doctor, team and the organizers, Firouzja decided to play from a specially arranged hotel room with the agreement of his opponents and in the presence of an arbiter. Extraordinary and of course made good chess content for the media as pictures of a grandmaster playing from a bed in a high stakes chess tournament is rare and only 2 other incidents in the history of chess come close like Tal playing a friendly game vs Fischer in a hospital bed and Tony Miles playing on a bed because of a back injury.

For his Round 5 match against Javokhir Sindarov, Firouzja played from bed wearing a T-shirt and sports shorts, with his injured right foot elevated on a pillow and wearing a protective boot. A small table with a chess board and clock was positioned in front of him while Sindarov sat across from him in the hotel room. Despite being under serious pressure throughout the game, Firouzja managed to salvage a draw.

🔄 Rescheduled clash: The postponed Round 4 game against Caruana was rescheduled for the rest day (Tuesday). Firouzja again appeared wearing a protective boot and played from bed in the hotel setup. However, he made a critical mistake on move 37 and lost the game.
Fabiano Caruana later commented on the surreal experience:
“It had kind of vibes of a World Championship match, except my opponent was on the bed, in a cast.”

Final Withdrawal

After completing five rounds with a score of 1 out of 5, Firouzja made the difficult decision to withdraw before Round 6. In his statement, he said:

"Unfortunately, due to an ankle injury sustained during the event, I have decided to withdraw from the tournament. Thank you to the organisers for their support and accommodations, and thank you to everyone following the games. I wish the players and organisers the best for the rest of the tournament."

Since Firouzja withdrew after Round 5, his past results counted toward tournament standings, and his remaining opponents were awarded forfeit wins with a full point. Tournament officials thanked Firouzja for his efforts to continue competing despite the injury and wished him a speedy recovery.

Controversy Over Withdrawal

FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky criticized the withdrawal as "unfair to Praggnanandhaa and Sindarov", suggesting that players who faced Firouzja in his injured state may have been disadvantaged compared to those who received forfeit points after his withdrawal.

The incident sparked debate about fairness, medical accommodations, and tournament regulations.

My 2 cents: it's a delicate balance between player welfare and competitive integrity. And if given to the chess community I think it would be 50-50 split. I agree with Sutovsky here in that none of the people who got a free point would have gotten it that easily against the World no. 9 (draw maybe but not all wins).

Naroditsky Memorial Rapid and Blitz with huge stars

2026-05-22T15:45:16.683+08:00

From the video :

The inaugural Naroditsky Memorial Rapid and Blitz shows that there is incredibly strong group of grandmasters gathered in Charlotte from July 3rd to 5th, 2026. Also it is a magnificent tribute to Danya.

FunMasterMike's breakdown highlights the top 7 elite grandmasters and fan favorites confirmed for the main field:

Hikaru Nakamura [00:35] – World No. 2, lethal rapid/blitz speed demon, and top seed.
Fabiano Caruana [04:52] – The calculation machine and multi-time US Champion.
Dommaraju Gukesh (Javakhir) [08:07] – The current World Championship Challenger keeping up a fiercely active competitive schedule.
Hans Niemann [10:33] – Ready to bring maximum tension and headlines directly to Charlotte.
Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus [13:21] – The phenomenal teenage prodigy tearing past the 2700 ELO mark.
Nihal Sarin [15:21] – A world-class speed demon and ultimate blitz specialist.
Robert Hess [17:11] – In a highly anticipated twist, Danya’s long-time streaming and broadcast partner is coming out of competitive retirement just to play in this memorial!

The Bonus Field [19:38]: As if the top seven weren't enough, Mike also dropped a massive list of additional heavy hitters confirmed to play, including:

Wesley So
Leinier Dominguez
Boris Gelfand (Former World Championship Challenger)
Ruslan Ponomariov (Former FIDE World Champion)
Alexei Shirov (Legendary attacking genius and former Candidate)
Andy Woodward (The brilliant young American GM)

There will also be a dedicated Creators Event [20:00] running parallel to the main tournament featuring 10 prominent chess personalities.

I don't follow chess much nowadays but this event will certainly be in my calendar and I will look out coverage on in, which should be good.

The Rise of Diajeng Theresa Singgih

2026-05-07T11:37:00.007+08:00

Ok potong gaji for missing one content worth posting last September 2025 of the Malaysian Chess Festival.

I didn't even get a picture of her during the festival event at KL Gateway where she showed up multiple times presumably to see how her student was getting on. Here's some old pix of her...

Younger sister of WGM Irene Sukhandar - WIM Diajeng Theresa Singgih was here as I bumped into her at the start of the festival. Was surprised that she was not participating in any of the festival events at all. She was here to coach her Malaysian student. Well that was all I got from her when I talked to her. I assume that the student was a remote student and the festival was a chance for a face-to-face with the coach.

The May 2026 FIDE rating list shows Diajeng Theresa Singgih is no longer just a "prospect" but a dominant force in Southeast Asian chess. Her climb from 7th place in April to 2nd place in May among Indonesian women is a more than impressive.

The Numbers: A "Quantum Leap"

Current Rating: 2308 (Standard FIDE Rating).
Rank (Women/INA): 2nd, trailing only IM Medina Warda Aulia (2355).
April-to-May Jump: She gained nearly 200 Elo points in a single month after a whirlwind of international competition, effectively overtaking seasoned veterans like WGM Chelsie Monica.

Also note that her older sister is not in the list because she was inactive for a year.

The "India Effect": Sharpening the Blade

Following in the footsteps of Grandmasters who seek the "trial by fire" found in the Indian chess circuit, Diajeng spent significant time in India between 2025 and 2026.

Playing Indiais crazy!
India is known for having "underrated" youngsters. Playing there is notoriously difficult for one’s rating. It takes courage and confidence for anyone trying gain ELO points playing in the shark infested waters of India.
Notable Scalps: During her 2026 run, she secured a stunning victory against GM Pouria Darini (2458) and a solid draw against Vignesh B (2222), proving she can hold her own against much higher-rated male opponents.

The European Tour

Her "solo travel" across Europe—a rare and courageous move for a young Indonesian player—was the catalyst for her recent success.

Serbia Success: It was in Serbia where she secured her second WGM (Woman Grandmaster) norm. Three norms are required for the title; Diajeng is now just one norm and a sustained 2300 rating away from becoming Indonesia's next Woman Grandmaster.
Financial Independence: Unlike many who wait for federation funding, Diajeng reinvests her earnings from prize money, coaching, and commentary back into her career. That's a big commitment and investment to one's own chess development.

A New Era for Indonesian Women's Chess

National Impact: Her 2308 rating doesn't just place her 2nd among women; it places her 22nd overall in Indonesia (including men), a rare feat for a female player at just 22 years old.

Fun Fact: Diajeng is also a prominent figure in the digital chess community. Known by her handle @chezzgirl04 on Chess.com and active on Instagram, she bridges the gap between traditional professional chess and the modern "streaming/content" era, making her one of the most relatable ambassadors for the sport in Indonesia.

The oldest pix I have of Diajeng is this one when she was 10 years old in 2014.

That just shows how long chess has been part of her life! Of course she has been "in" chess a couple of years before this.

She is now 22 years old.

How Chess Patterns Matter to Making a Smart Chess AI

2026-04-28T12:43:00.002+08:00

How Chess Patterns Matter to Making a Smart Chess AI

So what if you got the strongest chess engines, the best databases like the latest Chessbase 26 with access to millions of games from Megabase 26. But these are tools accessible by any chess players as long as they have the money to get them. And they've been around forever.

The evolution of chess is stagnant. Databases and chess engines. Of course we have the chess authors and chess coaches peddling their books and chess courses from Chessables etc. Don't get me wrong, there is potentially tremendous value in those mediums - no questions about that.

It's the new technology that is lacking. For decades, the chess industry has prioritized "brute force" calculation—engines like Stockfish that see 40 moves ahead but lack the vocabulary to explain why a position is winning.

What I feel is missing is computers understanding deeper. We need "smart" AI—one that truly assists human improvement—requires a shift from pure numerical evaluation to tactical pattern recognition.

That just means AI that recognises what is a fork, pin, skewer, discovered attack, double check, back rank weakness, colour weakness and double attack. Wait what? Don't computers already do that ? The simple answer is no. They can pin point which move in a game is a blunder or was brilliant but aren't that great at just recognising if the winning theme was a double check.

Beyond the Centipawn: The Language of Logic

Traditional engines see a board as a mathematical value, often expressed in "centipawns" (e.g., $+1.5$ ). While precise, this is a "black box" for the average player. A pattern-aware engine, such as the architecture behind ChessGrammar, transforms this math into a geometric map. Yes, there is only ONE project that does this as far as I know, called ChessGrammar (you can Google it to find out more).

By identifying the "grammar" of the game—forks, pins, skewers, and back-rank vulnerabilities—an AI can categorize positions instead of just scoring them.

This classification is the "missing link" in chess tech. When an engine identifies a discovered attack, it isn't just finding a winning move; it is identifying a specific logical theme. For a developer, this means the AI can provide structured data (like JSON) that tells a front-end application exactly what is happening. For the player, it means the feedback is no longer "play Be7," but rather "Be7 works because the Rook on d1 is pinning your Queen."

Patterns are the Secret Sauce!

Personalized Training Data: Imagine now you can pull out your database of games and ask the computer to list the games where there was a winning fork, but you missed it.

Machines that can "See"!

The smartest Chess AI for me isn't the one that wins every game—it’s the one that understands the shapes of the struggle, lets me learn from it.

For the moment, ChessGrammar is closed source, although the programmer allows others to use it via API calls. That is not ideal as it seems that it is the effort of just one person, and his source code is personal, and I assume it is not shareable.

Ideally, someone should make a similar project but open-source it so that it can be improved on by multiple software engineers around the world.

AI Chess Coach closer to reality

2026-04-08T14:56:00.005+08:00

For a couple of years I've been playing with the idea of AI chess coaches.

Why?

I don't have the money to pay a real coach! Call me cheap but I want a machine to teach me.

Of course there are materials out there one can use to improve like books, interactive digital courses like Chessable etc.

But these are general purpose marketed for profit to fit the general chess learning public. Everyone will agree with me if you had a personal coach, there would be leaps and bounds in chess improvement.

That's where a digital coach comes in. It's personal. It's available 24/7/ It's adaptable, learning from your good and bad habits. The ideal and perfect coach. And also improbable as if it was possible, someone would have already created in this fast moving age of AI tech.

I've posted many #syioksendiri posts on why it's not possible. At least not yet. But will be possible in the near future.

I think the future is now.

My initial thought was that you need a specialised Chess LLM - not those silly general purpose LLM like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude etc which is great at many things but horrible at chess. Many still play illegal moves and cheat.

A new LLM based on chess would have been too expensive in terms of hardware, time and monetary costs.

The solution would be to use a free local LLM and do "fine tuning" - teaching it all it needs to know about chess so it can become good enough to commentate like a digital version of GothamChess.

Think of it. You have GothamChess (Levy Rosman) to explain games to you in his highly effective and engaging style. You can stop him at any time and ask about the position. He tells you all he knows about the position, what goes in the mind of both black and white, plans etc. He is "just" an IM but as a teacher, I think he is better than most Grandmasters. I just want a digital version of him.

How?
By investing in the right hardware and choosing a good LLM.

Hardware Requirements

To achieve this, hardware investment will be on GPU VRAM.

The "Sweet Spot": A setup with dual RTX 3090, 4090, or the newer 5090 cards (providing 24–48GB of VRAM) is ideal for running 8-bit QLoRA (Quantized Low-Rank Adaptation). This allows to fine-tune a powerful model like Gemma-4-31B, which is considered the "gold standard" for the linguistic nuance required for grandmaster-level commentary.
Entry Level: A single RTX 4090 (24GB) can handle 4-bit LoRA, which is faster but may result in slightly less "fluent" coaching.

The Hybrid Architecture

It is critical to understand that even the best fine-tuned LLMs can hallucinate tactics or illegal moves. Therefore, the most effective feasibility path is a hybrid system:

Chess Engine (Stockfish): Acts as the "source of truth," generating evaluation scores, best lines, and identifying tactical threats like blunders or forks.
Fine-tuned LLM (Gemma 4): Acts as the "translator," taking the engine's raw data and converting it into enthusiastic, "Gotham-style" commentary that explains the why behind moves in plain language.

With this setup, the AI can perform advanced coaching tasks:

Interactive Quizzing: The system can be designed to pause mid-game and ask, "What would you do here?", followed by an explanation of why the user's choice was correct or a mistake.
Narrative Structure: Instead of move-by-move data, the AI can split a game into opening, middlegame, and endgame phases, summarizing the "narrative" of the match just like a human coach.
Psychological Insight: By fine-tuning on human commentary, the AI can point out "panic" moves or "desperate" central lunges, making the learning process engaging rather than purely mathematical.

Training, Training, Training!

By leveraging open-source datasets from Lichess or Chess.com and using parameter-efficient tuning (QLoRA), we can (hopefully) create a professional-grade coach that runs fully offline on our own machine.

We'll feed it PDFs with high quality chess analysis and commentary and of course YouTube chess commentaries from top commentators like GothamChess and Sagar Shah (Chessbase India). I would not even to explain how"magical" this process takes place and many AI expert fail to explain how the machine learn from just looking at examples. Only that it works!!

For example Suno was fed with tons of songs and in the end, it learnt how to compose songs better than most humans. MidJourney was fed with the world's best photographers pictures and artists and it can now mimic photos and art that few can differentiate if it was from a professional photographer or artists - and the examples can go on and one. Suffice to say, given enough example data, the AI can mimic the expert to a high degree!

Of course it's going to take an investment in a PC with a good GPU or maybe some rented time on hosted GPUs at Amazon servers. This is the least of it! The biggest investment is time. The humungous amount of time to train, since we are not billionaires or startup and cannot afford data centres to create and learn from training data with expensive servers.

But the thing is, it is now feasible and possible.

Chess Coaches - your job is safe from AI, or is it??

2026-03-18T14:57:00.010+08:00

Of course we know that ChatGPT and other LLMs are horrible at playing chess. So fears of AI computers taking over the jobs of chess coaching is distant and not even asked.

As a programmer, I can say the situation is different and more dire for the software development career scene. Junior positions are wiped out and many are on their toes on what skills to pick up to ensure they are not made obsolete.

Chess engines are too strong as even the weakest modern chess engine can actualy beat all, living or other wise, world chess champions hands down. LLMs like Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT are breaking barriers daily with crazy advancements. Despite that, chess coaching is a profession dominated by humans and AI will never threathen this profession.

But still, at the moment there is no threat. I can't say that for sure in future though....

The tools are there to make an effective AI coach. Just that the integration of these tools are not there yet and the effort to do this is non existant. Not at the moment anyway.

But if there was, this is how I would go about it.

The four integration problems that need solving

1. From evaluation to explanation

A chess engine gives you a centipawn evaluation and a best line. That is not coaching. The key integration step is routing that output through an LLM with enough context — who the player is, what rating they're at, what mistakes they've made before — to produce a genuinely pedagogical explanation. Not "Qxf7 was the best move, eval +2.3" but "You played Rd1 because you were focused on the open file, which is correct thinking — but you missed that their bishop had a long diagonal you didn't close. This is the same type of oversight you showed in games 3 and 7 this month: prioritizing activity over safety." That kind of synthesis is now possible by feeding structured engine output into an LLM with a rich system prompt containing the student's error history. Lichess and Chess.com already expose APIs for game retrieval. The glue is buildable today.

2. Error taxonomy and the spaced repetition layer

Human coaches know that blunders cluster. A student who repeatedly hangs pieces in time pressure has a different problem than one who misjudges pawn structure in endgames. The second integration challenge is building a classifier that tags every mistake by type — tactical (hanging piece, missed fork, calculation error), positional (weak square, poor piece coordination), psychological (time pressure, fatigue patterns), or conceptual (misunderstanding a specific opening or endgame principle). Once mistakes are tagged and stored per player, the system can do something a human coach struggles to do at scale: implement genuine spaced repetition for chess concepts, surfacing targeted puzzles on exactly the themes the player is weakest in, at exactly the intervals where forgetting is most likely. Anki has proven this works for knowledge. Applied to chess motifs with engine-curated puzzles, it becomes a powerful learning loop.

3. The curriculum generation problem

A good coach doesn't just react to mistakes — they have a road map. The third integration challenge is building a curriculum engine that looks at a player's full game history, identifies the ceiling (what is actually preventing rating improvement right now), and constructs a learning sequence. This is solvable with LLMs that are prompted to reason over structured player profiles: ELO history, opening repertoire weaknesses, endgame conversion rates, time management data. The output is a prioritized learning plan — "spend the next two weeks on rook endgames because you're converting won positions at only 40% accuracy" — with specific resources, puzzle sets, and model games attached. This is essentially a recommender system with a coaching persona layered on top.

4. The emotional and motivational layer

This is the hardest part to replicate and the most honest reason human coaches won't be replaced soon. Motivation, frustration after a loss, competitive anxiety, knowing when to push and when to ease up — these require genuine attunement to a person that LLMs can approximate but not yet deliver reliably. The realistic design here is a triage model: the AI handles the high-frequency, low-stakes interactions (daily puzzle review, game analysis, progress check-ins), and flags sessions to a human coach when the student shows signs of frustration, plateau, or motivational difficulty. The human coach's time is then concentrated on exactly what a human does best — the relationship, the competition preparation, the mental game. This makes the human coach more effective per hour, not redundant.

Also, today there are effective commercial LMS (Learning Management System) digital and online. Integrate that with what we have and we have a system to track and record in detail, students progress, report it, suggest areas of weakness and improvement etc. Just that there is no commercial Chess based LMS (yet).

What practical integration looks like today

The realistic near-term implementation is a platform that ingests a player's Lichess or Chess.com game archive, runs engine analysis through a Stockfish API, classifies errors with a fine-tuned classifier or a prompted LLM, maintains a structured player profile, and delivers coaching via a conversational interface where the student can ask "why did I lose this game?" or "what should I study this week?" and receive answers that are genuinely personalized. That platform does not require new AI research. It requires good product engineering, thoughtful prompt design, and a database schema that tracks player history over time.

The deeper opportunity — and the one that would genuinely change chess education — is building this at scale for the millions of club players who will never afford a human grandmaster coach but who could benefit enormously from consistent, intelligent, personalized feedback. That is a real gap, and the tools to close it are, as you said, already there.

Of course, like I categerised this post under "brainfart", almost as a joke. It is not a serious post. Heck, none of this will come to past, ever.

Or so you think !! :)