Chess Club Live Blog

  For nearly two decades, Magnus Carlsen has been chess's Superman. The world's number one seemed immune to the mistakes that destroy ordinary grandmasters. He survived lost positions, escaped tactical disasters, and squeezed victories from endgames that everyone else would have signed off as draws. His opponents didn't just have to outplay him—they had to survive him. But every Superman has a Kryptonite. And at Norway Chess 2026, Magnus Carlsen appears to have found his. The latest chapter in a shocking tournament came when India's Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa handed Carlsen a second classical defeat in the same event. Worse still, the Norwegian's downfall came in a manner that would have been unthinkable during his peak years: Carlsen marched his king into a forced mating net and collapsed under pressure. For a player famous for seeing everything, the sight was almost surreal. The Fall of the Invincible Carlsen's tournament began badly and has only grown worse. A...

 "Did I get 31 in 1 minute? I got 31 in 1 minute, I wasn't even paying attention..." - Hans Niemann I was on the fourth live stream that week with Hans Niemann. He was trying to beat the Puzzle Rush world record. "I got 62, I'm not going to break the world record tonight folks!" And with that, Hans hastily ended the stream. He pinged me on DM afterwards, wanting to know how I found his show. I told him it was awesome as usual and that I'd be following the next day. Hans Niemann is a precocious talent and is bursting with energy. When I got to know him he was a chess streamer and a very hardworking one at that. He would do a 6 hour stream, sign off to study chess then catch some sleep, all interspersed with school work. He was an IM and had ambitions to become a grandmaster but this was not his central focus. On Facebook I had a community of 250,000 which he seemed mildly impressed with and he was interested in engaging with them.. I connected with his da...

Super Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura is one of the most gifted chess grandmasters there ever was. He grew up in the online chess slums playing blitz and bullet like a God. He is easily the best chess player at speed alive today. Having said all of that Hikaru is a very divisive character. The actions of his online team led to the Chess Drama earlier this year. Hikaru probably sees himself as a comic book hero like a chess superman but he has a chain of Kryptonite in the form of one Magnus Carlsen, the chess world champion. Hikaru Nakamura believes he is the reincarnation of Bobby Fischer. Let's just pause, Fischer was pretty much the perfect player, a gentleman at the board, equally good in tactical melees as stodgy strategic binds. Fischer had the emotional intelligence to realize being petulant on the board only helped his opponents. Hikaru hasn't learned that lesson yet. Hikaru is nowhere close. I am being kind, Hikaru is as far away from being Fischer as I am from being Hika...

 Play Magnus is now the most powerful force in the chess universe. Their CEO and Chess Superman, has acquired a lot of cool chess assets, these consist of the New In Chess business, Chessable, and employing several high profile chess content creators. What is the Play Magnus corporate strategy? I have not got the slightest clue, I guess if you buy up all the good people who create content then your competition has nothing.  Play Magnus has floated on the stock market and is the first chess company to have had a successful IPO. This is surprising given that Chessbase and Chess.com were market leaders for so long and basically sat on their market monopolies for so long without capitalising on it to go to an IPO. What is slightly weird is Chess.com is still courting Magnus Carlsen by paying him to play in their august online chess competitions. Don't they realise he is their competition? Penny hasn't dropped yet. Chessbase is fine they don't really want chess world domination ...