Chess Club Live Blog

 "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...

 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 ...