One amazing thing about Sindarov’s Candidates run is his clock usage. He gets a big lead on the clock from moves 13-17 and then (on average) has 20 minutes more than his opponents until move 40, while no other player has a lead on the clock compared to their opponents after move 20 #chess

Sindarov has a big lead in the Candidates, but how can someone catch up to him? chessenginelab.substack.com/p/candidates...

Sindarov and Caruana won in the 5th round of the candidates, but Sindarov is now the favourite according to my model, as his win with black against Nakamura was less likely than Caruana’s white win against Blübaum. You can follow along with my model here: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/candidates...

The women‘s candidates is wide open, with Muzychuk und Assaubayeva leading with +1, but the pre-tournament faviourite Zhu Jiner has the best winning odds, according to my model, despite being half a point behind

Here is how the winning chances for each player have developed over the course of the first 3 rounds in the Candidates. You can follow along with my model here: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/candidates...

I ran my Elo based prediction model for the Candidates tournament. You can find more details here: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/candidates...

This is a fun study by H. Holm, 1958. White to play and win

I've looked at how the 6th move for white in the Najdorf has changed over the years. It's really interesting to see how different trends emerged over time I've also looked at positions leading up to the Najdorf in my post: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/najdorf-st...

Are there any stats about the Candidates you’d be interested in? I’ll take a look back at the previous editions of the tournament and will also review the upcoming event in the next two weeks

The penultimate round of the Prague masters changed the prediction quite a bit, with Abdusattorov winning his game and taking the tournament lead as van Foreest lost. Now Abdusattorov is given a 60% chance to win the tournament

Van Foreest, Abdusattorov and Navara drew their last 2 games in the Prague masters, but my model gives van Foreest now much better winning chances, as he held draw today against Abdusattorov, who is half a point behind him in the standings

I ran my tournament prediction on the Prague masters, and it’s interesting to see how the winning chances change after each round

I enjoyed this puzzle, black to play and win

After working on a prediction of individual games, I now made a simple model to predict the winner of tournaments. open.substack.com/pub/chesseng...

This puzzle isn't too difficult, but I really enjoyed the solution. Black to play and win #chess

A fun study by Grigoryev, 1928. White to play and win

In my latest post on Substack, I look into the prediction of the outcome of a chess game open.substack.com/pub/chesseng...

This position is from a blitz game of mine, white to play and mate in 2

As usual, I made a visual recap of the Wijk aan Zee tournament, this time I also included some opening statistics from the event: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/wijk-2026

For a new project, I looked at the score of 2700 players against various other ratings over the last 10 years with both colours. I also show the score which is predicted by the Elo formula and it’s interesting to see how big the impact of the colour is

My league game today ended up being a quick win, after my opponent made some dubious decisions in the opening. It still feels good to win such a clean game

Check out my most recent post, where I try to analyse the performance of players in different endgame types open.substack.com/pub/chesseng...

I‘ve also made a visual recap for the world blitz championships open.substack.com/pub/chesseng...

I've just finished my visual recap of the world rapid championship: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/world-rapi...

In my latest post, I looked at the relative number of forcing moves for different players. As one would expect, more attacking players generally play more forcing moves. You can read the full post here: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/forcing-mo...

While many top players already got eliminated in the world cup, there were fewer upsets in this year’s thirst three rounds compared to the previous two world cups

I had my first league game of the season. It was a very complicated game and I certainly made some mistakes along the way, but I'm happy that I kept it together in time trouble and I managed to win #chesspunks

After a busy summer, I finally managed to publish another blog post, where I worked on an improvement of my piece activity score. Check it out here: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/piece-acti...

This is from a rapid game of mine. I missed Black's winning move, can you find it? #chesspunks #chess

That's a fun study by von Holzhausen, 1900. White to play and win #chess #chesspunks

This position is from a blitz game of mine. White has sacrificed a rook, how do they continue the attack? #chesspunks #chess

For an upcoming post, I looked at the score for different rating advantages in different time controls and it’s interesting that the score of the higher rated player plateaus in rapid around a 300 point rating advantage. I’m unsure why this is the case

This study is by V. Bron, 1948. White to play and win #chesspunks #chess

I found this simple tactic quite nice. Black to play and win #chess #chesspunks

Black to play and win. What did a young Capablanca play here? #chess #chesspunks

This study is by E. Paoli, 1949. White to play and win #chess #chesspunks

This position is from a study by T. Gorghiyev, 1929. Currently it is Black to move. How can Black win the h-pawn and how can White win the game anyway? #chess

I’m planning to make a recap post about Norway Chess. Let me know if there are any stats you (don’t) want to see. My plan is to make it similar to my post about Wijk aan Zee this from year: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/tata-steel...

This position is from a blitz game of mine. White has many winning moves, but only one forced mate. Can you find it? #chesspunks #chess

Carlsen is most famous for his ability to squeeze out wins from drawn endgames. But I've never seen any data to back this up, so I took a closer look at it in my most recent post: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/carlsen-en...

I had this position in a blitz game. I thought that White had a win but I didn't spot the nice idea. Can you find White's winning line? #chesspunks #chess

White to play and mate in 2. The problem is by Healey, 1903 #chesspunks #chess

Black to play and win. The solution isn't difficult but I found it quite nice #chesspunks

I analysed the chess 960 games played with classical time controls. As one would expect, many mistakes happen from the first moves but interestingly this number goes down as the games progress probably since the positions "normalise" Check out my post: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/chess960-q...

I looked at the score of some more openings across different Lichess ratings, here are d4-openings. The Grünfeld looks really interesting since it scores much better on the 1400-1800 level than any others. You can read my full post here: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/scores-of-...

I'm currently working on a post looking at White's score in different openings across Lichess ratings. It's interesting to see that when White plays 1.e4 at lower levels, they only score well against 1...e5 and worse against all other common Black responses #chesspunks #chess

This is a beautiful tactic from the game Paikidze-Lee from the American Cup. White to play and win #chesspunks #chess

I recently looked at the rating improvement of three generations of top chess players. It's interesting to see how the big rating jumps happen at younger ages. You can read more here: chessenginelab.substack.com/p/rise-of-ge...

I had an interesting league game on the weekend with some instructive moments. White played a gambit I didn't know so I was under pressure from the start. Here white just played 11.Nb5 how would you respond? #chesspunks

This isn't too difficult but the solution is nice. Black to play and win #chesspunks #chess