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  • The Best Coffee Break Games That Keep Your Brain Active – Tech Digest

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    Whether you’re taking a break from work or sitting down for a moment before you complete the rest of the housework, we all need a little time to recharge during the day. However, we don’t want to relax so much that getting back into the swing of things is going to be even more difficult. As such, it’s a good idea to find ways to keep the brain active and engaged, even while being able to take your mind off the task for a while. For that reason, we’re going to look at a few games that can become your breaktime rituals.

    Word Puzzles

    If you’re able to fit a little meaningful benefit into your breaks, without feeling like you’re putting yourself to work, then that can be the perfect way to make sure that you stay switched on and can easily get back to work. Daily word puzzles like Wordle are great for this, rewarding your logic and deduction, activating your pattern recognition and memory, and even helping you expand your vocabulary if you play them enough. These games are perfect for those who prefer the feeling of really solving something, compared to the more endless or repeating games that we’ll look at below, allowing you some sense of accomplishment to lift your mood before you get back into the day.

    Sudoku And Number Puzzles

    While they operate much like word puzzles in that they have a definite end and a win state that you’re trying to aim for, mini brain puzzles, be it Sudoku, math teasers, or otherwise, tend to engage the brain at a slightly slower rate. Because they take a little longer to solve, at least, they encourage you to settle down for a session of quiet focus, engaging the brain’s problem-solving centers, and encouraging you to develop strategic methods with forward planning to find the best solutions. Of course, you can add the pressure of a timer if you want, and some people do that to increase the difficulty when they get used to Sudoku puzzles, making them effective as either quick mental resets or longer, deeper focus sessions.

    Solitaire

    Card games are an excellent way to reset the brain, especially if you want to get away from the computer screen while you’re at it. These games work well because they rely on inherently familiar patterns, while encouraging subtle strategy. The rules may be relatively simple, and you may repeat similar scenarios, but the particulars of how you manage your strategy of trying out different card routing paths can have you managing risk in your mind, adapting to randomness, and noticing patterns that improve your play next time. Digital solitaire takes that and adds a lot more convenience and the ability to quickly restart a game, but there is something to be said about the mindfulness of playing with physical cards.

    Casino-Style Games

    There are other card games that are designed to play with the concept of risk much more inherently, with clear win and loss states that are infinitely repeated. Poker and blackjack are two clear examples of these, but you don’t have to put any money at risk to enjoy them. There are plenty of free versions of these games out there for those who like a sense of stakes, to weigh odds, make calculated choices, and manage risk without losing anything for real. Even when the stakes aren’t real, the unpredictability and using your own logic, pattern recognition, and understanding of chance can help you turn things in your favor. Many free games allow you to aim for high scores, such as how many chips you might earn (or lose) in a predetermined amount of time. 


    Brain Training Apps

    If you’re looking to maximize the beneficial nature of your break, then you could make it the time for a quick and focused mental workout. There are apps like Lumosity that are designed to deliver daily games that target skills such as memory, attention, processing speed, flexibility, and more. These sessions are typically short and goal-oriented, making them perfect to fit in your break time every day. They feel inherently game-like, but they still require real concentration, meaning that they might not be as great if, for instance, you’re likely to be distracted by family or coworkers during your break.

    Logic Games

    If you prefer something a little slower and more thoughtful, but you prefer to think outside of the box, rather than relying on learning and repeating methodology like Sudoku, then logic-based games like pattern grids and deduction puzzles could be the right thing for you. These games are all about thinking multiple steps ahead, testing out hypotheses, and going back to old assumptions and open threads when you get a new clue. These games are great for those who want to keep their attention and focus sharp, instead of other games that could see you slip into something more of an autopilot mode. The sense of gradual progress with each unearthed clue or next step stops them from feeling too frustrated, as well.

    Chess

    Timeless strategy games like chess might take a while for a newcomer to learn. Once you do, however, it’s the kind of game you can come back to time and time again. Chess offers the chance to get into bouts of deep thinking for even short amounts of time, engaging your memory, planning, and foresight. Online chess platforms make it easy to face players at any level, so whether you’re still picking up parts of the game, beginning to memorize strategy, or getting to the higher levels where you’re reading your opponent as much as the game, you can find players that will match your mental skills. The game is complex enough that it’s rewarding to return to time after time, as well, while some puzzles and games can eventually get boring.

    Whether you have one game that you like to return to time and time again, or you’re more likely to switch it up day by day, having a game that keeps your brain active can be a great way to make your breaks truly refreshing.

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  • Checkmate or knockout: The sport of chess boxing combines brains and brawn

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    When we first heard about chess boxing, we thought it was a joke. Chess boxing? Could it really be a thing? Turns out, it is, and it’s just what it sounds like: alternate rounds of chess and boxing. You can win by knockout or checkmate – whichever comes first. Don’t laugh – this odd couple made it to the Paris Olympics as an exhibition match. Russia is the reigning champ. But this year an upstart American team swung for the medals. Still think we’re kidding? Come with us to the World Chessboxing Championships in Serbia.

    It’s a quiet September Sunday in Loznica, a sleepy Balkan town in western Serbia. But inside the local sports arena, the bells are ringing for a different reason.

    The German comes out fast, jabbing and punching. He batters his Russian rival until a roundhouse sends him down. Fighters from 18 countries are here trying to knock each other’s heads off. There’s the bell. But wait, now the fighters strip off their gloves and sit down – it’s chess time. Competitors have three minutes to vanquish their enemy on the board. If they don’t, it’s back to the slugfest for three more minutes. It’s gloves on, gloves off – until checkmate, knockout or judge’s decision.

    This is chess boxing, where knuckle meets nerd.

    Bill Whitaker: When you first heard about it, did you know that it was a real sport?

    Matt Thomas: No, I thought it was, like a “Saturday Night Live” skit. It was so absurd to me that someone would combine these two things.

    60 Minutes


    Bill Whitaker: I have to admit when I first heard about it, I laughed. It sounds crazy.

    Matt Thomas: It’s the best thing about the sport. Chess is battle on a- on a board. And boxing is chess with my body. So when someone combined those two I was like, “Yes, here’s my yin and yang. Here’s what I was made for.”

    Matt Thomas: Ladies and gentleman, chess boxing fans around the world thank you for being here

    Matt Thomas is a chess boxing evangelist and coach of Team USA. He’s built a squad of 15 American contenders from all walks of life: there’s the lawyer, a Cornell math major, a military veteran. In 2018, Thomas became the first American to compete for a world chess boxing title.

    Bill Whitaker: And you won.

    Matt Thomas: And I won. Which the person who was the most surprised about that was me.

    Bill Whitaker: So did you win by hook or by rook?

    Matt Thomas: Good question. It was actually by rook, yeah.

    Thomas dropped out of law school and went all in. He’s a promoter, commentator and fundraiser for a sport hardly anyone has heard of. No wonder. Chess boxing started out life in a French graphic novel. It was pure fiction until 2003 when it turned into fact at a real-life match in Berlin. It was an instant hit, especially in Russia. Now America is catching up, one fighter at a time.

    William Graif: I had the body of a chess player. I was just like a scrawny kid, you know.

    Meet William “Gambit Man” Graif, a New York State chess champ. He’s been playing competitive chess since the age of five. We saw his take-no-prisoners approach when he demolished four of us at once – just for fun

    Bill Whitaker: “How’d I get into this horrible position?”

    Bill Whitaker: “Checkmate” 

    William Graif: “Checkmate”

    Graif told us he added 30 pounds of muscle to become a chess boxer. He’s still only 160 pounds.  

    Bill Whitaker: Are you scared in any way?

    William Graif: I would be a little crazy not to be terrified.

    William

    William “Gambit Man” Graif and Bill Whitaker play chess

    60 Minutes


    Bill Whitaker: But why are you willingly deciding to step into a ring where you can get your head beaten in?

    William Graif: Yeah, you sound like my mother. One of the things is sorta the opportunity to tell my story here, of, like, a kid who played chess growing up throughout school and was to an extent ridiculed and ostracized.

    Bill Whitaker: For being a scrawny chess player?

    William Graif: Exactly. Ok, you know I’ve been doing chess for a very long time. What better time to sort of try something new and challenge myself?

    Like his teammates, Graif paid his own way to get here. There’s no prize money in chess boxing – just the warmth of your country’s flag. Matt Thomas told us that was enough to unite his ragtag team against the 800-pound gorilla: Russia.

    Matt Thomas: We’re by far the underdogs. We’re coming in with the red, white and blue, trying to upset people. You know, no one thinks we’re gonna do well. No one thinks we’re gonna win.

    Bill Whitaker: The Russians are the best

    Matt Thomas: By a long shot, yeah so-

    Bill Whitaker: But why? What makes them so good?

    Matt Thomas: They have it in over 500 schools and universities –

    Bill Whitaker: Really?

    Matt Thomas: – where kids are growing up with chess boxing. It is their sport, their focus. 

    Matt Thomas:  Making his chess boxing world championship debut, Wayne Clark:

    Wayne “GodKing” Clark was about to run into that Russian machine. A former Harlem Globetrotter, Clark traded hoops for the ring 11 years ago. He’s got the stare down perfected. His chess? A work in progress.

    Wayne Clark

    Wayne Clark

    60 Minutes


    We first met GodKing in Times Square, where he’d taken out a billboard to drum up interest in the sport. Clark told us he had one uncle who was a boxer and another who was a chessmaster.

    Wayne Clark: And the next thing you know the chess board would roll out, and they would be playing chess till one and two o’clock in the morning. And I was just always around it. So when I heard of chess boxing I knew I was destined for it, yeah.

    Bill Whitaker: So chess and boxing are part of your family’s DNA?

    Wayne Clark: Absolutely

    Bill Whitaker: And have you seen this becoming more popular? More well known?

    Wayne Clark: Yes, you know, we’ve actually are doing a chess boxing tour in schools right now. So we started this last year. And then the hope was that we can grow that all throughout the United States and introduce it to students, brains and brawn, and how they both work together.

    In Serbia, we watched on the big screen as Clark made his opening moves. The chess boxing crowd cheers as loudly for a captured queen as an uppercut. And they’re not shy with advice.

    Clark knew he had to win at boxing. But in the ring, his mojo deserted him. There was more wrestling than boxing. The Russian coach spurred his fighter on. Without a knockout, it was back to the board. Headsets on to block out coaching from the crowd. Clark tried valiantly to fend off the Russian attack. Too late. Checkmate.

    Bill Whitaker: How you feeling right now?

    Wayne Clark: I didn’t do my game plan. I didn’t stick to my game plan at all. I wasn’t the Wayne Clark I know I am in boxing at all.

    Bill Whitaker: Is this harder than you thought it would be?

    Wayne Clark: The chess, yeah. The boxing was just stupid errors. I take fully accountability for that

    Through 75 fights, Russia won victory after victory. But there were other contenders too. We saw knockdowns and knockouts. There was a little blood, a lot of sweat, but no tears. We saw fighters who flexed and grizzled veterans who tried. We saw nervous newbies and women fighters who pulled no punches.

    Matt Thomas: Immediately a knockdown to start the fight by France

    Then it was show-time for chess master William Graif. Coach Matt Thomas told us chess players may look meek, but they’re cutthroats.

    Matt Thomas

    Matt Thomas

    60 Minutes


    Matt Thomas: Those guys are Mike Tyson, but in the head. They want to tear you apart and make you doubt yourself and want to quit. In the same way that a boxer would pick someone apart, they’re picking you apart with their brain.

    In his first match, Graif shredded his french opponent.

    Matt Thomas: Checkmate on the board William Graif!

    Now, he was facing a German champion.

    Graif attacked, lightning-fast chess moves setting him up for the win. When they got to the ring, Graif channeled his inner Rocky and let loose with a flurry of punches. But it wasn’t enough. He lost on points.

    William Graif: I am really proud that I did this. I’m really proud of the way I went out. I’d do it all over again.

    As Iron Mike Tyson once said – everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

    Matt Thomas: Most people on the surface when they hear about chess boxing they think that the battleground is the chess board or the boxing ring. And it is. You have to be good at both. But the real battlefield is the minute in between rounds.

    Thomas told us the best chess boxers learn how to control their breathing to switch from a high-octane fight to cold calculation.

    Matt Thomas: So the more that you can down regulate, lower your heart rate, dump the adrenaline out of your system, and let your amygdala chill out for a round – the more of your potential chess strength you’re gonna be using in the chess round.

    Bill Whitaker: So this transition- this is key?

    Matt Thomas: Key. It’s still to this day a competitive advantage that I think Team USA has over the rest of the world. Not as many people are putting as much time, effort and preparation into the minute in between rounds.

    Halfway through the tournament, the scrappy underdogs of Team USA had two gold medals. 

    But the Russian march to first place continued.

    Peter Zhukov: We are this great rival for everybody.

    Peter Zhukov

    Peter Zhukov

    60 Minutes


    Peter Zhukov is a Russian businessman and the founder of the Russian Chess Boxing Federation. He told us chess and boxing are hard-wired into Russia’s history.

    Peter Zhukov: In Soviet old school Russian boxing gyms they would play chess after boxing training. They would just do it to develop certain qualities in their fighters. They played chess and checkers.

    Bill Whitaker: To work a different part of your mind?

    Peter Zhukov: Yeah

    Zhukov was ringside for the last and most coveted title of the championships: the super heavyweight final. no surprise to see a Russian fighter here. His challenger? 

    Matt Thomas: Hailing from the United States of America, James Canty III

    Michigan’s James Canty was the last American standing. A professional chess player, Canty has been boxing for only two years. He was up against a brawler with years in the ring. Canty knew the Russian would be looking for his head. The Russian charged, lashing out with a punishing right hook. Canty danced and dodged, taking blow after blow.

    But he hung on.

    And on.

    And then in the third round of chess – checkmate. James Canty III had beaten the odds to become the new super heavyweight chess boxing champion of the world.

    He needed a chair.

    James Canty III

    James Canty III

    60 Minutes


    Bill Whitaker: It’s like when you went back in for that second round –

    James Canty: Yeah

    Bill Whitaker: It’s like the longest three minutes you ever went through

    James Canty: Of my life, bro. Longest three minutes of my life. I ain’t gonna lie.

    Bill Whitaker: But you took a lickin’ and kept on tickin’

    James Canty: I did.

    Bill Whitaker: You did

    James Canty: I did and I’m a world champ

    Bill Whitaker: And you’re a world champ.

    Coach Matt Thomas was giddy with excitement.

    Matt Thomas: I couldn’t be prouder

    James Canty: Thank you

    Matt Thomas: I mean to have a USA Russia final to close out the seventh chess boxing world championship and to beat Russia for a gold –

    Matt Thomas: Let’s go baby! 

    Russia blitzed the medals for first place, but Team USA took nine – enough for second, surprising everyone. Already hyped for next year’s slugout, they were going home on a high.

    Matt Thomas: I love a happy ending, don’t you?

    Produced by Heather Abbott. Associate producer, Paulina Smolinski. Broadcast associate, Mariah Johnson. Edited by Warren Lustig.

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  • Inside a chess boxing bout, where brain meets brawn | 60 Minutes

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    Chess boxing, a sport testing both brains and brawn, has been steadily rising in popularity. It’s been a big hit in Russia, with the U.S. now catching up, one fighter at a time.

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  • Golden brothers headed to international chess tournament that could help chess become an Olympic sport

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    GOLDEN, Colo. — Two chess masters from Golden are preparing to travel thousands of miles to represent the United States in an international competition for players with disabilities in Kazakhstan.

    Brothers Griffin McConnell, 21, and Sullivan McConnell, 18, were selected for Team USA alongside three other players from around the country. Both are national masters, making them among the highest-rated chess players with disabilities in the country.

    “Chess is the only sport that I know of that there’s only one requirement,” Sullivan said. “You just have to be able to think.”

    The tournament is only the second of its kind and is a necessary step toward chess becoming an Olympic sport. It will bring together competitors with a range of disabilities.

    “We’re going to be playing against people who are possibly blind,” Sullivan said. “We’ll be playing against people who can’t move their hands, can’t move their feet, and that doesn’t stop them from playing.”

    Andy Cross/DP

    Griffin (left) and Sullivan (right) have been playing chess from a very young age. (Photo By Andy Cross/The Denver Post)

    Though the championship is being held half a world away, daily training happens in Golden.

    “We played each other more than any other person,” Griffin said. “We are both very competitive. We’re always trying to figure out who’s the better brother.”

    For Sullivan, this trip will be a first.

    “It’s been Sullivan’s dream. He’s never been out of the United States. We had to get a passport, like, within two weeks,” their father Kevin McConnell said.

    PALS chess kevin mcconnell chess champs

    Kevin McConnell

    Kevin McConnell (left) is the father of Griffin and Sullivan and the Executive Director of PALS Chess Academy.

    Kevin, executive director of PALS Chess Academy, is proud to see his sons get the chance to compete on an international stage.

    “I’m just really proud that they get a chance to represent their country, No. 1. And they’re a super strong team,” he said. “It would just be amazing for chess.”

    Griffin and Sullivan will play on Boards Two and Four for Team USA. For Griffin, that means not just focusing on his own matches, but helping his brother prepare for opponents.

    “We are brothers. Even though I’m lower rated than him, I can still help Sullivan with certain opponents,” Griffin said. “It’s a guessing game, but if I do it correctly, which I have done before, that has helped Sullivan win games.”

    The brothers see the sport as a uniquely inclusive competition.

    “It is the most accessible game in the world, no matter what you struggle with,” Sullivan said.

    The trip isn’t just about games and rankings.

    “Doing it with one of my other people, my brother, helping me and coming with me… It’s going to be a memory that I will always have,” Sullivan said.

    Kevin said he hopes his sons’ role in the tournament helps advance chess in the global sports arena.

    “It would be amazing if my kids were at the forefront of the group effort to make that happen,” he said.

    The McConnell brothers depart for Kazakhstan later this month, bringing with them not only their boards and pieces, but also a chance to show that chess can thrive on the world stage — and perhaps, one day, at the Olympics.

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    Denver7 | Your Voice: Get in touch with Colin Riley

    Denver7’s Colin Riley is a multimedia journalist who tells stories impacting all of Colorado’s communities, but specializes in reporting on transportation and our state’s senior population. If you’d like to get in touch with Colin, fill out the form below to send him an email.

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  • Former world chess champion may face discipline for treatment of Daniel Naroditsky

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    Chess’s international governing body said Wednesday it’s considering disciplinary action against a Russian former world champion who persistently leveled unproven cheating allegations at Daniel Naroditsky in the year leading up to the American grandmaster’s death.

    The Charlotte Chess Center in North Carolina, where Naroditsky trained and worked as a coach, announced his death Monday. He was 29. The cause of death has not been made public.

    Russian grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik, who held the world title for several years in the early 2000s, began accusing the California-born pro of cheating in online chess last October. He continued to share his suspicions on social media over the past year without providing substantial evidence.

    Naroditsky, who at 18 became a grandmaster, the highest title in chess aside from world chess champion, had denied the cheating allegations and accused Kramnik of trying to ruin his life.

    Arkady Dvorkovich, president of the International Chess Federation, said Wednesday he has formally referred all relevant public statements made by Kramnik before and after Naroditsky’s death to the body’s Ethics and Disciplinary Commission for review. He promised the federation would take “appropriate action” in any case where public harassment or bullying is observed.

    The body requires substantial evidence to launch a cheating investigation and may sanction a player who makes unfounded accusations based on emotion or insufficient data, according to its anti-cheating laws. There were no documented reports of the federation investigating Naroditsky.

    The Associated Press reached out Wednesday to Kramnik via social media for comment.

    The investigation comes as several grandmasters, including Hikaru Nakamura and Nihal Sarin, have called out Kramnik’s conduct, saying the Russian pro had harassed Naroditsky and tried to destroy his reputation.

    Five-time world chess champion Magnus Carlsen called Kramnik’s relentless pursuit of Naroditsky “appalling.”

    During his last livestream Saturday, Naroditsky told his massive online following that Kramnik’s cheating claims had taken a toll on him.

    “Ever since the Kramnik stuff, I feel like if I start doing well, people assume the worst of intentions. The issue is just the lingering effect of it,” Naroditsky said, adding that Kramnik used to be one of his “heroes.”

    It’s not the first time Kramnik has been accused of harassment. The popular internet chess server Chess.com shut down Kramnik’s blog on the site in 2023, saying he had used it to spread baseless allegations about “many dozens of players.”

    The following year, Kramnik published a list of players on social media with the title “Cheating Tuesdays” that included Czech grandmaster David Navara. Navara later shared on his blog that Kramnik’s public accusations had pushed him to consider suicide. Kramnik responded by accusing Navara of defamation.

    In June, the federation responded to the players’ public spat, saying the way Kramnik presents his arguments “brings a lot of harm to the chess community,” and “could be ruinous for the careers and well-being of certain players.” The group invited Kramnik to present the details of his approach and statistical data for official evaluation.

    Kramnik’s anti-cheating crusade exploded with the game’s shift online during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Many elite players traded the physical chess board for a keyboard to continue playing through lockdown, creating a surge in popularity for streaming content and fast-paced online games in which Naroditsky excelled.

    Players of the cerebral sport are known to value respectful conduct over the board. But in the digital arena, a new level of toxicity has developed, with cheating allegations growing rampant and becoming much more difficult to prove. Players now have sophisticated computer schemes at their fingertips that could give them an unfair advantage, and new ways to profit off their success online.

    In blitz and bullet chess, where players have mere minutes to finish intense matches, experts say top talents often move with speed and precision on par with a computer. Naroditsky was among the world’s top 25 blitz players and won the U.S. National Blitz Championship in August.

    “In recent times, public debate within the chess world has too often moved beyond the boundaries of acceptable, harming not only people’s reputation but their very well-being,” Dvorkovich acknowledged Wednesday. “When this happens, discussions can turn into harassment, bullying, and personal attacks — a particularly serious concern in today’s environment.”

    Dvorkovich said the federation will establish a prize in Naroditsky’s memory.

    Kramnik continued to post about Naroditsky on the day his death was announced, calling it a tragedy and speculating about the cause. Kramink wrote on the social platform X that the death “should be investigated by police.” He wrote Wednesday that he received threats after revealing “public information about the ‘dark side’ of modern chess.”

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  • Chess board may discipline Russian grandmaster who accused Naroditsky of cheating

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    Chess’s international governing body said Wednesday it’s considering disciplinary action against a former Russian world champion who persistently leveled unproven cheating allegations at Daniel Naroditsky in the year leading up to the American grandmaster’s death.

    The Charlotte Chess Center in North Carolina, where Naroditsky trained and worked as a coach, announced his death Monday-. He was 29. The cause of death has not been made public.

    Russian grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik, who held the world title for several years in the early 2000s, began accusing the California-born pro of cheating in online chess last October. He continued to share his suspicions on social media over the past year without providing substantial evidence.

    Naroditsky, who at 18 became a grandmaster, the highest title in chess aside from world chess champion, had denied the cheating allegations and accused Kramnik of trying to ruin his life.

    This undated photo released by Charlotte Chess Center shows Daniel Naroditsky playing chess. (Kelly Centrelli / Charlotte Chess Center via AP

    Kelly Centrelli / AP


    Arkady Dvorkovich, president of the International Chess Federation, said Wednesday he has formally referred all relevant public statements made by Kramnik before and after Naroditsky’s death to the body’s Ethics and Disciplinary Commission for review. He promised the federation would take “appropriate action” in any case where public harassment or bullying is observed.

    The body requires substantial evidence to launch a cheating investigation and may sanction a player who makes unfounded accusations based on emotion or insufficient data, according to its anti-cheating laws. There were no documented reports of the federation investigating Naroditsky.

    The Associated Press reached out Wednesday to Kramnik via social media for comment.

    Naroditsky’s accuser severely criticized  

    The investigation comes as several grandmasters, including Hikaru Nakamura and Nihal Sarin, have called out Kramnik’s conduct, saying the Russian pro had harassed Naroditsky and tried to destroy his reputation.

    Five-time world chess champion Magnus Carlsen called Kramnik’s relentless pursuit of Naroditsky “appalling.”

    During his last livestream Saturday, Naroditsky told his massive online following that Kramnik’s cheating claims had taken a toll on him.

    “Ever since the Kramnik stuff, I feel like if I start doing well, people assume the worst of intentions. The issue is just the lingering effect of it,” Naroditsky said, adding that Kramnik used to be one of his “heroes.”

    Daniel Naroditsky Chess

    Russian chess grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik, right, concentrates during his game against U.S. grandmaster Lewon Aronjan during the Zurich Chess Challenge 2015 Round 3 in Zurich on Feb. 16, 2015.

    Ennio Leanza / Keystone via AP


    It’s not the first time Kramnik has been accused of harassment. The popular internet chess server Chess.com shut down Kramnik’s blog on the site in 2023, saying he’d used it to spread baseless allegations about “many dozens of players.”

    The following year, Kramnik published a list of players on social media with the title “Cheating Tuesdays” that included Czech grandmaster David Navara. Navara later shared on his blog that Kramnik’s public accusations had pushed him to consider suicide. Kramnik responded by accusing Navara of defamation.

    In June, the federation responded to the players’ public spat, saying the way Kramnik presents his arguments “brings a lot of harm to the chess community” and “could be ruinous for the careers and well-being of certain players.” The group invited Kramnik to present the details of his approach and statistical data for official evaluation.

    Chess cheating allegations skyrocketed during pandemic  

    Kramnik’s anti-cheating crusade exploded with the game’s shift online during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Many elite players traded the physical chess board for a keyboard to continue playing through lockdown, creating a surge in popularity for streaming content and fast-paced online games in which Naroditsky excelled.

    Players of the cerebral sport are known to value respectful conduct over the board. But in the digital arena, a new level of toxicity has developed, with cheating allegations growing rampant and becoming much more difficult to prove. Players now have sophisticated computer schemes at their fingertips that could give them an unfair advantage, and new ways to profit off their success online.

    In blitz and bullet chess, where players have mere minutes to finish intense matches, experts say top talents often move with speed and precision on par with a computer. Naroditsky was among the world’s top 25 blitz players and won the U.S. National Blitz Championship in August.

    “In recent times, public debate within the chess world has too often moved beyond the boundaries of acceptable, harming not only people’s reputation but their very well-being,” Dvorkovich acknowledged Wednesday. “When this happens, discussions can turn into harassment, bullying, and personal attacks – a particularly serious concern in today’s environment.”

    “The chess community has long respected the achievements of GM Vladimir Kramnik, and his contributions to our sport are undeniable,” he continued. “The same high standards that accompany great achievements, however, also confer a responsibility to uphold the principles of fairness and respect and to be ambassadors for the sport.”

    Dvorkovich said the federation will establish a prize in Naroditsky’s memory.

    Kramnik continued to post about Naroditsky on the day his death was announced, calling it a tragedy and speculating about the cause. Kramink wrote on the social platform X that the death “should be investigated by police.” He wrote Wednesday that he received threats after revealing “public information about the ‘dark side’ of modern chess.” 

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  • Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky is remembered as a leader in the game’s online surge

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    Daniel Naroditsky, a 29-year-old standard-bearer in the world of competitive speed chess that flourished in the COVID-19 pandemic, died over the weekend and leaves behind a legacy as one of the greats of the game who helped usher in its digital era.

    The American grandmaster won several championships and amassed hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube, Twitch and other platforms, where he would livestream matches and explain strategy in real time. But he also struggled with the cyberspace he helped build.

    High-speed games became wildly popular online during the pandemic, creating a chess community that was soon rife with cheating allegations as players gained access to sophisticated computer programs that could give them an unfair advantage.

    Naroditsky’s untimely death has shined a spotlight on the dark underbelly of the game that fellow pros say brought undue hostility upon the chess star in his final months.

    Naroditsky had been accused of cheating, and the allegations, never proven, had taken a toll. Ukrainian grandmaster Oleksandr Bortnyk, a competitor and friend of Naroditsky, was concerned and went to check on him Sunday. He and a friend found Naroditsky, known to many as Danya, unresponsive on a couch in his North Carolina home, Bortnyk recounted during an emotional livestream Monday.

    The cause of death has not been made public.

    “Danya was not only a brilliant grandmaster, but also a tireless ambassador for chess, and above all — a kind, compassionate and truly good person,” said Arkady Dvorkovich, president of the International Chess Federation.

    The unsubstantiated claims of cheating came from from Russian grandmaster and former World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik, whom Naroditsky had called one of the “heroes” he looked up to as a kid.

    Naroditsky had denied the claims as he excelled at blitz and bullet chess, where players have mere minutes to finish intense matches.

    “Ever since the Kramnik stuff, I feel like if I start doing well, people assume the worst of intentions,” Naroditsky said Saturday in the last livestream he filmed before his death. “The issue is just the lingering effect of it.”

    He ruminated about his legacy and hoped other top players would trust that he played with integrity.

    Chess pros from around the world have since praised Naroditsky as an honorable player who used his online platform to make chess more accessible. His family said in a statement that they hope he will be remembered for the joy and inspiration he brought people.

    Meanwhile, grandmasters have slammed Kramnik on social media for how he treated Naroditsky. American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura went on an expletive-laden rant on his latest livestream, and Indian grandmaster Nihal Sarin accused the Russian pro of trying to destroy Naroditsky’s life in a post on X.

    Kramnik continued to post about Naroditsky on the day his death was announced, calling it a tragedy and speculating about the cause.

    Naroditsky became a grandmaster, the highest title in chess aside from World Chess Champion, at the age of 18. He was consistently ranked in the top 200 worldwide for traditional chess and was a top 25 blitz player, winning the U.S. National Blitz Championship in August. He spent much of his time training young players.

    “Daniel was an incredible teacher and explainer of chess and concepts and ideas,” said Daniel Weissbarth, a renowned chess instructor and the co-owner of Silver Knights Chess Academy in Virginia.

    Many pros this week called for an end to the constant finger-pointing that seemed to follow players like Naroditsky who thrived in fast-paced play.

    Kenneth Regan, a chess international master and computer science professor at the University at Buffalo, said the opportunity to cheat has exploded as the cerebral sport has shifted online. There are ways to police the game online, but Regan said they are intrusive.

    “The rate of cheating online is 100 to 200 times higher than the rate over the board,” Regan said. “From my point of view, there are five to 10 cases per year over the board.”

    The popular internet chess server Chess.com shut down Kramnik’s blog on the site in 2023, saying he had used it to spread baseless cheating allegations about “many dozens of players.” At the time, the platform warned of “Kramnik’s escalating attacks” against some of the most respected members of the chess community and some promising young talents.

    The speedy style of play popularized in chess’ digital arena is somewhat reliant on the honor system.

    Top talents analyze the board so quickly and move with such precision that cheating allegations have become common. Bullet chess is so fast, Regan said, that it’s essentially “playing chess entirely with your gut.”

    Last week, Naroditsky posted a video in his popular Speedrun series on YouTube, telling viewers he was “back, better than ever” after a short “creative break.” His videos, in which he gave tips and discussed strategy, were great tools for chess players of various abilities, said Benjamin Balas, a psychology professor at North Dakota State.

    “He would tell you ‘This is the kind of mistake you’re going to see at this level,’ and he would make mistakes, too, and talk to you how to manage them,” Balas said.

    Nakamura and five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen are also using social media to take chess to a wider audience, increasing its popularity around the world.

    “People, they see Daniel or other streamers and they start to play online chess,” said John Hartmann, editor of Chess Life magazine. “The streaming personalities, they lead people into the chess world.”

    Carlsen credited Naroditsky for his work in the streaming space, saying he was “such a resource to the chess community.”

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  • California chess superstar Daniel Naroditsky, a grandmaster at 17, has died at age 29

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    Alan Kirshner, a youth chess tournament organizer and political science professor, had for years been evasive when asked if he’d ever seen a chess “prodigy.”

    That changed when he first saw San Mateo’s Daniel Naroditsky, then a first-grader, in action.

    “It was apparent from the way he concentrated and was focused, but was relaxed at the same time,” said Kirshner, a retired Ohlone College of Fremont political science and history professor. “I ran to his dad, grabbed him by the arm and said, ‘He is a prodigy.’”

    The youngster proved Kirshner prophetic. He ultimately rose to the level of chess grandmaster — the highest ranking possible — while authoring a series of strategy books and eventually appealing to a new generation of chess enthusiasts through social media.

    Naroditsky’s star unexpectedly dimmed Monday as his death was announced by the Charlotte Chess Center, where the 29-year-old had worked as a coach.

    “Let us remember Daniel for his passion and love for the game of chess, and for the joy and inspiration he brought to us all every day,” the North Carolina center posted on social media.

    The center added: “Daniel was a talented chess player, commentator, and educator and a cherished member of the chess community, admired and respected by fans and players around the world. He was also a loving son and brother, and a loyal friend to many.”

    No cause of death was given by the center, nor were funeral arrangements announced.

    Naroditsky was born in San Mateo and competed throughout the Bay Area as a youngster.

    Although he impressed Kirshner as a first-grader, it was four years later when Naroditsky won the 32nd annual CalChess Scholastic competition high school bracket as a fifth-grader. The tournament is the equivalent of the Northern California championships.

    Kirshner wrote in a recap of the event that Naroditsky was the youngest champion at that high-school-level competition in tournament history.

    Fortunately for Naroditsky’s competitors, he was too young to represent Northern California in the Denker Tournament of state high school champions later that year, which was reserved for high schoolers only.

    Naroditsky had bigger goals, though.

    In December, he employed a chess tactic known as the “Sicilian Defense” to defeat Russia’s Ivan Bukavshin in the final round of a two-hour match for the Under-12 World Youth Chess Championship in Antalya, Turkey.

    The following year, Naroditsky enrolled in sixth grade at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Belmont, Calif., and attended school there for two years.

    After a year off, he re-enrolled in the local high school as a 10th-grader in 2011.

    The school posted a 2011 update from Naroditsky’s brother, Alan, who noted Daniel had earned the international master title, the second-highest honor in the chess world.

    A year earlier, the 14-year-old Naroditsky published his first chess strategy book, “Mastering Positional Chess.” In 2015, he added a second book, “Mastering Complex Endgames: Practical Lessons on Critical Ideas & Plans.”

    Naroditsky enjoyed a banner 2013 that included winning the U.S. Junior Chess Championship in June, while earning the coveted title of grandmaster in July.

    In 2019, Naroditsky graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in history.

    Shortly after his graduation, he began to post chess strategy videos on YouTube and other platforms, including Twitch. He gained 500,000 YouTube followers.

    His final, hourlong video, posted Friday, was entitled, “You thought I was gone! Speedrun returns!”

    “I’ve been sort of taking kind of a creative break, deciding future avenues of content,” Naroditsky said. “So, I won’t delve too much into it right now because I know everyone is excited about some chess game.”

    Crystal Springs school official Kelly Sortino said the campus was “deeply saddened by the passing.”

    “During his years at Crystal, Daniel was known not only for his extraordinary intellect and chess mastery, but also for his warmth, humility, and kindness,” Sortino wrote in an emailed statement. “Our hearts go out to his family and loved ones, as well as to all who were inspired by his talent and character. His loss is felt deeply within the Crystal community.”

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    Andrew J. Campa

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  • American chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky dies at 29

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    Daniel Naroditsky, a chess grandmaster who started as a child prodigy and quickly became one of the most influential American voices in the sport, died Monday. He was 29.

    The Charlotte Chess Center in North Carolina, where Naroditsky trained and worked as a coach, announced his death on social media, calling him “a talented chess player, educator, and beloved member of the chess community.”


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    By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM – Associated Press

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  • Daniel Naroditsky, American chess grandmaster, dies at 29

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    Daniel Naroditsky, a chess grandmaster who started as a child prodigy and quickly became one of the most influential American voices in the sport, died Monday. He was 29.

    The Charlotte Chess Center in North Carolina, where Naroditsky trained and worked as a coach, announced his death on social media, calling him “a talented chess player, educator, and beloved member of the chess community.”

    “Let us remember Daniel for his passion and love for the game of chess, and for the joy and inspiration he brought to us all every day,” his family said in a statement shared by the center.

    The cause of death was not immediately known.

    Naroditsky became a grandmaster, the highest title in chess aside from World Chess Champion, at the age of 18.

    Years earlier, the California-born player won the Under 12 world championship and spent his teenage years writing chess strategy books as he climbed the world rankings.

    He was consistently ranked in the top 200 worldwide for traditional chess and also excelled at a fast-paced style called blitz chess, maintaining a top 25 ranking throughout his adult career. Most recently Naroditsky, known to many as Danya, won the U.S. National Blitz Championship in August.

    This undated photo released by Charlotte Chess Center shows Daniel Naroditsky playing chess. (Kelly Centrelli / Charlotte Chess Center via AP

    Kelly Centrelli / AP


    Fellow grandmasters credited Naroditsky with introducing the sport to a wider audience by livestreaming many of his matches and sharing live commentary on others. Thousands of people regularly tuned in on YouTube and the interactive streaming platform Twitch to watch Naroditsky play.

    “He loved streaming, and he loved trying to be educational. The chess world is very grateful,” Hikaru Nakamura, an American grandmaster, said on a livestream Monday.

    In a final video posted to his YouTube channel on Friday titled “You Thought I Was Gone!?” Naroditsky tells viewers he’s “back, better than ever” after taking a creative break from streaming. He talks viewers through his moves as he plays live chess matches on the computer from a cozy home studio.

    Other elite chess players from around the globe took to social media to express their shock and sadness.

    Dutch chess grandmaster Benjamin Bok reflected on his lifelong friendship with Naroditsky, who he said he’s known since the Under 12 world championship that Naroditsky won in 2007.

    “I still can’t believe it and don’t want to believe it,” Bok said on X. “It was always a privilege to play, train, and commentate with Danya, but above all, to call him my friend.”

    Naroditsky was the son of Jewish immigrants to the U.S. from Ukraine and Azerbaijan. He was born and raised in San Mateo County, California, and was described by his parents as a very serious kid with an impressive attention span and memory. He went on to study history at Stanford University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2019 after taking a year off to play in chess tournaments.

    After college, he moved to Charlotte, where he coached the area’s top junior chess players.

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  • American chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky dies at 29

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    Daniel Naroditsky, a chess grandmaster who started as a child prodigy and quickly became one of the most influential American voices in the sport, died Monday. He was 29.

    The Charlotte Chess Club in North Carolina, where Naroditsky trained and worked as a coach, announced his death on social media, calling him “a talented chess player, educator, and beloved member of the chess community.”

    “Let us remember Daniel for his passion and love for the game of chess, and for the joy and inspiration he brought to us all every day,” his family said in a statement shared by the club.

    The cause of death was not immediately known.

    Naroditsky became a grandmaster, the highest title in chess aside from World Chess Champion, at the age of 18.

    Years earlier, the California-born player won the Under 12 world championship and spent his teenage years writing chess strategy books as he climbed the world rankings.

    He was consistently ranked in the top 200 worldwide for traditional chess and also excelled at a fast-paced style called blitz chess, maintaining a top 25 ranking throughout his adult career. Most recently Naroditsky, known to many as Danya, won the U.S. National Blitz Championship in August.

    Fellow grandmasters credited Naroditsky with introducing the sport to a wider audience by livestreaming many of his matches and sharing live commentary on others. Thousands of people regularly tuned in on YouTube and the interactive streaming platform Twitch to watch Naroditsky play.

    “He loved streaming, and he loved trying to be educational. The chess world is very grateful,” Hikaru Nakamura, an American grandmaster, said on a livestream Monday.

    In a final video posted to his YouTube channel on Friday titled “You Thought I Was Gone!?” Naroditsky tells viewers he’s “back, better than ever” after taking a creative break from streaming. He talks viewers through his moves as he plays live chess matches on the computer from a cozy home studio.

    Other elite chess players from around the globe took to social media to express their shock and sadness.

    Dutch chess grandmaster Benjamin Bok reflected on his lifelong friendship with Naroditsky, who he said he’s known since the Under 12 world championship that Naroditsky won in 2007.

    “I still can’t believe it and don’t want to believe it,” Bok said on X. “It was always a privilege to play, train, and commentate with Danya, but above all, to call him my friend.”

    Naroditsky was the son of Jewish immigrants to the U.S. from Ukraine and Azerbaijan. He was born and raised in San Mateo County, California, and was described by his parents as a very serious kid with an impressive attention span and memory. He went on to study history at Stanford University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2019 after taking a year off to play in chess tournaments.

    After college, he moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he coached the area’s top junior chess players.

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  • The Surprising Lessons Behind Chess.com’s Rise to a Billion-Dollar Company

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    When Chess.com launched back in 2007, its co-founders had a few starting advantages: a lifelong love of the game, two prior companies they’d exited a year before, and one very good domain name that cost them $56,000, purchased with the money they got from their exits. 

    In business, as in chess itself, you can’t always predict what’s going to happen. But you can learn to spot opportunities as they arise. That’s why, after several years of cultural shifts—paired with feature launches that capitalized on changing attitudes toward a very old game—Chess.com came out on top in 2023 with a billion-dollar valuation. Its valuation today is even higher.

    It’s something of a 20-year overnight success story. Through its early years, Chess.com focused on making it easy and fun for people to play chess, co-founder and CEO Erik Allebest says. But co-founder Danny Rensch—the company’s “chief chess master”—had a bigger goal. “Danny’s vision was, ‘We’re gonna revolutionize how chess is perceived,’” Allebest says. “And it took time to get there, but we grew in that way.”

    One key early gambit: The team was early to streaming, long before the platform Twitch became so popular that even presidential candidates started to appear on it. In 2012, Chess.com hosted its first-ever “death match,” in which two master players competed to see who could win the most rapid-fire games, played on laptops, with $1,000 cash in prize money at stake. The company has seriously upped its game since that low-res approach: today, Chess.com has 1.2 million followers on its Twitch account and 2.6 million on YouTube.

    “That took us in a different direction,” Allebest says. “A whole bunch of purists are like, ‘chess has been ruined,’ but it’s grown the game and the appeal massively.” With its domain name as straightforward as possible, Chess.com has not spent any money on traditional marketing channels, such as social media advertising. Instead, it’s focused on promoting the game itself, Allebest explains. Significant tailwinds in 2020 helped the company with that task.

    First there was the Covid-19 pandemic, which spiked users of Chess.com as people in quarantine looked for new ways to stay busy. In June of that year, the company launched PogChamps, a two-week competition in which 16 of Twitch’s biggest streamers—intentionally not those who are known for being particularly good at chess—competed for $50,000 worth of prizes. Chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, the most-followed player on Twitch, coached participants in livestreamed lessons ahead of the event. PogChamps drew more than 155,000 concurrent viewers and drove a 57 percent jump in hours of gaming watched on Chess.com compared to the prior month. The company has continued the annual competition since.

    Checkmate: the Netflix effect

    Then in October of 2020 came the cultural win the company couldn’t have predicted. Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, the chess-focused limited series starring actor Anya Taylor-Joy, became a massive hit: 62 million households streamed the show in its first 28 days on the platform, according to Netflix. By early 2021, new registrations on Chess.com hit more than 500 percent year-over-year growth.

    The Queen’s Gambit and its cultural cache poised the company well to roll out its first character bot later that year, allowing users to “play against” Beth Harmon, the protagonist of Netflix’s chess success story. Since then, the company has expanded that roster and introduce bots personifying real chess players like Nakamura, as well as fan favorites like Mittens, a snarky cat that users played nearly 40 million times the month it debuted in 2023. The bot—which performed deceptively well even against professional players—went so viral that it earned multiple press mentions, including from The Wall Street Journal, which called it “the chess world’s new villain.”  

    “It blew up the internet,” Allebest says. “It was hilarious.” 

    Chess.com has offered tiered premium subscriptions since 2009, ranging in price from $29 to $99 per year and giving users access to ad-free experience, as well as features including unlimited puzzles, daily lessons, instructional videos, and full game analysis. 

    In 2022, for the first time in more than a decade, it revamped its premium experience and increased its pricing to range from $50 to $120 annually. Roughly five percent of Chess.com’s active users have premium subscriptions, and the number of premium subscribers has surged more than 8x since the start of 2020. Today, annual revenue from subscriptions exceeds $150 million.

    The premium revamp involved rolling out a more comprehensive, AI-powered game review. Post gameplay, a coach-bot walks users through their performance. “What we found is most people actually don’t want to know what they did wrong. They want to know what they did right,” Allebest says. He points to research about the “optimal win to lose ratio for learning,” which leans heavily toward winning. Plus, he adds, “chess is punishing—you’re expected to lose half your games or more, so you’re already getting the negative feedback of losing games.”

    That insight led the company to find new opportunities to “gamify” its features and pepper in moments of positive reinforcement. “There’s a special symbol, a teal exclamation mark, that’s called ‘brilliant move.’ Finding those is very hard, and you only get to see them if you do a game review,” Allebest says. “It’s kind of a badge of honor.”

    The same year, Chess.com also closed on a star-powered deal, acquiring Magnus Carlsen’s Play Magnus Group—then a publicly traded company on the Oslo Stock Exchange—for $82.9 million. The company self-financed the deal through a combination of debt, internal financing, and equity, Allebest says. Carlson, a five-time World Chess Champion with 2 million followers on Instagram and 1.5 million on YouTube, was a big draw. But so was its educational platform, Chessable, which featured proprietary technology for spaced repetition learning.

    As Chess.com has invested in its core functions, it’s also continued to promote the game through innovative partnerships—like its BlitzChamps tournament series with the NFL, which it’s held annually since 2022, pitting NFL players past and present against one another for games of rapidfire chess.

    “Chess is just a game”

    Now, with 225 million registered users, Chess.com is quite the institution: the company has about 580 full-time employees, with about 40 percent devoted to engineering, and 10 percent in customer support. The platform is currently undergoing localization in 60 languages, Allebest adds, which adds to the organization’s complexity. “We answer everybody’s support tickets,” he says. “Some big companies are like, ‘Go look in the forums.’ We actually do care about every single inquiry that comes in.”

    Going forward, Allebest hopes that the platform can help users better connect with each other, too. The company plans to upgrade its social media features, most of which date back to 2009. The potential he sees is great. “Chess.com is a huge social network, but we don’t have a good user profile and feed. Like, when I win a game, why doesn’t it show up on my feed? What are my friends up to? What famous chess celebrity posted a cool video?”

    While Chess.com’s success has an exceptionally long arc, Allebest isn’t one to look in the rearview mirror. The company could have invested in its data infrastructure sooner, he says, but it was largely guided by “heart and intuition.” Now, with the numbers to inform the way it moves forward, it’s operating strategically.

    It’s not unlike playing the game itself. “You just have to make the first move and then react to what happens. And I think people get paralyzed by feeling like they need to see to the end,” Allebest says. “But you know, chess is just a game. You can only play one move at a time and do your best at that moment, and then react to what happens. And I think that is exactly what good entrepreneurship can look like.”

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    Rebecca Deczynski

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  • ‘I make my move’: Kids learn, enjoy chess after school – WTOP News

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    At Madison’s Trust Elementary School in Ashburn, Virginia, students are swapping screens for strategy at the Silver Knights Chess Academy’s after-school club.

    Children in the after-school chess club run by the Silver Knights Chess Academy. (WTOP/Neal Augenstein)

    There wasn’t a phone or gaming device to be seen when dozens of students at Madison’s Trust Elementary School in Ashburn, Virginia, gathered for their after-school chess club.

    And that’s kind of the point, according to Adam Weissbarth, founder of the Silver Knights Chess Academy, during WTOP’s visit to the after-school club.

    Parents sign up their children, then Weissbarth’s Fairfax-based company provides coaches to teach the game in the first half of the session and the equipment so the children can play chess after the lesson.

    “A lot of parents don’t want their kids on devices all day, and that’s a battle they’re often fighting,” Weissbarth said. “Chess, with a real board, and a real group of kids and a real coach, is a great way to use your brain to do something that’s fun that doesn’t involve a screen.”

    At Madison’s Trust, younger children sat on the library carpet, surrounding coach Angela Hoffman, who explained the moves each chess piece can make. The older children sat at tables, fielding questions from Rachel Middleton, whose coaching involved more advanced strategies.

    Weissbarth said Silver Knights Chess Academy teaches the games at approximately 350 elementary schools in the D.C. area.

    ‘It looked really fun to me’

    “It’s fun, it’s a game,” Weissbarth said. “Kids do like playing sports and they do like running around and playing, but this is also a form of playing — they’re just using their brains instead of their bodies.”

    Braden, a fifth grader, initially asked his father to teach him to play chess after watching his dad play with his sister. “It looked really fun to me.”

    Like most kids his age, Braden also plays video games: “Roblox is more for fun. With chess, you can learn strategy.”

    Part of being successful in chess is anticipating an opponent’s moves. Braden said it’s hard to predict those when children are just learning the game: “I usually see what my opponent does first, and then I make my move.”

    Weissbarth added that he’s been obsessed with chess since he was 5 years old.

    “The beauty of chess is that it’s relatively simple to learn the rules, but there’s infinite complexity to it,” Weissbarth said.

    “I think what both kids and adults love about the game is that it’s hard,” he added. “And when you win a game, it really feels good and you’ve accomplished something.”

    Asked how he feels as he’s cornering an opponent during a match, Braden said, “I usually feel happy, but I try not to show it, so they don’t notice that they’re in checkmate.”

    The fifth grader said sportsmanship is important in chess, as in other sports.

    “You don’t brag, or having bragging rights. I just shake hands and say ‘good game,’” he said.

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Neal Augenstein

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  • The Many Lives of Danny Rensch

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    Danny Rensch grew up in a village on the edge of a great forest, in the mountains outside Payson, Arizona. He spent his days with roving packs of children, building forts, playing cops and robbers in the woods, or splashing around in a septic dump, unmindful of the shit and of the bears and javelinas that sometimes came down from the hillsides in search of food and water. When Rensch was nine, he saw a movie, “Searching for Bobby Fischer,” about a boy in New York City who plays chess in a public park with homeless men and discovers that he’s a prodigy. Rensch and his friend Dallas found a cheap chess set and started playing constantly. One day, Dallas took Rensch to play chess with his grandfather Steven Kamp.

    Kamp was not just Dallas’s grandfather; he was the leader of a cult to which almost everyone in the town, Tonto Village, belonged. The members of the Church of Immortal Consciousness, also known as the Collective, followed the teachings of a Dr. Pahlvon Duran, who, they believed, lived the last of his many lifetimes as an Englishman in the fifteenth century. Duran spoke to the Collective through Steven’s wife, Trina, and he preached that the goal of life was to fulfill one’s “Purpose” and to live “in Integrity.” Ego was discouraged. So was private property. Families were moved from house to house, and were sometimes reconfigured, too. Rensch had only recently learned that Dallas was actually his stepbrother.

    Like most of the members of the Collective, Rensch often didn’t have enough to eat. At times, he didn’t have shoes. Kamp had his own house. He had Cheerios and cigars. He also had books about chess and his own wooden set. He had been following the world championship in New York between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand. Kamp, a good chess player, saw that Rensch had talent. “Chess made me special,” Rensch writes, in “Dark Squares,” his new memoir, “and to be special in the eyes of Steven Kamp is to be special in the eyes of God.”

    Chess has been viewed as a measure of intellectual potential for centuries, and Kamp was eager not only to promote the Church of Immortal Consciousness but to dispel the notion that it was a death cult or a dangerous militia group. What if he could boost the profile of the Collective with a successful chess team? The group’s children were in a unique position to undertake such a project. They shared a sense of common mission, instilled in them by Kamp. Traditional schooling was easily ignored. And chess could become a means to privileges: trips to McDonald’s and Taco Bell and out-of-town tournaments.

    The kids played for hours every day, with a sense of freedom, and, for a time at least, they had a lot of fun. In 1996, the Shelby School—an unchartered charter in a tiny town on an Arizona mountainside, which the kids attended—placed fourth at the national elementary-school championships, conducted by the United States Chess Federation. In 1997, the school won the U.S.C.F. Super Nationals scholastic championship. In 1998, it won the national elementary-school championship, the K-9 championship, and finished in the top fifteen of the K-12 championship, despite not having any high schoolers. “Cults work,” Rensch writes. “Until they don’t.” Rensch won the national elementary-school championship that year. Trina, channelling Duran, told Rensch that chess was his Purpose.

    For a time, Rensch was moved to a house that the Collective owned in Phoenix, to be near the city’s chess club, a hangout for oddballs, chess enthusiasts, and one honest-to-God chess genius, a raging alcoholic named Igor Ivanov, who’d defected from the U.S.S.R. and suffered the usual deprivations of a vagabond professional chess player. Ivanov became Rensch’s personal coach. Most mornings, Rensch would find the man sprawled naked on a bed, and would dutifully fix him the day’s first screwdriver. After Rensch’s rise in the game slowed, when he was fourteen, he was taken from his mother and installed in the home of Kamp’s right-hand man—who happened to be Rensch’s biological father, and who seemed to harbor no feeling for him. Kamp told him this was all for the good of his Purpose.

    Rensch’s Purpose, according to Kamp, wasn’t just to play chess. It wasn’t even to become a grand master, though that was the marker of his ambition. His Purpose was to save chess. Doing so, as Rensch puts it in his book, “would prove to the world that [Kamp’s] spiritual vision held the key to understanding human nature and the meaning of life.” Rensch was convinced. “I believed it because I was a child and it’s what I’d been raised to believe,” he writes. But he also wanted to do it for his own reasons. He wanted to make the game seem fun and normal, not “dysfunctional and weird.” He wanted to make it so that the pinnacle of chess achievement didn’t look like tormented, self-destructive figures such as Ivanov but a guy like him, Danny Rensch.

    At the age of eighteen, not long after winning the national high-school chess championship, Rensch’s eardrums exploded on a flight on the way home from a tournament. He tried to return to serious competitive chess in his early twenties, but it was becoming clear that his progress had stalled and his goal of becoming a grand master, let alone a top one, was fading. By then, he was married—in the Collective, early marriages were common—and had two kids. (He and his wife, Shauna, eventually had two more.) He was still driven by a belief in his chosen status, but his life was a mess. He began to make a little money coaching chess. He also started drinking, taking painkillers, suffering from panic attacks, and compulsively buying up chess domain names: chessface.com, chesscoachlive.com, and so on. The one he wanted, Chess.com, was already taken. But, at a tournament in 2008, he met the guys who owned it—Erik Allebest and Jay Severson—and badgered them into giving him a job. Only later did he realize that he was lucky that he didn’t badger them out of one.

    Maybe they were lucky, too. In 2010, they created ChessTV, with Rensch as its star. I first encountered Rensch in 2016, on a Chess.com YouTube show called “ChessCenter.” My boyfriend, now my husband, had introduced me to the game, and I’d quickly become obsessed, waking up at 4 A.M. to play on my phone. Some couples watch Netflix together; we watched Sicilian Defense instructional videos. We also tuned into live streams of pro tournaments, and we caught up on news by watching “ChessCenter,” which was a little like ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” if “SportsCenter” ’s soundstage was the walk-in closet of a law office in Payson.

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    Louisa Thomas

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  • The Uplift: Chess champs

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    Two young chess champions decide not to keep their prize money and instead give it to a cause that is close to their hearts. Plus, Steve Hartman shares his personal journey of bonding with a new family member, despite his hesitancy. See how he became a lovable dog dad, plus other heartwarming news.

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  • After 20 years at the top of chess, Magnus Carlsen is making his next move

    After 20 years at the top of chess, Magnus Carlsen is making his next move

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    STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Few chess players enjoy Magnus Carlsen’s celebrity status.

    A grand master at 13, refusing to play an American dogged by allegations of cheating, and venturing into the world of online chess gaming all made Norway’s Carlsen a household name.

    Few chess players have produced the magical commodity that separates Norway’s Magnus Carlsen from any of his peers: celebrity.

    Only legends like Russia’s Garry Kasparov and American Bobby Fischer can match his name recognition and Carlsen is arguably an even more dominant player. Last month, he beat both men to be named the International Chess Federation’s greatest ever.

    But his motivation to rack up professional titles is on the wane. Carlsen, 33, now wants to leverage his fame to help turn the game he loves into a spectator sport.

    “I am in a different stage in my career,” he told The Associated Press. “I am not as ambitious when it comes to professional chess. I still want to play, but I don’t necessarily have that hunger. I play for the love of the game.”

    Offering a new way to interact with the game, Carlsen on Friday launched his application, Take Take Take, which will follow live games and players, explaining matches in an accessible way that, Carlsen says, is sometimes missing from streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. “It will be a chiller vibe,” he says.

    Carlsen intends to use his experience to provide recaps and analysis on his new app, starting with November’s World Chess Championship tournament between China’s Ding Liren and India’s Gukesh Dommaraju. He won’t be competing himself because he voluntarily ceded the title in 2023.

    Carlsen is no novice when it comes to chess apps. The Play Magnus game, which he started in 2014, gave online users the chance to play against a chess engine modeled against his own gameplay. The company ballooned into a suite of applications and was bought for around $80 million in 2022 by Chess.com, the world’s largest chess website.

    Carlsen and Mats Andre Kristiansen, the chief executive of his company, Fantasy Chess, are betting that a chess game where users can follow individual players and pieces, filters for explaining different elements of each game, and light touch analysis will scoop up causal viewers put off by chess’s sometimes rarefied air. The free app was launched in a bid to build the user base ahead of trying to monetizing it. “That will come later, maybe with advertisements or deeper analysis,” says Kristiansen.

    While Take Take Take offers a different prospect with its streaming services, it is still being launched into a crowded market with Chess.com, which has more than 100 million users, YouTube, Twitch, and the website of FIDE the International Chess Federation. World Chess was worth around $54 million when it got listed on the London Stock Exchange.

    The accessibility of chess engines that can beat any human means cheating has never been easier. However, they can still be used to shortcut thousands of hours of book-bound research, and hone skills that would be impossible against human opponents.

    “I think the games today are of higher quality because preparation is becoming deeper and deeper and artificial intelligence is helping us play. It is reshaping the way we evaluate the games,” especially for the new generation of players, says Carlsen.

    At the same time, he admits that two decades after becoming a grand master, his mind doesn’t quite compute at the tornado speed it once did. “Most people have less energy when they get older. The brain gets slower. I have already felt that for a few years. The younger players’ processing power is just faster.”

    Even so, he intends to be the world’s best for many years to come.

    “My mind is a bit slower, and I maybe don’t have as much energy. But chess is about the coming together of energy, computing power and experience. I am still closer to my peak than decline,” he said.

    Chess has been cresting a popularity wave begun by Carlsen himself.

    He became the world’s top-ranked player in 2011. In 2013, he won the first of his five World Championships. In 2014, he achieved the highest-ever chess rating of 2882, and he has remained the undisputed world number one for the last 13 years.

    Off the table, chess influencers, like the world No. 2, Hikaru Nakamura, are using social media to bring the game to a wider audience. The Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit” burnished chess’ unlikely cerebral sex appeal when it became one of the streamer’s biggest hits in 2020.

    And in 2022 Carlsen’s refusal to play against Hans Niemann, an American grand master, who admitted to using technology to cheat in online games in the past, created a rare edge in the usually sedate world of chess. There is no evidence Niemann ever cheated in live games but the feud between the pair propelled the game even further into public consciousness.

    Whether chess can continue to grow without the full professional participation of its biggest celebrity remains to be seen.

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  • Apple Updates Its Chess App for the First Time Since 2012

    Apple Updates Its Chess App for the First Time Since 2012

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    Photo: Yuri A (Shutterstock)

    As Apple eulogized its commitment to purportedly non-invasive AI during its annual developer conference, the iPhone maker neglected to disclose a critical update that’s coming to the next evolution of its Mac operating system — macOS Sequoia.

    The New M3-Powered iMacs Are Triggering Serious Deja Vu

    Alongside an iPhone mirroring feature and Safari AI summaries, early users of macOS 15 beta say they’ve spotted the first upgrade to Apple’s Mac Chess game since 2012.

    As 9to5Mac first reported, Apple last updated the Chess app a dozen years ago, back when it still named its Mac operating system releases after big cats. With OS X Mountain Lion, Apple added Game Center support to Chess, along with a glossy background and some other small additions laid out in an ancient AppleInsider post. The app’s 2012 upgrade looked like this, per AppleInsider.

    Image for article titled Apple Updates Its Chess App for the First Time Since 2012

    Screenshot: AppleInsider

    The following year, Apple said it ran out of big cats and started naming Mac updates after “inspiring” places in California. In the years since, Apple kept its built-in Chess app around but neglected to update it until now.

    Image for article titled Apple Updates Its Chess App for the First Time Since 2012

    Screenshot: 9to5Mac

    The latest version of Chess for Mac features shinier and more realistic-looking pieces as well as a textured, gradient background. However, 9to5Mac reports that the revamped game includes fewer themes. The update specifically punts a rather gritty-looking grass theme option, though it’s technically possible that Apple has other changes coming to the app before macOS Sequoia exits beta and sees a wider release.

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    Harri Weber

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  • Indian teen chess prodigy could become world champ

    Indian teen chess prodigy could become world champ

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    Indian teen chess prodigy could become world champ – CBS News


    Watch CBS News



    Seventeen-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju of India is the youngest challenger for the world chess title later this year. CBS News’ John Dickerson has the details.

    Be the first to know

    Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.


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  • WTF Fun Fact 13688 – Chess’ Infinite Possibilities

    WTF Fun Fact 13688 – Chess’ Infinite Possibilities

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    Diving into the world of chess, we hit upon a fact that’s as mind-boggling as it is true: there are infinite possibilities in chess games. In fact, more than there are atoms in the observable universe.

    Let’s break this down into manageable pieces.

    Chess: A Game of Infinite Possibilities

    Chess, with its 64 squares and 32 pieces, might seem finite at first glance. However, the potential moves and strategies unfold into a vast, almost limitless landscape. The number of possible game variations exceeds the number of atoms in the observable universe, which is about 10^80. In contrast, the number of possible chess games is estimated to be around 10^120. This staggering difference showcases chess’s complexity and depth.

    Calculating the Infinite

    The calculation of chess’s possible iterations involves a dizzying array of potential moves each piece can make, compounded with each turn. From the initial move of a pawn or knight to the intricate dances of queens and rooks in the endgame, every decision branches into a new set of possibilities, expanding the game’s potential universe exponentially.

    The Impact on Strategy

    What does this mean for players? It ensures that no two chess games are ever the same. Players must constantly adapt, think ahead, and strategize in novel ways. This infinite complexity makes chess a perennial challenge, one that can never be fully mastered, always offering new puzzles to solve and strategies to explore.

    Beyond Human Comprehension

    The vast number of iterations in chess goes beyond what the human mind can fully comprehend or explore. It’s a humbling reminder of the game’s depth and the limits of human cognition. Even with the advent of powerful chess computers and algorithms, we’re still uncovering the mysteries and beauties of this ancient game.

    Infinite Possibilities on a Chessboard

    This fact about chess serves as a metaphor for the infinite possibilities within seemingly finite boundaries. It reminds us that within the constraints of a chessboard lies a universe of potential, echoing the endless capacity for innovation and creativity in the human spirit.

    In essence, the idea that chess offers more game possibilities than there are atoms in the universe is a testament to the game’s enduring intrigue and complexity. It’s a fascinating aspect that draws players in, offering a lifetime of discovery and challenge on just 64 squares.

    — WTF fun facts

    Source: “Are there really more possible Chess games than atoms in the Universe?” — Medium

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    WTF

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  • Google’s Chess Experiments Reveal How to Boost the Power of AI

    Google’s Chess Experiments Reveal How to Boost the Power of AI

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    His group decided to find out. They built the new, diversified version of AlphaZero, which includes multiple AI systems that trained independently and on a variety of situations. The algorithm that governs the overall system acts as a kind of virtual matchmaker, Zahavy said: one designed to identify which agent has the best chance of succeeding when it’s time to make a move. He and his colleagues also coded in a “diversity bonus”—a reward for the system whenever it pulled strategies from a large selection of choices.

    When the new system was set loose to play its own games, the team observed a lot of variety. The diversified AI player experimented with new, effective openings and novel—but sound—decisions about specific strategies, such as when and where to castle. In most matches, it defeated the original AlphaZero. The team also found that the diversified version could solve twice as many challenge puzzles as the original and could solve more than half of the total catalog of Penrose puzzles.

    “The idea is that instead of finding one solution, or one single policy, that would beat any player, here [it uses] the idea of creative diversity,” Cully said.

    With access to more and different played games, Zahavy said, the diversified AlphaZero had more options for sticky situations when they arose. “If you can control the kind of games that it sees, you basically control how it will generalize,” he said. Those weird intrinsic rewards (and their associated moves) could become strengths for diverse behaviors. Then the system could learn to assess and value the disparate approaches and see when they were most successful. “We found that this group of agents can actually come to an agreement on these positions.”

    And, crucially, the implications extend beyond chess.

    Real-Life Creativity

    Cully said a diversified approach can help any AI system, not just those based on reinforcement learning. He has long used diversity to train physical systems, including a six-legged robot that was allowed to explore various kinds of movement, before he intentionally “injured” it, allowing it to continue moving using some of the techniques it had developed before. “We were just trying to find solutions that were different from all previous solutions we have found so far.” Recently, he has also been collaborating with researchers to use diversity to identify promising new drug candidates and develop effective stock-trading strategies.

    “The goal is to generate a large collection of potentially thousands of different solutions, where every solution is very different from the next,” Cully said. So—just as the diversified chess player learned to do—for every type of problem, the overall system could choose the best possible solution. Zahavy’s AI system, he said, clearly shows how “searching for diverse strategies helps to think outside the box and find solutions.”

    Zahavy suspects that in order for AI systems to think creatively, researchers simply have to get them to consider more options. That hypothesis suggests a curious connection between humans and machines: Maybe intelligence is just a matter of computational power. For an AI system, maybe creativity boils down to the ability to consider and select from a large enough buffet of options. As the system gains rewards for selecting a variety of optimal strategies, this kind of creative problem-solving gets reinforced and strengthened. Ultimately, in theory, it could emulate any kind of problem-solving strategy recognized as a creative one in humans. Creativity would become a computational problem.

    Liemhetcharat noted that a diversified AI system is unlikely to completely resolve the broader generalization problem in machine learning. But it’s a step in the right direction. “It’s mitigating one of the shortcomings,” she said.

    More practically, Zahavy’s results resonate with recent efforts that show how cooperation can lead to better performance on hard tasks among humans. Most of the hits on the Billboard 100 list were written by teams of songwriters, for example, not individuals. And there’s still room for improvement. The diverse approach is currently computationally expensive, since it must consider so many more possibilities than a typical system. Zahavy is also not convinced that even the diversified AlphaZero captures the entire spectrum of possibilities.

    “I still [think] there is room to find different solutions,” he said. “It’s not clear to me that given all the data in the world, there is [only] one answer to every question.”

    Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

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    Stephen Ornes

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