Tessera

Looking at the number of wins compared to the games where each player stood better is really interesting for the women’s candidates. Vaishali had the fewest games where she stood better, but she converted all these games into wins, which lead to the joint most wins in the tournament.

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...

How Can Sindarov Be Caught at the Candidates?

Looking at different simulations of the Candidates tournament after round 10

chessenginelab.substack.com

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...

Predicting the Winner of Tournaments

Using game predictions to predict the outcome of a tournament

open.substack.com

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...

Predicting the Outcome of Chess Games

Approximating the expected score and draw rate based on rating difference and colors

open.substack.com

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...

Measuring Level of Play in different Endgame Types

Using Stockfish to see which players improve their winning chances the most in different types of endings

open.substack.com

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

Visual Recap of the World Blitz Championship 2025

A visual overview of the open and women's sections of the tournament

open.substack.com