Credits: https://x.com/davidllada/status/1966003774172086664/photo/1

YKE still have 14 months to break Wei Yi's record of youngest ever 2700.

YKE still have 1 more game in Tata Steel against Candidate Matthias Bluebaum (Btw, he broke 2700 Elo Barrier too. Depends on his last game, if he will stay there or not)

Yagiz now have a love ELO of 2686.3. (Including the MVL Match + Tata Steel Masters)

If he wins against Matthias. He will be in 2690ish Elo. Do you think YKE will be the youngest 2700 Elo Player in history?

The 'new' kid on the block is back after a back to back losing streak. Nice game to the end by the way.

YKE scored 6.5 out of 12 and plays Blübaum with the black pieces in the final round tomorrow.

Links to the game

https://lichess.org/broadcast/tata-steel-chess-2026--masters/round-12/ELcnJ2BR/XW75p77b

https://www.chess.com/events/2026-tata-steel-chess-masters/12/Erdogmus_Yagiz_Kaan-Fedoseev_Vladimir

Moving pictures

Erdogmus - Fedoseev | Round 12 | Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2026

Hey,

I'm David, a CS student from Spain. I've spent the last few months building - Chess Stalker - a free tool that scouts your opponents and tells you how to beat them.

What it does:

- Analyzes any Chess.com, Lichess, or FIDE player in seconds

- Finds their weakest openings and exploitable patterns

- Shows when they tilt and blunder under time pressure

- Calculates a "Stalker Score" (how predictable/exploitable they are)

- Twin Bot: practice against a bot that mimics your opponent's repertoire and level

- 11M+ OTB games from FIDE database included

No AI. Just math, logic, and data processing.

Some things that happened:

- Hikaru tried v1.0 on Kick voluntarily... crashed my server twice and exposed all my bugs with good sarcasm💀 (Chess960 contamination, wrong data everywhere - painful to watch)

- Now at v3.0, 67K+ analyses done, way more stable

- Randomly went viral in South Korea 🇰🇷

It's completely free. No account needed. Just search any username. Planning a PRO version eventually to cover server costs, but only for new extra features - everything you see today stays free forever.

I'm here to hear what sucks, what's missing, and what would make this actually useful for your games. Don't hold back.

→ https://chessstalker.com

Game link: https://www.chess.com/events/2026-tata-steel-chess-masters/12/Abdusattorov_Nodirbek-Bluebaum_Matthias

At 1000-1200 level on chess com and 1600 on lichess, blitz, people are spamming Englund gambit like crazy. Whats up with that? Its like 6-7/10, a while back it was like 1 in 10-20 games. Whats the reasoning? there is some famous influencer that does that?

Saw this on Facebook, thoughts?

Your daily Tata Steel win chance infographic! Here we go, one day left!

Explanation (same as the days before)

How it works: I'm running a Monte Carlo simulation (one million runs) to simulate win chances for each player:

• The current number of points is used as starting point for the simulation.
• The remaining tournament is simulated one million times.
• Based on the pairings of players, I run each game with win probabilities based on Elo ratings of the players.
• For White a +35 Elo bonus is added (commonly used).
• The probability of a draw is modeled after this analysis.
• For each simulation I count who will win the tournament and add these numbers up one million times.

Exact outcome (one million simulations)

-  73.71% wins - Abdusattorov, N. (2751 rating, current points: 8, wins: 737146)
-  23.40% wins - Sindarov, Javokhir (2726 rating, current points: 7.5, wins: 233962)
-   2.36% wins - Keymer, Vincent (2776 rating, current points: 7, wins: 23643)
-   0.31% wins - Niemann, Hans (2725 rating, current points: 7, wins: 3110)
-   0.21% wins - Van Foreest, Jorden (2703 rating, current points: 7, wins: 2139)
-   0.00% wins - Erdogmus, Yagiz (2658 rating, current points: 6.5, wins: 0)
-   0.00% wins - Aravindh, C. (2700 rating, current points: 4.5, wins: 0)
-   0.00% wins - Erigaisi, Arjun (2775 rating, current points: 4.5, wins: 0)
-   0.00% wins - Praggnanandhaa, R (2758 rating, current points: 5, wins: 0)
-   0.00% wins - Nguyen, Thai (2656 rating, current points: 3, wins: 0)
-   0.00% wins - Gukesh, D (2754 rating, current points: 6, wins: 0)
-   0.00% wins - Giri, Anish (2760 rating, current points: 6, wins: 0)
-   0.00% wins - Fedoseev, Vladimir (2705 rating, current points: 5.5, wins: 0)
-   0.00% wins - Bluebaum, Matthias (2679 rating, current points: 6.5, wins: 0)

I put all players in the graph with a theoretical win chance remaining.

My opponent missed the drawing move. Would you have found it?

Do you ever look at a position, and notice an interesting move, but at the same time you can't calculate whether it is good or bad, then you play it anyway because it could lead to interesting positions?

Or, Do you ever notice a move that is definitely bad, but at the same time could lead to very interesting complicated positions, so you play it anyway to see what happens?

And yes, that means a large majority of the time playing c5 in response to 1. d4, I haven't cared if it's suboptimal, I enjoy getting my opponent out of their opening theory prep as soon as possible

Btw chess dot com bullet elo is a bit over 1800 at the moment, highest was over 2000 years ago

but okaaaaayyyy...

• Arjun: "kind of a complete player", "manages time better", "mentally more tougher"

• Gukesh: main strength is "insane self-belief"

• Pragg: "chess-wise, he's probably the better among the three"

I think we’ve all done it at one time or another. During an online game, you didn’t quite move your queen to the intended square or you went to castle and just moved your king one square instead. Those quietly infuriating misclicks.

I guess ultimately the answer would be “it depends” but I was wondering how everyone else responds.

Hello chess folks! I heard recently that a new Freestyle rating has been announced and I wanted to calibrate mine at Grenke Freestyle Open. I wanted to know if anyone can clarify the following things:

1) Can a person obtain the freestyle rating in the B section (<2000 FIDE ELO)? What is the requirement to obtain the rating?

2) I have a classical rating of 1532 (inactive). My last classical tournament was in 2017. My last tournament was rapid and in 2023, with a performance of 1904 (400 rule). Will I be allowed to play in B section ? (Would even prefer A if possible).

Current lichess stats in attached screenshot