4 long-form pieces on chess — its players, its theory, its politics, and its place in the culture. Published as numbered issues, in the spirit of the chess magazines that came before the engines.
In 2016, antichess was computationally solved: 1.e3 wins for White. Chess is twenty orders of magnitude larger. What would solving it actually mean?
For a century, opening theory was chess's most precious inheritance. Then engines exhausted it. What remains for the human player who still wants to study?
At 18, D. Gukesh became the youngest world chess champion in history. The Indian generation behind him is not an accident — it is the end of an order.
In 2023, Magnus Carlsen walked away from the world chess championship he had held for ten years. Three years on, has the game survived without him?