Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam

January 29, 2026

Podcast

NIC Podcast #86: GM Loek van Wely

On the final free day of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, I invited Dutch grandmaster Loek van Wely to talk about the ten rounds of ‘the Wimbledon of Chess’ that have been played so far. Much to my delight, Loek - who is in Wijk aan Zee as the coach of Dutch grandmaster Max Warmerdam - accepted the invitation.With three rounds to go, Uzbekistan’s top player Nodirbek Abdusattorov is leading the Tata Steel Masters, half a point ahead of three pursuers: his countryman Javokhir Sindarov, Jorden van Foreest (winner in 2021) and Germany’s Matthias Bluebaum. In the Challengers, Azerbaijan’s biggest promise, Aydin Suleymanli is in the lead. He is being chased by Andy Woodward, MarcAndria Maurizzi and good old Vasyl Ivanchuk (56).The final three rounds promise an abundance of tension and excitement. Especially, as so far this year’s edition has seen a remarkable mix of gross errors, oversights and brilliant chess.We had a lot to discuss. Why have we seen so many mistakes? Should175

January 16, 2026

Podcast

NIC Podcast #85: GM Peter Svidler

My guest in the first New In Chess Podcast of 2026 is Peter Svidler. It’s a special moment. Two years ago, Peter was my very first guest in the inaugural episode of the podcast and I am delighted that he’s returning. Peter can look back on an incredible career as a player and he is one of the most knowledgeable and versatile experts in the world of chess. He is a three-time Candidate for the World Championship, an eight-time champion of Russia, and a World Cup winner. Among his many further successes are five gold team medals at the Olympiad.Over the past years, as he began to play less, Peter has become one of the most popular and loved chess commentators in the world. In fact, it’s fair to say that he was one of the commentators that took chess broadcasts to a new level and did a lot for the professionalization of our game.  For all these reasons, Peter is a perfect guest at the start of 2026, as we look ahead to a well-filled chess year that no doubt will bring us many highlights.First175

December 19, 2025

Podcast

NIC Podcast #84: GM Matthew Sadler

In this week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast, my guest is English grandmaster Matthew Sadler. Matthew is a two-time British Champion, a streamer, a YouTuber, an expert in chess engines, and a very successful author.  From his books, I only have to mention Game Changer, co-authored with Natasha Regan, on AlphaZero’s groundbreaking chess strategies and the promise of AI, which was one of the most successful and talked about books of the past years. But I might also mention its sequel, The Silicon Road to Chess Improvement, and the book he wrote together with Steve Giddins, Re-engineering the Chess Classics.These days Matthew is an IT Consultant, but he makes no secret of the fact that he fills his spare time with as much chess as possible. And although the FIDE rating list no longer has him as an active player, his FIDE rating still hovers eerily close to 2700. In fact, Matthew might very well be the strongest amateur chess player in the world.And last but not least, Matthew is the175

November 28, 2025

Podcast

NIC Podcast #82: GM Jan Timman

In this week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast, my guest is Dutch grandmaster Jan Timman. Jan returns to the podcast to talk about his latest book, Timman’s Studies, an impressive volume of 455 pages in which he presents his collected endgame studies and explains how they originated.Of course, Jan Timman is primarily known as the most successful Dutch chess player of the past fifty years; a world-class player who won countless elite tournaments around the world and rose to second place in the world rankings, behind Anatoly Karpov, in 1982.However, in recent years, after Covid, Jan’s appearances as a player had become less frequent, and a few weeks ago he announced in an interview with Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, that he has ended his active career as a player. Of course, he still follows chess closely – and he stresses that this is classical chess and not rapid chess, even if Magnus Carlsen plays, and certainly not Freestyle chess. As Honorary Editor, Jan also continues to write175

November 14, 2025

Podcast

NIC Podcast #81: GM Loek van Wely

In this week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast, my guest is Dutch grandmaster Loek van Wely. Loek is a good friend of the NIC podcast and he returns to talk about the chess event that is keeping us glued to our screens these days, the World Cup in Goa, India.  An 8-time Dutch champion, Loek can look back on a rich international career. He’s won tournaments all around the world and reached as high as 10th place in the world rankings. While Loek is still active as a player, his activities are more and more shifting to coaching and training. For instance, at last year’s Olympiad in Budapest, he was the coach of the Italian team.The World Cup started almost two weeks ago and will continue for close to two more weeks. There’s a lot at stake in Goa, as the top three finishers will qualify for the Candidates tournament in Cyprus next year (28 March-15 April). There’s also an attractive prize-fund. The winner takes home $120,000 and the numbers two and three, $85,000 and $60,000, respectively175

October 17, 2025

Podcast

NIC Podcast #79: GM Ruslan Ponomariov

In this week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast, my guest is Ukrainian grandmaster Ruslan Ponomariov. Born in 1983, Ruslan embarked on his career as one of the most astonishing prodigies in chess history. When he was 12, he won the U18 European Championship, when he was 14, he was the youngest grandmaster in the world, the youngest ever at that time. When he was 18, Ruslan won the FIDE World Championship by defeating his countryman Vasyl Ivanchuk in the final of the 2002 knock-out World Championship.There are many excellent reasons to have Ruslan Ponomariov on the New In Chess podcast, but the main reason this time is the victory earlier this week of the Ukrainian national team, led by Ruslan, at the European Team Championships in Batumi. A victory that made his country proud in incredibly difficult times, as Ukraine continues to suffer day in day out after Russia’s brutal invasion three years ago.It's also a highly emotional moment that offers a brief moment of reprieve for the chess175

September 26, 2025

Podcast

NIC Podcast #77 - GM Erwin l'Ami

This week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast features an interview with Dutch grandmaster Erwin l’Ami. Erwin has been a chess professional for some twenty years now. Among his most notable successes are victories in the Reykjavik Open in 2015 and in the Dutch Championship in 2022. And let me not forget to mention his win in the Rabat Blitz in 2015, ahead of speedsters like Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Alexei Shirov, if only for the fact that I had the privilege of watching this victory from a front row seat in the Moroccan capital. Erwin loves to play in tournaments – that remains his biggest passion - but his chess activities expand into other areas as well. He’s a prolific writer, has made popular courses for Chessable, and is a highly respected trainer. In that role, he has been on Veselin Topalov’s world championship team and has worked with Anish Giri for many years.I invited Erwin to the podcast to talk about his life in chess and to see where our conversation would lead us. Right175

July 04, 2025

Podcast

NIC Podcast #70 - GM Viswanathan Anand

My guest in this week’s episode is a very special one, it’s none other than five-time World Champion Viswanathan Anand. Commonly known as Vishy Anand, he is one of the greatest and most popular champions in the history of our game and one of its most admired and respected ambassadors. Anand was the first ever Indian grandmaster, and look what happened in his wake, today there are 85 grandmasters in India, it’s truly unbelievable. Although no one could blame him if he decided to rest on his laurels, Vishy Anand remains active as a player – and he is still ranked number 13 in the world (2743), which is frankly incredible - but in the past years he has also taken on new roles. He is Deputy Vice-President of FIDE and he is a partner in the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy in Chennai, where the cream of the highly successful young Indian generation is training and, no doubt, many youngsters whose names we do not yet know.Vishy Anand joins us from Leon, in Spain, where he is playing in the invitational175

June 20, 2025

Podcast

NIC Podcast #69 - WGM Tania Sachdev

This week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast features an interview with Indian chess star Tania Sachdev. Tania is a two-time Indian Women’s Champion, she was a member of the Indian Women’s team that wrote history when they won gold at the Budapest Olympiad last year, and she is one of the most popular chess commentators in the world. Relying on the broad knowledge and deep insights of the professional, and the unbridled enthusiasm of the true chess fan, Tania can entertain and speak to audiences of all levels.I interviewed Tania on the final day of Norway Chess, a couple of hours before the prizegiving and closing dinner. For close to two weeks, she had been working in the Chess.com studio in Stavanger alongside fellow commentators Jovanka Houska and David Howell, but, as I had hoped and expected, that did not stop her from being as energetic and passionate as ever as she answered my questions with a stream of stories, memories, observations and thoughts.We spoke about her family background175

June 13, 2025

Podcast

NIC Podcast #68 - James Altucher

This week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast features an interview with James Altucher, an ardent chess lover and one of the most inquisitive and inspiring persons I have met in recent years. James Altucher is an investor, a venture capitalist and a firm believer in AI and crypto. He’s also a bestselling author – you may know his book Choose Yourself – and he has a popular podcast with 50 thousand subscribers, The James Altucher Show. In his podcast, he dives into the world of entrepreneurship, personal development and out-of-the-box thinking. Or, as he puts it himself, he interviews the world’s peak performers in every area of life. You will find a wealth of thought-provoking conversations at https://jamesaltuchershow.com/But the main reason why I invited James Altucher to the New In Chess Podcast, is the great column he has been writing for New In Chess Magazine for the past four years. In his column, he describes his struggle to regain his old chess strength after he returned to our175

May 23, 2025

Podcast

NIC Podcast #66 - GM David Navara

This week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast features an interview with Czech grandmaster David Navara. For more than 20 years, David Navara has been the leading chess player of the Czech Republic. Thirteen times he won the national championship. In 2015, he was ranked number 14 in the world, with a peak rating of 2751.I spoke to David last week, in Prague, the city where he was born 40 years ago and where he still lives. Over the years, we met on many occasions, but for some inexplicable reason we never sat down for a proper interview. Now we did and to begin with we returned to our first meeting, in 2001 at the European Team Championship in Leon, in the north of Spain, where 16-year-old David  was one of the stars as he scored an impressive 7 out of 9. Even if we’d only just met, he kindly showed me three of his games, giving me a first taste of his phenomenal talent.After this nice memory, David talked with great openness about his upbringing, his loving parents, the crises in his175

May 02, 2025

Podcast

NIC Podcast #64 - IM Kostya Kavutskiy

This week's episode of the New In Chess Podcast features an interview with American International Master Kostya Kavutskiy. Kostya is one of the three "senseis" (teachers) at the ChessDojo, an international chess training program that Kostya runs together with fellow Americans GM Jesse Kraai and IM David Pruess. As a player, he is currently embarking on a "European tour", which has included the recent Reykjavik and Grenke tournaments. His next destination is Spain, where he will be attending the Killer Chess training camp organised by Jacob Aagaard. Joining us from Hamurg, Germany, Kostya talks to Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam about the origins of the ChessDojo program, his GM ambitions, meeting Vasyl Ivanchuk and much more. Enjoy this week's episode of the New In Chess Podcast! 0:00 – Intro 2:08 – Why Kostya prefers playing in Europe 4:00 – The philosophy behind the Chess Dojo 9:58 – How did Kostya transition from playing to teaching? 11:25 – Drawing inspiration from Mark Dvorestky 12:55 – The175