Chess Endgames and 25 Years of Karsten Müller: ChessBase Packages the Forgotten Phase

I have a habit of rewinding finished games. Not to watch the opening — the phase every news outlet rushes to analyze in the first few hours — but to watch from move 40 onward, when the board holds only two kings, a few pawns, and an empty space nobody wants to film. It is precisely there that Karsten Müller has spent 25 years doing something most fans consider pointless: recording every position, every optimal move, until the forgotten phase became a teachable curriculum. I rewound the SEA Games 29 footage to find what people had left behind, and years later, I rewind games for the same purpose.

On August 14, 2026, ChessBase announced a new edition of Endgame Academy, opening with Müller's course "Checkmate & Pawn Endgames". The announcement begins with three words: "25 years ago". Those three words are a way of pricing an asset.

To understand why an endgame course matters, look at the structure of the online chess market. For nearly two decades, most training content has revolved around openings: opening databases, opponent preparation, variations dozens of moves deep. The endgame sits at the edge. It is dry, hard to sell, and it forces learners to solve on their own — something the passive video industry does not encourage.

Karsten Müller was never a flashy grandmaster. He writes the "Endgame Corner" column, publishes books, and in coaching circles the phrase "nobody is better at endgames than Karsten Müller" is repeated as a professional convention. ChessBase has worked with him for years, and "25 years ago" is the marker the company wants to anchor: long enough to turn content into an asset, distant enough to evoke a sense of heritage.

Notably, Michael Kotyk, a young chess trainer in Hamburg, was invited to review the product. He remarked that interactive options "have become indispensable in video courses". That is a recognition of a market standard, rather than praise for the product itself.

We need to break down what actually creates value in an interactive endgame course. The first source of value is the structure of knowledge. The endgame is layered: basic checkmates, then pawn endgames — where theory about the king, the outside square, and tempo decides everything. "Checkmate & Pawn Endgames" was chosen as the starting point because it is the foundation. A course that begins here shows design along a skill axis, not a marketing axis.

The next source of value lies in the method of interaction. Passive video — learners sitting, nodding, then forgetting — revealed its limits long ago. In endgame training, skill is built by placing your own hand on the board and choosing a move, not by watching. Learners must calculate, compare with the answer, and understand why they went wrong. Müller, through the ChessBase system, shifts from "telling" to "forcing the learner to solve". That is a difference in essence, not in interface.

The least-discussed factor is the durability of endgame knowledge. Openings change every year; most of the variations grandmasters prepared for 2026 to 2026 are already obsolete. The endgame is different. Philidor, Lucena, the principle of driving the king to the corner — material recorded in the 18th century remains fully valid. That is why an endgame course has a longer shelf life than any opening course: it sells a law, not a season. ChessBase understands this. "25 years ago" speaks to the durability of a product, rather than to memory.

This raises a question for Vietnamese chess students. Free platforms such as Lichess provide vast endgame exercise libraries without charge. So what does a paid ChessBase course sell? It sells a structured path and the credibility of its compiler. For amateur players, the gap between a random exercise library and a sequentially designed program can be the gap between practicing and improving.

From a business angle, this is a moat-building strategy. When users have already paid for ChessBase software, integrating endgame courses into the ecosystem raises switching costs: leaving means abandoning a purchased library. Müller is the anchor keeping learners inside the ecosystem, beyond being an author. And Kotyk, the young trainer, is a transmission channel: his students will inherit the habit of using this product.

Based on my experience of following and reconstructing games, one detail stands out: major chess platforms often publish sales figures for opening courses, but rarely for endgame courses. That silence signals a stable, low-volatility segment that does not need a media push.

There is a paradox the press release does not mention. Interactivity is becoming a universal standard — true — but precisely because it is universal, it is no longer a differentiator. When every platform has interactivity, the distinction is no longer whether it exists, but the quality of exercise design and the depth of the learning path.

The second paradox runs deeper. The endgame is the least practiced phase yet the one that decides the most results at club level. Amateur players do not lose because their opening is weak — they lose because they turn a drawn position into a loss in the final three moves. If that is true, why are endgame products still fewer than opening products? The answer lies in psychology: openings offer a sense of control and glamour, while the endgame forces learners to confront patience. ChessBase sells packaged patience, rather than glamour.

The praise for Müller is genuine, but it comes from the publisher itself. Buyers should wait for independent reviews before deciding, especially since the price and the depth of the curriculum have not been disclosed.

I trust footage more than testimony, because footage cannot lie. Every documentary is a running track: the audience sees the finish line, I live at every starting mark. And the footage of 25 years of chess endgames shows one simple thing: what people dismiss as surplus is often where the truth dwells. To know how good a player is, the answer lies at move 40.