Karsten Müller and 25 years of writing endgame poetry: When chess learns to listen to pawns

That day I sat in the small studio of an old chess club on Nanjing Road, Shanghai. Outside, the streets were bustling; inside, there was only the ticking of a clock and the soft sound of wood touching wood. A fifteen-year-old boy was hunched over an endgame board: two kings, two pawns, one bishop. He sat motionless for twenty minutes. No scoreboard, no engine number could capture what was happening in his head. Only silence. And I understood why Karsten Müller, the man with silver hair and round glasses, had devoted his entire life to talking about pawns. The golden moment of chess does not lie in the opening, where computers have memorized everything. It lies in the endgame, where a person is forced to face himself. On August 14, 2026, ChessBase officially announced a new edition of its Endgame Academy, featuring the foundational course "Checkmate & Pawn Endgames," compiled by Karsten Müller. This is not the first time Müller's name has appeared on the platform. Twenty-five years since he submitted his first endgame analyses to ChessBase, the man still stubbornly holds to a strange belief: that the tiny pawns, the seemingly sleepiest games, are where the soul of chess resides. The contemporary chess market has never been more explosive. Online platforms sprout like mushrooms after rain, super grandmasters open their own courses one after another, and endgame analysis videos rack up millions of views. But most of them focus on the opening and middlegame, two phases that engines have decoded almost perfectly. The endgame is different. The endgame demands something a computer cannot teach: the discipline of patience. Karsten Müller is not as famous as world champions. He has no legendary games for people to recall forever. But in chess circles, his name is spoken with a particular respect. He is one of the few who has devoted his entire career to studying the most forgotten part of the board. While others revel in beautiful middlegame combinations, Müller quietly analyzes how a single pawn advancing one square can change the fate of an entire game. The new course begins with the most basic checkmate patterns, then gradually advances to complex pawn endgames. This arrangement is not random. It reflects a clear pedagogical philosophy: learning chess is like learning to write poetry, you must start with the simplest rhymes before you can compose free verse. I have watched many chess courses, and most share a common mistake: they jump straight into exciting topics while skipping the foundation. Müller does not. The most notable aspect of this edition is interactivity. ChessBase calls it "interactive options that have become indispensable in video courses." It sounds like an empty advertising line, but placed next to Michael Kotyk, a young Hamburg chess trainer invited to evaluate the product with a "magnifying glass of critique," the story becomes more interesting. Kotyk is not just a user; he is an educator shaping young students every day. When a young trainer reviews a course by an endgame master, it signals the product is aimed at coaches, not just self-learners. I have spent years observing youth chess training venues, and I have noticed something: children today learn chess faster than the previous generation, but they are less patient. They are used to every question having an immediate answer, every position being evaluated with a single click. So interactivity can be a double-edged sword. It makes learning engaging, but it can also reinforce the habit of solving problems by reflex rather than deep thought. I have an unforgettable memory of a SIPG youth training session in 2026. While every camera turned toward Oscar's sixty-million-euro transfer, I was drawn to the side pitch, where a seventeen-year-old boy named Zhou Junjie was quietly practicing free kicks. Seven out of ten times, the ball hit the top corner. The next day I wrote a long piece about the poetry in the left foot of unknown children instead of covering the transfer. That was the first lesson that taught me beauty often lies at the edge of attention. I thought of that lesson when reading about ChessBase's new edition. Endgame Academy is not a flashy product. It does not promise to make you win in thirty days, it has no grand livestreams with stars. It is just a course about pawns. But perhaps that is exactly why it is more trustworthy. There is a small detail worth noting. ChessBase did not disclose the price of the new edition, nor the length or the number of exercises. That makes the press release, however carefully written, feel more like an invitation than a verified claim. In the sports world, we are used to this kind of information: selected beautiful numbers, positive assessments from a few individuals connected to the producer, and silence about weaknesses. I am not saying the new edition has weaknesses. I am only saying the writer needs to distinguish what is announced from what is proven. Back to Müller. What I respect about him is not fame, but steadfastness. For twenty-five years, he still answers questions many consider trivial. Perhaps he refused offers to make courses on flashier topics, just to keep talking about pawns. Because anyone can teach attack, but few can teach patience. And in chess, as in life, patience is the hardest skill to learn. There is one thing I have always believed: my most romantic mistake is believing pawns can write poetry. But I still believe it, even knowing no engine confirms it. Because if we relied only on computers, the endgame would just be a math problem. And a math problem does not require anyone to sit for hours in an old room, just to hear wood softly touching wood. Now, the counterintuitive angle. The popularity of online chess courses is gradually creating a generation with good technique but weak intuition. They know every endgame principle from books but cannot feel them. They remember positions they studied but cannot create in situations they have never seen. This is a fascinating contradiction: the more interactive a course is, the more it can make learners dependent on ready-made exercises. When everything is digitized, the ability to focus deeply on a single problem becomes a luxury. And the endgame, the sleepiest part of the board, is precisely where that ability is trained. A player can solve hundreds of endgame puzzles on an app, but only those who have sat for hours before a seemingly hopeless position truly understand what the endgame is. Even Müller, with all his experience, cannot replace the learner sitting before the board. He can only point the way. And sometimes, in a market flooded with promises, pointing honestly is already a great contribution. I do not know whether the new edition of Endgame Academy will truly help learners make a leap forward. No one can evaluate a course from a press release alone. But one thing I believe firmly: after twenty-five years, Karsten Müller is still doing what few have the patience to do, speaking of small things as if they were everything. And in a world where everyone wants to become a legend instantly, that patience deserves to be recorded. An empty stadium still holds the applause of those who have passed. An empty board is the same, still holding the breath of pawns that once moved in silence. After three decades holding a pen, I realize I have never written about sports. I have only written about people, and how they remain patient with things that seem meaningless.