25 Years of an Endgame Calling: Karsten Müller and the Chess Academy That Never Grows Old

I remember the summer of Nha Trang in 2026, when every chess tournament nationwide came to a halt because of the pandemic. While cleaning out a storeroom, I found an old VHS tape recording an endgame between two amateur players. On the board, only three pawns and two kings remained. No audience, no commentator, only the sound of wood striking wood. I watched that tape again all afternoon. "The stadium is empty, but the applause of 2026 still rings inside every old record" - I wrote that line years ago, and it still holds true for what I saw on that tape. In mid-August 2026, ChessBase introduced a new version of its Endgame Academy, featuring endgame courses written by Karsten Müller, beginning with two sections on Checkmate & Pawn Endgames. The announcement landed exactly at the 25-year milestone of the partnership between ChessBase and Müller. In the chess world, Karsten Müller's name needs no long introduction: he is the author of a series of books and columns on the endgame, and he remains one of the most trusted analysts of endgame technique in expert circles. The verification role for this new product was handed to Michael Kotyk, a young chess trainer from Hamburg. What caught my attention was not that another course had appeared. What caught my attention was how ChessBase packaged it. Müller's courses are labelled "classics," and the product description stresses that in today's video courses, "interactive options have become indispensable." That is a small statement, but it carries an entire shift in the chess education market. For decades, learning chess through video meant sitting and taking notes. The learner absorbed passively, and the result was usually forgetting within weeks. The endgame is exactly the area where memorising theory is not enough to make you play the right move under pressure. A player may recite the square rule for king and pawn by heart, but facing a board with a ticking clock, the hand can still shake and err. That is why moving from passive viewing to interactive exercises is a methodological change, not just a technical feature. Every stadium I walk through has a hidden door, and the entrance is always a person. For Endgame Academy, that person is Karsten Müller. He is not a top player in the ratings sense. He is not famous for victories over leading grandmasters. His authority comes from specialisation. Decades focused on the endgame, on producing material, and on teaching. In a world where coaches are often pulled toward openings - where the money and the flashy "traps" live - having someone devote an entire career to the final phase of the game is rare. Choosing Checkmate & Pawn Endgames as the starting point reveals a clear pedagogical logic. Pawn endings are the foundation of every other endgame. If a player cannot precisely calculate pawn races, everything more complex beyond that becomes meaningless. The basic checkmate patterns are the same: they are the first brick any player must lay before thinking about deep calculation. Starting there, instead of with more glamorous subjects, shows that the author aims not at selling impressions but at building foundations. Over more than forty years at the board and later behind the camera, I have seen many young players win beautifully in the middlegame and then throw the victory away in the endgame. Some of them, when I asked about their shoes or their pre-match meal, could talk at length. But when I asked how they would handle a symmetrical king-and-pawn position, they went quiet. That gap is not a lack of talent. It comes from a chess education that, in many places, still treats the endgame as the leftover at the end of class, when the teacher is tired and the time is short. That is why I follow products like Endgame Academy with special interest. Not because I believe one course can change the fate of an entire generation of players. I do not believe that. But I do believe that a respected name choosing to place his weight on the hardest and least glamorous part of this sport is a cultural signal. It shows that the value of fundamental understanding is still being placed above the value of flashy performance. Back to Michael Kotyk. Putting a young German trainer into a review role can be read in two ways. First, it may be an attempt to manufacture credibility: placing someone other than the publisher to praise the product. If Kotyk works for ChessBase or has a commercial relationship with them, the verification value is close to zero. Second, if Kotyk is genuinely an independent trainer, his trial and comments carry a different meaning: this is how a new generation of coaches absorbs old tools and folds them into modern teaching methods. I will not assign Kotyk a role larger than the information permits, but I keep a thread of hope that he is the second kind. One thing any reader of this announcement should know: 25 years is a round number made for marketing. It says nothing about the quality of the content. It only says that the relationship between author and publisher has lasted long enough to earn the label "classic." For the buyer, the real questions lie elsewhere: how many interactive exercises does the new version contain, is there a mistake-checking mechanism, and can the learner access it through the full software or via a mobile app? None of those answers appear. The announcement only says interactivity has become "indispensable" - a true sentence, but not a sufficient one. There is one temptation I must always guard against when writing about any product: replacing verification with admiration. Karsten Müller has real standing. But the standing of a person does not automatically translate into the quality of a specific product. Great teachers have written poor books. Leading experts have stood behind rushed courses. And conversely, modest products have changed how a player understands the endgame. I think of the boy Nguyễn Văn Hải, whom I followed in 2026. He was not selected for the provincial team because of a lack of training funds. I carried a phone out to film him running on a red-dirt track, and one viral video opened a sponsor for him. I learned from that: opportunity does not come from perfection. It comes from the right person, at the right time, knowing what he needs and starting from the least glamorous place. Chess is the same. Endgame learners do not need the most spectacular products. They need products that actually help them improve, and that can only be proven by results after months of practice. So what about Endgame Academy made me stop and write this piece, instead of passing over it like hundreds of other product announcements? It is the combination of endgame and interactivity. The endgame is the least innovative field in chess education, because its principles are almost permanently stable. Whether a king-and-pawn position wins or draws does not depend on fashion, era, or style. Because of that immutability, the endgame is the field where a good course can hold value for far longer than an opening course, which becomes outdated within a few seasons. And in a market where everyone chases the new, betting on the unchanging is a counter-intuitive move. That is where I want to stop, contrarian. People often call chess the sport of the intellect, and the endgame the "dry technique" of that intellect. For me, the opposite is true. The endgame is where the human being is most exposed. In a position with dozens of pieces, a player can hide behind combinations. But when only a few pieces remain, every mistake is naked: a king move in the wrong direction reveals a lack of confidence; a hasty pawn push reveals impatience; a refused draw reveals greed. It is there that chess comes closest to the sport of the running track. I have spoken with many former players of the 1980s and 1990s generation in Vietnam. When I ask what they remember most from a game played years ago, most do not tell me about openings or beautiful combinations. They talk about endgame moments, when only a few pieces remained and the clock was nearly out. That is where memory settles longest. "A record never grows old, it is only waiting for someone who knows how to listen" - I believe that line holds true even for the smallest endgame positions. One detail in the product material caught my eye: ChessBase describes Müller as someone no one surpasses in the endgame. That is marketing copy, and I leave it right where it belongs. But what matters in a product like this is not that it has "the best person." What matters is whether the product helps a learner become a better version of themselves in the final phase of the game. If the answer is yes, those 25 years are worth something. If the answer is no, then even another 25 years will only send the learner back to their old tape. I still keep that 2026 VHS tape in my storeroom. Sometimes I watch it again to remember why I chose to bind my life to this sport. The tape has faded, but the wood tapping the board is still there. After watching, I usually reopen my old endgame materials and try a few problems. Very few I solve on the first attempt. But that is precisely why I am still sitting at the board at 65. For those waiting for a perfect course before starting the endgame, the news about Endgame Academy will probably not answer all their questions. No product can. What a good product can do is to set the learner on the right road, then let them walk. I do not know whether this new version is better than what Müller has done before. I will wait for independent reviews, and I will try it myself before writing a single word of certainty. That is perhaps the last thing more than forty years in this work has taught me: in sport, holding on to doubt is not weakness. It is the highest form of respect for both the maker of a product and the one who uses it.