25 Years and a Lone Pawn: Karsten Müller, Endgame Academy, and the Art of Finishing

In the first endgame exercise I ever attempted, there was a position with a lone King on the d-file. I stared at it for seventeen minutes, unable to understand why it was printed in bold in Karsten Müller's material. Only later, when I tried the wrong move and the engine punished me, did I realize: that pawn was not a tool for winning. It was a question the author wanted me to answer in silence.

That is how I began to understand Karsten Müller. And that is also how I received the news ChessBase published on August 14, 2026: a new edition of Endgame Academy, opening with "Checkmate & Pawn Endgames" authored by Müller himself, alongside a review by Michael Kotyk — a young trainer from Hamburg. "25 years ago" — the headline recalls a long milestone, but not for nostalgia's sake. It is a reminder that the endgame, the part many consider the sleepiest in chess, still has stories left to tell.

In Vietnam, we are accustomed to studying openings. Everyone knows a few dozen opening moves of the Sicilian, of the Caro-Kann. But when only seven pieces remain on the board, many young players start to panic. I once sat beside a young player at a Da Nang club, whose final twenty moves in a rated game became a nightmare: winning in structure, winning in material, but losing in execution.

Karsten Müller is not a world champion. He does not have ten stars on his chest. But within the endgame world, that name is equivalent to a school of thought. He wrote the "Endgame Corner" column for decades, wrote books, and his name appears in almost every professional player's reference list. Notably: ChessBase chose Müller for the opening course of Endgame Academy. When you open an academy, you do not choose the second-most serious person. You choose the first. This is not the first time ChessBase has done this, but it is the first time they have placed Müller at the opening position — as if he were the main door of the whole academy.

But today's story does not stop at Müller. It lies in the word "interactive." ChessBase states in its press release that interactivity has become "indispensable" in video courses. This is an important sentence that gets glossed over. It admits that the era of students sitting and listening to lectures has ended. The era of students clicking, failing, and being corrected has begun.

I remember myself during the pandemic period: when COVID-19 forced V.League matches to be played in empty stadiums, I commentated on the Viettel versus Hanoi FC match, which finished 0-0. Without cheering, my voice became monotonous. The editor said: "You said everything correctly, but nobody heard your heart." I have remembered that sentence ever since. An endgame course is the same. If it is only technically correct without touching the learner's intuition, it will die in silence.

What makes a good endgame course?

The content must have a progressive structure. Checkmate & Pawn Endgames is a pedagogically sound starting point: King-and-pawn endgames are the foundation of all endgame technique, and mate patterns are the most basic building blocks. Müller starts at the foundation, not at the top of the tower. This is the mark of a serious teacher.

Interactivity must actually work. ChessBase does not specify what the interactive mechanism is — whether it involves embedded FEN exercises requiring users to move pieces themselves, or simply a button reading "show answer." This difference is larger than we think. Active learning, meaning generating moves before seeing the answer, aids retention far more than passive reading. If Endgame Academy's interactivity is only a pretty interface without forcing the learner to think, it will fail educationally.

The reviewer must be independent. ChessBase inviting Michael Kotyk — a young trainer — to put the product "under the magnifying glass" is a smart media move. It creates a sense of external verification. But is Kotyk truly independent, or is he part of the ChessBase ecosystem? That is a question I do not have an answer to. And in this profession, unanswered questions are often the most important ones.

From a data perspective, I noticed one detail: the headline "25 years ago." This is anniversary marketing, not innovation. It suggests ChessBase is commemorating a long journey with Müller, possibly dating back to his first ChessBase product around 2026. This is valuable because it shows the persistence of a rare author-publisher relationship in chess. But it also raises a question: is this product a genuine creation, or a refresh of something old?

One point must be stated plainly. The chess education market has changed. Lichess offers endgame exercises for free. Chessable has interactive courses by many grandmasters. YouTube has thousands of instructional videos. ChessBase is no longer the only choice for endgame learners. So where does their advantage lie?

In this: Müller. Müller's content is curated and arranged into a learning path. Free does not mean good. A random exercise on Lichess is not equal to an exercise placed in its correct position within a curriculum. This is the value ChessBase sells: order, not raw knowledge. And order is expensive.

One small detail worth noting: ChessBase has not published a price, has not published the number of exercises, and has not published the actual length of the course. In data reporting, these are three gaps that turn any conclusion about value into speculation. I do not buy a course based on the author's name. I buy based on duration, exercise count, and actual interactivity. Those three numbers are absent, and their absence deserves to be noted.

But I want to argue against myself.

Is "interactivity" truly progress, or merely a trap of the era?

I once wrote: "The microphone does not make the storyteller. It is the silence of the stands that signs beneath every line." Likewise, a button does not make a chess learner. It is the silence of reflection that produces a player.

There is a paradox: when everything becomes interactive, learners tend to click more but think less. They solve a hundred King-and-pawn exercises in thirty minutes and feel they have improved. But when they encounter a real position in a game, with no "check" button, they freeze. Interactivity may be teaching learners to react to an interface, not to a board.

Müller likely understands this better than anyone. That is why I believe the static part of the course — the pages, the long analyses — is the soul. The interactive part is only the entrance. If ChessBase is betting that users will use only the interactive part and skip the static part, they have bet wrongly on the nature of the endgame.

Because "Sport does not promise victory; it only promises a heartbeat brave enough to continue." And chess, at its deepest level, is the same.

It would be easy to say this is a good or bad product. I do not have enough data to conclude. I only know one thing: after twenty-five years, people still have to reopen that lone King position on the d-file to find the answer. "Sports culture is a graveyard of names, letting their stories live one more inning." And Karsten Müller, somehow, is still playing his inning.