For chess coaches and serious players
Search chess by ideas,
not positions.
Describe a plan, a structure or a pattern in plain English. ChessIntel finds the elite over-the-board games where it happened, and opens each one at the move.
“Carlsen’s wins where he gave up the bishop pair for a knight, then pushed a pawn onto that colour”
60 games
- 17.Bxf6gives up the bishop pair
- 28.b4a pawn onto that colour
- 56,023FIDE-rated over-the-board games
- Top 320players by rating — every game they played
- 37themes and motifs detected in every game
- Move by moveevery result checked by replaying the game
Examples
Ask it what a coach would ask.
Real searches with their real counts. Each one opens in the app.
- Move sequenceCarlsen’s wins where he gave up the bishop pair for a knight, then pushed a pawn onto that colour60 gamesRun this search →
- StructureMinority attacks, with at least one player rated 2600+282 gamesRun this search →
- SacrificeExchange sacrifices that won, in the Sicilian116 gamesRun this search →
- ManoeuvreCaruana’s knight going b1–d2–f1–g315 gamesRun this search →
- Opponent prepPraggnanandhaa with Black against 1.e4, classical games since 202456 gamesRun this search →
- ClockTime scrambles between 2700s in classical games60 gamesRun this search →
- EngineCarlsen’s wins after being 3 pawns down6 gamesRun this search →
- TacticsSmothered mates6 gamesRun this search →
How it works
From a question to the move.
- 1
Ask in plain English
Or build the question clause by clause: player, colour, result, rating, event, opening, themes, positions on the board, and sequences of moves.
- 2
See how it was read
Your words become filters you can see and edit. Anything ChessIntel can’t search is flagged — never silently dropped.
- 3
Open every game at the move
Results open at the moment the idea happens, with the engine evaluation and the players’ clocks. Export to PGN, or save games to a prep list you can share.
What you can search
Everything that happened on the board.
Combine any of these with who played, when, at what rating and time control, and how it ended.
Ideas that unfold over moves
A knight’s route across the board, an imbalance held for twenty moves, a trade followed by a pawn push — searched as a sequence, not a single position.
37 themes and motifs
Detected in every game: isolated queen’s pawn, minority attack, opposite-coloured bishops, knight outposts, pawn storms and more.
Tactics
Forks, pins, skewers, discovered checks, exchange and queen sacrifices, smothered and back-rank mates.
Engine and clock
Comebacks from three pawns down, missed wins, and time scrambles — under 30 seconds with ten or more moves still to play.
Players, exactly
Bound by FIDE id, so different spellings never split a player. Profiles, results by colour, and the openings they actually play.
Openings over any result set
An opening tree for whatever you searched: what was played next, how often, and how it scored.
Accuracy
One wrong game, and you’d stop trusting it.
So every release has to pass an accuracy battery first.
- Stored games are audited field by field against the source PGN.
- Themes and tactics are re-derived by a second, independent implementation, and the two must agree.
- A hand-verified set of real moments has to pass before every release.
- Online events and broadcast relay errors are quarantined, never served.
- If your question contains something ChessIntel can’t search, it tells you.
For AI agents
Your assistant can ask it too.
ChessIntel is an MCP server. Add it to Claude — or any MCP client — as a custom connector. No key, no account.
https://chessintel.com/api/mcp
In Claude: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector. Agents can read llms.txt or this page as Markdown.
Then just ask“Find Praggnanandhaa’s classical games with Black against 1.e4 since 2024 and tell me what he plays.”
search_games- The unified search: players (bound by FIDE id), colour, result, rating, event, year, time control, opening, themes and motifs, board positions, piece routes, attacks, material imbalances and move-sequence patterns, each clause negatable. Every hit is verified by replaying the game and says where the idea happens.
list_themes- The themes and motifs search_games can filter on, with definitions.
player_profile- A player's score overall and per colour, average opponent rating, most-played openings, and the themes that recur in their games compared with the corpus.
explore_openings- The opening tree over any set of games: which moves were played after a line, how often, and how they scored.
get_game- One game as PGN with clock and engine-evaluation comments, plus every detected theme with its ply.
create_prep_list / add_to_prep_list / get_prep_list- Save games to a named list and get a shareable link — no accounts.
FAQ
Questions
Do I need an account?
No. Open the app and search. Prep lists are private links you can share with your students or team.
What does it cost?
ChessIntel is free to use right now.
Where do the games come from?
From broadcasts of FIDE-rated over-the-board events relayed on Lichess, with engine evaluations and clock times. ChessIntel keeps every broadcast game of the world’s top 320 players by rating, so a player’s record is complete — 56,023 games, 2023–2026, plus the 2020 and 2021 world championship matches.
Does it replace my chess database?
No — use it alongside one. Keep your database for deep opening work and large reference collections; ask ChessIntel how games unfolded, in plain English.
Can my AI assistant use it?
Yes. ChessIntel is an MCP server: add it to Claude or any MCP client as a custom connector, with no key and no account. See “For AI agents” below.