The Key Concepts And Methods This GM Teaches To Thousands

After a successful playing career, including a peak FIDE rating of 2641, April 2025 Chess.com Creator of the Month GM Tamas Banusz spent several years as a second to world championship candidate GM Richard Rapport. After that, Tamas finally began pursuing a lifelong dream: chess streaming and content creation, picking up more than 3,000 followers each on Twitch and YouTube in less than a year. Chess.com recently spoke to Tamas about starting in content creation, teaching with games from one of the greatest positional players of all time, and more.

How long have you been creating chess content, and what made you decide to start?

For 10 months. I was Richard Rapport’s second before that and when our relationship came to an end, I wanted change in my life but in the same time an upgrade as well. Going back full time coaching or playing didn’t motivate me, and streaming was always my dream job so it was only logical!

I've been watching streamers since 2016. I would watch the Chessbrahs—Eric is so fun. Danya, his vibe and how he explained things. Also Hikaru—the three big guns.

I pictured myself doing something similar, although I thought I would need to focus more on being educational. Chessbrah, for example, don't necessarily have to focus on the fact that they are actually grandmasters, because people will enjoy whatever they do.

When I was working for Richard, I would work on one screen and put a streamer on in the background because I just hate to work in complete silence. I've also always thought about what my dream job would be if I was not a chess player, and I thought I would love to become a streamer.

I always followed a different path, since I thought I had to become a professional player and coach. But when my working relationship with Richard came to an end, going back full-time coaching was not really something I wanted to do. I like coaching, don't get me wrong, but it's not something which motivates me in the long term as much as streaming does.

What’s your favorite thing about creating? What makes it fun?

Lot of things actually, but I especially love seeing my community grow over time and interacting with people who love chess the same way I do.

What is your single favorite piece of chess content you've ever created?

Recently I started giving an hour-long, one-on-one lesson but live on stream, and I call it: "Play like Karpov!" I have a huge database of Karpov games that I created myself, and I show those games based on my "3+1" rule.

I watched one of those streams and it's interesting how each individual viewer kind of is in that same position as the student, and it was pretty engaging in that way. How do you see that developing? 

I like it a lot. The only drawback is I want to focus on my student, and whenever he's thinking, I don't want to interact with chat because then I'm just disturbing his thinking. So for one hour basically I'm completely completely ignoring chat. 

But I'm getting very positive feedback about the series. I've always been obsessed with Karpov's games. I never really knew how to share my database with the world until I decided it would make for some nice content. So even if I wouldn't normally coach this way, it's quite instructive. Karpov's games do require a certain level of play, but I'm just doing my thing and hopefully people will enjoy it.

Do you want to talk a little bit more about the "3+1" rule?

It's something you can use whenever position doesn't require very long calculations. The rule is about improving pieces, trading pieces, changing the pawn structure, and prophylactic moves. From these elements, you can find the best move or the best plan.

Chess is very complex and sometimes forced lines override everything, but it's a general way to improve your position. If you have to change the pawn structure or you have to make some trades which will beneficial for you or you have to find the piece which can be improved or let's say prophylactic moves which not only about being prophylactic but preventing some threats or…let's say you have a threat you have a plan but there is something which your opponent has some resource and you are trying to prevent that one in advance so that's… why it's plus one because it's very complex yeah so this is basically what I created. I've never found it in any books and I always train I always coach this for my pupils. I try to build this around Karpov's games because they're full of these elements every single game. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your creative process?

When I'm on camera, I mainly focus on being educational. I play with viewers, review games, the Play Like Karpov series. I do all of these every week. Of course, I’m trying to be entertaining in the same time. I’m still spreading my wings, but over time I become more and more consistent.

On your YouTube channel I saw you had a lot of shorts from when you were playing. I thought those are pretty interesting or fun.

Tamas Banusz: The shorts are getting more and more viral, but the longer videos not so much. I am still trying to figure it out. Hopefully it just takes time, but I'm not worried about it or anything. I've gotten some nice feedback from the shorts, that they've improved a lot and are more efficient than they were before. So I'm also improving there.

A lot of the people we've talked to in this series, they'll mention that the YouTube the algorithm can be a hard code to crack. But for doing this for less than a year so far, you're definitely growing.

Tamas Banusz: Yeah, I'm definitely growing, don't get me wrong—but I am a person who wants everything at once! And I'm also a perfectionist. 

I'm very grateful for Chess.com because they are helping a lot, putting me on ChessTV every week. That's a very nice because I'm pretty sure my content is worth putting out there. So that's good. I'm grateful for that.

Anything else you'd like to share?

I’m really shy in front of a lot of people, but I figured out streaming is nothing like that. It doesn’t really matter how much people watch me, it doesn’t make me nervous.

That resonates with me. I had a radio show in college and it does feel different than speaking in front of an audience. It's almost like you're not actually having an interaction, you're just putting your stuff out there, so I was also less nervous doing that than I might have been in some other situations. I don't know if I really have a question around that, but I think that's something that a lot of people might deal with. And then to be able to grow a community is nice.

This was basically the main reason I didn't start streaming earlier. I can't recall who it was, but a streamer I was watching talked about the same thing and had done some research—and they're actually not the same thing, talking in front of a lot of people in the same room and talking to a camera where you don't see those people's face. Of course, in my first stream, I could barely talk and I was shaking and everything, but it's so funny to think how much I've changed in just 10 months, and I'm sure five years from now, a lot of things will be different as well.

There are some days when I do wonder why I am doing this, but if I stopped, then I would wake up I ask myself, "Why did you stop!?" So, I will keep grinding!