CircleChess and Neurostellar announced a new partnership aimed at exploring the connection between chess performance and cognitive science, through a hybrid tournament format called Battle of Brains.
Chess has traditionally been studied through its moves: opening preparation, key combinations, and the mistakes that decide a game. The new partnership looks instead at what happens behind those moves — why a player's focus fades after hours of strong play, why a familiar position suddenly feels difficult, or how fatigue, pressure, and time pressure change the way a player thinks.
Neurostellar specializes in cognitive performance, studying how people focus, make decisions, and perform under varying conditions. CircleChess, through its AI-powered platform Caissa, has built technology focused on how players learn, think, and improve at chess. The new collaboration brings the two disciplines together.
The first edition of Battle of Brains took place in Chennai on August 22
In Battle of Brains, participants gather in person but compete online through Caissa while wearing Orbit, a cognitive-tracking device developed by Neurostellar. The format is designed to capture the thinking behind every move — calculation, decision-making, focus, and performance under pressure — alongside the moves themselves. Registrations are handled through CircleChess' WhatsApp assistant.
Chess lends itself naturally to this kind of study. Players are constantly weighing possibilities, anticipating outcomes, and making decisions under time pressure and incomplete information; the difference between two moves can come down to a single moment of judgment, attention, or calculation. Battle of Brains is built to capture that dimension of the game.
Kumar Gaurav, Founder of CircleChess, shared a few words on the partnership:
"For years, we have looked at chess through the lens of moves, mistakes, preparation and engine evaluations. But there is another layer that we have always found a gap in - what is happening in a player's mind while they are making those decisions. Why does focus drop? Why does decision-making change under pressure? Why can the same player perform so differently across different moments of a game? Our partnership with Neurostellar allows us to start looking at those questions in a completely new way. Battle of Brains is a first step towards bringing cognitive intelligence into competitive chess, and we believe this could fundamentally change how players understand, train and perform." — Kumar Gaurav, Founder, CircleChess
"We built Orbit to answer a simple question: what does peak mental performance actually look like, moment to moment? Battle of Brains was the first time we got to answer that live, on a leaderboard, in front of a room full of players and spectators. Just as Whoop and Garmin gave us a window into physical performance, Neurostellar is kickstarting the mental fitness era, and partnering with CircleChess, one of India's fastest-growing chess platforms, made this possible. Their genuine enthusiasm for the neuroscience and psychology behind the game, combined with a massive chess ecosystem, gave us the perfect proving ground for combining cognitive tracking with competitive play. I'm genuinely looking forward to working closely with CircleChess as we take this further." — Karthik, Founder & CEO, Neurostellar
CircleChess' Chief Chess Officer is also collaborating directly with Neurostellar on the initiative, working to connect cognitive performance data with the practical realities of chess preparation. GM Vishnu shared:
"Battle of Brains in Chennai was an important first step in changing how we understand chess performance. For decades, we have measured players through results, ratings and engine evaluations, but that tells us only what happened on the board. By combining chess data with cognitive data, we can begin to understand how a player's focus, endurance and decision-making change under real competitive pressure. The first event gave us valuable validation, and our goal now is to keep improving the technology and eventually make this a meaningful part of how chess players train, compete and understand their own performance." — GM Vishnu Prasanna, Chief Chess Officer, CircleChess
The project also includes Paddy Upton, who is working alongside Neurostellar as part of a broader exploration of cognitive performance and human potential.
Karthik, Founder of Neurostellar, on collaborating with Paddy shares:
"Partnering with Paddy Upton on Battle of Brains was one of the most exciting collaborations we've been part of. Paddy - mental conditioning coach behind India's 2011 Cricket World Cup-winning team, with decades of experience across elite sport and business - has built his Digital Twin, an AI extension of his coaching practice. Given the depth of his work at the highest levels, Paddy's Twin brought a rare kind of coaching experience to the athletes at Battle of Brains. I'm looking forward to seeing how cognitive tracking and mental performance coaching together can push athletes closer to their peak."
For CircleChess, the partnership is a natural extension of its work with Caissa. The platform has traditionally helped players analyze games and train specific skills; this collaboration opens up a broader question: can the way someone plays chess reveal something about the way they think, and can that insight shape how they prepare?
That question sits at the heart of Battle of Brains. By combining the atmosphere of a live tournament with digital play on Caissa and Neurostellar's focus on cognitive performance, the event aims to build a more complete picture of each player — not just the moves they make, but the thinking and performance behind them.
CircleChess' Caissa is an all-in-one chess platform that helps players get metrics such as their mistakes, weaknesses, psychological factors, strengths, and strength to recover, through analysis of thousands of games played by the user on chess.com, lichess.org, and Caissa combined.
Below is a sample report of a player through Orbit, including metrics like Cognitive Endurance, Max Deep Work Duration, Intrusion Rate, State Dynamics, and actionable training recommendations.
The report recommends focus and breathing exercises to build endurance and reduce fragmentation.
In the coming time, CircleChess through Caissa can help integrate these metrics and personalize the learning experience — the idea being: play, measure your cognitive state, identify your weakness, train specifically on that weakness, and measure again. This can help players understand the mental side of chess improvement, alongside their normal game analysis, making it an integral part of preparation.
The partnership arrives as chess is increasingly viewed as more than a competitive sport. Its ties to decision-making, concentration, problem-solving, and mental endurance have made it a compelling subject in broader conversations about learning and cognitive performance. With Battle of Brains, CircleChess and Neurostellar bring those conversations into a live, interactive setting — placing the mind itself at the center of the game.
As chess continues to evolve, so does the way we understand performance. The next frontier may not just be in analyzing more moves, but in understanding the person making them.
With Battle of Brains, CircleChess and Neurostellar are taking a step in that direction — bringing together chess, technology, and cognitive performance to look beyond the board and closer at the human mind.
Because every move has a story. And sometimes, understanding the player behind it can be just as important as understanding the game itself. This will be a next evolution in the world of chess.