The State of Chess Returns March 24: Queen of Chess, AI Features, and What Chess.com Is Building Next

On March 24, Chess.com is hosting its next State of Chess broadcast, and this one covers three topics that matter to anyone paying attention to where chess is headed: the cultural impact of the Queen of Chess documentary, how Chess.com is using AI across its platform, and a trust and safety update. Here is what to expect and why each piece matters. ## Queen of Chess: From Sundance to Netflix's Global Top 10 Rory Kennedy, the director of Queen of Chess, will join IM Danny Rensch on the show. If you have not watched the documentary yet, it tells the story of Judit Polgar, who remains the only woman in history to break into the world top 10 in chess. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27 and hit Netflix on February 6. Within four days, it reached number seven on Netflix's global top 10 list. It cracked the top five in 18 countries, including Canada, Belgium, Slovakia, and Israel, and held the number one spot in Hungary for four consecutive days. The critical reception has been strong: 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, 75 on Metacritic. For a chess documentary, those numbers are remarkable. For context, the Queen's Gambit was a fictional series, and the Carlsen-Niemann documentary was more about controversy than inspiration. Queen of Chess is a straight biographical documentary about a chess player, and it reached 300 million Netflix subscribers. What makes this relevant beyond entertainment is the timing. Bodhana Sivanandan just earned the FM title at 11, rated higher than Polgar was at the same age. The Women's Candidates Tournament starts March 28 with one of the strongest fields ever assembled. The documentary is landing in a moment where women's chess is generating real momentum, and the conversation between Kennedy and Rensch will likely touch on what that means. ## Chess.com AI: What Vinay Bhat Is Building GM Vinay Bhat, Chess.com's first Director of AI and Machine Learning, will discuss how AI powers the platform and what comes next. This is the segment to watch if you care about chess technology. Bhat's team focuses on three user-facing areas: Game Review, puzzles, and human-like chess engines. The most interesting thread is the human-like engine work. Bhat has talked publicly about wanting to build engines that pass a chess-specific Turing Test. The idea is that a position played by a 600-rated engine should be indistinguishable from one played by a 600-rated human. This matters because the current bot experience on most platforms still feels artificial. Engines at low ratings do not make human mistakes; they make engine mistakes scaled down, which is a different thing. If Chess.com can crack genuinely human-like play across all rating levels, it changes how beginners learn and how intermediate players practice. The AI team also works on internal tools to speed up development, which sounds mundane but has compounding effects on how fast the platform ships new features. Expect Bhat to preview at least one or two features that have not been announced yet. State of Chess episodes have historically been where Chess.com reveals product roadmap items. ## Trust and Safety Update David Watkis, Chess.com's Senior Product Manager, will cover trust and safety. This typically means anti-cheating measures, fair play policies, and community moderation. Cheating detection in online chess is an ongoing arms race. Chess.com has invested heavily in detection systems that combine move matching, time usage analysis, behavioral patterns, and player profiles. Any significant deviation from a player's established profile triggers review. The timing here is also notable. With the Candidates Tournament starting five days after this broadcast, and the Chess.com Open running its Play-In events, fair play enforcement is front-of-mind for the competitive community. ## When and Where to Watch The State of Chess airs March 24 after Titled Tuesday, around 2:15 PM ET (20:15 CET). It will stream live on Chess.com's Twitch and YouTube channels. There will be a live Q&A session at the end. ## Why This Episode Matters This is not just a routine update. The three topics converge on a single question: what does the future of chess look like? The Queen of Chess documentary is proof that chess stories resonate with mainstream audiences when told well. The AI discussion previews features that will shape how millions of people learn and play. The trust and safety segment addresses the fundamental challenge of keeping online competition fair. Five days after this broadcast, the Candidates Tournament begins in Cyprus. The timing is deliberate. Chess is in a moment of unusual convergence: cultural visibility, technological innovation, and competitive drama all peaking at once. The State of Chess on March 24 is a good place to take stock of all three.