Chess is set to meet neurotechnology in Chennai as IIT Madras-linked neuro-tech startup Neurostellar, in partnership with AI-powered chess learning platform CircleChess, hosts Battle of Brains: A Hybrid Chess Revolution, a tournament featuring real-time tracking of cognitive performance.
The tournament is positioned as a first-of-its-kind chess event where players’ cognitive performance will be tracked live while they compete. Participants will wear Neurostellar’s Orbit wearable during rapid games, enabling the measurement of focus and mental endurance under competitive pressure.
The tournament combines an in-person playing environment with an online chess platform. Data captured through the wearable will feed into a live cognitive leaderboard, updated after every round.
Measuring the mind behind the moves
Traditional chess rankings focus on the outcome of games. The cognitive leaderboard seeks to provide another perspective by showing how players sustain mental performance through repeated rounds of high-pressure competition.
The event features FIDE Masters, Women’s Grandmasters and International Masters, bringing experienced competitive players into an environment designed to examine the relationship between chess performance and cognitive endurance.
Neurostellar Co-Founder Karthik Raghavendran said the tournament would help the company study cognitive performance beyond the final result by observing how focus, endurance and mental performance evolve as competitive pressure increases.
Neurostellar said the insights could eventually help make cognitive performance more measurable and actionable for athletes, professionals and others operating in high-performance environments.
Mental conditioning meets chess
Paddy Upton, the mental conditioning coach associated with India’s 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup-winning team, has joined the tournament as a collaborator.
Upton said chess involves not only skill and strategy but also attention, pressure and emotional regulation. Participants will also receive access to his Digital Mental Coaching Twin for three months, allowing them to explore their mental game, reflect on performance under pressure and understand their competitive behaviour.
Neurostellar Head of Performance and coach to World Champion Gukesh D, Grand Master Vishnu Prasanna, said the event provides an opportunity to observe the mental demands of chess in real time, round after round.
Expanding neurotechnology applications
The tournament follows the recent launch of Neurostellar’s Orbit, a wearable neurotechnology platform designed to track cognitive performance in real time.
Neurostellar said it is developing applications for sports and other high-performance environments, with the aim of making cognitive performance more measurable and actionable.
The Battle of Brains tournament seeks to demonstrate how neurotechnology could add a new dimension to understanding performance in competitive chess—by tracking not just who wins, but how the mind performs along the way.