Anna Rudolf Discusses Content Creation And Chess Mindfulness
IM Anna Rudolf is one of the very best commentators, ambassadors, and creators in chess. After a highly successful playing career that saw her join the Hungarian Olympiad team and win three Hungarian Women's Championships, she became one of the earliest Chess24 instructors and Chess.com streamers. Now, Anna is taking her experiences, both the good and the challenging, and her chess expertise to create a Studio app that she hopes will help others practice mindfulness and improve their lives.
Anna discussed starting out in creation, how she almost missed her chance to contribute to the Netflix Queen of Chess documentary about her chess idol GM Judit Polgar, how she came to create an app, and more. Don't miss this May 2026 edition of the Chess.com Creator of the Month!
You had a successful playing career and then, years before the chess boom, you started to switch to commentary and creation. What made you make that move?
That's a good question. I have a very unusual journey into content creation because I got into it in 2013. IM David Martinez was working on the soon-to-be Chess24 site and they wanted to recruit a handful of people to make videos for the platform. David was my teammate at the time in Madrid and he thought, seeing me working at chess clubs and primary schools, that I could explain chess to anyone at any level. So he saw potential in that and asked me to record beginner videos for Chess24. There were a few problems: this was in Spanish—my Spanish is not as good as my English—and I also had zero experience on camera. But I love a good challenge, so I said yes and I flew to Hamburg to start.
IM Sopiko Guramishvili, GM Anish Giri's wife, was also there recording for Chess24, and we became really good friends thanks to this experience. Chess really can form truly deep and special friendships.
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We both had a traumatic first week in the studio. Just imagine having never been on camera, not knowing what to do or how to present. There's a green screen behind you and a camera in front of you. They give you a remote and they say just press record whenever you're ready. There's no one in the room. You're just there all by yourself.
I prepared so much. I was even overprepared in terms of the material. But even then, I kept stopping and re-recording. I did so many retakes because I'm a perfectionist and was never happy with the videos. I would stumble my words, speak way too fast. My voice would go really high pitch because I was so nervous. When I look back at those videos, it's definitely not the same confidence or experience as now.
But we survived that first week, as hard as it was. And that really motivated me to train myself to get good at it. I remember thinking, "This is such a cool thing, new thing." I started watching a lot of TED talks and observing how show hosts interview people, how people present on TV. I started teaching myself how to do this job, which wasn't even a job at the time. But every couple of months we would be called back in Hamburg to record more videos for Chess24. A year later the site launched, and then I covered my first top chess event in 2014, which was the Chess Olympiad in Tromsø. I was the Spanish commentator. It all started in Spanish and with zero experience.
But I think the funny thing about all that is, by the time I start streaming in 2016, I had to unlearn everything. People told me, "Anna, for streaming, all you need to do is just be yourself." But I didn't know what that meant! I'd just trained myself for years to be a professional presenter, to speak in a certain way, to come across very professional, and I was very proud of what I'd learned. Now people wanted me to unlearn that? I struggled at the start. I would come to my first streams with notes on what I'm going to teach. I considered it an online chess lesson, and I didn't know how to interact with a live audience that's just there to hang out. It took me several months to be comfortable streaming because I came from a very different angle of chess content.
It was also hard initially to be suddenly exposed to online comments. I didn't have much self confidence at the time, and people picking you apart in YouTube comments or live chat definitely didn't help. But as painful as it was, it made me even more driven to train myself to be a better presenter and better communicator. One of the things people originally hated on the most was my voice, but now one of the most frequent compliments I get nowadays is how soothing and pleasant, "ASMR-like", my voice is to listen to. I still have the same voice, I just trained through reviewing TED talks, breathwork and mindset—I guess I can partially thank that to the initial haters!
One thing I couldn't help but notice, you said your first commentary event was the 2014 Olympiad. I think that was Judit's last event?
It was. We can also talk about Judit if you'd like, because to this day I pinch myself that she's my friend. I'm Hungarian and I grew up idolizing her. She was my hero as a kid. I started playing chess when I was four and by that time she was already a superstar, so I had her books. I studied the puzzles that her father published, this really thick book of just lots of tactics.
Then I had a chance to meet her when I was about 11. She played a simul in Budapest and I remember to this day that this was such an important day in my life, I wore all my favorite clothes. Of course I lost the game, but she signed the scoresheet with her really trademark signature with the little smiley face in the J. And to me as a kid, I was just like, "How cool is that?" It took me another 10 years to become part of the Olympic team and sit at the same dinner table as Judit and GM Peter Leko, and it was a dream come true to be on the team.
And then the fact that we became friends through being teammates and covering the 2018 World Championship match between GMs Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana onsite in London. It was one of the few events that had two female hosts, and by that time we were really close friends. She's the kind of friend that would pick you up at the airport even if you were just passing through. She's just an incredible human being and I am very grateful that she's my friend.
And then you got to do some commentary in the documentary.
Yeah, that was a full circle moment. There's no one more deserving than Judit to have a documentary about her career and her life story, so that the whole world can know about the incredible things that she has done and how she made the impossible possible.
When Netflix first reached out to me to do commentary, the email was sent to spam! I didn't see it until they messaged me again, and insisted on reaching me.
I got to talk about Judit and her incredible life journey. And I think that was just the least I could do, to fly to Budapest and contribute to her story, to help more people know what a hard-fought and truly deserving career she built. Even for people that might not care about chess, it's just an incredible life story that can inspire anyone!
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So in all the years you've been doing chess content, for yourself or in general, I wonder how you've seen the creation space change over the last 10 to 15 years.
Oh, well, it changed a lot. To go from chess not being really a thing on YouTube and Twitch, to now being a popular thing, the cool thing, from everyone getting into chess during The Queen's Gambit to the overall boom during the pandemic and then creators getting into playing chess through PogChamps. WFM Alexandra Botez is one of my closest friends, and back then we were just hosting our sub battles every Sunday with a few hundred people watching. Then I spent a good chunk of the pandemic streaming with GothamChess [IM Levy Rozman] a lot; Levy and I had similar viewership at the time but obviously now he's a giant. We were covering Hikaru's events on his channel, and the three of us were collaborating and raising money for charity at each event. I think it helped all of our sanity as well to do something productive during the pandemic and in the lockdown. That's when I went full-time streaming.
And then during PogChamps, I worked with creators like Pokimane, Rubius, Michelle Khare. I found it so inspiring to see their journeys, learning chess, often from zero, and how they grinded. That inspired me. I signed up for a Magic the Gathering tournament where I had to learn Magic from zero. Then I learned Dead by Daylight, which is a horror game—and I don't even like horror! But I was like, "No, I'm gonna do this. I’m just going to learn new things, because the journey itself, with learning any skill, is so rewarding."
And I picked up the drums! It’s such a fun and fulfilling hobby. I love music and making music.
I think a lot of that came from PogChamps, seeing how rewarding it was for us to teach them, but also I wanted to be the noob and learn new things too. Chess is the one thing I know well, so everything else is a good territory for me to learn. And I also started streaming video games, cooking, Just Dance, IRL streams, just lots of different categories until I had serious knee issues.
And that's when things became uncertain for me. I have a video that's called "Why I Disappeared" and it breaks down first the physical obstacles of losing, partially, my ability to walk and having to relearn to walk. Which was like a year and a half of my time of just constant knee injections, physiotherapy, working with a personal trainer, changing my diet for a complete 360 in both physical and mental health. And something really difficult also happened in my family.
My channel was one of the top channels at the time in the chess category, and I basically disappeared. I was still streaming here and there, but the priority was relearning to walk and working on my mental health.
I related to the story of Alysa Liu at the Winter Olympics, because I feel like even if it's not as visible in my case, I went through the same journey. I was really successful and I had to leave almost everything behind because of the health obstacles in my way and the adversity in my way. But all through those challenges and struggles, I learned so much, and learned so much about myself. Nowadays when I do something, I do it because I genuinely want to. People tell me that they have never seen me being this good at commentary, or they think my "What Chess Taught Me" videos are really inspiring.
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It's all because I really am so passionate about it. I care so much and I'm only doing things that genuinely fill me with that motivation. I think it comes across because I didn't change anything, I just learned a lot about myself—about what works for me and to have more balance in life, to look after my health a lot more, be outside a lot more, have other hobbies as well. I also needed to unlearn the habit of being on a constant grind.
I think it's all those things that led me to this chess mindfulness mix that I'm doing now. And it was all because of those adversities and through struggle and pain I learned so much that I feel like now I can share with others as a positive thing. The negatives become a positive, I think, in the long run, even if in the moment of losing your ability to walk, you are not thinking, "Wow, how lucky I am! This is going to be a great learning lesson from life!"
That seems like a good segue into the Studio app. Even when you were first talking about starting off, recording your first chess videos back in 2013, it seems like that would have been something you could have used back then!
Oh, definitely, 100%. Our mindset matters so much for both physical and mental health, and sometimes we need to lose something to appreciate it. For me, like I didn't care that much about health until it was like, "Oh, now I'm on crutches and I cannot walk." You know, I needed this intervention from life. But now I'm grateful for that because I have learned so much from it.
I only started connecting chess with mindset and mindfulness because the psychologist I work with recommended it to me last year as an exercise for my own mental health. She told me, "Anna, you know so much about chess. How about, as an exercise, see if you reflect on life through chess? Since you know how things work in chess and it's a more defined space, it might be easier to see the more complex and abstract things of life through it." It made sense, so I started doing those as exercises and they worked. Things started to make sense, like dealing with pressure, anxiety, stress, acceptance, resilience. Every person has challenges in their lives, and there's no rulebook or no set way in which you can deal with them. The fact that I could reflect on these complex and difficult things through chess, it opened my eyes. The chessboard as a metaphor for life isn't some kind of innovation; Kasparov has a great book [How Life Imitates Chess] on that and [WGM] Jennifer Shahade also recently published a book [Thinking Sideways], among other chess-to-life connections.
I'm not inventing the wheel, but I could feel how beneficial it was to me, and that's when I started creating these videos called "What Chess Taught Me" at the beginning of this year. My only motivation to share them was that if it helps me so much, maybe it will help other people too. And that is something that genuinely motivates me. I always wanted to help people. I was a teacher before and even through streaming I think I was always trying to make it a very positive space, a very kind space, a place where you can improve and get better first at chess and then overall be a positive impact in life.
When I posted those videos, they just blew up. I couldn't believe how many people could relate to them. Psychologists, scientists, top athletes, brain experts, they all started following me through those videos. I thought I might help a handful of people and then I had all these experts of these fields following me for these lessons that I'm transmitting through chess. To this day I can't really grasp that that happened. I'm not a guru. I don't have a psychology degree. I'm just reflecting on things through chess, because chess I know, and it helped to understand more complex things.
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That's how the app became a thing too. Studio reached out and I already had this idea that it would be great if I could give people a tool where they can do this for themselves, because we all have our very own challenges. How can I share this tool where they could have the same positive impact that reflecting on life through chess has had on my life? The stars aligned and Studio reached out like, "Hey, do you want to make an app?"
The core is basically that you have these like snippets of daily videos by me to help guide you, but then it becomes a reflection exercise where you're the protagonist. You have the microphone, the pen, to do what I'm doing in those videos. The main stage is yours and you get to use chess as a tool to improve your life, one move at a time.
That's the core idea of the app and it's just a very easy to use, and a very low time commitment app. There's so much going on in life, all the distractions, so I made it very simple to use. It's literally just one small pause in a day, a few minutes to focus on our inner world, because I think that by improving our inner world, we improve our life overall, and then the world will be a better place for everyone. So I hope that it will be a very positive impact overall, one tiny chess move at a time.
Like you said, it's already helping so many people. That's excellent. So I think we covered how you got into the content things and what you're up to now.
Oh, I have one more thing with content that Danny told me that I didn't know. Apparently a lot of people call me the "OG Anna" at Chess.com. Nowadays [WFM] Anna Cramling is "the" Anna obviously, but a lot of people don't even know me because I was kind of leaving the space and focusing on my health when chess was blowing up.
But it turns out I was the second person Chess.com collaborated with, after Hikaru. And I didn't know that! It's in Danny's book, Dark Squares, how in the earliest years of Chess.com they started bringing on creators. We would get help setting up our streams that we wouldn't have had without the team, and they didn't ask for anything in return. It was never like a contract or anything. It was just like what Danny describes in the book. They knew that if we became good ambassadors for chess, that will come back to Chess.com one way or the other, and that created this healthy ecosystem where we were just genuinely playing chess and having fun.
But yeah, I just thought I would mention that. I learned recently that I was the second person to become a chess influencer, before chess influencer was a thing!
From what I know there's a lot of similar themes between Danny's book and what you're doing.
Yes, I believe so. I found Danny’s book truly inspiring, and very brave how he opens up about all the adversities and physical and mental health struggles he had gone through, and how chess basically saved his life.
About my app, it’s not something where I want to be constantly telling people, "Hey, buy my app, try my app," but I genuinely think it can have a really positive impact. I hope people can see it truly comes from the fact that it helped me, and that's why I started sharing it. I thought maybe it will help a handful of people, and now those videos have like hundreds of thousands of views. Instagram shows how people follow you from the specific reel, and I would have never predicted that top athletes, scientists, and psychologists find this valuable.
It's kind of like how I can't believe I became friends with Judit, and I can't believe I'm making these videos that even top experts of their fields find valuable. But I think it's really chess that contains all these valuable life lessons, and I'm just a messenger.
Nathaniel Green is a staff writer for Chess.com who writes articles, player biographies, Titled Tuesday reports, video scripts, and more. He has been playing chess for about 30 years and resides near Washington, DC, USA.
