Hanna Sayce from Melbourne has had a remarkable career in chess. At the start of the pandemic, when she was 19, she began taking an interest in the game and played on the usual online platforms to pass the time. She started with a rating of 1000 and, in a relatively short period of time, reached an impressive online blitz rating of 2300 in tournaments on chess.com.
As she enjoyed chess so much, she eventually began playing classical over-the-board tournaments. The transition was difficult at first, as Hanna Sayce still had to learn that with a classical time control one has to think about decisions for longer, and that the endgame takes on greater importance.
While tactics decide the game in concrete moments, strategy guides the entire battle. Understanding how to improve your pieces, create weaknesses, execute maneuvers, and steer the game toward favorable structures is what defines strong players.
After exploring the fundamentals of calculation in his first ChessBase course, International Master Kostya Kavutskiy now turns to the other half of chess mastery: positional play.
This course offers a structured and practical introduction to the core elements of positional chess.
Free video sample: Introduction
Free video sample: Strategic Classic: Bondarevsky - Smyslov
Hanna Sayce travelled to open tournaments in Europe and Asia and began sharing her chess experiences through streams on Twitch. Before long, Hanna Sayce had tens of thousands of chess fans following her on that platform. Several companies support her chess activities.
Hanna Sayce | Photo: Private, via Facebook
Not all of her fans, however, responded in the way she would have wanted. In April 2024, one fan began harassing the young chess streamer. Shumsheer Singh Ghumman, a 47-year-old café owner, gathered information about Hanna Sayce and her family, obtained the contact details of her friends and threatened her. He claimed that he would use AI to find out further information and use it against her. He also found out about Hanna Sayce's holiday and travel plans. In March 2025, Hanna Sayce obtained a restraining order against the stalker, but this did not stop Shumsheer Singh Ghumman from continuing to harass her.
After Shumsheer Singh Ghumman learned that Hanna Sayce intended to travel to Qatar, he informed the local authorities and claimed that she would be smuggling drugs into the country hidden inside her chess pieces. Hanna Sayce was detained on arrival at the airport and temporarily held in prison until the matter could be cleared up.
The same thing happened when she tried to enter Iceland for the Reykjavík Open. Once again, the stalker had informed the local authorities and falsely accused his victim of drug smuggling. Once again, Hanna Sayce was arrested.
Eventually, the Australian authorities took decisive action against the stalker. On 1 May 2026, Shumsheer Singh Ghumman was arrested at his café in Burnley, in eastern Melbourne. On 23 May, the matter came before the court with a total of 35 charges. It emerged that Shumsheer Singh Ghumman had previously been convicted in a similar, but even more serious, case. He had set fire to the home of a woman whom he had also stalked and had been sentenced at the time to nine years in prison for attempted murder and arson. On appeal, the sentence was later reduced to four years.
In this video course, experts (Pelletier, Marin, Müller and Reeh) examine the games of Judit Polgar. Let them show you which openings Polgar chose to play, where her strength in middlegames were, or how she outplayed her opponents in the endgame.At the opening of the proceedings, the judge rejected an application for bail because, in her view, Ghumman posed a threat to Hanna Sayce's safety. The hearing will continue in October. Until then, the stalker will remain in custody.
Hanna Sayce expressed surprise on her channels that the story had been published in the Australian media. She herself had not spoken to the media, which had apparently obtained the information from the court hearing. "Although I had not expected to speak about this publicly, I am honestly relieved to be able to get it off my chest. The last couple of years have been very difficult, and the wrongful detention in Qatar was, to put it mildly, a very frightening experience", she commented on the matter.
Last Sunday, the streamer was a guest at Judit Polgar's "Global Chess Festival" and took part in a clock simultaneous exhibition given by the Hungarian chess icon. She streamed the game live on her Twitch channel.
This DVD focuses on several types of material imbalances, such as Rook vs 2 Pieces, Queen vs 2 Rooks, and Queen vs Pieces.
.jpeg)
.jpeg)