The following article is an excerpt from a large article titled Best Chess Podcasts: The Ultimate Guide To Chess Podcasts in 2022. Despite the “Review” in the title, it is primarily a subjective look at the landscape of chess podcasting and, as such, isn’t “objective” by any means. In this post/series of posts, I will share my impressions about different chess podcasts.

About the podcast

The Late Knight Show Podcast is another podcast that appeared relatively late on the scene of chess podcasting, with the first episode being released on 19th February 2022. It is a podcast hosted by the Norwegian sports commentator Askild Bryn and Grandmaster David Howell and officially backed up/managed by chess24.com and Meltwater Chess Tour.

It features conversations with top players participating in the tour such as Anish Giri or Jordeen van Foreest and other people associated with chess24/Meltwater Chess Tour, such as the official commentators of the tour Jovanka Houska or Simon Williams.

My impressions of the podcast

Even though I was semi-aware of the existence of the Late Knight Show podcast since its conception, I first listened to it only after I did my research for the first iteration of this article.

Immediately from the very first episode, I have had sort of mixed feelings about it. On one hand, given that I am a big fan of GM David Howell and his personality, I was very eager to hear him in a long audio format.

Furthermore, since The Late Knight Show can be considered the „official podcast of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour“, it is not surprising that the hosts/producers were able to invite top players and well-known personalities from the get-go – a luxury not many new podcasts on the scene are able to afford. I won’t deny that seeing the likes of Anish Giri or Eric Hansen on the guest list immediately attracted me – especially if we take my aforementioned affinity toward David Howell as a host into account.

And sure enough, the episodes of the podcast provided me with exactly what I expected – interesting and informed conversations that provide the listener with an insight into the mind of a top chess player or a commentator. I also really liked the light-hearted, relaxed vibe of the podcast, although at times it does come across as a bit forced.

This actually allows me to jump back to my earlier statement and segway into the part of the article where I start to explain why exactly I had mixed feelings from the get-go.

Why don’t I listen to it more regularly?

As mentioned above, the very first problem I have with the podcast is how forced attempts to be relaxed and humouristic sometimes come across. When I compare the flow and humour of The Late Knight Show to, say, Chicken Chess Club or Chess Feels Podcast, it seems much less organic and genuine.

For example, every episode starts with a segment where the hosts ask the guests a series of „rapid fire“ questions. This segment is obviously intended to be a relaxing and light-hearted intro to the podcast, but it feels extremely forced and it quickly becomes repetitive.

Even though Askild and David seem like very nice people with great personalities, their lack of experience when it comes to hosting a podcast is apparent – and I feel forcing these kinds of segments doesn’t help.

This, to an extent, exacerbates the main problem I have with the Late Knight Show. You see, in many regards, it suffers from the same problems as, say, 64: A Chess Podcast – it looks extremely amateurish. It is true that the podcast does have some sort of official website, but one brief look at it makes it obvious that the amount of information leaves a lot to be desired:

(The official website only shows episodes 5-9 and I haven’t found a way to scroll and find episodes 1-4)

From the photo above it is also obvious that the publishing schedule of the podcast is a mess. You don’t have to be a math genius or expert statistician to realize that release of the episodes on the 25th, 27th, 28th of April, 24th of May, and then 24th of June doesn’t really follow any particular pattern. Not to mention that new episodes haven’t been published ever since and to me it is very unclear whether the podcast will be back for a new season of the Champions Chess Tour or not.

Whereas this lack of professional presentation and scheduling is understandable when we are talking about 64: A Chess Podcast, which is essentially a one-man show, it is absolutely shocking when it comes to a podcast that is officially backed by very big entities that are a part of the PlayMagnus group.

You get the feeling the whole idea sprung to life as a result of a sudden decision to scrape up something real-quick because Podcasts are now „in“, without a deep and thorough strategizing and thinking about how best to go about the execution of that very idea.

So long story short, even though it is true that The Late Knight Show provides us with another opportunity to hear the thoughts of top players and well-known personalities from the chess world. However, in this day and age – so do many other podcasts. The episodes themselves are quite enjoyable and the podcast does have a lot of potential, but I do feel that the lack of strategy and professionalism is hurting it, both when it comes to improving the quality of each individual episode even further and in terms of its overall presentation.

I will personally continue listening to it occasionally if new episodes ever get released, but I will not consider it the end of the world if the entire project gets shut down after all.

Notable episodes of the podcast

Given that, at the moment of writing, only 9 episodes of the podcast have been released, it was a bit tricky to single out any of them. However, the two episodes that were noteworthy for me are:

• Episode number 7 with GM Eric Hansen. Even though Eric, as a founder of the popular streaming collective „Chessbrah“ is a well-known chess personality, this was the first time I heard him speak openly about the time when he stayed in Europe to play chess and how it negatively affected his mental health and his overall well-being.
• Episode number 5, featuring GM Anish Giri. In general, I am a big fan of Anish and have listened to several of his appearances in different podcasts, but I singled this one out because Anish openly discussed some heated topics such as the hack of his Twitter account and the controversy related to his second Jorden van Foreest becoming a part of Magnus Carlsen’s World Championship Team.