Tamer Karatekin

Tamer Karatekin
Personal information
Born (1981-04-02) April 2, 1981
Yugoslavia
Chess career
CountryTurkey
TitleFIDE Master (1997); FIDE Trainer (2015); FIDE School Instructor (2016)
FIDE rating2244 (September 2017)
Peak rating2325 (July 1998)

Tamer Karatekin is a Turkish national chess champion, a children’s chess coach, and an AI educator.[1][2][3] He is also a technology professional whose primary focus is on the integration of artificial intelligence systems with chess.[4] He is also a designer and curator of chess-related art projects.[5][6]

He holds the World Chess Federation titles of FIDE Master (1997), FIDE Trainer (2015), and FIDE School Instructor (2016).[7] Ahead of the 2000 World Chess Olympiad in Istanbul, he won the Turkish Chess Championship in 2000.[2]

Karatekin is an alumnus of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[8][9] He competed as the first board for MIT’s chess team where his team tied for third place at the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Championship held in late December 2001.[10][11][9][12]

Chess career

Tamer Karatekin was born in the Macedonian region of Yugoslavia in 1981 and grew up in Oldtown Fatih, Istanbul. He learned chess from his father and his grandfather.[13][14][15]

Karatekin won the Turkish Chess Championship in 2000 with a 2-point lead (10/13), ahead of the 2000 World Chess Olympiad in Istanbul.[2] He received the FIDE Master title in 1997 and achieved a peak rating of 2325 in July 1998.[7]

In 1997, he drew games against former world champions Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov in simultaneous exhibitions held in Istanbul.[16][17][18][19][20]

During his studies at MIT, he competed as the first board player of MIT's chess team, including in matches against rival universities such as Harvard and Caltech.[12][10][21] In 2001, his team tied for third place at the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Championship.[11]

Coaching and chess-in-education leadership

Tamer Karatekin coaching career involves the training of high ranking World- and Europe-ranked child players and teaching chess to primary-age students in a compulsory school setting; Some of his students have earned medals in official World and European youth and school chess championships.[3][22][23][24]

During the 2014–2015 academic year, he served as a compulsory chess lesson teacher for 300 primary school students (ages 7 and 8) at Istanbul Technical University Foundation Schools.[3]

He also developed the chess education platform "Deep Sea Chess," which participated in the Istanbul Technical University (ITU) Seed Incubator program (ranked among the top university incubators globally)[3][25] and organized youth tournaments in collaboration with the Boylston Chess Club.[26]

He served as the technical project coordinator and AI curriculum lead of the EU-funded Erasmus+ shatranj.ai project, which connects chess with artificial intelligence and technology education.[6][27]

Design and exhibitions

Karatekin is the designer of the ŞAHÎ chess set and related chess iconography, where each chess piece embeds symbols from the names chess pieces have been called in different languages.[28][29] He has been a co-curator of the history exhibition project focused on historic board games and chess piece designs, SHATRANJ.ART, first displayed at the Hagia Sophia campus of the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf University.[5][30]

Professional career

Karatekin holds a MicroMasters credential in Data, Economics, and Development Policy from MIT.[31]

He is a dual career sportsman and served as a product manager for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's Observability Group.[9]

He co-translated Andriy Burkov's The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book into Turkish (100 Sayfada Makine Öğrenmesi) alongside Ali Okatan and Kağan Okatan.[32][33]

Karatekin has given talks on the history of chess, artificial intelligence, and education. He has spoken at TEDxBoston[34][28] and has also spoken at the IEEE Global Tech Forum on AI.[35] He also presented a speech to the Moroccan Data Scientists community.[36] He was also a contributor to the academic workshop EduAI-20.[4] He is the lead author of a paper on machine learning models which was presented at the 2019 International Conference on Deep Learning and Machine Learning in Emerging Applications (Deep-ML).[37]

References

  1. ^ "Eski Şampiyonlar". Türkiye Satranç Federasyonu (in Turkish). Archived from the original on 1 February 2026. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  2. ^ a b c "Türkiye Satranç Birincilikleri" (PDF). Bilim ve Teknik (TÜBİTAK) (in Turkish). Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 February 2026. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  3. ^ a b c d "Report of FIDE Continental President for Africa to the 88th FIDE Congress (Annex 65)" (PDF). FIDE. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  4. ^ a b "Workshop Program – International Workshop on Education in Artificial Intelligence K-12 (EduAI-20)" (PDF). TU Graz. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 January 2022. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  5. ^ a b "Exhibitions". SHATRANJ.AI. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  6. ^ a b "SHATRANJ.AI - Gençlere Yönelik Tarihi Masa Oyunları Temelli Yapay Zeka Müfredatı". T.C. İstanbul Valiliği Avrupa Birliği ve Dış İlişkiler Bürosu (abmerkez.com) (in Turkish). Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  7. ^ a b "Karatekin, Tamer". FIDE Ratings. Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE). Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  8. ^ "'Very upsetting': ICE deportation policy upends students' plans". WHDH 7News. 8 July 2020. Retrieved 2 February 2026.
  9. ^ a b c "Tamer Karatekin (Author Page)". Oracle Blogs. Oracle. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  10. ^ a b "MIT Chess Club Faces Caltech In Virtual Battle of the Brains". The Tech. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 7 March 2003. Archived from the original on 9 August 2012. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  11. ^ a b "Awards & Honors". MIT News. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 6 February 2002. Archived from the original on 27 September 2020. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  12. ^ a b "Castling in the Square". Harvard Magazine. 1 November 2002. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  13. ^ "Satranç: Tamer Karatekin ile Söyleşi (Chess: Interview with Tamer Karatekin)". Cumhuriyet (in Turkish). 19 October 1997. p. 16. Archived from the original on 1 February 2026. Retrieved 2 February 2026.
  14. ^ "Mücahit Korça'nın Hayatı". International Journal of Language Academy. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  15. ^ Rumeli TV Interview: Family History of Mücahit Korça and Belkis Korça (Video). YouTube. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  16. ^ "Süper Tamer". Hürriyet (in Turkish). Archived from the original on 30 November 2024. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  17. ^ "Kasparov'dan satranç şov". Hürriyet (in Turkish). Archived from the original on 1 February 2026. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  18. ^ "Kasparov, Karpov ve Satranç" (PDF). Bilim ve Teknik (TÜBİTAK) (in Turkish). Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 February 2026. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  19. ^ "Tamer Karatekin vs Anatoly Karpov (1997)". Lichess. Retrieved 2 February 2026.
  20. ^ "Tamer Karatekin vs Garry Kasparov (1997)". Lichess. Retrieved 2 February 2026.
  21. ^ "Chess team checkmates Caltech". MIT News. 5 March 2003. Archived from the original on 1 February 2026. Retrieved 2 February 2026.
  22. ^ "Kardeş kıskançlığı şampiyonluklar getirdi". Güney Haberci (in Turkish). Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  23. ^ "11 yaşında dünyayı mat etti". STAR (in Turkish). Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  24. ^ "İstanbul İl Temsilciliği 2012-2013 Satranç Eğitimleri". Istanbul Provincial Representative of the Turkish Chess Federation (in Turkish). Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  25. ^ "ITU Seed Ranked Among The Best Twenty Business Incubator Centers In The World". Istanbul Technical University. 1 December 2015. Archived from the original on 1 February 2026. Retrieved 2 February 2026.
  26. ^ "Deep Sea Chess Children and Youth Chess Tournament". Boylston Chess Club. Retrieved 2 February 2026.
  27. ^ "Educator Workshops". SHATRANJ.AI. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  28. ^ a b Karatekin, Tamer. Chess: Bridging Cultures, Inspiring AI, and Redefining Education (Video). TEDx Talks. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  29. ^ "Şahî Chess & Shatranj Font License v1.0". GitHub. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  30. ^ Werner, John (4 February 2025). "Chess History Has A Lot To Do With AI". Forbes. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  31. ^ "MicroMasters® Program in Data, Economics, and Development Policy (Tamer Karatekin)". MIT MicroMasters. Retrieved 2 February 2026.
  32. ^ "100-Sayfada Makine Öğrenmesi Kitabı (Andriy Burkov)". Papatya Bilim Yayınevi. Archived from the original on 2 February 2026. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  33. ^ "100 Sayfada Makine Öğrenmesi". Amazon Turkey. Retrieved 2 February 2026.
  34. ^ "TEDxBoston event page". TED. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  35. ^ "Global Tech Forum on AI". IEEE Future Directions. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  36. ^ "Artificial Intelligence On The ChessBoard by Tamer Karatekin - MDS Talks". YouTube. Moroccan Data Scientists Community. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  37. ^ Interpretable Machine Learning in Healthcare through Generalized Additive Model with Pairwise Interactions (GA2M): Predicting Severe Retinopathy of Prematurity. 2019 International Conference on Deep Learning and Machine Learning in Emerging Applications (Deep-ML). IEEE. August 2019. Retrieved 1 February 2026.

Selected game records

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