Magnus Carlsen signing a chess book for Claus Gamborg in London, 2013

when Magnus Carlsen won the Candidate Tournament.

Magnus Carlsen won his first World Chess Championship

later that year against Viswanathan Anand in November.

MasterInChess Openings System (MICOS™). Claus Gamborg created the modern classification system for chess openings based on exact move order.

Claus Gamborg, from Denmark, has an extensive background in finance. He has served as Finance Controller at a bank, Admin & Finance Manager at a business college and international companies and notably as European Controller for the UK-based parent company Hi-Tec, overseeing subsidiaries across Scandinavia and Europe.

He holds an MBA and completed The Effective Manager program at the Open University in London, as part of Denmark’s first MBA graduating class. He received management training from the Danish Finance Ministry and IBM and later assisted the Danish Ministry of Education in developing management and administrative IT systems for Business and Technical Schools.

Claus Gamborg is an active over-the-board chess player and a member of the Danish Chess Union. At the Danish Speed Chess Championship 2024, he competed in the Master Group and finished within one win of a shared first place.

His combined experience in finance, IT management and competitive chess has been instrumental in the conception, development and long-term evolution of MICOS and MasterInChess.

MasterInChess has been conceived, developed and funded by Claus Gamborg as an independent long-term project since 2014. Over more than a decade, he has designed the MICOS opening system, developed the software platform and created the chess content that forms the foundation of MasterInChess. Following a two-year break, development resumed and led to the completion of today’s fully independent digital chess platform, where every core chess application is powered by proprietary MICOS software.

At MasterInChess, our mission is to empower chess players of all levels to enhance their skills and deepen their understanding of the chess game. We aim to provide high-quality resources, tools and training materials that foster chess improvement and strategic thinking.

What is MICOS

MICOS is a modern, structured and fully expandable classification system for chess openings designed as a modern alternative to the ECO (Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings) system introduced in 1974. It provides a more logical, easier-to-learn and fully expandable framework based on exact move order.