Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Chess

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

The timer starts now, cultie. This week’s cult is one that some find boring, some find thrilling, and some particularly fell into via a certain Netflix show starring Anya Taylor Joy (guilty). Whichever way you slice it, we can assure you the world of chess is far cultier than the cute little horsies would have you think. Whether you’re a total noob or grandmaster status, this week’s conversation with chess expert and cult survivor Danny Rensch (@dannyrensch) will have you on the edge of your seat. Come along with Reese as she looks beyond the cute academia aesthetic and into the strategic and not-so-black-and-white cult of chess. Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!Follow us on IG  @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia.  To pre-order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, click here! Thank you to our sponsors! For free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, Head to https://Quince.com/slac Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at ⁠⁠https://BollAndBranch.com/slac⁠⁠ with code slac.  Download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Start your Alienware Journey with the streamlined Alienware 15 with a design that refines the essentials for a more focused gaming laptop, featuring a brilliant 15.3-inch 16-hirt display seamlessly engineered into a portable 15-inch body, powered by an Intel Core 7 processor for high performance during every session, all wrapped in the elite and durable alienware design. It's everything you need for an immersive gaming experience distilled into one iconic machine. Visit alienware.ca.ca. Alienware 15 today. If you're looking for some of the sharpest takes on film and television, I hope you'll tune in to Critics at Large from the New Yorker. Over here at Critics at Large, we like talking about what we love, but crucially, what we hate it, about what we're watching. But even more, we like making sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here.

Join us as we make our way from Eddington to Moby Dick, from Ted Lassow to the rise in therapy speak, from the pit to Luigi Manjone. It's Critics at Large from the New Yorker, wherever you get your problem. podcasts. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. An us versus them dichotomy is a thriving key feature of most cults. Is this something that you see at all reflected in chess? I think that's one of the ones that is prevalent, not just within chess versus other games, but it's also really prevalent within the chess community. This doesn't have to be a game that is only played by the most

intellectually elite of our species for seven hours at a time by old white guys in a room, blowing cigar smoke. Now you have a lot of people as a part of the growth of the game in a much more just kind of fun and open way. And it's not something that has been welcomed or supported by the old guard, if you will. Chess didn't want to make any effort to make it feel more welcoming. And so I think the cult was protecting its own inward, almost to its own detriment. That's very culty. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I am Reese Oliver, sounds like a cult's resident, grad student, and rhetoric scholar.

Every week on this show, we discuss a different group or guru that puts the cult in culture from the Amish to fan fiction to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult. But is it really? And if so, which of our three cult categories does it fall into? Live your life, or watch your back, or get the fuck out. Because cultishness, like queerness, my friends, it falls along a spectrum. Not all cults are robe wearing, devil-worshipping, acid-tripping cabals.

Some of them just play Bunko on Tuesdays. Some of them have some cute little matching sweaters. Some of them are multifaceted, like today's cult. Unlike the black and white checkered board, today's cult contains many shades of gray among its pawns, grandmasters, and rookies alike. Many more shades than 50. Yes, culties this week,

we are playing along with the game of chess, the cult of chess. Hello, I'm sure you read the title. I'm a chess fucking master. Which is honestly like one of the OG board games, like, Clue, get out of here. Operation, never heard of her. I want chess, baby. We're going back to basics.

Chess is a schemy board game that is deceptively simple. It sounds, it looks kind of old-fashioned, but you pop the hood up, baby. And there is a game chock full of strategic moves, devastating losses, and very pompous wins. to get into a little bit of my chess history, chestery, if you will. Chess is obviously a very dramatic game. There's been like a lot of chess media. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a bit. But some of my favorite chess drama at the moment and the source of most, if not all of my current

chess content is at Nemo Chess on Instagram. She is a woman grandmaster, which, hey, kind of culty that that's a separate category. I don't really like that. Anywho, she basically posts videos of her stealth absolutely destroying anybody from the ages of 6 to 60. And they have a whole melange of different reactions from horribly insulted, offended, and misogynistic to like totally awestruck and also somehow misogynistic. I highly recommend her page. She's awesome. But before we get into the modern ways of the chess world, we need to take it back, baby. We need to break down some basics.

Let's get into some technicalities. Chess is a game made for two people. It is played on a checkered board of 64 squares. There are 32 chess pieces divided into two teams, black and white, of obviously 16 pieces each, one king and one queen per side, two rooks, bishops and knights, and eight ponds. Although the origins of chess can be linked all the way back to 7th century India, holy wow that is a long time ago. The version of chess that you probably are familiar with today and that my dad had a little version of in our living room that I always refused to play because I was

not immediately good at it. That version of chess became standardized in good old 19th century Europe. We're well familiar with her. The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, the acronym of which in French is F-I-D-E, was founded in 1924 in Paris. Today they are based out of Switzerland and you know this is a rather hot take but chess has been recognized as a sport by the International Olympic Committee since 1999. Now colties, I am intrigued to hear your takes on this because I actually have I think kind of a hot one. I don't know that I believe chess is a sport and I kind of think that's okay because hear me out I think games can be just as important. I think the reason that we feel the need to justify behaviors as sports to make them worthy of doing or paying attention to is very

militaristic and American and weird. And I think that it just shows how little we value play and working the muscle of our mind. Why does it need to be a sport for it to be important? Sometimes I'm just sitting and I'm playing a brain game and that is like very impressive. And yeah, we should all watch and it maybe it should be in the Olympics. Maybe there should be a whole games sector of the Olympics. And I'm sure this is getting far too semantic, you know, where a game ends and a sport begins, does it really matter if we go down this rabbit hole? I think all sports are games, but not all games are sports if we're going to get into it. Anywho, I'm interested to know if this is me being ignorant of the intricacies of the chess world or if this is maybe something some of you agree with.

Chess has been a part of pop culture and the arts for centuries. The sport has been featured in novels, movies and TV, paintings, poems, comics, plays, music, video games. Is anybody seeing the revival of the Chess Musical with Leah Michelle and Aaron Tavette on Broadway right now? Musical with notoriously terrible writing but very good songs? You know, chess is the perfect foreground for a Broadway musical. It's very dramatic. There's two people in it. That's kind of what you need.

From the iconic match between Harry Hermione and Ron versus the chessboard Shameron. in the 2001 movie Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone to the chess-themed 1871, Lewis Carroll novel through the looking glass and what Alice found there. I never thought about the fact that Alice in Wonderland is low-key chess-themed. I mean, I guess I have thought about it before. It's a very clear motif throughout the film, but I feel like it's not a very highlighted thematic element, and I find that fun now that we're talking about chess. And of course, what I am most familiar with the game of chess from, and I'm sure many of you are also familiar with chess from this, the 2020 Netflix original

series, The Queen's Gambit, based on Book of the Same Name, Chess has seen it all and then some. It is fodder for many a piece of art. And I think that that is because, despite its strict rules, chess is an incredibly versatile game. You can play chess just about anywhere. You can do some little casual quickies with your friends if you just want to get in and out. You can sit and do a very formal tournament if you're very serious about your chess and you want to pay entrance fees and you're like trying to move up the ranks of the col baby. You can also just sit online and not pay attention to your like English lecture and play on chess.com if you're like half the boys I went to high school with, which I guess good for you that you're not like, I don't know,

on 4chan or watching porn or something, but like pay attention. But yeah, you can even play chess boxing if you really needed reassurance that chess is a sport, which is exactly what it sounds like a hybrid between chess and boxing. It is awesome in the very biblical sense of the word and the Amanda Montelian sense of the word. But I don't know if it's clear, you guys. I do not know that much about chess. As I said earlier, I had a chess board growing up and never really interacted with it because I wasn't good at it without ever even trying. And in my brain, that was proof that like me and chess were not to get along. I do regret that now. And, you know, I started thinking maybe it's time for me to rethink chess. I obviously like Beth Harmon's fuck-ass little Bob, and I love

her little outfits. Maybe I want to get in on this whole chess thing. So here to help me uncover it and to tell us all about this checkered sport, we have Danny Wrench, American Chess International Master, event organizer, lecturer, and commentator. Danny is the co-founder and chief chess officer. Holy shit a cool-ass title of Chess.com. Danny, welcome to Sounds Like a Cult. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. Of course, excited to have you.

Could you introduce yourself for our listeners? My name is Danny Wrench, and I am a co-founder of Chess.com, and I am a cult survivor. If that's what we call it, I was in a cult growing up, the Church of Immortal Consciousness. But I've never been asked to introduce myself, so that sounded that, hopefully that went okay. Wow. Okay. I want like the spark notes on this Church of Immortal Consciousness thing first. What's that?

So that was the group that I was born into. It was a spiritual commune in northern Arizona, Tonto Village, Arizona, just outside of Payson, for those who know the area. And I was a part of a generation of kids, probably the first generation of kids that were sort of being born into this group. It had been around for probably five to ten years before I was born in 1985. But it was a spiritual group founded by Stephen and Trina Camp. Trina Camp was sort of the deity or the guru, if you will, and she was a practicing trance medium,

which meant she had been traveling the world trancing, a spirit that spoke through her. And at this time, her and her husband, Stephen Camp, had decided not to travel, but instead to set up shop and create kind of a community. So that is where my parents entered the picture before I was born, and then I was eventually born. So that's the very PG version of how that came together. Wow. I mean, it's a little too classical for a Slack episode, but clearly you're a very very very well predisposed for not only this show, but also for joining other cults. I'm happy you seem to have found a less harmful one. At least I hope it's less harmful. I guess we're going to find out. Is chess a less harmful cult? Is that it? That's the implication. Although we have joked recently

that even the term grandmaster in chess sounds like the name of a cult leader. So anyway, I do think chess is a less harmful cult than the one I grew up in. I think like any group, it actually does have its own tendencies to be what is the right way to say, whether it's It's not just controlling, but I think that there's an aspect to chess that can really draw people in and become their obsession in a way that that's all they do. There's a parallel there. But yeah, I'm not a part of any active cults other than the fact that I am a big part of the chess community for sure. Okay, good. Got that solved.

So to kick us off, can you just explain your relationship to the cult of chess? So I'm a co-founder of chess.com, which means I've been in the chess world for a long time and now accidentally. I guess find myself in one of the chairs where we lead a pretty big community. And I, though as a kid, part of my story is that I was a child chess prodigy and I actually learned to play when I was still in the collective, the Church of Immortal Consciousness leader, Stephen Camp, was pretty obsessed with chess, regardless of his other faults. And so the unique part of that is that I was sort of put on a path to playing chess because of my upbringing. And that path didn't work out. And the collective that I was in has since fallen apart, but I am still playing chess today and also

in a position to make chess a pretty big part of my life. And so, yeah, on a day-to-day basis, that is not a very fancy thing. I'm basically just like anybody else in like a tech company, you know, writing emails, I guess. But yeah, that's the quick version of how I got there. Yeah. Wow. Well, first of all, co-founder of a one-word website is like such an accomplishment. So I think that in itself you should be very proud of like just chess.com, not even anything else. Like that's a point of pride right there, if I've ever heard one. Very lucky. But yes, it's true.

We did actually get it from a group of people, a group of VCs who really didn't know what they had. And so we are in one of those positions where people go, how did you get chess.com? Like chess? Exactly. So thank you for saying that. And yeah, it's been a lot, though. It's been 20 years of grinding. And then the pandemic hit and the Queens Gambit show on Netflix hit, which was its own

massive blockbuster moment for the game of chess. And so the online chess community has blown up a lot over the last few years. Oh, yeah. I'm sure. And then just before we move on, the other thing I wanted to say is I made a joke about your cult experience, like, predisposing you to be involved with chess. And I did not realize that was very literal. Like, that is your truth. It's totally true. Actually, the craziest part of my story is that like any other kid in the village, I was just a regular member of the cult. In fact, one of the things about this particular group is there was a very clearly defined hierarchy. And so,

in some ways it was like leveraged and weaponized kind of openly in terms of where you stood on the totem pole of the group. And in other ways, it was more subtle, more manipulative. But let's just say that even as like a nine-year-old kid, I knew very clearly that me and my mom were very much like at the bottom of the totem pole in the group, right? And so when I learned to play chess, the summer of 95 when I was nine, which I learned from watching the movie searching for Bobby Fisher, which is a great movie. If anyone's ever seen it, I kind of went from zero to 60 in terms of how good I got and how quickly I got good. which thrust me into not just kind of like the limelight of the group, but sort of being like the apple of Stephen Camp's eye, and he was the leader of the group.

But it very quickly changed a lot of things about my life. And so literally I was a child chess prodigy from a cult in Arizona who was told at the time that my spiritual purpose was to become the best chess player in the world. Like that was part of what was ordained upon me. So that was the thing. And at some point, that didn't work out, yet somehow I'm still here a part of the chess world.

And so that's why I wrote a book, It's because it's hard to make up a story like that unless it's real, you know? Yeah, well, good thing you wrote the book before somebody else did. I was going to say, that's some fodder right there. It's funny because every time the story, like, was sort of casually discussed before the book was written, that was kind of the response. People were like, is anyone writing a book about this? Like, is there a movie about this?

Like, when is that coming out, right? So, yeah, it's been wild. And sharing it with the chess world who's known me for a long time, I guess, in terms of being a face of the company and a chess player and a chess commentator, They've known a certain part of my life, but no one really knew this part of the story. And now it's out there, right? Can't put it back. No, no, I can't put the genie back in the bottle.

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Some would probably say that that's me, honestly, which is an ironic thing to share, given my background, having literally been in a cult. You know, the chess world is big, but one of the things about chess.com is we have kind of accidentally gained a lot of market share. I guess that's the politically correct way to say it, right? Which is true. And I think we've done a very good job with that market share,

and I think we've done a lot to grow and popularize the game. But I think there are people at times who, whether they get banned for cheating on chess.com, and they want us to be more transparent with what we do, or whether there's people who want chess.com to do something else, if there's a person to blame at the end of the day, when we do or don't do the thing, I tend to get a lot of that heat, depending on where you look on Reddit. I would definitely say that there are a lot of things that actually make it, I would argue,

in my definition of a cult, having been in one, and I'll pretend to at least have an opinion on it for a second. One of the things is that no one owns chess. Like, there are literally thousands of places to play and learn, and while chess.com does have the powerful domain, as you said, we are obviously in a position where we get a lot of members. There are so many more choices available that this is not a world where anyone ever signed up with a covert contract and gave away their agency to a cult leader. And I point that out because I feel very personally attached to that process because, frankly, that was literally what I was born into. My mother had signed a contract, whether overtly or not, to give away her life to the leaders of the collective and the things that happened from there

with my relationship with my mom and my dad and all the fallout. Like, I know exactly what that experience can look and feel like and how that can be weaponized and used. And so I always say, like, hey, you are free to go whenever you want. And this isn't even like a cult leader. leader tricking you. Like, there's a lot of other places to play and learn chess. So I debunk the idea that anybody at chess.com would be a cult leader. But if you go beyond me, I mean, I don't know. I think that is really a thing that is great about the game is that it's the original kind of open source. You get to choose your own adventure. I think that many aspects of the top of chess have been too cultish because it has been a very feaster fame and culture. I think it is like, it is also gate kept most people

who feel like, oh, if I'm not smart enough, then I don't want to play chess. So I'm trying to break down the other aspects of the high-level chess cult of elitism kind of break that down with a wrecking ball as far as one of the things that chess.com has tried to do. So that's my long-winded answer to say, I'm not a cult leader. I think there are people who don't like chess.com and would probably blame me for some stuff. But I think that one of the things we've really been trying to do is actually change the narrative of the old-school way that chess has been viewed if we want to call that a cult to some degree. Yeah. Wow, that's a really well-thought-out answer. Chess strikes me as similar to like van life or plant parenthood or some of the cults that tend to destroy a little

live your life on this show not to make any presumptuous assumptions a lot of the live your lives what kind of gives them their culty edge is that you can find a leader in them if you really want to and at that point I think it's kind of up to how predispositioned to cultish behavior you as a consumer are because on the base level the thing might be like you can play chess with like just your friends or people in the park or whatever and that's not anything crazy But if you are an obsessive person or if you're someone who kind of needs something all-consuming, you can dial up the cultishness if you want. And I think just something that affects maybe where a cult falls on that scale is how much that leader finds you versus how much you need to seek out that leader. That's interesting. And with chess, I do feel, especially if you're the leader, I do feel you're sought, which is, I think point for chess. Okay, well, that's good to know. And I like how you think about that. Because I think that that's definitely true for chess that, like, depending on where that person is at, I mean, I've met people who chess literally is their religion. It is their God. Like there's both the game itself, the obsession of chess sort of like can land someone not just in the stereotypical, like this person is very

anti-social, whatever kind of lane, savant lane, but even if they present a little bit more savvy in terms of, you know, just basic social communication skills, their priorities are that becoming the best chess player in the world is first and foremost and sort of they rank every other human being around them based on that. And I think that that's actually been a historical problem for chess is that it's had like a very clear hierarchy back to like a bit of an analogy of where I grew up and I think that if you weren't at the top of that hierarchy, it wasn't just that you were famine because there's only been money at the top of the game for a very long time. I think until the digital kind of revolution that has been online. One thing I'll share, I don't know if this

relates to other calls is like there was also a great elitism by those at the top in terms of even if they were starving and even if the game had a broken economy, it was like, don't tell us how to fix it because we're better than you because we're smarter than you. And there was, there's been lot of that in chess historically. It's like, I'm a starving artist, but you don't get to tell me that because, like, I'm better than you and I'm smarter than you. And that part of the game has been something we've also been sort of trying to destroy. Now I sound like I'm trying to destroy chess, which is not totally the goal, but old school ways that I think chess has not made itself accessible or welcoming for anybody, let alone the cultish hierarchy, has been something that

we've been trying to kind of break down. Yeah, being aware of your cultishness is definitely the first step in breaking it down. So it sounds like it's not a very warm and fuzzy cult competitive as it is. So I want to know a little bit more about that. Can you tell me some of the entry and or exit costs to the cult of chess? Wow. We're down an analogy road. I got to think of this. Let's see. So I'm going to go to the exit first because that one's on the top of my brain. I think the exit cost of chess comes with some self-shame and self-worth that unfortunately is a story that people tell themselves, which is, ah, I wasn't smart enough to play this game. They were right. Or like, I'm not good enough for this. And I think that that's been a highly unfortunate thing that

the culture has leaned into because I think on the other hand, they're sort of perpetuating, oh, the best chess players in the world are geniuses, the most elite of our species who should be put on a pedestal in worship, when in reality, that is also not true. I think like any other kind of niche thing, if you commit your life to it, you can get very, very good at it. And I think, I don't want to say that I'm disparaging chess players, that they aren't smart. I think you can be smart chess player. But I guess what I'm pointing out is that there's no real reason to believe that you have to like, I guess back to your entry point, sign a covert contract that means I'm all in on this idea that I'm going to be completely obsessed with the game or I'm not allowed

to play. And that's been a thing for a long time that was there. In fact, me and my co-founders, just to talk about that, like, my story was I had failed as a child chess prodigy. And because I didn't become the best chess player in the world, there was like nothing left for me. There was no online community at the time. There was no, like, place to earn a real living, let alone one that would support a family. There was like, oh, you failed, so get out kind of opportunity, because if I wanted to have any other type of business or profession in the game that wasn't trying to become the best player in the world, it wasn't there for me. And my partners, they had never played chess at the same level, but they felt gate kept by most at the top by saying, oh, like, you're not really good, then there's no place for you.

And there was no, like, place that celebrated kind of just the fact that we were just playing chess because we loved the game, and it was fun, and we all blunder our queen. And it's not that big of a deal. And, like, that kind of environment just didn't exist. And so I guess the entry cost was like, you're either giving up your life or don't even pretend that you can play here. And by the way, if you fail, it's not just that you failed.

It's like your self-worth is at stake, right, in terms of how you feel about yourself. And I think that is a very heavy cost. And I think kids, by the way, feel that cost in chess. Like, if you're not careful, like, they will very early on understand, like, the pressure to perform,

not just for like a parent, but maybe a coach is like, oh, if I don't figure this out, it means I'm not as smart as this other kid. And I just don't think that that's actually a fair way to set that up. I think that you really should have like a you're never losing if you learn mentality. But I think a lot of people, just like sports stats, living through their kids with t-ball, like they're living through their kid is the smartest. And that's actually

not a very good thing. No, that's very culty and so dangerous the way that you get caught up and you get very into, I guess, the tighter rings of the cult that you can instrumentalize yourself. And it turns into such a zero-sum game. That's a very cultish thing. Zero-sum is a good way to put it. Yeah, that's sad because I think a lot of parents are actually okay with that until they're not. They're okay with rewarding the result of what the kid does and not the process as long as the results are good. And then they look back and go, oh, we were really over rewarding the result. And our child has all this like self-worth wrapped up on whether they please us. And we weren't rewarding the fact that like, hey, like actually the fact that you're like busting your ass and willing to play, like, I'm proud of you for that.

And I think the chess cult at a scholastic level can have a lot of that. and it can be a reason why a lot of young people drop out in addition to the fact that many years chess wasn't cool. I think chess was cooler than it used to be, at least I'm going to say that as one of the cult leaders apparently. But I would say that chess is more cool, but it still has a lot of people drop out too young, I think. That's sad. You either hear about people that have been playing chess for forever or like very young children that are playing chess. And I feel like amongst people my age, there's not a lot of casual chess players or people who are either recently picking it up or are playing since childhood that still regularly play. I do feel like chess.

though, I will say, to feed into your reputation as cult leader, I do feel like chess.com is improving that because I see quite a few people in my undergrad class is not paying attention because they were on chess.com. Okay, there you go. We're winning. Thank you for saying that. That is the goal. It's, I guess, some kind of a win for the cult. Win for the cult. No, but what you're saying is true. I think for a long time, it was like, oh, I played when I was little, but I don't play anymore, or I've been playing chess my whole life, right? But I think what you're saying is true in part because of, You know, I joke we're trying to tear down the gate with a wrecking ball. I think we've been trying to say, look, it doesn't have to be that way, right?

There can be a much more open, inclusive, go in and out of the gate as you please. It doesn't have to be you're obsessed and leaving your family for chess. Or it's something you did when you were little. And I think there are more people anecdotally. And our data would say that there are more people coming back online and playing. Hopefully in the mid-20s and 30s demographic are playing more chess than before. Yeah, yeah, hopefully. Get out there, guys.

go play some chess. Okay. What, if any, rituals or ritualistic behaviors are performed by chess players? Wow. Let's see. There's definitely a few. One thing is the pen. People will use the same pen until they lose a game. And in fact, if you watch them, a lot of chess players have like super nervous ticks about how they place the pen. Because in chess, when you're playing at a high level, you're supposed to write down your move. It's like a golf score. You have to mark what you got on every hole, basically. And so a chess player will have a lot of not just superstitious, but sort of like OCD obsessive type of behavior. That is a thing. I don't know if that counts as a ritual. But I think, One thing about chess players is because so much of it is like mental and you're either in your own head or you're not, there are a lot of things that not just depend. I've even known players, I won't call them out by name who like don't shower if they win. And what that can mean is that if you're really good, you might also really stink. That's an intimidation tactic. Exactly. You keep winning. That's not so much the case anymore. But there was a period where that was a thing growing up for sure. I haven't talked about that a long time. There are some rituals that are mental. And this is interesting as compared to. to very, very serious and potentially damaging cults that sometimes what you're doing in your own brain, not just to compartmentalize, but you know, you just sort of justify how you're living your life to kind of not look or not to start pulling on the yarn ball because if you pull on it, you never know where it's going to go, right? So you're doing your own mental gymnastics to make sure that you're in the best state of mind to do what you can do. And I think for chess players, not just superstitious things,

but one thing chess players will do is they'll avoid looking at the rating of their opponent because chess players have to live in a world where they're obsessed that if they do all the right things, that they will always win. It doesn't matter what the rating is of the opponent. They could be a much, much better player or worse. It can kind of like avoid being sort of present to the opportunity. And I think there are times where that eventually backfires. It's not always a good thing to have yourself denying how tough a challenge is or how good this person is. It might actually change your preparation. It could be a good thing to be willing to look yourself in the mirror and say, ah, this is going to be really tricky because of this. Some people don't even like looking at ratings

if someone's lower because they don't want to feel like the favorite. They don't want to have the pressure that they have to win. So the mindset can work both ways. And I did a lot of that stuff as a kid. I was also struggling with all kinds of other issues being in a cult. But I would always have to walk to the bathroom the exact same way. And I would have to avoid the pattern of like these big hotel ballroom carpets. And what I realize about that behavior now is like a lot of what you're trying to do

is control what you can control because you can't control everything else. And so sometimes as a chess player, you're trying to get yourself in the right state. mind by controlling things that don't matter, but at least you feel like you can control something because of the pressure you feel to be smart enough in that moment. So I have never been like analyzed like this as a chess player about the psychology. So I just want to put that out there that this is unexpected and fun. It's making me think a lot too because I'm very much, uh, I love control. I'm a very controlling person. And it does strike me that chess would appeal very much to that because of kind of the algorithmic nature of it. It's kind of about pinning down that last unknown

variable and making sure that you're the person who sees more steps ahead than whoever you're playing. And with that, I do think what's always been kind of mesmerizing to me about chess is that the game in itself, if you're good at it, there's a rhythm to it. It feels very ritualistic in the playing of it in itself. So there's a cultish entrancing quality just to the game. But you have to earn that flow state by being good enough. And it's also like a relationship with your opponent, I think, but I find as an actor, that's something that I recognize and I find that special. I think all of those things are true about chess players. And I like what you said about you have to kind of earn the rhythm.

And what I would say is one thing to get to the other side of these. We talked about the rituals and maybe the way that people play mental gymnastics. But if you talk about the best chess players who do it well, like you were saying, like they do appreciate that there's an algorithmic. We have to be as perfect as we can be, knowing that we won't be perfect, but we have to try. And they sort of find the zone in that. They sort of find the ability to stay totally focused in the moment. And now it works in reverse where they stop.

trying to control all these easy things and they focus fully on the hard task. Like Magnus Carlson is the goat and the best player in the world. And you observe a couple qualities about him when he analyzes the chess and when he talks about it, that he's simultaneously going deeper than you in every position, but also has total short-term memory loss. He doesn't think about anything that doesn't matter. So it's like players who are afraid that they won't be able to go as deep. You put that angst into something else. Like, let me control how I walk to the bathroom. Let me control how I put the pen. And it sounds like I'm exaggerating, but it really is like true. Like there's like an emotional anxiety you feel about the fear of whether you're going to be able to perform.

And so you put that into ritual, whereas the best, like, total alphas are like actually fully focused on the thing that they know they'll never be able to solve, but it doesn't bother them in that zone. And they don't waste any time on what doesn't matter. And it's like a different mindset that I had a, you know, I was never able to achieve a level of chest at Magnus. That even as a professional who played at a very high level. That's an interesting thing about Magnus's psychology that I would say aligns with what you

were saying. Hey, my name is Bob the drag queen. And I'm on an exchange. And we are the host of sibling rivalry. This is the podcast where two best friends Gab, talk, smack, and have a lot of fun with our black queer selves. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we are family. So we talk about everything, honey, from why we don't like hugs to Black Lives Matter,

to interracial dating, to other things, right, Bob? Yes, and it gets messy, and we are not afraid to be wrong. So please join us over here at sibling bribery available anywhere you get your podcast. You can listen and subscribe for free. For free, honey. Hey, I'm Mike Barronholz. On my new show, Funny You Ask, Trivia starts the conversation, and then things immediately go off the rails. I ask a question.

My guests think they know the answer. Sometimes they do. More often, they do not. And then the conversation takes a turn. One trivia question turns into stories about career highs, painful bombs, and behind the scenes moments that probably should have remained private. You'll hear confidence, misplace confidence, bold guesses, wrong answers, quick laughs, and the slow realization that maybe this was a bad idea to say out loud.

If you like smart comedy, sharp conversations, and trivia that exists purely to melt people's brains, this is Funny You Ask with me, Ike Barrenholz. Follow Funny You Ask with Ike Barronholtz on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So an us versus them dichotomy is a thriving key feature of most cults. Is this something that you see at all reflected in chess, or is that a little harder to find seeing that it is such a solitary sport? No, it's funny. Of all the features, I think that's one of the ones that is like prevalent, not just within

chess versus other games and other things that is compared to, but it's also really prevalent within the chess community. The us versus them kind of battle is happening. right now every day between like the online we're young edgy fast fun diverse chess is crazy we can all blunder this doesn't have to be a game that is only played by the most intellectually elite of our species and then what we've joked about at chess.com is like old chess where they're like don't try to grow the game and expand it to people who aren't going to try to become the best chess players in the world and or no we think that chess should be played for seven hours at a time by old white guys in a room

blowing cigar smoke and like that's actually what chess is right so it's really interesting that there is a very much us versus them at times with the growth and the explosion of the game that has happened around COVID around the queen's gambah and just around the explosion of probably like the smartphone and just how easy it has become to play chess casually right playing chess casually like literally was not a thing until the internet it was like you were either a chess player committed to going to that club and being in that stuffy room because for whatever reason if we're good or bad right but that was your thing Now you have a lot of people as a part of the growth of the game in a much more just kind of fun and open way. And it's not something that has been welcomed or supported by the old guard, if you will.

And there are examples of it all over social media where they try to call out the chess.com growth and kind of the younger generation getting into chess. And we're kind of like, great. Like we love it. We're all on board with it. And then I think outside of the game, I think historically, people I think have over defended the fact that chess is hard against other games. where like what I would say is just as I've been talking about how they got off on the fact that it was elite and super smart and actually didn't care if you felt bad about yourself if you've lost. There was no effort to be like, hey, like actually chess is really great for people. It helps improve their critical thinking skills.

Let's keep people playing and let them play with a coach. Make it more accessible. Don't make it so feels bad that if you lose, they don't ever want to, you know, fucking play again, right? It's a problem. And like there were so many issues as far as chess being compared to other games and they didn't want to make any effort to make it feel more welcoming. And so I think there were those aspects for sure where the cult was protecting its own inward, almost to its own detriment. Mm, that's very culty.

Yeah, wow, with a cult that has existed for so long, I mean, I learned in the research of this episode that chess has been around since essentially like the seventh century. So there is bound to be some generational splits along the way. And I guess it's a point against cultishness because I do think there's a degree of flexibility that's necessary to withstand the different social forces of generation after generation, generation after generation and even like technological medium after medium after medium like from something that was so tactile to now like chess.com being the predominant mode of chess playing, I would assume. Yeah. That goes to show, you know, what do they say? Cult plus time equals religion.

And is chess going to become a religion? When are we getting there? That's funny. Again, it probably already is for some. But it's funny here you talk about it evolving because one interesting thing you were saying about the requirement to evolve, I think that obviously with a lot of mainstream religions that have kind of made it and survived the printing press and beyond, you sort of try to adapt and be more at least relatable. Some do it better than others, right? We don't have to get into all that. That's your expertise. But I would say when it comes to chess, I think the one thing the game did do is it evolved in different ways, because it started in, as you said, the 7th century, 600 AD and moved with Alexander the Great and the whole Persian conquest empire army. But there were multiple different

stages throughout Europe where it probably would have been more on the verge of dying without a little bit of influence to sort of speed it up. And Queen Isabella of Spain, for example, is the one who invented the queen because of that time she was probably the most powerful human being on the planet. And before that, there wasn't actually a very dominant piece. Yeah, a lot of people don't know that. It's a fun fact that she literally said, like, no, like, we're not going to have the king and queen being slow. The queen is going to be the most powerful piece. And that actually ended up being super critical to making the game more interesting and entertaining. And there were other things, too, as far as, you know, little rules that I think were important. And I don't know what the time

machine would tell us back then. I would bet there were a lot of people like saying Queen Isabella, you know, whatever, for whatever reason, not wanting that, but she did it anyway, right? And I think that there are probably old guards that try to protect and keep it dysfunctional, even if it is to their own detriment for as long as they can. It's always going to be scroogees. Whatever. Screw them. Okay. Just two more questions. This is a not so fun one. What were the most devastating effects of the chess cult that you have witnessed? But you can also rounded out by answering some of the most positive impacts that you've seen. Okay. And well, I have my own cult too. So my relationship with chess and the cult that I grew up in was very tied. So I'll answer it

very personally first and then I'll try to talk about the chess world abroad. But again, so my crazy story is because the cult leader was obsessed with chess, he orchestrated an abduction and took me away from my mom at the age of 12. And I was put on a path to play chess with all of my life and self-worth being wrapped up in this idea that I was going to become a chess world champion. And so I'm in therapy and have been and will be for the rest of my life. Just making sure you know. And also, I think as far as lasting effects, because I was told my purpose is to become a world champion, it took me a long time to separate that purpose is not like an achievement. It is the why you do a thing. It is the reasons you do, it could be podcasting or chess or be a lawyer or whatever. And I had a lot of

issues and damage around my own self-worth because I thought, given that I had failed to become the world chess champion, that I was not good. And literally, and I think, all the spiritual shit that was wrapped up in that for chess. It made my relationship status with chess very complicated. Like, I hated the game. It was like, it was both mentor and tour mentor, and the part of it that was so difficult and had left such a, such a wound in my personal life, in my life with my family, that is a very personal answer in the truth,

that it was a very difficult game for me to continue to want to be a part of before Chess.com and the opportunity came along that we now have. And the second thing I would say that maybe the chess world is done as far as the wounds. I touched on a bunch in terms of, I guess, the financial ecosystem, just that there were too many people okay with the status quo in terms of they're not really being any real interest more broadly for the game. They're not being any commercial interest or any real way for the game to continue to be played for a kid who wasn't going to become a prodigy. And even for the prodigies, it probably wasn't healthy. And I just think that the chess world fought its own evolution and fought opening up the gates for other people for way, way too long. And I think that that is changing.

So my personal answer is a little more traumatic. And I think just kind of wrapping a ribbon on what chess.com has tried to do differently, you know, my professional answer is that the chess world was just its own worst enemy for way, way too long. So I have just one more question for you. First of all, like, I am so sorry that you went through that. And I also just want to say thank you for being so vulnerable with not just me, but also our listeners. And I know it really helps paint an in-depth picture of just how entangled that these like seemingly more

harmless cults can get with forces of actual mass manipulation. It's, it's, you know, it's a scary world out there. So we need to be aware of even our hobbies. We need to have no blinders on. So with that in mind, my last question for you is, what advice would you give to someone who is maybe taking their relationship with chess a little too seriously? Needs to chill out a little. That is a great question. Yeah, I think one of the unfortunate obsessions with chess is that after you lose a game, you have this immediate emotional response of, oh, I'm not as smart as this person, or at least in that game, I was outsmarted. And they remove, like, the objectivity of it was just one game versus an overall kind of indictment of your character. And what ends up happening next is because you feel, oh, I'm not smart, I have to figure out why I lost. And what happens is I think people move too quickly to analyzing and to, you know, to trying to address what went wrong before they've had time to process, and I guess even to say to grieve, I know that's a big word to use for just losing a game, but the truth is, like, any loss in life is like, you have to have a moment to, like, feel it and to grieve it and to go,

that suck and to actually, I mean, if you need to cry, let yourself cry. I've cried after a lot of chess games. And, like, one of the things I learned that was really fucked up and done with me wrong for all the spiritual reasons in the cult, but then I started to see parents doing it when I was teaching before chess.com, and I really, when I was a young, a young person with no kids, I would come down hard on the parents the other way and be like, hey, you're actually making not just a mistake in terms of that person's relationship with the game because you're like coming down on them about why they lost when they haven't had time to grieve and process. But science has borne out that my intuition there as a young damaged teen ended up being right that like it's actually not even productive to try to dive too deeply into your mistakes when you haven't actually processed your emotions. Because what happens is your brain actually ties that losing and hard feelings are associated with learning and then you stop wanting to learn. because you end up in a spot where you feel like every time you're reviewing your mistakes,

it hurts your heart and it hurts your feelings, which doesn't have to be the case. You can actually give yourself enough time to process and to grieve. And then when you're ready, go dive into the game, figure out where you went wrong, where you are a little bit more just like stable and it doesn't hurt your feelings anymore that you lost. And if I could be on any pedestal to like parents and chess players, I would be like, you don't have to tie your emotional body up in whether or not, or let's say why you lost the game. And when people do that too quickly, over time,

you start to associate learning with bad feelings and then you don't want to learn anymore. And that's a huge mistake people make with chess. Wow. That's incredibly wise. That's a little tidbit of wisdom that I did not expect to hear today learning about chess. I feel like that's widely applicable to not just chess. It is. And as a dad with kids, I will say it is. And I also have struggled with it many times because it's hard because as a person and a parent, like, you care. And so you think you're doing the right thing. But more like, if I could like, you know, the wise meditation be like, don't do that. don't associate the biggest feelings you have with these learning opportunities because it will

backfire with time and people will lose their motivation to want to improve. Your animal brain will not like it. You are not bigger than it. I promise. So now we get to play a fun little game. So this is a game that we call culty quotes. So I am going to read you a quote and you are going to have to guess if it is from a grandmaster or a classic cult leader. Oh my gosh. This is awesome. Okay. Quote number one. You must take your opponent into a deep, dark forest in which two plus two equals five, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.

I know that quote. It's Mikhailtao. That's a grandmaster. I know that quote. Unfortunately, I'm a good cult member. I know that one. You are, and that's an iconic quote. It's quite the quote.

It sounds pretty dark, right? That's pretty dark. It's pretty metal. Okay. Next quote. I'm Jesus Christ. Whether you want to accept it or not, I don't care.

That's got to be a call leader. Yeah, that one's Manson. Okay, I was going to say, all right. If that's a chess player, we got problems. All right. That's all right. Let's be realistic here. All right.

You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances. It's got to be a grandmaster, but I don't know who said that one. Bobby Fisher. Oh, Bobby Fisher. Okay, I guess I should know that, but yeah. I feel like the chess language gives it away. Yeah, I guess moves is one that gives it away, but yeah.

Okay. The world doesn't want you to know. know the truth about your potential, but we will show you. That could go both ways. That's definitely a cold leader, but that could go both ways. That's a cold leader, but who is it? That's Elron Hubbard, but I'm sure man loved him some chess if I had to put money on it. Yeah, I bet so too.

Okay. A bad plan is better than none at all. That's got to be, yeah, that's a chess player. That's a grandmaster. He's going through the archives. Yeah, that's Frank Marshall. Frank Marshall. Yeah, okay, good. And last one, it is the aim of the modern school, not to,

to treat every position according to one general law, but according to the principal inherent in the position. Definitely a chess player. And is that a, is that Botvinnik? No. That is Richard Reddy? Oh, Richard Reddy. Okay, ready. That's a good one. Okay, I thought it was Botvinnik. He's the father of the Soviet chess school cult, if there was one. That would be Bodvinnik. But okay, Ready's a good one. Okay. I see. Well, I'm happy that I've been schooled. I have certainly learned me a thing. I hope you've sought you a thing. Danny, thank you so much for coming on the show, where can the listeners find you? This is awesome. Thank you for having me. What am I? I'm on chess.com. I'm on the Twitters and the Instagrams and all the stuff at Daniel Wrench,

at Danny Wrench. But I do content and broadcast commentary for chess.com a lot. And yeah, I recently wrote a memoir about my childhood and the wild times of chess and the chess cult that I was in. So anywhere you want to Google. All right. Thank you so much. Well, Colties, I don't know about you, but I feel like, I am enlightened and I now know much more about chess than I ever did before and I feel like let me at Miss Anya Taylor Joy. I can tassel, but I guess it is up to me to give a solo verdict this week. And I think in its current iteration it is a live your life just because like anything that gets people off of TikTok is a live your life in my opinion like use your brain. Even if it's on chess.com,

especially if it's on chess.com. Danny's awesome. Go play some chess. Go learn some chess. Maybe should I learn chess? Should we learn chess? Coltys? Chess Club?

Thoughts? Anywho. Colties, that is our show. Thank you so much for listening. Join us for a new cult next week. And in the meantime, stay culty. But not too, culty. Sounds like a cult was created by Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of the podcaven.

This episode was hosted by Reese Oliver. Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show a lot. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out my book, Cultish, the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, The Age of Magical O overthinking, notes on Modern Irrationality, and Wordslut, a feminist guide to taking back the English language. Thanks as well to our network studio 71.

And be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult cult on Instagram for all the discourse at Sounds Like a Cult pod or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad-free at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.