Pod Insights The James Altucher Show How Chess Saved Danny Rensch’s Life: From Cult Roots to Chess.com’s Success About this episode Notes from James:I had no idea this conversation would go where it did. I thought we’d talk chess. Instead, we talked about life, trauma, manipulation, redemption… and how one of the world’s most popular games can be both a tormentor and a savior. Episode Description:In this raw and powerful episode, I sat down with Danny Rensch—International Master, Chief Chess Officer of Chess.com, and author of the upcoming memoir Dark Squares—to uncover a story that’s anything but a typical chess tale. Raised in a spiritual cult obsessed with chess, Danny’s path to mastery involved trauma, isolation, and resilience. We go deep into the psychological aftermath of cult life, the beauty and torment of the game that saved him, and how he helped turn Chess.com into a global phenomenon with over 200 million users. This isn’t just an episode about chess. It’s about survival, identity, and how to turn pain into purpose. What You’ll Learn:How Danny’s obsession with chess began inside a controlling cultThe complicated relationship between talent, trauma, and identityHow being taken from his family at age 12 shaped his worldviewHow Chess.com exploded from 100k subscribers to millions after The Queen’s GambitWhy cheating in chess is a growing threat—and how they’re fighting itWhat the Hans Niemann scandal revealed about the future of the gameHow to build resilience and purpose from even the darkest beginningsTimestamps:00:00 Introduction: A Unique Upbringing and Chess Obsession00:43 The James Altucher Show: Welcoming Danny Wrench00:58 Danny Wrench's Journey: From Chess Prodigy to Business Success03:19 The Dark Side of Chess: Cult Life and Personal Struggles12:38 Chess.com: Growth and Success14:34 The Impact of COVID-19 and The Queen's Gambit20:30 Cheating Scandals and Controversies in Chess26:26 Future of Chess: Technology and Cheating31:14 Conclusion: Living the DreamOur Sponsors:Pack up and go even further with the Defender 110. Learn more at LandRoverUSA.com/DefenderHead to rugiet.com/JAMES and use code JAMES to get 15% off today! Secure your online data TODAY by visiting ExpressVPN.com/ALTUCHERSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript 0:01 Speaker 00 At Lowe's, this Veterans Day and every day, military members, veterans and their spouses get automatic MyLowe's Rewards Silver Status Benefits. Plus, 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more and verify now at Lowe's.com/military. 10% discount can't be combined with another offer. Exclusions, terms and conditions apply. Loyalty programs subject to terms and conditions. Details at Lowe's.com/terms. Subject to change. Whoever said, "Good things come to those who wait," never shopped Black Friday early at Lowe's. Right now, get up to 50% off select major appliances. Plus, get free delivery, free haulaway and free basic installation and parts when you
0:45 Speaker 00 spend $896 or more on select major appliances. Shop Black Friday early in-store and online now at Lowe's. Valid through 12/2 while supplies last. Selection varies by location. See Associate at Lowe's.com for details.
1:00 Speaker 01 We're all here, it's family. Presents for the ones you love and love.
1:15 Speaker 02 I was raised in a spiritual collective that had a cult leader who was obsessed with chess. And when I was nine years old, I learned how to play and accidentally got very, very good at the game. While you wish there was someone around to kind of like, you know, smack you in the face and say like, "What, what, what the fuck is going on here?" One of the things that happens to abused people is very often abused children, they don't stop loving their abuser, they stop loving themselves. While chess itself was tormentor and that getting good at this game actually ended up having me lose my family in many ways and go through a number of different, very real tragedies, I would say that the game of chess both was tormentor and mentor and in many ways destroyed some parts of my life and then saved my life in the end because of that.
2:05 Speaker 03 This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.
2:18 Speaker 04 There are a lot of strange, very strange stories in the chess world. I mean, everyone remembers kind of the dramas around Bobby Fischer and even some of the dramas more recently with Magnus Carlsen. But I have never heard a story as unusual and as interesting as the story that brought Danny Wrench into chess. Danny, in his career, he's one of the first people out and he helps run chess.com, which has like over 100 million users. It's the biggest chess company ever. So we talk about that a little bit, which is very interesting. But the story of how Danny went from being a kid who played chess to one of the strongest
2:58 Speaker 04 young chess players in the country and why the people around him were motivated for him to do that has to be one of the strangest stories I've ever heard and we talk about it here.
3:12 Speaker 04 I am very excited about this presentation. Danny Wrench has had success in many areas of life, but in particular, as a young chess player, he achieved the international master title, very special. And then later, he achieved success, great success, and is still achieving great success in business as the chief chess officer of chess.com. But I will say that often the path to excellence is a very dark and twisted path, as many of you know, and Danny has his stories that are very intense and riveting. Maybe we'll get to some of them today. So Danny, welcome.
3:52 Speaker 02 Thank you, James.
3:53 Speaker 04 And for those of you who were here last year, you remember Danny interviewed Magnus Carlsen here on the stage, so it's my pleasure to now turn the tables on him. So Danny, on the one hand, I'm very jealous of you to achieve success young at something that you were so passionate about and so thrilled with. And then to take that same passion and turn it into a career success and business success and financial success. I mean, chess.com right now, how many users are there?
4:23 Speaker 02 Oh, we have over 200 million registered. We have 50 million monthly active users. That number rotates a little bit. We have about 10 million daily active users, which is a lot of people. 10 million people every day. So.
4:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, and just to set some background, back in like 1993, I was helping run the predecessor organization, the Internet Chess Club, ICC.
4:47 Speaker 02 Shut up, ICC.
4:48 Speaker 04 I would say we had 1,000 people a day, tops. So you've certainly improved the situation for all chess lovers. But I want to roll it back, like, and you can, you have, is it okay to mention the title of your upcoming?
5:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, you can, we can talk openly about everything.
5:05 Speaker 04 So there's, Danny has a great book coming out soon, Dark Squares. When is it actually being released?
5:10 Speaker 02 The book will be out in September, September 16th, 2025.
5:14 Speaker 04 And part of it, it describes, you know, you, obviously you were passionate about chess. You loved it. You had talent. You had skill. But the motivations for the people around you, for you to get great at chess, were perhaps different from the normal motivations people have. And maybe you want to describe a little bit how that started.
5:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, so it's a wild story that is, I guess, why it was time to write a book about it. But I was raised in a commune. It was a cult. I came to accept and learn through lots of reflection and therapy through the years of my life. But I was raised in a spiritual collective that had a cult leader who was obsessed with chess. And when I was nine years old, I learned how to play and accidentally got very, very good at the game. And over that time, over the next couple of years, I would develop a very close relationship with the cult leader and he would ultimately take me away from my family in order to help me pursue this, this mission.
6:13 Speaker 04 What does that mean, take you away from your family?
6:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's, it's complicated and it legitimately is complicated, which is, which is why there's a book about it, but. One of the things about living in a high-stress, high-demand, high-control group, a cult, and a lot of people, when you hear that term, you associate things like Jonestown, or Waco, or something with sort of a mass agenda of some kind, whether it be, whatever that agenda might be. But there are many groups like this where the agenda is a little bit less violent, but still just as damaging, or very damaging, if you will, for the people living in it. And when you have people with a lot of power over other people, you can sort of orchestrate and manipulate what you want. And the specific dynamics of that are in the story about this collective.
6:56 Speaker 02 But I was taken away from my mom at the age of 12, and placed to live alone, so that it would be more convenient for me to travel the world and play competitive chess, which I did as a top young American for many years, and many people never knew this. And I actually didn't speak to my mother for 10 years, even though we lived 500 feet away. Very weird dynamic to understand. And ultimately, the ending is, I guess, both a happy one and a tragic one, but I'll let people figure that out, whether they check it out. But ultimately, I learned a lot in that process, while becoming a very good chess player. And he was in control of where I spent my whole life, pretty much.
7:32 Speaker 04 And so you were living alone, you said, while they were, I guess you were having chess lessons, or you were hanging out with?
7:37 Speaker 02 Yeah. No, I mean, I wasn't, I was orphaned by a lot of senses of the word at that age, though there were people who were to caretake me, so to speak. I had lots of chess training, and I had the means to travel the world and the support I needed there, but a lot of the other dynamics that, some fundamental things you normally don't need to question, like, like your family, or where you're, where you're gonna be safe that night, some of those things were, were not always known, so.
8:02 Speaker 04 And would your mother ever try to reach out to speak to you, like, she must have cared about your well-being, even as you were removed from her house?
8:12 Speaker 02 There were some different things that went down, but overall, no, because she was also living under the control of the, of the cult at the time, and so it was difficult to do that.
8:21 Speaker 04 And you know, what's interesting about cults, like, Given what happened and given that it probably felt really bad for you and for her, how come, and I don't really, I never having lived with a cult, I don't know the answer. How come there wasn't more questioning that this might be a bad thing? Like, how come she didn't question more or refuse to let you go?
8:40 Speaker 02 You know, you look back at it, and I think it's hard for a lot of people to understand when you have smart, generally thoughtful, in some ways, very ambitious people living in groups like that, while you wish there was someone around to kind of like, you know, smack you in the face and say like, "What the fuck is going on here?" Right? That doesn't always, that's not always the case when you have a lot of people believing in larger sort of, if you want to call them lies, but larger sort of goals of the collective. And so, part of the dynamic of that was the belief that not only that everybody comes to the planet with a purpose, I'd like to think we all have purpose and we all want to find purpose in the things that we pursue. That's a goal of human nature, I think that we all share, or at least the meaning and the impact we'd like to have in our lives.
9:21 Speaker 02 But the idea that your purpose was ordained by God and therefore the collective leaders were the ones who got to sort of anoint that and decide that, and that your purpose was more important than any biological relationship, or that anything on the planet. And so, when you have a lot of people bought into the same sort of big lie, you end up with a dynamic that allows for people to overlook and buy into things that are generally, don't feel very good, and you sort of look the other way. And in many ways, I think a lot of, anyone who's been a part of a dysfunctional family or had tragic things happen, or forms of dysfunction, whether it's abuse in your family, or whether it's, you know, abuse of all kind, whether physical or sexual, or in any way
10:03 Speaker 02 manipulative, a lot of people wonder why it takes so long to call it out, but a lot of the times, it's because the people in the environment are protective. There's statistics that most people are sexually abused by someone in their own family, for example. And part of that is because when you have a dysfunctional element of your own family, one of the most dangerous things to do is to point at the dysfunction within your own family, because then you're very survival and sort of your self-worth and your acceptance by the people in your family goes away, right? Or it's at risk, right? And so, one of the things that happens to abused people is very often abused children... They don't stop loving their abuser, they stop loving themselves. And you don't, you don't necessarily doubt where the information is coming from, you doubt your own skepticism of it.
10:47 Speaker 02 And a lot of people who live in collectives are actually just children of the cult leaders. And so a lot of these dynamics are actually like part of just psychological manipulation. And wow, this, this got deep, you hit on this stuff. I thought we were going to talk about founding chess.com today, but he brought up the book. So I hope everyone's going to check it out at this point, but um, yeah, that is the, I'm not a therapist, but through many years of therapy and discussion, I've come to understand this pretty well.
11:11 Speaker 04 And when you were traveling around to youth tournaments and you were sometimes staying with other families and other kids while you were competing, you know, all over the place, did you get to see how they lived? And would that make you question what was going on? Or did you sort of think, hey, I'm part of this group that's special, I'm special, like what was the?
11:29 Speaker 02 It's funny because as I've reflected on it and of course, share a lot about the perspective I gained. We've heard a lot about perspective today in this amazing summit. There are obviously different ways to look at different things. And I agree with something you said very quickly earlier, that optimism serves a lot more purpose in our life than pessimism does. What I would say is my optimistic view of what I went through now has given me perspective that while chess itself was tormentor and that getting good at this game actually ended up having me lose my family in many ways and go through a number of different very real tragedies. Ultimately, the experience I had traveling the world at a young age and staying in other kids' rooms
12:10 Speaker 02 and just sort of living in a normal world, at least for a little bit, even if for a very long time I was keeping this sort of secret and this lie about what my life really was from the world. I think it ultimately helped give me, um, yeah, a unique perspective, I guess, to sort of challenge, be skeptical, be sort of indifferent to different things that other people felt were very like black and white or dogmatic about the different views of any sort of collective or spiritual belief or religion. So I think in hindsight was sort of able to walk among the collective, but not totally be of everything necessarily. And I think ultimately, as I grew into being an adult and. Was able to face down certain things without getting into every detail.
12:52 Speaker 02 I would say that probably the views I had of the world and the experiences I had through chess kind of saved me, right? And so it both, I would say that the game of chess both was tormentor and mentor and in many ways destroyed some parts of my life and then saved my life in the end because of that.
13:13 Speaker 00 At Lowe's, this Veterans Day and every day, military members, veterans and their spouses get automatic MyLowe's Rewards Silver Status benefits. Plus 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more and verify now at Lowe's.com/military. 10% discount can't be combined with another offer. Exclusions, terms and conditions apply. Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details at Lowe's.com/terms. Subject to change.
13:42 Speaker 05 Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5, only at McDonald's for a limited time.
13:54 Speaker 04 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Given that and given both the extreme positives and the extreme negatives that you in particular experienced, it's so interesting that you were able to kind of transform that passion into also a career. Like, how did you, you know, now you're basically a co-founder of chess.com, but how did you kind of stumble onto chess.com and begin your work in that arena?
14:19 Speaker 02 Yeah. So I think, you know, if anyone's being fully honest about their success, I think it's important to humbly acknowledge the parts of ourselves that got lucky in that experience, right? And/or in some ways, you know, they say necessity breeds genius, right? The hand you are given is the hand you then have to choose and then try to play as best you can. So one of the things that happened in my experience of not really having any parents was I developed a bunch of health problems and I actually lost all of my hearing at one point. I actually have a cochlear implant in my head that a lot of people don't know. There's a little scar here. One of the earliest versions of the cochlear is called a Baha, which is a bone anchor hearing aid. I'm not going to give you an anatomy lesson too, but I was
14:58 Speaker 02 Bedridden for almost two years and my career as a child chess professional. I was never as good as Hikaru, but at one point I was the second highest rated young American behind Hikaru. Under 21 and right around that time, I basically just stopped playing chess for two years from about 17 to 19, 18 to 20. And that was right around the time, 2004, 2005, when the internet came along. I remember where I was when someone was like, hey, you should check out this video. And I'm like, where is it? They're like, it's on YouTube. And I'm like, what's YouTube? So very quickly, I both had the perspective that I needed to find something else that I was going to do with my chess career. And also I had the reasons to do it, given, given how I was limited.
15:39 Speaker 02 And it was sort of converging with the luck, as, as you would say, with the timing of the earliest days of the internet. And there's more to that story, obviously. And then of course, what would happen with finding my co-founders and then getting involved with chess.com very early. But that's the very quick version of it is unluckiness met with the lucky, the lucky timing of the internet. And maybe I had some early inklings that this was the future and doubled down as hard as I could on that.
16:05 Speaker 04 And obviously during, during COVID and then pandemic, combined with at the same time, the release of the TV show, The Queen's Gambit. Chess took this, had this boom in popularity, which directly fed into the success of chess.com. I mean, what was, what was the multiples between like 2019 and 2021? Like, how fast did chess.com grow?
16:24 Speaker 02 Oh, it was insane. The fastest version to explain it to everyone is, we say it was overnight success 10 years later. It was actually longer than 10 years, but it took us 10 years to reach our first 100,000 paying subscribers and 1 million daily active users. And within a year, actually it was less than a year, we had reached a million paying subscribers and 5 million daily active users. The best part about chess though, is that even though everyone thinks of the pandemic and then the Netflix show, The Queen's Gambit, and a lot of other things that happened around that time that kind of catapulted the game into sort of just being more visual and around and the general zeitgeist of pop culture. Once people start playing chess, they tend to stick around a lot. That's one funny thing we've learned. And so as a lot of
17:08 Speaker 04 Because chess players are addicts.
17:10 Speaker 02 Whatever that is. And so of course we have had ups and downs and you do see market resets, if you will, when we have these large inflection points from the different black swan events, but. Most of the users stick around and that's one thing that's been very exciting and encouraging for us to continue on the mission of growing the game and just finding more ways for people to think of chess in some way because we find that once it becomes a part of your life, it really isn't comparable to other games people play that they drop. It's a little more comparable to things that we see as necessary for our life, like your Spotify subscription and your Strava and your Duolingo. Like, people really like playing chess once you start.
17:49 Speaker 04 And why is that? Like, take someone like Marcel Duchamp, who was like this inspiring artist in the early part of the 20th century. He is already is like maybe one of the greatest artists ever, but could have even been so much greater, except for the fact that he took 40 years off to get good at chess. So, why do people do that?
18:09 Speaker 02 I don't know.
18:09 Speaker 04 What is it about chess?
18:10 Speaker 02 He shouldn't have done that. I don't know. What is it about chess? You know, chess is, I think, fascinating to humanity as an unsolvable, yet somehow we always feel like the answer is right there, solvable problem. I mean, we saw the presentation earlier that was amazing on sort of the evolution of, you know, Alan Turing and those who invested early on with computers. Chess has always in some ways been sort of associated with something we revere and uphold as like the highest form of human intellectual achievement, right? For right or wrong, it's sort of what we have seen. I think in many ways, that has been a cool goal to aspire to because something about the existential problem of chess, which is,
18:51 Speaker 02 nobody can play a perfect game of chess, not even Magnus, I mean, not even Stockfish, or now the Leila Zero, which is the predecessor of Alpha Zero. Yet, we know that every position has a perfect move. It's sort of a mind bleep, right? It's like every position has an undeniably, objectively best approach. Like, being in a maze, there is a correct door, yet it is objectively impossible for you to go through a maze and choose the right door every time, right? And I think there's something about that that people find challenging and riveting, and you can equate that to maybe the human condition of sort of trying to aspire to our best selves, knowing that we're probably gonna fuck up tomorrow with something that we do. Sorry, my language, but adults in the room. Kids are gone.
19:39 Speaker 06 Weight Watchers now offers access to affordable GLP-1s. With our program, our members are losing more weight with expert nutrition and side effect support. Better results, expert support. Get started today for as low as $25 at WeightWatchers.com.
19:54 Speaker 04 Chess.com has become the place where chess happens. So let's say there's 600 million chess players around the world. Chess.com is the place where at some point or other, anybody who's even mildly serious is going to go and play a game of chess. Not only that, it's become this ecosystem of content where people make streams while they're on Twitch and YouTube when they're playing chess on Chess.com. And there's amazing tournaments, like I could play in a Title Tuesday and potentially play Magnus or other grandmasters or whatever. And at the same time, chess has always been this breeding ground of drama as well, perhaps because of the intensity. I don't know, maybe you could talk to that.
20:36 Speaker 04 But like, what are some of the biggest dramas you've had to deal with at Chess.com? And they're not just, oh, it's just a game. Like, who cares about this? People care. Like, there's movies being made about these dramas.
20:48 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, where to begin? On the dramas across the board or off the board? I mean, I feel like I'm in a room, a lot of people have followed a small, little scandal that happened a couple of years ago in terms of cheating involving the best player in the world, and of course, Hans Niemann. The fallout of that was absolutely crazy. There are documentaries that have been made that are coming out to Netflix, and there is much more being done that will start to hit the world very soon. For those who don't know, there's also a book being written about it. Not my book, but a book and a movie, a movie that has already been bought by Emma Stone in 824. So over the next couple of years, you will see just more iterations and probably some dramatized and fictionalized versions of this drama coming out.
21:32 Speaker 02 That's a big one. There are controversies every day within our world. And as far as asking the question as to why, you know, I don't know. I think that probably every industry has controversies and scandals and from performance-enhancing
21:48 Speaker 02 Drugs hitting one of the major sports probably every week to some degree and other types of athletes getting themselves in trouble for nefarious activity. I think in some ways I would argue that maybe chess has just grown enough that some of these scandals are getting the spotlight that they quote unquote deserve because the global interest in the game is bigger. So people actually, you know, give a shit for lack of a better way to put it, right? But maybe there is something to this, you know, idea that because chess is considered so cerebral and so non-action, non-violent, non-violently oriented that whenever some sort of physical component comes out in like an explosive way or in some sort of emotionally dramatic fashion,
22:30 Speaker 02 it really captivates people, right? It brings a lot of attention in. I don't know what it is, right? And I'm in the business of not trying to stop it. I think it's good when people are talking about chess for whatever reason they are.
22:41 Speaker 04 Were you nervous from a business perspective when the Hans Niemann, you know, or slash cheating scandal was happening? Like, did you worry about the effect on chess.com?
22:51 Speaker 02 No, no, not ever. It was a very stressful experience. My book actually opens up. I believe that Henrik Carlsen is in the second sentence of my book. The book opens up with a conversation that Henrik Carlsen I had moments before the scandal would break and Henrik knows the conversation I'm talking about. There was nothing nefarious about the conversation. We were kind of caught up in a moment of not really knowing what to make of what was happening. There were a lot of very good reasons that I share very much in my book to be concerned and to be skeptical. But I believe that everybody, and I even, you know, think that you could say this about Hans, even though he was sort of the guy attacking, attacking chess.com and suing me personally and everybody for a hundred million dollars and
23:35 Speaker 02 and everyone on the other side, there was a part of it that I would say, um. My opinion is everyone was doing their best and that there was never really any sort of malicious intent, other than we were kind of caught up in trying to solve a larger problem and have a conversation about what could happen if someone was cheating, what to do about it and how it felt. But from a business point of view, while it was stressful in the middle of it, we were never really worried. And we ultimately won that case. And for those who don't know, it was dismissed in a federal court with prejudice. That means you can't even sue again because we so everything, there was, there was no conspiracy. There was nothing to it. And the truth is while we people, while people were interested in it, business was actually going up, right?
24:18 Speaker 04 It might have increased because of that, because they saw it in the news and like, oh, I didn't even know chess, and then they would try it.
24:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:28 Speaker 04 But there is something interesting about the cheating question, which like if no one said, oh, marathon running is dead because cars can run a marathon. No one ever said that. But I watched a video you did, maybe it was about almost a year ago, where, you know, Elon Musk has this company, I forgot the name of it now.
24:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, the Neuralink.
24:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, Neuralink, the first person put a chip in his brain and was able to make computer commands based on what he was thinking. So the Neuralink knew what he was thinking and he was able to move things on the screen. So there is some connection now between computer technology and your actual thoughts. And you asked, and he said at the time, he couldn't ask for the best move. He could just say the coordinates of the moves. So he wasn't cheating. He was still making the moves he would make. But I question that because he could have also, the chip could have been also potentially talking to a program where he simply asks, make the best move. And that could have been a way to cheat, if the chip was programmed that way, and it wouldn't have been a reach. So at some point, I mean,
25:33 Speaker 04 the technology is already here now to have the chip in your head and by looking at the screen, have the chip make the best move. Is there an existential threat to chess as the most popular game, the most intellectual game, if this is on the horizon? Or what do you do to stop that? And I ask this also, as not just as a fan of chess, but for chess.com as a business?
25:56 Speaker 02 Yeah. So.
25:59 Speaker 02 It's a long story in terms of where it began and I appreciate that our conference is probably, you know, thank you to everyone here, we're probably going a little bit long here. So I'll make this answer as brief as I can, but I would say we've been facing down the existential threat of computers in chess and cheating for actually a very long time. And in 2010 in particular was when really you started to see more smartphones and kind of the access to the, these powerful engines on your phone for free became available. And I do share a lot about the evolution of this story in my book and there are actually some very fascinating conversations in terms of how we looked at the problem.
26:41 Speaker 02 What I would say is that where I disagree with the existential threat or even predictions of what might happen with this stuff as a really big problem and that we avoided going down a road that was worried about how people would cheat a long time ago. And the, so therefore the chip or the phone or whatever they are getting that information from, the idea that somebody is getting information, the murder weapon if you will, if we're talking about the crime, was less where we were dialed into. Now, there are ways, you know, we saw some earlier, Lennox said, you know, you could scan the head and there certainly are RFT, radio frequency transmission types of detectors and we've worked with different companies that can kind of navigate what signals might be coming in and out of a room and I've actually learned way more about spyware than I ever
27:25 Speaker 02 intended to learn because of Hans Niemann and the scandal, shout out to that. So I do know a lot about that, but what I would say is we leaned hard into the idea that the only way to solve this problem would be through data and through, so basically what I would say is forget about the murder weapon, what matters is CSI, what matters is crime scene investigation and finding the thread to pull on, which is DNA based, a little bit more like when you analyze what somebody is capable of, what Stockfish is capable of, what Gary Kasparov was capable of, what Magnus Carlsen is capable of, and you are finding patterns and correlating the probability that somebody could be this good, given other information.
28:04 Speaker 02 It's a lot harder to hide cheating than you would think. And as much as everyone screams on the internet and there are former world champions and a lot of people trying to create scandals about this. The reality is that we are catching grandmasters and we are catching people all the time. And again, if you consider that we have 20 million games played every day. When you hear something like, "There's a lot of people cheating," it does suck, right? But also, there's a lot of people being close for cheating and we're removing them, right? So, in many ways, I say, "We can't stop crime." I don't know how to do that. Unfortunately, more people need to be more morally ambitious, right? The truth is, we can't stop people from doing bad, but I think we are a lot better and a lot less worried about how they will do bad than you would think. And if anyone wants to know more about that, I have a million lectures online where I
28:47 Speaker 02 have sometimes accidentally gotten our data scientist mad at me because I say things that are probably a little bit too close to revealing our secret sauce of some of the stuff that we've been doing, I think, ahead of the game for a very long time. But we are doing things that are ahead of the game and we've been working with AI and building models and been doing data before that was a buzzword that everyone was using to raise venture capital. We've been doing this for a very long time and we're actually a lot better at it than people would think and that actually makes me less worried. And I'm not saying that as a flex, I'm saying that as a chess player or a chess fan because I want to be optimistic about the future and I am and I'm not as worried about it.
29:20 Speaker 04 Well, Danny, in my opinion, you're living the dream, even though maybe part of the background was nightmarish and Chess.com is a great business. I'm on there probably every single day, probably more than I should be, you know, six, seven, 23 hours a day.
29:37 Speaker 02 No, it's okay, you can be on there, Joe.
29:39 Speaker 04 And thank you so much for coming here. And the book is Riveting Dark Squares and I encourage, when it comes out, everybody to read it. So, thank you very much and thanks for putting up with my questions.
29:49 Speaker 02 Thank you, Jamie.
29:50 Speaker 04 Thank you.
29:55 Speaker 00 The Quarter Pounder with Cheese is made with 100% fresh beef, cooked when you order it. Then comes the melted cheese, the slivered onions, the pickles, the ketchup, and the mustard. Add hot crispy fries and an ice cold Coke, all for $8. And if things go well, one loose fry at the bottom of the bag. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal, now $8. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.
30:25 Speaker 00 The Quarter Pounder with Cheese is made with 100% fresh beef, cooked when you order it. Then comes the melted cheese, the slivered onions, the pickles, the ketchup, and the mustard. Add hot crispy fries and an ice cold Coke, all for $8. And if things go well, one loose fry at the bottom of the bag. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal, now $8. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.
Previous The Stoic Capitalist: How Rational Thinking Creates Success | Robert Rosenkranz Next The Secret of Dave Barry’s Humor: Class Clown Memoir and Florida Tales Page updated November 13, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
