... you know, spiritual mystics that got brainwashed? Like, how do you des- define this as someone that grew up in it?

Yeah, it's a really, it's a really good setup because you and I talked about this a little bit last night.

I would say that from the outside looking in, the collective was just a bunch of normal people.

My dad was a practicing attorney.

There was another practicing attorney in the collective.

A lot of people were running kind of just upstanding jobs, general contractor here, car mechanic there, school teacher here.

And I think w- my parents do have their own path.

Mm-hmm.

[laughs]

...

the, um- The culture of the game has been starved for money that, the other way to look at that is two Soviet grandmasters who weren't at the top, weren't being treated like kings, they're starving, they have families to feed.

They show up, and it's like, "Dude, if you beat me, the other guy who's already half a point ahead of you is gonna win.

But if, but if I beat you, like, I'll make sure I'm at least tying that guy, 'cause I have his score.

So we'll split the prize money for sure." And so a lot of it was, like, a broken sport, no commercial viability.

Similar to chess?

No, but, but chess became a state-sponsored sport in China, not, not dissimilar from the Soviet Union when it was funding chess.

If you had to define or pick out a leader of the chess cult, is there one, would you say?

Okay, that's funny.

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, 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.

Can you tell me some of the entry and/or exit costs to the cult of chess?

Yeah, that oughta be the, they buried the lead.

And the threats of keeping a lawsuit going, when you're dealing with someone who's been, like, knocked out in the ring, and you are a big company, and at that point, I would agree with Magnus, the legal system kinda does suck, where you realize people can keep coming and you're like, "Hey, like, how do we take our marbles and go home?" And that's me not going into the agreement, and I'm not gonna go into what may or may not be true about what Hans is saying when other people aren't there, 'cause I think it is in his interest to imply that somehow he got more than he did, right? And so that sucks.

The other ones, like I said, I can say all that and be frustrated with Hans continuing to kind of perpetuate lies, and still have a ton of compassion for this kid, and say that we don't think he, he deserved what he got, and we wish it had gone down differently, and I have regrets in h- about how fast that moved.

And I'll even go further as to sayI'm sure they cut up the Magnus thing to make shit end with his gaslight comment, because I know that Magnus felt that way at different times, but he and I talked and said, "Look, man, two things can be true."

Yeah.

And we've had a lot of successful stories in that lane, but catching cheating in chess is hard.

We are better at it than everyone in the world, and it's not even close, and people are incentivized also now because of this amazing economy we've built with streamers and creators to do it even more than ever.

And there's no one really to fully keep us in check if we were closing people with bad motives.

Yes.

You will develop habits that aren't good, not just substance abuse or what, as I share about in my book that I went through, but any type of, you know, anxiety.

You know, people have so many issues they walk around with that are invisible to the rest of the world, but are literally the, you know, they are the symptoms of this shit coming out sideways, right? And so, like, so to answer the question, like I, I don't think there's...

I don't know the recipe, right? Other than I do think your kids are a really key trigger for it, because I think when you look at your kids, it's impossible to not just, like, see them with, like, just absolute just, whatever it is, right? It's not just unconditional love.

It's like this, like, cosmic feeling of like, "Oh, like, they are perfect no matter what." And you go, "Did anybody ever feel that way about me?" And you go like, "Okay, someone must have.

So u- even if they didn't, I feel that way about me." And, like, if you use them as, like, the entry point-

Mm-hmm.

But there are still so many people who either just, like, in the chess world think it's a chess book, so they're still not reading it, and I'm like, "This is not a chess book," right? Or they think I'm just doing it to, like, capitalize on the cheating scandal moment, or they think I'm, like, doing it for business.

what Kromnik is basically hinting at right now.

Well, I mean, Kromnik is not launching an investigation, nor is he actually filing lawsuits.

He's not.

I mean, Kromnik is screaming into the abyss of social media for attention, but there is no lawsuit that has been filed and there is no actual claims, just so you know.

If there was, I would know.

So there's not even anything to respond to in that regard.

The Department of Justice investigated us when we made the acquisition.

That's the only thing.

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, 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?

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 believes 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 at least the meaning and the impact we'd like to have in our lives.

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, not just as a fan of chess, but for chess.com as a business.