Rhui Jin
The co-founder of Chess.com puts out an autobiography - one would assume it would be about his journey into creating the world's largest online Chess platform (and a large contributor to how large online chess has become, professional and non-professional wise), perhaps following the standard high-school-dropout finds an incredible idea and makes big bucks getting a startup with no VC funding, etc.
But this wasn't quite like those stories, and I had a great time with it. This follows Danny's journey in a cult called "Church of Immortal Consciousness" and how he essentially grew up being passed around the community members within the cult, was manipulated into thinking that his "purpose" was chess, and emotionally (and physically) abused by the adults around him.
Apart from the recounts of his experience within the cult, I found his account of the Hans Niemann scandal particularly interesting. With my very limited (and perhaps biased) knowledge of the scandals recounted by a few chess YouTube personalities, it seems that Danny is very firm in his stance that Hans did indeed cheat and has a history of cheating.
In light of the recent death of Daniel Naroditsky, I kind of hoped that the book could've touched on that topic as well. Especially that Daniel has been outspoken about being selected to be proctored by Chess.com and has mentioned how some of these playing conditions had led him to unfair playing conditions. It really does seem like cheating is going to be dominating the conversations within chess communities for the foreseeable future, and frankly, I don't really know how the issues could be resolved.
Overall, I recommend this book, but I did wrongly assume that it would've been more focused on Chess.com's formation. It definitely did touch on that but the majority of the book is centered on Danny's journey (understandably so), and even when he was focusing on Chess.com matters, the Niemann v. Carlsen scandal took up the majority of the word count.
If you’re interested in the book, you can check it out here: https://bookshop.org/a/117995/9781541703308. I earn a small commission if you purchase through this link, at no extra cost to you.
If you'd like to see some of the references for the above, visit my blog linked with this post!
Originally posted at rhuijin.cc.
The co-founder of Chess.com puts out an autobiography - one would assume it would be about his journey into creating the world's largest online Chess platform (and a large contributor to how large online chess has become, professional and non-professional wise), perhaps following the standard high-school-dropout finds an incredible idea and makes big bucks getting a startup with no VC funding, etc.
But this wasn't quite like those stories, and I had a great time with it. This follows Danny's journey in a cult called "Church of Immortal Consciousness" and how he essentially grew up being passed around the community members within the cult, was manipulated into thinking that his "purpose" was chess, and emotionally (and physically) abused by the adults around him.
Apart from the recounts of his experience within the cult, I found his account of the Hans Niemann scandal particularly interesting. With my very limited (and perhaps biased) knowledge of the scandals recounted by a few chess YouTube personalities, it seems that Danny is very firm in his stance that Hans did indeed cheat and has a history of cheating.
In light of the recent death of Daniel Naroditsky, I kind of hoped that the book could've touched on that topic as well. Especially that Daniel has been outspoken about being selected to be proctored by Chess.com and has mentioned how some of these playing conditions had led him to unfair playing conditions. It really does seem like cheating is going to be dominating the conversations within chess communities for the foreseeable future, and frankly, I don't really know how the issues could be resolved.
Overall, I recommend this book, but I did wrongly assume that it would've been more focused on Chess.com's formation. It definitely did touch on that but the majority of the book is centered on Danny's journey (understandably so), and even when he was focusing on Chess.com matters, the Niemann v. Carlsen scandal took up the majority of the word count.
If you’re interested in the book, you can check it out here: https://bookshop.org/a/117995/9781541703308. I earn a small commission if you purchase through this link, at no extra cost to you.
If you'd like to see some of the references for the above, visit my blog linked with this post!
Originally posted at rhuijin.cc.