00:01:53.340So good to have you here. I mean, you, in my head, you are such an amazing chess queen. And I just, I have like three days worth of questions for you about the world of chess, about how you even get involved in competitive chess, about the world of chess influencers.
00:02:14.500But I want to start out just like with the basics, because I'm so curious, how did you get your start in chess in the first place?
00:02:25.880You know, I actually went to Greenfield Elementary School, which is where, yeah, full disclosure, our kids go to school together.
00:02:31.800They've been they've they've been in school together since kindergarten.
00:02:40.740So I grew up in Philadelphia, and my father is a three-time PA state champion.
00:02:47.160So with a lot of chess players, especially girls and women, they get into it via their family because they're often less encouraged by the schools and the society.
00:02:57.880So you'll see that the top female chess players in the world, there's an extraordinary number who have a sibling who's a great player or a dad or a mom who's a great player.
00:03:47.280So even though my family was very supportive, I was kind of like, maybe chess isn't my thing.
00:03:52.720And so I stopped playing for a little while and I just got back to it in high school.
00:03:56.500But I find it really interesting because later I discovered and my my dad told me this much later when I was an adult that my brother actually broke the record for like the highest IQ score at Greenfield ever at the time.
00:04:09.720Oh, gosh. Yeah. And they always kept that a secret from me because they didn't want me to like think that I was, you know, first of all, you know, IQ has debatable relevance.
00:04:18.380And I think they were already kind of aware of that. It's often used for nefarious purposes and eugenics.
00:04:25.420But then also on top of that, they didn't want me to think that I wasn't smart or something.
00:11:33.840And in fact, there was an artist who created a chessboard with engravings for every square
00:11:41.720in the chessboard with a nasty comment about the queen.
00:11:44.220oh my god wow i want to see i want to see is there a picture of this chessboard there is there's a
00:11:53.440picture of it it's in old french um so yeah it's his name was grunt gratian dupont he actually
00:11:58.560tried to stay anonymous at first and the the nasty words like overly ambitious she devil
00:12:04.980things like that and my husband and i actually we made a updated version of this where all of0.89
00:12:11.880the squares on the board were insults to women chess players and commentators and0.60
00:12:17.460influencers in the world of chess. And every square was like a mean YouTube or Twitter comment
00:12:23.360for them. Wow. It's extraordinary to see how similar the comments were, even though they're
00:12:29.440like hundreds of years separation. Right. Right. Right. I mean, and how many of them are like
00:12:34.480knocking the fact that a woman would dare be ambitious? A decent number. I mean, they really1.00
00:12:39.480range from being like more like microaggressions, like should wear more makeup, wears too much
00:12:43.840makeup. So yeah, you really can't win there. To being extremely sinister, like should be hit with
00:12:48.620a baseball bat. So there's a broad range. And when I talked about the retelling, the modern0.97
00:12:55.080version that Daniel and I made. I mean, there's a million ways to insult women. And also women0.99
00:13:01.340have been insulted in the same ways for thousands of years at this point. Exactly. And the interesting0.99
00:13:09.220thing was the mad woman's chess game stopped being called the mad woman's chess game and it's
00:13:13.160literally chess as we play it now there have been very few rule changes since that massive one in
00:13:17.840500 500 years ago which also empowered the bishop the bishop used to be weaker too
00:13:21.680but that rule set is essentially what we play today and so chess is still the mad woman's chess
00:13:28.580game i would prefer it be called the mad woman's chess game i actually think i mean i'm a perfectly
00:13:35.660serviceable chess player, but I think I'd be even more into it if I could call it the Mad
00:13:41.620Woman's chess game. Yes, exactly. And so we've got to bring that back. We really do. It's funny.
00:13:47.540I mean, I've been working on a new thriller that's set at a dude ranch and the name of the
00:13:53.820canyon is the Crazy Lady Canyon. And because they claim that all these women went crazy and they
00:13:59.440haunt it. But of course, none of them were actually crazy. And now I kind of want to call it Mad0.55
00:14:03.720woman's canyon yeah yeah go for it right just inspiration all around it is a very inspiring
00:14:11.400history that jess has that's for sure so you didn't know any of this going into it but you
00:14:17.500you know you just absorbed yourself in this world and as you mentioned there wasn't as much money
00:14:23.460in chess back then but is there now can you now make a career out of playing chess oh definitely
00:14:31.000I mean, there's so much more money in chess. There's also a lot more saturation, though. So there's a lot of people interested in making money in chess. So it's not as easy as it might meet the eye. But there are huge prize funds for chess tournaments, much larger than they were before. Major sponsors interested in chess. Chess.com is a billion dollar company.
00:14:51.720I mean, who would have thought that a chess company could become a billion dollar company, but it truly is.
00:14:58.040And the influencers who are big in chess get millions and millions of subscribers.
00:15:05.140What really was shocking was that chess blew up enormously in 2020s.
00:15:12.500It was actually kind of rising steadily if you were paying attention, even the decade prior.
00:15:17.460ever ever since like the mid 2000s it had really been in an upswing but 2020 was when it just went
00:15:25.060completely massive and a lot of that was because of this Netflix show The Queen's Gambit
00:15:31.580beautiful show it was really I loved that show I did fantastic it was so good I loved it too
00:15:38.420and they one thing they did that was very revolutionary in that show is that they hired
00:15:44.260really smart chess people to do the consulting. So every chess position you see in the Queen's
00:15:50.980Gambit is like a real accurate chess position. So you can kind of watch it on two levels. You
00:15:56.380can watch it as this like wonderful drama about a woman who beat the odds. And you can also
00:16:01.840actually analyze the chess games, which of course all the chess nerds did. And that was super fun.
00:16:08.240And that got a lot of people into chess as well. Yeah, no, I mean, I can imagine that the chess
00:16:13.100nerd forums were blowing up while Queen's Gambit was on. I mean, I definitely learned something
00:16:20.060while watching it. And now it is a lot of fun for me because with my son starting to get into chess,
00:16:27.660I'm much more interested in chess. And I know you play a lot with your son too. You led a chess
00:16:34.440club at our school for the kids, which was awesome and amazing. And you also post a lot of videos
00:16:41.460online and they show some of the actual misogyny in the chess world. I want to talk about those
00:16:48.680when we get back from a quick break. Expedia. Hey, you. What you doing? Scrolling? Doom
00:16:59.100scrolling? Looking at other people's vacations? Miami? San Diego? Cancun? Okay, what about you?
00:17:29.080So talk to me a little bit about chess on social media and how that relates to just generalized misogyny and our favorite topic on this show, the patriarchy.
00:17:43.600chess social media has really blown up ever since 2020 and the queen's gambit and also it's blown up
00:17:51.520in conjunction with the rise of algorithmic social media feeds becoming much more targeted
00:17:57.920to and personalized to user so it's as you talk about so much on this show it's less about your
00:18:04.120followers and more about the content more tiktokified and so what's happened with chess
00:18:10.060is that a lot of influencers have gotten very wealthy
00:18:13.400because the chess videos just end up going out
00:19:07.860when you also have the right time need to have the right timing but what really struck me at
00:19:13.100some point especially as i started to do the chess videos with my son is that despite the queen's
00:19:19.060gambit boom and the idea that because of the queen's gambit somehow maybe more women were
00:19:23.320going to be interested in chess this is kind of the fantasy that everyone has feminists like me0.98
00:19:28.200but even just any chess player because they want to see the game grow it if you look at the1.00
00:19:34.220demographics of what the algorithmic stats are doing and who they're pushing these videos to,
00:19:40.700it was kind of alarming. Like my breakdown in gender and my different profiles is like usually
00:19:45.98065 to 70 percent male because I'm interested in poker and chess, but then 30 percent female because
00:19:51.800I'm a very vocal and well-known feminist. So, of course, I have a lot of female followers as well.1.00
00:19:58.160But when I make chess videos, it goes out to something like 96 to 99 percent men.
00:20:05.480So I can click on the demographics and I see that they're really not pushing this content to women.
00:20:11.540And it's highly associated with the manosphere, which is very upsetting to me.
00:20:17.700Now, that doesn't mean that everybody who watches chess videos is an Andrew Cate fan.
00:20:21.220Not at all. But what I'm saying is that those statistics of ninety nine percent men and one percent female feel very aligned with manosphere content.
00:20:32.600Yeah, yeah, they do. Absolutely. And fun fact that you emailed me earlier was that Andrew Tate was a scholastic chess player and his dad was a legendary chess champion who used to call the queen the bitch.
00:23:07.900You know, the way I really fell in love with chess, I mentioned this tournament in Brazil, is the beauty of the game and making moves that are surprising, just in the same way like an artist or a writer would come up with like a surprising angle that nobody ever saw before.
00:23:25.980And once I saw it that way, I got a lot better.
00:23:28.620You know, I remember in that very tournament in Brazil, which is such a breakthrough for me.
00:23:32.500Like I would look at chess books, which had these types of problems, these artistic problems where the correct solution is something that you would never expect, like sacrificing your queen, like, you know, moving your knight in a way that you would never move it.
00:23:46.140And when I found it, it feels like you're unlocking the key to a puzzle.
00:23:56.600But that that was like the the consequence of trying to find these beautiful ideas, not the primary motive.
00:24:05.860And in your new book, Thinking Sideways, I just, you know, one of the first lines of the description is something that I love, where you say chess is the art of the possible.
00:24:17.400After all, there are more possible chess moves than atoms in the universe.
00:24:22.720And I find that very hopeful and also very purposeful. But also, in a way, it feels like a very, to me at least, female way to look at the game because I feel like women are so open to different possibilities, that we are open to pivoting, that we are open to bringing more people and more ideas into the tent.
00:24:48.900obviously not all women. I would love it if that were true. But I just love that way of looking at
00:24:54.520chess. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And the reason I really wanted to focus on that in this book is
00:25:01.180because I think so many people have this misconception that chess is a metaphor for
00:25:06.300being brilliant and strategic and that that metaphor is thinking really far ahead and
00:25:11.820having everything figured out, planning 10 moves ahead. Like one of the most frequent
00:25:16.140questions I'm asked as a chess champion is how many moves do you think ahead? And I really wanted
00:25:21.040to show the truth, which is that many chess players have no idea what's going to happen in
00:25:25.140five moves. The greatest in the world don't know what's going to happen in three moves sometimes.
00:25:29.680But what they're really good at is not planning super far ahead, but actually staying present
00:25:34.980and being flexible and looking for possibilities. And I mean, that's definitely a metaphor that I
00:25:40.740feel like we need right now more than ever, as it's really hard to plan ahead right now.
00:25:44.860Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I can't I can't even begin to think about planning six months in advance, much less a year in advance, because there's just so many possibilities happening right now. Why did you name the book Thinking Sideways? What does it mean to think sideways?
00:26:05.780So instead of looking ahead, looking for the options that exist right now, like all the different possibilities, the different, you know, pathways in the multiverse, that that is being a great chess player, more than, you know, thinking too far ahead.0.97
00:26:19.140Because in what you say about women, I agree with. And I think one of the key reasons that it's so powerful to look at more possibilities rather than kind of tunnel ahead on your favorite one is because it implies that you're not just thinking about yourself, but that you're thinking about your opponent. Right. So if I'm thinking 10 moves ahead, chances are I'm not really thinking about you or what you're thinking. I'm just assuming I know what you're going to do. And I'm just going to plan based on my assumption. But the reality is so much messier.
00:26:49.140I make a move, you make a move that I wasn't expecting, then all those moves that I planned
00:26:54.180ahead of you are going to be moved, right? And that's the reason it's a superior way of thinking
00:26:59.660to stay present and to look just a couple moves ahead, but try to make sure you're looking at
00:27:04.540your possibilities and your opponent's possibilities. And you have so many great
00:27:11.920ideas in the book about how you can apply chess strategies and playing chess to actually just
00:27:19.920living your life and living a fulfilling life. I want to talk a little bit more about those
00:27:27.380okay we are back I love all of these ideas that you use that you've taken from chess
00:27:44.180from your long career in chess to be able to apply to living life and living a fulfilling
00:27:52.300and purposeful life. I want to go through some of these ideas and then have you unpack them for me.
00:27:58.840The one that I like a lot is don't let a perfect move be the enemy of a good move. What do you
00:28:05.360mean by that? That was an idea that I put in the chapter about making decisions under time
00:28:12.140constraints. Because that is chess. All games are time. I'm never going to be basically allowed to
00:28:16.880just think for hours. And so you need to make decisions quickly. Otherwise, you're going to
00:28:22.860lose on time. And this is very vivid in chess because there's this big double-sided clock face
00:28:28.740that literally ticks down as the game goes on. And you can see when it's running low,
00:28:34.760you're going to lose the game if you don't make more moves. In life, sometimes I think we forget
00:28:39.100that though. And we're looking for certainty. We're looking for perfection before we submit
00:28:44.260our proposal before we send an email. And I mean, that's one thing I'm so impressed by you about
00:28:50.000your incredible output. You do so many things in a week. And I think that a lot of people can't do
00:28:55.860that because they are so perfectionist and they have anxiety about like that, like step of
00:29:02.020submission and that chess forces you to make decision after decision after decision under
00:29:07.780time constraints. So you get used to that. Yeah. Well, and I say that all the time. I'm like that
00:29:12.300perfection is the enemy of done. And we just have to find a way to move forward or we're going to
00:29:17.640constantly get stuck. Exactly. You also say that chess players are pros at failing sideways. What
00:29:25.020does it mean to fail sideways? Well, what I mean by that is that chess players lose again and again
00:29:31.560hundreds of games. We play so many practice games. It's impossible. I remember one of my first
00:29:36.480chess, my first jobs was teaching chess in Harlem when I was going to NYU. And there was this
00:29:41.360wonderful lady there who, you know, just really loved the kids, loved chess. And I taught him a
00:29:46.380lesson one day on double attack. And then like a week later, one of the children lost the game to
00:29:51.460the double attack. And she was, she made it in a nice way, but she's like, how is that possible?
00:29:55.760Jennifer just taught you that. And I'm like, no, no, you're going to lose again and again with
00:30:00.160the same beams. And it's fine. You know, it's good because it shows that you're trying, that
00:30:05.960you're playing lots of games. But the one thing that you don't want to do is you don't want to
00:30:09.920lose the exact same game twice, right? And that I think is the same in life, right? We have so
00:30:16.540many different ways to move ahead and we want to try new things. You also say that you can use
00:30:25.420chess techniques to better manage your time, even if you're not a chess player, but something like
00:30:31.420using a chess clock to time your tasks, which I'm like, oh my gosh, now I have to get a chess
00:30:36.040clock. What are some of your tips for how you can use these chess techniques to actually organize
00:30:41.160your life a little bit better? Yeah, I love the chess clock one because what the chess clock has
00:30:46.760that a timer doesn't, it has two sides. So Tim Irvine used this in his own life and he's the
00:30:55.740guy who writes Wait But Why, where he'll have four hours for his deep work, like writing his book or
00:31:02.640working on blogs and ideating and then four hours for like more administrative things like
00:31:06.920replying to emails chatting with friends that kind of stuff and so when he's doing one he hits one
00:31:13.020side of the clock and then you hit the other side and so you're really not only timing out your deep
00:31:18.020work but you're also making sure you have time for those other types of tasks and one thing I love
00:31:22.840about the chess clock is that you can get like a really old school antique one which is very
00:31:28.180really beautiful and analog, but I also sometimes like using a digital one on my phone because then
00:31:33.900when it's on, I don't check my phone. So it's just okay to like keep myself off the phone and see
00:31:39.560instead this kind of digital representation of the time that I'm using.
00:31:43.420Oh, fun. I see. I immediately went to, I was like, Jen, can we go thrifting for like a beautiful
00:31:48.920analog antique chess clock? Yeah. Yeah. I have a couple old ones. I mean, they're great. Now
00:31:54.580they're all digital, but there is some antique ones that you can buy online. You also use the
00:32:01.000acronym SOFA, which immediately makes me think of couch. And I love couch. Couch is my favorite
00:32:06.820thing. But you're using it to say sleep, organize, focus, and activate as a way to help us remember
00:32:13.820the key components of improving our memories. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, a lot
00:32:19.020of people have this feeling that they don't have good memories. And that's probably not true.
00:32:23.660that often just means you haven't tried especially for someone who says like i'm just so terrible at
00:32:29.180remembering names a lot of times it's not an attribute it's just a failure to give it a shot
00:32:34.860and develop that skill and i became friends throughout writing this book with a world
00:32:39.540memory champion and her name is yenja and the first thing i learned about her is that she's
00:32:44.280absolutely obsessed with sleep if she has a memory competition that's literally the most important0.82
00:32:48.480thing for her because she knows that she's going to succeed more if she has her full eight hours0.70
00:32:53.480uninterrupted. So that's a big part of it. And the second technique that she helped me understand
00:33:00.540the importance of is organizing. Like you really need to organize the information that you're
00:33:05.280trying to memorize in order to do it efficiently. That could actually take more time than everything
00:33:09.560else and that's okay. And then focus. The ability to totally focus when you're trying to remember
00:33:14.840something is really crucial. It is easier said than done, but many people don't have this
00:33:23.020ability to fully focus because they're so used to being on call. And so if you can give yourself
00:33:28.860that luxury of full focus, you're going to be shocked at how much you can remember.
00:33:33.760In fact, I'm a professional poker player too. And I use this strategy in one of my recent
00:33:39.640tournaments and I had the best tournament of my life, winning more money than I'd ever won in a
00:33:43.460poker tournament. Now, part of it was luck. I'm not going to say it's all because of these
00:33:47.000these techniques. But I not only wasn't using my phone on the brakes, but I was actually using a
00:33:53.780notebook and a pen. And what I found was that I was just really able to remember everything about
00:33:59.480my opponents and my strategies better because of my detachment from my cell phone and because of
00:34:07.380the physical process of handwriting, which is the other thing, being active. That's the last part of
00:34:13.820the acronym about really activating the information that you're trying to use and remember. And one
00:34:20.380way to do that is to write things down. Yeah, I feel the same way with my writing, right? Like
00:34:26.620if I, I mean, I write books on the laptop. I write books on the phone. I like type out entire chapters
00:34:34.440when I'm like in line at the grocery store. But there is something very activating in my brain
00:34:42.480about using a pen and a pencil to just write down ideas and that physical connection between
00:34:49.780body and mind, I think. I think that's when I really start to, it sounds kind of woo-woo,
00:34:55.680but start to unlock things. Absolutely. And the research has shown that part of the reason for
00:35:01.280that is that it's slower. So when you're writing something down, you have to, with a pen and paper,
00:35:08.200You have to kind of prioritize what's most important, and that just activates more memory formation and more creativity.
00:35:16.300I feel like we totally just skipped over another huge part of your bio.
00:35:20.280How did you go from chess player to poker player?
00:35:23.620Well, I just also really love the game of poker.
00:35:26.980It's very psychological, and it brings a whole new set of people and challenges that chess, you know, doesn't challenge you quite as much on.
00:35:36.700And so I think that's really it. I love the culture of poker and the challenge. And so I started traveling the world to play poker as well.
00:35:44.900Which is just one of many, many super cool things about you. I, all right, this is not something I want to admit. I don't really know how to play poker. And Nick is constantly trying to teach me, but I don't really want Nick to teach me. I'd rather have you teach me.
00:36:00.280Oh, yeah. We should definitely get a game together.
00:36:02.620We could get like a whole Greenfield mom's poker gambit going.
00:36:06.840Yes, there's a couple of moms who play mahjong who already said they want to do poker as
00:39:36.260But now with Fabi being a massive like Sixers Eagles fan, I'm really all of the sports, all of the Philadelphia sports are our religion, essentially.
00:39:44.660And we're going to get a WNBA team. We have to wait till 2030.
00:39:47.840But I know that I know. But I know. But Charlie's already so excited about it.
00:39:52.500I'm so I'm too excited. But yeah, the the this is something that's really kind of borne out in sports analytics, too, that basketball teams will try to, you know, make one shot, even if it's not a great shot called the two for one shot.
00:40:04.120So they get two chances because the analytics have shown that kind of waiting for the perfect shot is worse than just taking two shots and trying to get that second possession.
00:40:13.760And I feel like that's, you know, that's a beautiful metaphor for life.
00:40:16.740You know, take a shot and then take another shot rather than try to align yourself for the perfect shot and get one more often.
00:40:24.320It's better to get two less frequently, but you have two shots.
00:40:29.180Yes. And it's something else that I think that women aren't always trained in and that doesn't always come naturally to us.
00:40:36.800Yeah, exactly. You want you want that. And I get it.1.00
00:40:39.420Sometimes, you know, you really want you want you've been you've been kind of training for something and you want to appear your best, perform your best.
00:40:48.060But that's, again, an idea that when we look at chess, when we look at poker, when we look at sports analytics, you look at the data and you see that successful people are just doing it and understanding that getting more shots is even more valuable than trying to be a perfectionist.