How chess.com grew before the pandemic

Danny Rensch went from being weaponized as a chess prodigy by a cult to co-founding Chess.com — detailed on part two of this two-part episode. (Find part one here!)

Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1290

What We Discuss with Danny Rensch:

• Chess.com grew from a bootstrapped startup — laughed out of investor rooms — into a unicorn by building a chess creator economy and content ecosystem years before the pandemic boom, capturing 99% of chess's explosive growth when The Queen's Gambit and COVID lockdowns sent 400,000 new members flooding in per day.
• Catching cheaters in chess is a high-stakes statistical science. Chess.com employs 30 full-time specialists, from research scientists to in-house detectives, who use AI-driven algorithms to detect engine-assisted play, acting only when evidence would hold up in court rather than in the court of public opinion.
• The digital revolution in chess has dramatically compressed the learning curve. Kids now grow up playing against Magnus Carlsen and top grandmasters online, producing prodigies like a 12-year-old Argentine dubbed "the Messi of chess" who may break the youngest grandmaster record in history.
• Chess.com's public stance against Russia after the Ukraine invasion landed Danny Rensch on a dark web hit list, and years of closing cheaters' accounts have brought direct threats — including one player who tracked his tournament locations and emailed that he'd feel a gun behind his neck.
• Danny's most powerful insight is that you can redefine your relationship with your past. Forgiveness isn't rewriting what happened, it's freeing yourself from it, and believing "everything happens for a reason" becomes actionable when you realize you get to choose the reason and reclaim the power over your own story.
• And much more...

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