The Chess Revolution: Understanding The Power Of An Ancient Game In The Digital Age

My upcoming book The Chess Revolution tells the story of how chess impacted our Western culture, and how it was impacted itself by the computer and the Internet. It is for chess fans but definitely also for non-chess playing readers. I am super excited that almost two years after starting this project, the book will finally be hitting book stores on October 24. Let me tell you more about it and the writing process.

Buy the book here!

How it started

It all started in October 2022, when the chess world was in the midst of a cheating scandal of epic proportions, covered by mainstream media all over the world. GM Magnus Carlsen's initial, somewhat cryptic tweet that suggested GM Hans Niemann had cheated, the weeks of speculation that followed, the more concrete allegations that followed, Chess.com's report on the matter, and eventually Niemann starting his lawsuit—it was a wild period that could have been contained within the relatively small chess world, if only Elon Musk hadn't (re)tweeted about the anal beads theory...

It became quite clear to me how big the scandal had become when I was invited to talk about it on two Dutch radio shows, and then also two news programs on Dutch television. When someone saw me on TV and suggested that I should write a non-fiction book about chess and how our sport had changed in recent decades, I realized this was a great idea. I felt I was ready to embark on something completely different from anything else I had done in the chess world, which was mostly writing, making videos, assisting in live broadcasts and lots of other different tasks here at Chess.com. I decided to write my first book.

Via an editor at New in Chess, I made an appointment with Sebes & Bisseling, an international literary agency, who were enthusiastic from the start. They told me to write a couple of chapters, create a full overview of all chapters and a motivation as to why I wanted to write this book. They would then be sending all this as a package to hundreds of publishers globally, and hope for the best. So I started writing.

Too much material

With the scandal still rocking the chess world, it made the most sense to start with it, and put everything in a wider context. I began collecting everything I could find related to the Carlsen-Niemann affair, and wrote a few dozen pages. Then I decided that my book was going to have "the biggest and most complete overview of all (alleged) cheating cases in the history of the game." That would be a nice challenge, wouldn't it?

Well, as it turned out, I was setting the bar quite high. A few weeks later, I had over 70 pages about cheating in chess, and I was still adding cases and anecdotes. I had way too much material. More or less the same happened when I started on a chapter that was going to be about women in chess throughout the ages: according to my agent I was a very fast writer, but I had to cut down the material! Kill your darlings, too many darlings.

First publishers!

In April 2023 we sent out the first 'package' to publishers worldwide, and within a few days a first one, from Sweden, already replied that they wanted to go for it. Whoohoo! A big moment. My book was going to get published, if only just in Sweden, ha!

As the weeks went by, a few more publishers showed interest, particularly in the Netherlands (obviously) but also bigger countries such as Germany and France. This was getting really exciting! However, somehow it wasn't working just yet for the English language. A lot of publishers in both the US and the UK provided positive feedback, and some even noted that they were very close to forward with a proposal, but there were some issues.

After reworking some of the text and the chapter list, our second proposal was sent out in the fall of 2023 and soon I signed up with the publisher Robinson, an imprint of Little, Brown. English language in the bag! At the time of writing, the book will be published in eight languages (and several more countries): English, Dutch, French (with different publishers in France and French Canada), German, Italian, Portuguese (with different publishers in Brazil and Portugal), Swedish and Russian.

The chapters

By the end of 2023, it was clear that the book was going to have ten chapters divided into three parts. Here's the full overview:

I. Chess as a Cultural Phenomenon

1.   1,500 Years of Magic: a History of Chess in Popular Culture

2.   Duchamp, Nabokov, Bogart, Kubrick: Chess in the Arts

3.   A Mutual Understanding: Chess and Science

4.   Brilliance at the Board: the Biggest Stars in Chess

II. The Impact of AI: How the Computer Changed the Game

5.   AI and Chess: from Babbage to Deep Blue

6.   Beyond Deep Blue: Age of the Neural Networks

7.   The Dark Side: Cheating in Chess

III.   The Online Revolution: How the Internet Changed the Game

8.   The Early Days: Chess at 28.8 kbit/s

9.   How Chess.com Came, Saw and Conquered

10.  The Streaming Revolution

We agreed with the publisher to try and publish by October 2024, ahead of the presidential elections in the US. (Yes, this affects many industries, and certainly the book industry!) By the end of 2023, I had already had a lot of material. I had done a lot of research on the early days of computer chess and the joint journey for chess and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for chapter five, I had made a deep dive into 1997 and the famous Kasparov-Deep Blue story (I really wanted to describe that big moment for chess and AI from a current-day perspective), and made an overview of everything that happened in human vs. computer chess since then, including everything related to the "revolution" started by AlphaZero and what part it plays in Google Deepmind's bigger strategy.

Fun interviews

Chapters eight and nine were more or less done by then as well, and those were especially fun to write. For instance, I got to interview a lot of "OGs" of internet chess, the ones who have been connected to the Internet Chess Club since its inception and the early years, such as Daniel Sleator, Marty Grund and Sandro Leonori. During Chess.com's annual meetup, in October 2023 in Punta Cana, I interviewed several of our platform's early-day contributors such as co-founder Jay Severson, "server guy" Igor Grinchenko, and programmers Piotr Dachtera and Matias José – and soon after I also spoke with Erik Allebest and Danny Rensch.

Chapter nine also includes an autobiographical segment, as I briefly discuss my own journey in the chess world as an early blogger and vlogger starting in 2006 to running chessvibes.com between 2007 and 2013 to joining Chess.com in September 2013. Because, I was kind of the first vlogger in the chess world, even before the term 'vlogging' existed. I filmed stuff like this in the playing hall and in the press room of Wijk aan Zee and other events, and made the following video a few months after joining Chess.com:

(If you want to see more of what I made in those early years of online chess video, you can go to the Chesscom Community account, go to videos and sort on 'Oldest'. Fun stuff!)

They also helped me shape up the final chapter, where I describe the incredible boom that we have experienced in three waves: the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the launch of the Netflix series The Queen's Gambit, and the biggest wave in early 2023 as a result of many different factors.

For this chapter I did interviews with several top content creators: GM Hikaru Nakamura, IM Levy Rozman, Agadmator, and others. For the international editions, I made sure I spoke to local, popular streamers. Hence, the Dutch version has a segment about FM Anna-Maja Kazarian, the French version about Kevin Bordi, the German version about IM Georgios Souleidis and the Brazilian version about GM Krikor Mekhitarian.

Chess & culture

Although the original idea was now sort of done – describing how chess had changed by the computer and the Internet – my publishers, my agent and myself, we all wanted to add more "beef" to a book that was not just intended for chess fans, but very much for a wider audience as well. Why chess? Why is there so much to say about it, and why is it so special?

I decided that, also because Parts II and III were set up quite chronologically, it made sense to say something about the game's history, and all its links to our culture, in the first part. (Somewhere along the road I heard Walter Isaacson in a podcast say that chronology is what people are used to, and that it still works, so I was confident that I didn't need to do it differently.)

So the book actually starts with a quick history of our game, starting roughly 1,500 years ago in India as chaturanga, until the 21st century. I am noting that, and trying to explain why, chess can be found everywhere: in just about any Netflix series these days, in politics, in art, literature, theater, cinema, played by famous sports personalities and cross-overs with music.

The strong links between science and chess are dealt with in a full chapter, and I also tell the reader about our three biggest stars (Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov and Carlsen) and discuss the eternal debate about who was the greatest of all.

I spent many hours in the Dutch Royal Library in the Hague (which has one of the biggest collections of chess books in the world) and also at the Max Euwe Center. I went through every single issue of New in Chess magazine since its launch in 1984. (Yes, that took me several full days.) I visited chesshistory.com, chessbase.com and chess.com a lot, among many other sites. And I spent a lot of time behind my laptop at home, but made sure I combined it with lots of exercise: I have become quite a fanatic runner as well. All in all, it was a one-and-a-half years well spent!

What I wanted to achieve

I really wanted to try and write a book that is about chess but can (also) be enjoyed by readers who aren't necessarily chess players. I always felt that we have so many great stories and anecdotes that deserve to be read or heard by more people! And I do think that chess is a very special game, different from any other game, with a certain intrinsic magic, something that has always been treated specially as well. I hope to have put forward what it is that makes chess so special. And I hope that I have now recorded the big story of all the incredible changes chess went through, especially in the last three decades.

It is a book that parents, children, partners or friends of chess players can give to their chess playing friends, and say: "Now you can read about how rich this game is that you are always playing." It is a book that chess fans can give to their parents, children, partners or friends, and say: "Now perhaps you will finally understand why I am hooked on this game." And so, hopefully, it is a book that will promote our game even further. No matter how many people know about it, chess always deserves a bigger fanbase. Happy reading!

Sample pages

How to buy

The UK and World English version will be out on October 24, while the separate UK/Philippines edition will be out October 29. Both are already available for pre-orders. Click on the button below to see all options to get your hands on the book!

Buy the book here!