Cult-building in black and white

International Master Danny Rensch is a former chess prodigy.

- DEVANGSHU DATTA

As the Chief Chess Officer of the website Chess.com, the 40-year-old is among the most important individuals in the game. Rensch is also a recovering alcoholic and the survivor of a cult known informally as “The Collective”.

Chess.com generates staggering levels of engagement, with over 230 million members, and 20 million games played every day. It hands out over $1 million annually in prize money. This book offers an insider’s perspective on how a game that’s been around for a millennia became a leading e-sport.

Until Covid, the site was moderately profitable. Then, membership exploded. It grew exponentially again when the Queen's Gambit aired. It has also spawned an ecosystem that includes other high-traffic chess websites, high-value streaming channels, online coaching, and soon.

The book deals in detail with one of the most infamous cheating scandals, with its account of the Hans Niemann-Magnus Carlsen face-off in 2022, seen from the perspective of Mr Rensch and Chess.com. (The book was written and published before the other “quasi-cheating scandal”, wherein the late Grandmaster Danya Naroditsky was hounded and cyberbullied after repeated, unfounded accusations of cheating by former world champion, Vladimir Kramnik.)

Many readers will pick up the book for the chess and promptly get sucked into the fascinating yet creepy world of the cult in which Rensch grew up — the Church of the Immortal Consciousness (Aka “The Collective”) — under bizarre and horrific circumstances.