Games and The Grid

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Games and The Grid
Games and The Grid
Life Lessons from Chess Cheating Discourse

Life Lessons from Chess Cheating Discourse

What can we learn about life from chess cheating and the discourse around it?

Jennifer Shahade's avatar
Jennifer Shahade
Jan 19, 2024
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Games and The Grid
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Life Lessons from Chess Cheating Discourse
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Photo Maria Emelianova / chess.com

 As I race to submit a draft of my next book, THINKING SIDEWAYS, I’ve been spending a lot of time contemplating the life lessons from a scourge in chess: cheating. My editor is very intent on me not just telling stories, but also embedding takeaways. Cheating is terrible, so it might not be the first thing we think of when considering all the lessons chess has to teach.    

And at first I struggled: but now I have takeaways beyond the scope of the chapter, hence this post. And in other news the writing is finally going well!

Top Seven Life Lessons from the Chess Cheating Discourse:

1.      The incredible spread of fake news: The Hans Niemann-Magnus Carlsen story blew up beyond imagination. And a big part of the early spike in news coverage was one tweet: by Elon Musk, soon after he bought Twitter, now X.

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