On October 24, 2024, my book The Chess Revolution was released. It describes the strong ties between Western culture and chess and explores the changes that chess went through as it was influenced by the computer and the Internet, leading to a new peak of popularity that was inevitably going to happen. The book will be published in eight languages: English, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish.
–> ORDER THE WORLD ENGLISH VERSION HERE
–> ORDER THE US / PHILIPPINES EDITION HERE
With a history of 1,500 years, chess is one of the oldest board games. It also the most special. Like no other game, chess was always an activity with a certain magic, something to enjoy but also something that inspired esteem or awe and should be treated with respect. The biggest personalities of their times had a connection to chess in one way or another, from Benjamin Franklin to Che Guevara and from Napoleon to Elon Musk.
At the same time, there is no other game with such strong links to Western culture. You’ll find it important literary works by Stefan Zweig and Vladimir Nabokov, pieces of art by Marcel Duchamp and Yoko Ono, and in TV series such as Friends, Seinfeld, The Big Bang Theory and The Crown.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, but also thanks to a Louis Vuitton picture with Lionel Messi and Ronaldo and Chess.com’s cat bot Mittens, chess has enjoyed an incredible surge in popularity. It has been a joy to experience this as a chess journalist who has written about the game since 2006. The story behind all these fascinating developments can be found in The Chess Revolution.