My guest in this week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast is Peter Doggers. Peter is a chess journalist from the Netherlands and the director of News & Events for Chess.com. I have invited Peter to the podcast because of the book that he has written, The Chess Revolution, Understanding the Power of an Ancient Game in the Digital Age. Besides the American and English editions, The Chess Revolution will also appear in French, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish.

In his book, Peter writes about the historical and sociological importance of chess through the ages and, in the second part, about the incredible boom the game has seen in the past years thanks to the pandemic and the success of the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit. In the process he writes about the success story of the company he works for, Chess.com. How the company came into being and how it managed to attract millions of new fans to the game.

The Chess Revolution is a book aimed at a broad audience; in fact, the broad new audience that has become fascinated by chess worldwide and wants to have more. Peter has followed the revolution firsthand, was and is even part of it, and believes that the future looks bright. In his view the golden age of chess has just started.

In our conversation, we talk about all this and more. If you are interested in recent developments in chess or want to find out if The Chess Revolution is a book that will appeal to you, you should not miss this episode of the New In Chess Podcast!

0:00 – Intro

2:02 – The manifestation of the “chess revolution” in the Ding-Gukesh World Championship match

4:03 – Extensive media coverage of the World Championship, Peter Leko’s tremendous commentary

7:50 – The current “Indian era”

9:11 – Chess.com’s history and eventual dominance of the worldwide chess scene

16:30 – Peter’s personal history as a chess journalist and “chess vlogger”

20:14 – AD BREAK

20:54 – Peter’s successful short videos

24:20 – What inspired Peter’s book, “The Chess Revolution: Understanding the Power of an Ancient Game in the Digital Age”

29:21 – Chess’s assimilation into short video culture and pop culture in general

32:43 – Chessboxing and the “Ding Chilling” meme

36:53 – The Queen’s Gambit Netflix series

42:20 – AD BREAK

43:26 – Mainstream media attention for chess during the pandemic, the new wave of chess content creators on social media

49:18 – Peter’s hate-love relationship with chess

52:29 – The very earliest beginnings of chess.com and its fruitful cooperation with content creators and streamers

1:04:58 – What does Peter think the future of chess looks like?

1:10:48 – Outro