The Chess Queen Who Wants Women to Stop Waiting for the Perfect Move

Hey all, Joe here and you are listening to Under the Influence.

Today we're talking about chess.

And in talking about chess, we're going to be talking about life.

My guest today is Jen Shahadi, a two-time U.S. women's chess champion,

a competitive poker player, a writer, and one of those people

who makes you want to immediately become smarter, bolder,

and maybe a little less afraid of taking risks.

Her new book, Thinking Sideways, uses chess not as some dusty metaphor for genius,

but as a tool for living better in a chaotic world.

One, where planning ten moves ahead is a fantasy,

and the real skill is staying flexible, creative, and open to possibility.

Today we're going to chat about how chess became a global obsession

while the game is still so tangled up with misogyny and men's fear culture.

Yeah, we even mentioned Andrew Tate in this one and his dad.

Yeah.

We also talk about what Jen had learned from a lifetime of competition,

about failure, confidence, momentum, and making your move

before you feel fully ready.

We also get into some of the delicious history of chess

and the history of the role of the queen in chess,

which I'm just, I'm never going to be able to forget now,

and I love it so, so much.

At its heart, I really think that this is a conversation

about how to live when the future feels unstable

and when the path ahead refuses to stay fixed.

Jen truly believes that the real power

is not in predicting every outcome.

It's in staying present, seeing the possibilities,

and making the strongest move that you can,

exactly where you are.

Here's my chat with Jen.

Hey Jen, how you doing?

Fantastic. Good to be here.

Ah, so good to have you here.

I mean, you, in my head, you are such an amazing chess queen,

and I just, I have like three days worth of questions

for you about the world of chess,

about how you even get involved in competitive chess,

about the world of chess influencers,

but I want to start out just like with the basics,

because I'm so curious, how did you get your start

in chess in the first place?

You know, I actually went to Greenfield,

Elementary School, which is where, yeah,

full disclosure, our kids got a school together.

They've been, they've been in school together since kindergarten.

They also do rock climbing together.

But I actually, I didn't know you went to Greenfield.

Yes, I did. So I grew up in Philadelphia,

and my father is a three time PA State Champion.

So with a lot of chess players,

especially girls and women,

they get into it via their family,

because they're often less encouraged by the schools

and the society.

So you'll see that the top female chess players in the world,

there's an extraordinary number who have a sibling who's a great player

or a dad or a mom who's a great player.

Oh, wow, and this is not the case for boys.

For boys, it's much less true.

I mean, sure, of course,

there is going to be a lot of times parents who teach boys,

but it's much more common that it's completely other pathway for boys, yeah.

Wow, okay, okay.

So your dad was into it,

and did it just feel like you didn't have a choice in the matter?

Or you were like, okay, I really like this.

Actually, somewhere in between,

because I have an older brother who is wonderful,

also went to Greenfield,

and he just had a much faster learning curve than me.

So when he picked up chess,

he became the youngest master in the country at the time,

one of the youngest ever,

and I was much slower by comparison.

So even though my family was very supportive,

I was kind of like maybe chess isn't my thing.

And so I stopped playing for a little while,

and I just got back to it in high school.

But I find it really interesting,

because later I discovered,

and my dad told me this much later when I was an adult,

that my brother actually broke the record

for like the highest IQ score at Greenfield ever at the time.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, and they always kept that a secret from me,

because they didn't want me to like think that I was,

you know, first of all, you know,

IQ has debatable relevance,

and I think they were already kind of aware of that.

It's often used for nefarious purposes and eugenics.

But then also on top of that,

they didn't want me to think that I wasn't smart or something, right?

Right.

Totally.

Because, you know, we're around the same age,

and I remember those IQ tests in school.

I don't think they do them the way that they did them for us anymore.

Yeah.

I think they are the validity of them has like come into question.

I think they're, they can be really useful for finding out

if somebody has a disability that needs to be addressed.

But I think like a, you know,

average or high-ends like their efficacy

is like really questionable at the same least.

Right. Right.

So then you find out this like this big secret about your brother,

that your parents have been keeping from you.

And how do you move into the competitive chest world

and decide that that's something you really want to focus on in your life?

Well, I think the thing that the reason I mentioned my brother is

because people have the stereotype of chest players being geniuses

and like that they have to be like super, super smart in this, you know,

right brain way, like analytical and math.

But I actually was very interested in creative things

from the beginning, art, travel, literature.

And as it turned out, there was actually a very, very deep

and long tradition of those topics in chess as well.

Like Marcel Duchamp was a chess master,

chess literature.

There were more books about chess than anything in the world.

One of the earliest chess books that was distributed widely

was a chess book.

And so actually there was just like this treasure trove

of the things that I could learn from the game.

And I also got to travel, which really absorbed me.

My first international trip was to Brazil.

Oh my gosh.

And at that time, I wasn't, I was good at chess,

but I wasn't great yet.

And I remember my very first game.

I was so nervous.

I felt like it was going to throw up.

And I was playing against a Brazilian girl.

And she had all these fans and media around her.

And I won the game.

And I played like my best game ever.

And I remember that that really stayed with me,

because it taught me that being super nervous

and feeling those butterflies was actually potentially a sign

that I was developing into the player that I could become,

not something that meant I was going to fail.

And how old were you?

Was it happened?

I was 15 at the time.

And then also in Brazil,

I went to masterman for high school.

And I mean, I was like, I had fun.

I had a lot of great friends, friends that I still have today.

But you know, I didn't like go to parties or anything like that.

And in Brazil, it was like every night,

everyone went to like a disco tag.

And like everybody was like making jokes and Spanish.

And I just was like a real eye opener.

And I was like, wow, if I get good at chess,

I can go to places like this.

Like I'm going to study more.

You're like, that sounds great.

That sounds wonderful.

And so in 98,

you became the first woman to win the US Junior Open,

which is a huge deal.

And then you won the US Women's Chess Championships,

too, in 2002, right?

Yeah, in 2004, yes.

Yeah.

Again, like this, I don't know enough

about the hierarchy of the world of chess.

But at this point, you're a pretty big deal in the chess world.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I'm an Olympic player and I travel the world playing chess.

I did go to NYU at the time.

So basically in the summers, I would do chess full time.

And I would often take off classes to play chess.

Same with high school, college, post-college.

I was basically a professional chess player, yeah.

And at that time, there wasn't as much money in chess as there is now.

So it was, it was definitely a bit of a hustle.

But I was, yeah, really loving the life.

I went to like dozens of countries to play chess.

I met so many amazing people.

And won these national championships,

which was huge for me.

Because every time I won one of these titles,

I was never actually the favorite.

So I was always kind of punching above my weight

when I won these big championship,

which I think goes to my study habits.

So when I played in a really important tournament,

I was not only very good in the board and in the flow state,

but I was also very good at trying to create dossiers

in my opponents and figuring out how to beat them.

And your first book was called chess bitch,

women in the ultimate intellectual sport.

First off, I want to talk a little bit about the gender bias

in the world of chess.

Again, this could be its whole entire own episode,

but it is a major issue in the chess world.

Can you talk to me just a little bit about that?

Yeah, so my first book I called chess bitch,

because as soon as I came up with the title idea,

you know, I was like wrestling with ideas like women in chess,

I'll start to like boring ideas.

And then like when I came up with this idea of chess bitch,

because there was bitch magazine at the time,

I mean, it was a subscriber to that,

and I understood that this idea of bitch

was a reclaiming of the idea that a woman

who is fierce and aggressive,

can also be called a bitch,

and that that was something that I wanted to aspire to in chess, for sure,

wanted to crush my opponent,

and I wanted to celebrate the predecessor,

but then the same thing,

which actually goes all the way back to the queen of chess,

who used to be the least powerful piece in the board,

before 1500,

and then I don't know anything about this.

You have to explain all of this to me,

because I am a complete newbie.

Yeah, so there's a lot of predecessors of chess

that's a very ancient game,

but the current rules that we're playing with are about 500 years old.

So thousands of years ago,

we played a version of chess called Shotron,

and in that game,

the queen didn't even really exist,

but you could kind of call the predecessor

was like the messenger to the king, basically,

and that was a very weak piece.

It can only move one square diagonally in each direction,

and then in about a thousand,

it moved to Europe and circulated there,

and the queen became the queen.

So this piece that was formerly the messenger

became called the queen,

but she was still very weak piece,

really the weakest piece in the board,

to improve the rules of chess,

because we probably wouldn't have died out with that rule set.

I mean, it just wasn't a very fun game.

The balance wasn't very strong,

because we just take forever.

Without the queen, the game just would last a very long time,

it'd be very difficult to checkmate Europe on it.

So they experimented with world changes,

and one of the experiments they tried was

to make the queen the most powerful piece in the board,

really making her eight times more powerful than she was before.

So it wasn't like a small upgrade.

It was just completely game changer.

And this game caught on,

because it was a much better game.

First and faster, too.

And also, you know,

it's reality.

The women are generally the most powerful people,

and also the most under recognized ones with power.

Which you can see right away,

because at first this game was,

you know, looked at Scansad,

and they called it the Mad Woman's chess game.

Sort of framed the woman.

No, they didn't.

Yes, they did.

They called it the Mad Woman's game.

And in fact, there was an artist who created a chess board

with engravings for every square in the chess board

with a nasty comment about the queen.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

I want to see,

is there a picture of this chess board?

There is.

There's a picture of it.

It's an old French.

So, yeah, his name was Grant.

They're at the end of pot.

He actually tried to stay anonymous at first.

And the nasty words like overly ambitious,

she devil, things like that.

And my husband and I actually,

we made an updated version of this,

where all of the squares on the board were insults

to women chess players and commentators

and influencers in the world of chess.

And every square was like a mean YouTube

or Twitter comment for them.

Wow.

It's extraordinary.

You see how similar the comments were,

even though there are like hundreds of years'

separation, right?

Right.

Right.

I mean, and how many of them are knocking the fact

that a woman would dare be ambitious?

A decent number.

I mean, they really range from being like more like microaggressions.

Like, should we or more make up?

Where's too much makeup?

So, yeah, you really can't win there.

To being extremely sinister,

like, should be hit with a baseball bat.

So, there's a broad range.

I'm going to talk about the retelling,

the modern version that Daniel and I made.

I mean, there's a million ways to insult women

and also women have been insulted in the same ways

for thousands of years at this point.

Exactly.

And the interesting thing was the Mad Woman's chess game

stopped being called the Mad Woman's chess game

and it's literally chess as we play it now.

There have been very few rule changes since that

massive one and 500 years ago,

which also empowered the bishop.

The bishop used to be weaker too.

But that rule says essentially what we play today.

And so, chess is still the Mad Woman's chess game.

I would prefer it be called the Mad Woman's chess game.

I actually think, I mean, I'm a perfectly serviceable chess player.

But I think I'd be even more into it

if I could call it the Mad Woman's chess game.

Yes, exactly.

We've got to bring that back.

We really do.

It's funny.

I mean, I've been working on a new thriller

that's set at a dude ranch.

And the name of the canyon is the crazy lady canyon.

And because they claim that all these women went crazy

and they haunt it,

but of course none of them were actually crazy.

And now I kind of want to call it Mad Woman's canyon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Go for it.

Right?

Just inspiration all around.

It is a very inspiring history that chess has.

That's for sure.

So you didn't know any of this going into it.

But you, you know,

you just absorbed yourself in this world.

And as you mentioned,

there wasn't as much money in chess back then.

But is there now?

Can you now make a career out of playing chess?

Oh, definitely.

I mean, there's so much more money in chess.

There's also a lot more saturation, though.

So there's a lot of people interested in making money in chess.

So it's not as easy as it might beat the eye.

There are huge price runs for chess tournaments

much larger than they were before.

Major sponsors interested in chess chess.com is a billion dollar company.

I mean,

who would have thought that a chess company could become a billion dollar company,

but it truly is.

And the influencers,

who are big in chess,

get millions and millions of subscribers.

What really was shocking was that chess blew up enormously in 2020.

It was actually kind of rising steadily.

If you were paying attention,

even the decade prior,

ever, ever since like the mid 2000s,

it had really been in an upswing.

But 2020 was when it just went completely massive.

And a lot of that was because of this Netflix show,

The Queen's Gambit, beautiful show.

It was really, I loved that show.

I did.

Fantastic.

It was so good.

I loved it, too.

The one thing they did that was very revolutionary in that show,

is that they hired really smart chess people to do the consulting.

So every chess position you see in the Queen's Gambit is like a real accurate chess position.

So you can kind of watch it on two levels.

You can watch it as this like wonderful drama about a woman who beat the odds.

And you can also actually analyze the chess games,

which of course all the chess nerds did.

And that was super fun.

And that got a lot of people into chess as well.

Yeah.

No, I mean, I can imagine that the chess nerd forums were blowing up

Well, Queen's Gambit was on.

I mean, I definitely learned something while watching it.

And now it is a lot of fun for me because with my son starting to get into chess,

I'm much more interested in chess.

And I know you play a lot with your son, too.

You lead a chess club at our school for the kids, which was awesome and amazing.

And you also post a lot of videos online and they show some of like the actual

misogyny in the chess world.

I want to talk about those when we get back from a quick break.

Okay, we are back.

So talk to me a little bit about chess on social media.

And and how that relates, you know, to just generalized misogyny.

And, you know, our favorite topic on the show, the patriarchy.

Chess social media has really blown up ever since 2020 in the Queen's Gambit.

And also it's blown up in King Junction with the rise of algorithmic social media feeds

becoming much more targeted to and personalized the user.

So it's just talk about so much on this show.

It's less about your followers and more about the content more tick-tockified.

And so what's happened with chess is that a lot of influencers have gotten very wealthy

because the chess videos just end up going out to millions of people.

And people can build a following very quickly.

Why?

I mean, it's funny because I also play poker.

And I realized at some point that part of the reason chess is so beautiful is that nobody owns it.

So anybody can just start making a chess video.

It's not like you have to ask permission from Mr. Chess or something like that, right?

There's no regulations.

So you don't have to worry about like different countries that ban it or different countries where it's not allowed or age restrictions.

So it's very international.

And so it ends up getting a really big audience in these algorithmic feeds.

Especially, of course, if you've got some kind of extra asset, like you're good looking,

you're a great chess player, you're charismatic, some combination of a three for the biggest influencers,

you got to really have all three.

And so that's true for every influencer across the board.

It just it just is.

Yeah, exactly.

When you also have the right time and need to have the right timing.

But what really struck me at some point, especially as I started to do the chess videos with my son,

is that despite the Queen's gambit boom and the idea that because of the Queen's gambit,

somehow maybe more women, we're going to be interested in chess.

This is kind of the fantasy that everyone has feminists like me,

but even just any chess player because they want to see the game grow.

If you look at the demographics of what the algorithmic stats are doing and who they're pushing these videos to,

it was kind of alarming.

My breakdown in gender and my different profiles is like usually 65 to 70% male,

because I'm interested in poker and chess.

So then 30% female because I'm a very vocal and well-known feminist.

So of course, I have a lot of female followers as well.

But when I make chess videos, it goes out to something like 96 to 99%.

So I can click on the demographics and I see that they're really not pushing this content to women.

And it's highly associated with the manosphere, which is very upsetting to me.

Now, that doesn't mean that everybody who watches chess videos is an Andrew Kate man, not at all.

But what I'm saying is that those statistics of 99% men and 1% female feel very aligned with the manosphere content.

Yeah, they do absolutely.

And fun fact that you emailed me earlier was that Andrew Tate was a scholastic chess player.

And his dad was a legendary chess champion who used to call the queen the bitch.

That's right.

Every day was a really great legend.

He was one of the first African American international chess masters.

He beat grandmasters all over the globe, incredibly talented, also very talented at speaking.

So he did this thing where he would come to a chess tournament and he'd win a game.

He'd like checkmate some grandmasters in some incredible way.

And he'd stand up on a chair and he'd say,

Emery paint show is starting in two minutes.

It's like just dozens and dozens of people would crowd around him.

A lot of children.

Honestly, I was I was very young at the time, maybe fit in 16 at these times.

And me and my buddies, we loved it.

We thought he was like the funniest guy of all time.

And he would just he would speak in this just kind of very graphic language, you know, about chess.

Chess bitch, the G five.

And I always thought it was kind of ironic because the queen is the most powerful piece.

So I didn't really see it necessarily as super misogynistic at the time.

I thought it was like I'm itchy.

But yeah, sometimes he was obviously misogynetic when he's tall.

But that wasn't his job.

Like he wasn't a professional misogynist, right?

Like he was a professional chess.

Unlike his son, he was not a professional misogynist.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And so when I hear Andrew, you really hear his father, like the way they talk, the speed, the kind of mania.

It's very similar.

And unfortunately the charisma, like the way that Emery was able to get, you know, hundreds of people,

sometimes at these tournaments, which literally had 100.

You get the entire tournament to like crowd around.

He stood up on a chair and showed his checkmate.

Andrew has been able to do that successfully.

And it's like really scary.

And discovering.

And yes, you will see.

Andrew talk about chess.

If you listen to enough of his videos, I'm not recommending that you do.

But he sometimes does talk about his chess career and how chess is like a metaphor for.

Domination and, you know, crushing your opponent, which is not how I see it.

But those are the terms that he speaks about it.

And it's definitely a scary kind of parallel there.

How do you, how do you see chess?

I mean, what is your overarching chess philosophy?

It's not about dominating your opponent.

What is it about for you?

Yeah, I don't see it that way.

You know, the way I really fell in love with chess.

I mentioned this tournament in Brazil is the beauty of the game.

And making moves that are surprising.

Just in the same way, like an artist or a writer would come up with like a surprising angle

that nobody ever saw before.

That's how I saw it.

And once I saw it that way, I got a lot better.

You know, I remember in that very tournament in Brazil, which is just a breakthrough for me,

like I would look at chess books, which had these types of problems,

these artistic problems where the correct solution is something that you would never expect.

Like sacrificing your queen, like, you know, moving your knight in a way that you would never move it.

And when I found it, it feels like you're unlocking the key to puzzle.

Yeah, and that's how I saw it.

And then if I could do that better than my opponent, I win.

And in a way, I dominate them, but that that was like the consequence of trying to find these beautiful ideas,

not the primary motive.

And in your new book, thinking sideways, I just, you know, one of the first lines of the description

is something that I love where where you say chess is the art of the possible.

After all, there are more possible chess moves than atoms in the universe.

And I find that very hopeful and also very purposeful.

But also in a way, it feels like a very, to me, at least, female way to look at the game

because I feel like women are so open to different possibilities that we are open to pivoting,

that we are open to bringing more people and more ideas into the tent.

Obviously not all women, I would love it if that were true.

But I just, I just love that way of looking at chess.

Yeah, yeah, thank you.

And the reason I really wanted to focus on that in this book is because I think so many people have this misconception

that chess is a metaphor for being brilliant and strategic and that that metaphor is thinking really far ahead

and having everything figured out.

Planning 10 moves ahead.

Like one of the most frequent questions I'm asked is a chess champion is how many moves do you think ahead?

And I really wanted to show the truth, which is that many chess players have no idea what's going to happen in five moves.

The greatest in the world don't know what's going to happen in three moves sometimes.

But what they're really good at is not planning super far ahead, but actually staying present and being flexible and looking for possibilities.

And I mean, that's definitely a metaphor that I feel like we need right now more than ever as it's really hard to plan a hand right now.

Oh my gosh, yeah, I can't even begin to think about planning six months in advance, much less a year in advance,

because there's just so many possibilities happening right now.

Why did you name the book thinking sideways? What does it mean to think sideways?

It's to look for those options.

So instead of looking ahead, looking for the options that exist right now, like all the different possibilities, the different pathways in the multiverse,

that that is being a great chess player that more than, you know, thinking too far ahead.

Because what you say about women, I agree with.

And I think one of the key reasons that it's so powerful to look at more possibilities rather than kind of tunnel ahead on your favorite one is because it implies that you're not just thinking about yourself, but that you're thinking about your opponent.

Right. So if I'm thinking ten moves ahead, chances are I'm not really thinking about you or what you're thinking.

I'm just assuming I know what you're going to do and I'm just going to plan based on my assumption.

But the reality is so much messier. I make a move, you make a move that I wasn't expecting.

Then all those moves that I planned ahead of you are going to be moved, right?

And that's the reason it's a superior way to thinking to stay present and to look just a couple moves ahead, but try to make sure you're looking at your possibilities and your opponent's possibilities.

And you have so many great ideas in the book about how you can apply chess strategies and playing chess to actually just living your life and living a fulfilling life.

I want to talk a little bit more about those when we get back from our last break.

Okay, we are back. I love all of the ideas that you use that you've taken from chess from your long career in chess to be able to apply to living life and living a fulfilling and purposeful life.

I want to go through some of these ideas and then have you unpack them for me.

The one that I like a lot is don't let a perfect move be the enemy of a good move. What do you mean by that?

That was an idea that I put in the chapter about making decisions under time constraints, because that is chess. All games are time.

I'm never going to be basically allowed to just think for hours.

And so you need to make decisions quickly, otherwise you're going to lose on time.

And this is very vivid in chess because there's this big double-sided clock face that literally ticks down as the game goes on.

And you can see when it's running low, you're going to lose the game if you don't make more moves.

In life, sometimes I think we forget that, though, and we're looking for certainty, we're looking for perfection before we submit our proposal before we send an email.

And I mean, that's one thing I'm so impressed by you about your incredible output.

You do so many things in a week.

And I think that a lot of people can't do that because they are so perfectionist and they have anxiety about like that, like step of submission.

And that chess forces you to make decision after decision after decision under time constraints, so you get used to that.

Yeah, well, and I say that all the time, I'm like that perfection is the enemy of done. And we just have to find a way to move forward, or we're going to constantly get stuck.

Exactly.

You also say that chess players are pros at failing sideways. What does it mean to fail sideways?

Well, what I mean by that is that chess players lose again and again hundreds of games. We play so many practice games.

It's impossible. I remember one of my first chess, my first jobs and was teaching chess in Harlem when I was going to NYU.

And there's this wonderful lady there who, you know, just really loved the kids love chess.

And I taught them a lesson one day on double attack.

And then like a week later, one of the children lost a game to the double attack and she was, she made it a nice way, but she's like, how is that possible? Jennifer just taught you that.

And I'm like, no, no, you're going to lose again and again with the same beams.

And it's fine. You know, it's good because it shows that you're trying that you're playing lots of games.

But the one thing that you don't want to do is you don't want to lose the exact same game twice, right?

And that I think is the same in life, right? We have so many different ways to move ahead and we want to try new things.

You also say that you can use chess techniques to better manage your time, even if you're not a chess player, but something like using a chess clock to time your tasks, which I'm like, oh my gosh, now I have to get a chess clock.

What are some of your tips for how you can use these chess techniques to actually organize your life a little bit better?

Yeah, I love the chess clock one because what the chess clock has that a timer doesn't, it has two sides.

So Tim Irwin used this in his own life and he's the guy who writes, wait, wait, but why?

Where he'll have four hours for his deep work, like writing his book or working on blogs and ideating and then four hours for like more administrative things like replying to emails chatting with friends, that kind of stuff.

And so when he's doing one, he gets one side of the clock and then you hit the other side.

And so you're really not only timing out your deep work that you're also making sure you have time for those other types of tasks.

And one thing I love about the chess clock is that you can get like a really old school antique one, which is very beautiful and analog.

But I also sometimes like using a digital one on my phone, because then when it's on, I don't check my phone.

So instead, this kind of digital representation at the time that I'm using.

Oh, fun. I see I immediately went to I was like, Jen, can we go thrifting for like a beautiful analog antique chess clock?

Yeah, yeah, I have a couple old ones. I mean, they're great. Now they're all digital, but there is some antique ones that you can buy online.

You also use the acronym sofa, which immediately makes me think of couch. And I love couch.

Couch is my favorite thing. But you're using it to say sleep, organize, focus, and activate as a way to help us remember the key components of improving our memories. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Yeah, a lot of people have this feeling that they're they don't have good memories. And that's probably not true.

That often just means you haven't tried, especially for someone who says like, I'm just so terrible at remembering names.

A lot of times it's not an attribute. It's just a failure to give it a shot and develop that skill.

And I became friends throughout writing this book with a world memory champion. And her name is Yenja.

And the first thing I learned about her is that she's absolutely obsessed with sleep. If she has a memory competition, that's literally the most important thing for her.

Because she knows that she's going to succeed more if she has her full eight hours uninterrupted.

So that's a big part of it. And the second technique that she helped me understand the importance of is organizing like you really need to organize the information that you're trying to memorize.

In order to do it efficiently, that could actually take more time than everything else. That's okay.

And then focus the ability to totally focus when you're trying to remember something is really crucial.

It is easier said than done, but many people don't have this ability to fully focus because they're so used to being on call.

And so if you can give yourself that luxury of full focus, you're going to be shocked at how much you can remember.

In fact, I'm a professional poker player too. And I use this strategy in one of my recent tournaments. And I had the best tournament of my life winning more money than I'd ever want in a poker tournament.

Now, part of it was luck. I'm not going to say it's all because of these techniques.

But I not only wasn't using my phone on the brakes, but I was actually using a notebook and a pen.

And what I found was that I was just really able to remember everything about my opponents and my strategies better because of my detachment for my cell phone and because of the physical process of handwriting.

Which is the other thing being active. That's the last part of the acronym about really activating the information that you're trying to use.

And remember, and one way to do that is to write things down.

Yeah, I feel the same way with my writing, right? Like if I, I mean, I write books on the laptop, I write books on the phone. I like type out entire chapters when I'm like in line at the grocery store.

But there is something very activating in my brain about using a pen and a pencil to just write down ideas and that physical connection between body and mind, I think.

I think that's when I really start to, it sounds kind of woo woo, but start to unlock things.

Absolutely. And the reason she's shown that part of the reason for that is that it's slower.

So when you're writing something down, you have to with a pen and paper, you have to kind of prioritize what's most important.

And that just activates more memory formation and more creativity.

I feel like we totally just skipped over another huge part of your bio. How did you go from chess player to poker player?

Well, I just also really love the game of poker. It's very psychological and it brings a whole new set of people and challenges that chess, you know, doesn't challenge you quite as much on.

And so I think that's really it. I love the culture of poker and the challenge. And so I started traveling the world to play poker as well.

Which is just one of many, many super cool things about you. I, all right, this, this is not something I want to admit.

I don't really know how to play poker and Nick is constantly trying to teach me, but I don't really want Nick to teach me. I'd rather have you teach me.

Oh, yeah, we should definitely get a game together. We could get like a whole Greenfield mom's poker gambit going.

Yeah, there's a couple moms who play Mahjong who already said they want to do poker as well, so we can definitely do that.

This is a thing that I really think we need to make happen because I think it will, yes, this will, this will improve my life.

So yes, absolutely. We are totally, totally going to do that.

Do you like one or the other better or are they both just kind of exercising different parts of your brain?

Yeah, they're so different. I do, I feel like the game of chess, the actual game because of its history and our artistic lineage.

Maybe I love the game more, but I really love learning more about people and myself from poker. You know, so much about it.

I was just thinking we could have the Mad Woman's poker game where Queens beat Kings.

We are going to call this the Mad Woman's poker game and that that is a role we are going to enforce.

And let's make that, let's make that a thing. Is Mad Woman's poker even a thing or can we just coin this?

Yeah, that's, that's definitely a great idea. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, done. We're going to influence this to happen. I'm very, very excited about that.

One last thing I want to talk to you about that is another pull out from your fantastic book thinking sideways.

How to think like a chess player and win at life is to make the most of a hot streak.

What do you mean by that? To me, I took it as, you know, celebrate your wins and also try to capitalize them because I think that we often dwell so much on our failures.

And don't think nearly enough about when we're doing things really well or when life is going, going the way we want it to.

Yeah, well, I think if I look at my own career, I feel like when I had a big win, I would often really celebrate.

But sometimes I would celebrate a bit too much because actually when you're winning, that's the moment where you can kind of get the most out of people where you can really level up.

And I see a very successful people are excellent at doing that. Like there's a great poker player who's now a famous speaker and, you know, does all sorts of great things live.

And I remember watching an interview with her after she won this big tournament and she was just like, yeah, I'm determined to make most of this.

Same thing with a US champion, Jennifer, you who was already winning a tournament and she had like 10 out of 10.

So like, I think it was nine and a half out of 10 points. So she had already clinched the victory.

So the 11th game, she doesn't even need to win, you know, and she won the game spectacularly anyway.

And after the game, I asked her like, well, you know, why was it so important for you to win this game? And she said because that's what a champion does, a champion wins.

And I was very impressed by that quote. She was only 18 at the time because to me, I hadn't seen it that way.

I saw it as like, once you win, you should like kind of take a step back and relax and let someone else win.

But that's actually not the way to accumulate wealth and success.

And I think sometimes as women were not taught about that secret. I think a lot of men already know this very, very early.

I think I think it's just like natural to them. Yeah. When you win, you just keep pounding, you go, go, go.

And because there's always going to be dark spots in your life. There's always going to be downswings.

And so you really want to accumulate as much success and power when you're having a hot street.

And you also say give yourself more chances to win.

Yes. Oh, yeah, that's a huge one. I mean, that's something I really learned from poker.

It's better to play in, you know, a few games. And even if those games aren't as good, but if you have multiple chances, that will help you.

I mean, that's something I'm, I'm interested in sports now. I wasn't before I, before I had a son.

But now with Fabi being a massive like six years Eagles fan, I'm really.

All of the sports, all of the Philadelphia sports are our religion essentially.

And we're going to get a WNV 18. We have to wait till 30.

But I know, I know, but I know, but Charlie's already so excited about it.

I'm so I'm too excited. But yeah, the, the, this is something that's really kind of born out in sports analytics to that basketball teams will try to, you know, make one shot, even if it's not a great shot called the two for one shot.

So they get two chances because the analytics have shown the kind of waiting for the perfect shot is worse than just taking two shots and trying to get that second possession.

And I feel like that's, you know, that's a beautiful metaphor for a lie. You know, take the shot and then take another shot rather than try to align yourself for the perfect shot and get one more often.

It's better to get to less frequently, but you have two shots.

Take all the shots and as something else, but I think that women aren't always trained in and that doesn't always come naturally to us.

Yeah, exactly. You want that. And I get it. Sometimes, you know, you really want, you want, you've been, you've been kind of training for something and you want to appear your best, perform your best.

But that's again, an idea that when we look at chess, when you look at poker, when we look at sports analytics, you look at the data and you see that successful people are just doing it and understanding that getting more shots is even more valuable.

Then trying to be a perfectionist. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you tell everyone how they can learn more about you and where they can find this gorgeous new book of yours.

Well, it's available everywhere and all the clubbing and they also did read the audio book. So if you like my voice, you can get that as well.

And I am also on some stack and everywhere at Gen Johani. So you can find me on all the places. And I hope you will enjoy the book. I had so much fun reading writing it.

I actually, I tell people that I wrote the book for myself. I wrote chess bitch because I needed to become a little bit more bitchy when people disrespected me and I wrote thinking sideways because I needed this book to make me understand that I could do new things at any age.

I could like change and improve the way that I think no matter where I was in my life. So I wrote this book for me. And I hope that will come across people that it's very passionate and that I hope it will be useful for the reader as well.

It absolutely well. And I think the audio book option sounds wonderful because I love your voice. And we just love to have you have you explaining all this in my ear.

Yeah, well, I can't wait for that poker game. All right, Jen, go have a great day. Great to talk to you. Thank you so much for having me.

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