Episode 5: The Sportsmanship

[00:00:00.45] [Rooked theme music plays]
[00:00:01.80] [Bill Cole] A few years ago, working with a tennis kid in Florida. She was 15. This kid she was playing was 11. And the 11-year-old was really, really good, but she was only 11. And my 15-year-old was really drubbing the 11-year-old, about to win the match, and on a changeover, the 11-year-old--
[00:00:18.57] [Mimics crying]
[00:00:20.89] --starts crying. And my student was a very nice person, and her heart went out. "Are you okay? Is everything all right?" And the little 11-year-old started telling the tale of, well, if she played badly like she is, and lost the match, even, maybe, she'd not only get grounded but severely punished. My 15-year-old felt really bad for her. They went to either sides of the court, and maybe subconsciously more than consciously, the 15-year-old that I was coaching took her foot off the gas a little bit, thought to herself, "Well, she's an 11-year-old, for Pete's sake. You don't need to crush her spirit. You can beat her left handed, but don't crush her spirit." And lo and behold, the 11-year-old won the match. When the match was over, no more tears, and the 11-year-old bounced up to the net, and shook her hand, and said, "Ah, it was a big trick. I wasn't upset at all."
[00:01:12.45] So is that cheating? No. Is it a mind game? Yes. You have to ask yourself, why would somebody do such a thing, especially age 11? That kid somehow felt unbelievable pressure to win, and maybe the threat was thrown out at home-- "If you don't do this, oh, you're going to be in trouble." And now she's playing out of fear instead of out of joy, and that's why people cheat. Pressure makes us do weird things.
[00:01:43.67] [Jess] You might be wondering why this episode is late, because we usually put out the new episode the first Tuesday of the month, and this is going out, um, not then.
[00:01:53.44] [Chuckles]
[00:01:54.14] Well, it's because we both have COVID. That's why I sound kind of funny, but I feel okayish. So, sorry again, but we're human.
[00:02:06.17] [Ryan] Also, if you've been following us for a while on social media, you might notice that things are looking kind of different lately. But we'll talk a little bit more about that later.
[00:02:16.10] Okay, on to the actual episode, which, by the way, this episode in particular will be really good for you if you've managed to hang on for three episodes but somehow still don't really like chess, because now we're going to talk about other sports-- specifically, what does sportsmanship itself look like at any level? And if you don't like other sports, sorry. Because this is a tale of chess and other sports, and sportsmanship in those sports.
[00:02:51.68] [Ryan] This is a tale of ethics, morals, and accountability.
[00:02:58.46] [Jess] This is a tale of cheating, of lies and conspiracies.
[00:03:05.42] [both] This is Rooked: The Cheaters' Gambit.
[00:03:11.18] [Music fades]
[00:03:12.63] [Gloomy music plays]
[00:03:16.02] [Jess] I'm Jess Schmidt, and you probably know by now that I make podcasts and I like talking about the chess world, despite how terrible I am at the game.
[00:03:24.18] [Ryan] I'm Ryan Webb. No other intro needed.
[00:03:27.75] [Jess] No, Ryan, you have to do the intro.
[00:03:29.31] [Ryan exhales]
[00:03:30.21] [Ryan] I'm only doing it this one last time, though.
[00:03:33.21] [Jess] Okay, we have, like, seven other episodes. But whatever you think.
[00:03:36.33] [Ryan] I'm Ryan Webb. I play chess for about three hours a day typically, and Rooked is my first stab at podcasting.
[00:03:44.16] [Jess] And here's our main guest for the episode, Bill Cole. He's known as The Mental Game Coach.
[00:03:50.49] [Bill Cole] So even though my company name is William B Cole Consultants at mentalgamecoach.com, I go by Bill, Bill Cole. And I'm a performance psychology coach and consultant. And I do this over multiple domains-- sports psychology, interview coaching, exam anxiety, people that freak out taking tests. Work with a huge number of physicians. Also do this in sales coaching, presentation coaching.
[00:04:15.64] It all started with a performance psychology background. I was the first person in the world to achieve an undergrad degree in sports psychology in the late '70s.
[00:04:23.82] [Mellow electronic music plays]
[00:04:24.28] [Ryan] Bill works with all kinds of different people, from across a myriad of sports and even outside sports, too, including-- you guessed it-- chess.
[00:04:34.48] [Bill Cole] Haven't played in a long time, but in terms of coaching chess, I've done mental game coaching and performance psychology coaching in now over 100 different sports. At one time, I didn't know there were a hundred different sports. So a hundred different sports and counting. So it seems like every month, a new sport pops in or some version thereof. Tennis and racket sports is a big one for me. Baseball. Work with a lot of chess players, and a huge amount of fencers, and a lot of divers and gymnasts, in particular, because they all seem to have similar mental problems in terms of mental blocks.
[00:05:05.38] [Upbeat, playful music plays]
[00:05:05.74] [Jess] So why are we talking to someone who bills themselves-- get it? Because his name is Bill? --as a Mental Game Coach?
[00:05:13.42] [Ryan] I'm glad you explained your joke. Give our audience zero credit.
[00:05:17.08] [Jess] One of the things I keep coming back to in the whole Sinquefield Cup scandal is how both Magnus and Hans were able to act the ways that they did with such confidence. Just absolutely not the kind of thing that you expect from such high-calibre players. Public accusations of cheating without any proof, an unprecedented withdrawal from an active tournament, downplaying the severity of cheating itself in any arena, OTB or online, calling the reputation of the entire sport into question. We have seen and continue to see some decidedly unsportsmanlike behaviour from all sides.
[00:05:58.64] [Ryan] But I think we have it in our heads that these high-level players of any sport act with complete stature, following the etiquette of their game to the absolute letter. But there's an endless supply of examples that we could name from countless sports where the top-level players acted the opposite of how they're supposed to. If you didn't listen to the last episode of Rooked on cheating, you should go back, just at least to hear Mike Boyd talk about doping in cycling in his lovely [Ryan, with a terrible Scottish accent] Scottish accent. Scottish accent.
[00:06:29.53] [Ryan, disappointedly] Eh.
[00:06:30.37] [Jess] Right. So that's why I think we need a lesson in sports psychology and sportsmanship. And Bill is the perfect person to school us.
[00:06:40.78] [Mellow electronic music plays]
[00:06:41.11] [Ryan] So what is sports psychology? According to the American Psychological Association, sports psychology, quote, "uses psychological knowledge and skills to address optimal performance and well-being of athletes, developmental and social aspects of sport participation, and systemic issues associated with sports settings and organizations," end quote. Which is both broad and very specific.
[00:07:06.58] [Jess] Let's just have Bill tell you a little bit more about what sports psychology is. He's been doing this for a long time, and he's great at it. Plus, he's a really good storyteller, so we would be remiss if you did not get to hear some of them yourself.
[00:07:20.30] [Bill Cole] So it was in the finals of the Erie County Tennis Championships. I was too young to drive. My friend Tim is driving me to the match in his Volkswagen.
[00:07:27.46] [Car engine humming]
[00:07:27.73] And I'm kind of daydreaming out the window, picturing how I'm going to play, imagining my shots, duh-duh-duh. What does a 15-year-old know about visualization? Which is what I was doing. But I just did it kind of inherently.
[00:07:40.24] Get there to the match. Warm up with Tim. Take a little break. Here's the opponent. Warm up with the opponent for about 10 minutes. Start the match. I'm playing really well right from the beginning. I won the first game at love so, you know, four points in a row. Trade sides of the net. Win another point at love, even though the points were not easy. This is the final after all. The guy's very strong.
[00:07:59.80] Before I knew it, I won three games in a row, and I go, "Huh, haven't lost a point. Interesting." So trade sides again at net. Win another four points in a row. "Huh, four in a row. This has never happened." Another one, 5-0, and then, believe it or not, I won the set without the loss of a point. So that never happened to me. Again, there was no name for it, 15 years old. Never read about it, but I felt something kind of special had happened.
[00:08:23.22] I proceeded to lose the next set because I was so wound up about the first set. Excited, happy, daydreaming. "Can I do this again?" I was trying to do it again, whereas in the first set, I didn't try to do anything. Second set, I forced it, and of course that's a loser style. You can't do anything if you're forcing it.
[00:08:39.54] I got to college and took my first psychology class, and everything lit up for me. And in my second class in phys ed, took a class in sports psychology, and there it was in front of me: The Zone.
[00:08:49.53] [Chiming]
[00:08:53.13] And there was no looking back, and explained everything that happened in tennis to me. Come full circle, a little bow on top with the 6-0 set.
[00:09:01.35] There is a name for that. It's called a golden set. And in the whole history of professional tennis, four times in history has that happened. Four. So that's how really special that was, and I use this story quite a bit to highlight what The Zone is.
[00:09:16.44] For years, I went out in practise and got the weakest tennis player I could find and tried to duplicate that, thinking, "I won't make a mistake," and I still was not able to duplicate that at all. I came close a few times but couldn't do it. So that talks about the elusive nature of The Zone, the finicky nature of The Zone, and the fact that you have to kind of ride that wave--
[00:09:39.68] [Wave crashing]
[00:09:41.22] --rather than forcing yourself on the surfboard. That just doesn't work. That's how I got into sports psychology.
[00:09:47.19] [Upbeat, playful music plays]
[00:09:47.49] [Jess] I love that story. It encapsulates everything that goes into sports psychology. Sports psychology at its core is just everything that goes into supporting peak performance, including the mental and social aspects of any given game, which need to be taken just as seriously as the technical aspects. Sportsmanship is one of the cornerstones of sports psychology. So that's why we're devoting an entire episode to it.
[00:10:13.42] [Ryan] To bring it back to chess, think of Hans and his streaming career. His whole validation for cheating on chess.com was that he was trying to force his rating, push through the "easy" part that he felt he was just better than. And it completely backfired on him. It turns out the cause and effect of cheating and getting caught is that it just convinces everyone that you're a cheater. Here's a clip from our interview with law expert David Franklin about Hans' online cheating.
[00:10:42.30] [David Franklin] FIDE, the international chess body, has a cheating czar, Ken Regan, and he said there's no indication that Hans has cheated in over-the-board games. On the other hand, I guess somebody who's willing to cheat extensively online is more likely to cheat over the board. But nothing has been proven.
[00:11:01.86] And, look, he's obviously a very talented player in his own right. Even after the scandal broke, when he's been under constant scrutiny, he's been able to maintain a 2700 playing level, which is very high. So you sort of have to ask, why would somebody that talented and that promising decide to cheat? Maybe to get more quickly from a 2500 or 2600 level, to a level where he gets more invitations to top tournaments. Or maybe he's a natural 2700 player, but he thought, well, if I cheat, then I can get to 2750 or 2800, and then I can really make good money. But he would be taking an enormous risk in doing that. Maybe he's a risk-seeking personality, right?
[00:11:52.63] [Mellow electronic music plays]
[00:11:53.47] [Ryan] And here's a clip from Mike Boyd, the content creator we featured last episode.
[00:11:59.50] [Mike Boyd] Every sportsman who gets popped for PEDs says the same thing: like, "I'm just trying to stay competitive. I'm not trying to get an edge. I'm trying to-- I'm trying to level." But until you prove everyone's cheating, they're still-- they're still just a cheater, aren't they?
[00:12:12.13] [Upbeat music plays]
[00:12:12.49] [Jess] And just in contrast to the public perception of Hans' sportsmanship, here's what Ben Johnson from the Perpetual Chess Podcast said about Magnus' sportsmanship when we interviewed him.
[00:12:23.74] [Ryan] That's a fucking tongue twister, that sentence.
[00:12:25.57] [Jess] I know, right?
[00:12:25.99] [Ryan] You did it in one try.
[00:12:26.98] [Jess] And I nailed it.
[00:12:28.12] [Ben Johnson] Magnus, I mean, he's been in the public eye for so long, I feel like 97, 98% of the time he's been the ultimate sportsman. He's always carried himself very well. He's never been rude to an opponent that I can recall. There's been, like, one or two cases where he's been very rude in press conferences. And I think after he lost to Karjakin and fell behind in the 2016 World Championship, I think, you know, it was in the contract that he should do a post-game press conference, and I think he just didn't do it.
[00:12:58.16] You do hear occasional stories of him being, like, late for press events and stuff, stuff like that. So behind the scenes, he doesn't have a reputation of being, like, uniformly kind and over-the-top sportsmanlike, but to get to the top of the chess world, you have to be thinking about yourself all the time, and thinking about the game all the time. So it's not unusual. A lot of the greats don't have, like, these huge reputations for being empathetic people, and Magnus, I think, is actually better than most, especially as he's gotten older. So this reaction, at least in terms of recent years, was definitely a break from character, and that comes across with so many Grandmasters and Super Grandmasters who've come out and said that they admire what Magnus did, which to me seems crazy. But they're in that circle and I'm not. So their opinions are certainly valid.
[00:13:53.72] [Gloomy music plays]
[00:13:56.86] [Ryan] So The Zone that Bill talks about is kind of like the pinnacle of sports psychology in that it isn't something that you can just muscle your way into. It happens when you're skilled but not trying too hard, driven but balanced, focused and calm.
[00:14:12.60] [Jess] You can't really intend on a specific outcome when it comes to things like nailing a golden set, or even playing all the top players on chess.com. You just need to do your best and hope that you're going to get to where you need to be.
[00:14:28.53] [Ryan] Like, we didn't intend on making money when we started this podcast. But now we have a Patreon with five whole subscribers on it. We're just out here telling this story the best way we know how. Speaking of Patreon...
[00:14:44.81] [Music fades]
[00:14:45.77] [Comical slide whistle plays]
[00:14:47.70] [Upbeat music plays]
[00:14:48.19] [Ryan] Did you know that Rooked: The Cheaters' Gambit is an indie podcast?
[00:14:52.36] [Jess] Indie as in independent. We don't receive any sponsorship support. Ryan and I make Rooked in our spare time for free.
[00:14:59.68] [Ryan] And don't get us wrong. We love getting to make this podcast exactly the way we want to, but we've been thinking that maybe with some support, we could make this show even better.
[00:15:09.73] [Tim Robinson] I got to figure out how to make money on this thing. It's simply too good.
[00:15:13.57] [Jess] So, like many creators, we've joined Patreon.
[00:15:16.96] [Ryan] Can I just ask, what is Patreon?
[00:15:19.66] [Jess] Great question, Ryan. Patreon is a way for fans to join and engage with their favourite creators' community. Basically , it's a platform that allows you to support creators financially. Currently, we have two tiers open: the Pawn level, if you want to support us for 5 Canadian dollars a month-- cheaper than mailing us an envelope of loonies and toonies-- and the King level for $20 per month. If you choose to support us at the King tier, we'll also mention you by name in the episode credits. And if you support us at any level on Patreon, you'll also be able to access bonus content, exclusive for our Patreon members.
[00:15:56.00] [Ryan] Plus, we'll send you nudes.
[00:15:57.86] [Jess] I will not be sending nudes, but whatever you work out between you and the Patrons is your own business, Ryan.
[00:16:03.92] [Ryan] Are you sure we should be doing this? Patreon looks like they stole their logo directly from Target.
[00:16:09.32] [Jess] You are the only person I've ever had to describe Patreon to, so I don't really trust your judgement here, honestly. But that's a good point. If you want to support us but monthly donations don't fit your budget, you can also buy us a coffee instead at buymeacoffee.com/rooked. Or we also really appreciate ratings, reviews, and shares, too. And those are free.
[00:16:31.32] [Ryan] We love making this podcast, and our motivation is listeners like you, so we really appreciate your support at any level.
[00:16:39.20] [Jess] Go to patreon.com/rooked to support the podcast. That's patreon.com/rooked. Thanks for listening.
[00:16:49.76] [Comical slide whistle plays]
[00:16:52.24] [Cheerful music plays]
[00:16:52.74] [Jess] Intentionality matters in sports because intention is one of the biggest drivers of sportsmanship. If you go into a game thinking that you need to win at all costs, you're going to have a very different strategy than someone going in thinking that they just need to play the best game they can. Winning at any cost opens the door for strategies that fall outside the rules of the game, like cheating.
[00:17:16.62] [Ryan] But even if you are a player who has good intentions and is just trying to play the game the best way that they can, you can't always be sure that your opponent feels the same way. Plus, there's always elements that you just can't account for or anticipate. And that's where other skills come in, like mental strength and coping abilities.
[00:17:39.00] [Bill Cole] We're talking cheating, but we could expand it to, what would happen if the lights went out? What would happen if the air conditioning broke? What would happen if your chair started to, like, sag or squeak? What would happen if the opponent did this? What would happen? So the what ifs.
[00:17:54.31] With all my kids in whatever sport, we generate a what-if checklist. And I ask them, "What are some of the weird things that have ever happened to you in your tournament career?" And we start going down the list, and some of them are pretty funny and interesting. They have stories, whatever. The point is, you generate a list of 20 such weird things. "And now, Tommy, number one, what have you done to fix that?" "I don't know. I never knew how to fix it." I give him the answer. "How about number two, Tommy?" "Oh, I did this." So we go down the whole list where those are contingency plans, and now if any of those things happen, including cheating, we've already gamed it out, planned it out, even practised it, visualized it, talked about it, whatever. And now when it comes up, you know, it's still not desirable because it's in the middle of a game and you don't really want it to happen, but now they have a plan. [Cheerful music plays]
[00:18:45.82] [Ryan] To me, it sounds a lot like Bill would be a huge fan of Nathan Fielder's HBO hit The Rehearsal. Basically, the concept of the show is that Nathan helps people plan out how to deal with a specific scenario in advance by hiring actors and acting through every possible scenario that could possibly play out, so that these people are prepared for any given outcome. Here's a quick clip of Nathan arguing with his fake co-parent during one of the episodes, because this is our podcast and we can do whatever we want.
[00:19:18.38] [Angela Sankovich] You ate feces. You ate the child's feces.
[00:19:22.54] [Nathan Fielder] I did. Angela, it was a chocolate bar.
[00:19:24.37] [Angela Sankovich] I don't care.
[00:19:25.48] [Nathan Fielder] But sometimes I couldn't tell if we were arguing as co-parents or if she was actually mad at me.
[00:19:31.93] [Angela Sankovich] Are you aware that eating poo is actually a satanic ritual?
[00:19:37.89] [Nathan Fielder] I-- no. Maybe you should make a list for me of all the things that are satanic so that I know when I'm doing something how to avoid them. I'm going to bring home oranges from the grocery store. You're going to be like, "That's satanic."
[00:19:50.16] [Upbeat, playful music plays]
[00:19:50.44] [Jess] Wow, how did I just know that a poop joke was coming?
[00:19:54.31] Okay, back to Bill. Now, you might be thinking, "Yeah, this makes sense." I'm sure this Tommy kid has never thought about that kind of strategy before, and Bill probably really helped him. But someone like Magnus must already know this stuff. And maybe he does, but remember last episode when we talked about Magnus playing Alisher Suleymenov at the Qatar Masters this past October? If you don't, it's okay. Basically, the gist of that story is that Alisher beat Magnus, and Magnus publicly called him out afterwards for distracting him by wearing a watch, because it could be used as a cheating device.
[00:20:30.68] Now, someone wearing a watch it at a tournament is incredibly common. It's against the rules, sure, but it's a rule that's rarely enforced. So what does it say about Magnus that when faced with a rule-breaking opponent, his knee-jerk response on multiple occasions has been to take to Twitter for justice?
[00:20:50.49] [Ryan] Even at the Sinquefield Cup, Magnus did basically the same thing. We now know he talked to the tournament directors and officials, and didn't agree with or like what they said. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't have taken to Twitter to rip on Hans. But there's just something that feels icky in making public shaming your main tactic for dispute resolution. So that was a question we put to Bill. What is the right thing to do when you are faced with what you suspect is bad sportsmanship, or possibly even a cheater?
[00:21:25.25] [Bill Cole] It depends on the sport. In some sports there are no officials. Like, in tennis, even in the junior level, there's no officials per court. It's a roaming official, so you could play a whole match, 90% of which there's no official. So now you have your personal power.
[00:21:41.40] So a kid comes to me, "What do I do if they're cheating me? Should I go get a referee?" That's a last resort. First, use your personal power. "Tony." You call Tony up to the net. "Tony, I'm hitting shots that are easily in by 10 inches and you're calling them out. I want you to do the right thing. Would you like to change your line call right now?" "No way." "All right, Tony, but you're on notice." That's interaction number 1. Ten minutes later, Tony cheats you again. "Tony, I'm not coming up to the net. Do you want to change your line call? It was definitely in." "No way." "One more time, Tony, I'm getting an official." Ten minutes later, happens again, you get the official. So that's your personal power you're putting on to Tony, because now you're actually having maybe a guilt trip on Tony because he's on notice, plus you get an extra benefit.
[00:22:33.80] People are watching your match. They can't hear everything. The match is over. "What did he say to you, Tony?" "He told me to stop cheating." So now Tony is sheepish, and my guy is, like, brave, and the word goes out, don't cheat Bill's student, because he'll call you on it. So there's many ways to handle cheating. I think personal power is one of the best ways.
[00:22:57.47] I don't know their ins and outs of a tournament in chess that well, even though I was a tournament director in tennis for years. If someone was cheating, you'd go to the tournament director and say, "Hey, we want a linesmen, or an official, or a scorekeeper, or some adult come on the court and oversee." And that's how you handle it. And it's kind of the same thing in chess. You don't accuse the person directly of cheating. You let the adults handle the whole thing.
[00:23:22.63] [Cheerful music plays]
[00:23:22.88] [Jess] I think in Magnus' own way, him going to Twitter is him expressing personal power. The problem with Magnus, though, is that, in the words of Voltaire and Uncle Ben...
[00:23:35.51] [Uncle Ben] Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
[00:23:41.46] [Mellow electronic music plays]
[00:23:41.91] [Ryan] Magnus has millions of fans that take everything he says at face value. And because it's the internet, it doesn't matter what the truth is, or whether there's evidence, or whether the allegations are actually provable. All that matters is Magnus is the one who levied the allegations in the first place. And because he is so powerful, in a lot of people's eyes, that makes it true, until he says otherwise.
[00:24:09.57] We're talking about a guy who has over 350,000 Twitch followers on an account that has one video and is basically dormant. He doesn't have to do anything and people still flock to him. They worship him.
[00:24:24.74] [Followers] Hail, Messiah!
[00:24:27.08] [Graham Chapman as Brian Cohen] I'm not the Messiah. Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah! Do you understand? Honestly!
[00:24:33.37] [Follower] Only the true Messiah denies his divinity.
[00:24:37.12] [Graham Chapman as Brian Cohen] What?! Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right, I am the Messiah!
[00:24:42.88] [Followers] He is the Messiah!
[00:24:46.46] [Graham Chapman as Brian Cohen] Now fuck off!
[00:24:48.93] [Mellow electronic music plays]
[00:24:49.32] [Jess] Another big question I had in the aftermath of the 2022 Sinquefield Cup was, where the hell was FIDE in all of this? They're who I assumed would be the adults in this situation, to use Bill's words. And, actually, that's one of the questions we asked FIDE historian Emilia Castelao when we spoke with her.
[00:25:09.54] [Emilia Castelao] Sinquefield is a FIDE-rated event, so if there is an instance of cheating or an accusation of cheating, then there are rules in the FIDE Charter and other FIDE handbooks that essentially tell FIDE, these are the steps that I need to follow in order to investigate and lay out how cheating is supposed to be dealt with.
[00:25:33.55] I think that many people were disappointed with the way that FIDE responded and investigated the scandal. I think that people wish they had been more firm about the whole situation. And so, it's kind of hard because the channels sometimes to accuse someone of cheating, like, through FIDE are sometimes unclear and confusing. And so, it overall, I think, was just a very foggy situation in regards to, like, where FIDE stood.
[00:26:05.64] [Upbeat, playful music plays]
[00:26:06.25] [Jess] Now, we spoke with Emilia prior to June of 2023, which is when Magnus publicly announced that the lawsuit between him and Hans had been dismissed, and that he didn't think that Hans cheated at Sinquefield anymore. And we now also know, thanks to a FIDE report published on December 12th 2023, that Magnus was fined 10,000 pounds-- so almost $13,000 USD or, like, I don't know, $12 billion Canadian-- by the Ethics and Disciplinary Commission at FIDE. But that fine wasn't from the accusation Magnus made. It was from, quote, "withdrawing without valid reason or without informing the tournament arbiter," end quote.
[00:26:48.46] [Ryan] According to that same report, Magnus was found not guilty for all of the following. Quote, "for reckless or manifestly unfounded accusation of chess cheating, for the attempt to undermine honour, and for the disparagement of FIDE's reputation and interesr," end quote. This decision from FIDE came 14 months after the events at Sinquefield. And they state in their report that, even though the lawsuit didn't have any bearing on their decision, they also couldn't make any decisions until the lawsuit was settled, because they needed Hans' and Magnus' cooperation. If you can figure out how that makes sense, let us know.
[00:27:31.70] We'll get more into how messed up FIDE tends to be in a later episode that talks about the game of chess itself. And if you're worried that one will be boring, you should know that one of the prior presidents of FIDE was convinced that he had been abducted by aliens and visited another planet in their spaceship.
[00:27:49.93] [Jess] Nothing in chess is boring.
[00:27:52.33] [Hal Sparks as Zoltan] Soon, we will leave this lame planet and fly through outer space with cool aliens who like us. It is going to be awesome!
[00:28:06.02] [Ashton Kutcher as Jesse Montgomery III] Zoltan!
[00:28:09.46] [Upbeat, playful music plays]
[00:28:09.91] [Jess] There's another grey area that we haven't really touched on yet that sits somewhere between good sportsmanship and then things like outright cheating. Bill calls this gamesmanship.
[00:28:21.43] [Bill Cole] Cheating is obviously cheating. It's against the rules. Gamesmanship is borderline but not considered illegal at all. For example, a tennis player can be playing doubles and up to the net, and I'm back there serving. My partner at the net can be moving around like crazy, attempting to distract the receiver. And that is allowable, as long as they don't whip their racket all over the place. But if they make body movements. It's kind of like a soccer player trying to trick out a defender. And if they didn't do that, it would really be a boring game, so that would be, like, just craftsmanship, not really gamesmanship so much, but a little bit that way.
[00:28:57.14] This is something that surprised me when I started working with chess players. Years ago, I would say, "So, what sort of mind games do you see, or cheating do you see, you know, when you go to tournaments?" And the kids would go, "There aren't any." "Really? You mean there really are no-- there's no cheating?" And eventually they would say, "Well, there are some bending of rules, or trying to get an unfair advantage, things like that, or unintentional breaking of regulations and procedures, but not like cheating, cheating." So, basically, I discovered that chess overall is either so tightly controlled by the tournament directors and/or the parents, or it's in the culture, or it's so obvious you're cheating that how dare you even try to cheat? So you don't. Maybe it's all of that. Therefore, I've discovered that cheating in chess compared to a lot of other sports is very pristine, although there is cheating.
[00:29:54.61] [Mellow electronic music plays]
[00:29:54.89] [Ryan] Okay, so much to say about this. But first, let's dig into Bill's opinion of chess as pristine and controlled, because this reflects what I think a lot of people typically view chess as, and it's one of the bigger problems that the sport is facing right now. It has this image that doesn't necessarily align with reality. Of course, you want to think that elite chess players are all good sportsmen and aren't cheating, and that they deserve the titles they hold. But if you listened to the last episode of Rooked where we detailed several other high-stakes cheating scandals, you know that's not always the case.
[00:30:33.92] Chess.com's Hans Niemann Report even states that in their 15-plus-year history of cheat detection online, they've closed down the accounts of hundreds of titled players and dozens of GMs, and they've even elicited cheating confessions from four players in the FIDE top 100.
[00:30:52.10] [Jess] And that's just for cheating. Because gamesmanship isn't illegal, we actually don't have any real numbers on what kind of gamesmanship there is going on in chess, but we can tell you colloquially what gamesmanship looks like in this sport. Before we get to that, though, I think it's also an important distinction to make that, when it comes to chess athletes specifically, Bill primarily works with kids. And it actually gives me hope that the kids Bill works with say that they themselves are good sportsmen, and most of the people that they are encountering while they're playing chess are also good sportsmen, especially since these kids primarily play OTB, and it does seem like cheating OTB is taken more seriously than cheating online.
[00:31:36.26] And while Magnus didn't follow all of Bill's rules-- like, he for sure did not let the adults handle this issue-- you can see that Magnus probably still thought he was being a good sportsman, because the honour of the game is something that Magnus seems really protective of, and the suggestions that he's made to help keep the game contemporary and above board, as it were-- Get it? Above board? --are evidence of that.
[00:32:03.24] [Ryan] But I think we need to back up a little bit here.
[00:32:05.57] [Tape rewinding]
[00:32:06.83] Because we need to talk about something very crucial and specific to chess.
[00:32:12.11] [Jess] Oh, boy, here we go.
[00:32:13.34] [Gloomy music plays]
[00:32:13.73] [Ryan] What exactly does gamesmanship and sportsmanship look like in chess? Each OTB game begins and ends with a handshake. You acknowledge the worth and dignity of your opponent by extending a hand in good sportsmanship. This doesn't really make for the greatest podcast material, but if you get a chance, you should Google "chess handshake fails." After COVID hit and chess players returned to playing masked in-person, nobody really knew whether to fist bump, or elbow bump, or shake hands, or whatever else you could think of. Truly the epitome of people trying to be polite and just, like, not really knowing how to do that.
[00:32:53.09] [Jess] Other good sportsmanship inherent to the game would be things like proper attire, but the rules for what constitutes proper attire in chess are, honestly, ridiculous. According to FIDE, quote, "it is important to promote a good and positive image of chess," end quote. So what goes against their dress code? Funny you should ask. The following are considered unsanctioned at any FIDE-rated event.
[00:33:18.97] [Clears throat]
[00:33:20.27] Beachwear slips, profanity and nude or semi-nude pictures printed on shirts, torn pants or jeans, holes, noticeable unclean clothing, sunglasses, sports caps, revealing attire, clothes such as denim shorts, short shorts, cut-off shorts, gym shorts, crop tops, tank tops, and clothes made of see-through material, or clothes that expose areas of the body usually covered, in the location where the event is taking place.
[00:33:46.91] [Ryan] Wow, FIDE fucking hates shorts.
[00:33:49.49] [Jess] This seems like a pretty exhaustive list, but keep in mind that the enforcement of the dress code is left to tournament officials, so in reality, this ends up being pretty subjective.
[00:34:01.31] [Ryan] Let's look at two examples of dress code not being adhered to, a.k.a. bad sportsmanship, according to FIDE. The first involves none other than Magnus Carlsen. During the 2022 World Rapid Championship, Magnus shows up late for his first game. The time limit is 3 minutes plus 2 bonus seconds per move, and Magnus arrives at the board with 30 seconds to spare on his clock. Nobody knew where he was, and then he just suddenly shows up wearing a sweatshirt and tracksuit trousers. Magnus would go on to win the game somehow, even though he was down so much on the clock. After the game, it was revealed that he had apparently been on a ski trip and, upon his return, he hit a traffic jam.
[00:34:45.54] Another player at the same event Ian Nepomniachtchi-- we'll just call him Nepo, everyone calls him Nepo-- was wearing a t-shirt with Spanish writing that translated to, quote, "What are you looking at, idiot? What are you looking at, Idiot? Come on, get out of here, you moron," end quote, which I guess was some sort of Football reference.
[00:35:05.57] [Messi, repeating phrase in Spanish]
[00:35:09.56] [Ryan] Anyway, both players were told to change for their next games or they would be fined, and they did just that. Compare this with the 2023 World Rapid and Blitz Championship, when Woman International Master Anna-Maja Kazarian shows up for a game wearing Burberry sneakers and is threatened with a 100-euro fine unless she goes and changes immediately. Here's what she wrote on Twitter. Quote, "One of the arbiters stopped me and asked me if I could change my shoes, because they were 'strange shoes' and considered 'sports shoes.' It hurts to even walk in those, and I definitely don't want to use my Burberry sneakers for sports," end quote. She's forced to take a car back to her hotel room and change into high heels, so that the image of chess doesn't fall into disrepute? Where's the line on what's appropriate or not appropriate? You're fucking sitting down at a chess board. Why on Earth would you need high heels for that?
[00:36:08.33] During the same tournament, Magnus can be seen wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt and nobody says anything to him about his attire. There's players in hoodies, for God's sake. Obviously, one could argue that the sport of chess is deeply sexist and misogynistic, but we're going to discuss that in greater depth in another episode. For now, here's a clip from our interview with chess coach, player, and podcaster, JJ Lang of the chessfeels podcast.
[00:36:34.53] JJ, on your website, you have a commitment to inclusivity page.
[00:36:38.55] [JJ Lang] Yeah.
[00:36:39.15] [Ryan] Why do you think diversification of the chess community is important?
[00:36:42.87] [JJ Lang] Because I think that the way to fight exclusionary spaces isn't by just being not a bigot but by actively reflecting on how to make these spaces more inclusive, and thinking about what skills or resources you have that you can offer to make that space a better space. And I think about the number of students, not even just female students, but the number of students I have who had talked about, like, having a coach as a child, or even an adult, who they didn't click with, or in particular who would kind of get upset with them-- maybe a kind of, like, stereotypically like the old Russian coach who would just kind of snap at them, or tell them that they were never going to get good or something. And thinking about how a skill that I have as a coach is my patience, is I have a lot of experience with neurodiversity particularly, but also, like, myself, I'm a very anxious person. And I've seen how that affects my chess, and how that affects my results and ability to perform under pressure. And so, just, I know I bring a lot of empathy to those conversations and create a kind of space that could be really useful for people who are maybe trying to break in but maybe didn't find these YouTube videos that are littered with misogynistic comments, or didn't find coaches who, like-- even something as innocuous as, like, maybe just like a coach uses "he" as a gender-neutral thing in their explanations, and you start to wonder if this is a person for you. And so just knowing that I can do that, and want to do that. And then also selfishly, if this is the space that I love and want to spend the rest of my life in, I want to spend it with people who I think are really cool, and that means people who probably have mostly felt alienated by a lot of the people in the space who aren't cool. And so, I personally would like more people who I want to hang out with to get into chess.
[00:38:35.73] [Melodic saxophone music plays]
[00:38:36.23] [Jess] Okay, so before we move on, let's just do a quick rapid fire. Keeping your composure across the board? Good sportsmanship.
[00:38:43.45] [Family Feud "Good Answer" sound effect plays]
[00:38:44.66] Sneaking off to the toilets to check a chess engine on your secret Poopie Talkie? Cheating, a.k.a. bad sportsmanship.
[00:38:52.07] [Family Feud Buzzer sound effect plays]
[00:38:54.05] Keeping noise to a minimum? Good sportsmanship.
[00:38:57.38] ["Good Answer" sound effect plays]
[00:38:58.55] Staring down your opponent the entire game? A bit complicated. Your opponent will probably think that you're a weirdo, it will not probably give you any advantage, but it's not illegal.
[00:39:09.32] ["Good Answer" sound effect plays]
[00:39:10.31] However, it's also not good sportsmanship.
[00:39:13.13] [Buzzer sound effect plays]
[00:39:13.88] So that makes it gamesmanship.
[00:39:16.34] [Mellow electronic music plays]
[00:39:16.73] But what else is considered to be good sportsmanship? If you knock down your opponent's piece, you're supposed to pick it up. But if you want to psychologically terrorize your opponent, then you can pick up their king and rip its head off. I'm not kidding. That's actually happened. We alluded to this in Episode One, and, yes, it involves your favourite bad boy, Hans Niemann.
[00:39:40.04] [Ryan] In 2022, during Round 12 of the US Championship, Hans is paired against GM Sam Sevian, who is a very unassuming looking character. During their game, out of nowhere, Sam picks up Hans' king and removes the cross at the top of the head. He effectively decapitates it. The media following the event erupts into a frenzy trying to figure out what this unprecedented move means, because touching any of your opponent's pieces, never mind the most vital piece on the board, and breaking it, is akin to a NASCAR racer wandering over to another driver's car and hopping into it while they're stopped in the pit. It's just a completely abnormal move.
[00:40:23.58] [Jess] Wait, has that actually happened in NASCAR?
[00:40:25.56] [Ryan] Oh, I have no idea. I don't know anything about NASCAR.
[00:40:28.50] [Jess] Okay, so do you think we need to look this up?
[00:40:30.75] [Ryan] Nah, they trust anything we say at this point.
[00:40:33.12] Again, if you accidentally knock another player's piece over while moving your own, it's a common courtesy to pick it back up. But grabbing another player's king and casually popping the head off like it's a dandelion? Unheard of. Everyone immediately assumes that Sam is making a statement in the wake of Hans' chess.com cheating confession.
[00:40:57.06] Post-decapitation, a semi heated discussion begins between Sam and Hans.
[00:41:02.97] [Sinister synth music plays]
[00:41:03.35] Sam motions with what appears to be a "let's take it outside" thumb gesture, and Hans eventually calls the arbiter over. Everyone is just generally confused, but eventually the game continues.
[00:41:16.73] [Mellow electronic music plays] In a post-game interview, Hans explains rather anti-climactically that it was just a misunderstanding when Sam decapitated his King. He describes that the top pin of the piece had fallen off and that Sam's intentions were to glue the piece back together, which explains his thumb motioning. When the reporter asks him to elaborate on what happened, Hans says this.
[00:41:42.37] [Hans Niemann] Ah, it was just a misunderstanding. Nothing-- nothing too serious. We had a cordial conversation after, so I assume there's no hard feelings there. But just a misunderstanding.
[00:41:50.84] [Cristian Chirila] Misunderstanding.
[00:41:51.59] [Hans Niemann] I don't want-- there's no drama. I know you guys are desperate for views, but--
[00:41:55.82] [Cristian Chirila] No, no, no.
[00:41:56.88] [Hans Niemann] No drama.
[00:41:57.94] [Upbeat piano music plays]
[00:41:58.19] [Jess] Why does this whole thing matter? Well, it's actually a great example of good sportsmanship from both Hans and Sam. Despite the pressure of how it looked from the outside, they both refused to let the situation get swept into some overdramatized story that made both or either of them look like bad sports-- which is important to note, especially for Hans, who has purposely curated a bad-boy image. Here's David Franklin again, commenting on Hans' personality.
[00:42:28.92] [David Franklin] I mean, he's-- he's not, to my mind, a likable figure. I just don't particularly gravitate towards brash, outspoken, controversial figures. You know, the way that he handles himself in post-game interviews, the "Chess speaks for itself" and all of the braggadocio and stuff, but that doesn't make someone a cheater, right? It may make them not fun to hang out with at parties, but that's a different story.
[00:42:55.92] [Gloomy music plays]
[00:42:59.44] [Jess] But what does this all sum up to? There is a clear sportsmanship inherent to chess. There's actually a lot of rules surrounding it that feeds into the idea that it's a highfalutin sport of decorum. But a lot of these rules are outdated, and they create more problems than they solve: sexism, gamesmanship, and focus on things that are not actually chess or even chess related. Because having a bunch of rules that only get enforced some of the time just makes it more confusing for players to know right from wrong. I guess the safest bet is that, if you're a woman, just don't ever wear any form of sneaker, even if you're in a room of hoodie-wearing men. Here's Amelia again.
[00:43:42.93] [Emilia Castelao] There is an air of tradition around FIDE. It is a really old organization. It's one of the oldest sports-governing bodies, so they very much love their tradition. They love over-the-board tournaments. They love, kind of, the prestige of players sitting down at a board and, you know, duking it out.
[00:44:02.05] [Upbeat piano music plays]
[00:44:02.32] [Jess] Clearly, we are not traditionalists in the same way that FIDE is, but the reason that we keep harping on this is because, more than just being annoying, there's a real cost to acceptable levels of gamesmanship-- because allowing in gamesmanship has the potential to fundamentally change the game. Here's Bill again.
[00:44:22.96] [Bill Cole] It was well known with Michael Jordan that when he was playing, like, the word went out: Do not trash talk Michael Jordan. He'll rip your head off because he'll be even more motivated to get revenge. In a lot of sports, trash talking and getting into somebody's head is a regular thing. It's not illegal. It's not cheating. It might be low class or it may not be low class, where, okay, it's part of the fabric of the sport. And everybody does it, not that that makes it right. But is there any real harm in taunting somebody or getting in their head to see if you can make them crack? In pickup games that's a really fun thing among fellow competitors, to have the banter, and the joking. And is it illegal? No. Is it cheating? No. Is it gamesmanship? Yeah. Could it evolve into cheating? It could. But it depends on the integrity of the person doing the behaviour.
[00:45:21.14] So I think if they're a person of integrity, they're not going to go down that slippery slope. But if the person is predisposed to do that, it could begin with the taunting and the trash talking. Before you know it, they're into full-blown cheating.
[00:45:35.58] [Mellow electronic music plays]
[00:45:36.07] [Ryan] Even at low-level online chess, gamesmanship still rears its ugly head. Players try all the time to psych out their opponents through the chat feature. This is still 100% legal. But the grey area between gamesmanship and cheating is problematic enough that players should honestly just be wary of any gamesmanship at all, because it's almost like a gateway drug. If you're willing to trash talk to try and get in someone's head, why wouldn't you be willing to look up a position or two in an engine? Next thing you know, you're hiding a Poopie Talkie at an OTB event, or shoving accomplice-controlled anal beads in your [bleep] hole.
[00:46:17.50] [Object vibrating]
[00:46:21.06] [Jess] One of the questions I had for psychologist Julia Rios and her chessfeels co-host JJ was whether they thought cheating in and of itself could somehow be addicting. I'm not sure that cheating needs any more benefits than it already offers, but I've just had a hard time wrapping my head around why so many people seem compelled to cheat. Here's what they had to say when we interviewed them.
[00:46:45.36] [Julia Rios] But we think about addiction as being this very specific sort of psychological phenomenon. I'm not quite sure for most people that that actually would have a really high potential for addictive use. So when we're thinking about would the desire to win be enough to compel people towards cheating, I imagine online chess, definitely yes. We know that, for example, Hans conceded to having cheated in blitz chess online and was very specific that it was only in this context. So even though I do think that the desire to win could certainly compel someone to cheat, potentially, in rated chess and over-the-board chess, I'm not sure that I would actually conceptualize that within a framework of addiction.
[00:47:28.68] [JJ Lang] The thing that confuses me there is thinking about, well, what would it be that you would be addicted to? And so, if we're talking about winning, okay, maybe what does that mean? Does that mean, like, the rush of winning, like, the experience of the dopamine, of getting the win? But if you know you cheated, do you get as much of that? And that's, like, a genuine question. Like, you can probably do the sort of self-deception into believing that you earned it. But I can't imagine getting that high from, like, from using assistance in order to play moves that I wouldn't have found or make decisions I wouldn't have been able to make. Like, that wouldn't do that. But maybe there's, like, other kinds of reward that are coming in, like the reward of having that rating itself as, like, a status symbol or something, or being able to show that. And so, I think those sorts of things there, yeah, but I'm not sure that that's, like, the rush of winning or, like, the dopamine hit, would be the way that I would think about that. But I definitely think the perception of being a winning chess player or a high-rated chess player could be motivating that.
[00:48:34.45] But I think it's a really interesting question. Like, do you have cheaters who are cheating at chess, they know they're cheating, and they're, like, really proud of themselves for how they played anyways, and, like, getting really excited that they're winning anyways? I think the answer is probably yes. Like, human minds are amazing, and self-deception is fascinating. I can't imagine how that would work. The answer is probably yes.
[00:48:52.99] [Julia Rios] I think that there are so many possible ways that someone could rationalize why what they're doing is not wrong. I mean, cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
[00:49:02.95] [JJ Lang] Top five kinds of dissonance.
[00:49:04.32] [Mellow electronic music plays]
[00:49:04.75] [Ryan] We've said at least a couple of times already in this episode that sportsmanship matters. But, honestly, this was a concept we hadn't thought about much until we spoke to Bill, because Bill has spent a lot of his career thinking about sportsmanship. And he's experienced his fair share of cheaters-- whether it be through his students or his own sporting career. His advice is as much practical as it is theoretical, and it made us think harder about sportsmanship in chess.
[00:49:38.53] [Bill Cole] For me, sportsmanship is a big thing. I'm also the founder and President of the International Mental Game Coaching Association. That's at mentalgamecoaching.com. In the Free Articles section, people can go to the sportsmanship, and in that area, we have a pledge we put together for athletes, parents, and coaches and administrators. If you're interested in looking at it, I think it's a pretty cohesive, comprehensive pledge describing how people should be in their sport. If they follow that, they're going to be in a really good space. However, maybe they're going against someone who hasn't signed on to that sort of a thing.
[00:50:15.88] Let's say it happens where the middle of the match, the opponent accuses my person of cheating. I would have my kid say to the other kid or the adult, "I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm a very honest person. I'm a person of high integrity. I don't cheat. Just want to let you know that. But if it makes you feel better to go get the tournament director, go ahead. Otherwise, let's play." So you come up with a little statement that says, I'm honest and I'm not doing anything wrong, and a lot of times the person will take that at face value and just keep going.
[00:50:48.98] I teach all my kids to be-- I mean, I think they are already, but I highly recommend they're sportsmanlike, and honest, and all that. So they're not going to be being accused of something like that.
[00:50:58.64] [Piano music plays]
[00:50:58.94] [Ryan] Let's bring it back to chess again. Here's James Canty III talking to us about his experience of being wrongfully accused of cheating at an OTB game.
[00:51:08.99] [James Canty III] At my last tournament, I beat a Grandmaster in the first round and he reported me because he thought I was cheating, because I played so good. And it's the fact that, like, perfect. That's a compliment. I want more of that to let you know I'm actually working. I can explain everything that happened here. He was just mad, you know? It happens. So Hans got that-- this stuff behind him, the fire, I think. So I would just continue to work, keep myself locked into rooms and study for hours on end until I hit these goals that I want.
[00:51:32.48] [Mellow electronic music plays]
[00:51:32.78] [Ryan] Even in low-level online chess-- like, the kind that I play-- sometimes if I've played a great game, my opponent will message me to accuse me of cheating. Like James, I do take that as a compliment, and I suggest that they file a complaint with chess.com.
[00:51:48.71] [Jess] But not everyone in sports has experts like Bill or James to guide them. In fact, a lot of players are decidedly lopsided when it comes to training and skill development. Athletes have a tendency to focus on the hard skills of their sport. In chess, this is things like studying theory and working on your calculation skills. But when you're just focused on getting as good as you can at the sport, you're putting all your eggs in the same basket. Here's Bill again.
[00:52:20.33] [Bill Cole] So when someone is a beginner in their sport, they have no skills. Therefore, they don't really need mental skills yet. Got to learn the game. Got to learn the rules. When they go to the intermediate level, they can start learning some mental things, some basics. And then when they get to the advanced intermediate or advanced level, here's what happens. They get to the advanced level in their sport by a lot of repetition and a lot of lessons, a lot of hard work, a lot of tournaments. They've been fully engaged in their sport, correctly, and they get really darn good. But no one along the way really has said boo about anything mental. And we're not blaming their coaches. The coaches just are not trained in that. Nonetheless, the kid turns, like, 15, 16, 17, 18, and they're fantastic in their sport, but they have no mental training, then they hit a wall.
[00:53:10.80] So when you rise up in your sport, what I just described-- let's say the confluence of the hard work, and the drilling, and all the lessons, take you quite a long way. However, when you jump up a new level, like a new weight class, age group, you go from junior to high school, high school to college, college to pro, the pressure gradient is dramatically upped. Therefore, if the mental skills the person has natively, the demands of the new pressure level exceeds their ability of their mental skills. Now there's a gap and now they fail. They go into a slump. They can't win. They can't beat certain people and they get, like, a mental block.
[00:53:50.16] [Sinister synth music plays]
[00:53:50.85] [Ryan] In trying to become as good as possible in the domain of hard skills, it's common for soft skills to fall by the wayside, which is why many chess players are lacking in people skills. Most Grandmasters are made by the age of 16, with some players achieving the title as young as 12 years old. The timeline for hard skill acquisition is so accelerated that there's just not much room for other skills. And there's not much emphasis on them, either.
[00:54:20.19] [Jess] But there should be, because being able to talk to the media is a soft skill. Being a good loser is a soft skill. Not being a raging asshole when you're under pressure-- that's a soft skill. A lot of players just don't have the skills to navigate the world properly when they're not seated at a chess board. Their world does not extend much beyond the 64 squares that they study day in and day out. But despite popular opinion that this is how you become a great chess player, I'm not convinced.
[00:54:53.52] [Ryan] I think there would be less assholes in chess if more people spent time outside of their little fishbowl. And it's more than just making better athletes. It actually has huge repercussions when you spend your whole career only focusing on the hard skills. According to Bill, there's a cost.
[00:55:12.25] [Bill Cole] So when somebody comes up in their sport and they're quite good, that becomes your identity. So because of that, you kind of want to protect your identity at all costs. You're confident, you have an ego, and sometimes if you're really overly wrapped up-- and this is a common problem I deal with with kids-- they pretty much are only their sport. Nothing else matters to them and that does cause problems, because it becomes rather self absorbing, narcissistic. If a narcissist gets really insulted, they get wounded, they go into a narcissistic rage. And that's bad for the people around them but good for the person to go deeper in their sport, work harder, focus more, achieve higher.
[00:55:55.24] However, as a person, that person is lopsided and out of balance. But as an athlete-- and this is true for many athletes as they go right to the end of their career, into the pros and beyond-- their pathway in their sport is extraordinarily narrow. They don't have good communication skills. They can't negotiate. They can't do this. They can't do that. So as a person, they're sort of just not very together, but as an athlete, boy, they've got it together. And this is why we see so many stories in the news of pro athletes falling apart in terms of criminality, and drinking, and drugs, and domestic violence, and so on, because they never learned the proper skills off the court to be friendly, and nice, and get along with other people. It's all about them, them, them. They feel, why shouldn't I have my way? I'm the star. So that's a big problem. Like, that's taking the ego to the extreme, and that is not good.
[00:56:56.82] [Gloomy music plays]
[00:57:00.28] [Ryan] Just ask Jason Street.
[00:57:02.41] [Jess] Where's Jason Street?
[00:57:04.30] [Ryan laughs]
[00:57:04.75] [Ryan] No, it's a person. Well, a fictional person. Friday Night Lights. We watched the whole first season together, like, not long ago.
[00:57:12.85] [Jess] Oh, right, but then we decided not to renew the Crave subscription.
[00:57:15.97] [both, with terrible Southern accents] Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.
[00:57:19.48] [Rock music plays]
[00:57:20.66] [both, with accents] Can't lose!
[00:57:21.90] [Permian Panthers team] Can't lose!
[00:57:23.28] [Ryan] So many accents on this episode. I feel like we have to renew our Crave subscription now to finish it.
[00:57:28.14] [Jess] Okay, let's put it to our listeners. If you guys think we should renew our Crave subscription so we can finish rewatching Friday Night Lights, comment that in a review on Spotify, or Apple, or whatever. Oh, okay-- and this is great-- leave us a rating that reflects how good you think Friday Night Lights is.
[00:57:44.85] [Ryan] So five stars.
[00:57:46.14] [Jess] Obviously five stars. Speaking of leaving us a review, one of our main goals for Rooked in 2024 is to get this podcast out there to more listeners. So in honour of that, here's the news about our new look that we teed up at the start of the episode.
[00:58:02.85] [Comical slide whistle plays]
[00:58:04.76] [Cheerful music plays]
[00:58:06.20] [Ryan] Rooked is proud to announce that-- drumroll, please...
[00:58:10.49] [Drumroll and cymbal crash]
[00:58:11.57] [Jess] We have a new member joining the team.
[00:58:14.09] [Ryan] Is it a new host? Am I being replaced? You said I was doing a good job. No Sally Bailey is joining us in the background to help with our marketing and social media.
[00:58:23.81] [Ryan] Oh, thank God. I'm terrible at that stuff.
[00:58:26.60] [Jess] I know. I am, too. But thankfully Bailey is a friggin' photography slash social media genius, and we're really stoked to have her and her expertise on board. If you want to see some of the changes that Bailey is doing to make our social media presence match how good the show is, follow us on whatever platform you prefer. And if you like what you see, consider sharing our posts and podcasts with your own network. It helps us out a lot, and we really appreciate it. Thanks.
[00:58:59.39] [Comical slide whistle plays]
[00:59:01.82] [Gloomy music plays]
[00:59:04.25] [Ryan] So what is it that draws so many people to the game of chess? Is it for the love of the game, the image of chess as a morally and technically pure sport?
[00:59:15.77] [Jess] What motivates an elite chess player? Is the slope from gamesmanship to outright cheating as slippery as it seems to be from where we're standing?
[00:59:25.46] [Ryan] As is usually the case on this show, in trying to answer a simple question-- what is good sportsmanship in chess?-- we've just uncovered even more questions.
[00:59:35.12] [Jess] But we have one more question that we actually thought we wouldn't get an answer to, until Bill managed to give us one that we both actually really liked. When we interviewed him, we asked Bill whether it was possible to stop cheating in chess entirely and what he thinks needs to change.
[00:59:52.76] [Bill Cole] Sunlight is the best disinfectant. So here it is all out for everybody to see, and it's being talked about. You know, there is a silver lining in the dark cloud.
[01:00:01.70] Technology is a big culprit but, you know, I'll maybe put a little bow on top and say, how many millennia has men and women been around on this planet? And technology is incredible and growing by leaps and bounds. And unfortunately, our ethics and standards maybe haven't followed along quite as closely. Because of that, I think cheating and gamesmanship are always going to be there, and a big push for me on IMGCA, mentalgamecoaching.com, is to improve sportsmanship around the world so that even if the cheating is possible, people will make better choices and they won't cheat. So an improvement in integrity, sportsmanship, and ethics I think is the ultimate answer.
[01:00:50.82] [Mellow electronic music plays]
[01:00:53.41] [Jess] Maybe not the simplest goal to achieve, but, hey, at least that's something to work towards.
[01:00:59.23] [Ryan] We solved it. Our work here is done.
[01:01:02.20] [Jess] Okay, Ryan.
[01:01:04.33] [Jess, synthesized voice with reverb] Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose. Can't lose!
[01:01:09.80] [Rooked outro plays]
[01:01:11.48] [Jess] Next time on Rooked, we delve deeper into the psychology of chess, and we also try to figure out why chess players are so paranoid and prone to madness.
[01:01:21.02] [Ryan] That's right. Our boys Bobby Fischer and Vladimir Kramnik are back. Plus, we'll talk about whether Magnus is doomed to finish out his career the same way as Fischer-- though, personally, I don't know that I see Magnus living as a recluse in Iceland and hitting up foreign radio stations to promote anti-Semitism and how great he thought 9/11 was.
[01:01:44.27] [Jess] But no one really saw that coming for Fischer either.
[01:01:47.21] [Ryan] Yeah.
[01:01:53.70] [Jess] Thank you to our King-level Patreon subscribers: Umaima Baig, Madelyn, Gord, and Mya Schmidt, Stefan Vezina, the Colorado Avalanche Foundation, and the Colorado Avalanche Institute of New Zealand. Yep, we have trolls and they love the Colorado Avalanche.
[01:02:10.50] [Ryan] Thanks also to LipoSteve for shouting us out on her Discord and during one of her streams.
[01:02:16.47] [Jess] We appreciate it.
[01:02:23.70] [Rooked] The Cheaters' Gambit is written and produced by me, Jess Schmidt.
[01:02:27.51] [Ryan] And by me, Ryan Webb.
[01:02:29.52] [Jess] Our amazing music is by the ever-talented Lorna Gilfedder.
[01:02:33.09] [Ryan] Our marketing is by media genius Bailey Simone Photography.
[01:02:37.95] [Jess] Our executive producers are Rooney and Indigo.
[01:02:40.43] [both] Speak!
[01:02:42.85] [Rooney and Indigo howling]
[01:02:44.85] [Rooked outro plays]
[01:02:47.35] [Jess] This podcast is recorded on the traditional Treaty 7 territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the land of the Siksika, the Kainai, the Piikani, as well as the Stoney Nakoda and the Tsuut-ina Nations.
[01:02:58.57] [Ryan] We acknowledge that this territory is home to the Metis Nation of Alberta, Region 3 within the historical Northwest homeland. In the spirit of respect, reciprocity, and truth, we honour and acknowledge all nations, Indigenous and non, who live, work, and play on this land, and who honour and celebrate this territory.
[01:03:19.54] [Jess] This gathering place, and therefore this podcast, provides us with an opportunity to engage in and demonstrate reconciliation. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is a project that's been active for almost 10 years. But their mission has been in the making since the start of colonialism in Canada, which has driven disproportionate violence against Indigenous people. Podcasting has proven to be an important tool in remembering and seeking justice for the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls of Canada. If you want to listen to some podcasts that are doing the important work outlined in the mission of the inquiry, visit the link in our show notes. Do better, Canada.
[01:04:02.99] [Music fades]