Chess Nights at Red Robin – Ep 299

After my daughter Hannah watched Queen’s Gambit in January 2021, she said “Dad, let’s play chess.” With those fateful words, our lives shifted. Just over a year later, I could no longer beat my 16-year-old daughter. Neither could her 6’3 older brother Jonah.

I wrote this essay a few years ago. Hannah is off at college now, Jonah is all grown up, and Mia Sarah is no longer eight. I did not want to change a word, because everything I felt on those Thursday nights is still exactly true.

Once lockdowns lifted, Hannah wanted to play against live humans, and we discovered chess meetups happening all over Denver, at restaurants, bars, coffee shops, even Whole Foods. Hannah and I settled on the Thursday night meetup at the Red Robin near my office. One evening my laptop battery died, I started playing too, and a new chapter of my life began.

In this essay I introduce the cast of characters we met there. Don, the mild-mannered aerospace software engineer the single women somehow always find. Marven, an electrician of Mexican descent who has played 217,000 games and never brings the same board twice. Dan, the retired financial planner and gadget man who grew up in India. Ian, an assistant to a real estate agent who dresses like he walked off a 1930s movie set. And Hannah, known as one of the most aggressive players in the room, going straight for the jugular.

I also share why, for the first time in my life, I started taking chess seriously, and what Naval Ravikant said about hobbies that stuck with me.

The full essay is at investor.fm.

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