Garry Kasparov's next gambit

Garry Kasparov joined Yahoo Finance to discuss his new online chess venture and his involvement in the Netflix series 'The Queen's Gambit.'

Video Transcript

- All right. The lyric goes something like this. Each game of chess means there's one less variation left to be played. But somebody who's played more variations than many others and is a master is Garry Kasparov. He's an author, a speaker, he's the 13th world chess champion taking the chess world by storm, many people will recall in the 1980s. He joins us now because you can get in on this if you love chess. And a lot of people are excited about chess after that popular show "Queen's Gambit". Garry Kasparov joins us now. And kasparovchess.com offers to a chess lover more than just a discussion about how to play the game, right?

GARRY KASPAROV: Absolutely. Yeah. So you mentioned "The Queen's Gambit". Yeah, and we have a unique content there. So we have chess journeys, short videos, and documentary, and podcasts. So we're trying to use the Netflix format for those who enjoy the show and then want to learn more about the game. So no one else has this at the market at this moment.

JULIA LA ROCHE: Garry, Julia La Roche here. And that series on Netflix really probably did spark a whole movement, a great deal of interest. I know I wish I had my chess board here. I left it in storage when I moved to Florida. But I would like to know, talk to us about the demand that you're seeing. Are you seeing new entrants to the space who never played before? I would love to get a bit more color from you.

GARRY KASPAROV: Oh, absolutely. It's very difficult to measure these demands sitting in front of your screen. But I can tell you, just from all my appearances, whether I talk about cybersecurity, about artificial intelligence, about geopolitics, I cannot recall a single event in the last few months without being asked about "The Queen's Gambit". So it tells you that it's amazingly. But the show reached our people all over the world and just in all the social areas, just in the most remote places far away from chess.

And it definitely helps chess to regain ground. Because for a long time, chess has been seen as some kind of potential risk for mental health. Many parents we're not comfortable with kids playing chess. Now it's exactly the opposite because the show proved that chess it's not a threat, but more likely it can help you to overcome many problems as Beth Harmon did in the show.

- Loved the show. But I want to ask you, in real world chess competition, I would imagine the competition is incredibly intense. Is it cutthroat the way it was predicted, or portrayed rather, in that program? And could you share with us a story to explain what it's like?

GARRY KASPAROV: Oh, absolutely. I was a consultant on the show. And I told Scott Frank that I would do absolutely everything in my power to guarantee that the viewers will have the first hand experience about, as you said, cutthroat atmosphere at these competitions. Every element there was as close as possible to the real chess events as one can imagine in a Hollywood production.

JULIA LA ROCHE: Garry, you mentioned chess helping you with a real world problem like it did for Beth Harmon in the film. I would love to understand how you view the world through that lens of being a chess player. Do you look at everything in your life as a chess move, things like making a decision? Is it-- I just feel like there's something to it. Because I often say when I make a decision, it's a chess move for me. How do you think about chess and how it's helped you in your life?

GARRY KASPAROV: Yeah, I think chess metaphor has been used so often now. And it's just it's people always say, oh, he or she is playing chess. And sometimes I'm resisting this kind of comparison. But it's obviously it helps the game to gain more popularity. There's no direct transfer of the knowledge acquired at the chess board into the world. But one thing that's important, and I wrote about it in my earlier book, "How Life Imitates Chess", that's 50 years ago, it's how you can find out the best way to analyze your own decisions.

So it's all about decision making. And if you know how you're making these decisions, whether decisions are good or bad, how you reach to them, so it will help you to understand the best formula for any decision making, whether it's in business, politics, or in your ordinary life.

- When we talk about your new platform kasparovchess.com, given the intense love for the game and now the popularity, might you bring the competitions live that we could watch streaming on the platform? Are you competing against media companies to do that?

GARRY KASPAROV: Look. The market is quite crowded now because a lot of people are trying to offer the services. Actually chess is gaining ground on Twitch. So it's very popular. American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura had nearly a million subscribers on this Twitch channel. And it's very important know just to find sort of the right angle of appealing to the mass crowd. And what we offer, and what will be quite unique compared to others, it will concentrate on learning and on community aspects.

So if a community have Discord groups that cater for the community and they will allow people to provide input directly to the developers. So it will include dedicated channels for new features and suggestions and for bug reports. Yeah, and also regarding learning, so we are providing more than 700 lessons already available. And at least one third of them recorded in a high quality Paris studio. Because as you know, Vivendi is a powerhouse behind this venture.

And again, that's quite a unique quality. And people will have a chance not just you learn, but also they will see the chance to learn at their level. Because we divided all the material and the playings into eight categories from beginners to masters. So that's why you're learning our process will be connected to your level. Regardless of your experience, you will be catered for.

And also the puzzles that you-- and 20% of the puzzles are free on our website. So the puzzles will help you to develop the material that you learn from our chess ambassadors that are recording these lessons.

- All right. Garry Kasparov is the author, speaker, 13th world chess champion, and also the creator of kasparovchess.com. We wish you all the best. Look forward to having you come back.