Danny Rensch is an international master and Chief Chess Officer at Chess.com. After a successful scholastic chess career, Danny joined Chess.com as a co-founder in 2009. He directs the company's content, media partnerships, and professional chess events. Danny is an accomplished commentator and broadcaster, which he used to establish Chess.com's streaming and creator programs. He has channeled his lifelong passion for playing and teaching chess to advance Chess.com's mission of growing the game and helping people enjoy their lives through chess. With over 200 million registered users, Chess.com is the leading platform for playing and learning chess.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielrensch
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Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Rensch
Company Address: P.O. Box 60400 Palo Alto, CA 94306
Company Phone: 1 (800) 318-2827
Read “Dark Squares,” Danny’s Highly Anticipated Memoir
Danny Rensch has released his highly anticipated memoir on September 16, 2025. Described as Educated meets The Queen’s Gambit, this powerful and deeply personal book dives into his upbringing in an abusive cult and how chess ended up saving his life.
I first knew Daniel Naroditsky as a prodigy. He and I played in many events on the West Coast together, and I watched closely as this amazing talent geared up to surpass me. But Danya was always different from the other ruthless youth eager to des...
For the past 3.5 years I've been writing a memoir. The difficult process of unearthing, reliving, and ultimately putting to paper the wild (and frequently traumatic) stories of my life has been unlike any other experience I’ve had. Now, the ...
Hey Everyone! Recently my team and I worked on a project to review (and gave real-time reactions to) a bunch of different "chess scenes" from film and television. While preparing the chess diagrams to accompany the movie scenes, we realized that...
Recently, like many chess fans, I observed a mind-blowing endgame between Stockfish and Komodo from the Computer Chess Championship! I spent a day (not kidding) analyzing the position, only to realize I know nothing about chess! Enjoy! Oh ...
Dear Chess.comrades - Obviously everyone knows Maxime is my boy but that doesn't mean I'm being biased! I also analyzed (blog coming!) Fabiano's fine finish vs Alekseenko, but given the one sided dominance of that affair this one took my v...
Just when I said he might be going on tilt, Grandmaster Ding Liren of China strikes back with a huge victory as White over American Fabiano Caruana. The team -- GM Dejan Bojkov, NM Jeremy Kane, Peter Doggers -- and myself all contributed toward ...
Calling All Chessdotcomers - Thanks for checking out my blog yet again. The young GM Gukesh D won a crazy game in Cannes a couple days ago, and my team suggested I do a video. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not the boss around here and ...
Hello, my dear, sweet Chess.companions - In my first "blitz review" from the 2019 FIDE World Rapid and Blitz, I covered GM Anish Giri's game vs. GM Alireza Firouzja, and for blog #2, we have GM Maxim Matlakov vs. GM Magnus Carlsen. As the...
Hey Chess.comrades, Last night I stayed up late to analyze (and then publish!) this video: ... and here's the game analysis to go along with it. Shout out to my partner in "chess analysis crime," NM Jeremy Kane: Hope you enjoy the v...
Hey Everyone! While on site at the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championship, the Chess.com team was able to take some live footage of a few select games. I'll be analyzing and then publishing both a video and blog for you over time... I hope yo...
In week five of the 2020 PRO Chess League, two Western Division powerhouses faced off... and while it may not have gone as Canada planned, their youngest player did leave a mark on the match! The game below between Fabiano Caruana and Alireza Fi...
Hey all! This blog will have the "behind the scenes" analysis of each game from my Top 5 Chess Games of 2019 video series. Premium members, check out the videos! Enjoy the breakdowns of each game and leave a comment if you learned something.&nbs...
More fun from Round 9 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss. The game that took most of my time was, unfortunately, more bad luck for my buddy Eric Hansen. Opening preparation has been his Achilles this event, and his own PRO Chess League team...
In Round 8 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss we had just about everything! To start, the main topic of the round was that we had two players "copying" each other, one removed from the playing hall, and all four players involved playing terrible ch...
3 Really fun games from Round 7 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss! A queen gets trapped by Houska, we see an awesome "dark-square-dominated" assault by Harika, and then a super complicated game that I'm STILL not even sure I fully understand be...
The rest day is in full swing after Round 6 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss, but those who follow my blog get to read the analysis and watch the videos even before they premiere on the live broadcast! This round, honestly, had my three favorit...
Another day, another blog, Snoop always said (what, what!?)... Round 5 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss is in the books! Anyway, I analyzed a few more games for you all yesterday, and I think we might have something to learn! If not about chess...
After a quick break for Round 3 on Sunday (forgive me ) I'm back at it again with the White Vans (I mean chess videos!) for Round 4 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss. Here I analyzed 4 positions, crammed into 3 videos. Let me know if you're enjo...
Another day NOT on the Isle has me doing a few quick video lessons, highlighting some of the fun, educational takeaways from Round 2 of the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss. Hope you enjoy the written notes to go along with the videos... ...
Each day, I'll be recording a few videos designed to bring you some educational, entertaining insight into a few games or key moments that didn't get as much love as they deserve from the main broadcast. Below is my analysis and videos from Round ...
For the second video in my new series on the history of computers in chess, I covered one of the most famous examples of human dominance over the early versions of Chess AI. Bobby Fischer's legendary victory over the machine known as "Gree...
As promised, I'm continuing to offer my notes and analysis as I prepare videos for our YouTube and Twitch channels during the 2019 FIDE World Cup. In Round 2 we, once again, saw fighting chess (the kind only a knockout event with stakes like the W...
Round 1.2 (or is it 1 and 1/2? Who knows! ) of the 2019 FIDE World Cup brought the thrills, the chills and a couple of guys with some mad skills! Grandmasters Parham Maghsoodloo and Peter Svidler played chess to impress in Khanty-Mansiysk on Septe...
Today I analyzed my favorite game from Khanty-Mansiysk: The 2019 FIDE World Cup! Big surprise from the thumbnail that I loved Ding Liren's game as Black in the Closed Sicilian. I hope you enjoy both the video... ...And the written ana...
Hey Everyone! Back at it again with the White Vans... and blog! I'm currently doing a streaming / youtube series on my games from the 2019 Denver Open. If you missed the memo, I somehow, I finished that event with a perfect 4-0 score (o...
