More Randomness In Chess? MIT Sloan Panel Explores The Future Of The Game
How can chess evolve to reach an even wider audience? What lessons can it take from other sports? These were just some of the questions tackled at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference last weekend.
The annual conference, which took place in Boston, brought together experts, industry leaders, and passionate enthusiasts from all aspects of various sports.
On March 7, Chess.com returned for its seventh panel discussion, exploring The Future of Chess Growth. The event was hosted by Chief Chess Officer IM Danny Rensch and featured star chess personalities WFM Alexandra Botez and IM Levy Rozman, better known as GothamChess.
Ella Papanek, a Quantitative Sports Trader at Susquehanna International Group, and Daryl Morey, President of Basketball Operations for the Philadelphia 76ers, were also on the panel.
Reflecting on the discussions, Rensch said Morey provided insights on how NBA executives think about game formats and content packaging to keep audiences engaged, drawing parallels to chess’s challenges in staying fresh and accessible.
Rensch's key learnings, however, came from Papanek, who shared insights on how randomness could play a crucial role in broadening chess’s appeal, particularly in the realm of fantasy sports and betting.
Rensch reflected:
Even if people are not subject matter experts in the game, they know something crazy might happen. Something you didn't see coming, somebody might get lucky. There might be something random from a fumble to a card on the river you didn't see. And it really got me thinking what the appropriate ways are to think about randomness in chess. And the right ways to do it. We think of variants, things like Chess960 and Fog of War, but adding variance to top-level chess, or at least to the viewing experience, might be something to think about.
It really got me thinking about what the appropriate ways are to think about randomness in chess.
—Danny Rensch
Randomness!? Does chess need more of it??? pic.twitter.com/1wULSUiVjM
— Daniel Rensch (@DanielRensch) March 7, 2025
In addition to the panel discussions, Chess.com engaged attendees with a series of fun events on March 8. FM James Canty faced ten conference attendees in a simul, winning 9-1.
Later, Botez and Rozman took over Chess.com's Instagram accounts for an AMA (Ask Me Anything).
Join Daryl Morey, @alexandrabotez, and @GothamChess in our interactive Guess the ELO panel, where the audience can join our chess experts in judging real submitted MIT chess games!♟️ pic.twitter.com/Ajoq9piWTN
— Sloan Sports Conf. (@SloanSportsConf) March 7, 2025
Guess the Elo attracted a packed audience at the Hynes Convention Center, with Rozman, Botez, and Morey all chiming in on guessing based on MIT students' games. It turned out that GothamChess, who invented the fun format, is really good at this. For the second year in a row he took home the Guess The Elo crown.
Tarjei J. Svensen is a Norwegian chess journalist who worked for some of the country's biggest media outlets and appeared on several national TV broadcasts. Between 2015 and 2019, he ran his chess website mattogpatt.no, covering chess news in Norwegian and partly in English.
In 2020, he was hired by Chess24 to cover chess news, eventually moving to Chess.com as a full-time chess journalist in 2023. He is also known for his extensive coverage of chess news on his X/Twitter account.
