From being raised in ‘the Collective’ to being a ‘shepherd’ of chess: the winding journey of Danny Rensch

By Ben Morse, CNN

(CNN) — Danny Rensch is at the vanguard of chess.

He, alongside a few others, has helped to develop the sport from one which was played by the elites to a phenomenon that has exploded in recent years, particularly thanks to the rising popularity of online chess.

But to get to where he is now – a self-described “shepherd” for chess in his role as chief chess officer at Chess.com – Rensch has been on quite the life path.

As he describes in his new memoir, “Dark Squares: How Chess Saved My Life,” Rensch was raised in Arizona in what he describes as a cult, a group that he says orchestrated a separation from his own mother and exploited his proficiency at playing chess for its own reputational gain.

Rensch had to overcome many hurdles: Surviving emotional and substance abuse, developing tinnitus and allegedly being manipulated by a charismatic leader by being told he’d be the savior of chess. But along the way, his journey has taken him from a small commune to becoming a guiding light in a sport which, he believes, still has plenty of opportunity to grow.

Despite the hardship and trauma he’s dealt with over his life, Rensch says he doesn’t hold any resentment. He believes the struggles of his past are all part of life’s rich tapestry, highlighting a quote from influential Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung as the motto he lives by: “We are not what happens to us, we are what we choose to become.”

“I think we can learn through pain and suffering sadly, but also it can give us an appreciation for what we have,” Rensch told CNN Sports. “Part of my journey is that what grief has taught me is that your relationships are what matter the most and connecting with other people through whatever you’re doing is what actually gives you purpose.

“Your purpose is not anything you do. It is what you feel and what you find within why you do it. And I adhere myself to the fact that I am not what has happened to me. I am what I’ve chosen to become. And I try to take that into everything that I do and everything that we do at Chess.com.”

Life in the ‘Collective’

Growing up, Rensch recalls in his memoir that he was afforded the freedom to run around with children his own age, spending days in the woods with his friends or splashing around in the water.

That was initially what life was like inside the now-disbanded Church of Immortal Consciousness.

According to the group’s beliefs, the Church of Immortal Consciousness followed the teachings of Dr. Pahlvon Duran, a figure who last lived in the 15th century. Rensch describes the group as a spiritual haven for those looking for direction. Known internally as the Collective, the group sought to give lost souls direction – or as they called it, a Purpose – in a supposedly egalitarian society.

Run by Steven and Trina Kamp, the Collective would meet to ensure members focused on their spiritual alignment and, as a group, would pool their money together to ensure they were financially merged.

Rensch recalls they would organize meetings – called Processes – where the members of the Collective would discuss whether or not a fellow member was following the teachings of Duran and, therefore, if they were spiritually pure. Rensch says in his memoir that these meetings often descended into loud arguments due to the amount of alcohol being consumed, and it would not be uncommon for someone to be “glassed” by having a full cup of liquid thrown in their face.

Steven Kamp has previously denied the Church of Immortal Consciousness was a cult.

Families would share accommodations, with Rensch recalling sharing beds with other kids across multiple abodes. But as a child, this was just something he was used to at the time.

Many traveled to the Collective in search of meaning. But, as Rensch came to find out, life in an idealistic commune often doesn’t end in spiritual happiness.

Despite preaching an equal society, it became apparent to Rensch that that wasn’t the case. He references a famous George Orwell quote from the classic novella Animal Farm when describing the hierarchy inside the Collective: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

“There were leaders and there was a literal hierarchy, a totem pole system. In some ways, the members self-ranked and sort of self-flagellated in order to keep everything in check,” Rensch explained to CNN.

Steven Hassan, a licensed mental health professional and one of the leading experts on cults, told CNN Sports that these kinds of groups can cause a “dissociative disorder and a disruption of identity” in members.

Hassan has personal experience having been a former member of the Unification Church, the controversial religion founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon in South Korea in 1954 and accused by critics of being a cult.

“So in my case, I went from Steven Hassan of Flushing Queens, youngest of three kids, nice Jewish boy, wasn’t political, to a right-wing fascist wanting to take over the world,” Hassan said.

“And so I had a pseudo-identity in the image of the cult. So my own critical thinking was pushed down. It wasn’t erased, but it was pushed down. The public has this incorrect assumption that people who get into cults are weak or stupid or uneducated, and it’s just not true. In Danny’s case, he had no choice.”

As a child, the social dynamics of the group didn’t register with Rensch. But in hindsight, he is now able to recognize the pitfalls of the group.

Rensch says in his book that the Kamps were able to weaponize the faith the Collective preached in an attempt to alter people’s life courses for the gain of the individual and the group. Whether it be how they raised their children or the job they were doing, the Kamps could decide whether it was the right fit spiritually and, if not, take steps to adjust.

Also, in the search of spiritual happiness, it was commonplace for families to undergo dramatic changes. Husbands would leave their wives in search of their “Like Vibration” – a better fitting partner in the eyes of the Collective – and Rensch says children would be separated from their parents and adopted into other families to allow the child to flourish.

Separation

Rensch was an ordinary kid who liked ordinary activities. But his whole life changed upon watching the film “Searching for Bobby Fischer.”

He was immediately gripped by a sport which was so different to any other, one which tested the brain in completely different ways than any other.

And, as it turned out, Rensch was good at it from the outset. He would spend hours playing and teaching himself until his skills eventually caught the eye of church leader Steven Kamp.

Kamp, a chess fan himself, saw the potential in Rensch’s game. Rensch said he later came to realize that Kamp saw Rensch’s ability at chess as a way of legitimizing the teachings of the Collective and justify the way the group worked.

CNN Sports has attempted to contact Kamp to offer him the chance to comment.

According to Rensch, Kamp took it upon himself to make sure that the boy received special chess training – including hiring the former Soviet defector, Igor Ivanov – and providing funds and transport so Rensch could travel to tournaments around Arizona and the country to test his skills. More than that, Kamp instructed Rensch that chess had become his Purpose, therefore instilling a religious importance to a game he was in his formative stages in learning.

This added pressure on chess distorted his view on what was meant to be an enjoyable game, Rensch says.

“When I was receiving discipline, to say it was wrapped up in shame and self-worth doesn’t even do it justice because the shame and self-worth was meant to transcend this lifetime. It was meant to transcend the planet,” he explained.

“It was like: ‘Oh, I’m actually, literally going to hell if I’m not putting my efforts into getting as good as I can at chess all the time.’”

This added attention and time to focus on chess meant Rensch quickly went from promising youngster to tournament winner and chess prodigy. Over his chess career, he would become the youngest national chess master in Arizona history and a multi-time national scholastic champion.

But this success came with a catch: Kamp took it upon himself to push Rensch further and further into the chess world, no matter the consequences, Rensch says. He saw Rensch as a future grandmaster.

The constant flights and elevation changes involved in the journeys he was making across the US resulted in Rensch developing tinnitus, he said, which would eventually develop into chronic pain, infections and sinus pressure.

Rensch describes the most painful moment of his time with the group as being when he was separated from his mother, with his future success at chess given as a main reason why that move was orchestrated.

Hassan said that children being separated from their parents is commonplace in cults, saying “parent alienation” is a typical practice.

“This is something that typically happens with authoritarian cults. One of the parents gets into a cult, the other one doesn’t want to,” Hassan said. “So I’ve seen that one for 48 years. Every single cult does that as a thing.”

Rensch’s chess playing career would eventually fizzle out, and looking back in hindsight, his relationship with the sport changed as he grew up and could recognize the environment he was living in.

“The game gave me everything and then it took everything away. And I’ve been to hell and back with chess so many times,” he said.

Moving on

As Rensch went through his life in the Collective and his chess playing faded away, his issues continued to pile up.

While he met his wife Shauna and had children of his own, Rensch says he dealt with alcohol and substance abuse as he struggled with the dynamic of the Collective and how he fit in. Shauna was briefly with the Collective when she was six but moved away before returning later in life.

He recalls the moment he decided to leave the Collective shortly after the birth of his second child and coming to the painful realization that it was time to move on.

That decoupling wasn’t an easy thought to process for Rensch, having spent most of his life with the group.

“Whatever I could do to myself, whatever baggage I was willing to carry, as long as it was just me, there was probably a part of me that could or would do it forever,” he said. “And that’s part of how you dip in and out of addictive behavior and back out again, you dip in and out of almost ruining your marriage but then barely saving it.”

Stewards

By that point, in 2009, Rensch had begun coaching on Chess.com. It was a humble beginning, but it allowed him to get his foot in the door at an organization which would soon enjoy a meteoric rise.

It wasn’t easy at the beginning. The website was set up in 2007 and, at that time, the main online chess platform was the Internet Chess Club (ICC).

Through years of development and clever marketing, Chess.com was able to develop into the dominant force of internet chess, with Rensch playing a key role behind that growth.

As well as making it the main platform for coaches to help nurture the next generation of chess stars, a key manta in developing Chess.com was to open the sport to the wider community, with Rensch admitting that the game has at times been a “gatekeep community” by the “intellectually elite or (those who) want to revere and worship the intellectually elite.”

“We were like: ‘This is wrong.’ And I saw that it was wrong from having failed to try to reach the mountain as a prodigy and (Chess.com CEO and co-founder) Erik (Allebest) saw that it was wrong as someone who always loved the game but felt kept out of the club,” Rensch said.

Nowadays, Chess.com is home to over 230 million members, sees more than one billion moves being played every day, and is valued at over $1 billion with no venture backing, according to the company. During those early years as a start-up, the only financial backing the site was ever able to receive was a $70,000 temporary loan from the mom of Allebest’s friend.

As one of the biggest organizations in the sport, Chess.com has also had to weather its fair share of controversy, most notably a cheating scandal involving an accusation from Magnus Carlsen that Hans Niemann cheated in an over-the-board game. Niemann was eventually cleared of cheating in that particular match.

Rensch said that the episode taught the people involved with Chess.com that it had “way more influence than we thought we did.”

But despite the meteoric rise and the sway the site now has over the sport, Rensch and his colleagues see themselves as guiding hands.

“We really are the shepherds of something that belongs to humanity and we do not take that for granted,” he said.

“The truth is we always had a bit of an existential – viewing ourselves from 30,000 feet – view that this was kind of bigger than us and that we owed chess the opportunity to reach more people.”

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