On March 31, 2026, US Chess and WGM Jennifer Shahade announced “that they have resolved all matters between them amicably and wish each other well going forward.” Shahade has been named “the first-ever Official Ambassador of US Chess.” As of April 5, 2026, her social media platforms state that she is a “PokerStars Pro.”
Lessons from Poker
Jennifer’s older brother is IM Greg Shahade. In a 2016 interview, he said, “One thing that I probably shouldn’t be saying is that deep inside I feel that poker may be a more beneficial game to teach children than chess (although chess is still very beneficial!).”
In Jennifer Shahade’s Thinking Sideways: How to Think Like a Chess Player and Win at Life, available in the United States on April 7, 2026, the word “poker” appears dozens of times, including in connection with GM Magnus Carlsen. In Game 12 of his 2018 World Chess Championship match against GM Fabiano Caruana, Carlsen offered a draw in a favorable position. After Caruana accepted, tying the Classical portion of the match, the players contested a rapid playoff.
According to Shahade, Carlsen’s draw offer showed that “Magnus was playing chess like a poker player.” She meant it as a compliment: “When Magnus made that surprising draw offer, he was calculating his equity: weighing his chances in the position in front of him against his odds of winning the four-game tiebreak.” Carlsen won the tiebreak, retaining the title of World Chess Champion.
Carlsen played in the main event of the 2023 European Poker Tour in Monaco. He finished in the money, in 63rd place out of over 1,000 entrants. Shahade wrote, “The lessons Magnus gleaned from poker may have helped him even more dramatically in his own field, chess, than in poker itself. Using lessons from one field and applying them to your own is a form of thinking sideways.”
Poker Mimics Life
In The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win, Maria Konnikova argued that poker is the best game for teaching life lessons: “It isn’t the roulette wheel of pure chance, nor is it the chess of mathematical elegance and perfect information. Like the world we inhabit, it consists of an inextricable joining of the two.”
Konnikova’s private mantra is “in poker, you can win with the worst hand and you can lose with the best hand.” Primarily for this reason, she said in an interview, elementary school students should be introduced to poker. She contrasted poker with other games: “In every other game in a casino—and in games of perfect information like chess and Go—you simply must have the best of it to win.”
Bluffing and Folding in Chess
Must chess players “have the best of it to win”? Almost always, yes. But sometimes, like poker players, chess players bluff and fold. Agadmator’s Chess Channel has a video titled “When Chess Masters Resign in Completely Winning Positions.” It features the following game.
Black, a grandmaster, had been winning the game before sacrificing his queen. The sacrifice is unsound, but White (a FIDE Master) “folds” and resigns. Had White called Black’s bluff by capturing the queen, White would have had a winning advantage.
Chess > Poker
In a March 5, 2026, interview in The Guardian, Shahade was asked about chess and poker. She responded, “I love both games. I see them as similar in many ways but the history and art of chess is unparalleled. You can’t compare any game to it.”
