Seth Makowsky never had any interest in football. He never even watched a game. A chess coach, Makowsky was 41 the first time the sport ever really caught his eye.
It was Feb. 4, 2018, and Makowsky had friends were over his Beverly Hills home watching Super Bowl LII between the Eagles and the Patriots. He kept noticing how one of the announcers, NBC analyst Cris Collinsworth, dropped what seemed like a half-dozen chess references over the course of the three-hour plus broadcast. Makowsky, who had been using principles he’d learned from chess to help his Poison Pawn business coaching and consulting clients boost their bottom lines, was suddenly intrigued.
“It just became clear to me that people saw it as just a metaphor for football, but it’s really more than that,” Makowsky said. “It’s real. It became so profound to me that it prompted me to go deeper and deeper.”
Just how deep? In the two years since he watched his…
