What are good book club discussion questions for How To Win At Chess, Next Level?

Spoiler-free questions to get the conversation going: Who taught you chess, or tried to? Tell us about the kitchen table, the park bench, or the app where it happened; Reading this, which moment made you feel the warmest: recognizing something you already knew, or finally understanding something that had quietly bugged you for years?; Rozman's voice is jokey and encouraging rather than stern. Did having a teacher who clearly likes you change how it felt to be told you were doing something wrong?; This book is about the middle, the awkward stretch after beginner and before good. Where else in your life are you in that stage, and has anything about it been secretly nice?; Some sections felt like a cup of tea and some felt like homework. Which pages did you linger on, and which did you lovingly skim?.

What food and drinks should I serve at a How To Win At Chess, Next Level book club?

Food: Black and white checkerboard brownies, Pirozhki or warm hand pies (beef and onion, or mushroom), Big pot of mushroom barley or borscht with sour cream and dark rye, and Honey cake (medovik) or a plate of tea biscuits. Drinks: Samovar-style black tea with jam and lemon, Spiced hot chocolate with a cinnamon stick, and Hot toddy with honey and lemon.

Cozy night

How To Win At Chess, Next LevelBook club questions, food & host guide

Levy Rozman

#2 New York Times Bestseller 1 week on the list

A cozy book club night for How To Win At Chess, Next Level by Levy Rozman. Includes 8 spoiler-free discussion questions, food and drink pairings, a playlist, and a host guide, ready to print and share.

A club that likes a side of hands-on puzzling with their tea, and does not mind if half the group skipped the diagrams

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Levy Rozman (GothamChess) follows up his bestselling beginner guide with a friendlier, funnier tour of intermediate chess ideas, full of diagrams, annotated games, and his signature online-teacher warmth. It is a how-to book that somehow reads like hanging out with an enthusiastic friend.

Why it works for clubs

Everyone arrives with a chess story, from childhood kitchen-table games to pandemic app streaks
The gap between knowing the rules and actually improving is a feeling every reader recognizes
Rozman's voice is chatty and meme-aware, so the book is easy to talk about out loud
It invites hands-on moments: set up a board and let people play while they talk

Themes & mood

Cozy learning Chess Gentle self-improvement Playful teacher voice Patience

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Reading level

Moderate

Warm-up questions

1 Who taught you chess, or tried to? Tell us about the kitchen table, the park bench, or the app where it happened.
2 Reading this, which moment made you feel the warmest: recognizing something you already knew, or finally understanding something that had quietly bugged you for years?

Digging in

1 Rozman's voice is jokey and encouraging rather than stern. Did having a teacher who clearly likes you change how it felt to be told you were doing something wrong?
2 This book is about the middle, the awkward stretch after beginner and before good. Where else in your life are you in that stage, and has anything about it been secretly nice?
3 Some sections felt like a cup of tea and some felt like homework. Which pages did you linger on, and which did you lovingly skim?
4 Chess asks you to sit still, look hard, and wait. Did reading this slow your brain down in a way that felt good, or did it make you restless?

Going deep

1 By the later chapters Rozman is asking for real patience from you. Did your relationship with your own mistakes shift anywhere across the book, and were you gentler with yourself by the end than at the start?
2 Without giving away where he lands, the book ends up saying something about why we keep playing a game we will never master. What did that leave you feeling, and does it apply to anything you keep coming back to?

On the table

Black and white checkerboard brownies

A board you can eat, baked in one pan and cut into squares. Chess-nerdy, zero fuss, and sweet enough to soften a long diagram.

Pirozhki or warm hand pies (beef and onion, or mushroom)

A nod to the Eastern European chess tradition the book lives downstream of, and the perfect thing to hold in one hand while you stare at a board.

Big pot of mushroom barley or borscht with sour cream and dark rye

Slow, warm, chess-club-basement food. Make it ahead, let it sit on the stove, ladle it out whenever someone gets hungry.

Honey cake (medovik) or a plate of tea biscuits

Layered, patient, built in stages, which is also how Rozman says you get better.

To sip

Samovar-style black tea with jam and lemon No alcohol

Endless hot tea is the true chess beverage. Set out a pot, a jar of cherry jam, and let people stir it in. Non-alcoholic.

Spiced hot chocolate with a cinnamon stick No alcohol

The after-school, learning-the-game drink, thick and comforting for anyone who wants to curl up instead of compete.

Hot toddy with honey and lemon

For the long-game players. Warm, slow, and best sipped while pretending to calculate three moves ahead.

Soft piano, muted jazz, and warm instrumental hum, the sound of a quiet room where two people are thinking hard and nobody wants to interrupt.

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