My Dad was a chess park hustler. He went into the parks and he'd sit down and say, “You go get ten minutes”. Then he’d play ten games simultaneously. Ten minutes each and he'd smoke them all for money. He destroyed grand masters so badly that they took like a year away from tournaments. Genuine embarrassment. No one wanted to work with him because it was a risk. His name was always feared. ‘Tate’ was a feared name. He said, “If you want your name to matter, you have to make it matter.” In his last year when we were sitting at the table, he was asking me, “Are you prepared for my death?” This was when I was in my 20s. He was talking about me being the oldest son, carrying the torch. He was talking about my responsibilities and duties. That I have to evolve and become a better version of him. He told me that the most important thing I can do is to have children. It is my duty to my father to be the man I am. I keep him alive and it is my sons’ duty to keep me alive forever. My father's view of the world was primal and based on masculine edge.

My Dad told me, “Son, the world doesn’t owe you shit. You fight for everything”. My Dad was a superhero. Chess master, fighter, genius. Every kid should see their father as unbeatable, and mine was. Chess wasn’t just a game to him. It was war. He’d play chess with me for hours. I’d lose, and he’d say, “Figure it out”. He could talk his way out of anything and beat anyone in a fight or debate. He’d walk into a room, and everyone knew he was the boss. Chess players feared him. Men respected him. I thought he could do anything. A man is a product of his environment. I got my edge from him. That’s why I’m unbreakable. I am who I am because of my father. From my father, I was instilled with a mindset of excellence.

I was in a hotel room in Brasov, Romania. It was about 7 p.m. I was sitting on the bed and I was due to commentate on an MMA show at 9 p.m. My phone rang. It was my Mum. I picked it up and she said, “Your Dad is dead”. I said, “Okay, I'll call you back”. I hung up. A girl who was in the room with me at the time. She said, “What happened”? I said, “My Dad died”. Tristan was on the other bed. He said, “Dad's dead?” I said, “Dad's dead.” And then we just sat there quietly for about 10 to 15 minutes. And then I said, “Tristan, let's get ready and go do this show.” He said, “Are we still doing it?” I said, “Yeah.” I didn't see the advantage of cancelling our commentating contract, when they flew us there from England. We commentated on the entire show. After the show, we went back to the room. The girl I was with was like, “Oh, is there anything I can do?” I was like, “No.” I was very irritable. She kept asking me if I was okay and it was pissing me off. I was like, “Can you just sleep somewhere else? Just leave me alone. You can't resurrect my father and you just keep asking me questions and you're pissing me off.” She left the room. Dad died of a heart attack in a chess tournament. Literally died on a chessboard. Best way to go for a professional chess player. Tears ran down my face, but I did not cry. There were tears in my eyes, but I don't know if sad is the right word for how I felt. I felt more anxious. Imagine every police officer on the planet just evaporates. You’d be like, “Well, what happens now?" You're nervous, on edge, scared, worried. That's how it felt. I didn't feel sad. I understood mortality well enough. It was more like, “Okay, well, Dad's gone.” So now what? Like, “T, what do we do? Dad's gone. We're the bosses now. We don't get told what to do anymore.” This is weird. That's how it felt. A strange anxiousness. And the weirdest thing about this is that the day before he died, I had messaged him. I was in a nightclub in Brasov. We talked on Facebook every few days. I messaged him randomly: “Dad, my chi feels off. Are you here?” It's the last message I sent him. He never read it. And then he died. The next day I woke up and my inbox on Facebook was flooded with stories from people who knew my Dad. It was very nice for me to read these stories of people I'd never heard of. People were like, “Hi, you don't know who I am, but I was in the military with your father.” “I met your father at a chess tournament.” They told me all these amazing stories of my father doing incredible things. A guy sent me a message saying, “Nobody is going to understand when you tell people how smart your father was. But I just want to tell you a quick story that when I joined the military, I was already fluent in Russian, and I lived with my Russian wife. And within two weeks, your father was correcting my Russian.” It was the Air Force record for the fastest assimilation of a foreign language. It was incredible. Everyone called him E-T, like an alien. They told me all these stories. A kid in Africa contacted me, said, “I can't get hold of your Dad. He's not responding.” I'm like, who are you? “Your Dad was sending me money and paying for my chess lessons.” I didn't know my Dad was sending this kid money. So I sent this kid some money. It was sobering but refreshing for me to read all these nice stories about him. To know that he made an impact on so many people's lives. And the fact that he died while playing chess gave me huge solace. I was happy that he died at a chessboard. That's how he should have died. A hero’s death. A warrior’s death. That's the best death I could have ever hoped for him. On the battlefield. Now I want to affect as many people's lives as possible and die a hero's death. I would hate to die peacefully in my sleep. I can do better than that. If this story ends with me pissing off the government so much that eventually I get drive-by shot somewhere, I wouldn't be disappointed with that ending. I pissed them off and I upset them and I broke The Matrix and I told the truth and they had to assassinate me. I'll take that. My father was 57, which is still quite young. But that's still 20 more years for me. In 20 years from now, I'll be kind of tired. I'm already bored of the women. I'm bored of the cars. I'm bored of the money. I'm bored of the diamond watches. I understand if I continue down the trajectory I'm continuing down, that the end result is going to be me getting into a lot of trouble. And getting killed. I'm ready for the bullet. Dying a hero's death is far better to me than a few extra years of consciousness and dying peacefully in your sleep. A hero's death is the best thing a man could ever hope for. Men used to go out looking for it. My father died a hero's death, He left a massive impact on people's lives. And isn't it a son's job to follow in his father's footsteps? Isn't that the whole point of it? I mean, I do have his name.

When is the last time you PANICKED? I was asked this question by my dad when I was 22. I don't even remember the answer I gave, but he became furious "DID THE PANIC HELP YOU?" Panic is a waste of time A terrible waste of ENERGY Action, reaction, CALM Professionals survive

A few weeks after my father died I got messages from a kid in Africa on Facebook. “Please can you help me? I’m looking for Emory Tate” I replied asking why… It turns out the teenager was originally an online scammer pretending to be a girl and trying to get money from Westerners. My father's logic was that this wasn’t a scam, it was a job, and a very hard one. Imagine how many THOUSAND emails you must send to even get a reply. When the kid emailed my dad, my dad gave him a single chance to be honest and say who he really was. The kid was from Ghana and worked in a plastics factory for 75usd a month My dad started teaching him chess online and giving him 200 dollars a month so he could focus on school Then. My dad died. Went dark. And the kid was looking for him. That’s when he messaged me. This was almost 8 years ago. I put Sam (his name) through school. He now lives in Johannesburg. RIP Emory Tate

My father worked for US intelligence before quitting to play chess professionally. We spoke constantly about the mind fuck games of globalists. He was tweeting about control in 2013. He prepared me to never wear a mask when this shit came. He died 5 years before corona.

A year before my dad died he said: "I will fight any man alive and win. The only motherfucker alive who might beat my ass is you. And I created you. So I am proud. But I am too proud to admit I don't have a chance son." He created a strong influence. As a father should.

I took a girl called Jessica home to my house after school. We rode the school bus together, I musta been around 9. We played Super Nintendo. She stayed an hour and left. Dad: "Oh, You playing on your own now? This your only girl son? Why isn't there a line outside?"

My “crazy” dad misspelled words and used bad grammar in every email or FB message he ever sent me. Now we know bots scan every single online word to build profiles of our behaviors. The bot along with everyone else thought he was crazy. Vindication.