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Ice Cube Isn’t Winning at Chess — He’s Losing at Poker
Mortgaging 30 years of reputation for an unredeemable promise is an all-in sucker’s bet
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For all of the armchair grandmasters out there who think Ice Cube is playing political chess with Trump by cutting a deal on the rapper’s Contract With Black America (CWBA), the only thing I’m sure of is that most of his fans don’t actually know how to play chess.
Chess is a perfect game, but here it’s imperfectly applied. The game’s allure as a representation of complex deals and big money moves is understandable: Chess involves long-range strategies, frequently requiring players to predict their opponents’ moves. It is both infinitely graceful and stunning in its brutality. But the more you unpack the game as a metaphor for a deal like this, the more you realize that not only is Ice Cube no Bobby Fischer, he’s not playing chess at all. He’s playing poker, and poorly.
If you take him at his word, Ice Cube is attempting to do something very noble: He wants concrete political change for Black people in real time, in exchange for Black support at the polls in (checks watch) two weeks. According to him, he offered his plan to…
