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Jennifer Shahade

American chess and poker player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ577543
Source-derived summary

Jennifer Shahade (born December 31, 1980) is an American chess player, poker player, commentator and writer. She is a two-time United States Women's Champion and has the FIDE title of Woman Grandmaster.

Shahade is the author of the books Chess Bitch, Play Like a Girl, Chess Queens, and most recently, Thinking Sideways. She is also co-author of Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess.

From 2018 to 2023, she was the Women's Program Director at the United States Chess Federation. She is also a MindSports Ambassador for PokerStars and a board member of the World Chess Hall of Fame in Saint Louis.

Early life

Shahade was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of FIDE Master Mike Shahade and Drexel University chemistry professor and author Sally Solomon. Her father is Lebanese Christian and her mother is Lebanese Jewish. Her older brother, Greg Shahade, is an International Master. She attended Julia R. Masterman School.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Jennifer Shahade” as american chess and poker player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jennifer, Shahade and American.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1980, 2018, 2023—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Jennifer, Shahade and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Jennifer Shahade”, the useful work is to connect “american chess and poker player” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q577543. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2018 and 2023.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Jennifer Shahade”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Jennifer Shahade primary sources, Jennifer Shahade archive and Jennifer research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jennifer Shahade”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Jennifer Shahade” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.