How Chess Engines Are Ruining Players' Skills | Nemo Zhou DSH #701

I only play five minutes.

I respect that.

On chess app.

And I've been banned twice.

Nice.

They don't like you talking, man.

No, no.

Chess is,

you know, trash talk and all that stuff.

I wish was more accepted in chess.

Yeah.

But obviously chess comes from, you know, a millennia of not being able to really talk games.

Just you sit there, straight face.

All right, guys, we got Nemo here today.

I'm about to get some chess lessons, huh?

Apparently, yeah.

Thanks for coming on.

Of course.

Thank you so much for having me.

You're here for poker, though, right?

Not chess?

Yeah, I'm here for poker.

We're actually going to be at the same table later tonight at the Celebrity Poker Tour.

You're going to have to go easy on me.

I don't know if I'm the one to go easy on you with because I think there's Wolfgang.

I don't know if you know Wolfgang.

Heard of him.

And there's another poker player.

Yeah, we, for some reason, have like the player, the table of poker players.

Yeah, and you won it last time, right?

I won it the time before.

First time.

Yeah, the first time.

so you've been playing poker for a little bit i have i've been playing since 2021 since i was legal i guess wow yeah okay legal yeah i guess it's different in every country because you've been all over you grew up in uh finland and canada right yeah you did your research i did it's important to me so you started in finland i started um well i was born in china um that's where both my parents are from and then my very first like excursion out of china i guess was france when i was about three four years old and then we moved to Finland when I was four.

And then Canada when I was like 10.

Okay.

And you were playing chess at three.

I was playing chess at three.

That is insane.

I don't remember shit from three.

Really?

No.

A lot of people tell me this, and I have absurdly good memories from being three years old.

You might be a genius.

Have you tested your IQ?

No, mostly because I think there's a very, like,

whether or not I am a genius doesn't matter that much to me, you know?

Like, what is that going to do?

Your ego won't appreciate it.

No, not really.

It's like, what am i gonna do with that yeah that's true though i mean you get the score and then it's like what's next yeah there's no just bragging rights i guess yeah i'm not i don't really plan on doing mensa or anything like that so it's like you know i definitely would say i'm very smart in some ways and then not quite so smart in other ways well you went all in on chess so yeah it makes sense to not be good at other things when you're locked in your whole life, right?

You're probably spending 40 hours a week for years.

Yeah, definitely.

There's this well i don't know about saying but a lot of people assume that chess players can be a little bit socially awkward

and growing up i was definitely that socially awkward kid obviously i've had a lot of time to work on him yeah yeah um now but yeah i would definitely say when you are so like all in on something it can be kind of hard to get out of it absolutely yeah i was socially awkward too i was a pc gamer nerd

you know what that's trending right now though now chess and pc gaming trending i know it's crazy the stuff we got made fun of and bullied for growing up is now cool.

Now there's so many chess players that are like getting millions of views.

For sure.

And also like, it's just a popular game these days.

Like you don't get bullied for it at school anymore.

Now kids ask you like, oh, do you play chess?

For real.

And the way you do, it's cool because you're streaming.

It's more casual.

It's not as intense as it used to be when you were playing professionally, right?

Yeah, for sure.

would not have gotten back into chess after I quit back in 2017 if it wasn't for streaming.

Was the pressure just too much for you?

Like was it too intense?

It honestly was more like my parents mostly wanted me to play chess so that I could get into a really good university.

And once I had like, you know, my university applications rejected by the Ivy Leagues and Oxford and stuff, I was like, okay, well, since I'm just going to go to University of Toronto, I don't really need to do this chess thing anymore.

So I was like, I'm going to just go focus on school and

you became a grandmaster, right?

Yeah, I became a woman grandmaster when I was 16.

Holy crap.

That must be one of the youngest ever.

Surprisingly, it's not.

What?

Okay, I might be one of the younger, but not definitely not one of the youngest, if that makes sense.

Like, it's on the young side relatively, but not quite young enough to be considered, like, oh, you have the chance to become the next women's world champion.

Got it, got it.

Like, there are people becoming grandmas, their kids becoming grandmasters are like 12.

And I only got my women's grandmaster at 16.

So, you know, there's like a little bit of a gap there.

Of course,

it's still like a really cool title.

And I was the first Canadian to get the women's grandmaster title.

Yeah, as well as the youngest.

But now

there's a few in Canada.

Yeah, I see that Indian kid.

He's like 12 and he's beating Magnus.

Oh my gosh.

Yes.

There's

the next World Chess Championship challenger.

Yeah.

He's 17.

Really?

Yeah, 17 from India.

What's his name?

Gukesh.

Gukesh.

Okay, I'm thinking of someone else.

I thought he was like 12.

Oh, there's also a 12-year-old that probably beat Magnus recently.

Like, there's, yeah, it's just

kids are too good at chess.

They're coming for Magnus.

He's been at the top for a while now, but these teenagers, man.

Well, it's pretty easy to not lose to them if you don't play.

So Magnus is not actually currently the World Chess Champion, even though he is

undoubtedly like the world's best chess player.

He just has decided that he doesn't want to play the world championship cycle.

So the current world chess champion is actually Chinese.

And he also is not a huge fan of playing chess.

he's like oh crap well i guess i wanted you know this so now i have to play but yeah he's been um sort of just chilling yeah well classical is just so taxing on the body right eight hours a day

yeah just i would say taxing just taxing you know like I think I did the math for some of the top-level players that play in these tournaments and they're getting paid like 125.

Okay, obviously this is like me doing the math, like looking at the prize fund and stuff.

I don't know how much they win, they get from sponsorships or all the other stuff.

But it feels like it's almost not worth it in 2024 when time is so valuable and you can do a lot with your day.

Whereas with classical chess, you're still spending

three hours of preparation, six hours of the game, three hours of analysis after.

And it's just like...

At some point, you just kind of have to evaluate what do you want from your life.

Right.

Yeah, I didn't even think about the prep and analysis part of it.

So they're really doing three three hours of analysis after each game?

Well, I don't know if three hours is more, too much or too little, but I would say when I was playing classical chess, when I was playing these tournaments super competitively,

it would definitely be at least like three, four hours of preparation per opponent.

Wow.

Yeah.

And then obviously the game can last anywhere between usually like, I would say right around three and a half hours is maybe average.

Dang.

But like your games hardly are ever lower, like less than three hours.

Yeah.

And they can go above five hours.

My attention span cannot handle that.

Exactly.

That was, that was what I said, too.

I was like, yeah, no.

I only play five minutes.

I respect that.

On chess app.

And I've been banned twice.

Nice.

Because I talk too much shit.

Let's go.

PC gamer coming in.

Yeah.

They don't like you talking, man.

No, no.

Chess is,

you know, trash talk and all that stuff, I wish was more accepted in chess.

Yeah.

But obviously chess comes from, you know, a millennia millennia of not being able to really talk during the games.

Just you sit there straight face, like kind of, yeah.

That's why I like Hans though, because he'll talk a little little stuff after the game and it it spices it up.

I I honestly think that you know, Hans is not the greatest role model for chess players out there, nor is he

a great example of a human being.

But that being said, I think that with the rise of like chess influencers or chess personalities, however you want to call it it's becoming a lot more accepted to talk during games at least in casual environments obviously you still can't speak to basically anyone it's against the rules in classical chess tournaments oh really yeah yeah i didn't know that yeah you learned so it's a long game it is a long game you're literally not allowed to um if you if you talk to anybody especially like you know a coach or something like that right it can be seen as cheating and you really don't want to be accused of cheating and yes like that's career it ends it yeah because he's banned from like every tournament now well hans isn't quite banned but i would definitely say his reputation not that it was ever you know sparkly clean but

um definitely he hasn't helped his own case yeah won't deny that have you ever played against him I have.

We actually used to be really good friends.

Oh, really?

Yep.

Oh, nice.

Well, he's like a little younger than me, but I used to basically babysit him.

What?

Yeah, yeah.

Like I played at World Youths and stuff.

He would hang out with me and my friends and all that.

And we actually played in like a Twitch Rivals Fall Guys tournament one time.

Okay.

Yeah.

Like we used to be friends.

We used to play league and stuff.

Like, I don't know what happened.

So he's gone down the dark path.

He really has.

He's gone down the full dark path.

Did you see signs of that when he was younger?

Or did it kind of be, was it random?

I did.

He's never been very.

He's always been extremely

like out there.

He's not afraid to talk shit.

He's not afraid to say what's on his mind.

He was always a little bit annoying growing up.

But, you know, I did not expect him to get to this point.

Right.

But yeah.

That's crazy.

Well,

you're on a new page now.

You're doing streaming.

You're not even doing those tournaments.

Right.

Yeah.

And I feel like it's more lucrative.

I think, well, I think it can be really lucrative to stream those tournaments.

So funnily enough, I think it's come full circle.

We're currently in a really interesting phase in chess where I would say after the Queen's Gambit boom, right, people just liked chess.

And now two years after, the people that like chess mostly just like chess.

And there's a lot less of like the casual

kind of scene.

Right.

Especially as, I don't know, Twitch is kind of, it's an own, it's, it's in a different phase now.

There's a lot less, you know, big variety streamers playing chess.

So if you're in chess, you're kind of all in on chess, which is kind of interesting in that way where classical chess tournaments are making a really huge comeback.

Like they're super popular.

People love watching these longer games.

And

that being said, as I can tell from sort of talking to you, you might not feel that way.

You still like playing your five-minute games and you might not follow these classical chess tournaments all that much.

But the people that really follow chess really follow those classical tournaments.

I feel that.

Yeah, there's definitely like a cult following, right?

Yeah, it's definitely a cult following.

But I would still say the average person that watches chess does not watch classical chess.

It's too slow for me.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

I mean, with TikTok ruining my attention span, I can only watch like five or 10 minutes.

Like Tilted Tuesdays, I could watch.

Yeah.

I like watching those.

I'll see Hikaro and Eric Hansen play those.

Yeah.

And it's entertaining.

I don't know how they talk during it.

It's so insane.

Title Tuesday is definitely the...

One of the highlights of the week.

Oh, is it Title Monthly?

But everybody thinks it's Tilted because of the, like, it's basically Tilted Mundo.

I'm such a normie, the fact that I said that.

Honestly, it's tilted Tuesday from now on.

Let's do it.

How much do you win if you win that tilted Tuesdays?

I think it's like $1,500 U.S.

Oh, that's not even that much.

Oh, it's not.

Because you're playing for two hours.

Yeah, it's really not.

There's not much.

Yeah, there's not much money in chest, really.

Yeah, because it needs bigger sponsors to fund it.

Yeah, biggest sponsors.

I think also a large part of it is

just

like the format of it is still kind of like very top heavy, which makes sense.

A lot of sports are like that.

But I also think at the end of the day, chess just sort of

chess can move in a direction where it's faster.

And there's people that are trying to do so.

But all of the world's most serious tournaments are still full-on classical chess.

And I just don't feel like that is completely necessary.

Like you can have one or two a year, maybe.

Yeah.

And then the other ones can be rapid.

Like we don't need to go all the way to Blitz, but just rapid.

And then more people might tune in.

I would love that.

Any chess games that you lost that still haunt you that you still think about?

Oh my gosh, so many.

Like every game I lose.

Oh, so you're really hard on yourself.

I am, but there's also some specific games that if I had won, it would have made a big impact maybe on my life.

Oh, yeah.

But that being said, it's like, I don't know.

Chess is

a very unforgiving game.

If you lose, you lose because of yourself.

And actually, instead of my loss, I have a friend, Fabiano Caruana.

He's been, you know, top in the world for a very long time,

world championship challenger, all that.

He actually drew a game very recently that if he had won, he would have gone to the tie breaks with Gukesh, the 17-year-old I told you about.

And then if he had won that, he would have had a chance to play.

the World Chess Championships.

And if he played the World Chess Championships, he probably would have won.

Wow.

So that's like a draw that I'm sure is going to haunt him for a really long time.

And I see these kind of things and I'm just like

Damn I'm like, you know imagine playing chess for a whole month and you draw this final game and you miss out on your chance.

That's just so unfortunate.

So heartbreaking.

One wrong move, right, can cause that effect.

Yeah.

Just crazy.

It could be one pawn move even, right?

Exactly.

When you're at that level, literally one pawn move can make or break the game.

For sure.

It's crazy.

Yeah, I don't know.

The pressure is just too high for me to ever get into something like that.

Yeah, I mean, I think the pressure is

if you if you're competitive, I would say the pressure is definitely like just something on the back of your mind and you're just focused on the moment.

But yeah, chess can be very high pressure.

Yeah.

You see how many calories chest burns?

Oh, insane.

Insane.

It's like in the thousands.

Yeah, it's crazy.

I didn't even know that till recently, but the fact that, yeah, it makes sense.

A lot of chess players are skinny.

There's a lot of chess players that are skinny.

There are also some less skinny chess players, but that might be because of other reasons.

I would definitely say that with chess,

the amount, I don't really know all the science behind it, but I would, I think if, I feel like it burns different calories, you know, like your brain calories versus, I don't really know how it all works, though.

Yeah.

Did you fast before your games or were you eating a full meal?

I was usually eating a full meal, but I would be really cautious to not eat too close to my game because then your body starts digesting and you don't want to feel like tired or lethargic during your game.

But when I was like playing my chess tournaments growing up, I would always have a set schedule of like breakfast in the morning, you know, training, all that, lunch pretty early, and then a little training after.

And then by the time I get a little tired, I would take a nap.

And then maybe like an hour, half an hour before my round, I would wake up and then go to my round.

But there was always like the set schedule.

Yeah.

Do you think it's easier to be better at chess now?

Cause there's so many information online and people teaching it.

Yeah, absolutely.

There is no better time to be a chess player.

This is peak.

That's why we have all of these 12-year-olds becoming grandmasters and beating Magnus Carlson.

Like these kids have the resources that the previous generation didn't have.

Even I didn't really have these resources.

Like chess engines really only became a thing during my lifetime.

the access these kids have is crazy and the access that anybody now has is crazy you can just go online look up any opening you want to learn and there's going to be a grandmaster course on it and 10 years ago had to probably pay either a lot or you had to hire a private coach.

Or yeah, it's completely different.

Yeah.

Even on the chess app, after your game, it shows you all your wrong moves.

You can learn instantly.

Absolutely.

And

we didn't have summary features like this.

Right.

Before you had to, how would you even know if you made a wrong move back then?

Well, before you would have to load it into the engine, so you would probably have to copy-paste your game

into a different software.

There weren't really like these cloud engines in the past.

And I think cloud engines have really changed the way that the average person approaches chess.

And it's not always the healthiest, in fact.

Because before I used to have to take my game, go into the computer, like put it through, and like move by move, I would have to input it.

or ask a coach.

And the way that it's very different when you do something like that is that you have to think about where you made the mistake.

You have to be conscious about it.

These days people just click through a game and it says double question mark and they're like, okay, I made a mistake here.

But there's not that much thought process going into why you made that move, how you made that move, how did you arrive at making this bad move.

Like there's so many questions that people stop asking themselves when the answer is just given to them.

Like they can immediately see that this is the better line.

Whereas before you had to sit there and be like, okay, well, if this is a bad move, I wonder why this is a bad move.

Or if you showed it to the coach, the coach would have to go through it and be like, okay, so in this position, you should have done this or that and there's that human element that's so important because let's be real we're not going to play like engines or the average person is going to play like an engine yeah the engines just beat everyone these days right yeah exactly and i i

you

we can't play like engine we don't have that capacity at least not yet um so i would actually say like it's really cool and i'm sure it helps the majority of people but at the same time it kind of takes away from the potential of people improving right have you ever played against someone that you found out was cheating?

Yeah, all the time on chess.com.

Oh, it's common?

Yeah,

it tells you.

It refunds your rating.

And then you play against cheaters, and then you can just see how much rating you got back and stuff.

So it's really common like that.

Yeah, it's pretty common.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

Which is why I think it's almost pointless to ever ask or ever think about if someone's cheating.

Yeah.

You could probably tell too.

Yeah, I can tell a lot of the time, but sometimes people, I don't know,

there are people that are better at it than others at cheating.

And I would have never guessed and then i get the rating back i'm like oh i did not know that this person was cheating i didn't even feel like they were cheating honestly they probably mess up like a couple moves just to offset it or something some whatever it is i don't really question it i don't really think about it because it's almost

like what's the point it's gonna happen anyways there's no point in thinking about it absolutely it's probably more rare over the board right

yes it's Well, it's supposedly harder to cheat over the board.

However, that being said,

it feels like we're currently in this slight paranoia phase where a lot of super grandmasters are a little cautious.

And there's also been reports of high-level cheating in tournaments.

And obviously the Hans versus Magnus thing was huge.

And up to this day, it's still like, did Hans cheat?

Did Hans not cheat?

Yeah, we never got a clear answer, which I'm upset about, you know?

Honestly, the tournament arbiters said that Hans didn't cheat.

So I will take their word on it.

Obviously, Hans cheated multiple times online.

So he's not helping his own case at all.

So once again, that's one of those cases where it almost doesn't matter what the official ruling is because.

The reputation.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I feel that.

In your opinion, which country has the best chess players right now?

India for men's and China for women's.

Wow.

So not U.S.?

Not the U.S.

The U.S.

has been really dominant for a really long time.

Players like Fabiano Caruana, So Wesley, Karu Nakamura, really, really strong American chess players, obviously.

But it feels like there's no American chess player that's like up and rising, if that makes sense.

Like these players have been in the scene for so long.

They've been so good for so long.

Fabi is still like world number two, obviously.

But from India, you're seeing all of these like 18, 17, 16, 15, 14 year olds.

And it's like...

When you are younger, you have so much time and energy and you don't have to worry about life and taxes and getting about, right?

And then

you see the American players and Hikaru is now married.

Fabi is 30s, mid-30s now.

I'm sure, you know, you can't just play chess forever.

Yeah, they're aging out.

Is it true you kind of lose a step almost in your 30s?

I mean, I think with chess, it's not quite like other sports.

You can keep going for a really long time.

Vishya Anand from India is a very clear example of this.

He's,

I don't want to get his age wrong.

I respect him like to the max, probably 50s now.

Okay.

And he's still one of the top players in the world and plays like consistently.

That's impressive.

Very impressive.

But that being said, for the most part, yeah, you kind of phase out around 40s.

Like it's sort of, whether it's, you know, your brain doesn't work as fast, you start having a family, having kids,

and like you just get a line, like, you know, whatever it is.

Yeah, most of the time it's commonly acknowledged that the younger you are, the better you are at chess.

Interesting.

How much of chess would you say is just memorization, memorizing all the lines and everything?

So memorization in chess works in a few different ways.

You can sort of look at

openings and memorize the moves.

But I would say for the most part, I would hope, at least, because this is how it works for me with Super Grandmasters and Grandmasters and all the top-level players in the world, you actually kind of remember patterns,

excuse me, rather than exact moves.

And I think that's really important because remembering patterns is so much better than just being like, okay, these are the first 20 moves I have to play.

So I would say almost all of chess in that way is kind of memorization because you're just looking at positions you've seen before or doing like pattern recognition association.

Whether you would call that directly memorization is up for

like that's not something that I really have a strong opinion on.

Got it.

But yeah, a lot of.

Yeah, because you've probably seen everything at this point.

So you can recognize what's about to happen.

Yeah, like I've never seen, it's very rare I see two positions exactly the same after the opening.

Like in the opening, sure, I've probably seen the position a million times.

But post-opening, it's very rare I see exactly the same position twice, right?

Because there's so many different positions in chess.

However, just because that the pawn is pushed two squares more or this knight is here versus this knight being there doesn't change the overall of the game necessarily that much so from that i can associate it to a past position that I've played, perhaps, and sort of go off of that position and develop a plan off of that.

So, I wouldn't really call that memorization, but it's a lot of pattern recognition.

Interesting.

And is it true grandmasters can think up to like 20 moves ahead of their current position?

Yeah, absolutely.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

20 moves.

Okay, well, I don't know about quite literally 20 moves.

I like to think of each move as, like, for example, if you play E4 and I go E5, this is

two moves, technically, because you made a move, I made a move.

So, like, up to 10 moves, like got it, got it.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Which is still impressive, right?

Of course, it is.

It's super impressive.

But and you're studying your opponent, so you kind of know what they're gonna do almost, right?

Yeah, especially in openings.

For the first part of the game, usually you've looked through all of your opponents' games and come up with, like, this is what my opponent's gonna do.

So, this is going to be my response to that.

Once you get into the middle game, it's a lot of pattern.

It's a lot of planning.

So, you've probably looked through

the opening, and this is what the engine says is going to be the best type of middle game for everybody to play.

So then that's what you do.

But yeah, other than that,

yeah, quite a lot of just thinking about what your opponent might want to do rather than like having pre-planned it out.

Absolutely.

And where would you say most games are won?

Is it in the beginning, the middle, or the end?

So for Grandmasters, I would definitely say a lot of the games are won by the end.

You kind of try to start building advantage once you get out of the middle.

Once you're in the middle game, you're trying to figure out, this is where I can push for a win.

This is where maybe I'm a little worse.

I'm going to defend for now.

Yeah, and then once you get to the get into the endgame, if the position is not clearly a draw, Magnus Carlson's really good at pushing drawing positions for a win.

But for the most part, if you're not exactly winning by the endgame, then you're kind of like just trying to figure out: is my opponent going to make a mistake?

Is my opponent not going to make a mistake?

And the answer is no, my opponent's not going to make a mistake.

Game kind of goes towards a draw.

But if they have like weaknesses, if they are down upon, if they have a bad bishop, something like that, you push for a win.

Got it.

And Grandmasters are so good now they're a lot of them are drawing right

the draws happen

the most draws are the most frequent result in chess yes because everybody is sort of like super close in level when you get to the really top but that being said there's a lot of decisive results in top competition okay in classical or in yeah oh yeah in classical too especially in classical there's a lot of no sorry especially in classical there's a lot of draws in faster time controls a lot more decisive results interesting yeah because people always complain about draws, but like they're so good.

I mean, like the game quality can still be really good despite it being a draw.

I feel like the draw hatred is almost uncalled for.

Sure, there's some really boring draws out there.

And like we always see that, those in tournaments are always like, oh, today's games were boring.

But I think draws can be really exciting as well.

Just because the game ended in a draw doesn't mean there wasn't a battle fought.

And Gotham Chess makes it exciting, man.

Oh, yeah.

Levy makes everything exciting.

I mean,

that's why he's Gotham Chess.

He's crushed it with that.

People that don't even know chess watch him.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, he makes chess interesting.

He makes chess fun.

Absolutely.

Have you ever played against him?

I have a couple of times.

Who won?

He's fun consistently.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I've maybe sneaked one or two games in here and there over the years, but like I, he, he has a very high win rate against me.

What was his peak rating?

Did he ever become a grandmaster?

No, he is an international master.

I think he's so to become an international master, that means he has to have hit 2400 at some point.

I don't know exactly his peak rating.

He's currently in the 2300s for Fide rating.

And actually, I believe he's about to return to classical chess.

Oh, yeah.

That's pretty exciting.

Oh, that is exciting.

Yeah, but he's good at chess, but he is not.

He wouldn't even be in top world 200, 300.

Or even 400, yeah.

Because he's taken so much time off.

No, just he never hit.

He never hit world top, you know, 300.

And it's not like a slight against him or anything.

it's just um there's a lot of grandmasters in the world i think there's way more grandmasters in the world than people realize yeah i didn't realize yeah like you only hear about the top grandmasters that you see play every tournament like ikaru and magnus carlson and yeah you know um like indians would know vidit and gukesh and prog uh but

No, there's a lot of other grandmasters and they're not nearly as good as those grandmasters.

It's like a whole spectrum of grandmasters.

You have grandmasters who

There's grandmasters around my rating.

Like, they used to play.

They're a little older now.

They don't really care that much.

They just play for fun.

But they're still a grandmaster because you get the title.

Once you get the title, you get it forever.

Okay.

And once again, no slight against them.

But there's definitely grandmasters out there that are lower rated than me.

They're grandmasters that are higher rated than me.

Obviously, most of them are.

There's grandmasters like lower rated than Levy.

Levy, I would say, is one of the stronger international masters, but he hasn't gone in his grandmaster norms, hasn't gone in grandmaster rating.

And there are grandmasters that are just like right around average.

They would never have the chance to play in the World Chess Championships, but they're still grandmasters, and they're still very good.

And, you know, they're still one of the very few Grand Masters in the world.

Right.

But then you hit like the Super Grandmasters, and the Super Grandmasters are the ones you see in media.

Those are the ones that you see

pop off on socials and whatnot.

Yeah.

Those are like the better than Hans.

You know, so Hans is a grandmaster?

Yeah, I believe so.

He's a grandmaster.

He's pretty good, obviously.

He's American.

He seems to think that he is going to be the next, you know, generational talent.

I don't want to disagree with him, but it's pretty difficult to be that when you're already in your 20s,

if that makes sense.

Like the current world candidates

winner is 17.

Right.

Right.

So it's almost unfortunate with how young Chess has kind of moved

that at 20, he's still insanely good.

Would crush me,

you, anybody else,

like this in a city in Las Vegas.

He would crush anybody in Las Vegas, any day.

Okay, I don't know.

Maybe there's some secret.

Grandmaster living here.

Maybe Magnus has a side house here.

Yeah, who knows?

But my point is, right?

Like,

really good.

but not quite good enough.

And it's crazy.

Chess is crazy that way.

Yeah.

So to become a GM, you need a 2,400?

You need 2,500

Fide A rating,

three Grand Master Norms.

And you get those Grand Master Norms by performing above 2,600 Fide A in tournaments where that is eligible.

So for example,

you have to play against a certain number of title players.

They have to be from different countries.

This is to avoid

collusion, rigging, whatever.

It has to be Fide approved.

So you can't just do this in your home.

Got it.

Like, you have to go get approval.

You can win them in in open tournaments, closed tournaments.

That doesn't really matter.

But yeah, there's like specific sets of rules.

Has anyone ever done it on a side quest?

Like, chess wasn't their main thing?

I would definitely say a lot of people probably have.

Really?

Yeah, I actually ran into a Polish, I don't know if he's a grandmaster or international master, but I ran into a Polish chess player once.

I don't remember his name, unfortunately.

He heard my mom and I speaking Mandarin at the airport.

We were on our way to a tournament in Reykjavik called the

Icelandic Open, really big tournament, really popular for players of all levels.

And he spoke fluent Mandarin to us and we were like shocked.

Like this guy is speaking Mandarin.

His pronunciation was great.

He knew my name because he read about me in Chinese like media.

So he could read Chinese media.

Turns out he had done his master's degree in China.

in Mandarin.

Wow.

In computer science.

That's impressive.

Right.

That's what I'm saying.

And he just just so happened to be flying to this tournament to go for his grandmaster norm, his final one.

I hope he got it.

I don't know if he did.

But anyways, my point is, yeah, like

there's a lot of people out there who are really, really good and are doing, you know, this for not necessarily as a side quest, but not also not necessarily as their main thing.

Right.

What role does natural talent play?

Because some people play chess their whole lives.

They never become a grandmaster.

And then some people get it in their teenage years.

I would say natural talent is probably about 50% of so it's a good amount.

I think it's a good amount.

I think it's higher than, um, I mean, I think it's right around there for sports, right?

Like, if you look at me, you saw my height coming in.

Yeah, for context, Sean is really, really, really tall.

Yeah, I was shocked the first time I saw him at the last celebrity poker store.

I was like, wait, Sean is tall.

Sean would have a much higher chance of being able to enter the MBA than I would.

Right.

Like, I am 5'6, maybe five, like 5'6, 5'7's pushing it.

And there's no, there's no, not even like, forget natural talent for basketball.

I don't even have the genetics to do it, right?

Yeah.

Like that's kind of my point is that in chess, it's sort of the same way.

Like you don't really think that people, I don't like to think that anybody is smarter or dumber when they're born or anything like that.

But I do think that everybody has a higher natural propensity to something in their life.

For example, somebody really, really good at chess might be really, really terrible at music.

Right.

And, you know, like that's just life.

That's just how it goes sometimes.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think environment when you're a young age, because you played at three.

I think your brain, 90% of it forms the first seven years.

So I think that gave you a huge edge too.

Absolutely.

I would, that, that's why the majority of chess players, if they become chess players, started before the age of nine, I would say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you coach someone right now, what rating do you think you could get them in a year?

It depends on how much they're willing to work on them uh work themselves okay because coaching is really important but i would also say a lot of chess has to come from studying looking through openings yourself there's only so much a coach can do got it yeah yeah because i'm a 1200 i don't know any openings to be honest i just winged it Honestly, I like to tell people that you don't need to know openings to get good at chess.

I think it's so much more important to not make mistakes.

Like, it almost doesn't matter what opening you're playing.

I'm currently playing an an opening that is absolutely terrible.

Basically, I just do this with my pawns.

It's called, I call it the ruffles because it's shaped like the ruffles chip.

It's one of my favorite chips.

It's a terrible opening.

You're basically minus 1.5.

That's a lot.

It's a lot coming out of the opening, but I've gotten to about 1700 over the last three days with it.

And it goes to kind of show that openings don't necessarily matter that much as long as you don't make mistakes and you catch your opponent's mistakes.

So what this means is that I'm not blundering my pawns.

I'm not blundering my knights, bishops, rooks, or queens.

I'm not blundering checkmate.

I'm not losing any of those.

Anytime my opponent gives me a free pawn, I take it.

Anytime my opponent gives me a free piece, I take it.

And just by following that alone, I climbed to 1700.

Obviously, the strategy and stuff, but you can look it for yourself.

This opening is terrible.

My pieces are dead.

So, like, you can see that I'm giving myself such a handicap, but I'm still able to get to

some level.

I don't know.

1700 might be the peak.

I haven't gone gone past it yet.

That's impressive.

Yeah.

Anyways, my point is like

openings I don't think matter that too much.

That's good advice.

Obviously it helps.

Don't play piss.

Yeah.

But like yeah, as long as you don't make mistakes, it's much more important.

Are you transitioning into poker?

I'm trying to.

I would say expanding is more accurate.

I think chess is always going to have that special place in my life.

But as far as competitive sort of edge goes, I have zero competitive edge in chess just because I've been out of it for so long.

I don't even know what the next tournament I could possibly try to win would be.

Like, I can probably try to win some open tournaments, but then it's kind of like, all right, so I won this open tournament.

What's next?

I kind of like to, I used to like playing chess with like winning

nationals and then playing in worlds.

That was always my trajectory.

But then once I turned 17, 18, it was like, well, now that I've played in the World Cup, I'm getting, I'm busted the first round because my opponent's so much better than me.

Right.

So, like, if I want to move to the next step of the World Cup, going to the top 32 women in the world instead of just the top 64,

it's like eight hours of work every day for the next six years.

I'm just like, okay.

Yeah, you know what?

If I, if I put that into poker, you never know.

I could win the main event in six years.

It'd be nasty.

Yeah.

You already won the celebrity game last time, so I could see it.

A lot of chess players are good at poker, I noticed.

The Botess sisters and Magnus has been getting into it.

Magnus is insanely good at poker.

Yeah.

For somebody who, like, just started.

Yeah,

he is one of those people that's once in a generation like talented.

Yeah.

He's just talented.

There is a lot of similarities though, right?

Like reading people, strategy.

So it makes sense why chess players are good at poker.

Absolutely.

Also, another really big reason why chess players are just motivated to play poker is because there's very little money in chess.

So if you become a marginally winning poker player, you're making way more than you would be playing chess tournaments.

Right, because you were top 64 in the world and you probably weren't making millions.

No, no, I made $1,000.

Oh, that's it?

Yeah, I won Canadian women's championships and I made $1,000.

Oh, I thought you were making six figures.

No, no, no, no.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Yeah, being Canadian women's champion gets you a thousand bucks.

And you dedicated 15 years to get that.

Yeah, exactly.

That's not.

You can kind of tell.

It's not quite worth it.

Yeah.

So you were just doing it because you love chess.

You weren't even thinking about money.

I honestly didn't even do it because I love chess.

I like loved chess until I was maybe 10, 11.

And then after that, it was very clear that, well, while I was good,

take advantage of it.

Yeah, take advantage of it, get into a good school, all that stuff.

At least that's what my parents planned out for me.

Didn't quite work out that way.

Yeah.

But yeah, it just was like,

chess is an interesting game.

It's like worth it because everybody respects it and it looks really good on your university application.

Right.

But if you're trying to make a living out of it, it is so difficult.

Yeah.

If you're not streaming, yes.

Yeah, if you're not a content creator, if you're not coaching it's practically impossible like i was making sixty dollars canadian an hour teaching little kids when i was in college to pay for college and like that was good it was really good i have friends making you know 70k a year just doing basically full-time coaching and it's not like bad or anything like that but it's probably not quite what you want to do after you've dedicated like six hours a day for 15 years of your life.

Like imagine if you did that with a university degree or something, you could probably get much further.

Yeah, I know the ROI just isn't there for you.

Yeah, exactly.

It's like all these things to put into perspective.

Absolutely.

Well, what do you got going on next?

Upcoming next, poker, a lot of poker tournaments.

I'm excited for WSOP.

Oh, you're entering the main?

Yeah.

Hopefully, there's going to be, I'll definitely be playing the ladies' main.

And we'll see about all the other events.

But a lot of that, a lot of...

chess content, hopefully creating some more fun IP.

Any chess boxing in the plans?

Oh, I was supposed to fight last December, but unfortunately, yeah, they managed to get a kickboxing license in Vegas, which I would have loved to participate in either way.

Yeah.

But unfortunately, the majority of participants are like boxing.

So kickboxing sounds intense.

I love kickboxing.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Chess kickboxing.

I would watch it.

Yeah, chess kickboxing would be crazy.

Chess MMA.

That would be insane.

Chess MMA.

But hopefully there's chess boxing this year.

All right.

I'll stay tuned for that.

Thanks for coming on.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

Thanks for watching, guys.

See you next time.