#2275 - Magnus Carlsen

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Speaker 2 Magnets Carlson, ladies and gentlemen, you want some coffee? No, oh, this is water. Yeah, tell Jeff to bring in the coffee.
Forgot to bring in the coffee.

Speaker 1 No, no, I'm good with water. But I need coffee.

Speaker 2 I'm going to keep up with you, buddy.

Speaker 2 And of course, Tony Hedgecliffe is here, who's a gigantic chess fan, and just creamed creamed his pants yesterday when I told him you were coming in.

Speaker 2 And then immediately I said, you got to come with me. And so Tony's here as well.
It's an honor to meet you, man.

Speaker 2 I'm always fascinated by people that are at the top of something that's insanely difficult, like chess. And I'm always wondering, like, how much time is involved?

Speaker 2 How often do you play? And when did you start? How old were you when you first started playing?

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 my dad is an avid chess player. So I think he

Speaker 1 thought that I might have some talent. So he taught me pretty early at around five years old.
But at that time, I wasn't that interested.

Speaker 1 I was mostly into Legos and I was into maths and like sports stats. And I had my little flag book with all

Speaker 1 the countries in the world, their flags and their inhabitants and area and everything. And I sort of,

Speaker 1 that's what I did, generally just

Speaker 1 taking in all the all the stats that I could also with with sports, reading the sports section every day. And I didn't find chess that fun.

Speaker 1 Uh a couple of years later, uh my older sister, who's a year and a half older than me, she had uh she did a lot of chess with with my dad. I started sitting in on them a bit and

Speaker 1 um I I started liking it. I really, really wanted to beat my sister as well at generally everything.

Speaker 1 And uh

Speaker 1 yeah, from there on it really just became uh became my thing and it's you know been my main hobby and

Speaker 1 uh eventually work as well since yeah obviously yeah it's fun it's so funny though a spark a competitive spark with your sister is really what ignited you to get going with it yeah the the funny thing is like she's not competitive at all so she hated the fact that I like I wanted to play especially when I I realized that I could beat her

Speaker 1 and she she she liked chess but she stopped for for a while and only started when i had become like good enough that there wasn't a competition so it turned out like my dad was right after all i just needed um i just needed that um that extra push yeah what a what a call i think you've got some talent what a call

Speaker 4 grandmaster at 12 was it

Speaker 1 um 13 so actually the um the record is um the record is 12 but uh Most kids these days, honestly, they start so early.

Speaker 1 I was at a tournament in India a few months ago, and there's this guy who's like a 1600-rated player, and he's three years old. And like,

Speaker 1 I'm seeing the games, like they are actually, they're actually decent.

Speaker 1 And yeah, now there's this one kid from Argentina, like they call him the Messi of chess, who's going to become a grandmaster soon. I think he's only 10.
So they're really, really

Speaker 1 playing early these days. But

Speaker 1 it's good to see, though, because information is so easily accessible these days. It takes a lot shorter time

Speaker 1 to get good at something.

Speaker 2 Well, it seems like now

Speaker 2 chess, because of social media, it's like everything else. It's kind of exploding because there's so many fascinating videos out.

Speaker 2 And then, of course, there was the big controversy with that young man who you believe is a big old cheater.

Speaker 1 That guy.

Speaker 2 I need to know know, the anal beads thing. Is that a legitimate theory?

Speaker 1 So it actually started in one of my friend's streamer channel. That like one random guy said,

Speaker 1 made a comment about anal beads. And

Speaker 1 he was like, eh, yeah, maybe. And then I think it

Speaker 1 became

Speaker 1 it started taking the rounds in Reddit. And then Elon saw it, tweeted about it, and then obviously it blew up

Speaker 1 I actually spoke to

Speaker 1 I think it was Mark Andreessen who said like

Speaker 1 that would be one way to do it yes

Speaker 1 but I really really really don't believe that that has happened like I think it has no

Speaker 2 no connection to reality but it just became its a thing of its own so unfortunately this young man will explain the anal beads thing but this this young man is a very talented player but does have a history of some shenanigans, correct?

Speaker 2 And even admitted that he did a little bit of cheating in order to move his rating higher so he could play better players.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, he's not admitted to nearly the extent of

Speaker 1 his cheating,

Speaker 1 but if you sort of

Speaker 1 If you sort of take what

Speaker 1 Cheslow Combs say, then, yeah,

Speaker 1 he cheated a bunch online

Speaker 1 in a certain period of time,

Speaker 1 partly in tournaments, but mostly in casual games, as he set himself to

Speaker 1 sort of

Speaker 1 get himself up the standings and play the best players in the world.

Speaker 2 But he is a very good player.

Speaker 1 I think he has become a very good player, yeah.

Speaker 2 Interesting. Okay.
So what made you convinced that he was cheating in that particular game? And by what method do you think he could possibly have have been doing this?

Speaker 4 Could you hear something? Was it like burnt?

Speaker 4 You're hearing vibrations.

Speaker 1 He sees his

Speaker 2 seat shift.

Speaker 4 You're smelling something. There's a wave of something in the air.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, that

Speaker 1 would have been the smoking gun, I suppose.

Speaker 1 I think there was a combination of

Speaker 1 things, though, based on the chest level I

Speaker 1 that I thought that he he had and that I'd seen from from his game both playing against him analyzing a little with him and looking at his at his other games

Speaker 1 there were a lot of stories

Speaker 1 back then

Speaker 1 um the thing is also there's um there's a Netflix documentary coming in a few months that sort of it's where I'm telling my side of the story.

Speaker 1 so i like i cannot go too deep into

Speaker 1 uh into everything but

Speaker 1 what i can say was that there were there were a lot of factors um that made me very very suspicious um

Speaker 1 and um i think ever since then he has

Speaker 1 become better uh but there's some still something

Speaker 2 uh there's still something off um both then and and now but that's so fascinating that as an elite chess player you'd be able to recognize that something is happening that's outside of his capabilities

Speaker 1 again um

Speaker 1 I'm not ruling out the factor that chess players are becoming more and more paranoid because

Speaker 1 we do have chess engines that basically have perfect chess, right?

Speaker 1 Like anybody with their their phone can, as I think Elon tweeted to to Gary once like my iPhone can beat you at chess which is which is

Speaker 1 which is the truth and this means that you know anybody having access to information it's it's incredibly it's incredibly dangerous and I think top-level chess has been a lot based on on trust and

Speaker 1 whenever you have outsiders whom there are these stories about everybody gets a bit a bit jittery. There's like

Speaker 1 people who either like they burst onto the scene, then they establish themselves and

Speaker 1 people know that they're legit and so on.

Speaker 1 It's not a problem. With him specifically,

Speaker 1 I don't know. It was.

Speaker 1 It's just...

Speaker 1 He doesn't seem to be playing, or it didn't at that point seem to be playing with

Speaker 1 a particular style. It seemed that he either played kind of eh or he just more or less played any position very well in certain games.

Speaker 1 Like he could just switch from tactical to positional play very easily and

Speaker 1 it was

Speaker 1 yeah, it didn't didn't smell good to me.

Speaker 1 It still doesn't, but

Speaker 1 you know, to some extent, like,

Speaker 1 he had his lawsuit. We've all kind of moved a little bit on.
I think I don't trust him. A lot of other top players still don't trust him.

Speaker 1 He certainly

Speaker 1 doesn't trust me or chess.com or Hikario or whomever he felt wrong by.

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Speaker 2 The problem is like once someone admits that they cheated a game, especially a game that has a lot of trust in it like chess, you're always going to think, is he cheating now?

Speaker 1 Always.

Speaker 2 But the question is like what method? Like what do people do? So if you're sitting there, you have no phone, your pockets are empty, like what could you be doing that could possibly be aiding you?

Speaker 1 Well, first of all, like an invisible air piece that people use for exams and and so on.

Speaker 2 So but he would have to have a partner.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he he would, yeah.

Speaker 1 That

Speaker 1 would

Speaker 1 not have been detected by the security system that they they used at that tournament.

Speaker 1 They amped up the security after the whole thing happened.

Speaker 2 Check your ears a little bit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, they they start checking their

Speaker 1 our ears and then um you know, we had a live tournament in in Paris last year where I played him, where there was proper security, where all of these things would be picked up, and

Speaker 1 he didn't play

Speaker 1 to nearly the same level there.

Speaker 1 So I think,

Speaker 1 well, I'm not an expert in all of that, but that's what I've heard from people, that that's like the most obvious thing that

Speaker 1 someone could have done. And it wouldn't be really that hard to pull off, considering the kind of

Speaker 1 security we have at chess tournaments. And this tournament had like a little bit of security.
A lot of them, like open tournaments, people are like wandering in and out of the playing hall.

Speaker 1 There are people in the playing hall, like spectators with

Speaker 1 their smartphones on and taking pictures or whatever, like going in and out. Like they could make signals.
It's

Speaker 1 yeah, it's it's it's it's it's hard. It's it's a big problem in chess for sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So the anal beads thing, for people who don't know what we're talking about, the theory was that he had vibrating anal beads that would somehow or another, through some sort of code, explain to him the moves.

Speaker 2 And I've thought about this for a lot longer than I care to admit. Like, what kind of code are you getting from inside your butt that you're like, okay, I got it?

Speaker 4 Well, it would be like, you know, C4 or whatever. Like, it could tell you.

Speaker 2 Wait, how would it sit in your butt though?

Speaker 1 Bam, bam, bump, bump.

Speaker 4 Well, I mean, it's more screwed up.

Speaker 2 I'd have to show you.

Speaker 1 Luckily, I brought one. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So I'm in right now. No, it would be like, it would buzz, right? It would buzz the letters and then the numbers that would indicate where you would move, and there would only be a piece or two.

Speaker 2 So like the first three vibrations would be letter C and then, yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's just a sort of technological version of ways people have cheated before. There was a scandal back in 2010 where the captain of the French team was helping

Speaker 1 one of the French players by cheating. He was basically just standing in certain spots around the table to tell him

Speaker 1 where to move. Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 That's crazy.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 Dirty people out there.

Speaker 1 This is wild.

Speaker 2 Well, it's such a competitive thing. Whenever you have competitive things, you always have people that just want to win at any cost.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's also funny that one of his teammates from that tournament

Speaker 1 worked with me for a long time, and he told me this guy was

Speaker 1 going out every night, not taking the tournament seriously at all. But yeah, he had a good reason.

Speaker 1 He's partying. He knew he was going to win.
That's hilarious.

Speaker 2 So is that the most egregious form of cheating that you've ever seen or heard of?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I actually played an open tournament in Denmark about 20 years ago where there was a guy who was playing Grandmaster in the first round.

Speaker 1 This was not a very good player. And was, he came drunk to the table and just literally pulled out his phone and

Speaker 1 opened a chess program. But, of course, like, he was immediately.

Speaker 1 So that wasn't, of course, nearly as nefarious.

Speaker 2 That's just a moron.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. He was just...
Yeah, probably

Speaker 1 some other issues there.

Speaker 2 There's just such a, it is such a fascinating game because it's impossible to play if you're dumb.

Speaker 2 Like, there's games that you could just be a savant, like an idiot savant, but chess is like it's the most impressive thing for people to be unbelievably good at.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I think you can be dumb and be like fairly good at chess.

Speaker 1 I think it like some intelligence certainly helps. But after all,

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 A lot of chess is about learning patterns, right? And basically anybody can do that.

Speaker 1 so like applying them at a higher level learning how to evaluate and so on that sort of is what sets the the really the best players apart from uh from merely good players but i feel like anybody could come become um quite decent at um

Speaker 1 at the game but i do love the fact that you know uh there are no coincidences like there are no outside factors well if you uh if you don't talk other than cheating, of course.

Speaker 1 But it's just,

Speaker 1 yeah, you are either outsmarting your opponent or you're getting outsmarted.

Speaker 2 So, for a guy like you that excels above all, what is the difference in your preparation?

Speaker 2 Is it just simply who you are as a person, you think, or is it something about the difference in your preparation without giving away any secrets, obviously?

Speaker 1 I'm like known in the chess world for being like a little bit lazy, I think.

Speaker 1 The thing is that I

Speaker 1 pause you then. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 What do you mean lazy? Like, how is that possible?

Speaker 1 No, the thing is, like, I've never been the kind of person who wakes up in the morning, works six, seven hours and chess like a normal, a normal job. And then...

Speaker 4 Because a lot of them study computers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. Like, I've...
I think about the game all the time. Like I play online,

Speaker 1 I look at games, I may read some.

Speaker 2 Did you ever play anonymously?

Speaker 1 I used to do that all the time.

Speaker 2 What a bloodbath that must be.

Speaker 1 But I think I got humbled

Speaker 1 one time by this Russian grandmaster who

Speaker 1 asked, somebody else asked me if a certain account on a certain website was me. And I was like, yeah,

Speaker 1 I don't know like I don't know who that is and this guy went like yes that is you and he listed up like five other accounts that I thought nobody knew about that

Speaker 1 were that would be nice for me by the way you play yeah I think it's it's

Speaker 1 it's playing strength playing style because I tried to switch up my openings on different accounts to not make it obvious that it's it's me and I have like a style where I switch that up a lot so it makes it a bit easier but I think you could just tell by

Speaker 1 the playing style.

Speaker 2 That is crazy.

Speaker 1 These days I just I play with my

Speaker 1 own name.

Speaker 1 I don't really care about that anymore. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 do most professional players study chess all day long at the highest level?

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 I think quite a few do.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't know like people's day-to-day activities so you guys don't talk about it not that much

Speaker 1 the people that I've worked with they certainly study chess a lot

Speaker 1 but others I'm I'm not quite sure

Speaker 1 the thing is that chess has always like still been a bit of a hobby for me that once it start starts to feel like work then

Speaker 1 it's it's

Speaker 1 it's it's harder for me.

Speaker 1 I had a chess coach when

Speaker 1 I was little. I went to have sessions once a week, which I loved.
And then he started giving me homework. And

Speaker 1 yeah, I told him quickly,

Speaker 1 I don't like homework.

Speaker 1 But I would still spend a lot of time reading books, playing on

Speaker 1 the things that I still do, but I would do them for fun.

Speaker 1 And that was the difference between me and the other kids is that they would go to chess practice, they would maybe even do their homework, but they weren't living and breathing

Speaker 1 sort of the game that

Speaker 1 in the way that I was. Like I think about it all the time.
Like I'm thinking about the game while I'm sitting on this chair. Like I'm still analyzing a game that I played today.

Speaker 1 Like it never goes completely out of my mind.

Speaker 1 And I think a lot of very good chess players do that, but like casual chess players, no, of course.

Speaker 2 So maybe the thing is discipline versus enthusiasm. Enthusiasm causes obsession and enjoyment, which probably leads to better retention of information.

Speaker 2 Whereas just pure discipline for the sake of like, I have to do the work in order to get better, you're missing this enjoyment.

Speaker 2 You're missing this enthusiasm for it that you have managed to, although absorbing so much information and playing all the time, you've managed to keep it playful and fun.

Speaker 1 I think so. I think this is definitely the way that works for me.
Maybe for others.

Speaker 1 I think for anybody, like if you want to be great at something, you have to be obsessed with it.

Speaker 1 And yeah,

Speaker 1 it has to come from within. Like nobody can,

Speaker 1 yeah, maybe

Speaker 1 in certain sports

Speaker 1 you can get that good purely by very, very targeted practice and a lot of hours. But

Speaker 1 yeah, I think

Speaker 1 for me,

Speaker 1 it's just the way that

Speaker 1 it works. And

Speaker 1 I do process the, even though I don't necessarily study, I don't

Speaker 1 deliberately practice all the time, I still process the information. So it's still,

Speaker 1 whatever the method is, it certainly works.

Speaker 2 But it's interesting because you've been able to excel above so many. And it makes me wonder, like, I always am fascinated by some, whether it's a Tiger Woods or

Speaker 2 whatever the athlete is or whatever the game they play,

Speaker 2 what separates the very best from everyone else?

Speaker 2 Like, I know in martial arts, there's a series of factors that have to do with genetics, training, coaches, sparring partners, and then ultimately discipline and drive.

Speaker 2 But with chess, it's all mental.

Speaker 2 Physical has nothing to do with it. So do you think it's a genetic thing? Do you think you have a unique mind for chess?

Speaker 2 Do you think it's this balance that you keep with enthusiasm and obsession? Like, what do you think separates you from everyone else?

Speaker 1 I think it has to be a

Speaker 1 variety of factors. I think there's no doubt that I'm incredibly naturally gifted at the game.
Like, otherwise, I wouldn't have come this far. And my dad

Speaker 1 is incredibly good with numbers. He started playing chess quite late, but became

Speaker 1 but but became decent. Like my mother was quite smart and my my sisters are very intelligent too.
So like it's clear that you know

Speaker 1 there are s some good good genes and I just you know I happened to find also an environment early on

Speaker 1 where I lived near Oslo which had

Speaker 1 the probably the best chess environment there was in in Norway at the very least where there were

Speaker 1 I had access to coaches, and I had access to like a little training group of other ambitious kids.

Speaker 1 After that,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I think the most important thing that

Speaker 1 I've done is that I haven't really listened to people who want me to do things like a certain way because that's the way things have always been done, especially with the Soviet chess school that was the dominant one for so many years.

Speaker 1 So I've always sort of gone my own way, tried to have as much

Speaker 1 fun. Everything has to be about enjoyment.
And

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 I cannot tell you why, but I just like understand

Speaker 1 the game better

Speaker 1 than the others. Like I'm...

Speaker 1 I don't calculate necessarily as far as the other, but my intuition, like for short lines,

Speaker 1 constantly evaluating is it's just it's just better

Speaker 1 it's just

Speaker 2 it's always just such an interesting thing to analyze like high performers you know and just to wonder like what it is that separates high performers when you say your father started playing late how old was he oh i think he started playing um

Speaker 1 about 14 15 something like that i i in in chess that's that's very but he never he never like took it took it seriously enough that he wanted to like he pursued it but um as a hobby

Speaker 2 as a hobby yeah well you when you say take it seriously you mean like you do yeah what this is what makes me think about epigenetics like we we still don't exactly know how much information is transferred between parents to children and it seems like there's a lot of talents whether it's like singing talent or sports talent that you have to wonder like is that coming from genes or is that coming from the environment which this child grows up, which this person, or is it a combination of all those factors?

Speaker 2 Like, I wonder if someone gets really, a very intelligent person, gets very good at chess early on, I wonder if some information or some proclivity for the game gets transferred.

Speaker 1 Aaron Powell, I think the reaction in the chess community, at least with certain people, was

Speaker 1 more along the lines of how could such a lousy player have such a good son at chess with my dad.

Speaker 1 And the the fact is as well that

Speaker 1 there are practically no,

Speaker 1 there are many couples of,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 like both mother and father are grandmasters in chess, but I don't think any of them have had sons or daughters that are grandmasters. So

Speaker 1 whereas you see anywhere like in the NBA or the NHL or in football or wherever, like it happens all the time.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I cannot say exactly why that is, but it does suggest that, you know, it's not a given, at least with genetics, that

Speaker 1 your children are going to be able to.

Speaker 2 I have an alternate theory for that. I wonder if you're a child and your parents are absolutely obsessed with a game if it's annoying.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 you're like, fuck this game. Like, I want to go play in the park and my parents don't even pay attention to me.
This is bullshit. Right.

Speaker 2 You know, like, like, there's a lot of children of alcoholics that will not drink. They won't even try it because they've seen the effects of it.

Speaker 2 I wonder that if it's like you see, because chess is an obsessive game.

Speaker 2 Like, I remember when Howard Stern was playing it, and I would listen to him talk about it on the radio and about how he started hiring a coach, and he was playing all the time, and he's improving his rating.

Speaker 2 I was like, oh, this is eating up your mind. Like, it's a game that gets in your bones.

Speaker 1 It really does, because like the entry is not so easy, right? Like you don't just get it immediately and you don't necessarily get enjoyment out of it immediately as you start to play. So

Speaker 1 you have to spend time on it. And then I think when you're trying to do something hard, then it becomes much more rewarding.
And

Speaker 1 it's easier for that to become an obsession when you start to get that reward.

Speaker 2 So the good thing about that. controversy with cheating was that I think it elevated the profile of chess because it became mainstream news.
It was like a big issue.

Speaker 2 I think there was a positive aspect of it in terms of the publicity of the game. Do you do you agree with that?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 I think for

Speaker 1 any for you know for any field of

Speaker 1 that's trying to to achieve something you know with

Speaker 1 publicity, there's always going to be

Speaker 1 a little bit of a negative with what exactly we're we're connected with, right? Because this is

Speaker 1 everybody knows chess and cheating but overall i think it's been it's been massively uh massively positive um you know hopefully the uh the netflix thing going coming up in a year even though like

Speaker 1 explain it to people what you're saying yeah it's it's a not netflix untold documentary so basically it's a series of uh sports documentaries and they're doing that it's not something that i like wanted to necessarily be be part of but I do recognize the fact that these things raise the profile of

Speaker 1 the game. And you see now

Speaker 1 everywhere people,

Speaker 1 chess is showing up in people's algorithms on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, everywhere. So it's just much more in the

Speaker 1 Zeitgeist than it used to be.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's certainly showing up on mine. It shows up on mine all on yours, right? Oh, yeah.
But you've always been a giant chess fan.

Speaker 4 Well, it's actually a newer thing, but when I when I got into it, it was just everything. Now it's what I do right before bed.
I fall asleep.

Speaker 4 Usually I fall asleep during actual games online on my phone.

Speaker 1 You're driving them crazy now.

Speaker 1 How could that happen? I'm exhausted. What do you do when you wake up?

Speaker 4 Oh, that's that's yeah, no, it's total options.

Speaker 1 I wake up and you have coffee. Yeah.
No,

Speaker 4 I wake up and I look at the board and it said you resigned because I went over my time or whatever. I just ran out of time.

Speaker 2 How many times have you resigned?

Speaker 4 It happens an embarrassing odd amount. It's how I fall asleep now is playing chess.

Speaker 4 But what you will appreciate is that when I fall asleep playing chess, like when I fall asleep, I'm still playing the game in my dreams sometimes.

Speaker 4 And sometimes the game will go all night and it'll be like this never-ending game and pieces will pop back up that have already gone.

Speaker 1 That sounds amazing. Like I would, like, obviously that would never happen to me.

Speaker 1 Like, I, I, I, I, you know, I like to play a game of chess on my on my my phone or my iPad whenever I have some whenever I have some time especially like if I know that I have 15 minutes or whatever and then if something comes up like my wife tells me like I have to be somewhere I have to do something it's like can you just finish the game like no I kind of resigned the game right what are you talking about?

Speaker 1 Yeah

Speaker 2 yeah obviously that's different though.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You can't just resign.
That's no, you gotta ride that bitch out. Yeah.

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Speaker 2 Yeah, that would be like psychologically torturous, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 especially if I'm playing somebody whom I'm

Speaker 1 who is a little bit of a rival. It's like, yeah, no,

Speaker 1 that's not going to happen.

Speaker 2 No chance.

Speaker 1 Because every time I lose games,

Speaker 1 it's a little bit of a story, right? In the chess world. So I prefer

Speaker 1 to happen as seldom as possible.

Speaker 2 I played a little bit of chess when I was young, but I never really got got into it. But my real introduction where I got fascinated with chess was actually at a pool hall.

Speaker 2 Because people in the pool hall would play chess sometimes, but there was this one guy who went to jail. And in jail, he learned how to play chess with his head, in his mind.

Speaker 2 And then there was a young kid who was a grandmaster, who was like 16, 17 years old, somewhere around then.

Speaker 2 Really, really good chess player who kind of like lost his way and started hanging around in pool halls and gambling and being a weirdo. And I watched these two guys play chess with just words.

Speaker 2 And I was like, what are you doing? Like, what? I was like, I think I was 22 or 23 at the time. And I was like, what are you doing?

Speaker 2 And they were explaining to me that they're playing chess, memorizing the board in their head. And I'm like, that's fucking crazy.
And then I saw a video of you blindfolded. Playing how many people?

Speaker 1 How many people did you play?

Speaker 2 It was the most people you've ever played blindfolded.

Speaker 1 I think I've played 12, but the world record is something like 50.

Speaker 1 That's crazy.

Speaker 1 12.

Speaker 2 You've played 12 people blindfolded.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 For me, that's

Speaker 1 as long as people are...

Speaker 1 The people I'm playing are kind of decent at chess, that actually kind of make that makes it easier because it's easier to store the games when I recognize the patterns and so on.

Speaker 1 When people start making weird moves that I cannot really recognize. Oh, so this is another one actually.
This is a blindfold timed symbol.

Speaker 1 Like there are fewer games but what's difficult about these is that the moves do not come to me in a sequence. So like the presenter will tell me on boo on board

Speaker 1 two, E takes D5, and then all of a sudden on board one, E6, and then

Speaker 1 on board two again and so on. So that makes it a bit...

Speaker 2 Oh, so you have to jump back and forth. So in the other games, games, there's a sequence where the player, even though if they know what move they're going to take, they must wait until their turn.

Speaker 1 Exactly. That's kind of the normal way of

Speaker 1 playing a simul. I think the last time that I played a proper blindfold simul was at an event

Speaker 1 in Vienna back in I think 2015. And then I had some very nice but spicy Chinese food before the game.

Speaker 1 I sat down and like my stomach was acting up. I couldn't think.
So I played for 10 minutes. I realized that I cannot do this.

Speaker 1 I ran away for 15 minutes and then I came back.

Speaker 1 I finished the game. But ever since that,

Speaker 1 it feels like

Speaker 1 I've done it.

Speaker 1 And now it just seems

Speaker 1 incredibly hard to do again.

Speaker 2 Do you prepare when you're doing something like this? When you're getting ready to do a blindfolded multi-game thing?

Speaker 1 No, not really, because it's like if my mind is on, then it's really not that hard, I feel.

Speaker 1 So, no.

Speaker 1 The preparation that I do is right there.

Speaker 1 I see my my opponents, so like, I assign a certain face to a certain seat, like, a certain number, and so on. So, that's just about

Speaker 1 what I do.

Speaker 2 So, you assign their face, and you think of their face as they're playing?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Face, like number one, it's that position.
Right. Yeah, and so on.

Speaker 2 And are you,

Speaker 2 what are you seeing in your mind when you're envisioning the table?

Speaker 2 When you're looking at the board,

Speaker 2 are you merely thinking of positions? Are you actually thinking of the pieces? Like, how are you breaking it down?

Speaker 1 No, I just see the chessboard in my head.

Speaker 2 Just see a completely like 3D chessboard in in your head.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's

Speaker 1 and then when I'm playing a simul, I just really think about one at a time and I kind of store the others

Speaker 1 away.

Speaker 2 But that's so crazy, like when your 5'6 moves in and you're thinking of all these pieces moving around and you've got it remembered. You've completely memorized each position of 12 different boards.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so like the difficult, difficult part of it, that where things sometimes go wrong is that

Speaker 1 so generally I remember all the games that I've played, but I don't remember every move. I remember like the in broad strokes what happened.

Speaker 1 And this is what can happen in these blindfold games as well sometimes.

Speaker 1 Like I can remember everything that's going on, but maybe there's a pawn on the side that I cannot remember if it moved one square or not. That's the thing that can be

Speaker 1 that can be

Speaker 1 difficult. And I do we used to have these blindfold like professional tournaments actually um

Speaker 1 that used to be like both fun but also totally exhausting um and then we would play on on a computer so we'd have like a blank

Speaker 1 like a blank chessboard where we would just click from one square to another and then whenever your opponent moved their move would would pop up on on the screen and I've had

Speaker 1 and also the software will tell you if you're making an illegal move. So I've had people like lose track

Speaker 1 and then you see them just clicking phonetically,

Speaker 1 trying to figure out what the position was. Like there was one guy whom I played, like he thought his rook was on a certain file, and if it was on that file, he would be able to save a draw.

Speaker 1 So I think he tried every single rook move on that file, hoping that the rook was there. But like, obviously, I knew that

Speaker 1 it wasn't

Speaker 1 but yeah

Speaker 1 overall I feel like honestly like blindfold chess is is a bit of a party trick in the sense that for the very top players it's not that hard but obviously for non like serious chess players it seems

Speaker 1 it seems incredibly

Speaker 1 incredibly hard. But I'm I'm I'm sure that, for instance, like solving Ruby's cube is really, really easy for those who know how to do it quickly, right?

Speaker 1 But it still looks incredibly impressive for outsiders.

Speaker 2 Have you seen they used a computer with AI to do a Rubik's Cube in less than a second?

Speaker 1 No, I didn't see it. Oh, wow.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 See if you can find it, Jamie. It's crazy.
It just goes

Speaker 2 and just spins it.

Speaker 4 I've never figured that shit out. That's crazy.

Speaker 2 There's a sequence of moves. If you follow a sequence of moves, you can actually get it to do it automatically.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Someone explained it to me once and they did it.
And I was like, what? I don't remember what it was because I don't give a fuck.

Speaker 2 It was just like eight times this way, eight times that way, eight times this. And you just keep doing it, and then eventually it'll be all flattened out at a certain point in time.
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But this computer does it.

Speaker 4 You do Rubik's Cube too?

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no. I'm talking out of my ass.
Like, I know.

Speaker 1 I think the world record is only like three seconds or something. Like, it's something absolutely insane.

Speaker 2 Imagine the time you could have spent building a business, raising a family.

Speaker 1 You're the fucking world record. Oh,

Speaker 1 God.

Speaker 1 It's green. Red.

Speaker 2 So, dumb.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, we all have to do it.
Seriously, watch this computer do it.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 How crazy is that? Ready? Way go.

Speaker 2 Yeah, less than a second.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 1 That is crazy.

Speaker 2 Show it again in real time.

Speaker 1 So give up, kids. Give up.

Speaker 1 Give up. The computer figured it out.

Speaker 2 That's prop that's a dumb game. But do you play other games as well?

Speaker 1 No, not that m not that much. Um, my parents sort of

Speaker 1 brainwashed me when when I was young into thinking that computer games are no fun.

Speaker 1 And really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Um but you're a grown man now. You've realized that's a lot.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 I have, but it's.

Speaker 2 I can see you Call of Duty fucking people up. No.
No headphones on.

Speaker 1 The thing is, like...

Speaker 1 The thing is, I actually got a

Speaker 1 PlayStation recently, but my wife is playing GTA and all of these FPS games, and I'm like playing some chill FIFA or something.

Speaker 1 But the thing about that is that...

Speaker 1 I didn't really spend that much time on those things when I I was little,

Speaker 1 which I think was a good thing. Like

Speaker 1 I was doing some sports and I was doing a lot of chess. Not so much school, but I kind of found time for

Speaker 1 everything else. And

Speaker 1 I think it was an important part of my chess education as well that I think some of the kids today are missing, that I actually learned chess on a physical board.

Speaker 1 I was able to practice from a fairly young age playing online, but I wasn't allowed to use the computer for more than a couple of hours a week, right? So I had to spend that really well playing chess.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, I would just sit there with my board, with my books, and, you know, try and figure things out.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the thing about video games is the narrative was always video games are a huge waste of time. And if you do it, you're not going to get anywhere in life.

Speaker 2 The problem with that is now people make a lot of money playing video games. and they've also shown that

Speaker 2 there's some benefits from video games that leak over into other things. Like, for instance, they found out that surgeons who play video games regularly make, what is it, like 25% less errors?

Speaker 1 It was 37%.

Speaker 2 37% less errors.

Speaker 2 I would feel like if there was a factor in medical school and they said, well, if you do not do this, you will make 37% more mistakes. They would force you to engage in that, whatever it is.

Speaker 2 It's like whatever particular discipline that was. Like if you want to be a surgeon, you must do this.

Speaker 2 I would say if you want to be a surgeon, you should fucking play video games because these people are 37%

Speaker 1 less likely to screw up an operation.

Speaker 1 That's why I'm not a surgeon.

Speaker 2 But I'm saying it's like video games are not necessarily a waste of time. And they've also shown there's cognitive benefits that can be

Speaker 2 gotten from playing video games on a regular basis. Things that, which does make sense, but it just seems like a frivolous pursuit, whereas chess is like a noble and very respected pursuit.

Speaker 1 I'm glad you say that.

Speaker 1 That is what chess has, though, that

Speaker 1 it is very respected among the general population and it does have that different standings from

Speaker 1 a lot of other games. It's like, I'm not here to shit on video games for sure.
Like,

Speaker 1 I know, like, like you do, that there there are studies that show that it's that it can be be helpful, I think, with with anything.

Speaker 1 Um, if you obsess over something, the only thing you will b become good at is that particular thing, like I have with um with uh with chess. I just think for me specifically um

Speaker 1 for me specifically, it was probably a um a good thing that that made me just sit and focus on on chess rather than um

Speaker 1 um uh rather than do all sorts of um other things.

Speaker 2 Oh, most certainly.

Speaker 2 Because video games are very, very addictive. I had to stop playing video games.

Speaker 1 We used to have a whole local area network at our old studio.

Speaker 2 We'd all play Quake, and it was a real problem.

Speaker 2 I just wanted to end the podcast so I could go play Quake. And then we'd play for hours.
And eventually got to a point where I was like, okay.

Speaker 2 I got to quit again. Just cold turkey, never again, leave it alone.
Because they're just too fun.

Speaker 2 And if you have other things, you have obligations, like chess like you're an actual professional chess player Call of Duty or whatever you're playing quake it's gonna eat your time I remember like when when I first moved out

Speaker 1 You know, I was technically a chess professional, but I didn't have a lot of time to

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I had a lot of time to kill when I when I was home so and I got myself a PlayStation played a ton of FIFA back then and there was there was a game stop near near me that like they they made a lot of money on me just buying new controllers all the time because I would throw them into

Speaker 1 the wall. But

Speaker 1 I have that same personality that I become become obsessed with things and then I yeah, same. I just have to quit cold turkey.
That's the only way that that works.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I I think I mean this is why I've avoided golf. And like Tony's big on golf and so is Jamie.

Speaker 2 It's like I see what it is, I'm sure I would love it, but I don't have that time, the time during the day.

Speaker 1 Well, I can tell you that I always thought, well, I wouldn't say that, but I always thought that I would get into golf later in life.

Speaker 1 And then I decided more or less a year ago that I was going to start. And now I am obsessed, and it's all I want to do.
So

Speaker 1 I can 100% relate. But my wife knows that I'm so happy when I come back from golf that it's like better if I get to do it quite often.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Even you should fake being happy so you can keep doing it.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 They say that's ruining Canelo Alvarez.

Speaker 2 You know, there's been a lot of criticism in the boxing world and particularly in like, you know, some of his promoters and things along those lines where they've criticized his

Speaker 2 he's obsessive. He plays every day, even when he's in camp.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a tricky thing.

Speaker 4 If they do that with him, and I

Speaker 4 obviously see them do it with Trump, but

Speaker 4 you have to golf to understand what golfing does to you.

Speaker 4 It appears from the outside that people are drinking and smoking pot and having a good old time out there and giggling around, farting around with their friends.

Speaker 4 But the touch grass meditative element, it truly is. Like he was saying, like, I'm in such a crazy good mood after golf.
Everybody at the comedy club can notice it. Like, it's like an upper,

Speaker 4 it gives you a massive burst of energy. So, like, the,

Speaker 1 the,

Speaker 1 what am I thinking of?

Speaker 4 The, uh, you know, just the bad reputation that golf has.

Speaker 4 Like, I would want my president golfing a couple times a week, knowing the effects that it gives you, a much clearer mind, a big burst of energy.

Speaker 4 You would think it would be exhausting walking around the woods or grass for four hours, but for some reason, it's totally the opposite.

Speaker 4 It's, it's whether it's the sun, the grass, the this, the that, the differential going from a powerful thing to a mid-range thing to the delicate touch and accuracy of putting these repetitive things.

Speaker 4 For some reason, it's a mind-clearer and kind of an energy giver. Whereas video games and other things make you depressed.

Speaker 4 I don't, you know, it's almost impossible to be down or depressed after golfing.

Speaker 2 Well, it's it's certainly a stimulating game, right? Because you are, it's hand-eye coordination, calculation,

Speaker 2 managing the lay of the land, the way the rolls of the hills are,

Speaker 2 and all those factors. I think, like, this is something that I think people genuinely need in life.

Speaker 2 And I think it's one of the reasons why people respect chess so much is because they know how difficult it is, and they know that all this is going on, and they see you two just staring at the board, looking at these pieces, and calculating this

Speaker 2 insane number of possibilities that could emit from each individual move. It's like that stimulation when someone gets good at a game, I think it's very valuable for you.

Speaker 2 And I think that can apply to all sorts of things in life. So I agree with you.
I would want the president to play golf too.

Speaker 2 I'd want him to find something, whatever it is, find a thing that you can excel at other than just being the president. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, even if it was Call of Duty.

Speaker 1 If it helped. I wouldn't want that.

Speaker 2 The president going, fuck it.

Speaker 2 We had that.

Speaker 1 It It was George W.

Speaker 4 Bush, and there was no video game

Speaker 1 system.

Speaker 1 That's dark. Yeah, it is dark.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, they literally use PlayStation fucking controllers when they were using drones. I don't know if they still do it now.

Speaker 2 I think now they have more sophisticated setups, but one of the reasons why they were using them is because so many people were accustomed to those.

Speaker 2 You get kids that have been playing, you know, Madden 10 hours a day for 15 fucking years, and then you give them the same controller, and they're like, oh yeah i can fucking drop some bombs on people like not a problem at all that's that's horrible it's dark yeah and all of a sudden like these kills that you have in a video game like you you think of it in the same way like it's well it really haunts those people apparently there's a very specific type of ptsd that drone operators get it's it's because they see the people sometimes for days in advance so they're doing surveillance they're waiting for the moment when they get the green light they see these people they see them with their families They're watching them from above.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 they drop the bombs on them. And then they cease to exist.
And this is happening on completely the other side of the world.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they just press X on the controller.

Speaker 2 But if you want to get good at that, probably play video games.

Speaker 2 There's a job for everybody out there, Magnus.

Speaker 1 I'm also trying to think, like, could you get surgeons to be drone operators? Probably doesn't work that way.

Speaker 2 No, it probably doesn't work that way. I best surgeons just whatever hand-eye coordination that they have is probably so intricate that they could probably excel at anything.

Speaker 2 They'd probably get good at video games. Like a very good surgeon who's never played video games would probably get really good at video games really quickly.

Speaker 2 'Cause the the communication between your hands.

Speaker 4 There's also probably a tricky part of that stat where the younger people are the ones playing the video games that probably wouldn't slip up with their hands as easily as an older surgeon that h has never played video games, right?

Speaker 1 Yes, right, right, right.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a good point. It's it's uh you know, it's interesting that chess is p

Speaker 2 uniquely the game that's respected. Like, probably out of all even if you play golf, people can think, oh, you're a fuck up.
You say you played chess, like, oh, that must be an intelligent man.

Speaker 2 It's probably the most uniquely rewarded game in terms of the the way the people respect it in society. Yeah, and this episode is brought to you by Tractor Supply.

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Speaker 1 We're very lucky that it has this unique position. Whether that's deserved,

Speaker 1 I don't know, but there's just something about the fact that it's, you know, it's a very, very simple game.

Speaker 1 But it's still so infinitely difficult.

Speaker 1 The thing now, though, is that we're trying to actually make it a bit more difficult for a classical form of chess.

Speaker 1 Because now computers are so strong. Preparation has gone so far that

Speaker 1 the thought of like sitting down at the board and just thinking on your own from the very get-go it's not it's not there anymore anybody who's really good at chess like they

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 anybody can can learn the best openings like very quickly even if you go like 10 20 years ago um you could play

Speaker 1 You could play, for instance, in the Chess Olympiad,

Speaker 1 which is the biggest team nation tournament in the world. And you could play against the best player from,

Speaker 1 let's say, Colombia. And, you know,

Speaker 1 you would know that they have certain skills, but they might not have the same set of openings, right? Now, all of these, like, there are kids everywhere.

Speaker 1 And they just, like, they know their stuff so well. So now we're like testing out new formats.

Speaker 1 One that we call freestyle, which is basically there are 960 starting possible starting positions if you shuffle the pieces on the first rank.

Speaker 1 And basically, like you start out,

Speaker 1 you just draw the position 10 minutes before the game, no preparation whatsoever. And you basically start with like in gaming a new map every single game.

Speaker 1 So that's sort of for

Speaker 1 the traditionalists, that's not like the same the same game. So like there are some people who don't like it.
But for the professionals,

Speaker 1 it's a chance

Speaker 1 to use their skills. Because otherwise, chess is moving.
It's becoming faster. Chess

Speaker 1 used to be an art, a science, everything.

Speaker 1 With the way things are now, it's just very fast, and it's all games, sports, and so on.

Speaker 1 I feel like

Speaker 1 with

Speaker 1 thinking from the very first move, you're bringing some of the other factors back as well.

Speaker 2 I think it's really unique about today is that kids today who are coming up are not just studying from books and from coaching, but you can watch so many great games instantaneously anytime you want.

Speaker 2 This is what's so unique about today.

Speaker 2 And I think it applies to all sports. I think it applies to all games.

Speaker 2 I think it applies to stand-up comedy as well. So I think it's one of the reasons why the younger guys are so good.

Speaker 2 It's like you get to see very high level stuff which gets into your mind that this is how to play at a very early age and you can be obs obsessed and just absorb so much more.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and and you see there are such different approaches as well, even even with uh with the kids.

Speaker 1 Like I I had a training camp uh a few years ago with uh with a k kid called Alireza Firouchia from uh he plays for France now, but he's from Iran originally.

Speaker 1 I think it was about fourteen then and my my chess coach has had

Speaker 1 recommended that

Speaker 1 we bring him in because he said that this is the most talented kid out there. So we have this camp where typically everybody has their laptop and there's a chessboard in the middle where you sort of

Speaker 1 and you sort of look at your own thing and then some things together on the board and you throw out ideas, mostly for openings, but also sometimes other little exercises and so on.

Speaker 1 And this kid, he would

Speaker 1 have his laptop where he would

Speaker 1 where he would analyze a certain position and then he would play games like for money on that same site at the same time so that he could buy

Speaker 1 cloud engine times because like the very best engines

Speaker 1 they're they're stronger like if they're in the the cloud than from your own

Speaker 1 than from your own laptop generally. So he would buy time

Speaker 1 for that by playing games, like one minute games on that server. He would play five minute games on another server

Speaker 1 and he would analyze with us on the board and he was still like following everything.

Speaker 1 He had no problems whatsoever just

Speaker 1 being there.

Speaker 1 So like it's just

Speaker 1 yeah, that's one way of doing it. Like he basically became one of the best players in the world by just constantly playing chess all the time and mostly like really quick games.

Speaker 1 And then you have the current classical world champion from India, Gukesh. Like he doesn't play casual games at all.
He just studies his ass off all the time.

Speaker 1 And he's also like, he's not good at

Speaker 1 rabid chess. He's not good at blitz.
He's not good at other forms.

Speaker 1 But he has...

Speaker 1 He has made all his

Speaker 1 studies about classical chess. He didn't even own

Speaker 1 chess software on his computer before he was 13. Wow.
And he was a grandmaster. Wow.
At that time.

Speaker 1 But it's interesting to see that there are

Speaker 1 such different ways

Speaker 1 to develop even these days.

Speaker 2 I just think it's fascinating human beings' capacity to excel at things.

Speaker 2 And that you really only know when someone someone pushes it a little bit further like this guy playing these all these games simultaneously yeah you know what I mean it's like when you when if everybody's doing it one way if everybody's only playing you know a few games a day and hanging out like you'll probably all stay at the same level but if you've got one fucking psychopath in the group that's online and is playing and is reading books and is

Speaker 1 that guy's gonna pass everybody and then everybody else realizes like oh that's possible you i could have gotten as good as him i better really bear down yeah because you you could also see that in these guys playing style the guy who has been playing like constantly all the time from when he was little he has fantastic instincts especially with with little time he just knows where the pieces go and like he's the only one of the kids who has that kind of feeling um the Indian guy on the other hand

Speaker 1 From the way he studies, he's like

Speaker 1 during games, like he's meticulous, he calculates, like he sees every position as a problem he has to solve more than oh what does my intuition tell me oh i'll do i'll do this uh it's like for him it's more well this is possible this is possible let me like try and uh see this all all the way all the way through so it's just yeah it's it's just very very different and

Speaker 1 they call it like the tortoise and the hare

Speaker 1 sometimes and then

Speaker 1 in certain situations the tortoise will win, and in other situations the hare will win.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 So there's different types of tournaments, and there's some tournaments that have no time limit for moves?

Speaker 1 There's always a time limit.

Speaker 2 What's a traditional time limit?

Speaker 1 What it used to be in chess was

Speaker 1 you'd have two hours for 40 moves, then you'd have an hour for the next 20 moves, and then half an hour for the rest of the game, so a maximum of seven hours.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that form is still

Speaker 1 being played.

Speaker 1 And then you have faster forms of chess, which is Blitz chess, which is usually five or three minutes, and rapid chess,

Speaker 1 which is somewhere from 10 to 30 minutes.

Speaker 2 Did you ever, before you were known, did you ever go to Washington Square Park and play those hustlers?

Speaker 1 No, I actually went there in 20 uh 2010 but i think i think some people recognized me back back then as well i think it's a bit of a myth though um

Speaker 1 how uh how good they are like right they're they're they're like okay but they're not like your level no they're not grandmaster level there was one guy though i don't remember i don't remember what was um

Speaker 1 uh what's the name of like it's up by um you know uh Columbia University. There's a park up there where they're playing chess as well.
There I played against the guy

Speaker 1 who played like a very strange opening as well. Like, he put like just a couple of pawns, one square forward, and then he started developing his pieces very slowly.

Speaker 1 So, at first, I thought this guy has no idea what he's doing, but it turned out like he actually had a system. So, after like 10-15 moves, I was in a lot of trouble.

Speaker 1 And then, and then like the game became super concrete and tactical, and and and I and I won um but

Speaker 1 it yeah it struck me that this guy like had

Speaker 1 it just I think he just played in a park all his life so he had developed a certain system wow that was actually like kind of effective if you don't know what you're doing

Speaker 1 against it so that was that was kind of kind of interesting I I'm like he was fairly old so I'm sure he'd played chess his whole life without ever learning any kind of opening theory or or something like that he just had yeah he was doing his own thing That's fascinating.

Speaker 2 Can you ever learn something from people that have an unorthodox approach like that?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 It's happened several times.

Speaker 1 There was,

Speaker 1 like my dad used to play a ton of chess at home. Like he used to have a home office and then certain times he'd appear to be

Speaker 1 focused on his in his work, but I knew like a certain look in his eye, which told me that he was actually playing chess. So I would go over and watch.
He was like,

Speaker 1 go away and then at some point where i was already a lot better than him um he played a certain opening as as white and i told him like what what is this opening like where did you learn this and he said

Speaker 1 well

Speaker 1 you taught me the very same opening but with the black pieces so i thought i was gonna play it as white like with with um one tempo more right because you're playing you're moving first i was like i like i never like, I'm one of the best players in the world, and I never thought of that.

Speaker 1 So, I actually took up that line and I

Speaker 1 used it. I used it with success against some of the best players in the world.
Wow. So, I've like, I've, I don't know if that variation has a name.

Speaker 1 Like, I've seen some other players play it afterwards as well. Uh, but I just call it the Henry Carlson variation.
That's really interesting.

Speaker 2 Your dad must be pretty proud of that.

Speaker 1 He is very proud.

Speaker 1 It's funny, though, that

Speaker 1 my dad and my sisters,

Speaker 1 two of my sisters, they played a bit of competitive chess as well.

Speaker 1 I think at some point in time,

Speaker 1 they wanted to learn a couple of openings, so I taught them a couple of openings. And I think all of them just never played

Speaker 1 anything else, basically. So they certainly didn't have the same kind of passion to

Speaker 1 study, but I'm glad I was able to push them into some decent lines.

Speaker 2 How do you decide what opening to choose?

Speaker 2 And do you ever decide an opening? Oh, fuck. I shouldn't have done that one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, sometimes. Honestly,

Speaker 1 sometimes

Speaker 1 I don't know what to do, so I just randomize.

Speaker 1 Because I think

Speaker 1 at a certain time, like you might think that against against this opponent you should play a little bit of more of an aggressive opening.

Speaker 1 But then maybe I feel good about my tournament standing, so I don't want to mess that up. So it's easy to go for a safer approach when the optimal approach would be a bit more aggressive.

Speaker 1 And then if you randomize it, then you will occasionally go for the for the more aggressive approach. So that's what I sometimes do.

Speaker 1 I randomize it, and then I just sort of accept the outcome. And it makes me more

Speaker 1 unpredictable. It makes me harder to

Speaker 1 prepare against as well. So that's what I sometimes do.
It's not like it's not going to be out there, but it's going to be between like two or three options that I think are roughly equivalent.

Speaker 1 They're just stylistically different.

Speaker 2 So when you say randomized, like how many openings do you have that you pursue on a regular basis?

Speaker 1 Oh, it's

Speaker 1 hard to say.

Speaker 1 Probably with white, I have like

Speaker 1 five or six options that

Speaker 1 I can go to, but only like two or three that I feel really good about.

Speaker 1 And I think

Speaker 1 similarly with black.

Speaker 2 So, and then when you randomize, you just go in your head and one of them stands out for you, and you say, okay, this is.

Speaker 1 No, I just like have an app on my phone. Oh, really? That's a real dice.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 Wow. Wow.

Speaker 1 And I think,

Speaker 1 honestly, a lot of people could benefit from that because you agonize over these minute decisions.

Speaker 1 Like you spend a lot of mental energy before a certain game agonizing over what opening you're going to play.

Speaker 1 And if you know that you're going to make a decent choice, but you leave all the agonizing to

Speaker 1 like there's nothing because it's it's left to chance. It makes it

Speaker 1 makes it a lot easier.

Speaker 2 That makes sense.

Speaker 2 Now you were saying mental energy.

Speaker 2 You were talking about the spicy Chinese food incident, but do you normally have a method of when you eat vitamins you take? Is there certain things that you do to optimize

Speaker 2 your clarity?

Speaker 1 Yeah, like if I'm playing if I'm playing an

Speaker 1 early afternoon game, for instance, starting at one,

Speaker 1 I try to eat like one big meal before that, which is generally

Speaker 1 like a big omelette with some some kind of salad and

Speaker 1 but you eat pretty clean before a big yeah I usually I usually do

Speaker 1 sometimes like after games like I will eat something like even some desserts and so on but before the games I try and keep it keep it fairly fairly clean and I actually learned that when I was when I was little like sometimes like my parents they were generally quite strict about sweets and so on, but sometimes I would eat sweets during tournament.

Speaker 1 Then, you know, my

Speaker 1 blood sugar would drop like crazy, and I would start

Speaker 1 making mistakes.

Speaker 1 And so, that's something that I learned quite quickly that I shouldn't do.

Speaker 2 Do you ever mess around with vitamins or nootropics or anything like that? Things, nutrients that help memory?

Speaker 1 No, I think

Speaker 1 it's a little bit about the way that I was raised. Like, I never take medicine unless I kind of have to.
I don't really take supplements

Speaker 1 or anything like that. So

Speaker 1 I probably should.

Speaker 1 Like, it's not a bad idea.

Speaker 1 Like, my wife is half American. Like, she's completely different.
Like, she takes five...

Speaker 1 kinds of vitamins every every single day. She's very meticulous about it.
But yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 I've never Just get her to make you up some little packets. Yeah, maybe.
I think it'll probably have an impact on you. I mean, it's extraordinary if you think about how good you are without it.

Speaker 2 Like any little thing that could give you a very slight edge. And I think that vitamins for sure give you a slight edge, particularly

Speaker 2 nootropics. There's a bunch of different vitamins that have been shown through clinical trials to improve cognitive performance.
You know, theanine, there's

Speaker 2 acetylcholine, a bunch of different things that enhance memory that are essentially just nutrients.

Speaker 1 What's the new thing that people are are doing, like uh keratin or something like that? Ketamine? No, no, no, not ketamine.

Speaker 1 Uh no, no, no, it's not ketamine. Um creatine? Creatine.
Creatine. Creatine, yes.

Speaker 2 Creatine is uh was a bodybuilding supplement that was almost akin to steroids in the 1990s. People you think it was cheating, and then they realized it was just a component of food.

Speaker 1 But uh one of the things that creatine does that's very extraordinary extraordinary is um it aids in performance when you're sleep deprived so if you ever find yourself sleep deprived and you have to do something where you have to use your mind creatine is a fantastic supplement for that well i mean i woke up today and like i think my my watch said it was that my sleep was like i got 15 like i slept for five hours but i got 15 minutes of random sleep like it was really really bad so that's what i could have i could have i could have used that um

Speaker 1 because i was playing a chess chess armor earlier today, so I could have used that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, creatine is something that everybody should take. Men, women, children, everybody should take creatine.
It's a really good supplement, super safe, and

Speaker 2 it aids in strength and muscle recovery and stuff like that, but it also has a lot of cognitive benefits. Just generally, just like a very good, safe supplement to take.

Speaker 2 What does it say here, Jane? Cognitive functions. Studies suggest that creatine supplementation may improve cognitive function, including memory, attention, and reasoning.

Speaker 2 It may increase brain energy levels by boosting endosine triphosphate production ATP which is essential for brain function creatine has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that may protect brain cells from damage caused by oxidative stress and neurotoxins may help reduce it so it does a lot of different things if you google it there's a ton of different benefits I take it in gummy form I take creatine gummies every day they're delicious it's easy I just pop a bunch of five milligrams I don't know we have any of those tricreates here I don't think so yeah I think I have them out there.

Speaker 2 But they're great.

Speaker 2 It's easy. I put a bag in my car, take them all the time.
I've noticed a difference. I just think with a guy like you, well, your brain is everything.
But you're kicking ass.

Speaker 2 So, like, why listen to me? No, no, no, but eat the cheeseburgers and fuck around.

Speaker 1 Let's see what happens. No, but it is the thing, though, that on certain days,

Speaker 1 I sort of just accept that.

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Speaker 1 You know, my brain is not going to

Speaker 1 work as good. And it's frustrating, especially if

Speaker 1 you've got a big game and you know know that you're starting down to zero because your brain is not working the way it's supposed to be.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel that with podcasting all the time.

Speaker 2 And the real danger is if I do that, if my brain's not on full tilt and I'm talking to a scientist and I'm like, oh, like we have to talk about quantum physics.

Speaker 1 I have to

Speaker 2 have good questions. I have to be able to follow what you're saying because it's so esoteric.

Speaker 2 It's weird that the brain just doesn't always work exactly how you want it to.

Speaker 1 And honestly, chess is one of the worst things to do sleep deprived because I think

Speaker 1 creativity usually

Speaker 1 is enhanced when you're not feeling well, when you're sleep deprived, but that's generally not what you need in chess. Like you need to minimize mistakes, you need precision.
And

Speaker 1 all of my intuition, all of that, it's just so much worse when I'm

Speaker 1 not feeling

Speaker 1 on top of my game.

Speaker 2 Do you have a specific thing you do when you're feeling not on top of your game? Do you like double check things in your mind? Do you have a process you follow?

Speaker 1 I just try to play a simpler game

Speaker 1 where it's not as complicated, really.

Speaker 2 And when you're feeling good, then you go for it.

Speaker 1 No, honestly, when I feel like good, I don't think about these things. It's just

Speaker 1 a state of flow where

Speaker 1 I know how much risk to take.

Speaker 1 I just.

Speaker 2 So what is the mindset? Like if you're in a world championship game and it's down to these,

Speaker 2 what is the state of mind like when you're in the middle of it?

Speaker 1 Honestly, when I'm at my best, I'm just like pure laser focused and

Speaker 1 I'm just calm and not thinking about anything other than just in the moment. Just in the moment, yeah.

Speaker 2 Just in the work is already done. You You already know the game, so now it's just reacting and moving and calculating.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 I had a game in 20 last classical world championship I played in 2021 where the first five games were drawn. Honestly, like I could have probably been down at that point as well.

Speaker 1 Sixth game was a super, super long game,

Speaker 1 almost eight hours. And I think for the last hour and a half, two hours, I was pretty short on time.
But

Speaker 1 I remember, like i was just so focused and so calm and afterwards i was just like yeah i could have kept going forever like i was just there um

Speaker 1 and it was exactly what i needed i ended up grinding out grinding out when and in in those classical games like once you get a lead like that is so big because it's so hard to win actually win games at that that level with that level of preparation um so that was that was really big but yeah that's that i've only i i've only had i feel like a few days where i feel like i'm just like completely in the moment usually it's a bit more messy than that but like when it happens it's just um yeah the best feeling that's amazing that it's only been a few days where you've been fully in the moment i'm rarely happy after i play

Speaker 1 i'm i'm i'm happier now like i'm honestly like my standards for myself like are a little bit lower, have gone down a little bit the older I've gotten.

Speaker 1 Because I sort of accept that I don't

Speaker 1 I don't have my brain is not as fast as it used to be. So I'm going to have occasional letdowns.
So my top level is like I think

Speaker 1 as

Speaker 1 Good as it's ever been or at least very very close to but like the average level

Speaker 1 is it's just it's just too hard when your brain is not that fast anymore uh but but but yeah generally i um i'm i'm always thinking well yeah i could have always done something better like

Speaker 1 you always miss some things but i always feel like yeah there are avoidable mistakes that i'm i'm still making so this

Speaker 2 as you've gotten older this lowering expectations is that a recognition of the fact that being hard on yourself over minute details doesn't benefit you and that you've just had a more healthy approach?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1 It just makes everything a bit

Speaker 1 easier.

Speaker 1 Also, honestly, like the randomizing opening choices has made

Speaker 1 has made things easier

Speaker 1 as well. Everything just to sort of lower the pressure a bit.

Speaker 2 Have you ever consulted a mental coach or

Speaker 2 someone who

Speaker 2 works with people on mindsets to try to capture what is happening when you are in that complete total flow state of laser focusedness and try to recreate that?

Speaker 2 Because there's a bunch of different mind coaches that will tell you for a bunch of different pursuits that what you have to do is when you get to that state, whatever that state is, recognize that you're there and then

Speaker 2 try

Speaker 2 to get a map of the territory and try to will

Speaker 2 yourself back into that thing.

Speaker 2 But then there's another school of thought that says, no, it just has to happen organically and that you just have, you just need to be obsessed and focused and take care of yourself and meditate.

Speaker 2 And just when it comes, it's going to come. But it's just, you have to accept that it's a gift and it's just not always going to be there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm definitely in the latter camp.

Speaker 1 i've talked to people who have suggested mental coaches like plenty of plenty of times um both in in the past and and more recently as well i've just like always been worried that

Speaker 1 somebody's going to mess something up in in in my head paralysis by analysis yeah that that that's really that's really what it is for me so i feel

Speaker 1 At some point, I'm just like more or less content with the way

Speaker 1 things are, that most days that I'm playing I'm going to be fairly good on some days I'm going to be at my very best at other days I'm going to be very far from from my best and it's it's sort of yeah it's sort of the the way it is I I'm much definitely much more open to doing things to prevent me from having those very worst days because that those are the ones that really

Speaker 1 that really hurt you, especially now that we're playing a lot of faster tournaments uh where there are where there are um knockouts where basically like if you have one bad day you're you're out and it doesn't matter um like back in the days with classical tournaments like you could you could have a really bad day uh but then you can always bounce back but nowadays it's not it's not that easy do you ever try to map out what are the factors that lead you to hit that state that's that flow state do you ever try to think about your day like what did i do what did i eat how how did i sleep did I avoid toxic people around me?

Speaker 2 Did I stay offline? Like, what did I do that allowed me to get to that spot?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, doing everything sort of right before the game definitely helps.
Like,

Speaker 1 getting

Speaker 1 good sleep, like

Speaker 1 reading a book instead of being on some sort of device before I

Speaker 1 go to sleep.

Speaker 1 Then just focusing as little as possible on chess before

Speaker 1 the game definitely helps.

Speaker 1 Really, little as possible yeah because you want it to be fresh in your mind you want it to be in something exciting yeah I just I just want to have like two or three ideas of what I'm what I'm going to play and not

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 I I just don't want to like

Speaker 1 use mental energy that I could have used on the game before

Speaker 1 so um

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 one of my better tournaments that I played um it's I used to play every year at this

Speaker 1 seaside resort in the Netherlands. And it's in the middle of winter, so it's not very resort-like.
It's just

Speaker 1 rainy and windy, and there's basically nothing there except this big tournament that's been there for 80 years. And it's for three weeks every January.
So for me, there's not...

Speaker 1 there's not a lot to do.

Speaker 1 So what I would do like every day is

Speaker 1 wake up, I'd go for a walk,

Speaker 1 and then I would watch like

Speaker 1 30 to 45 minutes of

Speaker 1 NBA highlights from the day before,

Speaker 1 look at chess for 15 minutes, whatever my coach has sent me of preparation that we discussed the day before,

Speaker 1 eat, and then go play. And that worked really, really well.
It's just keeping it as simple as possible, honestly.

Speaker 2 So get inspired a little bit, a little bit of energy from watching NBA highlights, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Just a tiny amount of information from the coach. Just like get your brain locked in, but not too much energy.
Don't focus too much on it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a lot of people, like, they do,

Speaker 1 they will spend three, four hours preparing on a game

Speaker 1 on that very day.

Speaker 1 And it can be beneficial, like, if your opponent goes into specifically the lines that you prepared and so on. But overall, I think

Speaker 1 having a fresh mind is

Speaker 1 so important.

Speaker 1 And I'm also like, even if I haven't had the perfect preparation,

Speaker 1 I'm really good at just blocking everything out, forgetting everything that's happened, and just focusing there and then.

Speaker 1 But it's still not as good, of course, as just being

Speaker 1 in a good state of mind.

Speaker 2 Do you ever get to the point where you feel burnout or you want to just take days off, a week off, and not think about chess, not touch a chessboard?

Speaker 2 Or is it just constantly playing in the background no matter what you do?

Speaker 1 But I really love it.

Speaker 1 Why take time? Yeah, why take...

Speaker 1 No, no, no. I'm fine with taking breaks from tournaments and so on.

Speaker 1 But having like at least days, several days in a row without like looking at a chess game

Speaker 1 or

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't have to play every day, but not having a, having a, yeah, not looking at anything, like not reading some chess stuff or like, yeah, I mean, it's, it's my favorite hobby. So I don't.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I don't see why I would want to do that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's probably why you're one of the best of all time, if not the best. I mean, that's a beautiful approach, right?

Speaker 2 If you can find a thing that you love so much that even though you do it all the time and you've done it since you were a child, you're still obsessing and loving it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I do have those moments where I just

Speaker 1 take a breath and

Speaker 1 think about how lucky that I am.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 there are just moments where I just

Speaker 1 sort of, I wouldn't say rediscover my love for the game, but where I just think like, I'm obsessed with this game and I'm completely

Speaker 1 fine with that.

Speaker 2 Well, that's a beautiful way to live your life. If people can find a thing like that in their life, that really is the key to an enjoyable life.

Speaker 2 If the thing that you do all the time you're obsessed with,

Speaker 2 we talk about it all the time at our comedy club where we're all in the green room. We're like, we are so lucky that this is actually what we do for a job.

Speaker 2 And pretty much everybody who's good at it is obsessed with it and they think about it all the time. It's kind of the only way.

Speaker 2 But I'd need time off sometimes because I think that's different because it's always different ideas and different things you're working on. Sometimes you need time just to refresh your perspective.

Speaker 2 But with a game like chess, I guess you don't really need time off.

Speaker 1 No, I think, again, it's different

Speaker 1 for different people, but

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't feel like it

Speaker 1 takes away energy. It just gives me joy and

Speaker 1 energy

Speaker 1 when I do that. Like, I will just

Speaker 1 on a certain day, I will just log into chess.com and observe random people play. And that is something I can do and be very happy about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's just the way I am.

Speaker 2 Well, you're just very fortunate, and you found a thing that you really locked into.

Speaker 2 That perspective is very important for people to recognize, like the perspective of gratitude and

Speaker 2 appreciation that you're so fortunate to have found something. People go their whole lives and never find a thing that they're truly, absolutely passionate about.

Speaker 2 And for a guy like you, I mean, it's a shiny example for people, I think.

Speaker 2 I think that's one of the things that I enjoy the most about super high performers is that they provide an insane amount of inspiration to other people.

Speaker 2 When someone sees you play chess at the highest level or sees Michael Jordan play basketball or whatever it is, you get this feeling of what human beings can do, and it elevates your own expectations of yourself and of people around you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think I've thought about it many times. Like, what am I actually doing with my life that's useful to other people? And it always

Speaker 1 comes back to that every time that I hear that

Speaker 1 people are inspired by what I do. Maybe it helped them through like

Speaker 1 a difficult time to watch my games and to get in to rediscover or find the love for the game,

Speaker 1 that's really nice. And again,

Speaker 1 in the process, I'm just

Speaker 1 doing

Speaker 1 what I love, right? And that's really what people

Speaker 1 want to see from me. It's just competing and doing well at chess.
So that's also what I'm

Speaker 1 giving as often as possible. Well, that's what people want out of life.

Speaker 2 It's something that they love, that they do,

Speaker 2 that they're very good at, and they get recognized for it. And when a person like you does it and does it publicly, and it's inspiring, it's a great gift for other people.
I mean, it truly is.

Speaker 2 Who has been,

Speaker 2 like,

Speaker 2 are there particular players that you really enjoy watching play and particular styles that you enjoy?

Speaker 1 I think my favorite probably player of all time is

Speaker 1 sort of the young Kasparov before

Speaker 1 he became

Speaker 1 world champion. The thing is, like, what I find fascinating about that is that he played with a style

Speaker 1 that was so unique and so dynamic

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 I know that I could never replicate it. It's just not the way that I play.

Speaker 1 So that's something I admire a lot.

Speaker 1 Usually, I'm whatever I'm into, like, be it soccer or golf or basketball or whatever, like I admire like what people do, not necessarily like it's about the people themselves.

Speaker 1 So that's the way it has been for me in chess as well,

Speaker 1 that I try to like learn from people's games and what they do and when I talk to them.

Speaker 1 And I've been very fortunate about

Speaker 1 that being able to study with

Speaker 1 Gary back in the day

Speaker 1 and Anand, who was the world champion before me. um

Speaker 1 because it's it's only then when like when you when you study like you talk to them like you understand like how good they really are and how much they they understand

Speaker 1 um for instance with anand i had a training session um in 2008 where we had both played a tournament where

Speaker 1 um I'd done reasonably well and he had sort of towards the end he had mailed it in but he was preparing for the classical world championship so we I think I had two days off and he was living outside Madrid.

Speaker 1 And so I went to Madrid for a couple of days because the other tournament was in the north of Spain.

Speaker 1 Then I went to his house and as soon as that training camp started, it's like something just switched with him. And he was

Speaker 1 just so focused. We played a bunch of training games.

Speaker 1 And from being this guy who seemed completely disinterested in this other tournament, all of a sudden, like like he was crushing me like he had a massive plus score in our games and it felt like everything we analyzed he was just he just had a much deeper understanding of the game it seemed like he was faster tactically and everything

Speaker 1 and it made me like appreciate like how good

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Speaker 2 When you are playing someone like that and you're getting your ass kicked,

Speaker 2 does this

Speaker 2 inspire you and enact change in your game or does it does it not change your game? You just do the same game but more focused?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think it's more of the latter.

Speaker 1 It was just a reality check for me because I thought at that point that I was

Speaker 1 I was ranked I think third in the world. I had very briefly been ranked number one

Speaker 1 already at that point, like for a week. And I thought

Speaker 1 before that, I thought I was maybe one of the the best 2-3 players in the world. And it made me realize that I wasn't, and that maybe I was able to have better results than my actual level because

Speaker 1 of youth, energy, and optimism, right? And that made me just, yeah, it just made me realize that I have a lot, a lot to learn, and that

Speaker 1 I should be patient and not expect everything to

Speaker 1 sort of come that fast.

Speaker 1 Because at that point, I'd had a year of more or less constant rise. I was, yeah, just

Speaker 1 winning tournaments. Every time I would lose a game, I

Speaker 1 just believed that I could strike back immediately.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I realize now that

Speaker 1 I was delusional. I thought I was a lot better than what I was.
And that was probably why I was having such good results.

Speaker 2 Because you're so confident.

Speaker 1 Because I was so confident.

Speaker 1 But having a little bit of a reality check, I think, helped me later to actually

Speaker 1 understand

Speaker 1 the game a bit better. But

Speaker 1 I've still taken away that I think in chess, the optimal state when you're playing a game is somewhere between optimistic and delusionally optimistic.

Speaker 1 Because if you're realistic, you're just never going to

Speaker 1 be opportunistic enough to sort of exploit your opponent's mistakes.

Speaker 2 It's, I think, another factor is the way you analyze things that you were able to say, I was a little delusional, and even though I'm doing very well, I got a trust in this process of growth and development.

Speaker 2 And that it is a very, very long process.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. And

Speaker 1 like very soon after after that, I started working with uh with Garry Kasparov as well, and that made me realize that I know even less. Um,

Speaker 2 and uh, what can a guy like Gary Kasparov tell you that makes you know that you know even less

Speaker 1 back then? Um,

Speaker 1 it was really like

Speaker 2 my

Speaker 1 style has become a bit more dynamic over time, but back then, I like

Speaker 1 I really, really lacked understanding of more dynamic positions in in chess like you can have

Speaker 1 you can have like more static or more dynamic pawn structures like if there are a lot of possible pawn breaks for for both sides and both kings are under attack then it's sort of more more dynamic and tactical or it could be more a lot more about gaining some minute positional advantages and that's sort of what I was excelling at the latter and working with him,

Speaker 1 it just improved sort of the more dynamic part of my game a lot. And that helped me

Speaker 1 very much

Speaker 1 short term.

Speaker 1 And also, also, it's helped me ladder because it improved my understanding of the game. My strength, main strength, is still more in the more static structures,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 that work made me so much more versatile, and I still definitely

Speaker 1 profit from that.

Speaker 2 What is a coach for you today?

Speaker 2 What benefit is a coach today?

Speaker 1 A couple of things.

Speaker 1 The main benefits that I have from my chess coach is opening work. That's like the low-hanging fruit.

Speaker 1 That's really what

Speaker 1 you can get the most out of on on

Speaker 1 from from game to game um a couple of other things like my my coach is is also um an old friend of mine um he's danish so we can communicate in the same language uh and he's also just as obsessed with golf as as i am so that

Speaker 1 every every time like we have like a chess training camp there is always also a lot of uh lolar golf being played so um

Speaker 1 yeah, those are a few things. But chess-wise, it's mainly about

Speaker 1 the opening work.

Speaker 2 And so it's essentially, he's obviously very good at chess as well, but it's essentially bouncing things off of each other and going over positions.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then he's very good at using chess engines to

Speaker 1 get slightly different.

Speaker 1 different results than maybe other others do.

Speaker 2 Do you occasionally, or do you at all, analyze other people's games and break them down together?

Speaker 1 Not really.

Speaker 1 When it comes to analyzing other games,

Speaker 1 it's more useful for me to look at what the engine

Speaker 1 is saying.

Speaker 2 Because the engines are just smarter than me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they are. And

Speaker 1 I'm good enough that I can interpret what the engine is saying to

Speaker 1 understand why

Speaker 1 a certain thing

Speaker 1 happened. So it's still interesting to analyze together as humans, but we always want to double-check what

Speaker 1 we're saying with the engines.

Speaker 2 Isn't it fascinating that that's a gigantic factor now ever since Deep Blue, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so the thing about, I know, like, I don't know if

Speaker 1 you talked to Gary, but he has this whole thing with

Speaker 1 Deep Blue. I'm not sure if Deep Blue was actually

Speaker 1 better than Gary, but

Speaker 1 it yeah,

Speaker 1 it started the downfall of us humans when it comes to chess. And it's now been a long time where we've just accepted that our computer overlords are just a lot better.

Speaker 1 And there are serious benefits for

Speaker 1 improving players, for kids, like the engines help people improve a lot faster. So

Speaker 1 that's a great thing.

Speaker 1 Additionally, people watching chess games, like one problem is that you cannot easily tell.

Speaker 1 It's not like one guy is being punched and the other guy is

Speaker 1 punching.

Speaker 1 It takes some skill to

Speaker 1 see what's going on. But with the help of the engines, you could actually have a real-time score all the time.
because it tells you who is who is winning and who who is not.

Speaker 1 So it becomes a lot easier to

Speaker 1 follow as well because honestly like most people when they can consume sports they're mostly interested about who is going to win and who is going to lose so now at least you can you can have that factor in chess that you can you can you can see that and

Speaker 1 there it's it's very interesting for me to read what people were writing about computer chess

Speaker 1 30 not not 30 but like 50 60 years ago and so on when there was an actual discussion whether computers could ever beat a grandmaster at chess. And now it's um

Speaker 1 it's very much settled, of course.

Speaker 2 Well, they have that same discussion about Go, right?

Speaker 1 Well, Go is much, much more complicated than than chess. So

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 I don't know what has happened since AlphaGo,

Speaker 1 if if like the best masters are still a little bit better or where the state is at.

Speaker 2 I think Go is better than everybody now. The computer is, but I think a new factor is that the computer has devised creative moves that were never used before, that have now been implemented.

Speaker 2 They're part of like general strategy, which I think they thought was very shocking.

Speaker 1 So if see if you can find anything. Is that kind of bluffing moves?

Speaker 2 I do not know because I don't understand Go.

Speaker 2 I was just reading an article about the extraordinary leaps that AI has taken and that one of the more shocking things was that it was able to beat the best players at Go, which they didn't, they thought it was like a long time coming.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I did watch, I watched the movie AlphaGo.

Speaker 1 How long ago was that? That's like five, no, maybe like six, seven years ago.

Speaker 2 See, in AI time, that's like Stone Ages, which is so crazy.

Speaker 1 And I think like a year or two later, there was AlphaZero in chess.

Speaker 1 So chess engines, they were always like kind of built by humans and instructed by humans. And then AlphaZero came along and

Speaker 1 which is a neural network that just learned chess on its own. And it became

Speaker 1 more or less as good or maybe

Speaker 1 slightly, slightly worse than the best traditional chess engines. What's interesting is that the neural networks played chess a lot more like humans.

Speaker 1 They were much less concerned about material factors. They were more about positional play and long-term thinking and so on, because it was not based on brute force in the way that

Speaker 1 traditional engines would. And you would see funny, like they have computer tournaments as well

Speaker 1 with the best engine in the world. And you will still see like

Speaker 1 Lila Zero, that's sort of the clone of AlphaZero because they discontinued the Alpha Zero project after a while.

Speaker 1 It will make like elementary tactical blunders, almost.

Speaker 2 That's crazy.

Speaker 1 Because it, I don't know, it doesn't have,

Speaker 1 it just

Speaker 1 thinks about chess differently than traditional engines, but it will also do things that just confounds the very best chess engines in the world still. So

Speaker 1 that's very interesting to see. And like all the best coaches and players now now when when you work with chess computers, like you always have

Speaker 1 both like a neural net and a traditional chess engine running, as well as some others who are now like hybrid, who are who have who have a little bit of both.

Speaker 2 It's just fascinating that it would make blunders.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's something about its

Speaker 1 its

Speaker 1 its search.

Speaker 1 I really don't know. But it would also make some fascinating decisions.
Like

Speaker 1 when you promote a pawn, like you usually promote to a queen,

Speaker 1 because that's almost always the best. Unless you sometimes want to pr promote a knight specifically to give a check or sometimes to avoid stalemate, but that's less frequent.
But then

Speaker 1 what

Speaker 1 Lila and AlphaZero would sometimes do is that they would promote to a different piece because

Speaker 1 if it's a piece that's anyway going to be captured, just to give your opponent like a slight chance of making a mistake by making another move,

Speaker 1 which is something like a human would never ever do,

Speaker 1 but it's like it's really funny.

Speaker 1 a little bit of a parallel to what's going on in Go, I think, with this gamesmanship that is going on with

Speaker 1 the new neural nets.

Speaker 2 That's crazy that it would just trick you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it would try and trick it. Like, it probably wouldn't trick a human because a human would be like,

Speaker 1 that's weird. Okay, I'll just take it, whatever.
But another engine would be... Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 Well, I have another alternative that seems

Speaker 1 equivalent, more or less. Maybe I'll go for maybe I'll go for that.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 It's very strange.

Speaker 2 So, what are the best programs that people play on?

Speaker 1 There are a few. There's one that was originally developed by a New Wigan called Stockfish.
That's still considered the best. So

Speaker 1 I think the best now is Stockfish, like Stockfridge Hybrid. That's part neural and part traditional engine.
And then I think...

Speaker 2 Do you have to be connected online to use that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, most people use either

Speaker 1 most people use remote engines, like some kind of cloud service to have as much computing power as possible.

Speaker 2 So the kind of computing power that's on your phone, like, can you beat your phone at the highest level?

Speaker 1 No. No chance.
Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 1 No chance. No chance.

Speaker 2 That's so crazy, because Deep Blue, wasn't it like as big as a room?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Deep Blue was a wasn't like a stack of computers, right?

Speaker 1 But I'm sure it's still less powerful than the computer on your phone is today, right?

Speaker 1 no no i have no chance against against um against my phone uh there was there was that's crazy

Speaker 1 there there was actually one time where i played uh corporate simul and there was this guy who said um i built a chess program in

Speaker 1 in my university class

Speaker 1 can i let that play against you again and instead of myself and i was like yeah sure why not and i actually like beat it fairly handily uh because i played some kind of like anti-computer chess where I just close up the position as much as possible and just let it have as few possibilities as possible to

Speaker 1 out-calculate me so that it's a purely strategical game. That doesn't work against very good engines, but it can work against

Speaker 1 weaker ones. But no,

Speaker 1 humans, like we don't have any...

Speaker 1 There was a grandmaster who played a match recently against Lila, which is like the best neural network engine now.

Speaker 1 They were playing classical chess and he started with a knight more

Speaker 1 and they played a 10-game match and he won five and a half to four and a half.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Which

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 crazy. Like it's a knight more.
Like that's it should not be possible for any

Speaker 1 like if God was playing chess, that shouldn't be you shouldn't be able to beat a grandmaster in any game like that. So the grandmaster was still able to win.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 for me,

Speaker 1 I rarely play against engines at all because

Speaker 1 they just make me feel so stupid and useless.

Speaker 1 I think about it more

Speaker 1 as a tool

Speaker 1 than anything else. And often, like, when you play against them,

Speaker 1 the moves that they make, they are not necessarily relevant as to what a human would do in that why in that situation because we just think we just think differently do you ever try to think like the computer um yeah well specifically the neural nets have improved our understanding of the game immensely and the alpha zero paper came out very late 2018 And actually, I played a world championship match late 2018 as well against an American Fabiano Carano.

Speaker 1 That was the best match I think that I've ever played. We played

Speaker 1 12 draws actually and then I won in a tiebreak. But like the games were super high quality and

Speaker 1 he was very evenly matched. And then he was actually using Leela, the AlphaZero clone, which we didn't have access to.
We didn't even know that was the thing.

Speaker 1 But the thing is like after AlvaZero came out in late 2018, there was a period, half a year maybe, early 2019, where you could very clearly see which players have been using these new neural network networks or knew how to use them and which players didn't and my coach he got into it very quickly and we got an advantage of basically everybody but that but that guy who had been using it during the match and it just made us understand the game a lot better uh there were as i said like a couple of things about long-term king safety.

Speaker 1 Pushing pawns on the side of the board was maybe the biggest takeaway. That often

Speaker 1 you would push pawns

Speaker 1 and not as an attacking tool, which used to be the way that you would push a pawn, like trying to break open

Speaker 1 your king. What you would do is that you would have a little hook on the side of the board that you could use 20 or 30 moves later

Speaker 1 to make your king

Speaker 1 like like to make the opponent's king less safe then. And this is something that humans didn't really do.
And I still see some people like allowing these pawn advances. And

Speaker 1 I don't like, I wonder if they didn't learn their lesson from 2019.

Speaker 1 But it was very clear to see

Speaker 1 at a certain time before everybody sort of caught up with the new information. And that's also when I had maybe my best stretch of chess ever because I just understood these new things

Speaker 1 better, better than others.

Speaker 2 It's almost counterintuitive that you wouldn't want to play the computer because the computer makes you look stupid. Because the idea in my mind would be like, well, you should play the best.

Speaker 2 thing that you could possibly play. And if that's a computer, great.
If that's another human being, then play the human being.

Speaker 2 But I would imagine that playing something that makes you feel stupid would, at the very least, teach you something about the game.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it does, but at the same time, like, you know, that these are usually things that humans cannot replicate.

Speaker 1 And to be fair, like, the kids these days, a lot of them play like a more concrete brand of

Speaker 1 chess that

Speaker 1 is more similar to

Speaker 1 engines than

Speaker 1 than we have seen in the past.

Speaker 2 Because they've had so much exposure to it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like they're less dogmatic, more concrete in their thinking. But then I know that there are usually other things that are lacking.
So I could sort of steer the game there as well. So I don't know.

Speaker 1 I haven't found it particularly useful, but but maybe I'm just

Speaker 2 yeah, I don't want to is it partly because you just don't want to lose?

Speaker 1 Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 And it's also because, as you said, like chess is a very lonely game. Like when you lose, it's because you're worse than your opponent.

Speaker 1 And imagine losing to somebody who you know is like completely stupid, which

Speaker 1 like traditional... chess computers are.
They're stupid. They just have much more computing power than you do.

Speaker 1 So losing over and over again to something that's so stupid, like, that's not a good feeling.

Speaker 2 Could you help explain to me what are the factors? Like, how can it what is it doing that you can't do in terms of calculating positions and moves and strategies?

Speaker 1 Well, first of all, it's infinitely faster.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there will be certain possibilities that I will rule out because of my intuition, but it is able to calculate in a very short time that it's it's it's possible it will never make

Speaker 1 blunders like simple tactical mistakes the neural networks sometimes do but traditional engines traditional engines don't

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 like I can

Speaker 1 I can keep like most of the moves that I make will be the same as they as they do

Speaker 1 but they just like they don't make any

Speaker 1 real blunders at all. Like they may make slight positional mistakes, but honestly, most of the time that I think

Speaker 1 an engine makes a positional mistake is because I don't understand it well enough.

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Speaker 2 So it's not really a mistake.

Speaker 4 And it might look like one, but it's long-term.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's just that my understanding is not good enough. And that is useful.
Then that does help me learn.

Speaker 2 What are the fact, like, what is the difference between the approach that the neural network takes versus a traditional engine?

Speaker 2 Like, why is one of them approaching the game differently?

Speaker 1 Because one of them is constantly calculating

Speaker 1 based on sort of what

Speaker 1 humans have taught them is

Speaker 1 like the value of like the value, what is the value of a pawn, what's the value of a knight, and what is the value of

Speaker 1 a far advanced pawn and all of this. Like it calculates based on that.
A neural network, just

Speaker 1 you teach, you just show it the rules of chess and,

Speaker 1 you know, play against yourself a lot of times and get better.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it it's it just has a it has a different approach. Like what it does is just based on the game games that it's that it's played against itself, right? So it it's it's just it it will have completely

Speaker 1 different different ideas um at times. Like i

Speaker 1 imagine like in twenty nineteen, because of these neural networks, like every opening that had been played for

Speaker 1 hundreds of years had to be rechecked by coaches. Because

Speaker 1 there could be a difference in the evaluation because there is this new neural network that just thinks in a completely different way. Wow.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 these neural networks could go back and look at

Speaker 2 a classic game from 1963 and say, well, you know what? I would have fucked that dude up because I would have done this, that, and the other thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 exactly. And

Speaker 1 it just,

Speaker 1 I think a lot of it was based on, it just emphasizes different factors than traditional engines do. And that ultimately just leads to

Speaker 1 different results, really.

Speaker 1 But it's, yeah,

Speaker 1 it was extremely fascinating.

Speaker 1 for a while, but now it's just led to really more parody in in the world of chess because

Speaker 1 everybody just has access to

Speaker 1 that information. It used to be a thing back in the time that some people would really be ahead of others, not only in 2019, but also other times they had

Speaker 1 more

Speaker 1 computing power, better cloud engines, like they had. started to use different engines and so on but now

Speaker 1 now you could prepare for a world championship, honestly,

Speaker 1 in two weeks and you'd be completely with like just a regular

Speaker 1 regular like laptop that's connected to a cloud.

Speaker 1 It's very different

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 so much easier today.

Speaker 2 That is so fascinating that it's changed the game so much. Could you get a computer, whether it is a traditional engine or whether it's a neural network, could you get one to imitate a specific style?

Speaker 2 Like, could you get one to say, I want you to play like Garrett Kasparov when he was younger?

Speaker 1 So we actually did this back in the day.

Speaker 1 We actually started an app called Play Magnus, where you could play against myself

Speaker 1 at different ages.

Speaker 1 And the

Speaker 1 style, it was based on, the guy who built built stockfish built this engine as well so it was based like an old version of that but it would have my openings and try to emulate my style at certain certain ages obviously it wasn't it wasn't perfect but it was it it was it was a start um

Speaker 1 i think it's still difficult to build like a very good clone because essentially

Speaker 1 At least with traditional engines, it's not possible. Maybe with AI,

Speaker 1 you can get there, but I still think we fundamentally think differently about

Speaker 1 chess.

Speaker 2 But yeah, maybe. But the interesting thing would be to take you, because there's so many games that can be observed and put into the calculations.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 2 I would really be fascinated to watch you play you.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, like, what would that be like? Like, you play you when you were 20.

Speaker 1 No, so the thing about it is that you would have also what you would have to calibrate is that

Speaker 1 it would make occasional like tactical blunders, right? Right. And which

Speaker 1 engines

Speaker 2 are they wouldn't want to.

Speaker 1 And so what we would do, what would happen in the Plyminas app is that it would make occasional blunders, but those would be like

Speaker 1 a little bit too outrageous because it's like really hard to emulate the kinds of mistakes a human would make by

Speaker 1 the engines.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I think that would probably still be like the most difficult part, like the main issue in order to make such a thing.

Speaker 4 If the Play Magnus thing was dialed in like 100%,

Speaker 4 what would be, do you think now would be the scariest age to play you?

Speaker 1 Does that question make sense? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Are you better now than ever before?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I think my peak level is close to the best because

Speaker 1 chess level or proficiency at anything, it's about making use of the knowledge and making it into skill, right?

Speaker 1 And I definitely have more knowledge now than I've ever had. But I think probably

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 best combination I had of knowledge

Speaker 1 and energy and that translated the best into skill was probably

Speaker 1 in 2019,

Speaker 1 like first half of the year

Speaker 1 when I was 28.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 when I was

Speaker 1 more like a young Kasparov than I'd ever been before,

Speaker 1 very dynamic.

Speaker 2 Well, what is the difference between you in 2019 and you today?

Speaker 1 A few things.

Speaker 1 First,

Speaker 1 I couldn't play the same openings as I played then because they have been worked out to a point where they're basically

Speaker 1 yeah they're just too analyzed and

Speaker 1 unplayable so that's that's one thing

Speaker 1 apart from that I think I could do like my average level probably be a little bit lower because I'm a little bit

Speaker 1 I'm a little bit older and

Speaker 1 and my brain is not quite as fast

Speaker 1 but I could do I think most of those things what I don't think I could do is like the other other sort of best version of me, which was 2013, 2014,

Speaker 1 when I was in

Speaker 1 the best shape of my life.

Speaker 1 And I was just

Speaker 1 a relentless beast at the board, grinding down

Speaker 1 my

Speaker 1 opponents in very long end games, never giving them any respite whatsoever.

Speaker 1 Like, purely skill-wise, that was far from the best version.

Speaker 1 Sorry, knowledge-wise, that was far from the best version of me.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I was just,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 it was just like the average level of my game definitely was higher than because I barely, I rarely played really bad, bad games at all because I was always, I was always sort of on. I had so much,

Speaker 1 so much

Speaker 1 willpower and energy.

Speaker 2 Well, you're saying you were in the best shape of your life. Do you mean physically or do you mean chance?

Speaker 1 Physically. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 there's two factors you're talking about, like physical fitness and nutrition and exercise.

Speaker 1 Like that,

Speaker 2 these things you don't really take too much into consideration, but they obviously played a huge factor in the most successful period of your life.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it did, but then...

Speaker 2 Because you're only 34. It's only an old man.

Speaker 1 No, no, no.

Speaker 1 That's true. But

Speaker 1 i i i just i just feel it with these these kids like their brains are just so much faster than mine um i i mean i've felt it for years as well that

Speaker 1 no i'm i'm not i'm not i'm not old uh but i can i i can i can never be at that level of pure like

Speaker 2 computing power but is that generally accepted with chess that there's a certain age where it just drops off

Speaker 2 like who has won the world championships at like the oldest age?

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, back in the days

Speaker 1 when you couldn't get information that quickly, it took people a lot longer to

Speaker 1 develop. And then it was considered that the best age was like late 30s, early 40s.

Speaker 1 Obviously, the drop-off is not nearly as steep as it would be in physical sports.

Speaker 1 That goes without saying. But I think the peak years are pretty much the same

Speaker 1 for for most people like mid mid 20s to to to early

Speaker 1 to early 30s

Speaker 1 I think I could still

Speaker 1 I could be I could still be very very close to to my peak if I

Speaker 1 focused fully on

Speaker 1 on yeah all the the things that I can that I physical fitness control

Speaker 1 all of those things.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and yet you don't do that? I don't understand. If you're so obsessed with chess, and that seems to have a primary factor.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's it's a good thing.

Speaker 1 I feel like I do I generally like do the right thing things when I'm at tournaments, but then in between,

Speaker 1 I don't know, I want to enjoy life

Speaker 1 as well.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 um,

Speaker 1 and like I'm generally obsessed with with with chess, but I'm not always obsessed with competing.

Speaker 1 Like certain times there will be certain days, certain tournaments where I I know that I'm not going to be at my best and I I can I can sort of I can feel it and then I I'm not able to

Speaker 1 to to to take it as as seriously. Like I feel like I cannot

Speaker 1 I'm I'm not a Michael Jordan type who has to like go all out in every

Speaker 1 in in in every game I used to but now I don't I I don't think I have that

Speaker 1 um that in me because my main motivation for playing chess is that I love to play um I don't have concrete goals of what I want to what I want to do

Speaker 2 things I want to achieve like does that sort of relax attitude that you have does that drive other people crazy that you're still able to beat them

Speaker 2 that would drive me fucking nuts if I was just fully obsessed and studying moves all day and just taking my vitamins and drinking only purified water.

Speaker 4 It's kind of a thing that you're known for, right? Like a lot of other people are known to work all the time and you've kind of always, at least a reputation,

Speaker 4 played the player, right?

Speaker 1 Isn't that what you're...

Speaker 1 Yeah, and also the thing is, like, I was known

Speaker 1 for...

Speaker 1 for like being fit and all of these things. But now I think there are a lot of other players who take these these things a lot more seriously than I than I do.

Speaker 1 I think the reason why I got that reputation is that I really like

Speaker 1 doing a lot of

Speaker 1 like I did a lot of sports from I was little and I've always like kind of done them for for fun so I think that was the that was why like you don't see a lot of chess players playing uh playing soccer or tennis or or whatever um not that i'm great at any of those things but i was usually better than than a

Speaker 1 a lot of other chess players.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I guess I do have

Speaker 1 I Don't know I don't know what a reputation I have for the others like I don't really care.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's not much you can do about your reputation.

Speaker 4 I'm just saying like in a in a in a game or a sport where it's so computer involved and analyzed and there's geniuses wearing suits and glasses and things, you're kind of known as a laid-back, intimidating force with a legacy.

Speaker 4 Do you have, are there, are there special things you do kind of like more like a poker player or anything to intimidate your opponents ever?

Speaker 4 Like, I've seen you, like, show up late to big tournaments where they're like waiting for you and stuff. That's really cool.

Speaker 2 That's a Miyamoto Musashi move.

Speaker 1 No, samurai? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Honestly, like, that's.

Speaker 1 Me being late is

Speaker 1 down to a couple of things. First, I hate waiting,

Speaker 1 but also I just am terrible at planning. So that's why I keep showing up later.

Speaker 2 You are terrible at planning.

Speaker 1 You know how funny that is?

Speaker 1 It's literally what you do. No.
Better than anybody.

Speaker 1 Like my planning is always based on everything going perfectly and like making a time plan based on that. And if something goes a little bit wrong, then I'm going to be late.

Speaker 1 And like something usually

Speaker 1 goes wrong or often enough that it becomes becomes a thing.

Speaker 1 like like as you talked about in in in chess like there's this video that a lot of people have talked about where i come there's there's um there's a blitz game right and i that's three minutes and i come like two and a half minutes late because i've been i've been skiing in the mountains and there was a there was an accident on the road that

Speaker 1 that delayed me like half an hour. Like most people would have planned for that, had a little bit of buffer, but I was like, eh, that was probably going to be fine.

Speaker 1 Suddenly there's an accident and I'm going to be late and I'm just running into the playing hall in my

Speaker 1 in my

Speaker 1 sweatpants and not really even realizing that the game has started. I just thought I was so late that I should be

Speaker 1 and I saw that everybody was there and then randomly turned out that I had half a minute left when when I got to the got to the board. So that's kind of more how'd you play the game?

Speaker 2 Did you like have a different approach?

Speaker 1 Because you knew you only had 30 seconds no the the thing is like in there you have a two second increment per move so i'm not going to lose on time automatically i just had to play a little bit faster but it was it was okay but as i said like i don't do those things to intimidate my opponents i'm just that would be such a mindfuck guy shows up two and a half minutes late and still stomps you yeah i don't think many people know about the the the the skiing delay or anything i think it was thought of as like a this i'm i'm a badass i'm coming in late no honestly, that was

Speaker 1 like the world championships and chess, like they're being held in the weirdest places. So, this was in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which

Speaker 1 is like really

Speaker 1 during winter at least, pretty polluted, not very nice city. And then, just half an hour out of the city, you have basically the Alps.
You have

Speaker 1 beautiful mountains that go up to

Speaker 1 three and a half thousand meters,

Speaker 1 where it's just fantastic. And you can

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 get

Speaker 1 yeah, from the city, it's like an hour, and you're at the top of the mountain and having a beautiful ski vacation.

Speaker 1 And I just like was so miserable being down in the city that I thought for this day, like if I'm going to perform at all today, like I need some fresh air. I like I need to get out of here.

Speaker 1 And so that's why I took the risk. And it was, yeah, definitely not

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 play mind games. Because

Speaker 1 Bobby Fisher said about chess that I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.
Like, I believe in a little bit of both, but I'm more in his school that I just

Speaker 1 I think I'm going to make better moves and I don't need

Speaker 1 all those other things.

Speaker 4 Did you ever have an opponent that was doing something psychological that kind of messed you up or threw you off?

Speaker 4 Like back when I was a wrestler in high school, school, some guys wouldn't shower and it would be disgusting, right? Was there anything like that in chess?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that specific thing has happened for sure. I'm not sure if

Speaker 1 it's been a conscience choice by my opponents. I'm sure I've been

Speaker 1 guilty of it as well.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 1 I don't know, really.

Speaker 1 I think the only thing is not to bring that up again, but I think

Speaker 1 when I that my my opponent might be cheating, that's the only time that I'm really

Speaker 1 off.

Speaker 2 It's just weird that you can cheat and do it for so long and yet still play in the best tournaments. You would think that like in the UFC, like say if you get caught with steroids, you get a long ban.

Speaker 2 And if you get caught again, you get an even longer ban. And I think it's like a three-strike thing.
If you get caught a third time, you're out of the sport forever.

Speaker 1 No, it's

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 thing is that.

Speaker 2 Would you think harsher penalties would discourage people?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, for sure. Especially for online, because there's been this thinking that cheating over the board and over online is very different.
But the thing is,

Speaker 1 once people are cheating online, then having these meteoric rises over the board as well, it makes you think, hmm, that's a bit strange. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So yeah, there definitely needs to be

Speaker 1 harsher penalties. One thing that chess.com used to do is that they would let people sort of confess privately and then get their account back.

Speaker 1 But now they're moving to more naming sh and shaming sort of sort of thing with the

Speaker 1 and and banning people for longer, which I think is yeah, it's it's a lot it's a lot better. Um

Speaker 1 but a lot of it is is is a lot of it is about incentives as well, right? Like if you you if you think that you can get get away with cheating

Speaker 1 and there are monetary incentives to cheat, people are going to cheat. It's as simple as that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, I guess that's just with every pursuit. There's always going to be people that look for shortcuts.
There's always going to be someone who looks to skirt around the difficult path.

Speaker 1 No, that's true. But the the thing is, like, there's so little you need in in chess, and and the the engines are so powerful.
Um,

Speaker 1 like if i started cheating

Speaker 1 you would never know

Speaker 1 the thing is like i would i i would get like a move here and there that's all i need or maybe

Speaker 1 imagine i'm playing a tournament i just find a system where i get somebody to signal me when there's a critical moment like if a certain move if there's a moment where a certain move is much better than the others that's really all i would need to

Speaker 1 go from being the best to being like practically unbeatable, right?

Speaker 1 So it really is a scary situation and situation. There have been these cases of

Speaker 1 so many cases of people who are acting suspiciously and who are making suspicious

Speaker 1 having suspicious results based on the data. But

Speaker 1 they're very like if you're not cheating in a dumb way, there rarely is going to be a smoking gun. And without that smoking gun, it's really hard to

Speaker 2 catch people. How would you eliminate that other than security? Would you have it so there's no audience members at all and have them only in a room

Speaker 1 together? So

Speaker 1 that has been done in World Championships, for instance.

Speaker 1 We're basically been playing in a glass box where

Speaker 1 you can see

Speaker 1 where you cannot see the audience and you cannot hear anything. So it's a

Speaker 1 glass proof box.

Speaker 1 I kind of

Speaker 1 that's like you kind of don't want that. You want there to be like I really like having chess more like an esports setting where people can be as loud as they want.

Speaker 1 It's just you have players sit down like boxers with headsets and but don't headsets open up the possibility of cheating? But then like the headsets would be all provided by the organizers. Right.

Speaker 1 So some sort of and you'd have to have like both we have had that in tournament like tournaments that you have to have white noise and some kind of sound from like Spotify or whatever if you want to listen to classical music or whatever.

Speaker 1 You can do that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. So you can listen to Wu-Tang Clan while you play chess?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, honestly, honestly, playing Blitz chess, listening to music usually helps me because like doing tasks that are more intuition based

Speaker 1 Then that helps with the flow with longer games

Speaker 1 You probably don't want that disturbance, but I've definitely played some of my best blitz chess just

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 listening to music

Speaker 1 sitting there bopping

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think I Some wild Norwegian music

Speaker 1 Ramstein or something.

Speaker 1 That's actually German, but

Speaker 1 they have some good songs.

Speaker 1 No, I think

Speaker 1 my best chess has probably been Norwegian rap. Norwegian rap, really?

Speaker 2 What's a good Norwegian rap band that you could

Speaker 1 rap group that you could recommend?

Speaker 1 There's a guy called Mr. Pimp Lotion, an Oral B.
Mr. Pimplotion.
An Oral B. They're kind of...

Speaker 1 It's like a little bit ironic, but they're like doing American West Coast rap in Norwegian.

Speaker 2 Oh, that sounds badass.

Speaker 1 This is a bit of a different one.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I actually did a song with Mr. Pimplotion.
I actually did a song with those guys.

Speaker 1 What a great name.

Speaker 2 Mr. Pimplotion.

Speaker 1 That's incredible. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, my verse is right at the end.

Speaker 2 I like it too because I don't have any idea what the words are saying.

Speaker 1 Yours Yours is at the end.

Speaker 1 No, basically there's...

Speaker 1 Yeah, the thing about the what happened was that they did a show and they have this

Speaker 1 thing called spinur which is like a moisturizer mostly used for animals. But like this Mr.
Pinflosion, like he's obsessed with that one. And somebody apparently stole that from backstage.

Speaker 1 at their concert. And so they didn't know know who it was, but they eventually found out and they made a song about it.
And so they had a bunch of people like send in their verses.

Speaker 1 Uh

Speaker 1 it's incredible the difference between America and Norway, what the rappers are rapping about. There's gang wars and shootings, and in Norway somebody's like, Who stole my lot?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 There actually was a uh

Speaker 1 there actually was a popular song

Speaker 1 about 20 years ago that referenced specifically that in Norwegian, that there was nothing to rap about because nothing bad ever happens.

Speaker 1 That's what he's saying.

Speaker 2 Don't pull out the gun. It's best that someone speak out.
Who stole this penal?

Speaker 1 Who stole my lotion? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Basically, there's a bunch of verses, like people accusing each other, and then I randomly come in at the very end

Speaker 1 and solve the mystery.

Speaker 1 Was it you?

Speaker 1 Oh, it wasn't me.

Speaker 1 I was not at that particular show, but

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 I think like the best online chess that I've ever played was probably

Speaker 1 listening to

Speaker 1 their music. Wow.

Speaker 2 Do you mix it up? Do you ever listen to like Led Zeppelin or?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I listen to

Speaker 1 a lot of

Speaker 1 older stuff

Speaker 1 as well.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, I'm like, I have no idea what's on the chart these days

Speaker 1 in general, but

Speaker 2 I find out through Tony.

Speaker 2 I find out through the young guys at the club.

Speaker 1 I'm like, what are you listening to? What is this?

Speaker 2 And then I'll do Shazam on it and put it on my spot playlist.

Speaker 1 That sometimes happens to me as well, maybe like once a year or something.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, it's,

Speaker 1 I remember, like I asked my sister probably like 10 years ago, like I saw his playlist and I was like, do you have anything from before 2000? And she was like, yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 Britney Sparrow's Baby One More Time, 1999.

Speaker 1 So I'm kind of the opposite of that.

Speaker 2 Well, that's awesome. Well, listen, man, it's been awesome having you in here.
I really appreciate you doing this. And tell everybody when the Netflix show is out.

Speaker 1 I don't know, but it's

Speaker 1 within a few months for sure.

Speaker 2 Jamie, do you know? I looked, didn't say, didn't say when it's coming out. Well, we will put it up on the Instagram when it's out, and uh, it's been awesome talking to you, man.

Speaker 2 I really appreciate it. Thank you, thanks for coming in.

Speaker 4 All right, Tony, fun times, fun times, all right,

Speaker 1 goodbye.

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