Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness | Lex Fridman Podcast #330
you and Magnus played a private game 40 games of Blitz in 2010 in Moscow at a hotel this sounds and just feels legendary the reason that I probably should not have agreed to play this match and Y very often times reference it as one of the biggest mistakes in terms of competitive trust that I made is specifically because it gave Magnus a chance to understand my style of Chess are you and Magnus friends enemies Frenemies um what what's the status of the relationship yeah I think with all the rivalries and chess everybody tries to Hype it up like everyone hates each other but the thing is at the end of the day yes we're very competitive we want to beat each other whether it's myself or Magnus or other other top players but we also realize that it's a very small world like a lot of us are able to make a living playing the game as professionals and as I alluded to earlier the top 20 to 30 players can make a living so even though we're competitive against each other we want to beat each other there is a certain level of respect that we have and there is a sort of Brotherhood I would say um so all of us are I would say fronomies the following is a conversation with Hikaru and the Gamora a chess super Grandmaster he's one of the greatest chess players in the world including currently being ranked world number one in Blitz chess he's also one of the most popular chess streamers on Twitch and YouTube which you should definitely check out his Channel's name on both as GM Hikaru this is the live streaming podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's to Karo Nakamura you and Magnus played a private game 40 games of Blitz in 2010 in Moscow at a hotel this sounds and just feels legendary final score was 24 and a half to 15 and a half for Magnus where'd you find out the score I'm actually curious I don't think it was publicly set or it was very briefly said but it wasn't ever like mentioned in a serious way so I think it's a deep dive based on a few links that started as at a subreddit which is how all great Journeys start yeah so this is kind of a crazy story there this was not pre-planned at all I remember this quite well um I went out to dinner that final night with someone who was actually very high up within the internet chess club at that time I went out for a nice dinner I think I had like a couple of drinks and it was wine beer I don't know what it was and I think towards the end of the dinner somehow they got word of this and they they relayed the information to me that Magus wanted to play a private match now I agreed to play this match probably I should not have and actually has nothing to do with like the state of having been out had a few drinks anything of that nature but the reason that I probably should not have agreed to play this match and Y very oftentimes reference it as one of the biggest mistakes in terms of competitive trust that I made is specifically because it gave Magnus a chance to understand my style of Chess and at the time I actually had pretty good results against Magnus I think maybe he was up one or two games but there were many games where I'd been pressing close to winning against him prior to that match and so when I went and played that match there were a few things that happened first of all Magnus really started to understand my style because we played all sorts of different openings and so I think he understood that at times I wasn't so great in the opening and there were many openings where I would play slightly dubious variations as opposed to the main lines and then secondly from my standpoint the problem that I realized since we were playing with an increment there were many games where I was close to winning and he would defend end games amazingly well he would defend what our technical technically drawn end games but where I would have like an extra pawn it would be like rook and Bishop versus rook and Knight say I have four pawns he has three pawns end games of this nature now if you aren't super into chess you might not understand what I'm referring to if you are you will but their end games where one side might have extra material and extra Pawn say extra two pawns but theoretically it's a drawn so can you give an example of the set of pieces we're talking about five six seven pieces like so okay like a very basic one would be rook in four pawns against rook and three pawns so that would be nine total pieces on the board four pawns on one side three pawns on the other side wide but it's on the same side of the board now this is a technical draw it's been known for probably let's just say 70 years roughly give or take that this is a theoretical draw no matter the position of the pawns it's just all the pawns are on one side of the board so like but like where they are so it's like let's just say they're let's just say they're four pawns right here they're just four pawns and black is three pawns so your pawns are on H6 G6 and F6 and there are no other pawns on the board something like this and you both have Rooks and it's a draw no matter what the next next like 50 moves of the game are we know that it's a drawn end game um with perfect play and so it was things like this where Magnus actually saved I want to say like five or six of these and I remember it quite well because I think the score was very very close up until probably the last like 10 games of the match and then at the end he started winning he started winning in Spades but there were a lot of situations where he was up like one game or maybe two games in the match and I had some end game like this and I was not able to win the end game and so for me after that match it wasn't even so much that I lost the match with a margin I lost by but it was the fact that I realized how hard it was to beat him even once you got the advantage and I think for Magnus he learned that my weakness was the openings I remember because I actually I don't remember the game itself but there was a game we played in the Sicilian night or um and he played this variation with Bishop G5 on move number six I'm sure you can you can insert a graphic later I can show you and I think it's a type of opening sicilian's the opening night orifice variation it was played by Bobby Fischer the form world champion Gary Kasparov as well and so we played all sorts of different openings because of course it's not as serious it's it's a serious match but it's not serious where it's going to count for the ranking so you're trying to fill out where your opponent is strong versus weak and so there was one game I remember this very clearly he played the bishop G5 variation in the night or and I think I played E5 or I played Knight bd7 and E5 which is dubious it's not the best response and that's just one example where I was playing things that were a little bit dubious and I was not playing the absolute main line with 20 moves of theory so I was trying to get outside of Theory and I think Magnus learned from that that even though it appeared that I was very well prepared in in these openings I wasn't quite at that level couldn't you have a different interpretation of you going outside of the main line that you're willing to experiment take risks that you're chaotic and that's actually a strength not a weakness especially when you're sitting in a hotel room at late at night this is past midnight playing chess I mean why do you interpret that that's your weakness because Magnus going forward was able to figure out the lines where you have to be super precise you cannot deviate at all and I got punished out of the opening in many games so it was like it wasn't about the night or if the the opening or the variation specifically but he knew what my repertoire was and we'd pick lines where I had to play the absolute best lines in order to equalize um or I would be much worse and he was very effective at doing that but nevertheless it's pretty legendary that the two of you you're one of the best chess players in the world throughout the whole period still today that you just sat down in a hotel room and played a ton of Chess like what was that like I mean what's the there's a I think there's a there is a little here there is a little video of it sure I mean this is like epic right how did this video Exist by the way I think there was one journalist uh Macaulay Peterson who's who's able to um film parts of it so it was it was in a room it was me Magnus I think Henrik was there I think Macaulay was there and that was it people can go on YouTube and watch it's on chess digital strategies Macaulay Peterson channel for people just listening to this there's a a dimly lit room with the yellow light emerging out of the darkness of the two faces I mean and the deep focus here and what time is this this is must be this is probably like one in the morning this was uh I believe the day of day after the fun this was the day that the final round occurred and the closing ceremony so we're playing afterwards I mean are you able to appreciate the epicness of this many of my favorite memories are actually similar to this another memory that I really have that I recall very fondly was after the US Championship it was called the 2005 U.S Chess Championship was held at the end of 2004 and I believe it's in La Jolla and San Diego I won that event and after that that event I was playing Blitz probably for like four or five hours in the lobby of the hotel so it's the same kind of situation where you're just playing for the Love of the Game as opposed to anything else of course nowadays um I think both are Magnus and myself just playing a dimly lit room like this would almost certainly not happen there would probably have to be um certain Stakes involved for for us to play but you know if you go back in time these are the sorts of uh memories and moments that would happen all the time so is there a part of you that doesn't regret that this happened you know I think it comes back to my general philosophy I feel like everything happens for a reason and so because I have that that's one of my core beliefs like I don't really look back on it as mistakes I feel like everything has happened and things have transpired the way they have for a reason if I look at in terms of potentially like World Championship aspirations I think certainly it was a big mistake because from a competitive standpoint Magnus figured out what my weaknesses were at the time and he exploited it for many many years in fact I think if you look at the match I played against him in the Melt water tournament at the I think that was in June or no it was later it's like September of 2020 we played this epic match it was the finals of the tour and it went all the way to the seventh match Magnus won in Armageddon and in that match my openings were much better I was able to match him in the openings I was not worse out of the opening of most the games and that made a huge difference but for many years he was able to exploit my openings and I mean that's why the score I mean it's not the only reason but it's one of the reasons the score is so long opsided the way it is is there any of those games that you mentioned seven games that are interesting to look at to analyze the ideas and then you remember that are interesting to you I mean the whole it was actually so to set it up and this probably will come into play in terms of world championship format um it was seven matches of four games so we played a four game match and after four games Sam up two and a half one and a half I win match number one then then it's so it's like you're doing four matches of four games do you remember how you won there were a couple of Berlin games uh in the sixth sixth match I believe in the seventh match as well where Magnus actually made some mistakes and I won some critical games you're gonna have to explain some Basics here so Berlin is the type of opening what's that the Roy Lopez or Spanish uh opening it actually existed all the way back in the 60s but it really became popular in 2000 and one I believe it was when Gary Kasparov and Vladimir kramnik play their world championship match sparov had been the world champion for a very long time I think it was close I think it was about 15 15 years roughly maybe a little bit more than that um and he lost the match because when Gary had the white piece as far was not able to effectively get an advantage a lot of those games were very quick draws and in chess you want to put pressure on your opponent when you have the white pieces so kaspar was not able to do anything with the white pieces and kramnik was able to beat him when the colors were reversed Kramer when I game the groin felt he won a game and wanted the Queen's Gambit declined slash nimso variations as well and um that was the reason Gary sparov lost the world championship title was because of this this variation can you teach me the Berlin opening absolutely so the opening starts let me just move this microphone up a little bit starts with E4 and then it goes E5 Knight F3 Knight C6 yeah there should be five and now Knight to F6 and uh at which point is this the standard like this is the the Berlin yeah this is the Berlin this is the starting position of the Berlin defense and white has many many options here now it's interesting because I did work with Gary at a certain point and I remember I I had access to his database and he had something like 220 files on the Berlin defense because what happened is as Gary's somebody who the way that he learned chess it's very much like there are certain openings that are okay there are other openings that are not okay yeah and so this was considered dubious at the time and so Gary basically decided to go into this end game with castles Knight takes Pawn was the castling and then game so I'll show you Knight takes Pawn all these moves are very uh very forced he got ponded what does it mean they're very forced that means like those are the optimal things that you should be doing exactly these moves are um I think they're almost at least for black they're absolutely forced or else you end up in trouble you said Knight takes D4 Knight to D6 oh okay so this attacks the bishop on B5 got it white takes black takes back with the pawn in front of the queen Pawn takes Pawn Knight to F5 and then it goes Queen takes Queen what king takes Queen very aggressive yeah so you get this position where we're in an end game you just ruined uh all the normal conventions I guess right on the other hand for kramnik it was quite brilliant because Gary what he was known for was opening preparation and getting the advantages of very tactical very aggressive player and you're playing an end game right from the start now Gary basically thought that this was better for white and he tried to prove it and he was unable to prove it I think up until maybe it was game game nine or game 11 actually maybe the order wrong because I think he was white in the even number games basically he spent four or five games with white pieces trying to win this end game and he was not able to win in fact he didn't even come close to proving an advantage so he kept wasting the white pieces in that match and cranwick basically took advantage when he had the white pieces and Gary the black pieces he was able to win some games um in very nice style and that was the difference so that's kind of brilliant so he had this is a new problem presented in that match and Gary's gut says white is better white is better and so in white I'm going to push with this position and I'm going to not change anything from Mash to match I'm going to try to find a way that this is better so it's that kind of stubbornness and what do you think about that like what that that's that's the way of Chess right that's not a mistake that's that's the way you should do it if your gut says this this position is better you should capitalize right I think that's an old school way of thinking and Trust because before computers it basically is up to humans your intuition your calculation process really determined um whether whether a position is better and so like if in Gary's time if openings were dubious they're dubious it means somebody is better but as we've learned with computers now even small advantages generally that doesn't mean anything and a position is defendable where you won't lose the game if you play optimal moves even if the advantage is like half a pawn for example like 0.50 with optimal play a computer will still prove that that position you can hold it and not lose the game and so for Gary he learned it where like if an opening's not right you like he knows it's not correct he has to prove it now finally towards the end of the match he tried to switch but it was already way too late and he didn't have time to to win with the white pieces he did come close in one of the later games uh but he spent the whole match trying to prove that this Berlin defense is not playable so this position the computer would say uh that black is better it would say that White's very slightly better because black has moved the king you're unable to Castle the king and it's kind of open in the center of the board oh so wait so stockfish or Daniel would agree with Gary's intuition yes but at the end of the day when you go like five moves deeper in any number of the sequences it's gonna go to 0.00 which means draw yes correct and that's a bad thing because white should be winning well you want to put pressure on your opponent when you have the white pieces into any tournament any match got it so if the engine says zero zero that means you're not doing a good job of playing white correct you should be putting pressure that doesn't mean you're to win there are going to be a lot of draws because the game of chess has Josh Tendencies but you want to try normally the the general approach these days because of computers is you try to put pressure on your opponent when you're white and when you're black you try to be solid make a draw that's the general approach now when Gary was actually at his Peak it was quite the opposite Gary was trying to win games with the black pieces as well by playing openings like the Sicilian night or but with modern technology and I I did a podcast recently where I also spoke about this computers are so good and players can memorize so many lines that nowadays trying to take risks with the black pieces it almost always backfires or if you're very lucky you might make the draw but you never get the winning chances so from a risk reward standpoint you have to play almost perfectly just to make the draw but you're never going to have any winning chances where in the old days generally you might lose the games but you're gonna have chances to win as well but now it's very much um one-sided so a lot of players try to be very soft this is by the way the c squared podcast correct yes yeah this is an amazing podcast so shout out to those guys I'm glad that they started a thing that seems to be a good thing and I hope they keep going with this good thing that was a great interview that I did with you in that podcast I talked about Sicilian night or very aggressive opening the problem is white is the one who has the choices um on after after the first five to six moves white has the choices what do you want to do can you show them sure so it's for example that would be E4 I'll just set it up E4 foreign Pawn to D6 Pawn to D4 trade Knight to F6 Knight to F6 and now Pawn to A6 so this is a night orph um Bobby Fisher really popularized it and has run run up to becoming the world champion Gary played it for probably the last 15 to 20 years of his career so it's a very solid solid um opening defense what are the uh sorry to interrupt what are the the what's interesting about this so there's a uh for people listening on the white side there's a couple of nights out and uh so black has many options um black can play for B5 here to develop the bishop to B7 because the pawn on A6 guards the pawn on B5 you can also play other setups like potentially G6 and putting the bishop on G7 okay so bringing uh doing different things and bringing out you can also push the pawn to E5 or push the pawn to E6 okay so there are many different setups and it's very very flexible but white is the one who who has the choice here in terms of what to play and there are many moves there's this move that I mentioned before Bishop to G5 which Magnus played against me there's also Bishop to E3 Bishop to C4 and now they're also moves like H3 H4 Rook G1 um even moves like A3 and A4 so they're basically are nine or ten moves that white can play here but the move that white plays sort of dictates the direction of the game and you have to be extremely precise if you're black so if white plays something like Bishop G5 this is very sharp and aggressive but you can also play something like Bishop to E3 Pawn to E5 and something like Knight to F3 here and it goes in a positional Direction so the again this is very Advanced these are very Advanced um sort of setups and and what I'm explaining is not not at a basic level but why does it want to choose as a type of game is it very aggressive very sharp or both sides of chances is it something very positional where if you're black you're probably okay but you have to play the best moves in order to equalize or you can end up worse okay so you're always responding as black in this situation correct so so how different are all those different variations so like with the bishop with a different you said you you bring out the bishop to this position to this position or to that position like how are those fundamentally different variations like I I just wonder from uh AI computational perspective like a single step yeah well I'll make it even simpler here if you put the Knight here it's very positional if you put the Knight on this Square it's very aggressive because normally white is going to push this Pawn uh from F2 to either F3 or F4 and potentially a pawn to G4 later so even here based on where you go it changes whether it's a positional game or it's a very tactical it's just those little and that those are the choices you're constantly making am I going to be standard and basic compositional or am I going to be aggressive and I can actually give you another example so psychology plays a big role and in the candidates tournament which I played in June of this past year in Madrid Spain I actually I had the white pieces against alireza farusia who is a rising Junior originally from Iran representing France and I knew that he wanted very aggressive games so he doesn't normally play the slain Idol and he chose to play it in this one tournament so I knew that he wanted these very sharp positions where he can lose but he can also win and so when I played him I intentionally played this very Asian because I knew that he was going to be unhappy he wanted these sharp exciting games and here I am playing something very boring where if he plays it correctly it's going to be a draw but he's not going to be happy and so he actually did something dubious because he wanted to create tension he wanted to create chaos so you knew by being boring you would frustrate him and then he would make mistakes exactly yes yeah so the ultimate troll at the highest level yes of Chess Yeah you mentioned psychology and taking us back to the Magnus even in 2010 the magnus games but Reddit said that you've spoken about losing to Magnus being a hit on your confidence uh is there some truth to that so is there some aspect about that 2010 match that's not just about Magnus figuring stuff out but just a hit on confidence like how important is confidence at that level when you're both young and like firing at all cylinders well it's not just a problem with me this is the problem everybody against Magnus because what happens is is is on a broader level when you're playing on somebody no matter who you're playing against but when they're somehow able to save positions where they're much worse almost in miraculous ways the way that Magnus is done against everybody he's done it against me done against aronian many times done it against cramming just about everybody when when someone's able to save games it really starts to affect you because you don't know what to do and more and more the more and more times that happens it starts adding up and it just affects you in a way that it's very very hard to overcome and I think every top player has that issue where if they've played against Magnus more than like five times they've seen things happen in the game that don't happen against anybody else and then psychologically it becomes harder and harder to overcome it which is why I think a lot of the junior players they don't have this long history and it does affect them as far as myself directly um certainly after that match though it was not the same playing against Magnus because I viewed him completely differently too after all those games where he was saving these these end games I sort of thing like this guy is superhuman but you can't really have those thoughts when you're playing competitively but in the back of your mind it's always there and I think every toddler has that issue is there a way to overcome that because you have to I don't know if I'll necessarily do better against Magnus going forward but I felt that when I started playing against him more than just a game here there in classical chess during the pandemic I played in these online tournaments it seemed like every month um I came very close I beat him in one event I think I lost and two others and then the two are final but when I was playing against them more and more if he didn't feel superhuman it felt like as I'm playing more and more and learning about his style um that I was doing better so I think for me the weird thing is that I just wasn't playing against him that many games but when I started playing as like 20 30 games during the course of a year I actually started feeling more confident because I feel like I can compete whereas when I was only playing him like three or four times in classical chess in the previous couple of years it was I wasn't doing great and then you don't have you don't have those glimpses of you don't have those moments where you feel like you're going to be able to win against them but when you start playing 20 30 games and you get these opportunities even if you don't convert you feel like you have the chances when you play three or four games and they're you might lose one draw three you never have those opportunities and so you feel very negative about what's going on when you were able to beat them or not necessarily win the game but win positionally something uh what was the reason like technically speaking the matchup between the two of you what like where where are the holes that you were able to find I mean the the answer I think is actually quite simple I think it's all psychological actually more than anything else um because I didn't it didn't I didn't feel like I was doing anything differently but I was also not making the mistakes that I was making before um so I think it was more psychological than on your part versus his part it's it's very weird because when you when you think about Chess it's a mental game um you know but we we all are capable of beating Magnus all of us but we all have very very bad scores against him and I think people underestimate how much of a role that plays um and for me when I played him in these online events in 2020 specifically I felt like there there was really nothing to lose which also ties into everything else that happened um during the pandemic as well but I just feel like there was nothing to lose and I felt like I was playing very freely unlike unlike before now that's not to say that Magnus isn't a better player that like somehow I expect to beat him but I felt like I wasn't making the same mistakes that I was making in the previous years if we dig into the psychological preparation is there something to your mental preparation that you do that makes you successful like what are the lessons over all these years that you learned what works what doesn't do you drink a bunch of whiskey the night before is there is there some is there some small hacks or major ones about how you approach the game it's really hard sort of in a way because I feel like I'm two different people I was one person up until the pandemic as a professional chess player solely where I earned all my income everything was derived from that and from the pandemic on I'm sort of a different person because that is not where where I'm making my income from and so the whole psychological profile that I had before is completely different from now uh there's this this joke about the I literally don't care the phrase that I've used and in a sense what that means is not that I don't care obviously I'm competitive I want to do well but if I lose the game or I don't do well in a tournament it's not the end of the world in the same kind of way that I felt it was before because that pressure of needing to always perform was very very high um and so I think before before the pandemic what I would try to do more than anything is just not think about the previous game for the most part like say I had a bad game I'd go out for a walk that evening just clear my mind these sorts of things now they aren't really hacks per se but it's trying essentially to have short-term memory loss so so I literally don't care it's not just the meme it's a it's a philosophy in a sense it's a way of being I mean it's it's basically that yes like I do want to perform well I'm going to give it my all but it's not like it if I lose a game it's not the end of the world that should be the title of your autobiography and it should be uh like uh I I know you're probably Immortal but if you do happen to die this should also be on YouTube so uh Charles Bukowski has uh don't try on his Tombstone yes which which I think emphasizes a similar concept but slightly different more in the artistic domain which is uh well a lot of people have different interpretations of that statement but I think it means don't take things too seriously yeah I I mean I I agree with that completely I think that um if you if you look at my career prior to the pandemic I put huge amounts of pressure on myself because I really want to be as good as I could be but but it was the way I was earning a living and one thing that's very difficult about Chess is that only the top 20 maybe 30 players in the world make a living from the game now you make a very good living um in no way am I diminishing chess but the problem with it is it's not secure at all so if you don't get invitations to the absolute top tournaments which have prize funds from anywhere from maybe a hundred thousand up to potentially half a million dollars if you don't get those invitations it's very very hard to earn a living you can go from earning maybe two hundred thousand three hundred thousand dollars a year to earning like fifty thousand so it's very very unstable and I think um for myself I really put a lot of pressure on myself and in a way that it affected me and not not in a good way not in so in part it was also Financial pressure so like once you're able to make money elsewhere it it makes you more free to take risks to play the the pure game of chess yeah it makes yeah exactly it makes it made me it took all that pressure off and I kind of I'm just trying to play as well as I can and I don't really worry like if I lose the game it's not the end-all be-all and maybe that's just like psychological stuff that I should have tried to sort out before I mean I did it some period of time like do certain things along those lines but um I I just yeah I became became free and I think it it definitely it was not about the chess and that's one of those things that's also very hard because when I look at myself and when I had these periods where it seemed like I played better or improved one of these periods um was in 2008 where I basically I dropped out of college I was about 26.50 ELO so I was roughly top 100 in the world and for the first probably half part of 2008 I played very little almost not all I went up to Vancouver I was living on my own for the first time and I was not studying that much and then after that period I started playing and I actually improved very quickly and I broke 2 700 shortly thereafter so it had nothing to do with chess when you moved to Vancouver uh and weren't doing much what were you doing exactly oh I was enjoying nature I was going outside hiking mountains um like going and kayaking all these things that I was not uh that I had not done for many years I'm glad I asked because I was imagining something else I was imagining you like in a dark room drinking and playing video games and uh okay cool that that's good that that that's an interesting break so dropping out of college and then giving taking a break and then giving everything to chess in terms of preparation and so on uh maybe actually if you can rewind back to the to the beginning you've said about yourself that you're not a naturally talented chess player uh your brother was but that's really fascinating because what would you say was the reason you're able to break through and become one of the best chess players in the world having been not a naturally talented chess player yeah I think that this applies to actually chess or any number of sort of basic games actually for that matter is that I'm not naturally talented but if I don't get something I'm I try to figure out why don't I get it what am I doing wrong over and over and over again and um I mean there are many games like this uh there's this funny game on the phone I'll just use it as an example there's a game called Geometry Dash um now I'm not like I'm not world class or anything at it it's just a silly silly little game on the phone that you play just tap and it goes up and down um people people will probably know what that is um but like I played that for maybe like an hour or so I just randomly placed for one hour and I was terrible at it and I kind of forgot about it about it for a week and then then I came back I saw it on my phone like okay what am I doing wrong like why am I not good at this game so I spent like probably like 100 hours over the following month just playing it non-stop over and over and over again to get to get better at it and again I'm not like world class or anything but I'm pretty good at the game and so with chess is the same thing as like when I started out it's like why am I not good what am I doing wrong and I basically refused to accept that I couldn't be good at the game and so um you know at the start I actually I played for a couple of months I did very poorly um and then my parents stopped me from playing for about six months they just said no you're not playing your brother your brother's quite good and my brother was one of the top ranked players in his age group in the United States so you're not playing then after about six months they relented and they let me play in the first tournament back I actually it was four games I was playing against other kids and I won the first three games so it was really good and I lost the form of Checkmate in the fourth game um which is of course quite ironic um how did you yeah oh I guess this is how old were you at this time I would have been about eight years old seven or eight so an eight-year-old future top ranked chess player has so it's great to know that that somebody has lost to that Checkmate so it's possible to lose that Checkmate yes I I remember that game quite well yeah was it I mean at that time did you know that that Checkmate exists obviously I mean I think I probably knew it existed but I didn't I was just playing like it's a completely different world than now if a kid goes on their computer they can immediately figure out what are the basic checkmates all these different things at the time that didn't really exist you'd have to find it in a book yeah so this is just a basic blunder yeah exactly cool yeah so it's like I came back it was a very good start and then I Then I then I lose like this but I stuck with it I improved very very quickly thereafter um and yeah it was very straightforward what was the secret to that fast Improvement so you said you said like this very first important step which is saying like what am I doing wrong like I have to figure out what I'm doing wrong but then you actually have to take the step before figuring out what you're doing wrong yeah I think it was just I I just I played as much as I could like it wasn't like I was consciously thinking about as an eight-year-old you're not really thinking about those sorts of things or the big picture so I just basically kept playing as much as I could whether it was online whether it was against my brother reading these chess books as much as I could I just devoured as much information I was like so you were studying chess books you were I I was I mean I wasn't studying them cover to cover though it's like you just study certain diagrams certain positions the openings and stuff like that you were uh mostly tactics actually openings were not other than top level chess openings were not a thing probably I want to say for players below maybe Master Level in a serious way until maybe like the early 2000s so for people who don't know chess what what kind of tactical ideas are interesting and basic to understand that once you understand you you take early leaps in Improvement yeah so it's things like forks for example where you attack two-piece at the same time discovered attacks like checkmates and again winning like a queen or other material those are probably two most important ones um batteries or batteries and pins things of things of that nature how many how rich is the world of and by the way discovered attacks are when you move a piece and you you put a king in check to win like a rook for example or other material and forking pieces is when you're attacking two pieces so obviously the other person can't move two pieces at a time they're gonna have to lose one of them okay so how big is the world the universe of forks and discovered attacks like um you know I I I I I myself know so there's like Knights attacking like uh what is what is their Forks Knight attacking like a queen in a rook for example like a pawn attacking a queen in a rook um or like a rook in a Bishop it's innumerable they're I mean but I will say that I think that with chess the more of these patterns you see the quicker you catch them and that's how you improve I think the the most is by learning these basic tactical themes at the beginner levels are you when you're discovering those patterns are you looking at the chess board are you looking at some like higher dimensional representation of the the relative position of the pieces you know so basically something that's disjoint of the particular absolute position of the piece but like you're seeing patterns like this kind of pattern but Elsewhere on the board like yeah are you thinking in patterns or in like absolute positions of the pieces both I think that at the higher levels you're always thinking about like you're thinking about the patterns on one side of the board specifically but then also what happens is you play more and more if you're a very strong player you will be able to remember say Pawn structures where the pawns are on certain squares from games that you've played like 15 20 years ago even potentially so it's a mix I think a lot of it is more subconscious than actively thinking about and like figuring it out like that um the only thing for me that I definitely am doing very frequently when I play is is trying to look at my pieces are they place on the optimal squares are there better squares and then once I get past that like using the basic logic I start to think about okay what pure calculations like what are the moves that make a lot of sense and start calculating direct moves but one of the most basic things that I think that I do that a lot of people actually should do that they don't do is looking at the piece placement trying to figure out what pieces look like they're on good squares versus bad squares so am I for each piece asking a question am I my happy place am I am I like optimally happy place I think that's very important like if we look at this position on the board right now as a good example who's not in their happy place on the board right now I think both both sides are actually pretty happy right now but the thing is if you're playing with a black because there's what is what is a move that sticks out to you to like follow basic principles basic principles probably bring out the bishop and then Castle the king and Castle the King right exactly that's correct and and that's what you should do that's the best way to play the position um now once you do that by the way I have a vibrating device inside you right now so I knew that right and so my rating is 3400 which is what I believe stockfish is higher it's like 3 800 actually is it 38 I think it is I'm using an earlier version of stockfish okay anyway sorry you were saying so like that's that's very basic but then if you move the bishop out and you Castle the king let's just say Bishop B7 play this you Castle okay so now you've done everything with the pieces on the king side so what would be the next set of what's the next way to try and develop the pieces so it everything here is pretty strong except maybe this Pawn I don't know okay but think about the pieces so by piece I mean everything except the pawns Okay I accept the pawns okay uh probably [Music] either either bishop or Knight right on the other side yeah that and that is correct you want to bring out the bishop in the night let's say you go Bishop E6 yeah all Castle now you can move the knights either Square it's somewhat irrelevant but just move the Knight I'll just play Knight to C6 what what was your random movement okay oh well yeah what's your unhappy place okay so let me move the queen to just follow some base principles okay because I want to bring my Rooks to the center of the board yes so like in this position you've pretty much developed all your pieces they're only two pieces that you haven't brought into the game the the queen and the Rock and The Rook and this you consider to be in the game because um I wouldn't say it's it's in the game but there isn't really a great Square for that Rook right now um but in this position you would probably move your Rook to C8 and then the middle game begins after that got it so here because now you've gotten your piece to all the optimal squares and now you have to look for a specific plan but you have gotten these pieces developed um out of the opening yeah and that's that's like a very basic thing that I think a lot of people don't think about is like what are the optical placements for the pieces so you're constantly thinking about the pieces that are not in the optimal placement as you're doing all the other kind of tactics and stuff like that but that's a basic thing that people can follow actually doing pure calculations like look moving five or ten moves in your head that's not realistic but trying to use basic logic to figure out what pieces look what pieces are on squares that look correct it's something anybody can do what about looking at the other person's pieces and thinking about the optimal placement of them like if you see a bunch of pieces not in their optimal placement for the opponent what does that tell you I mean that's a higher level concept of course that like I'm trying to give a beginner example um that is something that I do think about as well like I try to think about my opponent's pieces like that that is basic logic I think a lot of people these days at the upper levels of Chess they look at the game as something of pure calculation and you lose that human element you're trying to just calculate all these different sequences of moves and you don't think about the the basics um and it's something it'll be interesting to see what happens with the next generation of kids who become very strong because that is really how they approach the game they learn with computers whereas like I learned with computers at a certain point but I did not start off with computers from the get-go so human element still exists in my game actually Magnus I think has said this too where he did not use the computer I think until he was maybe like 11 years old something something around there and so we have that human element to our game that I think the newer generation won't have now it doesn't mean they aren't going to be better than us but it's going to be a completely different approach what do you mean by human elements just basic logic versus Raw calculation so it's like anybody now will use the computer from the time they start the game and and you use the computer you look at the evaluations after the game to see how you're doing but you if you don't really ever have those moments where you're just it's you or it's just you and your opponent one thing that was great in the old days before computers simply became too strong is that you would actually do analysis with your opponent after the game and that's very much this two humans analyzing game it's you and your opponent two peers and you come up with these human ideas it's not automatically run back to your room look with a computer on oh I should have played this move and it's just like winning the game so that is kind of something that has that no longer exists um in the game of chess because as I said there's no reason to analyze with your opponent after the game other ideas that the engine tells you that you can't reverse engineer with logic why that makes sense and you start to just memorize it that's good um yes so in the opening for sure there are certain positions where moves are playable and I can even give you an example actually in this night or if we can just set the position up a few moves earlier yeah night over I'm ba Bushman see it and just move the king back to Center Bishop back to f8 and pawn to E7 so the pawn in front of the king just push back two squares so like here's an example there's a move here that nowadays humans will play which is this move Pawn to H4 um and this this is a move that 20 years ago if someone showed this move to Kasparov he would just laugh at them no matter who you were he would basically say you're an idiot what is this move like you're pushing a Pawn on the edge of the board it does nothing and this is something that's it's playable but even if you were to ask me or any other top Grand Master why it's playable or why it's why it's a move that makes sense we wouldn't be able to say why it makes sense because it doesn't we just know that it's fine because the computer says it's fine it's fine or is it good it's just fine it can it probably like everything else is equal with perfect play but it definitely if you're not careful with black you can be worse for sure but if you ask me I can't say why it's a good move I can say okay maybe I'm gonna expand on the king side I'll push this Pawn here and push the pawn forward uh maybe maybe I can put the bishop on G5 and in some position the pawn guards the bishop but I can't give like an actual good explanation for why it's a move that makes sense because it doesn't make sense it's fascinating that young people today kids these days would probably do that move much more uh nonchalantly you'll see that a lot more because they know it's safe at least right because I know the computer says it's fine but I grew up without computers and so to me as you're pushing a Pawn on the edge it's the opening phase you don't do things like this it's just it looks ridiculous now of course I have worked with computers long enough that I know like I'm not I I know the computers are um computers prove that that everything is fine but still to me it does feel wrong yeah well I think as computers get better they'll also get better at explaining which they currently don't do at basically being able to do of so first of all simple language generation so a set of chess moves to language conversion explaining to us dumb humans of why this is an interesting tactical idea they currently don't do that you're supposed to figure that out yourself like why what's the Deep wisdom in this particular Pawn coming out in this kind of way let me ask you uh a ridiculous question do you think chess will ever get solved from the opening position to where we'll know the optimal optimal level of play I highly doubt it um without major advances in Quantum Computing I don't think it's realistic to expect chess to be hard solved I just I don't think that will happen um but I I don't know it could happen 20 30 years maybe but I think in the near future it's not not realistic well then let's go up with the pothead follow-up question suppose it does get solved what opening do you think will be the optimal well everything will be a draw for sure after for sure after move one yes for sure absolutely you're absolutely sure of that yes yeah that's what why are you so sure I'm so sure because when you look at the computer games you see these decisive results it's because they played the openings are set generally they can't they can't for move one they Place set opens like you might play the Knight or you might play the Berlin defense normally it's set openings as opposed to um as opposed to computers being able to do whatever they want I just believe in general when the openings that are symmetrical like E4 E5 D4 D5 uh the computers will draw and I think the optimal opening I think E4 E5 Knight F3 Knight F6 is probably a guaranteed draw if there is perfect if we have perfect information and we know that that chassis solved e45 Knight F3 Knight F6 the Russian or the Petrov defense that that will be the optimal strategy see so that's sure of that symmetrical play is going to lead to a draw but what if you can constantly as white maintain asymmetry constantly keep the opponent off balance so yes E4 then then you're all you're always doing this symmetry but what if chess inherently there's something about the mathematics of the game that allows for like that thin line that you walk that maintains to the end game the asymmetry constantly that there's no move that can uh bring bring back the balance of the game yeah I I don't think that exists I don't think it does so basically I'm saying E4 E5 I think is a draw I think D4 D5 is a draw C4 C5 I think I think basically symmetry that's all of it's a draw I think that's that's why it's a draw so it doesn't even matter like you're saying one if it's solved most openings will be a draw yes I think E4 D4 C4 and Knight F3 for sure will be a draw other openings I'm not sure about but those first four uh possible starting moves I think chess is a draw Knight F3 what's the response to Knight F3 um probably a knight F6 again or to make it simple if I play Knight A3 on move one um black here can also play D5 I'll move one and normally at some point White's gonna end up playing D4 so the order of so it's probably going to lead back yeah all roads kind of lead back there as well there probably are other ways which um where there is play but I think that's at the end of the day the Symmetry is symmetry is what's going to lead lead to like a forced Force equality or Draw on the game of chess uh so uh demos asabis is uh the CEO of deepmind divine helped create uh or created Alpha zero he says that he's also a chess player and he's a fan of Chess and he says uh the reason his hypothesis is that the reason chess is interesting as a game is the creative quote-unquote tension between the bishop and the Knight so like there's uh so many different dynamics that are created by those two pieces you think there's truth to that I mean some of that is just poetry but uh is there I think it's I think it's definitely true when you look at the imbalances that are not like crazy attacking Physicians like one thing that Bobby Fischer was really really good at when he was a world champion is playing end games with a bishop versus the Knight now traditionally we think of the Knight being better than the bishop even today in end games but Fisher proved that there are a lot of end games where Bishop is better than a knight so I do agree with that statement it's like the imbalances between like Bishops and knights and in many positions you never really know like there are many positions where a knight is better than a bishop or Knight and Bishop are better than uh two Bishops or like it is all the inbound generally it is the imbalances though um between the Bishops and the Knights or combinations of the two pieces that they lead to the most interesting positions so I I agree with interesting positions what about fun is there like aspects that you'll find fun within the game itself not all the stuff around it but just the the purity of the game I think for me these days when I see some of these moves that computer suggests after a game that I play and I just go wow that is the beauty for me because these are not moves that I would ever consider and when when I then see the move and then like I might make a couple of moves to try and understand why that is the beauty to me is seeing all these things that just like 10 years ago I never would have even seen because computers weren't at the level they're at today and so the depth and creativity of what they're saying even even if it's not like in our language but in the in the evaluation that's where I find a lot of beauty oh that's that's fun so like the the computer's a source it's a source of uh creative fulfillment for you absolutely absolutely it's very humbling as well because like you know when you spend your whole life playing a game and you got pretty good you think you're pretty good at it yeah um but even like even for Magnus I think when we look at it and you see like these things that we've spent 20 30 years playing this game and it just it doesn't click and then you see it it's just like it really is beautiful you're known for being a very aggressive player what's your approach to being willing to take big risks at the chessboard well I think that's another thing I was a very aggressive player probably until I got to about this 2700 ELO and then it kind of my style changed a little bit I think what it is is I like to play attacking chess I loved playing openings like the king's Indian um the Sicilian night off as well when I was a little bit younger uh and it's just like why not try to fight with both colors try to fight in every game and win if you can uh try try as hard as you can now one of the things is as you get better and better players are also better and better prepared so you have diminishing returns when you play these very aggressive openings like the king's inning or even even the Dutch which I played for a while you can only it only takes you so far and that if then at a point people figure out what how to respond to those choices so I still do play these openings for example I played a term in St Louis about three weeks ago and I played a great King's Indian game which I won against Jeffrey Zhang an American Junior player so I still do play it here and there but when you start playing it every game uh there's there's a point at which when you lose these game games you just can't it becomes too much and I spoke about this in the c squared podcast where I played the night orph and then I played Fabiano caruana a very strong American player as well and he just blew me off the board and like four straight against I'm like okay enough enough of this I just can't I can't keep doing it because uh the heat do you think he prepared for that opening then absolutely because you see what what have uh what has my opponent been playing recently where's their ideas and so I'm going to prepare for those ideas that they've been playing with exactly yeah that's that's what you do and also you have to be very self-critical because for Fabiano the night off was the one opening he did very poorly against but he worked really hard and he came up with a lot of different ideas and he solved that weakness what's the role of uh you're also known of having a bit of an ego what's the role of ego and chess is it helpful or does it get in the way I think it's a mix I think there's a fine line I think you have to be very confident in order to get to the top I know some players are very expressive like myself like Kasparov and others there are other people like Anon who don't express it but then there was a book that I think was released fairly recently where he basically said like he he was really angry in his room and he was like banging walls or doing some of the chairs uh I don't I don't remember the exact story but like he was he was able to in public he kept it very like very buttoned up but then in private he wasn't I think you know you have to you have to have that edge if you don't have that edge and you don't get upset when you lose games because you will lose games along the way then it's impossible to get anywhere near the top so I think every top player has that ego or or extreme confidence that is necessary if you don't have that you'll never I think get to the top probably in almost any field frankly do you have to believe you're the best to have the capacity to be the best in the world yeah I think you have to have that I think for me it wasn't really ever about thinking I'm the best in the world it's about like going into that game that game whoever I'm playing I believe that I can beat them or I know that I'm gonna beat them or I'm better than them that's for me it was always about the that whenever I'm in that moment in the game just knowing that that I can do that I think that is also another thing that when you start playing more and more in these top tournaments you kind of lose that sometimes because the positions you have the same opening strategies you end up with positions that are very drawish where you reach end games things of this nature and so it can also make you very jaded as well um after you've been up there for quite a long time well there are times you're an to someone and you regret it at the chess board or Beyond yeah so I'm asking internet questions yeah I mean this is definitely true I'm not going to pretend it isn't when I when I was younger um I was very angry when I lose games on the internet um many of these stories are specifically from the internet of course and you know I think I look back on it and of course I I wish that I'd been able to like channel the anger differently basically I think the simple gist of it is I would play Blitz Games online and I lost I would get angry at my opponents instead of getting angry at myself um which of course it's silly because they're playing the game they're trying to win like why shouldn't they try to beat you I think for me like I'm not happy about that when I was when I was a young teenager getting so angry over these online games and insulting a lot of people along the way but maybe that paved the way to your streaming career I think for me like I feel like having that me against the world attitude though it really fueled me when I was younger feeling like it was me against the world everyone hating me or me hating the world that was very important I was able to channel that anger in a way that really helped me improve so like do I regret it on the one hand yes of course you don't I think it I think you don't want to be like that on the other hand what I've gotten as good as I am if it was different I'm not so sure so next well then I'll ask you to empathize with somebody else who's currently has a me against the world at attitude and it's helping you which is Hans Neiman for several reasons he has me against the world kind of attitude well let me ask there's been a chess controversy about cheating and so on that you've covered people should subscribe to your channel your your hilarious entertaining brilliant and it's just uh fun to learn from you do you think as we stand now Hans ever cheated in over the board chest what as things stand now at the beginning of October yeah it's that's a very tough question for a couple of reasons I think first of all when people refer to evidence in regards to whether Han street over the board there is not I don't think there ever will be quote unquote hard evidence the only thing that would ever constitute that is if he's caught in the act literally he's caught like using a phone with an earpiece whatever it might be that is the only way that there would ever be hard evidence so as it stands right now there's a lot of circumstantial evidence how much of it is legitimate or not remains to be seen I know people have questioned the statistics some people think it's very convincing some people think it's complete nonsense I think I think that right now I'm I'm very undecided uh but I I do feel that within the next like three to six months assuming Hans is able to play over the board and more tournaments the stats will make it very clear one way or the other based on results whether it's legitimate or not I think I think for me I would say that regardless of whether whether you whether like I believe you cheated or not he is playing at probably a 20 he's probably at least 2 650 no matter what regardless of whether he's cheating or not he's already at that level which is very very high so I think the stats will will bear it out in the next probably I say I said three to six months probably I would say next six to 12 months um whether something happened but I I really don't know do you find compelling or interesting uh the kind of analysis where you compare the correlation between engines and humans to to try to determine if cheating was done in part so initially I thought that that was actually quite legitimate but as I as I found out much more recently anybody can basically upload this data so that whole Theory while it seemed very convincing at the time it simply isn't isn't any statistical um evidence in my opinion now but there there are games from some of those tournaments that definitely considering where his rating was look very suspicious in 2020 I would say um again that's not the role like myself to decide or chess.com that's obviously going to be up to fide whether they think that's compelling evidence or not um I think for me what I would say from an intuitive standpoint is that I've been in this world for a very very long time I've I've seen mostly Juniors as they've risen through the ranks Magnus and many others um and there's always been something about them that has stood out to me that's been like a brilliant game they've played against someone who's much higher rated I've just seen it from all the all those players I never really saw that with Hans Neiman so it's very difficult for me to sort of with my own twice being in this Chess World so long see things a certain way and then like something that's never happened before is happening but at the end of the day it is still possible it is completely possible that Hans something clicked at a certain age and he started improving in spite of the fact that you know the statistics look weird in terms of his rating Improvement so I don't know I I sort of I think that in six to 12 months I'll probably be able to say one way or the other with very certain confidence like you know whether whether he should be there or not speaking of Statistics uh I should ask I'm not sure about this are you a data scientist right that's a good one no of course I'm not you know but it's that's the thing you see you see all these stats are thrown out there and you you try to try to understand what's being said um but it's it's also very scary because when you see these things that look very legitimate and then they're they're disproven or people say like you're cherry picking like the dates and all these other things it almost feels like you can come to any conclusion that you want to yeah and that's why I think this is such a serious issue for the world of Chess because going forward if we don't take it seriously now I think at some point there is the potential for a much much larger Scandal do you agree that like with Magnus I think said that it is an existential threat to chess like this is a very serious problem that's only going to get bigger because it's you're basically uh from a spectator perspective from a competitor perspective or not sure that you can trust any of the results that's for sure true when I think back to the last like five to ten years there are plenty of top level tournaments that I played in where there was no security at all yeah um you just you just go into the auditorium and play your games and that was that so I do think it's a big issue I think it has been a big issue but the reason it's only coming to light now is because it features a very strong Junior player who's very close to the world's Elite there have been many achieving scandals before uh there was this French player Sebastian Fowler there was this player Igor's Rouses from Latvia um there was a uh I think it's from Belarus or maybe I have that wrong maybe it's Bulgaria uh borislav Ivanov as well those are three big cheating scandals but they were not at the absolute top levels of Chess which I think is why um it never became the huge news story that this is or it wasn't viewed in the same kind of ways why I think organizers were perhaps a little bit too LAX in terms of security so you said 2650 is it possible that Hans is in fact a kind of Bobby Fischer level of genius and he's capable at times of Genius at the chessboard oh absolutely 100 that that is absolutely possible I think that's why I think for everybody in the situation we want to see what happens in the next six to 12 months because I think it will be very clear also it's very interesting to me because there are other stats um from that 72-page report that chess.com compiled which in essence says certain other Junior players basically have peaked that they're not likely to improve further so it's also going to be very interesting when you look at those like I think it was like 50 pages of graphs because there are graphs that say like some of the other Junior players are done so when we look forward like in a year or two if those players don't improve it will also say something about their methods as well that they've used to sort of compile this data yeah I wonder what those Junior players do if they look at that data so there's a point where you should look at yourself like practically like what what is the actual empirical data over the past year of how much I've improved at a particular thing like it's one thing to kind of tell yourself that these are the ways I need to improve and it's another to actually look at the data and face the reality of it right I I think also that could have a psychological effect that is the other thing that makes the whole Han situation so tough because if you think that he's cheated or you're unsure about what's going on that is another psychological Factor whenever you play against it in his favor or against a favor definitely in his favor because for example if I go online and play against the computer let's just say I go play against sawfish tomorrow I'm gonna play a very certain type of opening strategy try to keep the board closed and maybe hope to get lucky now computers have gotten so good that generally even that doesn't I don't even have a chance even with such strategies but you play differently than you normally would and so if you're playing a game against him and there's a move that looks really weird um it doesn't seem logical at all that can also start to affect you where you immediately make a mistake or you start questioning yourself you start thinking well what's going on here is there something um something Unbecoming like you start worrying about what is happening and so it definitely is uh it is it's a very tough situation do you agree with magnus's decision to Forfeit the match his most recent match with Hans uh tough question I I don't in my heart of hearts I feel like there had to be a better way to handle it than what Magnus did on the other hand sort of being in this world of top Grand Masters having heard these rumors for two years I think that the fact that it was blown off and it wasn't treated seriously I'm not sure if there was a better option so my heart of hearts I feel like there had to be a better way to handle it but in practicality or like in the Practical world I don't I think he might have made the only decision where it became a big issue yeah I mean I guess I would have loved to see just where 100 it's certain that there's no cheating involved that they play a bunch of games yeah I think there was actually an article that was released today by uh Ken rogoff who is a grand master at chess where he wrote this article in the Boston Globe and he essentially said that like have Hans and Magnus play a match and see what his score is because statistically if it's above a certain percentage that means he's legitimate because of course you have security um if it's below that might mean that probably means that he's not at the level um that he's at so I don't know if that's a real way to settle it necessarily um because also for Magnus to ask him to play against someone who's cheated I think for him he just he would never entertain the idea because it's like why am I going to play against someone who cheated so yeah I don't I don't know it's very tough and you know one one other thing I would say on the topic that's really important to note is this sort of came from from left field for most people who are in the general public are very casual chess players but this is not something that wasn't known wasn't even on the radar I I think this has not been said before but there's there's one of these things where they talk about how Hans has uh he's he played better during a period of time when he games were broadcast versus not broadcast I actually heard this rumor two years ago during during one of the terms he's playing specifically so that is the thing is that this has been out there for a very long time and so it's it's hard because you do believe that Magus could have handled it better but if it was two years of these rumors and nothing was done about it I don't know and for people who don't understand when it's broadcast it's easier to cheat because you can have it removes one of the challenges of cheating which is the one-way communication from the board to the engine here the engine can just watch the broadcast and then all you have to do is then signals right back uh I mean that's really I've woken up to this fact actually uh programmed so setting all the silly sex toys aside um I have uh I have a bunch of these devices so like of this um is the size of a coin and it has a high resolution vibration that you can send so you can just have this in your pocket it's basically what your your smartphone has ability to uh vibrate you can do programmatic communication through anything Bluetooth is the easiest so like this made me wonder like wait a minute how often does this happen like at every level of play and you said this only became a huge concern for uh at the highest level of play but then how much cheating is going on at like the the middle level of play especially when more money is involved so in the Game of Poker when like is it really um it really made me think like the future will have devices like this much easier to like you will engineer smaller smaller and smaller devices that have onboard compute that like like this is the future I mean I I just it makes me um I think probably with all kinds of cyber security that means the defense will just have to get started to get better even with chess it seems like the security is very clumsy just looking the scanning of the recent tournament one thing you'll see is there a lot of people are talking about whether Hans has cheated or not the one thing that almost nobody is doing is actually like trying to show how it can be done yeah everyone's basically avoiding that I think the single biggest reason for that is simply because it can be done very easily at like a weekend term if you play a weekend tournament where the top prize is a hundred dollars and the players are maybe Master Level somebody could already do this because even in St Louis now where they have the security my understanding is the one the um the non-linear Junction device they bought costs about eleven thousand dollars um and organizers if you if you have a weekend tournament at the at the local Club you don't have eleven thousand dollars to spend on such a device and so that is why a lot of people have been talking about it but I think it is very very serious and it's that's why it is good even if you know aside from Hans even it is a very important question or debate to be having at the present moment well I think I think it's good to talk about it right to make it so that the defenses will really step up I think you could do pretty cheap like the security pretty cheaply uh but you have to you take it seriously right right of course uh and again we'll we'll see what happens I think that's gonna end up being on feed a more than anyone else to try and do that I I don't think asking the organizers to do it I mean I feel like fide they are the governing body it will be on them at the end of the day to figure it out but it's uh it's gonna be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of months will you play Hans if the opportunity arises well right now that's not in the near future for me I think fortunately why not uh well because the there's maybe only one tournament that I'm playing in that he could be playing in potentially and it's not even set to be happening at the end of the year there might be like a world Blitz and Rapid Chess Championship so I don't think I'm gonna have to make the most famous super Grandmaster in terms of online so it makes sense in terms of Chess is going through a kind of um like a serious controversy since it's not just like um the drama or something like this this is in part an existential threat to the game in terms of how the public perceives the game yeah so if the story that lingers from this is chess is full of cheaters like you never know who's cheating or not that's not a good uh that's not good for the game so it makes sense for a high profile person to to go head to head how do you think you do against odds I mean I I think I I think I would probably beat him in Blitz and rap but classical is a whole different question altogether I think in Blitz and Rapid I would I mean one thing actually that was very telling in both report and also hans's interview for all the other stuff it was said is the one thing he did say and seemed very adamant about was the fact that he had never cheated against me which uh so that was the one thing he did say that at least according to the report was truthful so it's something possibly down the road to consider um but I do want to see what happens with everything else first with fide and their their whatever they they choose to do in regards to Hans and Magnus um and and then see where see where the smoke stands but I think also one other thing that is potentially very dangerous about the whole situation is that I'm not convinced that fide actually is the ultimate say in this in that the top players if they if they feel that he has cheated over the board even if there's a report that says he had that Hans has not cheated top players can still decide not to play him and sort of override what whatever ultimate decision feed it comes to so that's also why it's very unclear um you know this term of the U.S Championship Hans qualified he's playing the tournament but beyond this there are no turns where he's automatically qualified to and so it also is on the top players to sort of have to reach some conclusion on their own separate of feeding so to flip that is there some part of you that regrets that the chess community and you included implied that Hans cheated early on and I think without having evidence and that kind of thing as we learn now can stick right and it kind of divided the chess community in part but like um I mean I guess I do want to empathize from from your position can you empathize with Hans that his reputation is essentially in part or in whole destroyed at this point yes I I absolutely can again I think it comes down to the specifics of how how it was handled now as far as I go I was covering the news and this is what makes it so difficult for me versus say some of the other content creators is that I do in a sense have that inside knowledge um you know again this is probably this is also not really public knowledge but when I went to St Louis to play this rapid and Blitz tournament before the sinkhole cup happened where Magus and Hans were playing there were people who told me very specifically that they thought he was cheating other other players in the event they even gave me like actual theories about like things in his shoes things of this nature yeah so I'm in a very awkward spot there as well because I know why I mean I I was like 99 sure why Magnus dropped out um it would have come out regardless though it would have come out no matter what because Magnus was not going to back down on a stance about Hans and others would have brought it up anyways so it's it's very tough I think if if you want to look for for blame I think probably it would be on chess.com ultimately because they were the ones who probably could have nipped all this in the bud at a much earlier stage and it wouldn't have gotten to where it got to because they could have released the online cheating and that would have I think yeah I think they could have released that I think also they could have probably not let him play after it happened uh the second time as well because it seems like it happened like I I don't I think it was like at least like four or five different times I haven't looked very very closely at that but it wasn't just an isolated incident and so I think if there is blame for that it's definitely on trust.com which should uh stop people from thinking that like my that I'm in some way influenced by by yeah are you biased because are you supported in part by chess.com yes I am I okay so so does that affect your bias no it doesn't I'm actually quite independent of them one thing that's that's interesting um to note is that a lot of people are under the assumption that when I do like broadcast of tournaments or things of this nature that chess.com is actively helping me they are not helping me I'm an independent contractor and so my opinions are my own and there are no lists given to me about like cheaters anything of this nature that has always been completely separate do they have compromising video of you that forces you forces you to uh if you don't follow the the main narrative that they will release that video publicly no they definitely don't um but yeah I I think I I think when I look look at it all I feel like if there is if if people are looking for for someone to blame I don't think it's actually Magnus the other day I think it is it's on chess.com very squarely for not handling handling it sooner I see you're okay with like Magnus being silent for long periods of time well I don't know why Magnus is still silent because my read of the situation was that there was some sort of NDA or there's some information that chess.com had that was they they could not release and so my read of it was Magnus was essentially saying the same thing chess.com said where like I can't say anything about it because of whatever whatnot but then chess.com releases what I perceive to be the stuff that they could not talk about anyway and Magnus still isn't saying anything so I don't really understand why Magnus has not said anything further there could be legal implications of accusing somebody of cheating uh over the board that could be like lawsuits that he just doesn't want the headaches he just wants to focus on the game and have fun playing the game and not get bogged down into lawyers and all that kind of yeah it's definitely possible but Magnus could also take the other route and just say well he cheated online in 100 games like I'm not going to play against a cheater that's very easy to say that's factual it's proven and that doesn't have to go into the speculation over the board so I I find it a little bit odd that Magnus hasn't said anything further at the same time it's also kind of peculiar because magnus's reputation is also kind of in in tatters in a sense like a lot of people are not happy with them for what he's done uh but still he goes and plays this tournament in this European Club Cup Tournament and he's just gaining like 10 points as though nothing has happened so I I mean I I don't I don't I don't really know where magnus's head is at because like if I was in that situation and everyone's coming after me for making such an accusation I don't think there's any way I'd be I would be able to play chess anywhere near the level that Magnus is playing at so the whole situation is yeah it's very strange yeah I wonder where his mind is at that he's able to play at that level uh let me uh before I forget let me ask you a technical question about cheating for at your level at like not your level but at a very high Grandmaster level how much information do you need this is a technical question it's like so for me in terms of Morse code and all those kinds of things I would need the full information so I would need probably in order to make a move just let's think about a very simple representation I would need two squares or the first to to designate which piece and the second where the piece is moving that's probably the easiest what's the smallest amount of information you need to help you basically like a buzz in a critical position that would be and what would the buzz say it would it basically would be something like one Buzz means the position is is great and two buzzes means the position is completely it's completely equal or there's nothing special in the position oh that's simple just to know that it's great we'll tell you what it will tell me that like my my in with my intuition like there are many times I've played Blitz online I'll say something I'll say something along the lines of I can feel like there's something here like intuitively I feel like there has to be a good move or I'm probably winning there's something there but I don't know that and most of the time I'm actually right about it like well after the game when I look with the computer usually it's like oh I should have played this this move and it would have given me a big advantage or I would have outright won the game so if I just know whether there's something there that's good enough that means it's worth worth it to calculate here yes and and I can follow that intuition probably to because what what normally is going to happen in such a situation is there probably are two moves or three moves Max that you're gonna to consider in a really critical position like if I feel like there's something there there are two to three moves so if I know something is there I will I'll be able to figure it out if I know that the position is very good okay so one Buzz for a good position for the current position I just need to know I just need to know whether whether like there's a there's something really good the position is really good or it's it's just like an equal position or it's just normal current position not even future moves just the current position there is a lot of Promise here yes okay uh what about the reverse like something's bad so you're saying if I'm if I'm in trouble in a game yeah and I and I I'm in the same situation um so I'm in trouble in a game it's it's probably a little bit more it's probably like I would say three two to three times where I would need to know the source of the trouble yeah I would I would need to know yeah I need to know like is there like one move that's good or there's there's more than one move again how you extrapolate that well wouldn't it be useful to know the information that you're now in a position where the other person could create a lot of trouble for you so we'll find that like it's out there find it like if you look at magnus's games there are a lot of situations where the position is equal but there's or it's equals one move but only one move if you don't find that one move you're significantly worse a lot of times that's the case so like if I if I can somehow note there's like only one move where I'm okay I could figure it out yeah yeah that's so that's one move is significantly better than the rest I mean I could give you like a perfect example as I played a game in the Canada's tournament last round against ding Loren from China and there there were many times where it was completely fine for me but it started drifting I started making some mistakes and I was worse but there was one last moment where I think I had one move where I would have been able to draw the game quite easily and every other move I was significantly worse and I did not find that move and I lost the game but if I had known it would have been nice to have a buzz right then yes I would have known uh who do you think is the greatest player of all time you've talked in from different angles on this uh Magnus Carlos and Gary caspara Bobby Fischer many others can can you make the case for each um can you make the case for you no I mean I can't make the case for me be serious I know I know there are a lot of people who want want that kind of like me to give off some kind of ego like that but no um obviously I'm nowhere near the conversation I I actually on that note I would say also I know people wanted to know if I'm the greatest player to never have played for the world championship or to have not got not become world champion I don't think that I'm actually anywhere near the top of that conversation I actually think Lavon aronian tops that conversation by a big margin simply because he was number two in the world for a very very long time and he never even got to the match so as far as world champions and who's the goat I think um I think Magnus is the goat simply because he's playing the best chess by by a bigger margin he has the highest ELO of all time uh on the other hand chess is a game where you know you build upon you build upon the Giants of the past we learn we learn from them and so you can definitely make the case for Gary as well I mean he's the number one player in the world for 20 plus years a lot of opening strategies he came up with in our people still play them today Bobby I'm not so sure you can really make that case because he was he shot up really quickly but he was the world champion for a very short window of time and then he quit the game as soon as he became world champion so I don't really feel like you can put Fisher in that uh in that conversation simply because he didn't have that longevity at all he was he was up there for a couple of years so I would say it's probably Magnus but I understand people can also say Gary's Gary's the best player ever um remains to be seen but I think if Magnus is number one for probably another let's say another three to four years I don't think there's any debate at all can you break down what makes him so good we've already talked about different angles of this and I would also uh try to get the same from you because we talked about early Hikaru like I'd like to uh talk about that folder but first Magnus what makes Magnus so good what are the various aspects of his game that make him so good I think for Magnus he he just you know that in the end game in the end games if you get there he's just he's not gonna blunder that's the first thing so you know if you reach an end game he's not going to make a mistake he obviously plays great openings and there's just really no defined weakness that he has there's no weakness that I can think of very specifically um many there are many times where players that actually out prepare him in the opening phase but as soon as they're on their own and they have to think very often times they'll make mistakes um so there's just no weakness for Magnus really no weakness well unlike say Casper like kasparab on the other hand there there are very clear weaknesses um in his game like kramnik exploit them first of all very I don't want to say like ego is the right word but like very stubborn believing that his openings were infallible that he could just win he could just prove an advantage and win the game out of the opening like against kramnik when he ultimately lost also generally not a great defender either very strong tactically but if he was in positions that were defensive he would make mistakes and lose in end games like he did in one of those games in the world championship against kramnik so there were very clear defined weaknesses in Sparrow's game um whereas like magnets are just they're no clearly defined weaknesses maybe maybe he doesn't like being attacked maybe that's the one thing he likes King safety and he doesn't like being attacked but that's not something that you can easily do whereas say uh if someone's very tactical and they're not a strong positionally that is something you can def that will happen quite frequently in games you can steer games a certain way doesn't mean you'll always get there but that is something tangible whereas King safety that's not something tangible at all it's very very hard to attack someone uh based on unless they play certain style of openings do you think Garrick has of reflecting in your comment would agree like what is it about his relationship with with kremnick that was so challenging I mean I think this is kramnik understood him actually one thing that's funny speaking of Kasparov is that I think it got under her skin like when I worked with him kramnik actually played a certain style very like very aggressive very sort of risky opening play during the time when I was when I was working with Gary and I know that he annoyed Gary because he's like why couldn't kramnik play like this against me because I think Gary Felton did that against him he would have just blown him off the board and had had many great victories so I think it's cramic understood Gary they had worked together I think during during the late 90s I think Gary actually was very useful or very helpful in terms of cram of getting a spot on one of the uh Russian chess Olympiad teams in in the mid 90s so I think it's just kramnik understood him very well and Gary just could not he just he couldn't figure it out I think also another things coming back to Psycho psychological part is that kramnik actually beat Kasparov in many games in the king's Indian defense Kasparov played the king's Indian defense for many years and they started losing like four or five games in a row in it to kramnik very similar to what I mentioned about the silly night orphan Fabiano and Gary gave it up he started switching to playing the grunfeld defense and so I think that also instilled some psychological fear as well because Gary was he was the boss in openings no one could compare to him what makes you so good what uh what What's the breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses so that's I think probably my biggest strength is that I'm a universal player I can play pretty much any opening strategy doesn't doesn't really matter um beyond that I think it's mainly that I don't really make many blunders I don't make blunders unless I'm under a lot of pressure generally so that I mean I know I'm I'm oversimplifying it's not as as simple as does this apply to uh to Blitz as well I think it's much more applicable to Blitz in particular because my intuition is very good so when I'm making less blunders with limited time on the clock my opponents actually make a lot more blunders that that's why I think it's much more pronounced in Blitz than it is in classical chess because in Blitz when you're down to like 10 seconds uh in the game both players have 10 seconds my intuition is just better than theirs I mean Magnus maybe not so clear but like if you look at other players say Fabiana car one a very strong player when he gets down to 10 seconds or in these these uh these situations he almost always makes a blunder almost always um so I'm just more precise I make less blunders and that that's really the the effect is much more dramatic Blitz what do you think that intuition is like uh sorry for the kind of uh like almost philosophical question what what is that is that calculation or is it some kind of weird memory recall what is that like being able to do that Short Line prediction I think that's just playing so many games online and there's some kind of subconscious field that I have because when you're that low on time you can't calculate it's just you have to look you just have to figure out what's the move you want to play is no calculation and just go with it and I think just playing so many games probably I mean I'm guessing I've played over 300 000 games online and I think just playing all those games it's it's a feel there's there's no tangible way uh that I can't put that really into words it's just a feel what do you Visual and we should say that you're I think currently the number one ranked Blitz player in the world you have uh been for a while you're unquestionably one of the greatest so the classical rapid and Blitz you're one of the best people for many years in the world okay but you're currently number one Blitz um so I I'd love to kind of for you to dig into the secret to your success in Blitz is it as you're saying that intuition being able to when the time is short to not make blunders and then to make a close to Optimal move I think it's generally that I'm able to keep the games going no matter what until we're low on time I'm always able to do that yeah like if we play a game with three minutes like there are games I will just win win very quickly but a lot of games between top players players have to think you have to use time and in those final critical stages I just don't blunder I just don't blunder really at the end of the day that's that's really the only difference because everybody's very very strong but it's sort of like who is the who is the better like brain who has a better like CPU or for lack of a better way of putting it it's like who makes a split to SEC Split Second decisions the best and uh I do think that I'm extremely good at that in a way that almost nobody else is that that really is the only difference is that those Split Second decisions because you can get a worse position but again if you keep the game going players have to use a time when you get down to those final 10 15 seconds uh I almost always end up winning in those situations what are you visualizing like when it knows when you're doing the fast fast calculations what what is it um it's basically you look at a move and you see like when it's like five seconds or ten seconds you play a movie you just make sure that it's not a blunder you just look make sure it's not a blender and you just go with it and the first part though is the feel so it's like I see this move and it looks right I don't know why it's right I can't put that into words but it looks like the right move and then I look very for like a split second see as long as it's not some kind of blender and you just play that move is there a bit of a tunnel vision are you able to understand the positions of all the other pieces on the board or are you just focusing on a very specific interaction it's just Phil it's really just feel it's like this move feels right and so I play it when you when you're at that stage of the game it's it's like as long as it's not a blunder and it just that it's just that feel there's there is no way for me to put that in and that feel like empirically does result in low probability of blunder for you yeah it's like you don't blunder even though there could be like you don't forget like a random piece that was like very very I mean it does happen of course but very rarely and I mean I've done it on stream many times like it's just you you go with the move that for whatever reason like it just intuitively whether it's from playing hundreds of thousands of games on the internet um or just that that experience like it you just intuitively can can feel like the move is right and so over those 300 000 games played over the board online all kinds of variations what's a game that stands out to you as particularly one you're proud of or or maybe what's the Hikaru mortal game or a strong candidate yes they're two games there's a game that I won against Boris gelfond um in 2010 where I offered a queen stock I think on five consecutive moves second sacrifice a sacrifice the queen yeah yes so coming through with the lingo can you take me to that game this is there's one sequence in the late middle game where um it's funny because I actually I I think I because I remember I tried to show this game to Peter actually Peter till and I confused the move order right in the late middle game so I don't want to do that again 2010 yeah 2010 it was yeah what what kind of opening is this that's the king's Indian defense so the knights are out what's with the bringing the night back yeah I have the black pieces and you want to push the pawn the uh the make room for the pawn yeah normally in the king's inning you try to is sort of like storming with the pawns uh on the king side where the white king is seriously now I push and I start pushing all my pawns forward are you happy with this position with all the Pawns in diagonal like this with the knives behind it this looks this is this is no this is this nowadays this is very well known as a standard Theory um but at the time I I the reason that I was aware of this is because I played a tournament I think in Montreal I think it was Montreal like the year the summer before and one of my friends had actually played this variation with the black pieces so I was aware of it and it seemed very dangerous but from the black perspective yeah I feel like it's very hard for white to play very hard for white to play it felt feels like you're getting attacked your king you see the black pawns are coming down towards the king and it's very hard to defend and also a lot of players don't like being attacked generally you try to avoid positions where your king is under Fire which comes back to what I said about Magnus as well like he doesn't like it when his King is under Fire and so therefore um You Can't Always Get that because White had to play along to get to this point as well if white didn't want something this uh this double-edged and just complicated he could have avoided it so is the is the is the black Bishop also a threat are you like yeah the lights were Bishop in the king's Indian is uh vital to any attacking possibility you're always likes you don't want to lose that Bishop if you can help it got it and so the he's bringing out the knights is there a particular moment that's interesting to you here so also keep going yeah there's so I play Rook F7 this is all all standard yeah so I take take now this is actually this is an exception to the rule normally the king's Indian you don't want to break this Pawn chain from the these are the four Pawns in a row The Connect Four why'd you break it because it's an exception where you can do that there almost are no variations in the king's inning where you do that you almost always Retreat the bishop um to guard the pawn the bishop to fa you break the pawn chain because it's an exception to the rule um because you're not actually worried about the about white being able to push the pawn to D6 here it was probably the best game I ever played so it keeps going A5 G4 yep no no no the diagonal's there again that that's that that looks threatening right like white Beasley is trying to guard the king he's gonna Retreat this Bishop from C5 to G1 as you'll see in a c in a second actually not quite yet yeah it goes now he goes here and so he's trying to guard his King with the bishopon on G1 uh but I'm able to keep keep attacking here and the next is there any case to be made for you to take the pawn here uh no that would actually be a mistake I mean it's very high level but it's a mistake because white will actually not recapture the pawn and and uh I it yeah this is a very high level oh also the pawn is the pawn like the pawn will be ends up in front of the king yeah it stops white from being the white king from being attacked basically oh interesting so your Pawn is stopping the their King from being attacked cool so yeah so the pressure continues from you right and then I sack is it is that off wait wait what's the sack oh the Knight takes Pawn Yeah is this uh what are the strengths and weaknesses of you throwing the Knight well basically I'm gonna get this uh I'm destroying the protection in front of the white king the white pawns there and willing to take risks but please I basically want to open up the king and try to check me if I don't check me and I'm probably gonna lose the game here in the center of the board so yeah and now there's some very nice moves after punch Pawn I take this because now what takes the queen I push the pawn forward on his checkmate uh so give me a second so your night is take you're losing pieces ever left and right right and you're pushing the pawn forward check he takes the pawn uh The Rook check so just check check Non-Stop and uh same theme though I keep going for this checkmate with a pawn or a Pawn on the Square in front of the king you see the queen is still hanging in fact I actually sacked the queen again he never took the queen he couldn't take the queen because it'd be Checkmate got it so constantly and that's what you mean by sacrifice he didn't actually yeah yeah he couldn't take you to have gotten checkmated but anyways Smoke Clears and I'm up material here and and I win this game so this is the game that I would say it's like why why why did it stand out I mean it's beautiful but just the fact that um it's mainly that I was able to offer the queen sacrifice so many moves in a row you almost never have that opportunity um and actually normally the games you're going to consider your best involve sacrifices and if you can sacrifice the queen that makes it uh very memorable there's just this constant theme of uh this this one Checkmate idea how often do you play with the sacrifice of a major piece like how often do you find yourself in that position pretty rare because players tend to avoid these sorts of situations players don't like games that can go either way so when when like both players have to sort of cooperate you have to want that kind of game in order for that situation to arise and a lot of games at the top neither player wants to go into that situation for the most part so you don't really have those opportunities nevertheless stockfish loves those opportunities the yeah the sacrifices well that's one thing also that we're starting to learn more and more is that stockfish and the other programs they don't care about pawns you can sacrifice one pawn two pawns three Pawns in a lot of cases if the rest of your pieces are very active and that's something that we kind of knew on a basic level about the initiative is what we call it in chess where like you'll give up material but your pieces are very well placed but we didn't realize just how how important that is and computers will do that all the time now all the time and even actually like they're in this variant Fisher random is another another variant where you arrange a piece on the back row they will gladly sack Rooks for Bishops or for Knights all the time all the time and so you take from that material imbalance or the material you give up doesn't matter as much as having this this attack or having this piece on certain squares well as long as you can hold on to the attack right and computers can't but yeah it's also very tricky because when we as humans sometimes you'll look at our opening variation and you'll see something like this and you want to do it in a game but the problem is we don't know how we're supposed to follow it up afterwards yeah and so if you do that and you don't know how to follow up afterwards very oftentimes we'll make mistakes we'll try to look in a human way and then of course all you end up losing in the long term because you've given up too much material so it's a very double-edged sword but that's why it's dramatic and what people love those kinds of sacrifices because you're putting it all in the line what's the what's the other game oh it was a game also with a queen sacrifice um it was a game against this uh polish player Michael krasenkow uh it was played in Barcelona in 2007 I believe it was I also I sacrificed the queen for one Pawn to just bring the king out into the middle of the board and you actually sacrificed it or yes I did sacrifice I took a pawn yeah absolutely and you're again black yes yeah this game you can just skip forward to about like the 20th move roughly what's the uh what's the opening uh this is I think it's like a Catalan it says neocaton so yeah it's basically a Catalan opening generally very slow you know Catalan declined yeah yeah and now here I sack the queen for the pawn or no sorry take the Knight first sorry Knight C6 keep going so by the way the pawn structure here is a mess or is missing yeah if I take the knight uh you take the Knight with a rook yeah uh what's the discovery my Queen's under attack now so when he takes the Knight The Rook on B1 is attacking my queen got it so they just get got it no yeah you you yeah you throw your queen into the middle um check check the king wait a minute that's not right yeah it's one Pawn it's it's a queen for a pond for a pawn yeah and the King takes your queen what was the thinking here well crazy magic the king is King is uh King has to go up the board and the king is very vulnerable in this position see but you're gonna have to keep checking here then yes uh Bishop checks King Rook checks night checks did you see all of this ahead yeah I mean I had not all of it but I I figured there had to be some way to win here with the King too many attacking pieces in your end that could duel well it's just basically the king the only piece that can sort of guard the king is the queen on D1 that's the only piece if I can just keep checking I'm gonna be able to win win here so it goes there and now I think I played yeah I played this move oh no check because I'm threatening to move the Rook over one square and make a Checkmate got it and then the rule was that the Rook takes your knight and then you take it right back with a check now I still want to scoot The Rook over to check check on the H6 Square the dark Square I think they resign here are they making well he resigned yeah hey did resign here yeah because I just moved the Rook over to that dark Square in front of the pawn and that would be Chuck mate dark Square in front of the pawn so 86 yeah because now the bishop covers the light square is there something he can do to to mess um not really there I don't think there's nothing with a queen Chuck mate nothing with the queen I guess he's gonna lose the queen yeah I think it's just actually Force Checkmate here in a couple of moves I don't think there's any way to stop it even if he loses his Queens yeah it's it's a force checkmate fascinating and so like that you you can't purely calculate but you can have some intuition also I think what it is is in such situations you know that there is at least a draw I could always just check him with my Rook if I wanted to to make a draw so that also gives me some margin where if I calculate after I play the move and I calculate it doesn't work out I can still make the draw are you uh I mean for fun dude do you do the sacrifices of this sort when it's not the serious competitive uh online events or over the board I do actually do this quite frequently and I wish there were more opportunities but top level chess it's it's become harder and harder because due to computers everybody's very very well prepared in the opening they know the first like 15 to 20 move sequences and no matter what you do so it's very the the room for creativity is less and less which makes it which means you have less less of those types of games I think you played uh Levy Gotham chess with the with the Without a Queen was that a thing I think that was a bullet game yeah the one minute game I think so yeah is that an actual thing that you can pull off like would you be like Levy or yeah can somebody like Levy and bullet maybe I can win like 50 it'll probably be what's bullet What's the timing on the whole game one minute for the whole game okay what about I mean how much do you miss the queen if it's gone against the international master you know in a bowl game like I said maybe in bullet I can maybe score 50 in in a in a Blitz game or anything anything slower maybe 10 maybe one out of ten I can win maybe one out of ten yeah on the topic of goat let me ask uh about Paul morphy how good was he uh Reddit asked me to ask you about this and and why is he a tragic figure in chess yeah so Paul morphe was the best player in the world by a bigger margin probably than anyone else in recent modern history he was I would say roughly using today's ratings around like 2 400 in my opinion and the other best players were maybe around 2000 or 2100 at best so he's the best player by a bigger margin Fisher for example I think it was about 170-ish points um better than Boris baskey but morphy was 300 plus at least now by modern standards he would probably be a very strong I am uh which you know is isn't saying a whole lot but at the time no one was even close so I don't think you can put him in that category of like best ever simply because he was not the best player for a long enough period of time um as far as why it's tragic it's very tragic because he essentially quit chess there was no competition for him uh if you think about like Magnus talking about the world championship and feeling like it's not competitive enough for morphe there was no one who could even beat him probably in individual games so he ended up quitting chess I think he was sort of like a lawyer kind of but he spent probably the last 15 I think last 15 20 years of his life just doing nothing now I have actually seen his grave in New Orleans I have been to where where he lived I think it's now Brennan's if I'm not mistaken or something like that um so it's very tragic that there was no one who was competitive with him at the time um as far as best ever I don't I don't think you can say he's the goat but I still think he's in the top 10 if we're using a criteria of players who were better than their peers by a big big margin so what do you think about the world championship and what do you think about Magnus stepping down do you still see it as the height of chess I I still think that there is Merit in having the world championship the way it is at the same time the game is always evolving and one of the things that has changed a lot in recent times is you now have a lot more Blitz tournaments and also rapid tournaments in the past classical chess was the golden standard there were that was the only thing that mattered but in the last probably 10 years slowly but surely there are probably as many rapid flash Blitz tournaments as there are classical tournaments now maybe it's not quite 50 50 but at the top level at least it feels like it's getting very close to 50 50. and in terms of the world championship I feel that the biggest issue is you have too many draws the games can be exciting but the games inevitably end in a draw and the single biggest reason is because players have about six months or more to prepare for the match so for example the Canada's tournament which I just played it was in June and July it ended I think around July 5th the world championship match will probably be in February of March so that's you know nine months and when players have that much time to prepare they are not going to have any weaknesses in the opening phase of the game and so both players are likely going to be very solid you'll have a lot of draws and in many cases it might come down to tie breaks Magnus in fact in two of the matches both against karyakan and against Carolina he had to win in Rapid tie breaks so I think for Magnus he just doesn't feel like the format is right I think he feels that there's just it's too long too many draws he doesn't get to play Creative or exciting chess and that's why I think he pushed so hard for a change in the format I don't know what the right change would be but I do think that the format is becoming a little bit antiquated with all these classical games if you don't want to change the format the one suggestion that I've mentioned before and I think it's probably still valid is that the match should be held maybe one month after the Canada's tournament to determine the Challenger it's held one month after that event that's probably this the only way to keep the format as it is where I think both players have time to repair but it's not something crazy because when you compare the candidates to other classical tournaments let's just say let's just say St Louis I played I played there recently there was the I played the rapping Blitz but there was a singfield cup um this was I think like September 10th something like that the point is players probably came in and had a week or two to prepare for that tournament now there's the US Championship players had a little bit of time to repair you play the event normally players don't have these long breaks where they can prepare for very long periods of time so they are very well prepared but you still have a lot of exciting games because that window of preparation is so much smaller but you had uh you're pretty close given how things rolled out to heaven having the opportunity to compete for the World Championship uh hence the the copia meme which I still don't quite understand um are you and Magnus friends enemies Frenemies um what what's the status of the relationship yeah I think with all the rivalries in chess everybody tries to Hype it up like everyone hates each other but the thing is at the end of the day yes we're very competitive we want to beat each other whether it's myself or Magnus or other other top players but we also realize that it's a very small world like a lot of us are able to make a living playing the game as professionals and as I alluded to earlier the top 20 to 30 players can make a living so even though we're competitive against each other we want to beat each other there is a certain level of respect that we have and there is a sort of Brotherhood I would say um so all of us are I would say Frenemies I think that's the simplest way of putting it what do you love most about Magnus Carlson as a human being as a human being I think it's it's very similar actually to use a comparison to tennis and Roger Federer in that it feels like with Magnus everything comes very easily it's for example we've seen the situation with Han's name somehow it's rolled right off his back and he's playing Amazing chess in this in his latest event um so it's it's really how easy he seems to make it look and I know like because tennis is a sport that I've played a lot I followed it very closely I remember hearing Andy Roddick say that this about Federal words like somehow he handles it all like there's no pressure he makes it look easy and how does he do all that and I feel the same way about Magnus where it seems too easy because I know for myself when I'm playing these games like they're stress the pressure and for Magnus it just you don't you don't ever see that now I'm sure it's probably there but we don't witness it so that's what I would say is just how easy it is it was sad to see Federer retire I don't know why yeah just greatness in a wooden Lionel Messi will retire it'll also be sad because there's certain people there um just singular right in the history of a sport yeah I don't know if there's going to be another messy I don't know if there's going to be another Federer yeah not for a long time is the greatest ever would you say is he up there he's definitely up there I mean I I grew up as like more of an adult fan just because actually like I felt like Nadal it never looked easy it was the exact opposite like for an adult it feels like he's always he's running after every ball he's exerting himself it looked really really hard and like for me uh since nothing really came easily for me in chess like I kind of I can relate to that more um but at the same time like you know especially when Federer start losing more and he seems more human I started really liking him him more as well but um I think Federer he changed the game I don't know if he says the greatest ever but the game changed forever because of him yeah there's certain people she said lasting impact Sampras uh Agassi everybody okay uh who wins in a chess boxing match between you and Magnus probably Magnus just because he's he's taller than me I think also reach he's taller is more reach yeah but I I think he I think he would win question from Reddit in what sport do you think you can beat Magnus 10 out of 10 times I think I could beat Magnus 10 out of 10 times in tennis I mean I took lessons for eight years I I try to go out and hit two or three times every week I I think I could beat him in 10 to 7 out of ten backhand forehand what's your what's what's your style of tennis play I wish I was taller because I really like trying to come into the net I like I like falling a lot um but I am no Rob Rod Laver and Rob Laver was very short but he was able to make it work like 50 60 years ago I really like bowling but I'm a little bit too short so I I kind of have to stay back and and I mean I normally hit like I try to hit hard forehands and I try to slice uh slice or two hand backhand uh you mentioned Magnus and Kuryakyn uh and I just wonder if you have ideas thoughts about uh the fact that he was originally a qualifier for the candidates tournament and was disqualified um by fide for breaching his code of ethics about the related to his support for uh the Russian invasion of Ukraine uh does that ever seep into the the games that you play over the board the the geopolitics the actual military conflict of it all do you feel the pressure of that because there's battles between nations nepo's uh you know Russian there's there's America there's I mean every nation is in some profound way represented on the chessboard right I've I've never really felt that I think actually for me it's very eye-opening to realize how difficult it is for a lot of the Russian chess players right now to play because of the situation even nepo for that matter I remember when we were in St Louis he he essentially has to bring cash because obviously Russia's cut off from Swift no no credit cards work so if these Russians don't have cash they can't play and I know a lot of them have fled the country just to try and keep their chess career going so it's it's a very very very tough situation for them obviously for the ukrainians who are suffering um it's it's really really bad do you know if nepo this has he talked haven't seen as he talked about the politics the the geopolitics of it all I I don't think he really has I I mean I I feel like most players try to avoid talking about I think it's very difficult I remember when I was in St Louis there's another Russian player Peter savidler and I I basically asked him he's like don't get me started because I I can't I just can't talk about it um so I think most of them are probably on the other side of the spectrum I don't think they're probably supportive of what is going on right now so it's it's very it's a very very difficult situation but I don't really feel like that manifests itself in actual like tensions when I play against like the Russian players I mean maybe when I was younger playing certain events the the one country I felt like maybe it actually I felt some tension I really want to go out of my way to win against was against the Chinese perhaps that is maybe the one time I felt something along those lines um but generally I feel like we treat the players as individuals it's not about the country they represent yeah let's go back to the the philosophical of Chess uh what do you find most beautiful about the game of chess looking back over your whole career I think looking back it's really is it's both over the board and also just like the memories that I've created um I think for me the fact that I've been able to travel because of Chess to meet so many people who are playing this great game from all different nationalities all all different backgrounds is is probably the thing that I I really like the most chess is one of the maybe the only thing I can think of where you can have people different backgrounds different ages honestly you can have someone who's a billionaire talking to someone who's like a nine-year-old kid from the inner city and when they're talking about the game of chess they're on the same level and I don't think that is really applicable to anything else in this world um you don't have that level of respect that is communicated through a game so for me that's probably the single most beautiful thing about about sort of Chess in the Chess World itself is that you have that in terms of the game itself the creativity the possibility of different positions learning something new even after I've played the game for 30 years is it's very inspiring to me knowing that I've spent all this time they're still new things that I can learn um those those are probably two biggest biggest things that I would refer to are there memories big or small like weird surprising anecdotes from all those years of going to all the different places that stand out to some some of the darker times weirder times like weird places you've played weird people you played weird people you hung out with anything that jumps to memory you know I think we're this is probably a little bit more like political but I think one of the things that's great is whenever you go and play these tournaments you have a certain impression of what a country is like or what the people are like and probably the best example for me was in 2004 or it's actually no sorry it's 2003 I think it was I played in the uh fide World Cup and it was held in Tripoli the capital of Libya at the time when Gaddafi was still running the country and you know you hear a lot of these things but then when you go there and you see the people are so friendly it's very eye-opening and sort of you you look at it with uh without just believing things you go to these places you see how things truly are and generally I find that it's very different than how the media will portray it one of my great regrets is as someone who loves history not going to see Magnus lepta which were the greatest ruins I think greatest ruins in Africa from the Roman times and of course no longer exists so I really do regret that I think another thing that's very unique about Chess is that all of us even when we compete as children like there are a lot of people like nepo and others who have known for a very very long time there are a lot of people who no longer play chess competitively but inevitably you end up talking to these people many years down the road and so you never truly lose touch with the game or the people that you grew up playing it with and there's so many of these people that like I connected with in the last couple of years who I knew when I was a kid and they went off did something else but they they still end up you still end up talking to them and have being able to share these uh these these old memories so you said you're a bit of a student a fan of History even ancient history are there uh cultures periods of time people from human history that you draw wisdom from about human nature that you're particularly drawn to a lot I mean I probably study um mostly like it'd be like ancient Roman history or pre uh pre-roman Empire and of course ancient Persia is another um another subject I've studied a lot on if you ask me I I would say I mean there there's it depends you're talking like military generals you're talking like philosophers I mean there's so yeah they're both right so uh philosophers is how people thought about the world uh of course military has to do with how the uh how how people sort of conquered lands both are interesting because in part it seems so far away from what we are today and it's cool to see that people were kind of the same in their ability to invent amazing things and uh maybe the same and different in their willingness to go to war so I think I mean one of my favorite books that I've read in the last couple years is the histories by Herodotus uh I mean basically considered the father of history and um I mean I really love reading reading about these things like thermopyla or Marathon these these great ancient battles um I don't know if there's like a specific like quote or wording or something like that that I can come up with but that is one of my favorite favorite books on history by by far so those books are written a long time ago yeah it's like 400 I think it was like 400 BC that's when that was written so what's that what's that like what's that like reading that it's just is it does it seem ancient it does seem ancient like it's sort of I feel like for myself one of the things I really like doing is getting away from technology when I have the opportunity trying to disconnect these sorts of things so when I read books like that besides just having a general interest it sort of reminds you like there is really a life without all this stuff or there was at least at some point and so it's something that I can kind of relate to like Humanity flourishes without all the stuff we take we think is fundamental to our current culture like all the all that we find beautiful about Humanity can still exist without any of the technology yes definitely that that's really good reminder given the contrast of course is beautiful because you're in the midst of the technology with streaming right like it to me streaming somehow feels because of how many how how large of a percentage of the young of young people are interested like consumes uh streams it feels to represent like the future because so many people kind of developed their mind by watching twitch and YouTube right I mean that's that's definitely true for like for for myself I remember when I was a little bit younger when I was like 17 18 around then I would actually try one one day a week on the weekend to try not to look at like my computer or my phone now phones weren't where they are today obviously but I was able to do that pretty easily now it's very hard like when I try to go one day recently I tried to do that like I actually just pulled some books out of my garage and I started reading and it was a very foreign concept because I do read a lot but it's always on it's always on an iPad so or a Kindle yeah both of those actually um so it's it's very very weird but I do try when I can to get away from it all um I mean another thing like I said I really like going out into nature when I have the opportunity I've spent a lot of time in Colorado for example hiking hiking some of the 14ers that is one of those life goals that I have to go and get to the top of every single one of them um so I try to disconnect when I can but of course it's very hard so whether it's disconnecting or not can you take me through a perfect day in the life of a car and Nakamura on a day of a big chess match multiple days right we'll take one where it's a big chess match and one that's just like your representative average day a perfect chest day although I cannot do this uh it would start like the night before I would get like nine hours of sleep uh like a consistent nine hours like say 12 a.m to 9 A.M for example let's just say the round starts at like two o'clock and then nine to say 12 o'clock I do preparation and then 12 to 1 I go eat lunch and or one to two I just nap or I walk or I do something completely unrelated to it that would be the perfect day when are you doing uh everything except the preparation are you thinking about Chess at all are you trying not to think I'm trying not to think about Chess definitely not what do you do is there any tricks to that well I find that like if I go outside I just try to try to hear like the birds I try to listen it's one of those like meditation kind of things like you know they always say when you meditate you try to try to hear yourself breathing it's like when you close your eyes try to hear yourself breathing just focus on that so I do try to do things like that uh from time to time as well so in terms of getting nine hours of sleep that that come difficult to you that almost never happens I mean there have been a couple times where it has happened like in Norway specifically but generally it just I don't sleep well during trust terms I wish I did but but so we're talking about a perfect day so sleep is really important what about diet and stuff like that yeah I think uh for a lot of people they try to keep it light before the round actually like I remember hearing the story from uh Peter sevidler some years back a Russian GM and he said that kaspara would go and eat like a big steak right before the game and he would he would be completely fine but I think for most players it's the exact opposite you try to like eat like some snacks like maybe some nuts a few bars things of this nature or maybe just like maybe fish something very light for lunch um before the game and then then you probably eat a lot after the game that's generally what you try to do but I don't think there's any like specific diet that makes a huge difference but every everyone is different of course so when you're actually at the board on that perfect day how do you maintain Focus for so many hours of classical chess like like um you know what like minute to minute second to Second how are you able to maintain focus is there tricks to that how difficult is that I think it really depends on the type of the game that you're playing I think if it's a game that's very very calm and very slow or not a lot happens at the start it's a it's a lot easier because because you're not having to be super focused like your mind can drift and whatnot and the critical moment you have to sort of Zone in um so those are the easiest ones I think generally when when games are very complicated from the start uh what you're doing is you're you're just you're you're trying to not let your mind wander at all because when games are complicated like that one of the things that I've never been very good at is my mind does wander and you're always like I'm always worrying about the next move it's like is this a blunder what's what's going on like what am I gonna do um so you're trying I think very much to block out the noise I think that's actually the hardest thing is is also because like I can say this when I played Magnus before there have been times when I've gotten winning positions against him and in that moment when I have the winning position very often times my mind wanders like okay you're about to win this game and you're like okay what happens after the game you win this game gain the rating points all these different things but you haven't actually won the game yet and I think for a lot of players that's the hardest thing is when you get a winning position your mind does drift it drifts to like what the what happens after after you've won the game or what the outcome is so yeah drifting into the future and you should say in the moment you really should yes like hold on and also what is it uh yeah probably getting excited about the win what what is that what is it about that that makes you worse at playing so interesting like getting uh well I think it's you you get it's like a nerve it's nervous but it's like you're you're too excited I think you just you it's like you're waiting for a time you expect it to end and then and then your opponent keeps keeps defending and and you can make mistakes what about the flip side of that where you start getting frustrated like how do you try to recover from that kind of thing it's very difficult I I think for myself I just try I try to basically focus on it every single move I just try and again you try to block out the noise no matter which direction it's going in so I try as best I can I mean sometimes I'm very poor at it like I just don't do a good job uh blocking out the noise at all but I think generally I try to think okay just make this next move make your opponent have to find the best moves and just just keep the game going no matter what just keep it going by the way what's a long day of classical chess what's that look like this it's pretty brutal I mean it would be something like okay so the game starts at two o'clock so you've done all this other stuff the game probably goes from like two to seven for example or maybe two to eight five six hours probably eat uh you eat dinner for an hour or so maybe clear like I'll go clear my head for 30 minutes and then immediately it's right back to studying for a couple of hours are you reviewing previous games are you already uh generally you're just moving on to the next game that's what you're not and trying to no matter what happened put that behind you yeah win or lose or draw okay so that's that's also why there's another question a lot of people wonder which is why don't I play more of these classical tournaments and sort of it gets back to the you know the literally don't cares for his stuff but when I'm going to play in tournaments I want to be able to give it my best shot and if I don't feel that I can I'm not going to play which is why like I play here and there but I do balance my schedule very carefully because I'm not just going to go and play tournament simply because if I don't feel that I can put in the work uh it's not it's not it's not the right thing to do also because I'm taking away a spot from somebody else who probably will be putting in the work who will want to compete in that event and so when I look at the candidates or a lot of people say well why why is he playing there like okay qualified but he's not going to take it seriously um but I did give it everything I had in that tournament um and I always will as much as I can if I can't do that then I'm just not going to play so what about a perfect day in the life of vacara when you're not doing a perfect day a perfect day would be something along the lines of I get up very early like three four o'clock in the morning drive an hour away and go climb mountains that's the perfect day out in the mountains oh oh do you mean a normal non yeah a perfectly productive normal day oh perfectly productive okay so perfectly productive would be along the lines if I wake up at like 7 30 8 o'clock probably I watch either Bloomberg or CNBC for 30 minutes to an hour um and then watch the markets for maybe maybe an hour or two look at certain things that are you really care about investing uh I do follow it quite closely yeah I follow the markets very closely closer than I should but yes for personal reasons so do do you comment on it like do you like for personal investing reasons or for like philosophical understanding what's going on in the world it's it's sort of everything I think first of all obviously I'm interested in investing I have been for many many years I've done investing trading for at least a decade now um so like I am very interested on that level I'm also quite interested as well because when you see the policy that's being dictated like you look in the last last six months specifically you see the FED policy around things like interest rates unemployment things of this nature it is something that interests me also because I do invest in real estate aside from the stock market so therefore I'm always keeping an eye on these sorts of things and and always looking and as a better example like I'm looking for Trends so if we go back to I think it was 20 I could have the year wrong it was 2015 or 2016. um there was a pattern that I found that on the FED minutes that came out uh you know I believe 2 215 I think it's on the Wednesday of every third Wednesday of every month um that gold would actually the gold ETFs and etns would actually go up uh not every single every single Wednesday of the month that the minutes came out so I would follow things like that now of course I wasn't like trading huge huge volume but I found a trend there of course it stopped working at a certain point but those are the sorts of things that they just interest me even if it's not something I'm doing to make a living trying to spot those Trends it's always been something that has uh that has fascinated me one Reddit said that you shorted Tesla a time ago uh do you regret doing so uh well when I when I did those plays I was only those small amounts of money and that was only via uh via puts that was where I would buy puts or put spreads um on it so it wasn't something where I was straight shorting I would I would never actually do that um because it's just it's not worth the risk and I don't want to ever be in a situation where I have to think about those sorts of things and I think a better example is there was a period in 2016 actually shortly before the candidates when I actually was in oil I had a long position in oil and this is when oil completely crashed it went very I don't think it went below did it go below 30 even it went very low and and of course the Saudis were not cutting they were not um I think they they were uh were they cutting or not cutting production but anyway there was a period in 2016 when I had a big long position in one of the 3x oil ETFs and I I it kept going down day after day after day and then of course right near the bottom of my finally couldn't take it anymore I took a loss and that really sort of it was very difficult dealing with that the stress every day looking seeing those losses and after that I kind of decided I would never put myself in such a situation again um and so that's why like I don't I don't do shorting and then separately and I think I post a reply to this comment but in 2021 as Tesla started going up I actually started selling puts and I did quite well off of that so it's it's sort of play Both Sides never never like become hard set with your conviction like where you refuse like this is this is just like it has to go down or like it it has to go up just sure you'd be you have to be um willing to adapt do you think shorting should is should be legal do you think it's ethical like to me I'm not I don't know much about investing but I feel like it feels wrong now I know if uh something is over inflated it's good for there to be an opposing Force to like balance it or something like that but it just feels like in our current modern internet world I think Tesla I vaguely saw somewhere that's like the most shorted stock like ever and so that incentivizes a lot of um the publication of misinformation about it like it just feels like the incentives are wrong not when we look at the markets but at the future of human civilization perspective it just feels like shorting is somehow wrong but maybe maybe I'm misunderstanding the broader picture of markets well I actually try not to do that I like I almost only take long positions specifically because I feel like you're at betting betting like on world collapsing I just I feel like morally I don't want to be in that that I don't I don't want to have that Viewpoint I think you know that sort of is another thing that I've noticed like I've been very lucky I've traveled a lot I've met a lot of a lot of famous people and the one thing that I know notices like a lot of a lot of the people who are the most successful they're the ones who are very optimistic no matter what is happening day to day they remain very optimistic about the future of where things are going um so so I try not to enter that situation I think as far as like shorting specifically the real danger to me is that anybody can now invest and I feel like actually some of these apps like Robin Hood they go out of their way to try and make it seem like it's this fun game um like I I I've seen people where you place a trade and like it gives you like like these stickers or these pop-ups like of confetti and it's like wait a second what what's what's going on here um with the whole with the whole game like people are sort of they're going after the wrong thing um so I I don't think shorting like will be banned but I think it's very dangerous that everybody has access to to being able to do things like that so according to Reddit on the topic of Tesla uh you have trouble admitting when you make a mistake is that true um no that's that's generally not true actually I think that way Reddit is not 100 accurate and truthful in its representation of a character that's fascinating no I think I think the thing that I I've learned is I'm obviously very good at chess but that doesn't automatically mean that I'm I'm a genius and everything else and I feel like that's another thing actually I really really admire about Magnus is that he is the world champion he's the best player but he does not automatically believe that translate to EV translates to every area of life I feel like with some other world champions they think that they're great no matter what they do um and that's not not like intentionally trying to be like be like rude but I do feel like there's certain people who feel like that like anything they say is right and they are the authority um when in reality like we are the authorities when it comes to chess like we know chess the best we are the experts but that doesn't automatically mean we're Geniuses and everything else that said I think you said somewhere on the c squared podcast that I forget if it's chess or streaming that taught you to generalize the various like you feel like you're able to do other things now was that streaming I don't know if that's specifically streaming but I think streaming has taught me a lot about sort of life and also how to run run a business honestly like I've I have read a lot of business books and one of the things with streaming is that when you start out it's like this very small thing it's just you maybe you have a couple of people who help you along the way but as it becomes bigger or bigger if there's a boom you suddenly start having to hire employees you're basically running this business and like for me I've I've learned a lot about that because one one of there was this book that I read some years back I think it was by Mary Buffett it was on Warren Buffett and and how like he tries to be hands off like when he buys these companies it's hands-off management stays the same you don't do anything and I actually I try to do things kind of the same way where like I try to be hands off there are a couple people around me I leave a lot of the general day-to-day decisions up to them and then like things that are really important obviously I'm involved in but I try to do things like that so streaming is you learn a lot along the way and I think now having done that there probably are several other potential careers that I that I could have if I really wanted to almost about that uh generalize in terms of what it takes to build a business from the ground up from the process of becoming a successful streamer you have learned what it takes to start from the ground up with a single person and to build the business as multiple people in a successful uh what what would you attribute your success as a streamer to I mean many things I think being a very strong trustler and having had a following was incredibly important at the start I think anybody whether it's chess or whatever field if you have that following to begin with from from your career or whatever activity or video game you do that's already a big step up if you have that to begin with so that definitely played a big role I think more than that though for me it's about the fans it's about hearing from people how they feel I mean there are trolls obviously but the positive messages you hear when you hear about people who are struggling struggling in life whether it's say I've heard people talk about having cancer you hear about someone going through a divorce or they're just trying to make it through day to day when you hear about things like that I think it really puts it all into perspective about what it what it all means at the end of the day and um so for me it really is the fans that they they give me that motivation they are they are the reason I do it and when I meet when I meet some of these fans in person like I have it a couple of a couple of events like just talking to them hearing their story worry just just knowing that I can bring them some Joy is uh again at the end of the day it's why are you doing it that's that's what it's about if I can bring people Joy you know if it's someone working working like in a factory all day someone in the middle of the country if I bring them Joy through my chest that means a lot you know if it's if it's a kid for example if I can Inspire them to take up chess in a more serious way or even honestly if they just learn from chess certain skills like critical thinking and that leads to them becoming like a great scientist or something down the road that is what I'm what I'm ultimately hoping uh that's that's what I hope will come out of it I mean we'll give you strength to have to turn on I mean I don't know how much you stream but it's a lot so day after day after day to be able to put that content out there is there some can you comment on the challenge of that and maybe the low points how you're able to overcome that I I actually don't fill the lows and I think the main reason that I don't fill lows is because at the end of the day I've been very fortunate even even as a chess player very very fortunate travel the world meet people I've lived a great life so for me to see myself as a streamer doing so well and and bringing joy to people I don't feel like I'm in a position maybe this is wrong to say this because mental health is very important but for myself I feel like I'm very lucky I don't really have any right to complain so I don't really feel those lows in the same way there are times when there's certain things like Reddit or otherwise it will will get on my nerves a little bit but I'm able to realize that I'm so fortunate and so I don't generally struggle struggle with the lows that much speaking of Reddit and trolls Reddit asked me to ask you to tell me the story of Chess Bay the Reddit moderator who pitted you against Eric Hansen uh also known as chess bro I'm just saying things I don't know I don't know much about air cans I guess Eric is another Grandmaster you guys had some uh drama and tension between each other so we'll also ask you to tell me what you like best about Eric Hansen as a human being here's what I was like the the whole stream streamers and the whole boom of Chess there are certain people certain entities that are very very important to what happened um you know there are a lot of people in the right place at the right time myself botez the chess bras I love you as well we were all kind of in the right place at the right time but just having the personalities alone is not enough you need people who push things and um there are a lot of things that have been said about Chess Bay about what she did at the end of the day the way that I view it is pretty straightforward you don't have to agree with what she did manner in which she did things but it pushed the game it pushed the directory and chess on Twitch forward in a way that would not have been possible with anybody else at the time chess.com for example they were not directly um pushing it so you needed someone who's pushing it and that so to me when I look at the whole boom actually of what happened on Twitch in many ways I think she's just as responsible as I was Levy was botez was in the bras were all of us were extremely fortunate because if you didn't have someone pushing it forward until Stockholm was not really that involved at the time it never would have gotten to where it was so you can sort of look at it and say okay you don't agree with what happened but you needed someone like that who was going to push push really hard to get just to where it is today can you comment on what happened for people who have no clue what you were talking about is that not useful I I don't think it's specifically useful to get into it I think there are a lot of layers um people felt there were things like abuses of power things of that nature there are a lot of things that were said um you know I don't want to be super negative about about what happened specifically but one thing people will note um is that prior to what did happen in April of 20 I think that was 2021 now uh there were a lot more collaborations the Chess World was much more together as a whole a lot of streamers did things together after what happened in April there was a big sort of Separation a lot of streamers went off in their own directions because of what happened um so that is I mean that's not the whole story there's a lot more to it of course but I think it's fair to say that I if I can just comment on the few times I've tuned into the streaming world I do hate to see the the silos that were created one of the reasons I've been a fan and now a good friend of uh Joe Rogan you call it collaborations because basically everybody's supporting each other gets excited for each other promotes each other and there's not that competitive feeling with with streamers sometimes I've just noticed that there's a natural siloing effect I don't know why that is exactly um maybe because drama is somehow good for views and clicks and that kind of stuff I don't know what that is but I hate to see it because I love seeing kind of friendship and uh uh collaboration I think this also goes like again try not to be super negative but this also goes to the chest world as a whole like one of the things that I've been in this trust world for a very long time not talking about online but just like the Chess World itself and I've been very fortunate because I've seen a couple booms and busts like in the late it actually wasn't late 90s it was in the mid 90s there was a period of time when Intel and IBM and all these tech companies were very big on chess there there were there's this PCA Grand Prix World Championship held in New York um there there also were I think there was like the deep blue stuff later on in the late 90s with Gary Gary Kasparov um and you had a lot of interest at the time and then it sort of went went up in Flames for a couple different reasons also in the late late 2000s or maybe mid-2000s there was a group in Seattle that was very big on chess they hosted the US Championship all these different things there have been a lot of booms uh booms and busts of course if you go way back there was the Fisher boom as well um but inevitably what leads these bus and the thing thing that leads to it is at the end of the day people in the trust world have this natural tendency to want to not work together you want to hang on to whatever whatever piece of the Chess World you have as opposed to thinking about it from the standpoint of what's good for one is good for all and so it's one of those things that now that I'm in this situation having seen these booms of us I I remember when I was younger I would very oftentimes think like why is it the chest isn't bigger why do we struggle so much to to grow the game and I think you know we we see the reason so now when I'm in this position it's also very tough because like I know what's happened you try to learn from the past um but you still it still feels very hard to uh break out from that it feels very tough and it's also difficult because another thing that people kind of misunderstand is from time to time I'll talk about myself I'll actually talk about Levy and incomes or how well we're doing and the main reason I talk about this is that I wanted to inspire like fide the governing bodies and others feel like wow these people are having such success like we we surely we can do something different we can change things and somehow it has not happened which is in a way very very disheartening to me because I want to see more interest in chess you know you want to see more sponsors more more the general public getting excited by the game so it is one of those things that's very very difficult yeah so you want to see Innovation on the parts of everybody but also the organizations like feedanchs.com right to uh how to inspire a large number of people which is what this is what streamers are doing they're constantly innovating I guess of how how to reach very large audience before we forget just to put a little look you want me to ask about error yeah yeah yeah a little love out there what do you like best about Eric Hansen as a human being um I think he's it's mainly he's just he's very he's very charismatic he's very charismatic he he knows the the brand that he has and he's he doesn't like he doesn't pretend to fake it like he knows what his brand is and and he owns it so he's uh just for people who don't know and I don't know he's a grand master yeah he's a strong Grandmaster but he's also like a Creator yeah one of the one of the earliest major chess content creators on Twitch like educational stuff too uh a mix mix of educational mix of high level everything yeah okay awesome uh what historical chess figure do you think would have the best streams historical chess figure I would say probably Mikhail tal who's the former world champion um now he lived he lived a very um very exciting life let's put it that he was somebody who drank he's from uh he was from Latvia he's gonna he's called the uh the magician from Riga uh so he drank a lot uh he smoked a lot a lot of a lot of other stuff as well oh like with sex drugs and rock and roll kind of yeah he was he's I think if you look at like actually not even just top Grand Masters but like or not immoral trans but top Grand Masters he probably had the most uh most interesting Life by by far by far and even even like as an example of how much he loved chess and how how what a character he was I think when he was uh dying in like 19 I think it was 1989 or maybe it was 91 when he was dying he actually left the hospital to go play a blitz tournament in Moscow and he actually beat Gary Kasparov in that Blitz tournament in one of the games well at what age uh probably like late 50s mid 50s I mean he drank too much so he died young but yeah like he left he left the hospital in Moscow and went to play a blitz term he beat Kasparov well first of all just to push back I think we all died too young and uh some of the most impactful people uh like uh Churchill did quite a bit of drinking and smoking all that kind of stuff so um you can still do brilliant things even if you uh partake in the old uh with skin drugs and rock and roll and women okay just about streaming though I there's there's this quote that I mean it's that I love which is the Steve Jobs quote which is you can you can never connect the dots um looking looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards and when I look at how I got into streaming there were all these things that happened along the way that were so beneficial so one first thing would be that when I was young and I was I was growing up I played a lot of Blitz chess on the internet chess club it was one of the predecessors to trust.com and there were there was no like No cameras or audio or these things but one thing that people did was you could commit you would write comments about your games and things of this nature and so I was actually doing very I was doing something very similar where instead of talking I was writing and chatting during some of the games that I was playing so that was something that I was doing that was very very beneficial without that I don't think that I would have been able to have the success that I've had streaming I think would have taken much longer to get used to it and feel comfortable with it but I already had that built-in Advantage um additionally when I was younger up until I think I was a I was 10 or 11 I don't remember exactly I did not actually have a TV well I had a TV but I didn't have cable so I did not watch TV Growing Up So I listened to the radio a lot I listened to a lot of baseball games in New York Yankees specifically um and so I think by listening to those games like I I sort of I've heard a lot of announcers and I think that's also it's one of those things where you learn from what you see kind of when you're growing up um they're examples and so I think that was very very beneficial and then a third thing um in terms of like having some flares when when I was growing up I was homeschooled probably about 14 15. there were there was this uh Great Courses I think they still they still do some of these great Course and there was this I don't remember who who the guy was but he was a professor and so I watched some of these DVDs of his lectures and he would always dress up as someone who it was like Middle Ages so he would dress up and he was sort of like an orator and he would explain like you know what happened in the 13 1400s in this sort of style and that's also something that obviously it's not something that I can consciously like internalize but I think it's something as well that from having watched those courses and seeing that style of oration really helped me a lot as a streamer too yeah the yeah all those little experiences contributed to life that's that's definitely something I think about because I took a pretty non-linear path to life and I think they they somehow get integrated into the picture but I do I do uh connect to your um idea that you being good at chess was a part was an important part of your success streaming I think like that's really good advice for people to um to be good like in order to be a Creator or a podcast or create videos all that kind of stuff or stream I feel like it enriches you if you if you pursue with your whole heart something else outside of that like you don't have to be obviously at your level of Chess but just you have to be developed in a passion or procedure yeah you have to know what that passion kind of what what it is I think for sure I think if you're all only doing streaming there's something first of all I feel like that's going to empty you over time for some reason I've seen some of the lows that people hit if they don't have this other passion Pursuit outside of streaming but also just make you a better creator uh which is interesting I think um I think again with with podcasting this applies like with Rogan I think he's just would not the reason this podcast is very good is because all of his passion is put into being a comedian and being uh uh a fight commentator like the podcast is a is a is a hot is a side hobby that's the way I feel about it too that so that's your main passion is outside of it I don't know what that is I think it puts everything in its proper context and also it allows you to mentally Escape into that place that you find deeply um fulfilling you mentioned uh uh like offline you told me that you're interested you you found it interesting that I said that I'm renting this particular place and I always rent because um because of the sense of Freedom it gives I mean I tend to actually try to be a minimalist for the most part um when it comes things like clothes or or like owning like like cars for example or watch that like I just I don't own a lot of these these uh material things they don't really interest me but at the end of the day the one thing is and this this is this might actually play a role in a lot of like the hiccups where I didn't get to maybe being closer to world champion is that one of the things from from the time that I was I was very young is like I didn't grow up from like a wealthy background and like I had a single mother for the first six years of my life she works as an elementary teacher to support my brother and myself so like I saw a lot of these sort of lows um in life early on now even even once you're remarried like all the money that my stepfather made was not all of it but a lot of it was directed towards like my mom and I like traveling to tournaments internationally or even in the U.S um so seeing some of these struggles like once I actually made it as a chess player and this this goes back to investing as well um is that it's kind of like you want to be secure at a certain point so I've always looked at that um like what is you know how do you get to that point at the end of the day um and and again like I said with my experiences seeing like actually even now my stepfather he's 72 years old still teaches chess all the time um probably works harder than I do actually um and so so I see things like that and that that really interested me like how do you get from point A to point B and that's that's in large part what led to it that being said obviously when you start owning things like uh properties houses or condos and whatnot um there are headaches that come along with you know getting some of these bills in the mail or you say HOA about a tenant not um you know parking their car illegally fifty dollars that you have to you have to pay in fees these sorts of things it is kind of a pain um but I try I mean I try to reduce the number of things that can really bother me in life and that's really the only thing that I let you know not let but it's one of those things the only things that kind of ties me down in a way and I still feel pretty free though for the most part despite owning but you mentioned security so that meaning like security stability yeah sorry so that's the thing you chase do you value when it comes to chess as I said if you're a pro player you can do very well make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year of course I'm talking pre-tax um but if you do poorly in one year that income dries up and there is a chance you'll never get back there so I feel like for much of my career that was always on my mind and maybe that held me back to some degree I don't know those the sort of the sort of thoughts about things like that as opposed to purely being being focused only only on the chess like worrying about the results worrying about the prizes things like this um it might have held me back but that was always something that was all it was it was on my mind for me I really worked hard to make sure that I'm philosophically intellectually spiritually in every way I'm okay with having nothing as close to nothing as you can get and the reason I want that is so that I have the freedom to not create stability or rather have stability because my bar for stability is so low and that gives me the freedom to take big risks and I thought that for me I felt like the way I could really help the world is by optimizing you know the positive I can do and for that you have to take big risks and big risks really does mean uh potentially losing everything so you're saying like startups you mean like that yeah the startups in every aspect meaning pivoting uh career paths completely when everybody else is telling you not actually you know it's interesting because like when I think about streaming it's not like it's not like a star because like I'm not like investing money where I where I can lose everything if it's not successful but it was also a big risk for me doing that because at the time I was a professional player doing very well when I when I kind of started in October 2018 I was still top 10 in the world doing very well 2019 was actually a very bad year for me I started playing much worse and towards the end of 2019 I was I intended to take a six month break last time I played was November 2019 in India and then I was going to take a break until the U.S championship in April of 2020. so I did in a sense actually take a risk because I was potentially risking my career um by spending this extra time that I had streaming so it's not like it's not the risk where like financially I can lose everything but it actually was a bit of a risk now now that I think about it in a sense because if I lose my career as a player there's no guarantee that streaming is going to be anything anything substantial you didn't think it was a risk at the time I think at the time I just I don't know I thought it was just something fun to spend my time on I I like I I didn't somehow I don't know I wasn't I figured that after a six-month break I would come back and play better chess kind of but like the stream as far as streaming I never thought of it as being something that would be a career something viable I just thought it's something fun to do uh maybe it gives me it gives fans some access to me it broadens the platform more people hear about me and that that was about it really I did not ever expect it to become what it did you said uh growing up with a single mother hmm and just giving your whole life to Chess at a certain point has there been through that low points maybe times when you felt lonely isolated maybe even depressed oh absolutely chess is very difficult you're you're on your own like you can have friends people you compete against who are friends but at the end of the day it's a very singular Pursuit it's just you and your results dictate everything so there have been many moments um throughout my life when when like I've struggled I I think probably the the biggest uh biggest time when that happened would have been about 2005 into 2006 where I stopped playing chess and I went to college and that was mainly because I had gotten to a level where I was top 100 in the world but I stagnated for that year about 2005 2006 and so I decided to go to college primarily because I had stagnated I didn't feel like I was going anywhere and then also kind of being on your own just having a few friends here there in the Chess World you kind of you wonder what it's like and especially because I was homeschooled as well like that that further added to kind of wanting to um be around other people it really played a very big role in in my decision to go to college but at the end of the day as as I realized College kind of was a big disappointment because the strongest or the biggest strength of playing chess is that you mingle with people from all different backgrounds all different ages and when I went to college the the whole notion of basically people who are Juniors and seniors being more important or more equal than others to do the animal farm line um like when you're when you're in that situation it didn't really jive with my childhood and growing up in the world of Chess and that that is one of the biggest reasons that I actually came back to chess because it's like this world of where certain people can are more important like and and things are different like I just could not really relate to that and that was that was one of the biggest reasons it really was that wasn't the only reason the other reason though was that towards the end of my first semester I played a term after not studying actually when I was in college when I wasn't actually studying for class I was mainly on PokerStars playing poker all all night long um so like towards the end of that semester I actually went to play a tournament uh in Philadelphia because I was going to college nearby and um with very little preparation I won that tournament against other strong Grand Masters and that kind of made me think well okay if if I'm ever going to take a chance it has to be now if I stay in college for four years probably got like you know probably probably you know got a major on political science do something in the political Arena and then I felt like I'm gonna probably look back like five ten years from now I wonder what if what if what if like what if I had played chess how far could I have gone and if I'd taken those four years there would have been no opportunity for me to to reach my full potential or even see how far I go so therefore that that was um also a big big reason so another what what if question if you didn't play chess you mentioned political what other possible that depends that successful trajectory you might have you had that depends on on what point really if uh when you ask that question I think if we're talking about the time of college probably I would have done something in political science um maybe law obvious or something something terrible like that honestly um if I was a little bit younger there were you know I really I loved uh ancient history archeology and also languages as well so probably something along those lines and if we talk like more recently something something in finance I don't know what exactly but something something in finance what do you think like when we talk again 30 years what do you think you're doing 30 years um I honestly want to believe that I'm just you know sitting in like a beach house in Malibu just just relaxing yeah right so like you and I are in a yacht for some reason why we're in a yacht you paid for it it's you you don't ever want to own a yacht um no okay all right fine but I I mean that's like the the amount of money you waste on docking fees the yeah the gas like no way no I guess I was trying to construct an example you're being super rich for some reason it doesn't have to be that actually you know I don't think that that's actually does not appeal to me at all I I think one of another great thing about Chess is that within the Chess World I'm very prominent and famous but I can go out to the supermarket and nobody recognize me and so I am famous but I'm not famous at the same time so I don't actually want to be like I don't want to be in a situation where everyone recognizes me or I'm super famous it's not that that to me sounds like a very miserable life I I do not want TMZ down the street so your family this in a community you love and that so whenever you plug into that Community it's it's always like this deep connection there you can always Escape when you need to break what advice would you give to young people about career about life maybe they're in high school maybe they're in college maybe they want to achieve the heist who have achieved in chess they want to do that for something they yeah so I think the main thing is follow your heart Follow Your Passion one thing I did we didn't touch on this um like both my parents my mom was was a musician she was she was very good I think she was like maybe Allstate in California when she was growing up on the violin but she still was nowhere near good enough to get into Juilliard or the top music schools and pursue that as as a career and there are a lot of starving musicians who never are able to quite make it so like when I see my mom and and and what happened with her you know her passion the fact she wasn't able to make it or then my stepfather who who haven't talked about my stepfather actually he's of Sri Lankan descent um he comes from a family of lawyers his father was a lawyer his uncle was a lawyer for the international court of justice so it's a family of lawyers and my stepfather he went to England to study law he went to Southampton I think it was University of Southampton and at some point point he was going and playing these tournaments on the weekend and playing playing at the school club all these things and his parents actually they took away his chess board they took away his chess books they took everything away and told him he was going to become a lawyer he would he could not play chess um so when I look at my upbringing you know I feel very lucky that my parents having had these experiences they were so supportive of everything I did and I think that at the end of the day you have to pursue your passion to whatever end that might be you might you might pursue it you might fail but I do think you have to pursue it um it's better what's it it's better to have tried and failed than have not tried at all so I really do believe that's the most important thing is that you do that um and where it takes you who knows but the experiences I feel are much more important than than like the what ifs and possibly missing out on living life so even if it's uh you know everybody around you and your own judgment says that this is not going to be financially viable long-term still pursue I think I mean at some point you have to make those tough decisions but absolutely I feel like too many people follow the standard route it's like you're supposed to you know go to college get that degree be two hundred thousand dollars in debt these sorts of things um but then then at the end of the day are you are you really living are you pursuing what you want to pursue it's just because that's what you're supposed to do that's what Society tells us that you're the route you're supposed to go um so I I think you just have to you pursue it of course at a certain point you're not making it you have to make hard decisions but I think that you know in life the the only thing really you know time and sort of experiences those the only things that you really can't put a price on yeah and uh you know and really pursue it you know even like streaming I'll see people like or YouTube and that kind of stuff it's it's a world and in many ways foreign to me it's like there's there's levels to this game and that like there's a way to really pursue it and there's a way to half-ass it and I guess the point is not the half-ass it like um don't you know don't just keep it a hobby make it a full-time if that's your passion then go all out so sometimes people can think that like uh these things they love it's just a hobby like music or something like that but there's a way to do it seriously to go all out yeah that's that's probably my general advice is like whatever it is you pursue it because even with chess why not when I dropped out of college there was no guarantee that I was going to make it as a professional player there was no guarantee but like I took that chance and very very fortunately for me it worked out would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses um probably a probably a horse-sized dock just just one one enemy is better than having to keep an eye on a hundred this the stress or what the anxiety you don't uh the why why why why don't you like 100 I mean they're tiny tiny duck size courses well I don't know if they're gonna attack you or not but I feel like having one enemies thing like the clear objective I I would always I prefer that if you could uh be someone else for a day alive or dead uh who would you be who would I want to be for a day um if I had to pick someone actually I would probably pick Elon um when how many years ago is now what when when the Rockets were blowing up I'd be very interested to see those processes of how they went through that and they got out on the other side because like you I feel like you most of the time when you hear about the startups like okay you look at Amazon you have the big investment to start doesn't feel like there were those super super lows yeah for for like the Amazons of the world maybe not when the three rocks blew up but maybe when that was it the fourth or fifth one actually succeeded but somewhere in that time frame yeah that that is probably one of the lowest lows that ever publicly I've ever seen yeah that's yeah those are the moments that make us if everyone on Earth disappeared through a horrible atrocity and it was just you left uh what would your days look like what would you do it's just me it's just dead bodies anything like this right it was like there's many movies like this honestly if I could I would probably just uh but you're saying there's like no no life like no no plans not another stuff no there's there's life there's there's life just not just not not human life um there's like goats and stuff is it what was that I remember reading us I mean it's slightly over there was this sci-fi book I read many years ago I think it was rendezvous with Rama um or I think there were people that were just going all over the land like in this this cylinder um and so I think for me I've just explore I've just like walk bicycle maybe plant plant some uh plant some trees things of this nature I wonder how that would experience uh change your experience of nature knowing that you it truly is because like that's one of the magical things with Nature's it's humbling that it's just you out there or like that's that's why I love it I that's why I love going like hiking um because obviously you got the exercise but honestly it's a reminder of how small we really are and here you would realize like you I mean it's is it extra humbling effect of like you really are alone out here yeah that's I don't know I probably I've probably spent a lot of time just thinking about thinking about everything too do you hate losing in chess or do you love winning do I hate losing or do I love winning I think I love I love I love winning I mean maybe because I've maybe because I'm doing so many different things like losing doesn't have the same effect on me that it that it once did um so I think like now I definitely love winning winning more but I think when I was younger I hated I hated losing much more than I thought much more than I liked winning what comforts you on bad days I think similar to what gives me the motivation for streaming is the fact that at the end of the day no matter how bad things things appear or seem I mean we've never been at a better time in human history people have things much better off now than any other time so I I find it hard to really have pity or not have pity but like feel really bad I just use those sorts of things as like the the way to to get over it's just knowing how how lucky I am what's the role of Love In The Human Condition let me ask if a car About Love Love Is Love is uh I mean I think it can be the greatest thing in the world I think when it you know when When Things Fall Apart like you know I I've I've been through this quite a few times actually um some some really real highs some some really real lows as well uh I think love is it it can it can inspire you to do things you never thought were possible um and without it though I think it's I think life life is very empty I think it's the probably the most important thing to have in life in one one way or another which is extra sad if you were the last person left on earth right exactly yeah I mean I think again also in terms of Chess I think that that it can be as far as just goes like or any competition it can be the greatest thing in the world it can also be the worst thing in the world when when you're in love a lot of chess players for many it does not help them it actually makes them play much worse to us because you you kind of you you don't have that energy or that drive in the same kind of way um so it's it's very mixed for chess as far as me personally though I think you know I would say what I've said before it's better to have loved and lost and I've never have loved at all and I definitely have been through that I thought you don't care I thought you don't care turns out you care sometimes a little bit a tiny bit a very very tiny bit a car you're an amazing person I'm a huge fan uh it's really an honor that you would talk with me today I can't wait to see what you do next thank you it's good being here thanks for listening to this conversation with her car in the Kimora to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from David bronstein it is my style to take my opponent and myself onto unknown grounds a game of chess is not an examination of knowledge it is the Battle of nerves thank you for listening and hope to see you next time