GothamChess: Hans Niemann, Magnus Carlsen, Cheating Scandal & Chess Bots | Lex Fridman Podcast #327
I have anal beads that are communicating with stockfish via Bluetooth we'll get to that if you cheat you play God you decide when the game is over you can fake bad moves you can fake everything you can even if you're cheating quote unquote the right way you're gonna lose plenty of games to avoid getting detected what's the probability that Hans cheated over the board against Magnus in St Louis I think day by day the evidence is slowly starting to show more and more that he's cheated it like like how Magnus said more than he said and more recently the following is a conversation with Levy Rosman also known as Gotham chess he's a professional chess player and educator I highly recommend you check out his YouTube channel called Gotham chess this is a Lex Friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Levy Rosman you're known for being able to guess people's ELO rating so what do you think just by looking at my face deep into my eyes uh what's my ELO rating here I'll help you I'll I'll do E4 for the listener I actually read that stockfish prefers E4 does it really I actually didn't know that because it maximizes the number of tactical options so that makes sense the variety answer is 3400 which is I believe stockfish uh you guessed people's ELO chest rating what what's that take how hard is it to do that and like how would you actually do that like what are telltale signs of red flags about a person at different ratings is there something you look for yeah I think you can separate it something like the very first the zero to about eight nine hundred for simplicity's sake I'm gonna use the trust.com rating system because leeches is slightly different it tends to go to 300 points higher than chess.com sometimes even four or five hundred points higher but then it catches up they catch up around 22 2300 I would say what's chess.com what's lead chess can you like yeah so explain what the difference is and what they are they're two chess websites uh good starting point yes chess.com is it it has obviously the free option where you can play games you get some sort of puzzles every single day you get some sort of lessons every single day but then they have tiered memberships where you can pay annually or per month that you can unlock all the other features and like what like for training for like for training puzzles and all that kind of yeah they have unlimited puzzles but they also have their biggest selling point for sure is like a dedicated game review that it's like very flashy and sophisticated and the coach will literally tell you what you did wrong every single moment the computer evaluated a mistake but the most important thing that they have is they offer International masters Grand Masters the opportunity to make video Lesson libraries which hundreds of hours of anything I can even learn some stuff on there probably I have anal beads that are communicating with stockfish via Bluetooth yeah we will get to that yes we will get to that uh it's epic it's actually scary how many people think that's a real thing by the way which is the danger of the internet but we yeah we will get into that but I tend to believe that people believing a thing that's hilarious at scale will make that thing a reality I will deal on on this I think people manifest the meme the meme becomes real so that but that that's I in all walks of life I I think there is something about humor sort of uh being uh why doesn't why did I I was gonna well was I I was going to say is I feel like humor becomes a lubricant for the trajectory of human civilization and I don't know why the word lubricant went into my head which means I understand yeah but it's very Freudian anyway so uh to zero to 900 if you're a 1300 player you were saying if you're not good at end games you don't understand how to convert positions that have seven or eight pieces left on the board you don't know when you're supposed to activate your king you don't know how a bishop outplays a knight with just several pawns on the board those are all very important things because it's not just about knowing the theoretical end games like some positions in chess are literally solved if I showed you a position I asked what's the evaluation and how do you win it there's a technique you're supposed to know that technique and the coaches on chess.com can help or no yeah so these lesson libraries it's not like a live lesson it's pre-recorded training position walk you through it and then there's a dynamic Factor as well where you can practice you can practice the theoretical and you can practice a practical game where there's no set format to do something it's just based on your previous experience basically leeches is their entire thing is it's an open source website that tries to be as free as possible and operates totally on donations they don't have any advertisements they don't have which is weird because normally in big competitive settings it's all capitalistic you have one big entity and another big entity and they're both for-profit but in this case the big argument is well they offer a lot of things for free you can analyze your games for free you can you can go in into leeches's lessons library and do things for free the comparison that I always make is chess.com is basically like having a good personal trainer and having someone to help you at the gym leeches says you have to do the all the stuff yourself so you can combine YouTube with leeches No One's Gonna really point you in the right direction you got to go fully explore on your own if you want to do it you can I also like to say can I make a controversial joke yes okay Ardent Alicia supporters are like very angry uh you know only a vegetarian or or vegan folks because they will tear you apart and try to convert you as much as possible did you just did you just point a large number of of uh haters onto this uh very podcast is this what just happened no is there like several people that were very upset at you right now no and throwing things okay no that's always the joke that I've made because if people have chess.com and I love all people but I'm just saying chess.com patrons do not try to actively convert folks only chess folks on leechas are like you know there's a memechess.com it started at Lee chess started started somewhere in red on Reddit Anarchy chess kind of a oh so leeches is a little bit of an anarchist organization would you would you go as far as to say there are terrorist terrorist extremist organization are we going there for legal reasons that's uh I thought leeches has like really good analysis like somebody does it have an engine for analysis of like games or is that is that an open source thing that like they both do they both use stockfish 15. okay and then the rest is the interface around stock stockfish that shows it's tough It's it's the life so chess has a live server where you and I can play a game against each other we just both seek and if we have the same rating we have the same criteria yep we'll play a game but there's also reviewing your own games there's an opening database so you can see what the most popular Trends are so leeches is great like I'm I'm sponsored by charles.com and I will openly say that but you can't have you're deeply biased yes okay but I'm also complimenting the competitor okay but uh can you play games on leeches or is it just for analysis yeah yeah you can yeah so it's the same exact thing so they're like legitimately competitors not exactly the same thing but they have the they're trying to match for features but you're saying lead chest is more chaotic and then chess.com is more like professional yeah I don't know I don't know if it's chaotic I just know that it's uh you have to No One's Gonna Hold Your Hand if you if if you go to to leeches you absolutely can you can play games you can analyze your games but you have to discover yourself the whole point of shells.com is to make the journey as simple as possible uh but I also firmly believe you can't have any sort of growth in chess without a chess.com or a chest 24. what time oh what's chess 24. so just 24 was another live server with some lesson libraries and so on but uh they were I think the process was they were bought by play Magnus so let's play Magnus play magnets that's Magnus Carlson's thing he doesn't own it he owns some stake in it I think nine or ten percent they owned a bunch of Chess companies including chess 24 but now it seems like they're either merging or basically getting acquired by chess.com got it and then play Magnus it's an app also where you can play Max different levels but there's also the educational stuff yes okay the for-profit chess companies make the option for Grand Masters to make a living to make chess and esport yeah leeches is great it doesn't put on any events there's no commentary so you you can have both in theory and probably some controversy is good does chess.com like sponsor you to help you out in some way like what's the connection between your videos and streams and so on in chess.com like are they supporting people in that way or no my content they don't necessarily I just make whatever I want like I don't have I'm not sense like if they do something stupid I will call out their leadership it's not like but uh I to have the logo up like in my YouTube videos yeah that's just that kind of stuff yeah so anyway back to uh I mean that was really helpful I was confused about all that um the guessing people's rating so the thing you mentioned about the end game if you don't know what the hell you're doing with the end game what does that mean about you writing if you don't know how to finish with just a few pieces on the board you could be my rating and game is tough that's the self-deprecating humor we tuned in for uh games are hard man yeah you can't have there's a reason Magnus is the best it's because seven hours into a game when everybody's given up he's still squeezing juice out of the fruit so that's the way I would describe it so that's not good source of information if you no within the first 15 moves generally you can tell because you can tell how well they played the opening so how well they knew what they were supposed to memorize what they were supposed to play and then how they react to peace interactions so if they are faced with a move that a more advanced player would deal with very swiftly because there's kind of a natural response that gives you information if they move their King when they're in check when they didn't have to that's a massive giveaway some people just think oh I'm in check so I have to move my king okay so it's like how direct the response of your play is to the danger so like if you're more moving like multiple pieces at a time meaning like you're moving like the pieces are like tied together in interesting ways and then okay okay like what about like uh what about the opening can you tell also because a lot of people can memorize openings right yeah but takes two to tango so you could memorize a bunch of stuff but if you're 900 and I'm 900 your rating is fluctuating all over the place in the in this podcast I feel yeah Solve 13 900 yeah you can memorize things I'm gonna play some crap and you can't play the way you you memorize them because I have to respond to you in certain ways so you will either respond the way you think you're supposed to respond and that will probably be incorrect or now you have to figure out how to deal with the fresh position oh so the 900 will reflect itself in both cases yeah yeah I wonder if actually so uh do you know your current rating or no or your top rating what was your topic I know both my current ELO like over the board now is 23 20 my Peak was 24 30. oh cool so can you play like a 900 player like can you force yourself yeah so you can like given that you've guessed a lot of Elo ratings can you kind of emulate that it's kind of an interesting question yeah yeah of course before I was doing YouTube and twitch I was teaching kids so I had to not only did I have to play at their rating I also had to play and sometimes even behave and explain things in a way that the kid could understand so absolutely yeah I think that's what contributed to the growth of the channel frankly I kind of understood how beginners thought about the game so yeah you did um you taught people chess you coach people for for many years I guess in New York yeah New York what did you learn about the way people learn from that so like how how do people that were successful at getting good at chess quickly what were the some of the commonalities some of the patterns that you saw obsession yeah what does Obsession look like I would say it's Obsession and also and also love of the game so if you're bored you don't want to watch a show you want to boot up chess.com or leeches just for just so I don't get flamed by any anyone in the audience uh and you just so you're saying Lee chess people are the ones that would attack aggressively they're the kind of probably the chest 24 people oh that's another so there's nothing I didn't know I thought chest 24 was part of the chess.com well now yes uh cult or tribe or whatever terms we want to use no I'm sure there's even more places to play live there always have been more places to play live but uh just like I'm leech has dominated no it's just 24 is this is rough for live interface of course they have good courses and everything but yeah I got it I got it and some are even good people or whatever yeah that quote goes okay like uh Obsession that means the way they look at the board when they're bored how quickly do they return to the chess board that kind of stuff just like how many hours a day they want to spend yes they spend and wants to spend some kids definitely have a talent of course there's this eternal debate Talent versus hard work I don't necessarily know if it's a talent for chess specifically but it's a talent for I'm sure there's some sort of spatial visualization in your mind your you start picking up what squares are controlled by your pieces and opponent's pieces faster your memory is much stronger so you you don't just learn openings like we discussed you learn literal patterns such as oh I remember this from two tournaments ago I remember this from a game I played just yesterday and you just keep playing and playing and playing but I think the one commonality I think I've seen in all kids it's uh Obsession you have to play a lot and I've seen kids who are brilliant kids like if you give them a page of tactics puzzles they saw faster than anybody they can pick things up here super fast they're a pleasure to teach they go to a tournament disaster they can't handle the anxiousness they can't handle that silent face-to-face war with another six-year-old they can't even handle there's also trash dog that's like one sentence by a kid can throw off your prize student and I've seen kids just totally disintegrate I've seen also my students bully other kids corn my student wasn't that strong but they're verbal Warfare which is not allowed but goes unnoticed it's not even verbal Warfare like just going like like a little little like like facial expressions you would make at the board hey I didn't even think about that that's pretty creepy the intensity not creepy that's not the right word but there's an intensity in that silence over the board like you can probably hear stuff like just like it's super quiet it's like a library yep and then there's just a tension that builds you can hear the breathing yeah and at the highest level both sides are involved in a battle that they both foresee 99 of the time that's the scary part is that you both see the exact same thing it's very rare you play Move It I didn't see it it's that I misevaluated it I saw the move could be played but I missed something three or four moves deeper you play that move and suddenly you're excited and I'm nervous but all of a sudden you make an inaccuracy and now the tide shifts right we could be on totally different planes throughout the game or we could be on the same plane throughout the game so it's it's really fascinating it yeah so your thought is when you see a move that to you seems sub often when you start to think what was that we start to try to make sense of that did you miscalculate or did they miscalculate what isn't that what Magnus is really good at is taking people away from like making sub-optimal moves to take him away from the known uh openings or is that unfair to say yeah he gets part of his really dominant reputation I think from not letting people get into Ultra theoretical positions he just won this tournament this online tournament and he said he had a young player strategy he had an anti sorry a anti-young player strategy what's that mean it means that by move seven or eight you go to the database no games the kid is on their own they have to swim on their own yeah and they have to deal with the Strategic complexities of the position which he just he gets and he might get from just an enormous database within his brain of historical games that have similar structures or just sheer Genius Like We we won't know yeah it's a mix of the two for sure the younger you are you can't remember a game played in 1951 and some bar in the Soviet Union but he does because he read a book once or a magazine once and he just remembers just remembers he remembers the structure which it's just it's not fair it's crazy right what do you think makes them if we can sort of link on it what do you think makes them so good I think it's the memory and I think it's he just seems to get the game better than anybody else that's the best way I I can describe it in sports you have reaction time you have strength you have but also as he's now evolving it's stamina so there have been games that if you put two other 2750 rated players or world top 10 players they would have drawn the game the game would have ended the game nobody would have won it you put Magnus as one of the aggressors in that game suddenly the chance of Victory doubles from five percent to ten percent weird what's that about because it was a game six against netball league right uh isn't stockfish say that it's supposed to be a draw so 0.00 does mean a draw sometimes but other times it means since the joke I always make it means the stockfish is out for a smoke break it can you explain the joke and can you explain 0.00 yes so when so stockfish will show an evaluation which determines whether the position is equal slightly better for one side slightly better for the other side or completely winning you can 0.00.2 minus 0.2 that's all within a balance you can say okay black has a little sprinkle of activity something white has that but if it's zero zero zero it could be literally a dead draw meaning theoretically just impossible to win but oftentimes what that means is the smoke break joke is Cypress doesn't know there is so much complexity within the position the combinations of different moves that are acceptable and okay it cannot evaluate correctly wow so even the end games are tough for stockfish which is why Magnus won that game because there was practical value remaining it wasn't a dead draw he continued to ask questions over the course of six or seven hours he would sacrifice a pawn he would sacrifice another Pawn to damage the structure evaluation stayed the same because a machine could stop him but not young and that was one of my favorite re that that game ruined my whole day by the way it destroyed because yeah I made so many plans that day it completely ruined my day but it was a very worthy recap you were just all in you watched that whole game I watched the whole game and the world championship was a crazy time because I wanted to be first with the recap video but I also wanted to be best with the recap video so I spent all the hours of the games watching all the live broadcasts and getting all the information all the variations and trying to put that into the recap it was it was a lot of fun it was a huge adrenaline done when it was all over so just for people who don't know that's the most recent World Championship um so you had a I mean that that was a draw after draw after dry after dry yeah and it was It was kind of boring in that way or maybe our draws is there like non-boring Parts within the draw to you when you were like just studying it carefully for me yes for the average viewer no that's the truth especially when the game itself is not that exciting when Magnus plays a strange move on move nine or ten that hasn't ever been played and then Jan has to try to exploit it and he fails and no attack builds up and they Shuffle their pieces for three hours my favorite thing is when the commentators like I don't know why he did that I wonder why he did that like yeah when the commentators are confused that's my as a as a person who's just a spectator just like that's that's interesting because then you the most interesting part is about listening to the commentators who I guess themselves might be Grandmasters uh all yeah they are trying to I guess just like nepo just like Magnus tried to figure out what's the idea here what are you thinking that's cool that's that's that's an interesting part of the game but other than that it's it seemed um yeah I was sure this is just gonna keep being a draw especially in that situation so it's almost it seems almost remarkable that his uh Magnus was able to put pull out a win in game six and after that at least Magnus said that that that ends it because now Knapp was gonna have to take more risks and that opens it up to Pure chest and then um who was it uh Steve Prefontaine said like whenever it's whenever there's a race is down to like pure guts then that's when I win it there was also a conversation about eons first half second half in any tournament in the first half he's just brilliant on fire you could even say he was out playing Magnus but the entire conversation before the match was young slows down and at the first sign of a loss or a setback the match might fall apart and that was the worst way to lose there was literally no worse way and it just got worse from there and there I mean it was one move mistakes and but he's back won the candidates again he's going to play for the world championship so who you got who who you got what is what is this swing terminology can we like somehow edit that into a more sophisticated with the British accent type of phraseology okay who do you think will win that match I think it's 55.45 but I don't know so it's close it's very close Okay you can make both cases you could say ding you could say Jan has been here before you can say to the world championship stage he knows what it's like to have a training camp and so on and so forth his playing Styles very but you can also say dingly ran is one of the most stable unemotional chess players and ding oftentimes goes from down to up so in the candidates he lost to yawn in the very first game a 14 Round tournament he got demolished in the first game I'm sure he was suffering from jet lag the flight he he came to Spain like two days before the games began which was crazy to me and he got second place by the end there's chances of finishing in the top two were like two percent after that first round game people wrote him off completely so he doesn't go from top down he goes the opposite way and if he loses he might come back but the truth is I don't know the truth is it's it's going to be an interesting match and it's also disappointing we're not going to get Magnus in it yeah what do you think about him stepping away from uh the world championship are you a romantic about the World Championships no I'm not a romantic about anything I don't think I I can't imagine what dark that went dark quickly I don't think I'm sophisticated enough to be a romantic I think I uh you know I I taught chess and now I make YouTube videos I'm not qualified on the subject of Romanticism but I you don't think it's a beautiful game chess yeah no I think I I think it is a beautiful there you go I got you yeah is that is that considered being a romantic yeah I was seeing the beauty in the you can be like Bach and seeing the math and the music so you can see the beauty the magic I think I see beauty in certain types of chess for sure not in all chess so I'll partially romantic part-time romance yeah yeah so what I mean what what do you feel about Magnus stepping away from the world championships disappointing but understandable can you still man his case what what's what's understandable about it to you I don't think it's as prestigious as it could be I don't think the world championship yeah yeah why does Magnus still sign everything as world champion then that's a good point that that he did just put out a statement and he did but he does it everywhere else too does he really yeah like world champion right world champion I don't know World Championship World chess champion maybe it's just because he he he wanted but he thinks that the journey to the top ones again to maintain the status quo has lost its appeal well you know what the example that I like to I like to make I I'm a big fan of UFC so we've never really seen with the exception of George St-Pierre walking and and could be but khabib was kind of a different story walking away from a belt at the absolute Zenith of their career but also in the UFC Champions are extremely well taken care of and the Champions have some of the best some of the best lives of course you can argue not all Champions you can say some of the lower weight divisions yes but what I'm saying is a lot of them get all the sponsors they get massive massive paydays they're International celebrities I don't think chess has that in fact the world championship of Chess prize fund has not changed much in like 40 years so you could probably make more money on uh on YouTube yes playing randos not randos but other having fun and playing challenging really challenging games playing other super Grand Masters like and ad hoc events uh or maybe a little bit organized events but not the world championship yeah and still and still have a lot of fun make a lot of money um get everybody excited all that kind of stuff yeah so for Magna specifically and we're using him because he's the world champion if you tally if he wins every tournament that he plays in over the course of a year which is really not even that crazy of an estimate because that's really how it seems sometimes yeah I don't know how much money that is I haven't tallied but if he dedicated an entire year to being managed on social media and doing various things and growing all his Brands and getting sponsor deals I think he would make five times more than being the world champion which is crazy yeah but money isn't everything I know that's that's totally available dedicate their whole life to winning the Olympics the Olympics is a funny it's an interesting one too because like I didn't even watch the the Olympics as carefully as I usually do this year yeah yeah neither it's it's really strange I'm not sure why that is when during covid I'm not sure that's that was weird I don't know if it's losing its magic part of it is also the people that own the Olympics and the way they distribute it they make it a little bit more difficult to watch like it should in my opinion it should all be just available on YouTube and uh easily accessible it's like the difference between like uh SpaceX and and uh some other organ like even NASA just SpaceX is better at streaming their launches and commentating them and it they've made NASA better as well but just like the ability it sounds ridiculous but making it more frictionless for people to watch get excited to share all that kind of stuff yeah like I'm not exactly sure where the magic like balances between the The Classy traditional World Championships and the kind of dramatic exciting streamer world and it feels like for for the World Championships to be relevant they have to find that balance yeah well this recent one had I was it's pretty good commentating yeah no I I'm not I'm not even necessarily talking about myself there was a lot of that was the worst part for me you did amazing yeah I appreciate that it was a lot of uh I was a big arms race so every major chess platform try to get one super Grand Master you name it they were they were basically involved and to to go back to that point yeah I the big question is money and if if Magnus is not motivated by money if the price went for the next World Championship was 10 million dollars would he play it if he says no Then it must be something else it must just be a matter of something's not worth it it's not worth you got to take him with his word and his word is like there's too much stress to the little sample play yeah like I want to play many more times yeah he wants to play more he wants to kill him yeah exactly yeah more shorter games like where you can um increase the possibility of Pure Chess whatever the heck that means if we can't go back to the first carp of Kasparov match which they have to stop due to health concerns I mean the guy went down five nil and it was first to six wins and draws didn't count so draws didn't amass to the total score there was no best of system so what happened there the match went something like seven eight months Kasparov started making a comeback after being down five nothing he was five three and they called it off they called it off they said both players are in poor health conditions because far of stormed down yelled that this is a farce and but the match was 50 games long it would even more maybe I made a video and I don't even remember how many games it was it was so long can you imagine Bobby Fischer wanted something almost as extreme draw Stone Calendar's first one to ten wins and if it's nine nine the world champion retains his title so you have to beat the world champion 10-8 that's the only way so you don't like that but I it's just grueling I don't know maybe I like it for the YouTube Recaps but do I like it for the players do I like it for general public no sure yes three four hours right you imagine your favorite tennis match was six months long what are we doing yeah yeah there's still a magic to the world championship I wish they could make it some interesting they make it work somehow but Matt I think Magnus is really challenging fee day and everybody else to step up and try to figure that out which is great ultimately um who would you say is the greatest of all time can you can you make the case imagine casparov can make the case for casparov can you make the case for Magnus Carlsen uh Bobby Fischer tall in my opinion you can make a case for Magnus Gary and Bobby Fischer I'm not one of the folks that's like I mean capablanca was brilliant you can argue steinits was brilliant but as uh I think I think it was it's probably Kasparov and Magnus has a chance to overtake it so the longevity is really important to you when you're thinking about this yes I think so I think Magnus is very very close like it's it's extremely close what would be the magic you gotta get that sixth one I'm just kidding so the World Championships matter it's kind of like basketball right Rings it's all comes down to how many rings did this person win what about well basketball doesn't have this the number of years is number one right like uh rating sorry yeah uh like there's a there is a which is what Magnus really likes is like there is a nice system of raiding of who is ranked number one and has to do not with some championships or low sample tournaments it has to do with General game after game after game helps estimate more accurately the ELO rating so yeah he's been world number one for I think 11 years right which is still less than because Gary was world number one for 20 years yeah which is which is quite wild but still lower rating I think than Magnus now right yeah I think rating in general has sort of allegedly it got inflated yeah is that true is this true to that I think so I don't I can't speak to how exactly it happened but it also happens online if you go back just three or four years I think some of the best Blitz players on let's say shows.com were 27 2800 and now they're 3200 I think it's just sort of what happens but I I don't exactly know uh I will mention that there was a very strange change not exactly sure when the year was in fide so over the board chess where if you were under the age of 16 or 18 years old one of those two and you were below 2300 okay your rating change Factor was three to four times higher so just imagine that means Magnus has a rating change factor of of let's say one I have a reading change Factor also of one anybody over the rating 2400 has the same rating change Factor uh what is uh the rating change Factor so if you win yeah there's a formula and basically let's say at the very base level five point change if your rating change factor is one you beat somebody you gain five points those kids who were under 18 and under 2300 the rating change Factor was four so their ratings were going out four times higher and four times like up and down compared to normal folks and there was a there was one teenager in the US in particular who in one month played a bunch of tournaments with his rating change Factor and became nearly rated 2640 which is top 50 in the world it was just a random teenager from the United States he became a grand master ultimately but he bled like 90 points down because his rating was so inflated and this the k-40 exists now I mean you have many kids who out of nowhere 2100 2100 2400 after you know one good month like what so that's interesting that's like uh similar to like how Tick Tock inflates your virality early on doesn't well yeah like I I and well at least the rumor is like they want you to get engaged and I thought there was even artificial likes and so on that they want you to get that dopamine addiction so maybe they want to throw you if you're really passionate about Chess they want you to throw you to the Sharks by artificially inflating you inflating your rating and maybe that gets you into the game much more intensely Maybe fair I wonder how many like backdoor feeding meetings there are with cigars and so that that was uh the factors determined by who who does the the ELO rating who changes this stuff yeah who knows it's probably those Lee chess anarchists exactly I think they wanna I think they wanna they wanna stay away from that stuff but so there's a guy named Hans Neiman yep and uh he beat Magnus Carlsen recently yeah it has been already what is it was it August September 4th oh it was September so he beat him twice right recently once is the allegations the by the internet that Hans Neiman cheated and then the second time uh Magnus played a few moves and forfeited and resigned well there's actually so there's three okay sorry no no yeah can we go through this yes yes yes so they play a live Esports event in Miami Miami Beach yes Eden Rock that's where I actually interviewed Magnus yeah that's where that was Oh by weird circumstance I found myself in Miami unrelated to chess event and uh yeah it was a very dramatic event for me for various reasons one of which the camera stopped working halfway through the conversation so I thought yeah I saw that I also side note I really respect how you write comments pin them at the top you add time stamps you're like very true professional I am the complete opposite on YouTube when I'm off the camera so I dig in the mud from when I started on YouTube in 2020 I in June like May June 2020 I had no subscribers so I got to a million in a year I had a lot of people analyzing my every move all of my small flaws and I I love getting hate comments because you pin you pin is it the comet of Shame that's what it was it's been named over the years by by folks I never called it that but yeah it's it's pin of Shame and it's a shame yes it's been tough because now people pretend to write hate comments just to get attention so like anything the public ruin the good thing but it started that way it started with people just shredding me to bits calling me spin-offs of this and that and um I think I'm I'm a human more than I am a Creator an influencer an attention seeker like I'm just a person so to me even at the size of 1.6 million subscribers now September 2022 I don't understand that I've gotten big and that I shouldn't do this stuff and that I should be Beyond it or I shouldn't be checking my social media as much as I do and interacting one-on-one I'm still very much a human being and my guilty pleasure my way of killing time if I'm not laying on the couch and playing some jazz Blitz Games off stream is I just interact with people who say nice things and who say horrible things and I really like to get into the head of the people who say the terrible things now sometimes you can sometimes they are truly Trolls but sometimes people just they just they just really hate you so what's the successful what's a successful interaction with the person that's uh trolling you what's like at the end of that Hero Journey that you were uh yeah partaking in what's what's like what's the top of the mountain look like is the troll conquered and broken mentally not no not meant I don't wanna I don't want to defeat I I honestly sometimes somebody writes a very long comment I'll just I'll respond with a question mark yeah oh so you're you're you see each other's like like a brother and sister you're gonna travel together on this journey of deep meaning like introspection what does this mean yeah I've had people write I can't quote now but something about my Persona my behavior this and that and I just like respond to them and I say hey it sounds crazy that a large Creator might do something like this but this kind of goes back to you you speak to folks on a very respectful way if you make a mistake you completely own up to it so I have this sometimes these one-on-one interactions where I say I think you're reading too much into this I think you're kind of you don't understand maybe some of my humorous sarcasm as such so you form this opinion that I'm this kind of a person this and that and now you're sort of anything I do you're trying to attach to that reasoning and here you are writing this lengthy essay of why nobody should watch my content and sometimes people go you know what I think you have a point maybe I should relax a little bit yeah I would love I would love to sort of interview and understand the lives of the the folks that post that kind of stuff I mean they're human beings they have interesting Journeys also I think they often don't realize I think they don't realize their comment will be read by anybody especially you maybe they think like they also don't realize you're a human being I feel like that's yeah it's it's so interesting to watch it like uh some guy because I posted on Twitter for like a minute uh that I'm talking to you and asking for questions I I deleted that tweet because 95 of the people were talk about cheating talk about the cheating all right I got it thank you this is not going to be helpful at all so I was like all right but in that time like there's one comment which I'm it's hilarious to me that you found that one comment the one comment says like this seems like a waste of time or something like why lame guest lame guests yes lame guess and then used like responded something like with a question mark yeah yeah I wrote wow my lame guests let's talk about this yeah I was like why am I a lame guest and he responded he responded even after you deleted this what do you say he said he doesn't know what value I would bring because I just make videos about chess games yeah and that's true you've had some absolutely brilliant people on but I also looked at this gentleman's profile and he his he was one of the folks that put things about his family and God and His politics in his Twitter bio and I started thinking maybe I said something in some video and I made a joke about religion or something just some offhand five second thing somewhere that someone turns me into just an absolute outcast in their household they can no longer watch me and that has happened yeah that has happened I'll record a 30 minute video and I'll make a joke about something and some phrasing and that's it I've lost the viewer forever and they will let me know they will write me an email and I just don't think people should be that serious yeah there's some of that because I'll I've seen people say that sometimes about me but I see it more with others they'll say uh you know I used to be like Joe Rogan guess this uh yeah I used to be a huge fan of Joe Rogan until he said this right it's like one is um first I do wonder if you were ever really a big fan that's that's one question mark I have but the other is like I think when you should be more lenient with each other in terms of how much stupid shit we say and and you know if you actually I wish people were able to sort of introspect on their own on the OWN on the stupid shit they say themselves like to have a little bit of empathy like I wish there was a way to read all the emails you've ever written and just to see or maybe do a search engine for all the stupid shit you've said in emails in the past and like summarize it and to reveal it to yourself that like you have bad days you have good days you have emotional days uh you have stoic days you have sometimes you have like uh you take very different political views than you do in other days and it's like it's all over the place and if you're a Creator if you're putting stuff out all the time you're gonna have those and you're you're still you're still full like complex bag of emotions and thoughts and ideas and contradictions and all that like you shouldn't judge a person by a single statement and even if when you do you should try to infer the best possible interpretation of that statement I feel like that that's just a healthier way to interact with the world than with other humans it's like I wonder what's the best possible interpretation of the thing they just tweeted or they said like what let's let's imagine that the person saying those words is actually a really good human being and what do they mean when they said that thing about anal beads so good for so long yeah right uh or what whatever it is like you know they didn't mean to be offensive to the sexuality of a certain group they're just talking about they're talking shit about anal B it's like they're not uh like sometimes it's humor sometimes it's actually genuinely uh embodying like a political viewpoint and like walking with it thinking through it for a few days like like taking it seriously empathizing not just for a brief moment but for a time like walking with an idea and allowing yourself to express it like playing doubles out I do that all the time with yourself or with myself yeah in conversation I do too and I find I have to say I'm playing Devil's Advocate like you have to be very explicit but with myself I'll just do it in my head like I have different voices like you know uh obviously it just in I've been getting so much information so many thoughts in all the complexities of the war in Ukraine for example and all the different voices within Ukraine I just interviewed hundreds of people and they have very different perspectives in nuanced ways about the War uh some are full of hate some are full of love like hate for the other love for their own country love for family and tradition all of it it's a beautiful mix and I have to walk I have to like carry those ideas in my head and empathize with them deeply and then I have to listen to people that live elsewhere that live in India they have a very different perspective there's a lot of people in India that have a very different perspective the people in Ukraine and so I don't know and some of that will bleed out into the thoughts I expressed publicly and um like when people judge you harshly for it it first of all me as a human being is psychologically difficult uh but also it makes me less willing to be fragile I still try to be strong enough to be fragile in front of the camera just say like say things that are on my mind even if I know it's going to create uh people that are going to be like ruthlessly negative towards me so I tried to wear my heart on my sleeve and still try to be fragile but it's harder you're going to pay a psychological cost like like I'm you know in some sense I try to be tough but like I could be a softy in that in like certain certain like attacks can get to me so I'm surprised that they don't get I mean do does some negativity get to you or is this the way you deal with it by responding uh like that's that guy's saying like what value does talking to let me add to the world yeah no but that was I mean that was so good I was looking at I was thinking at various moments ever you went to jump in and I was I was kind of letting letting you speak one of the things I wanted to mention was it's significantly simpler to talk about Chess than it is to talk about some of the things you talk about and you have a big responsibility because you have to absorb information like a sponge but you also then need to present it in a way where you potentially have an opinion while trying to be fair to everybody and you're talking about things that will literally never please everybody just literally what else are you going to talk about some issues that are going to get out there into the and people are going to watch it the eyes right the years of of millions of people and not everybody is going to be satisfied and these are issues where people are going to be much more likely to speak up in all sorts of ways tremendous support or tremendous hatred vitriol and God knows what else yeah you you it's one of the reasons I'm I'm Blown Away to even be sitting here frankly because up until a few months ago you weren't talking to you know you I'm not saying you weren't talking to but you hadn't spoken to chess players you were speaking to people who were doing much more substantial things in the world I I appreciate the humility there just to me is incredible it's a beautiful game but I think the reason comments hurt is not I mean they hurt no matter what to me like not to me because I'm in a simpler space so if it's chess based criticism it doesn't hit as hard no if you had a podcast about anal beads no I'm just I'm launching this if you had a podcast watching a new podcast photography you gotta you gotta realize like it wouldn't it wouldn't be the same way you talk about potentially existential things you talk about uh cyber you know things things in cyber security or or AI or people who are massive uh heads of companies that are just inherently going to be a bit more controversial so that I can't imagine being in your shoes because you have so many complex emotions about situations where you may not necessarily agree with everything that someone has said publicly but you still invite them for a conversation because they're a human being it's totally different likes I don't know I not the way I experience it to me I think what hurts is it's not even on my because I'm super self-critical usually way more than the internet can be it's that like human beings can be cruel to each other so like the reason it hurts for some reason is like this almost like this disappointment in people they don't give each other a chance so in that sense the negativity doesn't have to be about Ukraine or geopolitics it could be about the silliest of things I said and like to me it's like why why be mean to each other in a context where the mean doesn't like it's out of place because I for example there is like a gaming culture where they just talk shit to each other Non-Stop I think it's more acceptable there it seems to fit it seems to be funnier there in the like uh when streamers talk shit to each other I've been listening to several streamers recently and it's like it somehow Works a little better even if they're just like cruel to each other it makes more sense um but I think what people are genuinely trying to educate or to help and so on and you still get the shitty comments I don't know it makes me sad no it doesn't it it doesn't make me it doesn't make me sad I think part of that is also the way I was brought up so I was I skipped kindergarten so I was always the smallest kid and you're picked on I was picked on and then I did picking so I had kind of both in my life I kind of know I went home from summer camp crying and I also made a kid cry once in fourth grade so I had the balance and a physical or mental abuse or both verbal verbal no I didn't beat anybody up I was Tiny I think the kid in the younger grade was bigger than I was and he still broke him because I was an ass yeah I so I had to use my mental Warfare I had to use my words I had to be and growing up I my parents blew when I was super young and I played chess so all things that make you super self-trustworthy like you believe your first instinct you don't listen to what other people tell you and if people give you advice say okay I'm gonna think about that I'm not going to go in and do that I wasn't impressionable you couldn't convince me to do something that stuck to this day my wife has had to deconstruct some of my stubbornness I didn't even realize was incredible stubbornness it's just something that you you brought up with so to me that stuff doesn't bother me and it's it's so the voices of others don't shake you quite they can't mentally um shake your like psychological stability no they they haven't I I think when it got probably at its worst point was in combination with being unable to perform well in over the board play but that was also self-driven I wasn't performing poorly because I was getting comments but because I was performing poorly the comments got to me more the cycle was sort of in the opposite direction and that that was probably the most frustrating out people have said some vile things to me you know about my whole Indonesia thing oh this is good I was just gonna give the anarchist and Lee chess all right let's go what's the Indonesian things yeah the way you said okay maybe we don't want to talk about it no no but let's let's talk no it's it's it's totally fine I who did you kill I didn't I I was gonna say I wish but I'm not even sure I can make a joke like that I uh so the Indonesia thing was I was streaming chess on chess.com I might add uh and I got booted up a 10 minute game just a random account from Indonesia that was the flag now mind you on these websites you can pick your flag can be from wherever you don't it's not geotracing you can change it I was like okay I come from Indonesia and as always I looked at the account because it was a Untitled high rated account and look through the games win rate was suspiciously High average accuracy was suspiciously High okay I think this is a cheater I said it out loud it's not the first time I played cheaters on stream and I saw okay I'm still going to play Let's see what happens it was not crazy suspicious but definitely suspicious a few critical moments where I just clearly thought I had a good position and then the person or the bot played some move that just killed my hopes and I lost it's like okay I lost and uh I wrote to the chess.com Fairplay team like behind the scenes I wasn't even saying anything publicly on stream and uh guy got banned it was cheater so that night oh right before I'm going to sleep because Indonesia is 12 hours ahead of New York go my Twitter what the hell is going on I see hundreds of responses to my recent tweets Levy you gotta check Facebook man you gotta check Facebook like so you got here's a link so allegedly that account belonged to an older gentleman and his son made a Facebook post that said my dad played a big streamer in chess Gotham chess and Gotham got mad he lost to my dad so his community Mass reported my dad and he was banned for cheating oh it went viral oh no did you know that in Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world I didn't know I learned it the hard way interesting tens of thousands of DMS every second Wow Instagram DMS because I had my DMs open I was never afraid of that stuff uh my YouTube videos went from 99 of vote down vote 50 50. oh wow they swarmed myself all negative oh no all play him again you I I mean I don't know how much swearing there is on this podcast but I mean it was just all sorts of all the fucking swearing uh they just everything ruthless The Vicious they were gonna kill me they were going to rape my family they were going to they were contacting people I followed on Instagram they were contacting them and telling them crazy things it was I'm not joking it was tens of thousands of people every minute it was unbelievable and I didn't know what to do because the guy cheated I was in the right yeah people how certain were you that he cheated 100 okay 100 I'm okay I don't know if you can say 100 but suggest.com had also had a suspicion they what if they have like good they have like good detection algorithms yes Danny wrench would be able to I legitimately know nothing about the behind the scenes because it's only kind of tech people but uh what one thing I did not realize was that this account whether it was the sun playing or the father playing we will not know we don't know who played it could have been the sun it could have been the dad covering for him whatever but at some point that account won 27 games in a row at 95 accuracy I mean even Magnus can't do that even you know uh this took a month this story took one month from start to finish first I had to work with a like a media company to geo-block my content in Indonesia on YouTube so Indonesians could not see my channel oh so you you didn't want to like lean into it Go full Donald Trump no no let's let's uh because you're in the right you feel like you're in the right you as far as you know you're in the right yeah and I hated watching all my work burn to the ground like oh you felt it was being yeah and I'm one thing I'm learning about myself is I'm not a good crisis actor I need someone to like slap me so I don't do something emotional in the moment when crisis is ongoing what would be the emotional act that's not productive there of partnering with an MCN that makes you give away a bunch of your revenue and then when you break with them I wasn't monetized for a week it was a very big decision to plug in I think they're called mcns but what are they sorry I don't what are they they're like we there's there's specialized agencies that work behind the scenes with YouTube yeah that if you connect your account they say they can give you certain ad benefits they can Geo block your content they which you can't do normally they have certain perks that only YouTube allows behind the scenes you pay them ten percent of your monthly ad Revenue but they claim to do a handful of things for you I just needed them to Geo block my content I I just didn't I didn't care how much money I was uh going to give away per month but so why geo block it you just didn't like the the downboarding yeah I didn't want you wanted positivity more like you're being educational you're I mean they're like you do a bit of shit talking but it's more like fun and easy going you didn't want this kind of viciousness yeah my comment section was just being completely flooded like they were destroying my channel and to be honest maybe all of the views and the downvotes out of would have actually been beneficial maybe I mean my videos would have actually started getting recommended to more people yeah but I'm a person this is Hill goes back to the same oh so this got to you yeah this was like I was just watching it and I'm like this is not fair this is I don't I don't know what to do so I'm gonna stop this as much as I can they still got through their VPN and they were like you asshole you don't think we have VPN in Indonesia it was this whole you know it was this whole thing um this father and son got invited to every major News Network I'm not joking they got invited to the major podcast they like to say The Joe Rogan of Indonesia yeah Daddy corbosier is this Mentalist he's a bald guy very fun guy he had them and that's when the Indonesian Chess Federation stepped in the thing is nobody who was harassing me knows anything about Chess they just saw the story and long story short they brought in a sponsor the guy played a strong uh one of the strongest chess players in the country who also happens to be a woman Irene sukhandar she's like 2400 International Master she crushed him because his actual playing strength is thirteen hundred fourteen hundred you something like that he still got paid because there was a winning price point a losing price fund and we never heard from him again and that was the whole search that was that was why I had to shut down all of my social media to DMS and DM requests and even notifications like I don't get notifications unless it's someone I follow but see stuff like that doesn't often get resolved in this kind of clear way no it doesn't it could have been so you got lucky there that there's um a conclusion to this yeah somebody got views somebody got money uh and I never got I never got many apologies what did you learn from that experience about yourself about about the internet I think first and foremost I learned that every moment you are live or broadcasting can be completely blown out of proportion you have to be real careful and I can't actively think about that unfortunately even when I'm streaming I've had other instances where things come back to bite I've even had these moments live on stream I feel like I said something too sarcastically to somebody and I don't know how their day is going in my ruin their whole day you know God God knows what you have these moments of regret where you want your personality to shine through and you want to entertain at least you're thinking at what cost if I make a joke to a viewer that suddenly the whole chat is laughing at them what if that puts them in a deep dark place and again so it all comes back to this one-on-one thing for me because I'm a human I would hate to put another person into that situation if I would much rather get a drink with somebody than then but it's all kind of part of this act and you want to make jokes and I also learned I'm a horrible crisis actor so I have no patience but I think that's normal in 2022 everything is immediate we can barely sit think let time go by it makes me sad because I think that kind of stuff can destroy good people that's what makes you sad yeah well one of the things we discussed just here before recording which I'm also I've talked about this on stream I'm very open with this type of stuff is over the I think for me a lot of that comes down to just a lack of control of the of the narrative that's that phrase is kind of messy it can be used for political stuff but I I hate when I say things and they get completely misconstrued or they are completely misinterpreted and I can't imagine being in your shoes because again I do chess you cannot really you can clip me saying something about a chess game out of context and it's hilarious you know it it's it's dumb it's it's nothing it's not an attack on on me or or something that I said it's not an attack on kind of more similarly to to what you were describing uh and you don't say you don't say stuff like that like ridiculous you don't say ridiculous shit about yourself oh I do that I do I do and you don't feel like that could be made isn't this the same guy that said X maybe maybe I I either haven't said enough of those things or there's no moments in I don't have three four hour open conversations with other humans and I'm pretty sure if I did there would be more of that that stuff out there but uh that's probably what it is just the lack of it's a lack of being able to kind of control what is actually reality and and that that is very frustrating and uh yeah you're right I mean there is a sense that there's not enough motivation for people to attack you you're ultimately adding a lot of positive stuff to the world and when you get into more political topics there's people there who are hurting who have a lot of anger in their hearts and they want to direct it towards you so then they need ammunition and ammunition comes in the way of like clips from the past so I'm sure that you I'm pretty sure you already have Clips like that it's just there's not people that really have anger to direct towards you ultimately you're adding a lot of good stuff to the world and so yeah but it's man the the viciousness of human beings under the veil of anonymity at scale can be really painful so that that's I guess that's the curse the challenge of being a Creator on YouTube and so on on Twitch yeah um when you talked about retiring you I think you tweeted about retiring from chess give me the video Yeah and tweeted um it's my values of the world the Tweet or the video it's just the both yeah um I'm retiring from all competitive chess events my preparation has outmatched my calculation skills are too flawed and most importantly my anxiety is beyond repair I physically and emotionally cannot do it anymore what was the hardest thing uh what was the hardest thing about competing like can you can you elaborate on that yeah I think it's separated into faces of my life so after being a Creator and coming back and playing over the board and making Recaps of all my games I think the constant feeling that I had at the board was a kid who hadn't studied enough for a test which is a very unique type of anxiety and during the game it was just self-hatred like good moves did not feel as good as how bad bad moves felt and bad moments and and underneath that you're saying there's a sense that I did not prepare well enough one unquestionably so my I'm an international Master but there's International Masters now who are 11. I got the title when I was 22 which is late that might not sound like it's late but it's really late and I quit just multiple times when I was a teenager if I hadn't one of my parents was like sit down this is the only thing that you're good at focus on it yeah maybe I would have been a grand master but that's that's life right and I would come back to Chess at various points in my life when I felt more mature I felt more ready and I felt more motivated I was all me I never I had one coach when I was maybe about 10 I never listened to the guy great guy like he emailed me even recently just wanting to catch up which I thought was adorable because I'm like I don't even know if he knows that YouTube chess exists he's in his 70s he's just he's just like a nice older guy yeah um and he would come to my house we would have dinner my grandma would make us food and he would tell her that I'm brilliant but I never work and I have so much potential if only I ever worked at all one minute on anything I just played Speed games online and and what did he did he speak the truth there like could you have worked more I could have worked more for sure yeah absolutely when you listen to Magnus who doesn't he seems like he doesn't work either he works uh he might work in different ways but I think for him it's also uh Obsession again love it's it's everything it's he might read a book he doesn't consider it work it's work he's getting information in and he's learning something it might just be easier for him to learn than for me for example or for anybody just everybody learns and absorbs things differently so I I would come back to chess and the best run of my life that I had was in 2016 where I basically while teaching a chess program Scholastic chess program I told all the parents hey so for these four months I want to stop doing private lessons and I'm gonna go travel and play tournaments because I want to become an international Master finally I'm 20 years old this is in 2016. like can can you help me raise some money these are all managing directors these are lawyers these are seven figure eight figure households and they contributed and I kept the blog and then I worked just six hours seven hours every day like studying all the opening Trends uh all of the new ideas reading the books analyzing my own games playing my own speed games and analyzing them training every day and that year I went from 20 to 40 over the board to 2404 with two of the three Norms as they call them which are basically tournament performances like you perform at a certain level not too complicated so I got almost everything I needed to be an IM but I just slipped up at the very end and 2017 I didn't play chess but in 2018 I came back once again with the Vengeance I started playing in the summer once again and I went up up to my Peak but then something interesting happened my life mission was accomplished I never wanted or thought I could be a grand master yeah I wanted to be an international master and the adrenaline dump of hitting the I am title I just stopped working completely which is completely stopped working I I couldn't and the second I started falling I couldn't stop and I spent the rest of the summer just tanking and I said Fuck this I'm I made my made my I am I'm gonna I'm gonna fuck off someplace and whatever I'll be I am it doesn't matter uh but when I play games online I mean I destroy Grandmasters all the time like dynamically Dynamics and chess were just complex positions with all sorts of calculation attacking defending like very forcing lines I think it's my best strength I think I'm easily Grand Master Level so that you have the capacity to be Grandmaster 100 like if I if if the work was put in if the work was put in and I I was not doing my current career if I just train full-time I think I could do it do you have a desire to be Grandmaster did you have a desire you said I didn't really want like the main goal was in international Master which by the way is really interesting just I've talked to Olympic athletes the crash after the gold medal is fascinating I didn't get gold but for me that was my goal that was your goal I mean it doesn't matter it's the goal yep uh it takes a very very special person to not be destroyed by the gold and continue the dominance yeah it's to continue growing to continue I mean it's hard to that's why they talk about it's hard to be a champion and defending championships or whatever the goal is to achieve the goal and stick to like um yeah who broke me he broke you yep so you have the capacity to be a Grandmaster have you ever thought by the way is there still possible for you or you have fully dedicated now to the love of creating and analyzing this game I don't think I'm going to do what I do right now forever so we're gonna die one day right just a heads up yes yes yes yes I once cried when I realized that it was at a funeral it was very sad that's another entirely separate Rabbit Hole to go down which is when when did this happen yeah just a couple years ago yeah it was right so you really were able to like like that their realization really hit you like fuck this this ends yeah I'm the kind of person who I have my active thoughts on my brain of things I have to get done and the more of those the better because I'll my brain will walk me off a cliff not the physical body the brain itself will walk off a cliff uh spinning in circles so I try to keep myself as active as possible on tasks I have to do it's good and I'm busy it's good I'm at the scale I am because you can't really rest a whole lot but yes that was I have these moments in my life where I have realizations of past fuck ups or things I have like I really have to do that I've been like really doing poorly or things like this massive existential things that just hit me like a just like a bus there's several things tricky about it so because I meditate on death a lot like in this conversation I imagine this is the last thing both you and I do just and we're gonna die after this so you meditate on that but then you also have to I think what hits people really hard is the realization that life moves on not only does it just end for you but most people would be like um they'll you know in your case they'll tweet it's like oh he's so great after they'll be so much they'll be outpouring of love and so on for a day and then it moves on yeah and the you know the new trees grow new uh bridges are built and then eventually human civilization ends or moves over to Mars and so on and you'll be forgotten completely and but that that for most people will come right away like you you get a cancer diagnosis or something like that and it's like doesn't anyone else know that I'm going to die Does anyone else care like nobody gives a shit I mean they do I mean there's love there but like not in in a dramatic way that you would somehow deep inside hope for that the world would stop because your life is facing this catastrophic event so yeah but I think ultimately what you could channel that realization into appreciation of the current moment it's just the people you love and sharing love with them as intensely as possible experiencing every moment as intensely as possible because eventually there'll be a last moment and after that there'll be no more moments that's sort of what I do yeah might try to Channel all of that into sorry I don't use these fancy microphones uh in in my own you look uncomfortable it's not useful it's not your fault like with this microphone no with this ques with this line of conversation oh uh I'm playing therapist I don't know if I'm uncomfortable I just I don't know if I have a lot to say I'm sometimes I just listen yeah like sometimes I'm intimidated like if you say a lot of good things and I'm like shit what am I gonna say like at the end yeah on this on this subject especially I'm like that's sort of what there's nothing I what do you think happens after we die oh man no that's a rhetorical question what were we talking about Grandmaster Grandmaster so uh how hard is it to reach what are the what are the requirements for Grandmaster by the way because yeah and what are the requirements for international Mastery you mentioned a few requirements and so on yes so the first one is you have to know how to use a sure mic and an arm um slowly you were impressed by this your microphone by the way for the for people listening we're using this as I'm sure sm7b that a lot of podcasters use I don't know why and Michael uh Jackson on Thriller which Grimes told me really that's why I think it looked a little different but it's the same wow underneath it a few musicians used it in studio I don't know where it became popular as a as a podcast and microphone because I think most broadcasters use condenser mics that look like really fancy yeah this looks a little I know this one's great it sounds really really good and I told you before that I wanted to use it but it requires a external dashboard of some sort and I'm way too lazy to learn how to do it and my microphone doesn't sound that bad for YouTube and for for twitch but this is a long term I still have to figure out how to stream stuff I'm not I haven't figured that out because you want to go down into the world of twitch no I don't okay I don't you just want to learn how to do it uh uh no for uh do you know what we have over there so first of all yes it is it's like uh I feel like The Hobbit going into like mortar like I I yeah twitch is a very intense world but the there is the useful cases when you should have your microphone work with like the different the processing chain work in real time so you can do like interviews and also I play video I try to play a video game once a month so um I've done that like three times already uh so stream that kind of stuff for like like an hour um like play Skyrim I like I love playing Skyrim I actually love the idea I haven't done that yet but apparently in Skyrim you can turn off the monsters you could just walk around so I love the idea of just walking around Skyrim for a couple hours and just like because it's beautiful nature I see have you do you know anything about those uh I know I I know I know a little about Skyrim uh but so it's kind of like chat no sure yeah it's just beautiful world so um there's games that are able to create this sense of you know the way you feel when you go hiking a sense of nature yeah there it's not that they're ultra realistic but they capture some Majestic aspect of nature I think some of it is also music something peaceful it's like old-timey uh medieval type of music and just the trees like the wind like you could and then there's in in the distance there's the mountains and you can like you have a sense of history that the nature gives you you have a sense of space like this you're like this tiny little creature and there's this big world all around you I don't know how it that's like an art for a video game to create that it's not just about the monsters in front of you yeah it's about this world and this feeling of a world so I can just walk around and enjoy it I get asked this question a lot why don't why don't I stream more video games yes and I didn't know that such video games first of all existed I thought it was mostly just various sci-fi-ish characters and shooting and uh objective yeah yeah I've played OverWatch on stream it's the it's the only video game I actually played a lot and got decent at and I couldn't play it on stream anymore because my teammates would use racial slurs in the voice chat yeah so that is one of the because I've been thinking of talking to a few uh streamers and they do they're a little bit I don't know as far as they the the that Community broadly does use racial slurs and seem to make them okay um but for the ones I would talk to are a little bit they're just harsh in general in in the intensity of language and I don't know what to feel like I don't want to be the guy who says like kids these days with their with their mean language on the internet like you want to kind of adapt to the different communities but at the same time there is there's lines that you can cross right like if you make everything into a joke because that's what they kind of do everything ends in LOL everything is funny yeah and that becomes uh once again a lubricant that uh it's like a slippery slope that takes you to a place where you actually make pretty um mean ideas even evil ideas okay because it started as a joke and so I mean you start getting into the territory of I mean because I've been reading a lot on Hitler and and Stalin and so on and you'll see those kinds of topics come up in that community and it's like oof they have a very different perspective on that stuff to them it's just a fun fun joke fun time and I I and I see that the contrast of that with Call of Duty where you're where you're shooting and I I love shooting and killing things in video games but there's a slippery slope there too because then just having visited the front in Ukraine you get to see the real killing of people and you see how one can lead to another it it's not an obvious but there's a there's something that happens in video games where you're like well this is not reality the same kind of things happens in war well the people on the other side aren't really human it does become a kind of video game and that that same mechanism I feel like I want to be cautious about our brain going down that road so yeah I I do worry about that Community um but there are video games that don't have such communities around them I think Skyrim I don't think Skyrim is an online component of people Minecraft I think is relatively civil from what I've seen interesting a good Community I think it's a lot of a lot of right now it's booming it's a lot of young creators who are all seemingly quite close and but I think the community then extends to social media some of them are intense but who isn't and I think I think they Foster a more or less kind of good group of folks but no I I completely agree I think a lot of that stuff and combined with the anonymity stuff that we mentioned earlier totally dehumanizes the way people interact with each other and it's it's scary I don't I don't know combine that with two years of some people barely going outside yeah yeah it's not a good mix it's not a good mix at all I mean you'd like to think that folks it's like in their teenage years kind of go through those and they mature out of it and stuff so like they they they they start to realize the weight of their words like that's my hope but we're all trying to figure that out how the internet has changed youth like easy access to porn easy access to like some dark communities yeah where dark ideas uh breed I don't know but then again I trust in the goodness and the intelligence of people at the end of the day and I think kids will not sound like an old man but it's it's good for kids to play with different ideas and then they grow out of it hopefully but then you have to have parents in good school and like good friends that kind of call them out and they're bullshit you need that if you're stuck inside under anonymity maybe you don't have some of those signals kids these days with their internet I had to go through this it's kind of what I what I mentioned so I I didn't have two divorced my parents were divorced I didn't have uh two households I had three so I had was the third one so I went to school most of my childhood in a town where my grandmother lived and she was kind of like the Switzerland so I would be with her and my mom would come with me there uh half the week dad would take me to his place for the other half of the school week and then my parents was split weekends my mom's weekends were in New York where she my stepdad was and that that family sold three houses so Grandma your dad mom and dad and then yeah Mom so step siblings yeah there and there new people there and there extended family there and there and also at Grandma's where I would come anytime I had a conflict and when I was 12 and 13 and being just a total lunatic emotional manipulator of all folks in my family or just teenager rebelling and also having to deal with three different households and I mean I carried a backpack the same backpack literally that I not the physical one but what's inside of it that I carried uh like when I came here to record the episode and have my stuff in the hotel a backpack with a laptop a bunch of clothes a bunch of other things that I need throughout the week deodorant things like that I mean of course you start getting that stuff and all all the houses but the that was the way I lived for some of the most important developmental years of my life and who knows if I had too much of what we're describing one sprinkle of this too much one sprinkle of this too much if I had someone influence me in a negative way luckily I managed to steer clear a lot of a lot of it and yeah how did you not get into trouble with the internet meaning like how did you oh what was your experience with the internet so I I was looking to move a lot having to have multiple households just psychologically different and difficult upbringing I yeah it was it was extremely tough I it's hard to speak about it now because I'm in a completely different mental state I don't even remember some of like those moments but it's almost like a different person yeah that's exactly how it feels but I I remember I had a big video game addiction just like most teenagers I want to say teenagers but probably teenage boys but I'm not I don't know I I don't know how addicted teenage girls are to to video games yeah I didn't date on that I definitely look back on things that I did in certain instances like while I was a teenager that was stupid oh I scammed somebody in some video game oh that was you know I was oh that's hilarious like and just uh was it it's just an idiot teenager like I didn't do anything unforgivable luckily and for the most part just kind of went about my life and I somehow got older and started getting more independent and stopped playing video games and to be honest with you I I would love to sit here and say I have some sort of logical explanation of why I am the person I am today but I think you need elements of the right upbringing and support system as you said and you also need luck you just I've been in some situations as a teenager where I almost got I almost got killed by some gang members that's a very exaggerated story but I was in a park in New York City and I got into it with a kid whose brother was in a notorious gang of that neighborhood and he told me his brother was gonna come and kill me basically over a stolen basketball and I was I was gonna fight this kid because I was 14. you know he stole my basketball of course I'm gonna fight this kid this kid was like 12 he had a pierced tongue yeah like this wasn't a joke yeah this kid was from a totally different way of life and his brother did show up but his brother was like oh my God what's this kiss like that was I was a little teenager I wasn't a big now 14 year olds or six feet tall maybe something would have happened to me but I was a little kid and it was like probably but looking back at that is crazy because I definitely had some of these moments in New York City more than anywhere else because it's such a big place but luck you need some you need some luck yeah it's kind of funny that there's certain moments in life on which the entire trajectory of your life can turn yeah and then they're all like in that case nothing happened but you know I I most intensely feel this when I get almost run over by a car kind of thing how many times have you almost got run away I don't know maybe it happened like twice in my life okay that kind of stuff like when uh somebody runs a red light yeah that happened to me here in Austin uh you realize oh shit that was like your life flashes before your eyes and those moments can turn and then there's more meeting certain people where you meet them and for the positive they're like while this um this moment of inspiration like wow this is possible wow this this kind of person can exist maybe I could be that kind of person too so yeah those things can like change the direction but maybe not maybe they just reveal something that was already there and the momentum is always carrying you forward into a thing that you are always going to end up in yeah I wonder about that um speaking of teens doing stupid things yeah uh how did it start who is Hans Neiman who's Magnus Carlson how did it start there's three games it started Miami yeah a good a good background story is Magnus Carlsen is the arguable greatest player of all time very close I would say to to Gary Kasparov world number one for now over 10 years with the top of this game you think like close to the top of his game right now after the most recent thing yes I think he has The Uncanny ability of top athletes to absorb the bullshit and show oh yeah Dad's home now yeah you know yeah run I was only trying 70 before that you know and and I think that's what he I think I really think that's what he sure I was in awe I I if Magnus is playing in a tournament yes it's good for views to put him in my YouTube thumbnails and make the video title about him if he does something brilliant but I was legitimately just blown away it wasn't even wasn't farming him for Content it was this is unbelievable what he's doing to people uh and he has a point to prove Hans is a I believe he's 19 years old right now he's an American I don't know if Prodigy is necessarily the right word prodigies you you know their prodigies from very very young you don't in chess you don't become a prodigy at 18. but he was always a good Junior player he was always a very unique character like I met Hans when he was 11 12 years old this little kid just trash talking Folks at the Marshall chess club and he already had a reputation literally like he had a reputation with with counselors with like and the truth is I was similar I was kicked out of Chess Camp by one of the best chess Grandmasters of all time Arturo Yusuf I was in a chess Camp when I was nine years old what did you do I was just an asshole yeah I was too strong so I helped other people with other work you let your ego shine that was a kid I mean I wouldn't well you know not every kid let's say you go shine but some do oh yes you did uh Hans does I think there's interviews when he's young yeah or like he's kind of yes talking shit but it's entertaining yes when I try to stay away from is just yes I let my ego shine but I don't think I even knew what any of that was when I was younger yeah so it's just sort of I was just that was just a loud boisterous kid from a household where I wasn't paid attention to because I had three of them yeah so I just was like here's where I'm gonna show up and get my attention and arturia superv he's a great great man I drove that man crazy he was like top five in the world at some point in the 80s and 90s he said it's either me or this kid oh wow that's what you really got to yes he said I'm not gonna come back and teach camps unless it's mere and I remember like going through this I have very vague Distant Memories of this my dad calling apologizing yeah and to make you feel good that you got to a Grandmaster no I feel horrible I felt guilty I feel guilty my whole life about I very rarely feel proud of bad things or I showed them even things it gets to the point you feel guilty about things you didn't do that's what that's when your brain really goes crazy yeah I'm with you on that so okay so you can relate yes to Young Hans and he was like in and out of Chess this is what I remember he was around the rating of 2300 and I remember looking at some of his games in a tournament in Philadelphia and I was like there was some game that he played and he didn't know the opening it was like a London which is a very popular opening some theoretical and I looked at him like whoa he didn't know that okay that's crazy and then I just kind of walked by and I saw him in a tournament a few months later and he did something very rare where in an open tournament not a tournament of 10 players where everybody plays everybody open tournament randomized pairings depending on how many points you have he played nine grand Masters which is crazy that means he was performing so well so consistently that was where he got his first I am Norm it's like oh here it is here comes that like boom of a young player where he gets mature he gets back into the game and he gets stronger I don't follow a whole lot pandemic happens and he starts streaming a bit and he's he's boisterous he's he's kind of like loud he's talking trash and he's gaining rating constantly he's just but so are a lot of people so you don't think much of it and then now you can go play over the board again live tournaments face to face as opposed to online events and he's like I'm gonna go to this tournament I'm gonna win it I'm gonna get my last gem Norm many does and then he's like all right my goal is this rating by the end of this year he gets it he just demolishes absolutely everybody and you're like over the board over the board like this guy's for real there's a lot of people like that if you look at the top Juniors of the world it's crazy Ali has a faruga 2 800. Vincent kymer 2700 a bunch of kids from India 27 other age you're younger usually one or two years younger maybe maybe a little older by a year but it's just this wave and you're just hyped for the guy yeah like this is fucking awesome like we got we got a young American guy who shit talks every time he's on camera and he beats everybody he plays but then you start hearing sprinkles here and there maybe in some stream I think he he doesn't he doesn't get to play on chess.com anymore yeah like chess.com doesn't put that badge there on the account sometimes sometimes they just tell the player listen we know and the player's like all right you got me and that's it there's no conversation so there's like these sprinkles but people cheat online especially when they're young it's very you know it's very captivating it's a very nice thing to do just to be clear I mean just make explicit that the accusation and I think it's proven but they're still being shady about it to the degree is done is that he cheated on chess.com when he was 12. 12 and 16. that's what he says but he admitted to but right now chess.com put out a statement and now Magnus put out a statement as well saying we think it's more than that and yeah I've talked to Danny because he wants to come on the podcast which I'm actually kind of interested in I think he's a cool person um and they're also doing some really interesting anti-teaching stuff which to me from an algorithmic perspective is interesting but he is also the man like there's always in every field there's the institution so he represents the institution because Chester calms institution it's like in the Olympics it's the ioc it's like I'm I'm you don't have to be I have to be careful um you know and just feed a is the institution okay yeah budgets.com they've outgrown way more people actually know chess.com way more people know me way more people know Hikaru it's one of the reasons it's actually where the power lays who has the most power interesting yeah chess.com has the most power which I don't know maybe you and her car would do no um the stair public opinion you know it's a very good question I have to think with my evil cap now what would happen if I'd rather you have the evil cup than Hikaru because I feel like he would really you know the power absolutely if the two of you ruled the world it'd be a problem you mean side by side or uh yeah it would be like yeah as Rivals there would definitely be a war it's one of the reasons I would I would I would not just box him do you guys how much do you like each other I mean do you admire each other as fellow um I'll tell you how I feel it's so entertaining um well we should finish magnatons yes yes I know it's I feel like just inside we don't want to talk about it because it feels like it's been talked about so much I'm trying to give up for you just remember I for me it's even it's much less yeah and for them listener zero yeah yeah so like a like Rogan asked me like so what what's this I know I heard him even talking what's this chess you know Joe talked about the Indonesia thing yeah in some super random small thing and that was a very funny moment I told them about this drama a few weeks ago and then he's like yeah this is interesting this is the anal beads is that possible is that good yeah I think it's possible um I don't remember how drunk you were but so even you know he's curious he doesn't really know but anyway cheating when he was 12 when he was 16. as he said he admitted yes to cheating online line when he was 12 and 16. yes but for timeline's sake let's just let's just do it this way he has a lot of over-the-board success but nobody really talks about the online cheating stuff it's sort of kind of kept low-key a couple hundred people maybe a couple thousand people which sounds like a lot but it's not because there's millions of viewers know about this it's generally kept kind of low-key because historically if you cheated online as a teenager you're not cheating over the board it's not possible you will get caught nobody has ever attempted it we've had over the board cheaters but not at the ultra Elite level and so what happens is they play this tournament in Miami and the first day Hans loses three nothing this is important because on the very next day it's not like Hans was destroying every Everything the second day of the tournament he sits down game one versus Magnus in their best of four and destroys him like he destroyed him made it look like I was playing in magnus's shoes you know the level difference it wouldn't have even leaky it wasn't close of course we can argue it might be because of the maybe Magnus knew something ahead of time there's obviously the psychological element not not important Hans leaves they say interviewer says Hans Yesterday by the way horribly phrased interview question he goes he goes Hans yesterday was a terrible for you and today you start with a masterpiece what do you have to say just speaks for itself walks away yeah argue you can argue it's cringe you can argue I thought it was cool and then the guy then keeps asking a question of his arm extended because he's so shocked he doesn't know what to do like he didn't even occur to him how ridiculous it looked to be asking and then not only does Hans come back and loses the best of four he loses like two more games or maybe three I think he loves the next three games he then proceeds to lose every single best of four match for the rest of the tournament he ends with zero points and a prize money of zero dollars they put up the graphic and he put Neiman zero I think he got some minimum right so it's like wow this is like insane this guy comes out with this crazy interview and in my recap videos I was like the next time Hans has success he has to stay away from the cameras don't let him talk just don't let him talk it's gonna be bad luck and I'm joking around like next time he plays it's crazy he's gonna that was that was their kind of first interaction there they also there were some photos they were having fun playing on the beach I don't know where they had a chessboard on the beach chess players or something yeah so they were still getting along I guess so yeah it's interesting because I talked to him at that time would he have mentioned something right I wonder what he would would have said if I asked him about Hans because that was clueless did anyone care no no no no no nobody no no Hans is not a super known entity right he became much more known he became probably a top five all-time popular chess player in the last three weeks yeah so it's it's not it wasn't it wouldn't even be a worthy question no I'm not you you don't know maybe Magnus already kind of knew a lot of the top players it seems are coming out now and saying we are ready we're suspicious it seems like magnets might have known but maybe not enough to address it uh he still might not be willing to dress it yes yeah but anyway so like so so yeah so totally horrible tournament performance after correct uh after Han's then the annual tradition of the St Louis tournament happens which is a strong field of players first for a fast tournament rapid and Blitz and a classical tournament and the classical tournament is the singfield cup it's the it's named after rexingfield billionaire chest philanthropist uh and it's like Saint Louis chess club it's like a prestigious place it's this whole host of a prestigious tournament Hall of Fame is there for chess I don't know if it's U.S hall of fame or worldwide Hall of Fame but yeah it's it's the two countries play chess I didn't they do but you know we will I I don't know who determines where the Hall of Fame gets to be if we say it's the Hall of Fame okay one day some other part of the world's gonna be like actually it's over here so basically what happens is we have a field set for the sync field cup set it's the top 10 players in the world some can't make it so okay you get number 11 in there or something one of them can't come because of something related to coronavirus it's not it's not now we're going to get little asterisks on Spotify because it was mentioned uh get more info about coven 19. uh so I don't know why he couldn't come but he couldn't come okay something happens he can't make it Hans Neiman is the replacement yeah at the time we didn't know this but now weeks later we knew Magnus wanted to not play this is very important back then we didn't know apparently some other top players also didn't want to play they also were suspicious they also wanted increased anti-che cheating measures which by the way in chess are dog shit like do you give this little metal wand and you put it on the little the ears the body and there's apparently an argument a micro earpiece would not be caught something in the armpit vibrating would not be caught something in the shoe they don't make the players take their shoes off because it's too elitist how you're gonna make players take their shoes off that's oh my God but if these things are out there or if anything was inside any other orifice correct yes I have to bring that I mean I mean to be honest yes that that is very truthful uh so if nothing else this podcast is about honesty and truth so I have to be complete and transparency so what ends up happening in the same field cup is Magnus ends up still playing but the anti-cheap measures are not introduced so the first few games Hans has a very very impressive first round game against levonne aronian one of the best players in the world okay draw he was pushing draw second game demolishes like a like a top player Mommy dear crushes him dominant opening but not like a perfect game you understand like it was it was uh he made some inaccuracies here and there and he ended up winning in a complex game because game three happens versus uh versus Magnus and not only does he beat Magnus with the black pieces he dominates him from start to finish so in the opening Magnus played something with white that he had maybe played once or twice before there was some big debate about it I'm not going to get into it basically a very Niche small thing that just he had never played in maybe a long game before with some sprinkled in venom that might get Hans off guard Hans proceeds to play like the first 15 20 moves absolutely perfectly and then converts the game into a slightly better end game and squeezes magnets to death basically beats Magnus with black which nobody had done in years the same way Magnus would have beaten other players then he goes and gives this interview which where he claims that he had looked at those first 15 20 moves right before the game basically he got lucky didn't he say he looked at something some very similar no he it was it was either similar or or literally that exact variation which is possible I've done that before one of my best ones of my life that morning I went you know I'm not prepared what if my opponent plays this Queen's Gambit accepted variation and I literally learned the first 12 moves he didn't know move 12 I killed him okay like it just happens yeah unfortunately when you combine that with other small elements of the interview and now there's body language experts going all on this it was odd he gave an interview afterwards explaining his uh explaining the various details of the game but not really explaining them that's the thing the standard chess player interview is you sit down you go something about the opening something about not oh yeah I looked at this right before the game and then you explain various Symphonies and and compositions of variations things that went through your head things you were evaluating but hans's interviews were different so everything about him as the chess player already is different and his interviews are extremely strange and also different yeah that's fine but not when you combine it then with the world champion withdrawing right after you beat him and ghosting the entire Chess World yeah so there's a for people who haven't listened to it there's a kind of sloppiness to the way he analyzes the game like he's like oh yeah yeah like it's very um because it's very obvious like what do you mean yeah just completely winning here yeah I'm completely winning here and it's like uh I uh yeah I just played perfect I play Perfect like there's a sense of like but it also doesn't for me again a very outside spectator it doesn't raise any red flags that's just his personality he seems to really like to talk this way and plus this could be crazy uh but do you have a sense that he's more of an intuitive player versus like he's just not the kind of person that analyzes really well is it or is that a ridiculous notion well let's put it this way to succeed legitimately because obviously this is a cheating scandal at the end of the day at the 2750 82800 level the upper echelon of chess you cannot be an intuitive player you can be a little bit more intuitive than a calculator and a concrete evaluator of positions meaning if I give you five seconds to play a move you're going to choose the best move quickly those people are generally better at fast time controls but you have to be good at everything and what raised red flags in this interview was the fact that it was different than every other interview any human being ever gave at that level of trust particularly after beating Magnus for the first time as a teenager which is a very small group of people and so that's where it got weird and the very next day Magnus withdraws from the event Chess World lights completely on fire for multiple weeks and he also tweets right now yes that's the resignation no resignation the sweet was I'm withdrawing for the tournament in St Louis I've always enjoyed playing here and I will in the future and then it's a clip of Jose Mourinho I cannot speak I choose not to speak if I speak I'm in big trouble I don't want to be in big trouble yeah and that one that's some people nuts but people said it's not even a cheating insinuation which was one of the theories another theory was someone in team Magnus told Hans what Magnus was looking at and that's why Hans learned those first 15 moves which is so fucking stupid because Magnus knows like five people not in not in his life but his team is fine that's very close in that group right but to The Outsider that sounds like a very legitimate Theory how could how else can you explain Han said he knew before the game what was going to happen Magnus senses a mole he's not no by the way just uh just so uh I know like if that was forget the cheating aside if you knew doesn't matter how the opening your opponent is going to do they prepared is that a significant help to you if that opening is ultra sharp and requires basically the game to be on the knife's edge yeah yes meaning one mistake from can be fatal because then you can look up what the engine says you can know everything you can know all the possibilities so even if your opponent goes off that engine path you will know how to punish it in this case what happened basically was Magnus played a line that if completely optimally punished would have given Hans a slightly better position and that's what happened but then he also demolished him in that later phase of the game yes and then okay so uh Magnus designs go silent the Chess World goes crazy uh what else is interesting in that period of time hans's fourth round game of that tournament right after beating Magnus was also just absolutely genius just an absolutely brilliant game which he failed to win but then after that game he also gives once again another interview where he's like this game was absolutely Genius Like This was I was just killing him from start to finish and like there was a moment he literally says oh yeah I just gave him a piece like a full piece which is a substantial advantage to the other side and he starts explaining why the position is winning but in words not in chess moves not in specific concrete chess moves which is the way you're supposed to if you understand the position right so now there's this new Theory that's being cultivated if it's the interviews are going to be used as the evidence and Beyond round four he just played like a a good Grandmaster and he lost two or three games maybe maybe two games and he drew the rest so he didn't win again and he beat in the first two out of his first three games he beat mamazara if he beat Carlson and he also went on the attack himself he that was when he publicly admitted to cheating in an interview that he gave to the St Louis chess club that's when he said he has never cheated over the board then he said chess.com has banned me from the global Championship which is what I was invited to to play privately they banned me they didn't even ban me publicly and then he said and Hikaru is uh is is is on Twitch every day you know saying things about me this and that and since then nothing tournament finishes somehow I don't know how we got to the end of the tournament I really thought that it was going to get called off but tournament ends Hans hasn't said anything since then so has he still said when's the last time that was the last text tweet that he sent September 7th says Hikaru wants to play the victim something like this they face each other again recently when was it what was that they played in the online event of this uh meltwater Champions chess tour which is a 16 player tournament where everybody plays everybody first and after 15 games the top eight make a knockout bracket and Magnus played the game there was obviously a lot of hype prior for what was going to happen in this game Magnus plays one move and resigns actually I imagine he didn't want to play one move I imagine he would have resigned the game as it was starting but I think some websites don't let you resign before you make one move because then the game isn't counted yeah so I think he didn't want to play at all but he played one move and that made it even more epic I suppose and he resigned and that was that was that like so you still you you lose that game counts right you lose the rating all these online events unfortunately don't count for any sort of rating uh but on the tournament yeah you play one move yeah so he resigns and then how does the tournament still work out is it determined already over so he made the eight as Magnus still made the the top eight it was round five or like round six or something so it was halfway through the preliminary stage yeah it affected his standings but then after resigning that game Magnus finished first uh in the bracket in the preliminaries and then he won the entire event there was a chance that they were going to meet in the final but Hans lost in the first round against the Vietnamese strong player Le Quang Liam and then Magnus gave a short interview to the live broadcast where he said he would give a statement at the end of the tournament and then he did he gave a statement at the end of the tournament and now here we are the only other thing missing from this is the very intense scrutinization of all those over the board games that I mentioned earlier that Hans dominated in so people are now going through all of his games that he played in tournaments and they're analyzing them with engines and they're saying he played exceptionally well and the debate is was he cheating or was he way too good already but underrated because he could have had incubated knowledge so he could have not played for a couple years was 2700 level but was playing people who were 24 2500. ah well well over the I see so not just over the board with the top level people like Magnus but over the board in general uh yes before he got a chance to play in these super tournaments against the best players in the world he had to go to Europe he was the most active chess player in 2021 and he was quite dominant yes I think he played more over the board games than any player in 2021 or 2022 I think it's 2021 and yes I think his rise was steeper than everybody maybe with the exception of well there was a faruga who got the 2800. see I'd like to believe because he he talks about being very he just became obsessed with chess and I like stories like that I like stories of um the underdog especially with the Scarlet Letter of having been a cheater in the past I like the idea of somebody who is flawed psychologically and ethically and just just the full fascinating personality and this somehow just becomes obsessed I mean similar to Bobby Fischer is also a tortured Soul also flawed also just chaotic all over the place you could see Bobby Fischer being somebody that might cheat when he was 12. right on the online chess right like if it existed yeah actually I think in some podcasts like small Jazz podcast I don't wanna I I like Ben Johnson so I I'm apologizing for calling it small but compared to like let's say Lex Friedman podcast uh it's uh oh what's what's it what's this podcast it's it's perpetual chess it's kind of like oh I love Perpetual Jazz are you joke really dare you cop yeah all right um I'll show you because it does a lot of it talks it makes me feel special let me see where is it Perpetual chess um he does like improver series yes yeah yeah yes yes yeah he's great Ben I forgot I'm so horrible with names his name is Ben Ben Johnson yeah it is Ben Johnson that's right yeah the Perpetual chess podcast that's amazing see legs when even individuals like myself who might have a large audience when I look at you you're at a you're you're just at a different level I don't expect you to be listening to chess podcast during the day just imagine you're generally doing something to change the world or talking to some Visionary people well I should say it you know I've been running a lot and I listened to podcasts a lot because they're such I love human beings excited about stuff that really energizes me and um I've listened to a bunch of Chess podcasts I I'm really energized by your love of Chess um I really like yeah sorry I did forgot his name but Ben Johnson I love it when he talks to Grandmasters I love this when he talks to the the the the the regular folks for the improvers like to see how they balance life and chess and all that kind of stuff he's just pretty good at it he's like super excited and they talk about books yeah and they get excited about different books yes I mean it it also gives me a sense of uh where the Chess World is from a different perspective is like people studying chess like what they get excited about how difficult it is um yeah it's nice to get a sense of the community the language that's used because I did want to have a bunch of conversations um with folks about Chess because I think it's a beautiful game and I I think it's a beautiful community so that's that's one of the podcasts I listen to so yeah anyway he's it's great anyway you were saying why why'd you bring him up yes great podcast great podcast I only reason I thought of it uh and I used the word small no disrespect Ben is because even that episode which he did with Hans like it was a small episode it wasn't seen by mass audience of Chess and you did an episode of Hans recently or no some time ago yeah and in that episode Hans very openly is like Bobby Fischer was misunderstood and he was my idol oh I said a couple of things like that and strong Hans isn't intense guy like I when I listen to Hans I get a little anxious I just he brings out some sort of disturbance in my ecosystem yeah it's just I I can't really pin him down to like what what's going on there yes as a person who's trying to read people yeah um it's difficult like I can I can this is the dark aspect he could be both the genius of Bobby Fischer and a genius cheater and you could see like there's something chaotic about him which makes him very appealing in that way yes so right now late September 2022 the current environment is such that Hans hasn't said anything in weeks and people are sort of dissecting every bit of circumstantial evidence that they can and they're trying to present the case I don't even know to who ultimately I guess it would be the feed a cheating anti-sheating commission or whatever it might be to you essentially I mean to people with the platform it could be to present convincing evidence to where the the people the people are convinced of one way or the other because you're for people who don't know and you should definitely follow Gotham chess you've been on this you've covered it a lot and I'm sure if anything comes out you'll cover it more but you've been quite balanced and thoughtful and kind of objective about the whole thing yeah so the reason for that is I understand the power that I wield with anything and if I say one sentence the wrong way I might be sending 10 000 people or more to go do something yeah and I hate that I want to present the evidence and I want the video to end and people go okay I understand not I'm gonna go I'm gonna go fuck someone up yeah you know what I mean like because that's and I also believe that even if Han's even if Hans is guilty this goes all the way back he's a human being yeah and you can argue that cheater's got to be punished and you can argue that people who do things wrong you shouldn't feel any sort of compassion but I would hate to have the whole world pointing at their fingers at me the entire world that I've known my entire life and even if I if I messed up there's still a world after chess there might still even be a world in chess I don't know but that stuff it doesn't make me it doesn't make me feel good to present all of the circumstantial evidence in my videos and start being like yeah it looks you know so but at the same time you deeply care about Chess and the chess community and there's some sense where was it you as a Magnus that said that cheating poses an existential threat I mean there is some aspect of Truth to that which is like you know we the chess is in a state where Bots uh chess engines are much better than humans yeah and we're living in a world where technology becomes easier and easier to integrate with with human beings whether you put in some orifice or elsewhere and that that does pose a threat to um to our ability to trust that a world champion is indeed a world champion that somebody we think is good is indeed good and so there is some aspect to the ecosystem that should punish cheating and perhaps over punished cheating and the other thing is in sport you can take PDS and have bigger muscles bigger better reaction time but you still have to perform the action in a successful way there is still a chance you can lose if you take Peds maybe in some sports the gap between non-ped and ped user is significantly more noticeable but in chess if you cheat you play God yeah you decide when the game is over you can fake bad moves you can fake everything you can even if you're cheating quote unquote the right way you're gonna lose plenty of games to avoid getting detected so you can create Bots that are 2800 like you can also just not listen if you know all the best moves but choose to play on your own oh I made a mistake not a big deal you could yes Bots are all at a different level but if you were to cheat that you you play God you can decide when you make your move and when the engine makes its movement if you know the top four lines of the engine you choose the fourth one so in hindsight people will analyze your game and they will go oh it wasn't perfect well no shit only the stupid cheaters play the top Engine line the whole game by the way I'm not saying that this is what's happening here because but there's uh there's probably an excitement to Playing God to to and get in the way with it like I know people I know adults grown adults who are successful in their fields and they they cheat they cheat in lessons they cheat and like I've I don't want to say I've taught any may I may or may not have uh for some reason one of them watches this and they know they're guilty uh and it happens it happens uh not just teenagers not just young adults but full-grown adults will cheat when they play because it they think it helps them learn oh uh well that's exactly just that's justification but I just meant like I'm it might not be just about winning it might also just feel good to have that power like I bet you it's a drug oh yeah I mean like with a lot of criminals with a lot of criminals I feel like part of like the ma like Mass murderers would be serial killers I feel like a lot of it is they can get away with it the the fact that they like they like everyone else is a sucker and they figured out how to do this evil thing and uh obviously cheating is nowhere close to that but the but there's still a feeling of getting away with it yeah I wonder and you're pretty objective on the whole thing like where if you were um a betting man what would you say is the probability and are you changing day by day in your head what's the probability that Hans cheated over the board against Magnus in the in St Louis that's a tough one man have you even allowed yourself to to put a probability on it no not on that specific game because I think a lot of that game was affected by magnus's own psyche that was one of his worst games ever so he played poorly to a Magnus played which doesn't help his case yeah Hans might have cheated then that game but we'll never know I I think day by day the evidence is slowly starting to show more and more that he's cheated it like like how Magnus said more than he said and more recently it's undeniable like right a lot of the statistics are there the problem is you can't prove you're not cheating yeah unless you strip naked like that site offered him a million bucks to like everything about the which site of a headline that said Hans Neiman bucks and where I struggle to comprehend is how on Earth he could pull it off and like I'm a guilty that my brain goes to guilt first and resent yeah resentment remorse guilt that kind of that Trio uh Magnus put out a statement as we speak yesterday saying dear Chess World at the 2022 sinkfield cup I made the unprecedented professional decision to withdraw from the tournament after my round three game against Hans Neiman a week later during the Champions chess tour I resigned against Holland's Neiman after playing only one move I know that my actions have frustrated many in the chess Community I'm frustrated I want to play chess I want to continue to play Chess at the highest level in the best events I believe that cheating in chess is a big deal and an existential threat to the game I also believe that chess organizers and all those who care about the sanctity of the game we love should seriously consider increasing security measures and methods of cheat detection for over-the-board chess when Neiman was invited last minute to the 2022 sinkfield cup I strongly considered withdrawing prior to the event I ultimately chose to play that's the thing you're referring to is that he can like now we know he was torn about the whole thing I believe that Neiman has cheated more and more recently than he has publicly admitted his over-the-board progress has been unusual and throughout our game in singfield cup I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do this game contributed to changing my perspective he must do we must do something about cheating and for my part going forward I don't want to play against people that have cheated repeatedly in the past because I don't know what they're capable of doing in the future there's more than I would like to say unfortunately at this time I'm limited in what I can say without explicit permission from Neiman to speak openly so far I've only been able to speak with my actions and those actions have stated clearly that I am not willing to play chess with Neiman I hope that the truth in this matter comes out whatever it may be sincerely Magnus Carlson World Jazz Champion um I was useful enough your statements if I was a world yet no just say whatever Lex Friedman what would be the title yeah I don't know I think I would not even if I was a world champion I would just say Lex or make up a title and I feel like I really fucked up in life if I have to tweet a statement as an image that's like when you get you've you're a politician you got caught cheating on your wife like for many years in a row yes then I tweet an image I'm sorry for all the people I have hurt and the people that believed in me and what whatever else and then I would sign World chess champion you know the most like the the modern way to give a statement what I thought Magnus was going to do yeah I thought he was gonna write on the recent Scandal or my statement on the past few weeks twit longer what do you mean so you put a URL oh yeah so that's for tweets but it's unlimited characters it's not a hundred I didn't know what that is can you explain that to me yeah so generally when a celebrity has a giant audience on Twitter they will make their statement on social media and say what it is in a sentence yeah one line and then there's a link where's the link take you it's a website called twit longer twit longer yeah and that is where they write their statements that is what I was expecting when I did this I haven't seen this before oh this this is I don't have one off the top of my head but it's just that Kanye Kim Kardashian breaking up that would use that streamers musicians yeah I don't think politicians use it because that it's just feeling yeah I use the image use my yeah Myspace and Facebook right uh yeah I'll probably go see I I like um I mean I'm not just being biased here just because I'm a podcast I'm a huge fan of podcasts I feel like I would go on a podcast to talk about it with somebody I trust so like long form and discuss it I thought he was going to do that too in fact I wanted to write him a message and be like I can be that that guy for you I have a very strange relationship with Magnus because good bad I I don't we've never interacted I very openly I don't want to say use him for views because that is a very crude way of saying it yeah but if you wanted to insult my YouTube channel that is what you would say so Magnus is in a lot of videos thumbnails or or videos not clickbaity but if he's playing in a tournament and he plays a great game he's going on that fucking thumbnail because because uh let's see he's the number one chess player very likely the greatest chess player of all time right plus he's exciting uh and YouTube algorithm loves his name and people click on it the best yeah but I don't know what the chicken or the egg is but the reason it loves it the reason people click on it is because he is an exciting personality he's an exciting chess player is there's something compelling about him yeah he's also he can he knows how to in a subtle dry wood humor way talk shit with the silences and all of that yes he knows he knows it he knows it he knows the whole game of it specifically to Magnus my relationship with him we've never interacted and throughout the last couple of years he generally has interacted with Hikaru as a competitor he has done some collabs with the bodesza's he obviously has talked to Ludwig who's a very very big streamer and part of me regrets the fact that when I was smaller as a YouTuber in a twitch streamer I'm sure I used to make jokes or some tweets at Magnus like when Magnus would tweet something I would try to respond so I could be the top reply because that was my social media I literally think I once responded to a magnum Sweden saying responding for engagement because it was some like it wasn't some controversial tweet yes it was just something funny and I went haha responding for engagement because I was just being a little bit of an idiot and I knew that if it got enough likes it would be at the top and people would see me my brand and just get to know me this is the type please don't use the word brand but yes yes uh but yeah no and your worries that he wouldn't take you seriously because he wouldn't take me seriously and it was one of the best of all time and I saw some dude on YouTube just kind of being a moron and I'm all over his thumbnails I can imagine he has a very legitimate case I appreciate your humility and self-critical nature but one of the um the realities with people like him is he does he wouldn't hold a grudge or not treat you seriously um I'm pretty sure he's a he's a fan and he's a big support he doesn't watch YouTube videos I barely watch YouTube videos I think of Chess like yes he might watch like more fun on Chess at Jason stuff but he just doesn't it's not for him so uh I'm pretty sure he knows of you and likes you and you're commenting on stuff has zero effect on his belief which is funny that's something you think about now you're perfect but you're well respected like you're a lot of people mention you as a person who was like okay this person is legit which is an important thing it's not just an Entertainer it's not just a shit talker and so on this person does is a great educator great fan and student of Chess uh a great player himself so all those components and so yeah you're definitely a good person and on this particular aspect have been very objective effective I understand that I'm nowhere near perfect I don't I'm not a different person on camera off camera I will say it like it is maybe on Twitch you gotta you gotta dig in the mud there a little bit more a lot more sarcastic a lot more Brash and whatnot but you meet me in a taco place and I'll talk with you the same way I might if it was a video just that you may not you may not consider me just a random guy at a taco place and that's why I think about the stuff with specific to Magnus and it's one of the reasons I don't reach out to him directly ever I never have never dm'd him on Instagram hoping for a response never I've never even reached out to anyone on his team trying to get a conversation very candid with him which I think it would be I even barely reached out to guys in the top ten like top 15 only recently started pushing myself more to do that and I even in my intro messages to them preemptively say something like you might think I'm some idiot you might not be totally wrong yes but like I think this would be a good conversation and give it a shot and I've been surprised that I've been ignored by a few but some said oh yeah I've seen your stuff generally a fan like no problem I was actually really blown away this YouTube channel uh levito of Chess it's a Russian chess Channel and I think the last name of the guy is the name of the channel is named after Ilya levitov who has some sort of managerial role in the Russian Chess Federation and this channel has interviewed some of the greatest players of all time they have interviews with the modern best Russian players and kaspara of carp of kramnik you name these guys from Russian Genesis history it's unbelievable I just thought this was a Channel of just unbelievably well respected chess players and Legion of fans that were long-time chess fans and I mentioned them very briefly in a YouTube video and that little clip went into their next Community event and the founder of the channel went on this two minute beautiful description of why he liked me and how he only watched my channel as a beginner and how I have a natural voice and how if I talked about cards I would have a Millions 100 million subscribers just all this really kind stuff that in my mind I thought was either undeserved or I just never fathomed that yeah I mean you you said you certainly should not feel as deserved as you should have a humility about that kind of stuff but I think that is the thing that works over time it's like reputation spreads which is like if if one person likes you and they tell you to other people and it kind of spreads and over time you have one conversation with the top ten uh like a like a super Grand Master and they they say nice things about you and it just kind of spreads because I've been very surprised in all walks of life like um you know this this really gets me this makes me happy honestly because um like people ask me like how I get guests and so on and it just seems honestly just be a good person and like a real person an honest and just kind of spreads the word word of mouth you know even coming here I almost didn't reach out what do you mean I had seen you I'd never talked to a a chess person and I've watched a lot of I've watched some of the things start to finish especially if the guest I'm really interested in like Jersey St Pierre I'll watch that guy do whatever yeah exactly I'll watch him do basically anything yeah make an omelette or something yeah I I love listening to him some of the other things I I I've listened to as well and I noticed that neither well to me you you obviously and Joe are the two biggest podcasters I don't know if that's like factual I don't know if some influencer has some podcasts but you guys interview folks that I listen to more more often than anybody else and when Magnus came on I was like oh this is that's amazing you know I I don't even know how I would reach out to Someone Like You it just seems like a a limp like climbing a mountain and then a couple days later and I even in that episode wanted to write but I didn't know how like do I make a YouTube comment I don't want that I'm like I'm clout chasing on the Magnus episode but then you talk to the bethesis and I said oh what's this I shouldn't overthink it yeah like you know I so I just said all right fuck it I'll just write a comment and you're like yeah I'd love to have you on I was shocked I didn't even you responded just within a couple hours or something yeah yeah I loved it man I mean it was an honor this is a good way to connect I also like on live streams I'll watch I'll try to resist commenting but um you know I'll watch some some even smaller channels like I'll get super excited by by them and connect in that way there's an intimacy to that man YouTube is beautiful I don't know anything about twitch um maybe it's similar to know anything about it but YouTube has ruined you there is an intimacy like especially if it's live I don't know what that is but if it's live they're like right there you can just like reach out and say hello yes cool it's like really uh I don't know I'm just happy to live in this time when you could connect with people in that way there is an intimacy that's why I love podcasts too I I listen to people and I feel like they're my friend it's cool it's a cool it's a cool feeling it makes you feel less lonely um in this world like you have a lifelong companion especially like people that do a podcast for many many years I'm like we've been you've gone through all the ups and downs of life together with a creator with uh with a podcaster with anything it's cool I don't know it makes it um it's surprisingly intimate a one-way friendships there's some negatives that people Definitely describe the word that gets used a lot as parasocial you think you you like the viewer will think that the the streamer or the YouTuber knows them or owes them something or has some they have a bigger connection than they do but yeah you know what actually because I had to interrupt I have to look maybe you can explain to me I've heard this term parasocial a lot I've been meaning to look it up might as well look it up while in live yeah I guess sure sure there's social interaction PSI refers is this a new term because I have just started listening hearing it like the last yeah I think it's years yeah parasocial interaction PSI refers to kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performance in the mass media particularly on television and on online platforms viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities as friends despite having no or limited interaction with oh shit that's a term for a thing of been referring to interesting the term was coined by Donald Horton and Richard wall in 1956. wow when there was like a very limited media huh wow I guess TV and radio and stuff yeah yeah parasocial interaction and exposure The Gamers interested in the Persona become a parasocial relationship after repeated exposure to the media yeah okay what's the downside bro what's what's okay oh well I can tell you the downside the downside is is people thinking they're in relationships with streamers and stalking them that's or the Stalking Part but the relationship is like I mean okay you mean like actual relationship like like waking up and saying how are you doing like in your head to them yeah no but that might be an extension more like yeah getting mad they don't respond to you in anytime you're in the Stream or that convincing yourself the other person wants you and you need to go to them so you need to find where they are like this has happened some of the biggest female streamers have reported that they get stalked in harassed for months and that's born out of this this on a very small scale is you come into a stream every so often and give an update about your academic career that's not so bad I I was going to mention I've streamed on Twitch for years and I watched people have kids like people will come in over the course of months and say hey man you know I just finished I just took the bar exam yo man like I'm having my first kid and that's crazy that's that's amazing yeah but if they do it in a healthy way that's one thing but there's always gonna be downsized but most of it is beautiful man yes I have uh very uh I have I guess parasocial relationships uh of people that take it a little too far but it's all love you also have a fundamental belief and hope in people to be good yeah yeah yeah and I've been you know I haven't gotten in trouble with it yet that's that's a good thing me too I've interacted with plenty people in person and no one's been negative so yes and I've even gone to a war zone uh there I can't there's no there hasn't been uh people have been very I don't know uh people have only surprised me in the positive direction in the depth of the the capacity they have for compassion uh do we okay so now we're in this weird place with the cheating can ask you a question about how it's possible to cheat like if you and I you know the conversation you're gonna have with Magnus we're gonna have we're gonna play chess if we're we're trying to figure out how can you beat them what are the different ways do you think over the board chess what are the ways yeah that's where I lose the thread because I don't know that's what I immediately went to it's like the engineering challenge of cheating right well that's because that's like how good I mean you're not good at creating cheating in over the world situation I'm just saying you your brain works differently I just choose to not even like I can't entertain that I can come up with some bullshit but it's not going to be anywhere oh your mind is not like immediately attracted to pulling at that thread of like how would you fuck with the system yeah my mind stops at ah that would have to be a really sophisticated thing and that's it it doesn't go any further my brain every day thinks about the best way to compartmentalize chess into a digestible format and put it out into content chess that's what I think on the board chess not cheating yeah I just think about the YouTube I just think about that that's currently where my mind is fully focused I'm also working on like a book so that's what you think yes see for me because I've built chess engines that without understanding chess much as like you know as anyone does who's interested in AI you build all kinds of systems that do all kinds of stuff in chess is just an easy game like it starts with Othello goes up the chest and go there's it's just a great uh Benchmark a great place to explore different AI algorithms um from search to machine learning and so on but to me cheating is like it's it's a similar kind of ideas well if I make it a board instead of eight by eight to ten by ten I caught us to change things and with cheating it's almost like expanding the engineering challenge or chess out into the the real world to me okay so just allow me I know cheating is horrible and everything but stockfish AI engine and human working together in interesting ways it forgets us just machine and human working together to expand the capability of the human is really fascinating and that's like a beautiful thing to me of course the purely for the chess game it ruins the game yeah but foreign I just like thinking of how AI can interact with the human uh in in ways that doesn't that it's frictionless like uh you know like neural link brain computer interfaces dream of directly connecting the human brain to AI system the problem in this case is I don't think the human and the AI are interacting together the AI dominates the human is just the mechanism that makes the moves I actually played if I may I I don't maybe I need your advice on this I thought and I told myself I won't do it and then a friend of mine said uh and the a couple of friends and both of them are previous guests in this podcast so I definitely need to do it which is um you know connect so I already have for the chess arm that I built um this computer vision on the chessboard is able to to uh extract from vision um the way you do optical character recognition extract the board so I was gonna just build that cheating system to demonstrate it with the reason I thought it was interesting so something we didn't mention is I don't know who started this rumor but the rumor started there it might have been like anal beads that yeah I don't know who started this but I do know that Elon magnified it my username was dead center and that thing that he retweeted which was hilarious to me uh you're using uh what do you mean he retweeted the clip but also the copy pasta like the the paragraph that was like describing the whole anal beads Theory and dead center in the middle of that paragraph is as Gotham chess says and the worst part about it was I was literally Tagged so it was as user slash Gotham chess says so every time that paragraph gets posted on Reddit I get tagged so it's getting posted a lot so yes but yes he tweeted and then there's also the funny thing which I really love the the weirdest most entertaining thing uh was that part of the same thing where uh like uh plot twist Magnus has been using anal bees this whole time that's how he got it yes yes uh I love that so much okay but anyway uh there's a I will I quickly realized that there is I I have to admit that I know not much about sex toys and then I quickly realized that there's a lot of sex stories that have bluetooth capability that you can interact with so you can it's very easy to connect stockfish to a sex toys actually actually yes so uh apparently that's a popular thing like a lot of sex toys are Bluetooth enabled so you can communicate with them so this is actually pretty trivial to do not trivial but but then and then in fact there is a um there's several libraries one of them is really active called now this is on GitHub friends it's in Rust but I think there's python wrappers it's called butt plug is the name of the library that communicates with it supports a bunch of different devices uh a bunch of different like vibrators and all that kind of stuff but then I looked at the kind of vibrators it supports and they're all like creepy looking I mean like it doesn't it it doesn't have um I don't know it felt too dirty you know like there's a line I was like uh is this not gonna because the reason I like that kind of stuff is I like the joke of it that ultimately is somehow educational because to me I really care about Ai and this is a cool little project to do it's pretty easy to share um yeah but I was thinking about doing it I was thinking about doing it at first I said no it's just kind of feels dirty but then the the aforementioned uh friend said no you should definitely do it I'm sure that people will sign up right I just went on the table like show the vibration like like this is you're basically converting uh now it's not I'm not obviously a grand master so you have to say everything I feel like no you don't you could say the square you don't have to say the piece the human will fill in the Gap no a good human chess player I can't oh that's what that's the point I wanted to make is like for me I would like to know the actual move I need to make yeah so I need the full information right so I have to convert the bishop C5 whatever to more to Morse code which is a lot of vibration I that yes exactly uh but it still works it's hilarious and fun so I was thinking about doing it but uh because it's pretty easy to do um it would be just like a fun exercise I love a mix of technical rigor and humor well this is the perfect project for that right exactly yeah this was born I think out of uh user comment in a twitch stream so I thought it was born on Reddit this Theory but I think uh Eric Hansen was streaming Chas brah and someone in his chat made that joke and he read it out loud that was the first time it was read out loud and then somebody clipped it and it became international news like I don't have you followed how big the traction got on this anal beads thing no it was covered by every major News Network late night talk show Trevor Noah Stephen Colbert no international news international news in countries like China where I would have never thought that they would report about anal beads yeah did they what was the tonality of it was it seen as a joke or did they say there's a cheating scandal I think too much literally anal beads like just you know just accused uh accused denies uh denies cheating with anal beads which he never did he never denied cheating with anal beings it was a joke internet theory if that was him I would lean into it yeah I can't imagine men like that's I I don't know what the right thing for him to do is but it's you're not touching this one damn oh I I I've talked about it I don't say the words anal beads in my YouTube videos but I'll say pizza yeah I'll uh okay the thing is you think I should do the the code thing it's like a tutorial sure yeah I think it would be hilarious if you find a way to do it yeah yeah you can show that it is possible to theoretically vibrate via Bluetooth chess moves and if someone shoves it up their ass what that was another joke okay they offered you to play naked they're gonna make you spread your cheeks yeah I didn't understand why naked soft problem I think there's so it doesn't have to be naked I don't think naked is enough yeah um okay some questions from Reddit ask him ask Levy if he deep down hates his audience I saw that yeah I saw I saw that was someone I have a I have a love-hate relationship with the chess subreddit yeah so that's why some of those questions were going to be tough I have a love-hate relationship do you think that's a tough question or is that come from a place of Love ah very very tough to say very tough to say uh love and hate like they're basically next door neighbors on Reddit I feel like correct they oscillate very quickly between each other yes so Reddit chess specifically I think is mostly folks who are around before the chess boom so the chest is the chest subreddit sorry yeah yeah so a lot of them have been around for five years seven years ten years even more and I think the average age on Reddit is lower than the average age on these chess subreddit I think that the chess subreddit is beyond the age of 20 maybe even 25 like a lot of folks that are ancient ancient people and they're amazing yeah I mean not 15 or 16 uh Anarchy chess is younger so Anarchy chess is basically chess memes this is great A lot of stupid memes on there do they like you or no or is it they did until my crypto sponsorship um which is a separate convo that I'm more than happy to have uh but uh yeah so my relationship with the Reddit chess subreddit is tough because my content on YouTube stops at a certain point with them they can't learn from me because I'm tailoring to 95 of my audience which is about 16 1700 and below and I have a lot of content where I jokingly make fun of low rated players and everyone's in on it and we all have fun and I laugh at myself a ton the life as you can even see in this conversation I but just like you mentioned in with with clips and out of context things folks have already formed the perception of my personality there's nothing I can do to win them back and I think the dominant percentage of the loudest group of folks on the chess subreddit they just they have a certain perception of me it's not going to change and you add something like cryptocurrency sponsorship which people on Reddit just in general are relatively negative on the subject is going to start you know snowballing more and more so if you ever look up a thread of should I buy a Gotham course and it's on Reddit chess it's gonna say no everyone's calling it a scam over price interesting I got I I heard a lot of really positive stuff I don't know where I was on Reddit in general about me yeah you might have you might have been looking for it you might have not been looking for for negative things and I know I was looking for like best Educators online like that kind of stuff I don't I'll it might have not been read to chess I'll be totally honest with you if you ever go there and look for something like best Recaps or best educational content for intermediates I'm not mentioned I might not be mentioned because I'm already expected to be on the list so they just kind of want to generally shout out smaller creators totally fine with that and I'm not even going on this whole explanation because I want to win folks back it's just sort of the reality of the situation a lot of my stuff is really click-baity and I'm playing the YouTube game yeah they don't want that do you ever feel like a limit or tension between your creativity and the YouTube algorithm like do you feel like it has negative yeah effects yeah yeah I want to cover more in-depth stuff in a 30 minute video that I think is super useful to people it's only going to get 60 000 views and you feel why is that a bad thing is is it good is it good to mix it up yes it's good to mix it up but I make a video a day I make one bad video the other videos suffer and then if I make two videos that underperform the rest of the videos don't get pushed out as much your earnings can go down 40 day to day which doesn't happen in other careers and if I ever want to supplement if I ever want to make a very instructional video I try to do it in a very fun way so something like eight of Magnus Carlson's best end games you can still learn a ton but the concept of the video is going to be different like I try to still teach things but in more interesting and exciting ways like the the guy who was scammed for a million dollars Alexa shirov who has basically promised the world championship if he won his match he won his match he didn't get a world championship so there's still stuff in there you can learn and you can my goal is just you click on the video you learn something and you enjoy yourself that's it get people to click on it by any means necessary but once they're there have quality stuff they can learn and yeah yeah man I wish so I I have zero those pressures but I also really really uh like I turn off views and all that kind of stuff I don't pay attention to any of that uh but I wish YouTube would like the algorithm would include how good the video is like beneficial for people's long-term well-being in in the calculation yeah I actually really hate the fact that they turned off dislikes yeah I didn't get that at all because like and now I don't know the difference between like for tutorials specifically like I don't know what's a good chess video or not or what's a good review or not but I mean it emphasizes following certain people more like if you trust the Creator but like man um I really don't know what's a good video or not essentially and then you have to trust more the title then then the click baitiness comes in and it's it's no good you have to use your own gut instinct as opposed to data sucks yeah there's videos that have almost no views that are still great incredible yeah and some of some of the best ones some people who are just focused on like the quality yeah and don't want to play the game or don't even know how to play and they don't really want to play the game of the YouTube algorithm yeah it sucks it sucks especially given how dominant YouTube is in the in defining the sort of the Creative Energy of our whole civilization of the youth not just us not just chess uh when are you going to chess box against Eric Rosen this is a question from Reddit chessbox you uh you said your your hands are all messed up yeah yeah you're training for something or a regular like so I also just remembered we never talked about Hikaru so I can talk about Rosen and Hikaru in the same chess boxing oh shit is this your McGregor like uh Eric Rosen is actually a close friend of mine I probably have five of those and he just so happens to be uh not just the chess streamer but uh we we talked about buying homes we've talked about he's stayed at my place he took my wedding photos I flew him to New York and paid for all his stuff just so he could hang out with my wife and I and you know take some 6 a.m photos in the sun uh in in the park so oh he looks familiar yeah so he's uh yeah he's a good friend of mine now in terms of Chess boxing sales boxing is this really fascinating sport where you have boxing but you also have chess and you have rounds so you start a chess game with a clock that segment itself lasts for a couple of minutes they put the board away and pause the clock whatever the time situation is then you box for a minute and that keeps going on I don't know how it works in terms of the time expiring meaning in fighting there's judges that just tell you how the fight was going right here I don't know who wins and how like do you win by you can win by knockout you can win by Checkmate or their clock can run out on the chessboard but it's the judges who is there a round limit does this just go on and on and on and on you know what I mean yeah I thought it's like 12 rounds right isn't this a thing in in Russia it's a big thing in the UK UK yeah UK I don't I don't know why and there's a lot of YouTuber events just for boxing so YouTubers just learn to box and then they just box no chess they just straight up box each other like Jake Paul for example you ever gonna get Jake Paul in here yeah yeah I'm sure okay I'm sure I feel like there's so many different guests have been mentioned uh yeah Jake but Jake Paul would be it would be a fun guess but he's obviously the biggest scouter he's legitimately boxing people he's not yeah uh but okay chess players is never going to learn to box to that level and all of us are starting basically from zero and and Ludwig talked to me behind the scenes hey how would you feel about being in a chess boxing match I said okay yeah maybe when is it going to be he said five months from now I've always wanted to train combat I've weight lifted I've done cardio I've played here UFC fan too yeah but do you admire fighting yeah I would enjoy it I just have a really bad lower back and that makes a lot of different combat difficult but I said you know what screw this I'm going to contact a few local gyms yeah and one of them the guy emailing me back and forth had actually watched my YouTube videos so he was the first to respond and he said yeah like come in do a couple classes like see how you feel so first I did conditioning which killed me because fighting conditioning as you know it kills you it's a completely different type of conditioning but I felt good and I really wanted to come back and since July I've been training three four days a week nice yeah I feel pretty good I love it lower back feels good lower everything the whole body got stronger so what you're saying is you're gonna fuck up your car it's UTC training I'm not I'm not fighting so I talked to Eric about it and the truth is we're both concerned about head trauma I haven't actually sparred I like sparring Shadow Boxing but I go there I do personal training I don't do a group class I'm not fighting I'm fighting the bag I'm doing Shadow Boxing my form is improving but I haven't been punched I get hit in the stomach you know I get hit in the side with kicks nobody's punched me in the face yet so I think we both were adequately concerned about that and there was not some ridiculous amount of money on the table so we decided it's just not worth pursuing how does hakara come into the picture because he's a possible competitor ask me all the time who would you fight would you yeah people are like ah Andrea botes would kick your ass that's a tough one because I can't what am I going to say I'm gonna fight a woman who I'm larger than you know so I just have to take the L against any time a woman is mentioned that's fine like Owen's still winning that one right exactly so I've lost to both boat houses Anna Rudolph Anna kremling they're all chess creators they're not like hypothetically yeah I get a hypothetical fight yeah yeah um there's been training uh I think Andrea has been training that's because an event got announced this this event that I was hypothetically going to be the main event against Eric Rosen yeah it was not announced yeah and then you kind of like thought like maybe let's not do this no I I knew once I declined to fight Eric that I would not be participating and I even knew you know I knew who was going to be the main event um because I was kind of offered both of those guys so I'm on Hamilton so is this still going on the chessboxing event will happen in December in Los Angeles yeah who is the main event it's Aman Hamilton who's also chess bra so they have a couple of guys as part of the chatbra channel and Lauren strand Lauren strand is a international master from England he's a I think he's done some boxing a little bit he's a commentator Brash guy nice controversial guy yeah uh it's funny because they started Lawrence put out some videos and I went damn I should have done this yeah I think it but uh I mean you're right first of all there's so many things to say one of which is if you're if you want to take it seriously you know it does pull you in like you know if you train a lot it's going to affect the rest of your life and then and then there's it it changes you I think taking Combat Sports seriously changes you and good and there's negative cost to it I think because it's a whole nother thing man it's like uh it's like doing Marathon running or something it really pulls you in and the other thing is the is the head trauma like you have to take that kind of stuff seriously especially if you're doing sparring and all that kind of stuff yeah um still some of the celebrities I don't know why but it's pretty exciting right I don't know why it'd be fun to watch a car like there's something I always said if Hikaru and Magnus did a boxing event and I was the co-main event against I don't know who that would that be that'd be has Magnus said anything about it like about doing chat box uh well first of all he's gonna commentate the Ludwig event nice which he which he said he he kind of said oh there's been people in the past that are my level in chess not my his level in chess and uh have wanted to get physical with him I think he's talking about Hikaru it's it's I don't think anybody else is that'd be that'd be a good one man that'd be a good one I think Magnus who do you think wins that one I think Magnus is in better physical shape he's also a little bit bigger I think than Hikaru a lot of reach I think he carves a dog though I think I think he'll I don't think he's gonna he's gonna get out of there like I I don't think he's gonna quit in in the ring I would think Hikaru just goes nuts in the beginning and Burns himself out so if matters can survive that I feel like a car would just go crazy and then just get exhausted would not be able to Pace himself correctly maybe chasing that first round knockout yeah yeah just swing like crazy honestly I just love to see that which is like the effect of physical exertion on the on the game I think it's I'm sure they're strong enough to yes but I think we definitely underestimate the effect of being punched maybe bleeding out of your nose or something like that it's it's no joke I can't I can't say I'm anticipating the first day I actually do some sparring and get seriously hit because I know it's not going to feel good even now I take a hard jab to the stomach or the ribs and I'm just like man this is this is rough I mean I I had to do three minutes on heavy bag and when I finished my I had I had been like slacking on my form because my arms were tired and I hit with my fingers instead of my Knuckles and my hands are like you can see the the red skin like completely pink meaty skin under I didn't realize when I was hitting and only today it's the pain is unbearable so I can't imagine head this must be no I mean it gets I mean it's a different thing I mean of course your skin gets tougher everything gets tougher so it gets used to it the head the head is a weird one because it's not going to send you those kinds of signals you're not going to get this the skin type of signals the brain is a weird thing because it doesn't hurt yeah it just does the damage and the damage can materialize itself manifest itself only years later yeah it's a weird one but then we all die is there's that Braveheart speech um I gotta ask you about Bots because it to me it's like super interesting and you've played a lot of bots at different levels uh you have a video called the advanced chess Bots are terrifying uh so what's the difference between playing humans and Bots like you mentioned this Nelson bot yeah that brings this queen out I think rated 16. over 1400 okay at 12 40. I think so like there's a style to those what uh what's the difference between the way Bots play and the way humans play a lot of people prefer playing Bots because they have anxiety playing other humans it's a very legitimate thing interesting a lot of beginners they don't like live chess they get nervous yellow anxiety you get close to your highest ever rating you panic happens to me too yeah happens to me even now so definitely Bots they're somehow more reliable or something yeah they're I don't know but that's it's a big thing it's a big thing and the popularity of that video shows that people enjoy watching you play chess bots so uh I'm gonna demystify this this might be shocking those Bots are all the same but for the most part you could just program a bot to make mistakes at a certain moment you could program a bot to spend less time on certain moves and it's gotten sophisticated enough that you can basically program it to play at whatever more or less level that a human plays at you say I'll play it at 1800 level so it's programmed to throw in mistakes the problem is and this is why it's all beginners to not play Bots because Bots are programmed in the following way beginner Bots or like literal toddlers they have no understanding whatsoever they will literally lose all their pieces but they won't lose all their pieces and make mistakes they'll be beginners the beginners actually know how to start a game they just struggle the first eight moves nine moves their mistakes are very different than Bob plays completely outlandish types of mistakes that you cannot pick up in terms of a pattern standpoint because no actual humans play like that they should move their Queen to the opposite side of the board for no reason you can take it yeah it's not even a blunder it's almost like Randomness it's completely random and this problem extends further because Advanced Bots will play an opening completely reasonably and let's just hang a rook which okay maybe happens but that's not exactly how you get to 1800 at 1800 that's a very strong level of the game you know your openings very well you start navigating the middle game based on already things that you remember and then basically once I chooses a bad plan and the other side chooses a better plan and one thing leads to another nobody's just recreationally hangs all their pieces which is the way Bots are kind of programmed to play but some of those bots in that video were I remember playing them and uh they were they yeah they were nuts uh they were out calculating me every time I thought I had a trick in two three second moment of thought it would just play the best move and sometimes that also happens it gets into a dead Loop where it just starts bulldozing you and it can't stop so it made its mistakes already yeah it's programmed to make only a few and then it just bulldozes you the rest of the way interesting I mean that's that's why I I played with stockfish a bunch so I got um I built for myself a bunch of different chess experiments recently I had to do with the chest plane bot um but I also built the infinite chessboard where it was stockfish was playing like an infinite number of chess games and one of the parameters that was interesting to play with is how long it gets to think about a move and how that affects the rating of the thing oh I've I did that a little bit so that's a tricky one I'm sure people know how to do that well but it's trick it's not trivial to to understand like what there must be a good formula for it but it's also interesting to think about like a controlled number of blunders but it's probably better the control number of blunders is not a good way to build the bot yeah it's yeah for training purposes at least the time the time per move is probably better but the craziest thing is I did that a couple of my of my devs were helping me with the build like uh I'm scaling my courses into a better chess learning platform essentially we've done a lot of different experiments with stockfish which I'm even happy to get into here um and uh stockfish making moves in 0.1 millisecond plays better than a human which is disgusting and disturbing frankly because that's crazy like you can't react to a car stopping in front of you anywhere near that fast and yeah so the reason I was interested in that is because when you have an a very large chessboard you have tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of game going on at the same time you have to the like think of the minimum amount of thinking per move that you can uh allow for and it does it does seem it's damn good uh at least to my eye basically at the lowest possible setting you can give it so yeah it's incredible it's incredible what boss you're able to do now it's as far as I know as primarily machine learning based stockfish so stockfish move to machine learning completely it's not doing search as far as I know yeah this is where you you lose me a bit but the move Discovery and evaluation is what's been changing in in the way starfish works so it's discovering of moves and then the way it looks forward and then evaluates positions that has changed but Matthew Sadler who wrote the book Game Changer about Alpha zero yeah that that he explains it significantly better but that's the way I think it it works what did that make you feel when you first saw Alpha zero play I was excited I I didn't have any any sort of existential thoughts I enjoyed watching it completely destroy openings that people thought were good uh and it it that experiment though has does have some caveat in the sense that I think Alpha zero was playing with a full tank of servers and I think stockfish wasn't which I think is what one of the things people point out they weren't playing since then they were able to demonstrate much less yeah uh but also Alpha zero stopped developing um they stopped developing it yes which which sucks but again from their perspective From deepmind's perspective it's like all right well we took on this really tricky game did something honestly incredible they won they won I mean well not just one I mean they did it without any human supervision so like uh without any training on human expert games so only through self-play which I mean that's what learning is about it's like it's what you think of as a child a human child a toddler learning from you know somewhat nothing and becoming a capable human that's that's what we think of when we think about intelligence so the fact that it's able to play itself and become the best player in the world at the game of Go and all kinds of games it's just incredible and obviously that inspired the modern stockfish yeah now to do the same all the same kind of self-play methods uh somebody on Reddit asked a pretty interesting question I don't know if you have an interesting answer to it what makes a chess move quote unquote human as you are someone oh this is to me but it's matching you in third person as you are someone working in AI this idea of humanness would seem incredibly interesting yes sir it is especially since most cheat detection relies on humanness as a way to detect cheaters I think since children being born right now will have the advantage of engine training their whole life they will start to see the game the way an engine does will a person be considered a cheater if they play like an engine there also seem to be a discrepancy especially with Levy about who can play What appears to be a non-human move he often says things like quote if you were a normal player normally in quotes if you were a normal player I would think you were cheating but since it's Magnus I don't doubt Magnus is great but if human this is our Benchmark what is the ELO rating where your moves can start to look like an engine without critique there's a bunch of questions in there they combine two of my quotes yes and into one so one thing that I like to say is sometimes in a chess game moves look or an opening looks so ridiculous that if a viewer played it I would make fun of them or slap them that's always the joke if I was your chess coach I'd smack you but yeah when Magnus plays it which oh wow you know it's a very different so they mixed up this quote with another quote which is uh you know if if ice if I'll be explaining something and I'll say oh and here the engine says you should play like this yeah if one of your opponents plays like this report them for cheating they say they fuse two quotes they said oh human can't play like that but because it's an engine move but because Magnus is playing so they they mixed kind of two things but there's interesting levels of humor and uh insight there on both of those yeah the difference between human move and engine and like what an engine move is is I think two things number one a computer move is outlandish in its in its concept and it's um and its idea so the best example that I can give of that is if you gave a hundred grand Masters a position and told them you know what what do you think the best move here is for black not in this position right here we have nothing but an overwhelming amount of them would look at the position evaluate everything they know about the game of chess which is relatively similar but obviously slightly imbalanced based on their skill level and they would come up with a sample size of two or three moves and in comes the computer with a fucking Haymaker and suddenly everybody goes oh everything we know about Chess has gone out the window so they all start looking at that move and they know it's the best move so now they start adding the evidence behind the verdict as opposed to getting to the verdict while first looking at at the evidence so the concept of it and the idea of it is so outlandish based on a certain type of position that you can't fully grasp it you have to continue to beg the engine to tell you what the variation is a move is only good if its extension is good that's the way chess works so if like a move is good it's because the computer has seen that the various branches of things going forward are also good so you bring all that back and no human could have even conceptualized that initial thing but the second thing about computer moves is they they look counter-intuitive so that's a if you might be in a position where it looks like the demands of the position are ABC and then the computer is like nope it's not because I've seen the future way more than you possibly could have and I don't have emotions so like dumb moves and Brilliant moves can look similar yes and oftentimes do and this is actually back to the Hans thing a lot of people now dissecting these games they're playing and there are they're basically saying like even Fabiano Corona one of the best players in the world was on some on his podcast yesterday basically saying okay this is beyond my level saying out of my league yeah what's that what's out of your league you played for the world championship kind of we get what we can read between the lines right it's is it possible that Hans is that level of Genius is there like different different kinds of Genius like where one you could be out of each other's League kind of thing maybe in the case of Magnus it's understanding of end games it's just somehow he understands the that last phase of the game and the complexities and the problems he composed better than anybody else so you can see Magnus do uh poor looking Moves In the End Game or like moves that don't fit what seem your gut says is would be the optimal yes but also so it's not that you even think they're right you you just might not even consider them yeah because of over Reliance on your own information or even the computer that was what was going on in game six she kept doing things and kept playing and kept finding play and posing those questions that humans and computers could not understand so he beat the engine basically he could he wouldn't have beaten the engine because they would have defended Yan lost that game in the 90s move psychologically he thought the game was over so that contributed computer would have defended so by the by the time this podcast comes out which I don't know would be in a week or something like that I feel like more will happen let's say you're predicting engine how does this Hans drama end wow look let's look in um in three months by the time we get to the next World Championship let's say what what uh this what are the options what are the possible let's imagine let's not say like what the probability is what are the options uh chess.com is forced to or agrees to or whatever to come up with a huge amount of evidence of cheating in the past uh or Hans comes out what are the what can Hans do with this so I'm uncomfortable with the general make sure you can maybe update me on this but there was a little bit of an attack on him not a lot of an attack that he's a cheater right without evidence without clear conclusive evidence physical evidence physical evidence so all of those all right that's the tricky thing yeah so like that stuff we're talking about is beyond my level that starts being um kind of intuitive circumstantial evidence there's the statistical evidence behind the over-the-board games that he's played in 2020 2021 where the games match what's called engine correlation more than Magnus and many other top Grand Masters combined but that can be argued is because he was very strong in playing weaker oppositions so there's always kind of this argument against statistics right there's the fact that the guy who Magnus name dropped Maxim bloogie loogie is a chess Grand Master and he's even been I think president of the US Chess Federation I've played him in some Blitz Games it turns out I wasn't even fully aware of the extent of this he has been banned from chess.com for cheating for cheating have they actually have has him and Hans actually worked yes so that was why he named dropped that right that's also not good you see where this is getting you still don't have the physical proof but you have smoke so I don't know how this ends I don't know if this if if he denies it to the death and he ends up filing some sort of legal action some sort of Ethics complaint yeah or he admits everything I don't know boy well no matter what I hope despite chess or not that he's mentally strong enough for whatever is to come that's what I keep saying because he's been under Fire right yeah I can't I can't imagine right like I just I really can't imagine and maybe we just have too much compassion but I don't think so I really just feel like at the end of the day chess is just a game but it is a game played by millions of people throughout history and Nations have basically fought Wars over the chessboard so like there's there's a lot it's like Olympics Olympics is just a little oh this dude running and so on the hockey is just the thing with for the puck and but you know um it's it's also much more than that it's also it's also Nations um sort of figuring out their conflict in a way that doesn't involve violence yeah it's a serious thing and it's a thing that inspires millions of people and it's a testing ground for intelligent systems that eventually uh take over human civilization yeah I mean the Bots Bots are really interesting I I don't know if there's other lessons like you you played a clone of yourself that's you watched stockfish versus stockfish you have a video um people should check out each other you have a lot of Awesome videos you have video titles Stockbridge versus stockfish and that was the experiment I made them play each other so I made the two person what did you learn from that experiment uh I enjoyed first of all they will always make a draw so engines don't get to play each other from a beginning position because they will always draw especially if they're the same engine so stockfish 15 slackfish 15 I don't think one side will ever beat the other basically but if you program them to play a certain opening position according to chess Theory you get to see interesting ways into how they evaluate one of the things one of the ways that it played against the London opening was absurd like it just it was completely ridiculous black sacrificed two pawns as early as move six which is a borderline completely lost position and then both sides foresaw that the only way white was going to be able to use those that material advantage was to give it back and stabilize their own position like black just got a crazy attack Jesus Christ because this is crazy yeah but they drew I mean they ended up drawing so I I'm also gonna make them play against each other in either bad openings or like some of the most popular gambits looking looking at something like that um and the way I'm going to do this is basically say which chess gambits are the best and the way I'm going to do that is theoretically the engine should be able to beat the Gambit because the Gambit is very rarely blessed by the computer so if the computer cannot beat that Gambit that means it's good that means it's not losing if it's a completely lost Gambit it will beat it but if it draws despite getting that early disadvantage then that means the Gambit is very reliable and you can play it so that's a good way to evaluate opening games yeah what's what's the best what's your favorite opening or what what openings do you like there was an opening that got me back into chess when I was 15. I had quit for like three years and I went to my friend's house and he had a book by Lars gandorf a Danish Grandmaster called the Karo Khan defense which is C6 do you want white do you want black do you want to show them the opening this is the opening the carcon defense so you play E4 I play C6 I have I have to play Black that's it yeah absolutely and we develop from here what counts as a opening okay but the development does the development matter yeah so from here the development goes into the variations of the Karo Khan so this is the Karo Khan like you can be in a city but then you can be in neighborhoods so that's a very non-dramatic okay uh two Pawns in the center so that's called The Briar variation so which what's a good thing for me two two squares yeah if you can put two Pawns in the center yeah you should and then um so that's a good thing yes and then I will go here and now you have to decide what you're gonna do with your center point you can push take or defend it and uh push take or defend right yeah uh what would you suggest take is the the worst take is just stable so we just trade but pushing is considered the best advancing and taking my space away from me so I think Alpha zero or stockfish would probably always push push and now there's something called like the main line or the sideline main line is what's the most popular played at all levels which is moving the bishop here I've played this a lot but for beginners this is an intermediate player's uh this is why I love this opening so much on move three black already has a plus score which is crazy like it's not supposed to happen and there's this very tricky second most popular move which is undermining your Center trying to get you to take my free Pawn but destabilize and leave both of them kind of hanging and uh is that why the the plus score is because you're susceptible to the destabil destabilization yes because people at 99 of the rating ladder do not understand how to deal with what's coming basically they don't know how to deal with a structural attack so would uh would stockfish try to defend the pawn here and keep no it would take the pawn and tell you to go fuck yourself oh I knew that because I am 3400 right that would take the pawn and be like all right win it back and even if you did you would suffer it would make you win it back in the most annoying way it would make you tie your shoes together and so I uh like as stockfish I would taste yes that's the best move but not at 99 of the rating ladder which is funny interesting um but you like to play this I play this against GMS I play both I move my Bishop I push it and you know what are the different ways it evolves like then the rest doesn't matter so this is just like a pawn structure thing uh yeah and I mean it how deep are most openings so it's anywhere from like two moves to like 10 moves kind of thing yeah you can be out of theory very very quickly to move two move three like basically on your own you have a general idea but you don't remember games I mean I I know Karo Khan games from start to finish because I've played it since 2011. so you know all the different branches that goes without down yeah I I think I know every opening in chess basically I think most most title players know every opening but we don't know we can't play it competitively because we would be but what are some of the weirder openings that um foreign but might be explored like Magnus might play them just to fuck with the opponent he played something recently actually uh against this German Prodigy Vincent kymer which was um a specific move order in a very popular opening so it was basically a position that had been reached thousands of times but the move order Magnus chose with white was played maybe 0.05 percent of the time which is crazy thousands of games and it's supposed to be not good meaning it allows black to equalize because that's what black is going for it's not winning the game but equalizing because you go second says I don't care about equalizing I just want a position I don't want my opponent to know the answers to the test and that's so interesting yeah because also fucks you psychologically it throws you off and just always keep you on your toes he's in a weird position but he also has the advantage of being able to intimidate I wonder how many people um how much is that a roll of it like being scared of the other person that's usual I think I think some of the top guys would deny it but you know when you're in the seventh hour and you're playing Magnus it's a very different feeling than some of the other when Magnus is messing around in the opening it's very different than another person messing around in the opening you're just kind of like expect to for something to be there we'll see if it translates to poker for him but I think he got he gets a little bit maybe less respect in the poker world in the Chess World he's sort of alpha he gets a lot of respect I just talked to Daniel negrono he gives gets the only person that doesn't respect Magnus Carlson honestly either in chess or poker is Magnus Carlos [Laughter] sure but like bang is just hilarious I mean when he talks about his rating he's like that's pretty good when he talks about how good he's this Pokemon I suck but you know I think that self-critical view that he I think he honestly believes uh to a degree is is probably part of the the uh the engine that fuels him to get better and better and better and better yeah but what I'm saying is if you if you're face to face with Magnus out of chessboard it's not the same as being in a nine-handed poker table with him you kind of keep an eye on him maybe and then he's a mysterious guy but just different because you're like this is the man yeah there's very few people yeah so in uh in poker they talk about Phil Ivey that way yeah yeah it's like this super intimidating I think that's that's probably harder to intimidate in poker actually I don't know I don't know there's something intimidating about like excellence in a deterministic game that's just terrifying like you're fuck I mean it's like playing stockfish like you're fucked this thing will suffocate you and especially when you do makes moves that you don't understand this I to me the most beautiful thing honestly is the sacrifices that the um the engines do just the it's such a fuck you yep like I could sacrifice pieces and I'll get them back and I'll get them back more and I could I don't even I don't even have to get them back your position is so bad I Gave You full material and there's nothing you can do about it yeah that's terrifying yeah that's terrifying that's like and that transfers to AI systems in general like Like A system that plays weak just to to fool you for people who uh are trying to get better at chess beginners or um at any stage of their development what advice would you give about getting better Except watch did you of course watch my videos check out chastity.com that's where we're going to scale the courses too uh but no on a serious note you have to be prepared to lose way more than win my mom gave me advice when I was maybe 13 or 14 and I just discovered that I I liked girls she said you're gonna get a lot more no's in life than yeses uh that even happened with with my wife actually our whole journey is is quite quite fascinating it's paved with rejection okay paved with yes various uh ghostings uh over the course of years but then we got married and we love each other very much so um it's a it's a it's a wonderful Tale But it's the it's the same in chess You're Gonna Lose a lot and you have to be for adults I noticed kids and adults learn chess very differently kids yell out in class and they're very excited and they don't realize how many times they get something wrong adults never want to talk during lessons because they're afraid of being wrong adults will preface correct answers with this is probably wrong but like shut up you're paying for a for a private lesson this is the place to be wrong you know so adults especially think that being dominant in a career where they've dedicated a lot of their brain power a lot of their work ethic and a lot of their study time it's going to translate to chess they do it to keep their own kids they helicopter their own kids because they try to apply a lot of the same stuff studying chess is different than studying anything else anything else same could be argued for martial arts I guess but yeah 100 you have to have a beginner's mind and what that actually means is sucking in every aspect of the game and and studying all the interesting ways in which you suck and you will realize you get better without actually trying to get better I show up to the boxing gym one day I move my hips better yeah and my I would do Shadow Boxing uh Sensei goes you're moving your feed better today you got better I'm like I didn't practice footwork it's just your brain just starts putting it all together randomly you might study a shitload and still lose 100 points if you're gonna study chess oh and for fuck's sake this is the only activity where people go in going how much do I have to work to be a Grandmaster nowhere else in my life have I ever seen someone try to pick up a hobby and want to be the the top ranking level only in chess you're right but like for example when I like grappling Sports I'll see people come to a gym and basically ask like how long before I can get into the UFC right but UFC champion is different I mean no Grandmaster is equivalent to be getting into the UFC um I guess yeah so but people quickly realize when like the 110 pound girl Taps them out over and over and they're a 230 pound like um ripped dude they realize like okay this is an art this is a journey yeah and I think if you resist the lessons that failure teaches you that's when you don't grow so like just relax and one of the things you have to learn probably place the chest to is to know how to relax your body your mind and just like there's something about just like you said like if you don't resist it if you relax then your body your mind will learn the way of this game and probably add to that is just put a lot of hours in of having fun but then then I I on that Perpetual chess podcast I listened to somebody that say like it doesn't like Puzzles none of that what matters is the number of hours you spend kind of suffering meaning like thinking deeply like count like like straining like thinking with your mind like really working hard so uh and then you know you have the Magnus who says no what matters is the number of hours you spend having fun yeah it's a mix it's a mix he's right I don't quite agree with suffering but I think people do a lot of fake learning they play Speed games they just go through tactics so okay I have to do 20 tactics okay Boop wrong next one I used to tell my students you need to do 10 puzzles and you need to get 100 correct I don't care how long it takes so I suppose that kind of is like the suffering Theory but if you do 30 puzzles and you get eight correct what even is that that's so laughable and the correct amount of you know it was 29 I don't know but 26 it's you can't do that you have to get things right and that's the only way you're actually and that requires like thinking deeply like really struggling like especially if you're doing the puzzles at the level that that's your level I've done a puzzle for an hour before because I was so stubborn yeah I didn't want to just put in a wrong answer yeah the the the guy was listening to said like that's good you should you should do that maybe for me and the same with blindfold just I have to say like my blindfold skills I never practice I just I can visualize the board quite well I've played than most I've played four games blindfolded at the same time that sucks that just feels horrible in the brain afterward but like I can play Four simultaneous games apply for it yeah what's that take to do that I don't know and I get asked that all the time how do I practice why the fuck we should do that to your social media good party trick it is yes I it is the video of Magnus doing it in Columbus Circle on YouTube has like I don't know how many views I did it live with an announcer I can't imagine how chaotic that was but he yeah it's a great party trick yeah oh there is a Reddit thing I I forgot to ask Magnus that they asked me to ask him because they moved the wrong piece yes and then somehow he remembered I don't know how that happened I have to tell you I I was I kind of presumed that he figured out from the way the other person was moving that they moved the wrong piece yeah yeah I forgot to ask him that yeah why did I forget I didn't remember me sucks uh you said you know ups and downs in your childhood a little rough sometimes um also you get attacked by the beautiful wonderful people on the internet so sometimes it's difficult what's uh what's been the lowest point that you've ever gone to in your mind in my career in my life in your life in your career and everything your mind so have you uh ever been depressed for sure yes how how did you like if you can remember moments how did you overcome that well I I will share two anecdotes uh one when I was uh May 2012 so I was uh 16 and a half and I was living in a household situation where I thought nobody knew what was going on basically without sharing obviously extremely personal details like what was going on except me and I confided in my grandmother I was imagine living in a house where you basically feel like a prisoner you don't want to interact with anybody in the house you don't know how you're supposed to bring these things up of course this sounds extremely vague and I just don't I don't feel like exposing all of my entire family drama to the audience but I live this way for probably something like eight months I don't know something ridiculous it was the junior year of high school so I was supposed to take my SATs that was the year I was supposed to finish up my portfolio for college because you only get really a few months of senior year to start applying it was a fuck it was a nightmare a complete Nightmare and I I don't know how I got through it time went by I listened to sad music and tried to spend as little time as home as possible I would pretend to fall asleep at my friend's houses so that my mom was like you coming for dinner and I'll just pretend to be asleep it was just a grind yeah yeah it was it was a grind I I don't remember a whole lot from from that period just sort of finding what made me happy and trying to focus on it and I was a teenager in the house I wasn't going to run away I still had a roof over my head so I'm not not saying I had a better or worse than others I just had a different uh and actually recently this is much more on my memory uh I more or less tore up a very happy life my wife and I had and I've talked about this in bursts on stream but essentially what happened was uh we we had just been living in that's actually funny the way we got into this apartment was was also very bad but we were living in just a very like nice little apartment like high-rise apartment safe and the reason we moved into a high-rise was because we had lived in a house for two weeks that got broken into not because of who I am but because we suspect we had people moving in mattresses and they went oh shit these two people live here that's it and basically there was three Apartments my upstairs neighbor let in somebody that they didn't expect and the guy cracked our door open with a crowbar thank God that was the first day in two years my wife went to work did they know did they not know I don't know everything happens for a reason so everybody got hurt nobody nobody got hurt yeah they stole they they stole them some couple of important things but nobody was hurt uh and the cops did nothing yeah in New York for for safety and we're away from things and we have our own nice little Nook and somewhere some months into it I started hearing noises from above our neighbors and it started in the morning 7 A.M it started in the afternoon and I picked up on it and I expected it every day for weeks then it was driving me crazy and I was like okay we're gonna go have a civil conversation with who's ever up there sounds like kids so we go knock lady Gaslight the shit out of us I've never been gaslighted that hard in my life she went noise what noise it's probably our other neighbor who's a boxer lady you have kids we can hear you through the vents hear you talking to your kids went to the front desk of the building they did nothing went to the leasing office they did nothing and basically over time I just let this drive me nuts this was been back to the stubbornness thing I I decided we were leaving we were going to live somewhere there was no noise because we can't beat these people there's there's nothing we can do right and my wife I dragged her around to a bunch of different viewings that was dead set I was I was decided I was completely miserable and I we found a house to rent like a nice house family had just moved away house Standalone house not gonna have neighbors but wife decided that wife decided we decided that the it's too big it's too big for so we're gonna get a dog we always wanted an animal so we're gonna get a dog so we get an absolute lunatic puppy who just doesn't let us sleep at all this is on top of everything else the Mental Health crisis that's going on and the day we are moving to this house I realize I fuck up like I realized that this whole thing was in my head and I don't want to leave I don't want to leave this could have all been avoided and the guilt and res I didn't want to exist like it's not that I it wasn't suicide but you know the feeling of just you want to just observe yourself from a distance yeah and I couldn't sleep I thought my wife was gonna leave me like this is my and that's what anxiety does it also takes everything you feel to an absolute dread and that I experienced for a good chunk of two weeks and then we kind of settle down and decided like we're gonna live you tell her about it like were you able to talk through it yeah yeah I yeah that you know the levels of Madness that could be inside your mind I don't know if she'll ever know but I tried to tell her that and uh give glimpses yes I'm not I'm not sure you'll ever know I got a good point yeah I try to that's why I try to keep busy but that was that was the darkest that got and yet through all of that I went on stream every day I made YouTube videos every day like I understood that I had a job to do and and I did it and I talked about it here and there but that was that was the worst that I ever got because I'm learning that the emotions I experience are guilt remorse and your brain just goes in circles basically about things that you've done or haven't done it's funny because noise can do that also so no the noise was real but it was building in your head yeah so I I try to I actually it's kind of funny because I like to focus deeply and I'll have like sources of noise I've tried to teach myself over time I'll go to like coffee shops and stuff to like I like I almost try to put myself next to annoying situations so I get like trained really maybe I should do that but it's at a certain point at the same time I've gotten to hang out with certain people especially in La they're like in the middle of nowhere like a Malibu or something and it's like that quiet and can you hear your ears ringing it's so quiet basically yeah and it's like holy shit this is a good place this is a good way if you want to write something or create something this is like super quiet so my mom does my mom's a science journalist science author she just published her first her first book actually on the poop of all things yeah fecal the waste management is actually very fascinating concept and look through history and she would do that she goes to complete Solitude yeah and she writes yeah it's beautiful no Sirens I mean New York is the opposite of that so you know it's you you've you've brought it uh you brought on yourself I I've lived there for 20 years it has it been tough like going on stream to put on the face of Happiness through that yeah yes but I find my ways to have moments where I can talk about it if it's on a stream I don't get 10 000 live viewers so it's very different it's if I stream late night I get a 1500 2 000 viewers I used to care a lot more about viewers on on stream but I've basically invested fully in YouTube so that's kind of the way I and I think I don't know maybe you can correct me but I think people appreciate the human being behind the chess streamer I think so I think so I think a lot of people not in the Chess World but just a lot of people they put on a Persona and just in general social media is the highlights of your life or the low lies just as long as they're dramatic but I I've tried I try to be very open and honest when I'm tired I'm tired it's what makes my recaps of my tournaments I think so real yeah man you're an incredible person I've been a fan for a long time it's kind of funny that we connected with God and she has to talk uh please please keep creating keep teaching people for now I'm not going anywhere well it could end at any moment as we talked about so yeah uh thank you so much for talking today man thank you for everything you do it was an honor it was great thanks for having me on thanks for listening to this conversation with Levy Osmond to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from Irving chair Neff every chess master was once a beginner thank you for listening and hope to see you next time