Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Magnus Carlsen,
00:00:03 the number one ranked chess player in the world
00:00:05 and widely considered to be one of,
00:00:07 if not the greatest chess player of all time.
00:00:11 The camera on Magnus died 20 minutes into the conversation.
00:00:14 Most folks still just listen to the audio
00:00:16 through a podcast player anyway,
00:00:18 but if you’re watching this on YouTube or Spotify,
00:00:23 we did our best to still make it interesting
00:00:25 by adding relevant image overlays.
00:00:27 I mess things up sometimes, like in this case,
00:00:32 but I’m always working hard to improve.
00:00:34 I hope you understand.
00:00:36 Thank you for your patience and support along the way.
00:00:39 I love you all.
00:00:42 This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
00:00:44 To support it, please check out our sponsors
00:00:46 in the description.
00:00:47 And now, dear friends, here’s Magnus Carlsen.
00:00:51 You’re considered by many to be one of the greatest,
00:00:54 if not the greatest chess players of all time,
00:00:57 but you’re also one of the best fantasy football,
00:00:59 AKA soccer, competitors in the world,
00:01:02 plus recently picking up poker
00:01:03 and competing at a world class level.
00:01:06 So before chess, let’s talk football and greatness.
00:01:10 You’re a Real Madrid fan,
00:01:12 so let me ask you the ridiculous big question.
00:01:15 Who do you think is the greatest football,
00:01:17 AKA soccer player of all time?
00:01:19 Can you make the case for Messi?
00:01:22 Can you make the case for Cristiano Ronaldo, Pele,
00:01:25 Maradona, does anybody jump to mind?
00:01:28 I think it’s pretty hard to make a case
00:01:30 for anybody else than Messi for his all around game.
00:01:37 And frankly, my Real Madrid fandom
00:01:42 sort of predates the Ronaldo era,
00:01:47 the second Ronaldo, not the first one.
00:01:50 So I always liked Ronaldo,
00:01:51 but I always kind of thought that Messi was better.
00:01:56 And I went to quite a number of Madrid games
00:02:00 and they’ve always been super helpful to me down there.
00:02:03 The only thing is that, like they asked me,
00:02:06 they were gonna do an interview
00:02:08 and they were gonna ask me who my favorite player was.
00:02:10 And I said somebody else,
00:02:14 I think I said Isco at that point,
00:02:15 and I was like, okay, take two now you say Ronaldo.
00:02:19 So for them it was very important,
00:02:22 but it wasn’t that huge to me.
00:02:26 So Messi over Maradona.
00:02:29 Yeah, but I think just like with chess,
00:02:32 it’s hard to compare eras.
00:02:34 Obviously the improvements in football
00:02:36 have been like in technique and such
00:02:39 have been even greater than they have been in chess,
00:02:43 but it’s always a weird discussion to have.
00:02:48 But just as a fan,
00:02:50 what do you think is beautiful about the game?
00:02:54 What defines greatness?
00:02:55 Is it, you know, with Messi,
00:02:58 one, he’s really good at finishing,
00:03:00 two, very good at assist,
00:03:02 like three, there’s just magic.
00:03:03 It’s just beautiful to see the play.
00:03:05 So it’s not just about the finishing.
00:03:06 There’s some, it’s like Maradona’s hand of God.
00:03:09 There’s some creativity on the pitch.
00:03:13 Is that important or is it very important
00:03:15 to get the World Cups and the big championships
00:03:18 and that kind of stuff?
00:03:19 I think the World Cup is pretty overrated,
00:03:22 seeing as it’s such a small sample size.
00:03:26 So it sort of annoys me always when, you know,
00:03:31 titles are always appreciated so much,
00:03:35 even though that particular title can be a lot of luck
00:03:42 or at least some luck.
00:03:45 So I do appreciate the statistics a bit
00:03:50 and all the statistics say that Messi’s
00:03:54 the best finisher of all time,
00:03:55 which I think helps a lot.
00:03:58 And then there’s the intangibles as well.
00:04:01 The flip side of that is the small sample size
00:04:05 is what really creates the magic.
00:04:10 It’s so, it’s just like the Olympics.
00:04:12 You basically train your whole life for this.
00:04:15 You live your whole life for this and it’s a rare moment.
00:04:17 One mistake and it’s all over.
00:04:20 That’s, for some reason, a lot of people
00:04:23 either break under that pressure
00:04:25 or rise up under that pressure.
00:04:26 You don’t admire the magic of that?
00:04:28 No, I do.
00:04:29 I just think that rising under pressure
00:04:34 and breaking under the pressure
00:04:36 is often a really oversimplified take
00:04:41 on what’s happening.
00:04:44 Yeah, we do romanticize the game.
00:04:46 Well, let me ask you another ridiculous question.
00:04:48 You’re also a fan of basketball.
00:04:50 Yes.
00:04:53 Let me ask the goat question.
00:04:55 I’m biased because I went to high school in Chicago,
00:05:00 Chicago Bulls during the Michael Jordan era.
00:05:03 Let me ask the Jordan versus LeBron James question.
00:05:07 Let’s continue on this thread of greatness.
00:05:10 Which one do you pick or somebody else?
00:05:13 Magic Johnson.
00:05:14 So I’ll give you a completely different answer.
00:05:15 Uh oh.
00:05:17 Depending on my mood and depending on whom I talk to,
00:05:21 I pick one of the two and then I try to argue for that.
00:05:24 With the quantum mechanical thing.
00:05:25 Well, can you, what, again, what would,
00:05:30 if you were to argue for either one,
00:05:35 statistically, I think LeBron James
00:05:36 is going to surpass Jordan.
00:05:38 Yeah, no doubt.
00:05:39 And so again, there’s a debate between.
00:05:44 Unquantifiable greatness, no?
00:05:46 I mean, that’s the whole, that’s the whole debate.
00:05:50 Yes.
00:05:51 So it’s, well, it’s quantifiable versus unquantifiable.
00:05:54 Yeah.
00:05:54 What’s more important?
00:05:55 And you’re depending on mood all over the place.
00:05:58 Yeah.
00:05:59 But what do you lean in general with these folks,
00:06:02 with soccer, with anything in life,
00:06:05 towards the unquantifiable more?
00:06:07 No, definitely towards the quantifiable.
00:06:10 So when you’re unsure, lean towards the numbers.
00:06:12 Yeah.
00:06:13 But see, like, it’s later generations.
00:06:15 There’s something, that’s what people say about Maradona
00:06:18 is, you know, he took a arguably somewhat mediocre team
00:06:23 to a World Cup.
00:06:25 So there’s that also uplifting nature of the player
00:06:28 to be able to rise up, it is a team sport.
00:06:31 So are you gonna, like, are you gonna punish Messi
00:06:36 for taking a mediocre Argentine squad
00:06:40 to the final in 2014 and punish him
00:06:43 because they lost to a great team very narrowly
00:06:47 after they missed?
00:06:49 The internet does.
00:06:50 He set up, like, a great chance for Higuain
00:06:53 in the first half, which he, which he fluffed.
00:06:57 And then, yeah, eventually they lost the game.
00:07:00 Yeah, they do criticize Cristiano Ronaldo,
00:07:02 Messi for being on really strong squads
00:07:04 in terms of the club teams and saying,
00:07:07 yeah, okay, it’s easy when you have like Ronaldinho
00:07:10 or whoever on your team.
00:07:13 It would be very interesting
00:07:14 just if the league could make a decision.
00:07:19 Yeah, just random, random allocation.
00:07:21 Yeah.
00:07:25 And just every single game, just keep reallocating
00:07:28 or maybe once a season or every season you get random.
00:07:32 But let’s say every, every player,
00:07:37 if let’s say they sign a five year contract for a team,
00:07:41 like one of them, you’re gonna get randomly allocated
00:07:43 to, to let’s say a bottom half team.
00:07:48 I bet you there’s gonna be so much corruption around that.
00:07:50 It could be random.
00:07:51 Obviously it wouldn’t, wouldn’t ever happen or work,
00:07:54 but I think it’s interesting to think about.
00:07:57 So on chess, let’s zoom out.
00:08:01 If you break down your approach to chess
00:08:04 when you’re at your best,
00:08:06 what do you think,
00:08:10 what do you think contributes to that approach?
00:08:12 Is it memory recall, specific lines and positions?
00:08:15 Is it intuition?
00:08:16 How much of it is intuition?
00:08:18 How much of it is pure calculation?
00:08:20 How much of it is messing with the strategy of the opponent?
00:08:23 So the game theory aspect in terms of what contributes
00:08:27 to the highest level of play that you do.
00:08:30 I think the answer differs a little bit now
00:08:35 from what it did eight years ago.
00:08:39 For instance, like I’ve, I feel like I’ve had like two peaks
00:08:42 and in my career in 2014,
00:08:46 well, 2013, 2014, and also in 2019.
00:08:50 And in those years, I was very different
00:08:56 in terms of, of my strength,
00:09:00 strength as specifically in 2019,
00:09:03 I benefited a lot from opening preparation
00:09:07 while in 2013, 2014,
00:09:09 I mostly tried to avoid my opponent’s preparation
00:09:15 rather than that being a, being a strength.
00:09:19 So I’m mentioning that also because it’s something,
00:09:22 something you didn’t, didn’t mention.
00:09:26 I think like my intuitive understanding of chess has
00:09:31 over those years always been a little bit better
00:09:35 than the others, even though it has evolved as well.
00:09:41 Certainly there are, there are things that I understand now
00:09:44 that I didn’t understand back then,
00:09:46 but that’s not only for me, that’s for, for others as well.
00:09:52 I was younger back then.
00:09:53 So I played with more energy,
00:09:55 which meant that I could play better
00:09:56 in long drawn out games,
00:10:01 which was also a necessity for me
00:10:03 because I didn’t, I couldn’t,
00:10:05 couldn’t beat people in the, in the openings.
00:10:09 But in terms of calculation,
00:10:12 that’s always been a weird issue for me.
00:10:16 Like I’ve always been really, really bad
00:10:20 at solving exercises in chess.
00:10:22 Like that’s been like a blind spot for me.
00:10:28 First of all, I found it hard to concentrate on them
00:10:34 and to look, to look deep enough.
00:10:38 So this is like a puzzle, a position, mate in X.
00:10:42 I mean, one thing is mate, but find the best move.
00:10:45 That’s generally the exercise,
00:10:46 like find the best move, find the best line.
00:10:49 You, you just don’t connect with it.
00:10:52 Usually like you have to, to look, look deep.
00:10:54 And then when I get these lines during the game,
00:10:58 I very often find the, the, the right solution,
00:11:04 even though, even though it’s not still
00:11:11 the best part of my game to, to calculate very, very deeply.
00:11:17 But it doesn’t feel like calculation you’re saying
00:11:19 in terms of.
00:11:20 And it does sometimes, but for me,
00:11:23 it’s more like I’m at the board trying to find,
00:11:26 trying to find the solution.
00:11:27 And I understand like the training at home
00:11:30 is like trying a little bit to, to replicate that.
00:11:33 Like you give somebody half an hour in a position,
00:11:37 like in this instance, you might’ve thought
00:11:40 for half an hour if you play the game,
00:11:42 but I just, I just cannot do it.
00:11:44 One thing I know that I am good at though,
00:11:47 is calculating short lines because I calculate them,
00:11:54 them well, I’m good at seeing little details
00:11:58 and I’m also much better than, than most at evaluating,
00:12:05 which I think is something that sets me,
00:12:08 sets me apart from, from others.
00:12:11 So evaluating specific position, if I,
00:12:15 if I make this move and the position changes in this way,
00:12:20 is this a step in the right direction?
00:12:22 Like in a big picture way?
00:12:24 Yeah.
00:12:24 Like you calculate a few moves ahead and then you evaluate
00:12:27 because a lot of, a lot of time, a lot of the times
00:12:31 you cannot, the branches become so big
00:12:34 that you cannot calculate everything.
00:12:35 So you have to, yeah.
00:12:37 So you have to, you have to make evaluations based on,
00:12:41 you know, based mostly on knowledge
00:12:44 and intuition and somehow I seem to do that pretty well.
00:12:49 When you say you’re good at short lines,
00:12:51 what’s that, what’s, what’s short?
00:12:53 That’s usually like lines of two to four moves each.
00:12:59 Okay, so that, that’s directly applicable
00:13:01 to even faster games like blitz, chess and so on.
00:13:04 Yeah, blitz is a lot about calculating forest lines.
00:13:09 So those, you can see pretty clearly that the players
00:13:14 who struggle at blitz who are great at classical
00:13:17 are those who rely on a deep calculating ability
00:13:21 because you simply don’t have time for that in blitz.
00:13:24 You have to calculate quickly and rely a lot on intuition.
00:13:29 Can you try to, I know it’s really difficult.
00:13:30 Can you try to talk through what’s actually
00:13:34 being visualized in your head?
00:13:36 Is there, is there a visual component?
00:13:39 Yeah, no, I just visualized the board.
00:13:41 I mean, the board is in my head.
00:13:44 Two dimensional?
00:13:45 My interpretation is that it is two dimensional.
00:13:49 Like what color is, is it brown tinted?
00:13:52 Is it black?
00:13:53 Is it, like what’s the theme?
00:13:56 Is it a big board, small board?
00:13:58 Are the, what do the pawns look like?
00:14:01 Or is it more in the space of concepts?
00:14:04 Like.
00:14:05 Yeah, there aren’t a lot of colors.
00:14:07 It’s mostly, yeah.
00:14:09 So what is it?
00:14:11 Queen’s gambit on the ceiling, whatever.
00:14:13 I’m trying now to imagine it.
00:14:16 What about when you do the branching,
00:14:17 when you have multiple boards and so on?
00:14:19 What, how does that look?
00:14:20 Are you?
00:14:20 No, but it’s only one at a time.
00:14:21 So like.
00:14:22 One position at a time.
00:14:23 One position at a time.
00:14:24 So then I go back and that’s what, when,
00:14:27 when people play, or at least that’s what I do.
00:14:30 When I play blindfold chess against several people,
00:14:33 then it’s just always one board at a time.
00:14:35 And the rest are stored away somewhere.
00:14:39 But how do you store them away?
00:14:40 So like, you went down one branch.
00:14:42 You’re like, all right, that’s, I got that.
00:14:45 I understand that there’s some good there,
00:14:47 there’s some bad there.
00:14:48 Now let me go down another branch.
00:14:50 Like, how do you store away the information?
00:14:52 You just put it on a shelf, kind of?
00:14:54 I try and store it away.
00:14:55 Sometimes I have to sort of repeat it because I forget.
00:15:00 And it does happen frequently in games
00:15:02 that you’re thinking for,
00:15:06 especially if you’re thinking for a long,
00:15:08 let’s say a half an hour,
00:15:09 or even more than that, that you play a move
00:15:12 and then your opponent plays a move,
00:15:14 then you play a move and they play a move again.
00:15:17 And you realize, oh, I actually calculated that.
00:15:20 I just forgot about it.
00:15:22 So that’s obviously what happens
00:15:24 when you store the information and you cannot retrieve it.
00:15:26 When you think about a move for 20, 30 minutes,
00:15:30 like how do you break that down?
00:15:32 Can you describe what,
00:15:35 like what’s the algorithm here
00:15:36 that takes 30 minutes to run?
00:15:38 30 minutes is, at least for me, it’s usually a waste.
00:15:44 30 minutes usually means that I don’t know what to do.
00:15:47 And I’m trying.
00:15:48 You’re just running into the wall over and over.
00:15:49 Yeah, I’m trying to find something that isn’t there.
00:15:52 I think 10 to 15 minutes things
00:15:55 in complicated positions can be really, really helpful.
00:16:00 Then you can spend your time pretty efficiently.
00:16:05 Just means that the branches are getting wide.
00:16:10 There’s a lot to run through,
00:16:15 both in terms of calculation
00:16:17 and lots you have to evaluate as well.
00:16:20 And then based on that 10 to 15 minute thing,
00:16:24 you have a pretty good idea what to do.
00:16:29 I mean, it’s very rare that I would think for half an hour
00:16:32 and I would have a eureka moment during the game.
00:16:35 Like if I haven’t seen it in 10 minutes,
00:16:37 I’m probably not gonna see it at all.
00:16:39 You’re going to different branches.
00:16:41 Yeah.
00:16:42 And like after 15 minutes, it’s like.
00:16:43 But it mainly to the middle game,
00:16:45 because when you get to the end game,
00:16:47 it’s usually brute force calculation
00:16:50 that makes you spend so much time.
00:16:52 So middle game is normally,
00:16:55 it’s a complicated mix of brute force calculation
00:16:59 and like creativity and evaluation.
00:17:05 So end game, it’s easier in that sense.
00:17:10 Well, you’re good at every aspect of chess,
00:17:14 but you’re also your end game is legendary.
00:17:16 It baffles experts.
00:17:18 So can you linger on that then try to explain
00:17:21 what the heck is going on there?
00:17:22 Like if you look at game six
00:17:23 of the previous world championship,
00:17:26 the longest game ever played in chess,
00:17:31 it was I think his queen versus your rook knight in two pawns.
00:17:38 There’s so many options there.
00:17:40 It’s such an interesting little dance
00:17:42 and it’s kind of not obvious that it wouldn’t be a draw.
00:17:45 So how do you escape it not being a draw
00:17:47 and you win that match?
00:17:49 No, I knew that for most of the time,
00:17:53 it was a theoretical draw
00:17:55 since chess with seven or less pieces on the board is solved.
00:18:01 So you can, like people watching online,
00:18:04 they can just check it.
00:18:05 They can check and they can check a so called table base
00:18:09 and they, it just gonna spit out win for white,
00:18:13 win for black or draw.
00:18:15 So, and also I knew that,
00:18:18 I knew that didn’t know that position specifically,
00:18:21 but I knew that it had to be a draw.
00:18:23 So for me, it was about staying alert.
00:18:29 First of all, trying to look for the best way
00:18:33 to put my pieces, but yeah,
00:18:37 those end games are a bit, they’re a bit unusual.
00:18:40 They don’t happen too often.
00:18:43 So what I’m usually good at is I’m using my strength
00:18:47 that I also use in middle games
00:18:50 is that I evaluate well
00:18:53 and I calculate short variations quite.
00:18:56 Even for the end game, short variations matter?
00:18:58 Yes, it does matter in some simpler end games.
00:19:01 Yeah, but also like there are these theoretical end games
00:19:07 with very few pieces like rook knights
00:19:10 and two pawns versus Queens,
00:19:12 but a lot of end games are simply defined
00:19:14 by the Queens being exchanged
00:19:16 and there are a lot of other pieces left
00:19:18 and then it’s usually not brute force.
00:19:21 It’s usually more of understanding and evaluation
00:19:26 and then I can use my strengths very well.
00:19:30 Why are you so damn good at the end game?
00:19:32 Isn’t there a lot of moves from when the end game starts
00:19:36 to when the end game finishes and you have a few pieces
00:19:38 and you have to figure out,
00:19:39 it’s like a sequence of little games that happens, right?
00:19:43 Like little pattern.
00:19:44 Like how does it being able to evaluate a single position
00:19:47 lead you to evaluate a long sequence of positions
00:19:51 that eventually lead to a checkmate?
00:19:53 Well, I think if you evaluate well at the start,
00:19:57 you know what plans to go for
00:19:59 and then usually the play from there
00:20:02 is often pretty simple.
00:20:04 Let’s say you understand how to arrange your pieces
00:20:11 and often also how to arrange your pawns
00:20:14 early in the end game then that makes all the difference
00:20:21 and after that is like what we call technique very often
00:20:28 that it’s technique basically just means
00:20:31 that the moves are simple and these are moves
00:20:36 that a lot of players could make
00:20:39 not only the very strongest ones.
00:20:42 These are moves that are kind of understood
00:20:44 and known.
00:20:45 So with the evaluation,
00:20:47 you’re just constantly improving a little bit
00:20:49 and that just leads to suffocating the position
00:20:51 and then eventually to the win
00:20:53 as long as you’re doing the evaluation well,
00:20:55 one step at a time.
00:20:56 To some extent.
00:20:57 Also, yeah, I said like if you evaluate it better
00:21:01 and thus accumulated some small advantages
00:21:05 then you can often make your life pretty easy
00:21:10 towards the end of the end game.
00:21:12 So you said in 2019 sort of the second phase
00:21:16 of why you’re so damn good.
00:21:18 You did a lot of opening preparation.
00:21:21 What’s the goal for you of the opening game of chess?
00:21:26 Is it to throw the opponent off from any prepared lines?
00:21:31 Is there something you could put into words
00:21:33 about why you’re so damn good at the openings?
00:21:35 Again, these things have changed a lot over time.
00:21:40 Back in Kasparov’s days, for instance,
00:21:43 he very often got huge advantages
00:21:46 from the opening as white.
00:21:49 Can you explain why?
00:21:51 There were several reasons for that.
00:21:54 First of all, he worked harder.
00:21:56 He was more creative in finding ideas.
00:21:59 He was able to look places others didn’t.
00:22:03 Also, he had a very strong team of people
00:22:05 who had specific strengths in openings that he could use.
00:22:11 So they would come up with ideas
00:22:13 and he would integrate those ideas into…
00:22:15 Yeah, and he would also very often
00:22:17 come up with them himself.
00:22:19 Also, at the start, he had some of the first computer engines
00:22:26 to work for him to find his ideas,
00:22:31 to look deeper, to verify his ideas.
00:22:34 He was better at using them than a lot of others.
00:22:39 Now, I feel like the playing field is a lot more level.
00:22:44 There are both computer engines, neural networks,
00:22:48 and hybrid engines available to practically anybody.
00:22:53 So it’s much harder to find ideas now
00:22:59 that actually give you an advantage
00:23:03 with the white pieces.
00:23:05 I mean, people don’t expect to find those ideas anymore.
00:23:08 Now it’s all about finding ideas
00:23:11 that are missed by the engines.
00:23:15 Either they’re missed entirely
00:23:18 or they’re missed at low depth
00:23:22 and using them to gain some advantage
00:23:26 in the sense that you have more knowledge.
00:23:28 And it’s also good to know that usually
00:23:34 these are not complete bluffs, these are like semi bluffs
00:23:37 so that you know that even if your opponent
00:23:39 makes all the right moves, you can still make a draw.
00:23:43 And also at the start of 2019,
00:23:46 neural networks had just started to be a thing in chess.
00:23:50 And I’m not entirely sure,
00:23:52 but there were at least some players
00:23:55 even in the top events who you could see did not use them
00:24:00 or did not use them in the right way.
00:24:02 And then you could gain a huge advantage
00:24:04 because a lot of positions,
00:24:06 they were being evaluated differently
00:24:09 by the neural networks than traditional chess engines
00:24:13 because they simply think about chess
00:24:15 in a very, very different way.
00:24:18 So short answer is these days,
00:24:21 it’s all about surprising your opponent
00:24:25 and taking it into positions where you have more knowledge.
00:24:29 So is there some sense in which it’s okay
00:24:31 to make suboptimal quote unquote moves?
00:24:34 No, you have to.
00:24:36 I mean, you have to because the best moves
00:24:39 have been analyzed to death mostly.
00:24:42 So that’s a kind of, when you say semi bluff,
00:24:44 that’s a kind of sacrifice.
00:24:46 You’re sacrificing the optimal move,
00:24:50 the optimal position so that you can take the opponent.
00:24:53 I mean, that’s a game theoretic sense.
00:24:55 You take the opponent to something they didn’t prepare well.
00:24:59 Yeah, but you could also look at it another way
00:25:02 that regardless, like if you turn on whatever engine
00:25:07 you turn on, like if you try to analyze
00:25:09 either from the starting position
00:25:11 or the starting position of some popular opening,
00:25:15 like if you analyze long enough,
00:25:17 it’s always gonna end up in a draw.
00:25:19 So in that sense, you may not be going
00:25:23 for like the objective, the tries
00:25:26 that are objectively the most difficult to draw against,
00:25:29 but you are trying to look at least
00:25:32 at the less obvious paths.
00:25:35 How much do you use engines?
00:25:37 Do you use Leela, Stockfish in your preparations?
00:25:41 My team does.
00:25:43 Personally, I try not to use them too much
00:25:47 on my own because I know that when I play,
00:25:51 you obviously cannot have help from engines.
00:25:54 And often I feel like often having imperfect
00:26:01 or knowledge about a position or some engine knowledge
00:26:05 can be a lot worse than having no knowledge.
00:26:09 So I try to look at engines as little as possible.
00:26:13 So yeah, so your team uses them for research
00:26:15 for a generation of ideas.
00:26:17 Yeah.
00:26:18 But you are relying primarily on your human resources.
00:26:23 Yeah, for sure.
00:26:24 You can evaluate well.
00:26:26 You don’t lean.
00:26:26 Yeah, I can evaluate as a human.
00:26:29 I can know what they find unpleasant and so on.
00:26:33 And it’s very often the case for me to some extent,
00:26:38 but a lot for others that you arrive in a position
00:26:43 and your opponent plays a move that you didn’t expect
00:26:46 and if you didn’t expect it,
00:26:49 you know that it’s probably not a great move
00:26:51 since it hasn’t been expected by the engine.
00:26:54 But if it’s not obvious why it’s not a good move,
00:27:00 it’s usually very, very hard to figure it out.
00:27:03 And so then looking at the engines doesn’t necessarily help
00:27:08 because at that point, like you’re facing a human,
00:27:10 you have to sort of think as a human.
00:27:14 I was chatting with Demis Ashabis, CEO of DeepMind
00:27:16 a couple of days ago and he asked me to ask you
00:27:19 about what you first felt when you saw the play of AlphaZero.
00:27:24 Like interesting ideas in your creativity.
00:27:28 Did you feel fear that the machine is taking over?
00:27:31 Were you inspired?
00:27:34 And what was going on in your mind and heart?
00:27:37 Funny thing about Demis is he doesn’t play chess at all
00:27:42 like an AI, he plays in a very, very human way.
00:27:48 No, I was hugely inspired when I saw the games at first.
00:27:54 And in terms of man versus machine,
00:27:58 I mean that battle was kind of lost for humans
00:28:02 even before I entered top level chess.
00:28:07 So that’s never been an issue for me.
00:28:10 I never liked playing against computers much anyway.
00:28:14 So that’s completely fine.
00:28:16 But it was amazing to see how they quote unquote
00:28:20 thought about chess in such a different way
00:28:23 and in a way that you could mistake for creativity.
00:28:27 Mistake for creativity, strong words.
00:28:30 Is it wild to you how many sacrifices it’s willing to make
00:28:33 that like sacrifice pieces and then wait
00:28:36 for prolonged periods of time
00:28:37 before doing anything with that?
00:28:38 Is that weird to you that that’s part of chess?
00:28:42 No, it’s one of the things that’s hardest to replicate
00:28:46 as a human as well, or at least for my playing style
00:28:50 that usually when I sacrifice, I feel like I’m,
00:28:56 I don’t do it unless I feel like I’m getting something
00:28:58 like tangible in return and.
00:29:03 Like a few moves down the line.
00:29:05 A few moves down the line,
00:29:06 you can see that you can either retrieve the material
00:29:08 or you can put your opponent’s king under pressure
00:29:12 or have some very like very concrete positional advantage
00:29:16 that sort of compensates for it.
00:29:20 For instance, in chess,
00:29:22 so bishops and knights are fairly equivalent.
00:29:26 We both give them three points,
00:29:28 but bishops are a little bit better.
00:29:30 And especially a bishop pair is a lot better
00:29:33 than a bishop and a knight.
00:29:36 So, or especially two knights depends on the position,
00:29:40 but like on average they are.
00:29:44 So like sacrificing a pawn in order to get a bishop pair,
00:29:49 that’s one of the most common sacrifices in chess.
00:29:52 Oh, you’re okay making that sacrifice?
00:29:53 Yeah, I mean, it depends on the situation,
00:29:55 but generally that’s fine.
00:29:57 And there are a lot of openings that are based on that,
00:30:00 that you sacrifice a pawn for the bishop pair,
00:30:03 and then eventually it’s some sort of positional equality.
00:30:07 So that’s fine.
00:30:08 But the way AlphaZero would sacrifice a knight
00:30:14 or sometimes two pawns, three pawns,
00:30:18 and you could see that it’s looking
00:30:20 for some sort of positional domination,
00:30:22 but it’s hard to understand.
00:30:24 And it was really fascinating to see.
00:30:27 Yeah, in 2019, I was sacrificing a lot of pawns,
00:30:33 especially, and it was a great joy.
00:30:36 Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to continue to do that.
00:30:40 People have found more solid opening lines since
00:30:45 that don’t allow me to do that as often.
00:30:48 I’m still trying both to get those positions
00:30:51 and still trying to learn the art of sacrificing pieces.
00:30:56 So Demis also made a comment that was interesting
00:31:01 to my new chess brain, which is one of the reasons
00:31:04 that chess is fun is because of the, quote,
00:31:06 creative tension between the bishop and the knight.
00:31:09 So you’re talking about this interesting difference
00:31:13 between the two pieces, that there’s some kind of,
00:31:16 how would you convert that?
00:31:17 I mean, that’s like a poetic statement about chess.
00:31:20 I think he said that, why has chess been played
00:31:22 for such a long time?
00:31:24 Why is it so fun to play at every level?
00:31:26 That if you can reduce it to one thing,
00:31:28 is it the bishop and the knight,
00:31:31 some kind of weird dynamics that they create in chess.
00:31:34 Is there any truth to that?
00:31:36 It sounds very good.
00:31:38 I haven’t tried a lot of other games,
00:31:41 but I tried to play a little bit of shogi.
00:31:43 And for my new shogi brain, comparing it to chess,
00:31:48 what annoyed me about that game is how much the pieces suck.
00:31:53 Basically, you have one rook and you have one bishop
00:31:55 that move like in chess.
00:31:56 And the rest of the pieces are really not very powerful.
00:32:01 So I think that’s one of the attractions of chess,
00:32:05 like how powerful, especially the queen is, which.
00:32:10 Interesting.
00:32:11 I kind of think makes it a lot of fun.
00:32:14 So you think power is more fun than like variety?
00:32:19 No, there is a variety in chess as well, though.
00:32:23 But not much more so than like go or something.
00:32:27 No, no, no, no, that’s for.
00:32:29 So like knight, I mean, they all move in different ways.
00:32:32 They’re all like weird.
00:32:33 There’s just all these weird patterns and positions
00:32:36 that can emerge.
00:32:37 The difference in the pieces create
00:32:39 all kinds of interesting dynamics,
00:32:40 I guess is what I’m trying to say.
00:32:41 Yeah, and I guess it is quite fascinating
00:32:44 that all those years ago,
00:32:47 they created the knight and the bishop
00:32:50 without probably realizing that they would be
00:32:53 almost equally strong with such different qualities.
00:32:57 That’s crazy that this, you know,
00:32:59 like when you design computer games,
00:33:02 it’s like an art form.
00:33:03 It’s science and an art to balance it.
00:33:06 You know, you talk about Starcraft and all those games,
00:33:09 like so that you can have competitive play
00:33:12 at the highest level with all those different units.
00:33:16 In the case of chess, it’s different pieces.
00:33:19 And they somehow designed a game
00:33:21 that was super competitive.
00:33:22 But there’s probably some kind of natural selection
00:33:24 that the chess just wouldn’t last if it was designed poorly.
00:33:27 Yeah, and I think the rules have changed over time
00:33:32 a little bit, but I would be,
00:33:35 I mean, speaking of games and all that,
00:33:37 I’m also interested to play other games like chess 960
00:33:42 or Fisher random, as they call it,
00:33:46 like that you have 960 maps instead of one.
00:33:50 Yeah, so for people who don’t know,
00:33:52 a Fisher random chess, chess 960s.
00:33:54 Yeah, that basically just means
00:33:56 that the pawns are in the same way
00:33:57 and the major pieces are distributed randomly
00:34:03 on the last rank.
00:34:04 Only that there have to be obviously
00:34:06 bishops of opposite color
00:34:07 and the king has to be in between the rooks
00:34:10 so that you can castle both ways.
00:34:12 Oh, you can still castle in chess 960.
00:34:13 You can still castle, but it makes it interesting.
00:34:16 So you still have, it still castles in the same way.
00:34:20 So let’s say the king is like here.
00:34:22 Yeah, what happens in that case?
00:34:24 Yeah, let’s say the king is in the corner.
00:34:28 So to castle this side,
00:34:29 you have to clear a whole lot of pieces.
00:34:33 Well, what would castling look like though?
00:34:35 No, the king would go here and the rook would go there.
00:34:38 Oh, okay.
00:34:39 And that’s happened in my games as well.
00:34:41 Like I forgot about castling
00:34:43 and I’ve been like attacking a king over here
00:34:46 and then all of a sudden it escapes to the other side.
00:34:50 I think Fischer chess is good that it’s,
00:34:57 the maps will generally be worse than regular chess.
00:35:03 Like I think the starting position is as close to ideal
00:35:08 for creating a competitive game as possible,
00:35:11 but they will still be like interesting and diverse enough
00:35:14 that you can play very interesting games.
00:35:18 So when you say maps, there’s 960 different options
00:35:21 and like what fraction of that creates interesting games
00:35:24 at the highest level?
00:35:26 This is something that a lot of people are curious about
00:35:28 because when you challenge a great chess player
00:35:32 like yourself to look at a random starting position
00:35:38 that feels like it pushes you to play pure chess
00:35:41 versus memorizing lines.
00:35:42 Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.
00:35:43 But that’s the whole idea.
00:35:45 That’s what you want.
00:35:47 How hard is it to play?
00:35:48 I mean, can you talk about what it feels like to you
00:35:50 to play with a random starting position?
00:35:53 Is there some intuition you’ve been building up?
00:35:55 It’s very, very different.
00:35:57 And I mean, understandably engines have
00:36:02 an even greater advantage in 960
00:36:05 than they have in classical chess.
00:36:08 No, it’s super interesting.
00:36:10 And that’s why also I really wish
00:36:13 that we played more classical chess,
00:36:17 like long games, four to seven hours
00:36:21 and in fish random chess, chess 960,
00:36:25 because then you really need that time,
00:36:29 even on the first moves.
00:36:31 What usually happens is that you get 15 minutes
00:36:34 before the game, you’re getting told the position
00:36:36 15 minutes before the game,
00:36:37 and then you can think about it a little bit,
00:36:40 even, you know, check the computer,
00:36:42 but that’s all the time you have,
00:36:45 but then you really need to figure it out.
00:36:46 And like some of the positions obviously
00:36:50 are a lot more interesting than the others.
00:36:53 In some of them, it appears that like,
00:36:55 if you don’t play symmetrically at the start,
00:37:00 then you’re probably gonna be in a pretty bad position.
00:37:03 What do you mean with the pawns?
00:37:04 With the pawns, yeah.
00:37:06 Why does that make sense?
00:37:08 That’s the thing about chess though.
00:37:09 So let’s say white opens with E4,
00:37:13 which is, which has always been the most played move.
00:37:17 There are many ways to meet that,
00:37:18 but the most solid ways of playing
00:37:21 has always been the symmetrical response.
00:37:23 Yeah.
00:37:24 With E5, and then there’s the,
00:37:26 through Lopez, there’s the Petrov opening and so on.
00:37:30 And if you just banned symmetry on the first move in chess,
00:37:35 you would get more interesting games.
00:37:37 Oh, interesting.
00:37:39 Or you’d get more decisive, decisive games.
00:37:43 So that’s the good thing about chess
00:37:45 is that we’ve played it so long
00:37:46 that we’ve actually devised non symmetrical openings
00:37:50 that are also fairly equal and.
00:37:53 But symmetry is a good default.
00:37:55 But yeah, symmetry is a good default.
00:37:57 And it’s a problem that by playing symmetrical
00:38:00 armed with good preparation in regular chess,
00:38:03 it’s just a little bit too easy to,
00:38:06 it’s a little bit too dryish.
00:38:08 And I guess if you analyzed,
00:38:11 if you analyzed a lot in chess 960,
00:38:14 then the, a lot of the positions
00:38:19 would end up being pretty dryish as well.
00:38:24 Because the random starting points are so shitty,
00:38:26 you’re forced to.
00:38:28 You’re actually forced to play symmetrically.
00:38:30 Like you cannot actually try and play
00:38:33 in a more sort of interesting, interesting manner.
00:38:37 Is there any other kind of variations
00:38:39 that are interesting to you?
00:38:41 Oh yeah, there are, there are several.
00:38:43 So no castling chess has been,
00:38:47 has been promoted by former world champion,
00:38:50 Vladimir Kramnik.
00:38:52 There have been a few tournaments with that,
00:38:55 not any that I’ve participated in though.
00:38:59 I kind of like it.
00:39:00 Also, my coach uses like non castling engines quite a bit
00:39:05 to analyze regular positions
00:39:08 to just to get a different, different perspective.
00:39:13 So castling is like a defensive thing.
00:39:15 So if you remove castling,
00:39:16 it forces you to be more offensive, is that why?
00:39:19 Yeah, it just, yeah, for sure.
00:39:23 It seems like a tiny little difference.
00:39:26 No castling probably forces you
00:39:28 to be a little bit more defensive at the start,
00:39:31 or I would guess so,
00:39:33 because you cannot suddenly escape with the kings.
00:39:37 It’s going to make the game a bit slower at the start,
00:39:40 but I feel like eventually it’s going to,
00:39:45 it’s going to make the more games more,
00:39:48 well, less droish for sure.
00:39:51 Then you have some weirder variants,
00:39:53 like where the pawns can move both diagonally and forward.
00:40:02 And also you have self capture chess,
00:40:04 which is quite interesting.
00:40:06 So that pawns can,
00:40:08 or pieces could commit suicide or what?
00:40:10 Yeah, people can.
00:40:11 Why would that be a good move?
00:40:13 No, sometimes one of your pieces occupy a square.
00:40:17 I mean, let me just set up a position.
00:40:20 Let’s put it like this, for instance, like here.
00:40:26 I mean, there are a lot of ways to checkmate for white,
00:40:29 like this for instance, or there are several ways,
00:40:32 but like this would be a checkmate.
00:40:36 Oh, cool.
00:40:38 For people who are just listening,
00:40:39 yeah, basically you’re bringing in a knight close
00:40:42 to the whole, the king, the queen and so on,
00:40:45 and you replace the knight with a queen.
00:40:46 Yeah, that’s interesting.
00:40:47 So you can have like a front of pieces,
00:40:51 and then you just replace them with the second piece.
00:40:54 Yeah, I mean, that could be interesting.
00:40:56 I think also maybe sometimes it’s just clearance,
00:41:00 basically it adds an extra element of clearance.
00:41:04 So I think there are many, many different variants.
00:41:09 I don’t think any of them are better than the one
00:41:13 that has been played for at least a thousand years,
00:41:17 but it’s certainly interesting to see.
00:41:22 So one of your goals is to reach
00:41:24 the FIDEELO chess rating of 2900.
00:41:27 Maybe you can comment on how is this rating calculated
00:41:30 and what does it take to get there?
00:41:33 Is it possible for a human being to get there?
00:41:36 Basically you play with a factor of 10,
00:41:39 which means that if I were to play against an opponent
00:41:44 who’s rated the same as me, I would be expected
00:41:49 to score 50%, obviously, and that means
00:41:51 that I would win five points with a win,
00:41:54 lose five points with a draw, and then equal if I draw.
00:41:57 If your opponent is 200 points lower rated,
00:42:00 you’re expected to score 75% and so on.
00:42:05 And you establish that rating by playing a lot of people,
00:42:08 and then it slowly converges towards an estimate
00:42:11 of how likely you are to win or lose against different people.
00:42:13 Yeah, and my rating is obviously carried
00:42:16 through thousands of games.
00:42:20 Right now, my rating is 2861, which is decent.
00:42:26 I think that pretty much corresponds
00:42:28 to the level I have at the moment,
00:42:32 which means in order to reach 2900,
00:42:36 I would have to either get better at chess,
00:42:40 which I think is fairly hard to do,
00:42:45 at least considerably better.
00:42:47 So what I would need to do is try and optimize
00:42:51 even more in terms of preparations, everything.
00:42:56 Not necessarily like selecting tournaments and so on,
00:42:59 but just optimizing in terms of preparation,
00:43:04 making sure I never have any bad days.
00:43:08 So you basically can’t lose.
00:43:10 Yeah, I basically can’t fuck up ever
00:43:13 if I wanna reach that goal.
00:43:17 And so I think reaching 2900 is pretty unlikely.
00:43:22 The reason I’ve set the goal is to have something
00:43:26 to play for, to have a motivation
00:43:31 to actually try and be at my best when I play.
00:43:36 Because otherwise, I’m playing to some extent,
00:43:40 mostly for fun these days in that I love to play,
00:43:45 I love to try and win, but I don’t have a lot to prove
00:43:51 or anything, but that gives me at least the motivation
00:43:55 to try and be at my best all the time,
00:43:59 which I think is something to aim for.
00:44:02 So at the moment, I’m quite enjoying that process
00:44:05 of trying to, yeah, trying to optimize.
00:44:12 What would you say motivates you in this now
00:44:15 and in the years leading up to now?
00:44:17 The love of winning or the fear of losing?
00:44:22 So for the World Championship,
00:44:25 it’s been fear of losing for sure.
00:44:29 Other tournaments, love of winning is a great, great factor
00:44:34 and that’s why I also get more joy
00:44:36 from winning most tournaments than I do
00:44:39 for winning the World Championship
00:44:41 because then it’s mostly been a relief.
00:44:44 I also think I enjoy winning more now than I did before
00:44:48 because I feel like I’m a little bit more relaxed now.
00:44:52 And I also know that it’s not gonna last forever.
00:44:57 So every little win, I appreciate a lot more now.
00:45:02 And yeah, in terms of fear of losing,
00:45:05 that’s a huge reason why I’m not gonna play
00:45:08 the World Championship
00:45:09 because it really didn’t give me a lot of joy.
00:45:14 It really was all about avoiding losing.
00:45:17 Why is it that the World Championship
00:45:19 really makes you feel this way, the anxiety?
00:45:22 So when you say losing, do you mean not just the match
00:45:26 but every single position, like the fear of a blunder?
00:45:31 No, I mean, the blunder is okay.
00:45:32 Like when I sit down at the board,
00:45:34 then it’s mostly been fine because then I’m focused on.
00:45:38 Got it.
00:45:39 Then I’m focused on the game
00:45:40 and then I know that I can play the game.
00:45:42 It’s a time like in between, like knowing that,
00:45:45 you know, I feel like losing is not an option
00:45:49 because it’s the World Championship
00:45:50 and because in a World Championship, there are two players.
00:45:53 There’s a winner and a loser.
00:45:56 If I don’t win a random tournament that I play,
00:45:59 then, you know, I’m usually, it depends on the tournament.
00:46:03 I might be disappointed for sure.
00:46:06 Might even be pretty pissed,
00:46:07 but ultimately, you know, you go on to the next one.
00:46:11 With the World Championship,
00:46:12 you don’t go on to the next one.
00:46:14 It’s like, it’s years.
00:46:17 Yeah.
00:46:18 And it also has been like,
00:46:20 it’s been a core part of my identity for a while now
00:46:24 that I am World Champion.
00:46:26 And so there’s not an option of losing that.
00:46:31 Yeah.
00:46:32 Yeah, there’s, you’re gonna have to,
00:46:34 at least for a couple of years,
00:46:36 carry the weight of having lost.
00:46:39 You’re the former World Champion now,
00:46:42 if you lose versus the current World Champion.
00:46:46 There are certain sports that create that anxiety
00:46:51 and others that don’t.
00:46:52 For example, I think UFC, like mixed martial arts
00:46:55 are a little better with losing.
00:46:57 It’s understood, like everybody loses.
00:47:00 But then.
00:47:01 Not everybody though.
00:47:02 Not everybody.
00:47:02 Not everybody.
00:47:03 Not everybody.
00:47:04 Yes.
00:47:05 Khabib entered the chat.
00:47:08 But in boxing, there is like that extra pressure
00:47:11 of like maintaining the championship.
00:47:13 I mean, maybe you could say the same thing
00:47:14 about the UFC as well.
00:47:17 So for you personally, for a person who loves chess,
00:47:22 the first time you won the World Championship,
00:47:23 that was the big, that was the thing that was fun.
00:47:28 Yeah.
00:47:29 And then everything after is like stressful.
00:47:32 Yeah.
00:47:33 Essentially.
00:47:34 There was certainly stress involved the first time as well.
00:47:39 But it was nothing compared to the others.
00:47:44 So the only World Championship after that
00:47:46 that I really enjoyed was the one in 2018
00:47:49 against the American Fabiano Caruana.
00:47:51 And what that made that different
00:47:53 is that I’d been kind of slumping for a bit
00:47:57 and he’d been on the rise.
00:47:58 So our ratings were very, very similar.
00:48:01 They were so close that if at any point during the match
00:48:06 I’d lost the game,
00:48:09 he would have been ranked as number one in the world.
00:48:12 Like our ratings were so close that for each draw,
00:48:15 they didn’t move.
00:48:16 And.
00:48:17 And the game itself was close.
00:48:18 Yeah, the games themselves were very close.
00:48:21 I had a winning position in the first game
00:48:26 that I couldn’t really get anywhere for a lot of games.
00:48:28 Then he had a couple of games
00:48:31 where he could potentially have won.
00:48:34 Then in the last game I was a little bit better.
00:48:37 And eventually they were all drawn.
00:48:40 But I felt like all the way
00:48:41 that this is an interesting match against an opponent
00:48:45 who is at this position at this point equal to me.
00:48:49 And so losing that would not have been this disaster.
00:48:53 Because in all the other matches,
00:48:55 I would know that I would have lost against somebody
00:48:59 who I know I’m much better than.
00:49:02 And that would be a lot harder for me to take.
00:49:07 Well, that’s fascinating and beautiful
00:49:09 that the stress isn’t from losing.
00:49:12 Because you have fun.
00:49:14 You enjoy playing against somebody who’s as good as you,
00:49:17 maybe better than you.
00:49:18 That’s exciting to you.
00:49:20 Yeah.
00:49:21 It’s losing at this high stakes thing
00:49:24 that only happens rarely to a person
00:49:27 who’s not as good as you.
00:49:28 Yeah, and that’s why it’s also been incredibly frustrating
00:49:31 in other matches, like when I know,
00:49:34 when we play draw after draw.
00:49:36 And I can just, I know that I’m better.
00:49:39 I can sense during the game
00:49:41 that I understand it better than them.
00:49:43 But I cannot get over the hump.
00:49:46 So you are the best chess player in the world.
00:49:51 And you not playing the World Championship
00:49:53 really makes the World Championship not seem important.
00:49:58 Or I mean, there’s an argument to be made for that.
00:50:01 Is there anything you would like to see
00:50:03 if you had a change about the World Championship
00:50:05 that would make it more fun for you?
00:50:07 And better for the game of chess period
00:50:09 for everybody involved?
00:50:10 So I think 12 games or now 14 games
00:50:14 that there is for the World Championship
00:50:16 is a fairly, fairly low sample size.
00:50:20 If you want to determine who the best player is,
00:50:23 or at least the best player in that particular matchup,
00:50:26 you need more games.
00:50:27 And I think to some extent,
00:50:31 if you’re gonna have a World Champion
00:50:34 and call them the best players,
00:50:36 best player, you gotta make sure
00:50:37 that the format increases the chance
00:50:39 of finding the best player.
00:50:41 So I think having more games,
00:50:43 and if you’re gonna have a lot more games,
00:50:45 then you need to decrease the time control a bit,
00:50:50 which in turn, I think is also a good thing
00:50:54 because in very long time controls with deep preparation,
00:50:59 you can sort of mask a lot of your deficiencies
00:51:03 as a chess player
00:51:07 because you have a lot of time to think and to defend.
00:51:10 And also, yeah, you have deep preparation.
00:51:14 So I think those would be, for me to play,
00:51:17 those would be the main things,
00:51:22 more games and less time.
00:51:24 So you want to see more games
00:51:26 and rules that emphasize pure chess?
00:51:30 Yeah, but already less time emphasizes pure chess
00:51:35 because defensive techniques are much harder
00:51:40 to execute with a little time.
00:51:42 What do you think, is there a sweet spot in terms of,
00:51:45 are we talking about Blitz?
00:51:46 Is it, how many minutes?
00:51:47 I think Blitz is a bit too fast.
00:51:49 To their credit, this was suggested by Fieda as well.
00:51:53 For a start to have two games per day,
00:51:57 and let’s say you have 45 minutes a game
00:52:01 plus 15 or 30 seconds per move,
00:52:04 that means that each sessions will probably be about,
00:52:07 or a little less than two hours.
00:52:10 That would be a start.
00:52:11 Also what we’re playing in the tournament
00:52:14 that I’m playing here in Miami,
00:52:17 which is four games a day
00:52:20 with 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per move,
00:52:24 those four would be more interesting
00:52:27 than the one there is now.
00:52:29 And I understand that there are a lot of traditions.
00:52:32 People don’t want to change the World Championship.
00:52:35 That’s all fine.
00:52:36 I just think that the World Championship
00:52:40 should do a better job of trying to reflect
00:52:42 who’s the best overall chess player.
00:52:46 So would you say like, if it’s faster games,
00:52:50 you’d probably be able to get a sample size
00:52:52 of like over 20 games, 20, 30, 40.
00:52:55 You think there’s a number that’s good
00:52:56 over a long period of time?
00:52:58 Well, I would prefer as many as possible.
00:53:00 So like a hundred?
00:53:02 Yeah, but let’s say you play 12 days, two games a day.
00:53:07 You know, that’s 24.
00:53:09 I feel like that’s already quite a bit better.
00:53:11 You play like one black game, one white game each day.
00:53:15 Endurance wise, that’s okay?
00:53:17 Yeah, I think that’s fine.
00:53:18 Like you will have free days as well.
00:53:19 So I don’t think that will be a problem.
00:53:23 And also you have to prepare two sets of openings
00:53:26 for each day, which makes it more difficult
00:53:29 for the teams preparing, which I think is also good.
00:53:32 Let me ask you a fun question.
00:53:34 If Hikaru Nakamura was one of the two people,
00:53:39 I guess, I apologize.
00:53:41 Yeah, he could have finished second.
00:53:43 So he lost the last round of the candidates.
00:53:45 Yeah, and maybe you can explain to me,
00:53:48 internet speed copium is something you tweeted.
00:53:51 Yeah.
00:53:53 But if he got second, would you just despite him
00:53:59 still play the world championship?
00:54:01 That’s internet question.
00:54:02 And when the internet asks, I must abide.
00:54:04 The dude abides.
00:54:06 Yeah, sure.
00:54:07 Thank you, internet.
00:54:10 So after the last match, I did an interview
00:54:17 right after where I talked about the fact
00:54:20 that I was unlikely to play the next one.
00:54:22 I’d spoken privately to both family, friends,
00:54:26 and of course also my chess team
00:54:29 that this was likely going to be the last match.
00:54:34 What happened was that right before
00:54:38 the world championship match,
00:54:39 there was this young player, Alireza Firouzsa.
00:54:42 He had a dramatic rise.
00:54:43 He rose to second in the world rankings.
00:54:46 He was 18 then, he’s 19 now.
00:54:48 He qualified for the candidates.
00:54:50 And it felt like there was like at least
00:54:53 a half realistic possibility that he could be the challenger
00:54:59 for the next world championship.
00:55:01 And that sort of lit a fire under me.
00:55:04 Do you like that idea?
00:55:05 Yeah, I like that a lot.
00:55:07 I love the idea of playing him in the next world championship.
00:55:11 And originally, I was sure that I wanted to announce
00:55:16 right after the tournament, the match,
00:55:19 that this was it, I’m done.
00:55:20 I’m not playing the next one.
00:55:22 But this lit a fire under me.
00:55:24 So that made me think, this actually motivates me.
00:55:29 And I just wanted to get it out there for several reasons
00:55:33 to create more hype about the candidates,
00:55:36 to sort of motivate myself a little bit,
00:55:40 maybe motivate him.
00:55:42 Also, obviously I wanted to give people a heads up
00:55:45 for the candidates that you might be playing
00:55:49 for more than first place.
00:55:53 Normally, the candidates is first place or best.
00:55:56 It’s like the world championship.
00:55:59 And then, so Nakamura was one of many people
00:56:02 who just didn’t believe me, which is fair.
00:56:05 Because I’ve talked before about not necessarily wanting
00:56:10 to defend again.
00:56:11 But I never talked as concretely or was as serious as this time.
00:56:16 So he simply didn’t believe me.
00:56:19 And he was very vocal about that.
00:56:21 And he said, nobody believed me, no other players,
00:56:24 which may or may not have been true.
00:56:27 And then, yeah, he lost the last game.
00:56:29 And he didn’t qualify.
00:56:31 But to answer the question, no, I’d already at that point
00:56:35 decided that I wouldn’t play.
00:56:38 I would have liked it less if he had not lost the last round.
00:56:44 But the decision was already made.
00:56:48 Does it break your heart a little bit
00:56:51 that you’re walking away from it?
00:56:54 In all the ways that you mentioned
00:56:55 that it’s just not fun, there’s a bunch of ways
00:56:59 that it doesn’t seem to bring out the best kind of chess.
00:57:02 It doesn’t bring out the best out of you
00:57:03 in the particular opponents involved.
00:57:05 Does it just break your heart a little bit?
00:57:07 Like you’re walking away from something,
00:57:10 or maybe the entire chess community
00:57:12 is walking away from a kind of a historic event that
00:57:17 was so important in the 20th century at least?
00:57:20 So I won the championship in 2013.
00:57:23 I said no to the candidates in 2011.
00:57:28 I didn’t particularly like the format.
00:57:30 I also wasn’t, I was just not in the mood.
00:57:34 I didn’t want the pressure that was connected with the World
00:57:39 Championship.
00:57:40 And I was perfectly content at the time
00:57:42 to play the tournaments that I did play,
00:57:46 also to be ranked number one in the world.
00:57:48 I was comfortable with the fact that I knew that I was the best
00:57:52 and I didn’t need a title to show others.
00:57:56 And what happened later is I suddenly decided to play.
00:58:02 In 2013, they changed the format.
00:58:05 I liked it better.
00:58:08 I just decided, it could be interesting.
00:58:11 Let’s try and get this.
00:58:13 There really wasn’t more than that to it.
00:58:17 It wasn’t like fulfilling lifelong dream or anything.
00:58:21 I just thought, let’s play.
00:58:25 So it’s just a cool tournament, a good challenge.
00:58:27 Yeah, it’s a cool tournament, it’s a good challenge.
00:58:30 Why not?
00:58:31 It’s something that could be a motivation.
00:58:35 It motivated me to get in the best shape of my life
00:58:39 that I had been until then.
00:58:40 So it was a good thing.
00:58:42 And 2013 match brought me a lot of joy as well.
00:58:46 So I’m very, very happy that I did that.
00:58:49 But I never had any thoughts that I’m
00:58:50 going to keep the title for a long time.
00:58:54 Immediately after the match in 2013,
00:58:58 also before the match, I’d spoken against the fact
00:59:01 that the champion is seeded into the final, which
00:59:04 I thought was unfair.
00:59:07 After the match, I made a proposal
00:59:10 that we have a different system where the champion doesn’t
00:59:13 have these privileges.
00:59:14 And people’s reaction, both players and chess community,
00:59:19 was generally like, OK, we’re good.
00:59:22 We don’t want that.
00:59:23 You keep your privileges.
00:59:26 And I was like, OK, whatever.
00:59:27 So you want to fight for it every time?
00:59:30 Yeah, I want that.
00:59:34 I have to ask, just in case you have an opinion,
00:59:37 if you can maybe from a fantasy chess perspective
00:59:41 analyze Ding versus Nepo, who wins?
00:59:45 The current, the two people that would
00:59:48 play if you’re not playing.
00:59:50 Generally, I would consider that Ding has a slightly better
00:59:54 overall chess strength.
00:59:57 What are the strengths and weaknesses of each,
00:59:59 if you can summarize it?
01:00:02 So Nepo, he’s even better at calculating short lines
01:00:08 than I am.
01:00:11 But he can sometimes lack a little bit of depth.
01:00:16 In short lines, he’s an absolute calculation monster.
01:00:19 He’s extremely quick.
01:00:22 But he can sometimes lack a bit of depth.
01:00:25 Also recently, he’s improved his openings quite a bit.
01:00:28 So now he has a lot of good ideas.
01:00:33 And he’s very, very solid.
01:00:36 Ding is not quite as well prepared.
01:00:39 But he has an excellent understanding
01:00:42 of dynamics and imbalances in chess, I would say.
01:00:48 What do you mean by imbalances?
01:00:51 Imbalances like bishops against knights
01:00:54 and material imbalances.
01:00:55 He can take advantage of those.
01:00:57 Yes, I would say he’s very, very good at that
01:01:00 and understanding the dynamic factors,
01:01:04 as we call them, like material versus time, especially.
01:01:10 I think Nepo got the better of him and the candidates.
01:01:12 So what’s your sense why Ding has
01:01:14 an edge in the championship?
01:01:17 I feel like individual past results hasn’t necessarily
01:01:21 been a great indicator of world championship results.
01:01:25 I feel like overall chess strength is more important.
01:01:32 To be fair, I only think Ding has a very small edge.
01:01:34 Difference is not big at all.
01:01:36 But our individual head to head record
01:01:39 was probably the main reason that a lot of people
01:01:42 thought Nepo had a good chance against me as well.
01:01:45 It was like 4 to 1 in his favor before the match.
01:01:51 But that was just another example
01:01:53 of why that may not necessarily mean anything.
01:01:56 Also in our case, it was a very, very low sample size,
01:02:00 I think, about the size of the match in total, 14 games.
01:02:05 And that generally doesn’t mean much.
01:02:09 How close were those games, would you say, in your mind
01:02:11 for the previous championship?
01:02:14 So that game six was a turning point where you won.
01:02:18 Was there any doubt in your mind that if you
01:02:21 do a much larger sample size that you’ll
01:02:24 get the better of Nepo?
01:02:25 No, no, larger sample size is always good for me.
01:02:28 So world championship, it’s a great parallel to football
01:02:33 because it’s a low scoring game.
01:02:36 And if the better player or the better team scores,
01:02:41 they win most of the time.
01:02:44 Oh, that’s generally for championships or in general?
01:02:47 Yeah, for championships.
01:02:48 They generally, generally win because the other slightly
01:02:54 weaker team, they’re good enough to defend
01:02:57 to make it very, very difficult for the others.
01:03:00 But when they actually have to create the chances,
01:03:02 then they have no chance.
01:03:04 And then it very often ends with a blowout
01:03:06 as it did in our match.
01:03:08 If I hadn’t won game six, it probably
01:03:11 would have been very, very close.
01:03:13 He might have edged it.
01:03:14 There’s obviously a bigger chance
01:03:16 that I would have edged it.
01:03:18 But this is just what happens a lot in chess,
01:03:21 but also in football that matches are close
01:03:24 and then they somebody scores, somebody scores
01:03:27 and then things change.
01:03:30 And this gives people the illusion
01:03:32 that the matchup was very close.
01:03:35 Well, actually, it just means that the nature of the game
01:03:40 makes the matches close very often.
01:03:43 But it’s always much more likely that one of the teams
01:03:47 is going to or one of the players
01:03:49 is going to break away than the others.
01:03:51 And in other matches as well, even though a lot of people
01:03:56 before the match in 2016 against Karjakin,
01:04:01 there were people who thought before the match
01:04:04 that I was massively overrated as a favorite
01:04:07 and that essentially the match was pretty, pretty close,
01:04:12 like whatever, 60, 40, or some people even said like 55, 45.
01:04:18 And what I felt was that the match went very, very wrong
01:04:23 for me and I still won.
01:04:25 And some people saw that as an indication
01:04:28 that the pre match probabilities were probably
01:04:30 a bit closer than people thought.
01:04:31 Well, I would look at it in the way that everything went wrong
01:04:35 and I still won, which probably means
01:04:38 that I was a pretty big favorite to begin with.
01:04:41 I do have a question to you about that match, but first,
01:04:43 so Sergei Karjakin was originally a qualifier
01:04:46 for the candidate tournament, but was disqualified
01:04:50 for breaching the FIDE code of ethics
01:04:52 after publicly expressing approval
01:04:54 for the 2022 Russian invasion in Ukraine.
01:04:57 You look at the Cold War and some of the US
01:05:00 versus Russian games of the past,
01:05:02 does politics, does some of this geopolitics,
01:05:05 politics ever creep its way into the game?
01:05:09 Do you feel the pressure, the immensity of that
01:05:11 as it does sometimes for the Olympics,
01:05:13 these big nations playing each other,
01:05:15 competing against each other,
01:05:17 almost like fighting out in a friendly way,
01:05:22 the battles, the tensions that they have
01:05:23 in the space of geopolitics?
01:05:26 Yeah, I think it still does.
01:05:27 So the president of the World Chess Federation
01:05:30 who was just reelected is a Russian.
01:05:33 Like I like him personally, for sure,
01:05:36 but he is quite connected to the Kremlin.
01:05:39 And it’s quite clear that the Kremlin
01:05:42 considers it at least a semi important goal
01:05:45 to bring the chess crown home to Russia.
01:05:49 So it’s still definitely a factor.
01:05:52 And I mean, I can answer for in the Karjakin case,
01:05:56 like I don’t have a strong opinion
01:06:00 on whether he should have been banned or not.
01:06:03 Obviously, I don’t agree with anything
01:06:05 that he says.
01:06:08 But in principle, I think that you should ban
01:06:14 either no Russians or all Russians.
01:06:17 I’m generally not particularly against either,
01:06:22 but I don’t love banning wrong opinions,
01:06:27 even if they are as reprehensible as his have been.
01:06:32 Yeah, there’s something about the World Chess Championships
01:06:36 or the Olympics where it feels like banning
01:06:39 is counterproductive to the alleviating
01:06:41 some of the conflicts.
01:06:43 We don’t know.
01:06:43 This is the thing though.
01:06:45 We really don’t know about the long term conflicts.
01:06:48 And a lot of people try to do the right thing in this sense,
01:06:53 which I don’t really blame at all.
01:06:54 It’s just that we don’t know.
01:06:57 And I guess sometimes there are other ways
01:07:00 you wanna try and help as well.
01:07:04 See, like within the competition,
01:07:05 within some of those battles of US versus Russia
01:07:08 or so on of the past,
01:07:10 there’s also between the individuals,
01:07:14 maybe you’ll disagree with this,
01:07:15 but from a spectator perspective,
01:07:16 there’s still a camaraderie.
01:07:18 Like at the end of the day,
01:07:20 there’s a thing that unites you,
01:07:22 which is this like appreciation
01:07:25 of the fight over the chessboard.
01:07:29 Even if you hate each other.
01:07:30 Yeah, for sure.
01:07:31 I think for every match that’s been,
01:07:35 you would briefly discuss the game
01:07:37 with your opponent after the game,
01:07:40 no matter how much you hate each other.
01:07:41 And I think that’s lovely.
01:07:43 And Kasparov, I mean, he was quoted,
01:07:46 like when somebody in his team asked him like,
01:07:48 why are you talking to Karpov after the game?
01:07:52 Like you hate that guy.
01:07:54 And he’s like, yeah, sure.
01:07:55 But he’s the only one who understands me.
01:07:57 Yeah, the only one who understands.
01:07:59 So that’s, no, I think that’s really lovely.
01:08:01 And I would love to see that in other areas as well,
01:08:06 that you can, regardless of what happens,
01:08:09 you can have a good chat about the game.
01:08:12 You can just talk about the ideas
01:08:15 with people who understand what you understand.
01:08:18 So if you’re not playing the world championships,
01:08:21 there’s a lot of people who are saying
01:08:24 that perhaps the world championships don’t matter anymore.
01:08:27 Do you think there’s some truth to that?
01:08:30 I said that back a long time ago as well,
01:08:32 that for me, I don’t know if it never happened.
01:08:37 So I don’t know what would have happened,
01:08:39 but I was thinking like the moment that I realized
01:08:43 that I’m not the best player in the world,
01:08:44 like I felt like morally I have to renounce
01:08:47 the world championship title, you know,
01:08:49 because it doesn’t mean anything
01:08:51 as long as you’re not the best player.
01:08:53 So the ratings really tell a bigger, a clearer story.
01:08:58 I think so, at least over time.
01:09:01 Like I’m a lot more proud of my streak
01:09:05 of being rated number one in the world,
01:09:06 which is now since I think the summer of 2011.
01:09:13 I’m a lot more proud of that than the world championships.
01:09:17 How much anxiety or even fear do you have
01:09:21 before making a difficult decision on the chessboard?
01:09:24 So it’s a high stakes game.
01:09:26 How nervous do you get?
01:09:28 How much anxiety do you have in all that calculations?
01:09:31 You’re sitting there for 10, 15 minutes
01:09:33 because you’re in a fog.
01:09:35 There’s always a possibility of a blunder, of a mistake.
01:09:38 Are you anxious about it?
01:09:39 Are you afraid of it?
01:09:40 Really depends.
01:09:42 I have been at times.
01:09:45 I think the most nervous I ever been was game 10
01:09:50 of the world championships in 2018.
01:09:54 I know that was just a thrilling game.
01:09:58 I was black.
01:10:00 I basically abandoned the queen side at some point
01:10:02 to attack him on the king side.
01:10:04 And I knew that my attack, if it doesn’t work,
01:10:08 I’m going to lose, but I had so much adrenaline.
01:10:12 So that was fine.
01:10:13 I thought I was going to win.
01:10:14 Then at some point I realized that it’s not so clear
01:10:18 and that my time was ticking and I was just getting
01:10:20 so nervous.
01:10:21 I still remember what happened.
01:10:25 Like we played this time trouble phase
01:10:28 where he had very little time, but I had even less.
01:10:31 And I just remember, I kind of remember much of it,
01:10:35 just that when it was over, I was just so relieved
01:10:38 because then it was clear that the position
01:10:40 was probably gonna be routed in a draw.
01:10:43 Otherwise I’m often nervous before games,
01:10:47 but when I get there, it’s all business.
01:10:50 And especially when I’m playing well,
01:10:53 I’m never afraid of losing when I play
01:10:57 because I trust my instincts.
01:11:01 I trust my skills.
01:11:03 How much psychological intimidation is there
01:11:06 from you to the other person, from the other person to you?
01:11:09 I think people would play a lot better
01:11:11 if they played against an anonymous me.
01:11:15 I would love to have a tournament online
01:11:21 where let’s say you play 10 of the best players in the world
01:11:25 and for each round you don’t know who you’re playing.
01:11:30 That’s an interesting question.
01:11:31 There’s these videos where people eat McDonald’s
01:11:35 or Burger King or Diet Coke versus Diet Pepsi.
01:11:38 Would people be able to tell they’re playing you
01:11:42 from the style of play, do you think?
01:11:45 Or from the strength of play?
01:11:48 If there was a decent sample size, sure.
01:11:51 And what about you?
01:11:52 Would you be able to tell others?
01:11:55 In just one game?
01:11:58 Very unlikely.
01:11:59 What sample size would you need to tell accurately?
01:12:02 I feel like this is science.
01:12:03 Yeah, I think 20 games would help a lot.
01:12:06 Per person?
01:12:07 Yeah.
01:12:09 But I know that they’ve already developed AI bots
01:12:13 that are pretty good at recognizing somebody’s style.
01:12:16 Okay.
01:12:17 Which is quite fascinating.
01:12:21 And it’d be fascinating if those bots
01:12:23 were able to summarize the style somehow.
01:12:26 Maybe great attacking chess,
01:12:28 like some of the same characteristics
01:12:29 you’ve been describing like great at short line calculations
01:12:33 all that kind of stuff.
01:12:34 Yeah.
01:12:35 Or did you just talk shit?
01:12:37 No, but really all the best chess players,
01:12:40 there are basically just two camps.
01:12:42 People who are good at longer lines or shorter lines.
01:12:46 It’s the hare and the tortoise, basically.
01:12:49 And sometimes, you know,
01:12:51 I feel like I’m the closest you can get
01:12:55 to a high bridge of those.
01:12:58 Because you got both,
01:13:00 you’re good in every position.
01:13:02 So the middle game and end game.
01:13:03 Yeah, and also I can think to some extent
01:13:06 both rapidly and deeply,
01:13:08 which a lot of people, they can’t do both.
01:13:11 But I mean, to answer your question from before,
01:13:14 I think, yeah,
01:13:15 I sometimes can get a little bit intimidated
01:13:18 by my opponent,
01:13:18 but it’s mostly if there’s something unknown.
01:13:23 It’s mostly if it’s something
01:13:25 that I don’t understand fully.
01:13:28 And I do think, especially when I’m playing,
01:13:30 well, people, they just play more timidly against me
01:13:34 than they do against each other.
01:13:36 Sometimes without even realizing it.
01:13:39 And I certainly use that to my advantage.
01:13:42 If I sense that my opponent is apprehensive,
01:13:46 if I sense that they are not gonna necessarily
01:13:49 take all their chances,
01:13:51 it just means that I can take more risk.
01:13:53 And I always try and find that balance.
01:13:58 To shake them up a little bit.
01:13:59 Yeah.
01:14:00 What’s been the toughest loss of your career
01:14:03 that you remember?
01:14:04 Would that be the World Championship match?
01:14:08 Oh yeah, for sure.
01:14:09 Game eight in 2016.
01:14:12 And who was it against?
01:14:13 Against Karjakin in New York.
01:14:16 Can you take it through the story of that game?
01:14:19 Where were you before that game
01:14:22 in terms of game one through seven?
01:14:26 Yeah, so game one and two, not much happened.
01:14:29 Game three and four, I was winning in both of them.
01:14:32 And normally, I should definitely have converted both.
01:14:37 I couldn’t, partly due to good defense on his part,
01:14:43 but mostly because I just, I messed up.
01:14:48 And then after that, games five, six, and seven,
01:14:53 not much happened.
01:14:56 I was getting impatient at that point.
01:15:00 So for game eight, I was probably ready
01:15:04 to take a little bit more risks than I had
01:15:07 before, which I guess was insane
01:15:11 because I knew that he couldn’t beat me
01:15:14 unless I beat myself.
01:15:17 Like he wasn’t strong enough to outplay me.
01:15:20 And that was leading to impatience somehow?
01:15:22 And impatience.
01:15:23 No, because I knew that I was better.
01:15:25 I knew that I was better.
01:15:27 I knew that I just needed to win one game
01:15:28 and then the match is over.
01:15:30 That’s what happened in 2021 as well.
01:15:32 Like when I won the first game against Nebo,
01:15:34 I knew that the match was over
01:15:35 unless I like fuck up royally,
01:15:38 then he’s not gonna be able to beat me.
01:15:42 So what happened was that I played
01:15:44 a kind of an innocuous opening as White,
01:15:48 just trying to get a game,
01:15:49 trying to get him out of book as soon as possible.
01:15:51 Then…
01:15:52 Okay, can you elaborate?
01:15:53 Innocuous, get him out of the book.
01:15:56 No, basically I set up pretty defensively as White.
01:16:00 I wasn’t really crossing into his half at the start at all.
01:16:04 I was just, I played more like a system
01:16:07 more than like a concrete opening.
01:16:09 It was like, I’m gonna set up my pieces this way.
01:16:12 You can set them up however you want.
01:16:14 And then later where sort of the armies are gonna meet.
01:16:18 I’m not gonna try and bother you at the start.
01:16:20 And that means you’re gonna have
01:16:22 with as many pieces as possible
01:16:24 kind of pure chess in the middle game
01:16:26 without any of the lines,
01:16:28 the standard lines in the opening.
01:16:31 Exactly.
01:16:32 And so there was at some point
01:16:33 a couple of exchanges,
01:16:34 then some maneuvering, a little bit better.
01:16:38 Then he was sort of equalizing
01:16:40 and then I started to take too many risks.
01:16:42 And I was still sort of fine,
01:16:44 but then at some point I realized
01:16:48 that I’d gone a bit too far
01:16:50 and I had to be really careful.
01:16:52 Then I just froze.
01:16:53 I just completely froze.
01:16:57 Mentally?
01:16:57 Yeah, mentally.
01:16:58 What happened?
01:16:59 I realized that all the thoughts of I might lose this.
01:17:05 What have I done?
01:17:07 Why did I take so many risks?
01:17:08 I knew that I could have drawn at any moment.
01:17:11 Just be patient.
01:17:12 Don’t give him these opportunities.
01:17:15 What triggered that phase transition in your mind?
01:17:18 No, it was just a position on the board.
01:17:22 Realizing there was one particular move he played
01:17:25 that I missed.
01:17:26 And then I realized that this could potentially
01:17:30 not go my way.
01:17:32 So then I made another couple of mistakes
01:17:35 and he, to his credit,
01:17:37 once he realized he had the chance,
01:17:39 he knew that this was his one chance.
01:17:43 He had to take it.
01:17:44 And so he did.
01:17:46 And yeah, that’s the worst I’ve ever felt
01:17:51 after a chess game.
01:17:54 I realized that I’m probably gonna lose my title
01:17:57 against somebody who’s not even close to my level.
01:18:02 And I’ve done it because of my own stupidity, most of all.
01:18:08 And that was really, really…
01:18:12 At the time, I was all in my own head.
01:18:16 That was hard to deal with.
01:18:18 And I felt like I didn’t really recover too much
01:18:22 for the next game.
01:18:24 So what I did, there was a free day after the eighth game.
01:18:27 So I did something that I never did
01:18:30 at any other world championship.
01:18:31 Like after game eight, I just,
01:18:35 I got drunk with my team.
01:18:38 And…
01:18:39 That’s not a standard procedure.
01:18:40 No, no.
01:18:41 That’s the only time that’s happened
01:18:43 in the world championship during the match.
01:18:46 So yeah, I just tried to forget.
01:18:50 But still before game nine…
01:18:52 Game nine, I was a little bit more relaxed,
01:18:55 but I was still a bit nervous.
01:18:56 Then game nine, I almost lost as well.
01:18:59 Then only game 10.
01:19:02 Game 10, I was still, I wasn’t in a great mood.
01:19:04 I was really, really tense.
01:19:07 The opening was good.
01:19:09 I had some advantage.
01:19:10 I was getting optimistic.
01:19:11 Then I made one mistake.
01:19:13 He could have forced a draw.
01:19:15 And then all the negativity came back.
01:19:18 Like, I was thinking during the game,
01:19:20 like how am I going to play for a win with Black
01:19:22 in the next game?
01:19:23 Like, what am I doing?
01:19:26 And then, you know, eventually it ended well.
01:19:29 It didn’t find the right line.
01:19:32 I ground him down.
01:19:33 Actually, I played at some point pretty well
01:19:36 in the end game.
01:19:38 And after that game, like there was such a weight.
01:19:43 Lifted? Lifted.
01:19:44 No, after that, there was like no thought
01:19:47 of losing the match whatsoever.
01:19:49 I knew that, okay, I’d basically gotten away with,
01:19:54 not with murder, but gotten away with something.
01:19:59 What can you say about the after game eight?
01:20:02 Where are the places you’ve gone in your mind?
01:20:05 Do you go to some dark places?
01:20:07 We’re talking about like depression.
01:20:09 Do you think about quitting at that point?
01:20:12 No, I mean, I think about quitting
01:20:14 every time I lose a classical game.
01:20:17 Or at least I used to.
01:20:18 Like, especially if it’s in a stupid way,
01:20:21 I’m thinking like, okay, if I’m gonna play like this,
01:20:25 if I’m gonna do things that I know are wrong,
01:20:27 then, you know, I might as well quit.
01:20:30 No, that’s happened a bunch of times.
01:20:34 And I’ve definitely gotten a bit more carefree
01:20:37 about losing these days,
01:20:38 which it’s not necessarily a good thing.
01:20:41 Like my hatred of losing led to me not losing a lot.
01:20:46 Losing a lot and it also lit the fire under me
01:20:49 that I think my performance after losses
01:20:52 in classical chess over the last 10 years
01:20:56 is like over 2,900.
01:20:58 Like I really play well after a loss,
01:21:01 even though it’s really, really unpleasant.
01:21:03 So apparently like I don’t think the way
01:21:07 that I dealt with them is particularly healthy,
01:21:09 but it’s worked.
01:21:11 It’s worked so far.
01:21:12 But then you’ve discovered now a love for winning
01:21:15 to where ultimately longevity wise creates more fun.
01:21:20 Yeah, for sure.
01:21:22 What’s the perfect day in the life of Magnus Carlsen
01:21:26 on a day of a big chess match?
01:21:28 It doesn’t have to be world championship,
01:21:30 but if it’s a chess match you care about,
01:21:33 what time do you wake up?
01:21:35 What do you eat?
01:21:37 Oh, it depends on when the game is,
01:21:38 but let’s say the game is at three,
01:21:42 I’ll probably wake up pretty late at about 11.
01:21:49 Then I’ll go for a walk,
01:21:55 might listen to some podcasts.
01:21:57 Maybe I’ll spend a little bit of time
01:22:00 looking at some NBA game from last night or whatever.
01:22:04 So not chess related stuff?
01:22:05 No, no, no, no.
01:22:06 Then I’ll get back, I’ll have a big lunch,
01:22:11 like usually like a big omelet
01:22:13 with a bunch of salad and stuff.
01:22:15 Then go to the game, win like a very nice clean game.
01:22:21 Perfect day.
01:22:22 Just go back after, relax.
01:22:24 Like the things that make me the happiest at tournaments
01:22:28 is just having a good routine and feeling well.
01:22:33 I don’t like it when too much is happening around me.
01:22:36 So the tournament that I came from now was
01:22:41 the Chess Olympiad, which is the team event.
01:22:44 So we were a team Norway.
01:22:46 We did horribly.
01:22:49 I did okay, but the team in general did horribly.
01:22:52 You won that Italy?
01:22:54 No, no, Italy beat us, but Uzbekistan won in the end.
01:22:58 They were this amazing team of young players.
01:23:01 It was really impressive.
01:23:02 But the thing is like we had a good comradery in the team.
01:23:05 We had our meals together.
01:23:07 We played a bit of football, went swimming,
01:23:10 and I couldn’t understand why things went wrong.
01:23:13 And I still don’t understand.
01:23:14 But the thing is for me, it was all very nice,
01:23:17 but now I’m so happy to be on my own at a tournament
01:23:19 just to have my own routines, not see too many people.
01:23:24 Otherwise just have like a very small team of people
01:23:27 that I see.
01:23:28 You are a kind of celebrity now.
01:23:31 So people within the chess tournament and outside
01:23:35 would recognize you, want to socialize,
01:23:37 want to tell you about how much you mean to them,
01:23:39 how much you inspire them, all that kind of stuff.
01:23:41 Does that get in the way for you
01:23:43 when you’re like trying to really focus on the match?
01:23:46 Are you able to block that?
01:23:49 Like are you able to enjoy those little interactions
01:23:51 and still keep your focus?
01:23:53 Yeah, most of the time that’s fine
01:23:56 as long as it’s not too much.
01:23:57 But I have to admit, when I’m at home in Norway,
01:24:02 I rarely go out without big headphones and something.
01:24:10 Oh, like a disguise?
01:24:11 No, not a disguise, just to block out the world.
01:24:15 Yeah.
01:24:16 Otherwise…
01:24:17 Don’t make eye contact?
01:24:18 Yeah, no, so the thing is people in general are nice.
01:24:23 I mean, people, they wish me well,
01:24:25 and they don’t bother me.
01:24:29 Also, when I have the headphones on,
01:24:31 I don’t notice as much people turning around and all of that
01:24:35 so I can be more of in my own world.
01:24:39 So I like that.
01:24:40 Yeah, what about in this perfect day after the game?
01:24:45 Do you try to analyze what happened?
01:24:47 Do you try to think through systematically
01:24:49 or do you just kind of loosely think about like…
01:24:52 No, I just loosely think about it.
01:24:53 I’ve never been very structured in that sense.
01:24:57 I know that it was always recommended
01:25:00 that you analyze your own games,
01:25:03 but I generally felt that I mostly had a good idea
01:25:06 about that.
01:25:07 Like nowadays, I will loosely see what the engine says
01:25:12 at a certain point if I’m curious about that.
01:25:15 Otherwise, I usually move on to the next.
01:25:20 What about diet?
01:25:21 You said omelet and salad and so on.
01:25:23 I heard in your conversation with the other Magnus,
01:25:26 Magnus number two, about you had like this bet about meat.
01:25:31 One of you are gonna go vegan if you lose,
01:25:34 I forget which bet.
01:25:34 Vegetarian though.
01:25:36 Vegetarian, sorry.
01:25:37 And you both have an admiration for meat.
01:25:42 Is there some aspect about optimal performance
01:25:45 that you look for in food?
01:25:46 Like maybe eating only like once or twice a day
01:25:50 or a particular kind of food,
01:25:52 like meat heavy diet.
01:25:54 Is there anything like that?
01:25:55 Or are you just trying to have fun with the food?
01:25:57 I think whenever I’m at tournaments,
01:26:01 like it’s very natural to eat,
01:26:03 at least for me to eat only twice a day.
01:26:06 So usually I do that when I’m at home as well.
01:26:08 So you do eat before the tournament though.
01:26:11 You don’t play fasted.
01:26:12 No, no, no, no.
01:26:14 But I try not to eat too heavy before the game
01:26:18 or in general to avoid sugary stuff
01:26:22 to have a pretty stable blood sugar level.
01:26:26 Cause that’s the easiest way to make mistake
01:26:29 that your energy levels just suddenly drop
01:26:33 and they don’t necessarily need to be too high
01:26:37 as long as they’re pretty stable, yeah.
01:26:39 Have you ever tried playing fasted,
01:26:41 like intermittent fasting?
01:26:44 So playing without having eaten.
01:26:46 I mean, the reason I ask, you know,
01:26:50 especially when you do a low carb diet,
01:26:52 when I’ve done a person at low carb diet,
01:26:54 I’m able to fast for a long time,
01:26:55 like eat once a day, maybe twice a day.
01:26:58 But I just, the mind is most focused
01:27:00 on like really difficult thinking tasks when it’s fasted.
01:27:05 It’s an interesting,
01:27:06 and a lot of people kind of talk about that.
01:27:09 Yeah, but you’re able to kind of like zoom in
01:27:11 and if you’re doing a low carb diet,
01:27:13 you don’t have the energy stable.
01:27:15 You know, that is true.
01:27:17 Maybe that will be interesting to try.
01:27:18 So what’s happened for me,
01:27:21 I played a few tournaments where I’ve had food poisoning
01:27:24 and then that generally means
01:27:26 that you’re both sleep deprived and you have no energy.
01:27:31 And what I’ve found is that it makes me,
01:27:36 it makes me very calm, of course,
01:27:38 because I don’t have the energy
01:27:40 and it makes me super creative.
01:27:42 Interesting.
01:27:43 Sleep deprived probably I think in general
01:27:45 makes you creative.
01:27:47 Just the first thing that goes away
01:27:48 is the ability to do the simple things.
01:27:51 That’s what it affects you the most.
01:27:54 Like you cannot be precise.
01:27:56 So that’s the only thing I’m worried about.
01:27:58 Like if I’m fasted that I won’t be precise when I play.
01:28:06 But you might be more creative.
01:28:08 It’s an interesting trial.
01:28:09 Fasted, yeah, potentially.
01:28:12 What about you have been known to
01:28:14 on a rare occasion play drunk.
01:28:16 Is there a mathematical formula
01:28:18 for sort of on the X axis how many drinks you had
01:28:22 and on the Y axis your performance slash creativity?
01:28:26 Is there like an optimal for,
01:28:28 like one of the,
01:28:29 would you suggest for the FIDE World Championship
01:28:31 that people would be required to drink?
01:28:34 Would that change things in interesting ways?
01:28:36 Yeah, not at all.
01:28:38 Maybe for rapid, but for Blitz,
01:28:40 think if you’re playing Blitz,
01:28:41 you’re mostly playing on short calculation and intuition.
01:28:47 And I think those are probably enhanced
01:28:50 if you’ve had a little bit of, a little bit to drink.
01:28:54 Can you explain the physiology of why that’s,
01:28:58 why it’s enhanced or the?
01:29:01 You’re just, you’re thinking less.
01:29:03 You’re more confident.
01:29:04 Oh yeah, it’s confidence.
01:29:06 I think it’s just confidence.
01:29:07 I think also like a lot of people feel like they’re better
01:29:11 at speaking languages, for instance,
01:29:15 if they’ve drunk a little bit,
01:29:17 it’s just like removing these barriers.
01:29:19 I think that it’s a little bit of the same in chess.
01:29:25 In 2012, I played the World Blitz Championship.
01:29:27 And then I was doing horribly for a long time.
01:29:33 I also had food poisoning there.
01:29:34 I couldn’t play at all for three days.
01:29:37 So before the last break,
01:29:39 I was like in the middle of the pack, like in,
01:29:43 I don’t know, 20th place or something.
01:29:46 And so I decided like, as the last, last gasp,
01:29:51 I’m going to go to the mini bar and just have a few drinks.
01:29:54 And what happened is that I came back
01:29:58 and I was suddenly relaxed and I was playing fast
01:30:02 and I was playing confidence.
01:30:03 And I thought I was playing so well.
01:30:05 I wasn’t playing nearly as well as I thought,
01:30:08 but it still helped me.
01:30:10 Like I won my remaining eight games.
01:30:11 And if there had been one more round,
01:30:14 I probably would have won the whole thing.
01:30:16 But finally I was second.
01:30:18 So generally I wouldn’t recommend that,
01:30:20 but maybe as the last resort sometimes,
01:30:23 like if you feel that you have the ability,
01:30:25 like obviously none of this is remotely relevant
01:30:29 if you don’t feel like you have the ability to begin with.
01:30:31 But if you feel like you have the ability,
01:30:34 there are just factors that make it impossible
01:30:39 for you to show it.
01:30:42 Like numbing your mind a bit can probably be a good thing.
01:30:45 Yeah, well, it’s interesting, especially during training,
01:30:47 you have all kinds of sports that have interacted
01:30:51 with a lot of athletes and grappling sports.
01:30:54 It’s different when you train under extreme exhaustion.
01:30:57 For example, you start becoming,
01:30:59 you start to discover interesting things.
01:31:01 You start being more creative.
01:31:02 A lot of people, at least in Brazilian jiu jitsu,
01:31:07 they’ll smoke weed.
01:31:09 It creates this kind of anxiety and relaxation
01:31:12 that kind of enables that creative aspect.
01:31:16 It’s interesting for training.
01:31:17 Of course you can’t rely on any one of those things too much,
01:31:20 but it’s cool to throw in like a few drinks
01:31:22 every once in a while to, yeah.
01:31:25 One, first of all, to relax and have fun.
01:31:28 And two, to kind of try things differently,
01:31:30 to unlock a different part of your brain.
01:31:32 Yeah, for sure.
01:31:33 What about supplements?
01:31:35 Do you, are you a coffee guy?
01:31:38 Oh no.
01:31:40 I quite like the taste of coffee.
01:31:44 But the thing is I’ve never had a job.
01:31:48 So I’ve never needed to wake up early.
01:31:50 So my thought is basically that if I’m tired, I’m tired.
01:31:55 That’s fine.
01:31:56 Then I’ll, you know, then I’ll work it out.
01:32:01 So I don’t wanna ever make my brain get used to coffee.
01:32:08 Like if you see me drinking coffee,
01:32:10 that’s, that probably means that I’m massively,
01:32:16 massively hungover and I don’t,
01:32:19 I just want to try anything to make my brain work.
01:32:24 Yeah, that’s interesting.
01:32:25 But for a lot of people, like you said, taste of coffee,
01:32:27 for a lot of people coffee is part
01:32:29 of a certain kind of ritual.
01:32:31 Yeah, for sure.
01:32:32 That they enjoy, you know.
01:32:32 So, but you can have rituals without that.
01:32:34 I know that I would enjoy it a lot.
01:32:36 Yeah, just you don’t wanna rely on it.
01:32:39 Yeah.
01:32:40 I also like the taste, so there’s no problem there.
01:32:44 What about exercise?
01:32:47 So how does that, what like, what, you know,
01:32:51 a lot of people talk about the extreme
01:32:56 stress that chest puts in your body,
01:32:59 physically and mentally.
01:33:00 How do you prepare for that, to be physically and mentally?
01:33:02 Is it just through playing chess,
01:33:04 or do you do cardio and any of that kind of stuff?
01:33:07 This is kind of it up and down.
01:33:08 Like, as I said in 2013, I was in, I was in great shape.
01:33:15 Like, I mean, generally I was exercising,
01:33:18 doing sports every day, either playing football
01:33:22 or tennis or even other, other sports.
01:33:26 Otherwise, if I couldn’t do that,
01:33:28 I would try and take my bike for a ride.
01:33:34 I had a few training camps and I played tennis
01:33:36 against one of my seconds.
01:33:38 Like, he’s not a super fit guy,
01:33:42 but he’s always been very good at tennis.
01:33:43 And I never like played in any organized way.
01:33:47 And that was like, that was the perfect exercise
01:33:50 because I was running around enough
01:33:54 to make the games pretty competitive.
01:33:58 And it meant that he had to run a bit less as well.
01:34:01 But he was just, he said like,
01:34:05 he was shocked that if we played like for two hours,
01:34:10 I wouldn’t flinch at all.
01:34:13 Interesting.
01:34:14 So like a combination of fun
01:34:16 and the differential between skill
01:34:20 result in good cardio.
01:34:21 Yeah, but it’s just that, so in those days I was pretty,
01:34:27 I was pretty fit in that sense.
01:34:29 I’ve always liked doing sports, but at times, you know,
01:34:32 I think in winter, especially,
01:34:34 like I never had like a schedule.
01:34:37 So at times I’ll let myself go a little bit.
01:34:42 And I’ve always kind of done it more for fun
01:34:45 than like for a concrete benefit.
01:34:48 But now I’m at least after the pandemic,
01:34:51 I was not in great shape.
01:34:52 So now I’m trying to get back, get better,
01:34:56 get better habits and so on.
01:35:00 But I feel like I’ve always been the poster boy
01:35:06 for making being fit a big thing in chess.
01:35:11 And I always felt that it was not really a deserve
01:35:14 because I never liked doing weights much at all.
01:35:19 I run a bit at times, but I never liked it too much.
01:35:23 You just love playing sports.
01:35:24 I just love playing sports.
01:35:26 So that I think people confuse that
01:35:28 because I’m not like massively athletic,
01:35:31 but I do, I am decent at sports
01:35:35 and that sort of helped build that perception.
01:35:39 Even though others who are top level chess players,
01:35:42 they’re more fit like Karana, for instance,
01:35:46 he’s really, really, his body is really, really strong.
01:35:51 It’s just that he doesn’t.
01:35:52 He like goes to the gym and.
01:35:53 Yeah, if he doesn’t play sports, that’s the difference.
01:35:57 And the thing about sports is also is just,
01:36:01 it’s an escape.
01:36:02 It helps you forget for a brief moment
01:36:05 about like the obsessions, the pursuits of the main thing,
01:36:09 which is chess.
01:36:10 Yeah, for sure.
01:36:12 And I think it’s, it also helps your main pursuit
01:36:16 to feel that you’re even if not mastering,
01:36:20 but like doing well in something, in something else.
01:36:24 Like I found that if I just juggle a ball,
01:36:28 that makes me feel better before a game.
01:36:32 So a skilled activity.
01:36:34 Juggle of football, yeah.
01:36:35 Yeah, skilled activity that you can improve on over time.
01:36:39 It like flexes the same kind of muscle,
01:36:42 but on the thing that you’re much worse at.
01:36:44 Yeah.
01:36:45 It focuses you, relaxes you, that’s really interesting.
01:36:47 What’s the perfect day in the life of Magnus Carlsen
01:36:52 when he’s training?
01:36:53 So like, what’s a good training regimen
01:36:55 in terms of, you know, daily kind of training
01:36:59 that you have to put in across many days, months, and years
01:37:04 to just keep yourself sharp in terms of chess?
01:37:07 I would say when I’m at home, I do very little
01:37:10 deliberate practice.
01:37:12 I’ve never been that guy at all.
01:37:14 Like I could never force myself to just sit down and work.
01:37:18 So deliberate practice, just so maybe you can educate me,
01:37:22 for some grandmasters, what would that look like?
01:37:25 Just doing puzzles kind of thing?
01:37:27 Or like?
01:37:28 Yeah, doing puzzles and opening analysis.
01:37:30 That would be the main things.
01:37:33 Studying games?
01:37:34 Just studying games, yeah, a little bit.
01:37:38 But I feel like that’s something that I do.
01:37:43 But it’s not deliberate, it’s like reading an article
01:37:47 or reading a book.
01:37:48 Got it.
01:37:48 Like I love chess books, I’ll read just anything
01:37:52 and I’ll find something interesting.
01:37:54 So chess books that are like on openings
01:37:57 and stuff like that, or chess books
01:37:58 that go over different games?
01:38:00 Yeah, books on, so there are three main categories.
01:38:05 There are books on openings and there are books
01:38:07 on strategy and there are books on chess history
01:38:09 and I find all of them very, very interesting.
01:38:12 Like what fraction of the day would you say
01:38:14 you have a chess board floating somewhere in your head?
01:38:18 Meaning like you’re thinking about it.
01:38:21 Probably be a better question to ask,
01:38:23 how many hours a day I don’t have a chess board floating.
01:38:26 Yeah.
01:38:27 I mean it could be just floating there and nothing’s
01:38:30 happening, but like.
01:38:32 I often do it parallel to some other activity though.
01:38:35 And what does that look like?
01:38:37 Like are you daydreaming like different,
01:38:39 is it actual positions you’re just fucking around with?
01:38:42 Like fumbling with different pieces in your head?
01:38:45 Often I’ve looked at a random game on my phone for instance
01:38:50 or in a book and then my brain just keeps going
01:38:53 at the same position analyzing it and often it goes
01:38:56 all the way to the end game.
01:38:58 And those are actual games or you conjure up like fake games?
01:39:02 No, they were often based on real games
01:39:05 and then I’m thinking like oh, but it wouldn’t be
01:39:07 more interesting if the pieces were a little bit different
01:39:10 and then often I play it out from there.
01:39:12 So you don’t have, like you don’t sit behind a computer
01:39:17 or a chess board and you lay out the pieces and then you’re.
01:39:20 No, I’m not at all a poster boy for deliberate practice.
01:39:25 I could never, I could never work that way.
01:39:27 My first coach, he gave me some exercises
01:39:33 that are at home sometimes, but he realized at some point
01:39:38 that wasn’t gonna work.
01:39:39 Yeah.
01:39:40 Because I wouldn’t do it really or enjoy it.
01:39:44 So what he would do instead is that at the school
01:39:48 where I had the trainings with him,
01:39:50 there was this massive chess library.
01:39:54 So he was just like yeah, pick out books.
01:39:56 You can have anything, you can have anything you want.
01:40:00 Just pick out books you like
01:40:01 and then you give it back the next time.
01:40:03 So that’s what I did instead.
01:40:05 Yeah, I just absolutely raided the,
01:40:08 then my next tournament I will try out one of the openings
01:40:11 from that book if it was an opening book and so on.
01:40:14 Does it feel like a struggle, like challenging?
01:40:17 Like to be thinking those positions
01:40:19 or is it fun and relaxing?
01:40:20 No, it’s completely fine.
01:40:22 I don’t.
01:40:24 Like if it’s a difficult position to figure out,
01:40:26 you know, like to calculate.
01:40:27 Then I go on to something else.
01:40:29 Okay.
01:40:30 Like if I can’t figure it out, then you know, I go on.
01:40:35 Change it so that it’s easier to figure out.
01:40:37 There was a point in your life
01:40:38 where Kasparov was interested in being your coach
01:40:42 or at least training with you.
01:40:43 Why did you choose not to go with him?
01:40:45 That’s a pretty bold move.
01:40:47 Was there a good reason for this?
01:40:49 No, the first like homework exercise he gave me
01:40:54 was to analyze, like he picked out, I think,
01:40:58 three or four of my worst losses
01:41:00 and he wanted me to analyze them and give him my thoughts.
01:41:05 And it wasn’t that there were painful losses or anything
01:41:08 that that was a problem.
01:41:10 I just didn’t really enjoy that.
01:41:14 Also, I felt that this whole structured approach
01:41:19 and everything.
01:41:20 Yeah.
01:41:21 I just felt like from the start, it was a hassle.
01:41:23 So I loved the idea of being able to pick his brain
01:41:28 but everything else, I just, you know,
01:41:32 couldn’t see myself, couldn’t see myself enjoying.
01:41:35 And at the end of the day,
01:41:38 I did then and always have played for fun.
01:41:42 That’s always been the main reason, so.
01:41:45 It’s great that you had the confidence
01:41:46 to sort of basically turn down the approach
01:41:50 of one of the greatest chess players of all time.
01:41:52 At that time, probably the greatest chess player
01:41:54 of all time.
01:41:55 I don’t think I thought of it that way.
01:41:58 I just thought this is not for me.
01:42:00 I wouldn’t try another way.
01:42:01 I don’t think I was particularly thinking
01:42:03 that this is my one opportunity or anything.
01:42:06 It was just, yeah, I don’t enjoy this.
01:42:08 Let’s try something else.
01:42:09 When you were 13, you faced Kasparov
01:42:12 and he wasn’t able to beat you.
01:42:15 Can you go through that match?
01:42:16 What did that feel like?
01:42:17 How important was that?
01:42:19 Was that, how epic was that?
01:42:20 We played three games.
01:42:22 I lost two and I drew one.
01:42:25 Right, but one draw.
01:42:27 No, the one draw.
01:42:29 And but didn’t you say
01:42:30 that you kind of had a better position in that?
01:42:32 Yeah, I remember that day very well.
01:42:35 There was a Blitz game.
01:42:36 This was a rapid tournament
01:42:38 and there was a Blitz tournament the day before
01:42:41 which determined the pairings for the rapid.
01:42:46 For people who don’t know,
01:42:47 super short games are called bullet.
01:42:49 Kind of short games are called Blitz.
01:42:51 Semi short games are called rapid.
01:42:54 Yeah.
01:42:56 And classic chess, I guess, is like very super long.
01:42:59 Yeah.
01:43:00 Yeah, basically, bullet is just never played
01:43:02 over the board.
01:43:03 So in terms of over the board chess,
01:43:05 Blitz is the shortest.
01:43:06 Rapid is like a hybrid between classical and Blitz.
01:43:11 You need to have the skills to both
01:43:12 and then classical is long.
01:43:15 The Blitz tournament, which didn’t go so well.
01:43:18 Like I got a couple of wins,
01:43:19 but I was beaten badly in a lot of games,
01:43:22 including by Gary.
01:43:24 And so there was the pairing that I had to play him
01:43:27 which was pretty exciting.
01:43:28 So I remember I was so tired after the Blitz tournament.
01:43:31 Like I slept for 12 hours or something.
01:43:34 Then I woke up like,
01:43:35 okay, I’ll turn on my computer.
01:43:37 I’ll search chess space for Kasparov
01:43:41 and we’ll go from there.
01:43:44 So before that, I hadn’t spent like a lot of time
01:43:47 specifically studying his games.
01:43:49 It was super intimidating
01:43:51 because a lot of these openings I knew.
01:43:54 I was like, oh, he was the first one to play that.
01:43:56 Oh, that was his idea.
01:43:57 I actually didn’t know that.
01:43:59 So I was a bit intimidated before we played.
01:44:02 Then of course the first game,
01:44:04 he arrived a bit late because they changed the time
01:44:08 from the first day to the other, which was a bit strange.
01:44:11 But everybody else had noticed it but him.
01:44:15 Then he tried to surprise me in the opening.
01:44:17 I think like psychologically,
01:44:19 the situation was not so easy for him.
01:44:21 Like clearly it would be embarrassing for him
01:44:23 if he didn’t win both games against me.
01:44:26 Then like I was spending way too much time on my moves
01:44:30 because I was playing Kasparov.
01:44:32 I was double checking everything too much.
01:44:33 Like normally I would be playing pretty fast in those days.
01:44:37 And then at some point I calculated better than him.
01:44:42 He missed a crucial detail and had a much better position.
01:44:46 I couldn’t convert it though.
01:44:48 I knew what line I had to go for
01:44:50 in order to have a chance to win.
01:44:52 But I thought like, I’ll play a bit more carefully.
01:44:55 Maybe I can win still.
01:44:56 I couldn’t.
01:44:58 And then I lost the second game pretty badly,
01:45:01 which it wasn’t majorly upsetting,
01:45:04 but I felt that I had two black games
01:45:07 against Kasparov both in the blitz and the rapid
01:45:09 and I lost both of them without any fight whatsoever.
01:45:12 I wasn’t happy about that at all.
01:45:14 That was like less than I thought I could be able to do.
01:45:19 So to me, yeah, I was proud of that, but it was a gimmick.
01:45:25 That was like a very strong IAM that had GM strength.
01:45:30 I was like, it can happen that a player of that strength
01:45:35 makes a draw against Gary once in a while.
01:45:37 But I mean, I understand that I’m 13,
01:45:40 but like still I felt a bit more gimmicky than anything.
01:45:44 I mean, I guess it’s a good thing that made me noticed,
01:45:48 but apart from that, it wasn’t.
01:45:51 And for people who don’t know,
01:45:52 IAM is international master and GM is grand master.
01:45:56 And you were just on the, I guess,
01:45:58 on the verge of becoming a youngest grand master ever.
01:46:01 I was the second youngest ever.
01:46:04 I think I’m like the seventh youngest now.
01:46:06 I mean, these kids these days.
01:46:08 Kids these days.
01:46:08 Yeah.
01:46:10 Yeah, but I was the youngest grand master at the time
01:46:15 in the world.
01:46:16 Yeah.
01:46:17 So there is a, you say it’s gimmicky,
01:46:20 but there’s a romantic notions,
01:46:22 especially as things have turned out, right?
01:46:26 No, for sure.
01:46:27 And have you talked to Gary since then about that?
01:46:30 No, not really.
01:46:31 I think he’s immersed.
01:46:33 He’s still bitter, you think?
01:46:35 No, I don’t think he’s bitter,
01:46:36 but I think the game in itself was a bit embarrassing for him.
01:46:41 Even he can’t see past like…
01:46:45 No, no, no.
01:46:46 I think he’s completely fine with that.
01:46:47 I think like in retrospect, it’s a good story.
01:46:51 He appreciates that.
01:46:53 I don’t think that’s the problem,
01:46:54 but it never made sense for me to broach the subject with him.
01:46:58 Yeah, it’s funny just having interacted with Gary,
01:47:03 now having talked to you,
01:47:04 there is a little thing you still hate losing.
01:47:08 No matter how beautiful like that moment is,
01:47:11 because it’s like, in a way it’s a passing of the baton
01:47:14 from like one great champion to another, right?
01:47:17 But you still just don’t like the fact
01:47:19 that you didn’t play a good game from Gary’s perspective.
01:47:22 Like he still is just annoyed probably
01:47:24 that he could have played better.
01:47:27 And we did, so we did work together in 2009, quite a lot.
01:47:33 And that corporation ended early 2010,
01:47:38 but we did play a lot of training games in 2009,
01:47:42 which was interesting because he was still very, very strong.
01:47:47 And at that time it was fairly equal.
01:47:49 Like he was out playing me quite a bit,
01:47:51 but I was fighting well, so it was pretty even then.
01:47:57 So I mean, I appreciate those games a lot more
01:47:59 than some random game from when I was 13.
01:48:03 And maybe I just don’t know what I’m talking about,
01:48:07 but I’ve always found it, at least based on that game,
01:48:12 you couldn’t tell that I was gonna take his,
01:48:15 that I was gonna take his spot.
01:48:17 Like I made a horrible blunder and lost to an Uzbek kid
01:48:22 in the World Rapid Championship in 2018.
01:48:28 And I mean, granted he was part of the team
01:48:30 that now won gold in the Chess Olympia,
01:48:32 but he wasn’t the crucial part.
01:48:34 He barely played any games.
01:48:35 Like it wasn’t like I would think
01:48:37 that he would become world champion because he beat me.
01:48:39 I’m always skeptical of those who said
01:48:42 that they knew that I was gonna be world champion
01:48:44 after that game or at all at that time.
01:48:48 I mean, it was easy to see
01:48:50 that I would become a very, very strong player.
01:48:52 Everybody could see that,
01:48:53 but to be the best in the world or one of the best ever,
01:48:57 that’s hard to say.
01:48:59 It is hard to say, but I do remember seeing Messi
01:49:01 when he was 16 and 17.
01:49:05 But hasn’t that happened with other players though?
01:49:07 Yeah, but I just had a personal experience.
01:49:10 He did look different than, there’s like magic there.
01:49:14 Maybe you can’t tell he would be one of the greatest ever,
01:49:18 but there’s still magic.
01:49:19 But you’re right.
01:49:20 Most of the time we try to project,
01:49:22 we see a young kid being an older person
01:49:25 and you start to think,
01:49:26 okay, this could be the next great person.
01:49:28 Then we forget when they don’t become that.
01:49:30 Yeah, exactly.
01:49:31 That’s I think what happens.
01:49:33 But when it does become.
01:49:34 Or maybe some people are just so good
01:49:38 at seeing these patterns that they can actually see.
01:49:40 Aren’t you supposed to do that kind of thing
01:49:41 with fantasy football, like see the long shot
01:49:44 and bet on them and then they turn out to be good?
01:49:46 That’s the whole point.
01:49:47 No, you make a lot of long shot bets
01:49:49 and then some of them come good.
01:49:52 And then people call you a genius for making the bet.
01:49:54 Well, let me ask you the goat question again,
01:49:56 from fantasy perspective.
01:49:59 Can you make the case for the greatest chess player
01:50:02 of all time for each yourself, Magnus Carlsen,
01:50:07 for Garry Kasparov, I don’t know who else,
01:50:09 Bobby Fischer, Mikhail Atal, anyone else,
01:50:12 for Hikaru Nakamura?
01:50:16 Just kidding.
01:50:17 Yeah, I think I can make a case for myself,
01:50:22 for Garry and for Fischer.
01:50:23 So I’ll start with Fischer.
01:50:25 For him, it’s very, very simple.
01:50:30 He was ahead of his time, but that’s like intangible.
01:50:33 You can say that about a lot of people.
01:50:35 But he had a peak from 1970 to 72
01:50:40 when he was so much better than the others.
01:50:43 He won 20 games in a row.
01:50:46 Also the way that he played was so powerful
01:50:49 and with so few mistakes
01:50:51 that he just had no opposition there.
01:50:54 So he had just a peak that’s been better than anybody.
01:51:00 The gap between first and second was the highest.
01:51:02 The gap between him and others was greater
01:51:04 than it’s ever been in history at any other time.
01:51:08 And that would be the argument for him.
01:51:12 For Garry, he’s played in a very competitive era
01:51:18 and he’s beaten several generations.
01:51:21 He was the best, well, he was the consensus best player,
01:51:26 I would say for almost 20 years,
01:51:29 which nobody else has done at least in recent time.
01:51:36 So the longevity.
01:51:38 The longevity for sure.
01:51:39 Also at his peak, he was not quite the level of Fisher
01:51:46 in terms of the gap, but it was similar to,
01:51:49 or I think even a little bit better than mine.
01:51:52 As for me, I’m of course unbeaten
01:51:57 as a world champion in five tries.
01:52:00 I’ve been world number one for 11 years straight
01:52:04 in an even more competitive era than Garry.
01:52:07 I have the highest chest rating of all time.
01:52:10 I have the longest streak ever without losing a game.
01:52:15 I think for me, the main argument would be about the era
01:52:19 where the engines have leveled the playing field so much
01:52:26 that it’s harder to dominate.
01:52:28 And still, I haven’t always been a clear number one,
01:52:32 but I’ve been number one for 11 years.
01:52:35 And for a lot of the time, the gap has been pretty big.
01:52:39 So I think there are decent arguments for all of them.
01:52:43 I’ve said before, and I haven’t changed my mind
01:52:45 that Garry generally edges it
01:52:48 because of the longevity in the competitive era,
01:52:51 but there are arguments.
01:52:55 But people also talk about you
01:52:56 in terms of the style of play.
01:52:58 So it’s not just about dominance or the height or the,
01:53:01 it’s like just the creative genius of it.
01:53:05 Yeah, but I’m not interested in that.
01:53:07 In terms of greatest of all time,
01:53:11 I’m not interested in questions of style.
01:53:16 So for Messi, you don’t give credit for the style,
01:53:20 for the stylistic.
01:53:21 I like, no, I like watching it, I just.
01:53:24 But you’re not gonna give points for the,
01:53:27 so Messi gets the best ever because of the finishing.
01:53:30 Yeah, it’s the, no, it’s not because of the finishing,
01:53:34 it’s because of his overall impact on the game.
01:53:37 It’s higher than anybody else’s.
01:53:39 Okay.
01:53:41 He contributes, he just contributes more to winning
01:53:45 than anybody else does.
01:53:46 What’s, so you’re somebody who was advocated for
01:53:51 and has done quite a bit of study of classic games.
01:53:53 What would you say is, I mean, maybe the number one
01:53:58 or maybe top three games of chess ever played?
01:54:01 That doesn’t interest me at all.
01:54:04 You don’t think of them, that was very curious.
01:54:05 No, I don’t think of it.
01:54:06 I mean, I try to, I find the games interesting.
01:54:09 I try to learn from them, but like trying to rank them
01:54:12 has never interested me.
01:54:13 What games pop out to you as like super interesting then?
01:54:16 Is there things like where idea, like old school games
01:54:20 where there was like interesting ideas that you go back,
01:54:25 that you go back or like you find surprising
01:54:29 and pretty cool that those ideas are developed like that?
01:54:34 Is there something that jumps to mind?
01:54:35 Yeah, there are several games of young Kasparov,
01:54:40 like before he became world champion.
01:54:43 If you’re gonna ask for like my favorite player
01:54:45 or favorite style, that’s probably.
01:54:47 Young Kasparov.
01:54:48 Young Kasparov.
01:54:49 Can you describe stylistically or in any other way
01:54:52 what young Kasparov was like that you like?
01:54:57 It was just an overflow energy in his play.
01:54:59 So aggressive.
01:55:00 Yeah, extremely aggressive, dynamic chess.
01:55:04 It probably appeals to me a lot because these are the things
01:55:09 that I cannot do as well,
01:55:13 that it just feels very special to me.
01:55:15 But yeah, in terms of games,
01:55:17 I never thought about that too much.
01:55:23 Is there memories, big or small, weird, surprising,
01:55:29 just any kind of beautiful anecdote from your chess career?
01:55:33 Like stuff that pops out that people might not know about?
01:55:37 Just stuff when you look back, it just makes you smile.
01:55:39 No, so I’ll tell you about the most satisfying
01:55:45 tournament victory of my career.
01:55:46 So that was the Norwegian championship under 11 in 2000.
01:55:52 Before that tournament, I was super anxious
01:55:56 because I started like kind of late at chess.
01:56:00 I played my first tournament when I was eight and a half.
01:56:02 And a lot of my competitors had already played
01:56:05 for a couple of years or even three, four years
01:56:09 at that point.
01:56:10 And the first time I,
01:56:12 so I played the under 11 championship in 99.
01:56:15 I was like a little over the middle of the pack.
01:56:18 I’d never played against any of them before.
01:56:20 So I didn’t know what to expect at all.
01:56:22 And then over the next year,
01:56:24 I was just like edging a little bit closer.
01:56:26 In each tournament, I felt like I was getting
01:56:28 a little bit better.
01:56:29 And when we had the championship,
01:56:32 I knew that I was ready,
01:56:34 that I was now at the same level of the best players.
01:56:38 I was so anxious to show it.
01:56:41 I remember I was just,
01:56:42 the feeling of excitement and nervousness
01:56:45 before the tournament was incredible.
01:56:47 The tournament was weird because I started out,
01:56:51 I gave away a draw to a weaker player,
01:56:56 whom I shouldn’t have drawn to.
01:56:57 And then I drew against the other guy
01:57:01 who was clearly like the best or second best.
01:57:05 And at that point, I thought it was over
01:57:08 because I thought he wouldn’t give away points to others.
01:57:12 And then the very next day he lost to somebody.
01:57:16 So then the rest of the tournament,
01:57:18 it was just like,
01:57:19 I was always like playing my game and watching his.
01:57:21 And we both won the rest of our games,
01:57:24 but it meant that I was half a point ahead.
01:57:27 Like the feeling when I realized that I was gonna win,
01:57:32 that was just so amazing.
01:57:34 It was like the first time that I was the best at my age.
01:57:41 And at that point.
01:57:43 You were hooked.
01:57:44 Yeah, at that point I realized,
01:57:48 I could actually be very good at this.
01:57:49 So you kind of saw,
01:57:51 what did you think your ceiling would be?
01:57:53 Did you see that one day you could be the number one?
01:57:57 No, I didn’t think that was possible at all.
01:58:01 But.
01:58:02 When did you first?
01:58:02 I could be the best in Norway.
01:58:05 The best in Norway?
01:58:06 At that point.
01:58:07 When did you first?
01:58:07 Because like I started relatively late.
01:58:09 Right, so yeah.
01:58:10 And also like,
01:58:14 I knew that I studied a lot more than the others.
01:58:17 I knew that I had a passion that they didn’t have.
01:58:19 They saw chess as something like,
01:58:24 it was a hobby.
01:58:26 It was like an activity.
01:58:27 It was like going to football practice
01:58:32 or any other sports.
01:58:34 Like you go,
01:58:35 you practice like once or twice a week,
01:58:37 and then you play a tournament at the weekend.
01:58:39 That’s what you did.
01:58:41 For me, it wasn’t like that.
01:58:42 Like I would go with my books and my board
01:58:46 every day after school.
01:58:49 And I would just constantly
01:58:53 be trying to learn new things.
01:58:55 I had like two hours of internet time
01:58:59 on the computer each week.
01:59:01 And I would always spend them on chess.
01:59:04 Like I think before I was 13 or 14,
01:59:10 I’d never opened a browser
01:59:15 for any other reason than to play chess.
01:59:19 Would you describe that as love or as obsession
01:59:22 or something in between?
01:59:23 It’s everything?
01:59:24 Yeah, everything.
01:59:25 Yeah, everything, so I mean,
01:59:30 it wasn’t hard for me to tell at that point
01:59:32 that I had something that the other kids didn’t
01:59:36 because I was never the one to grasp something
01:59:41 very, very quickly.
01:59:41 But once I started, I always got hooked
01:59:44 and then I never stopped learning.
01:59:46 What would you say,
01:59:47 you’ve talked about the middle game
01:59:49 as a place where you can play pure chess.
01:59:52 What do you think is beautiful to you about chess?
01:59:56 Like the thing when you were 11.
01:59:58 What is beautiful to me is when your opponent
02:00:01 can predict every single one of your moves
02:00:04 and they still lose.
02:00:06 How does that happen?
02:00:07 No, like it means that at some point early,
02:00:10 your planning, your evaluation has been better.
02:00:14 So that you play just very simply, very clearly.
02:00:17 It looks like you did nothing special
02:00:19 and your opponent lost without a chance.
02:00:22 So you’re, how do you think about that?
02:00:24 By the way, are you basically narrowed down
02:00:26 this gigantic tree of options
02:00:29 to where your opponent has less and less and less options
02:00:32 to win, to escape, and then they’re trapped.
02:00:35 That’s it.
02:00:36 Essentially.
02:00:37 Is there some aspect to the patterns themselves,
02:00:40 to the positions, to the elegance of like
02:00:45 the dynamics of the game that you just find beautiful
02:00:48 that doesn’t, that where you forget about the opponent?
02:00:53 General, I try and create harmony on the board.
02:00:58 Like what I would usually find harmonious is that
02:01:02 the pieces work together, that they protect each other
02:01:08 and that there are no pieces that are suboptimally placed.
02:01:13 Or if they are suboptimally placed,
02:01:17 they can be improved pretty easily.
02:01:19 Like I hate when I have one piece that I know
02:01:23 is badly placed and I can’t improve it.
02:01:26 When, yeah, when you’re thinking about the harmony
02:01:28 of the pieces, when you’re looking at the position,
02:01:30 you’re evaluating it, are you looking at the whole board
02:01:36 or is it like a bunch of groupings of pieces overlapping?
02:01:42 I would like dancing together kind of thing.
02:01:44 I would say it’s more of the latter
02:01:47 that would be more precise that you look.
02:01:50 I mean, I look mostly closer to the middle,
02:01:55 but then I would focus on one,
02:01:57 like there are usually like one grouping of pieces
02:02:00 on one side and then some more closer to the other side.
02:02:04 So I would think of it a little bit that way.
02:02:08 So, and everything’s kind of gravitating to the middle.
02:02:11 If it’s going well, then yes.
02:02:13 And in harmony.
02:02:15 Yeah, in harmony.
02:02:16 Or like if you can control the middle,
02:02:20 you can more easily attack on both sides.
02:02:23 That applies to pretty much any game.
02:02:26 It’s as simple as that.
02:02:27 And like attacking on one side without control of the middle
02:02:32 would feel very nonharmonious for me.
02:02:37 Like I talked about the 10th game
02:02:40 in the World Championship.
02:02:43 Like that’s the time I was the most nervous.
02:02:45 And it was because it was the kind of attack that I hate
02:02:50 where you just have to, you’re abandoned one side
02:02:53 and the attack has to work.
02:02:57 There was one side and part of the middle as well,
02:03:00 which I didn’t control at all.
02:03:01 And that’s like the opposite of harmony for me.
02:03:05 What advice would you give to chess players
02:03:10 of different levels, how to improve in chess?
02:03:14 Very beginner, complete beginner.
02:03:16 I mean, at every level, is there something you can say?
02:03:19 It’s very hard for me to say.
02:03:21 Because I mean, the easiest way is like love chess,
02:03:26 be obsessed.
02:03:28 Well, that’s a really important statement.
02:03:29 But that doesn’t work for everybody.
02:03:31 So I feel like it can feel like a grind.
02:03:34 So you’re saying the less it can feel like a grind,
02:03:37 the better, at least for you.
02:03:40 That’s for sure.
02:03:41 But I’m also very, very skeptical about giving advice
02:03:46 because I think, again, my way only works
02:03:50 if you have some combination of talent and obsession.
02:03:56 So I’m not sure that I’d generally recommend it.
02:03:59 Like what I’ve done doesn’t go with
02:04:02 what most coaches suggest for their kids.
02:04:06 I’ve been lucky that I’ve had coaches from early on
02:04:09 that have been very, very hands off
02:04:11 and just allowed me to do my thing, basically.
02:04:16 Well, there’s a lot to be said
02:04:17 about cultivating the obsession.
02:04:21 Like really letting that flourish
02:04:24 to where you spend a lot of hours
02:04:28 like with the chessboard in your head
02:04:29 and it doesn’t feel like a struggle.
02:04:31 No, so like just letting me do my thing.
02:04:35 Like if you give me a bunch of work,
02:04:37 it will probably feel like a chore.
02:04:38 And if you don’t give me,
02:04:39 I will spend all of that time on my own
02:04:42 without thinking that it’s work
02:04:45 or without thought that I’m doing this to improve my chess.
02:04:49 Well, in terms of learning stuff, like books,
02:04:52 there’s one thing that’s relatively novel
02:04:56 from your perspective that people are starting now
02:04:58 is there’s YouTube.
02:04:59 There’s a lot of good YouTubers.
02:05:00 You’re a part time YouTuber.
02:05:02 You have stuff on YouTube, I guess.
02:05:04 Yeah, I have, but if you’ve seen my YouTube,
02:05:06 it’s mostly like, it’s carefree.
02:05:10 It’s generally not high effort content.
02:05:13 Yeah, but do you like any particular YouTubers?
02:05:17 I could just recommend like stuff I’ve seen.
02:05:19 So Aged Madar, Gotham Chess, Botez Live.
02:05:25 I really like St. Louis Chess Club,
02:05:27 Daniel Narodetsky, and John Bartholomew.
02:05:32 Those are good channels,
02:05:33 but is there something you can recommend?
02:05:34 No, all of them are good.
02:05:37 You know, the best recommendation I could give
02:05:41 is Aged Madar, purely.
02:05:45 How much did he pay you to say that?
02:05:47 No, so the thing about that is that I haven’t really,
02:05:51 I have, so I can tell you I’ve never watched
02:05:53 any of his videos from start to finish.
02:05:56 I’m not like, I’m not the target audience, obviously.
02:05:59 But I think the only chess YouTube video
02:06:03 that my dad has ever watched from start to finish
02:06:07 is Aged Madar, and he said, like,
02:06:11 I watched one of his videos,
02:06:12 I wanted to know what it was all about,
02:06:14 because I think Aged Madar is like the same strength
02:06:19 as my father, or maybe just a little bit weaker,
02:06:21 like 1900 or something.
02:06:23 My father is probably about 2000.
02:06:25 And my father has played chess his whole life.
02:06:28 He loves, he absolutely loves the game.
02:06:30 It was like, that’s the only time he’s actually sat through
02:06:32 one of those videos, and he said, like,
02:06:34 yeah, I get it, I enjoy it.
02:06:36 So that’s the best recommendation I could give.
02:06:39 That’s the only channel that my father actually enjoys.
02:06:44 This is hilarious.
02:06:45 I talked to him before this to ask him
02:06:47 if he has any questions for you.
02:06:48 And he said, no, just do your thing, you know.
02:06:52 No, he’s so careful, he wouldn’t do that.
02:06:54 He did mention jokingly about Evan’s Gambit, I think.
02:06:59 Is that a thing?
02:07:00 Evan’s Gambit?
02:07:01 It’s some weird thing he made up.
02:07:03 It might be an inside joke.
02:07:04 I don’t know, but he asked me to.
02:07:06 Well, anyway.
02:07:07 Yeah, I didn’t even get the…
02:07:10 It’s something he made up.
02:07:11 I didn’t even realize that he plays the Evan’s Gambit.
02:07:15 Like, he plays a lot of Gambits that are…
02:07:17 Wait, Evan’s Gambit is a thing?
02:07:18 Yeah, yeah, that’s a thing.
02:07:19 Like, that’s an old opening from the 1800s.
02:07:22 Captain Evans apparently invented it.
02:07:25 Why would he mention that particular one?
02:07:26 Yeah, I don’t know.
02:07:27 Is there something hilarious about that one?
02:07:28 I don’t know.
02:07:29 I don’t think I’ve ever faced the Evan’s Gambit in a game.
02:07:34 I feel like both of you are trolling me right now.
02:07:37 But I mean, he’s played a lot of other Gambits.
02:07:42 Maybe this is the one he wanted to mention.
02:07:45 So this, maybe this is called the Evan’s Gambit as well.
02:07:48 But I just know it as like the 2G4 Gambit.
02:07:52 Maybe this is the one.
02:07:53 Like this one, he has played a bunch.
02:08:00 And he’s been telling me a lot about his games
02:08:03 in this line.
02:08:04 It’s like, oh, it’s not so bad.
02:08:06 And I’m like, yeah, but you’re a pawn down.
02:08:08 Yeah, but I can sort of see it.
02:08:10 I can sort of understand it.
02:08:12 And he’s like, he’s proud of the fact
02:08:15 that nobody like told him to play this line or anything.
02:08:17 He came up with it himself.
02:08:19 And there’s this, I’ll tell you another story
02:08:23 about my father.
02:08:23 So there’s this line that I call,
02:08:26 that I called the Henry Carlson line.
02:08:31 So at some point, you know,
02:08:34 he never knew a lot of openings in chess,
02:08:36 but I taught him a couple of openings as black.
02:08:40 It’s the, it’s the Sveshnikov’s Sicilian
02:08:45 that I played a lot myself also
02:08:48 during the world championship in 2018.
02:08:52 I won a bunch of games in 2019 as well.
02:08:55 So that’s one opening.
02:08:55 And I also taught him as black
02:08:57 to play the Rogozin defense.
02:08:59 And then, so the Rogozin defense goes like,
02:09:02 goes like this.
02:09:05 It’s characterized by this bishop move.
02:09:10 And so he would play those openings pretty,
02:09:14 pretty exclusively as black
02:09:16 in the tournaments that he did play.
02:09:17 And also the Sveshnikov Sicilian is like,
02:09:20 that’s the only, two of my sisters play,
02:09:23 have played a bunch of chess tournaments as well.
02:09:26 And that’s the only opening they know as well.
02:09:28 So my family’s portrait is very narrow.
02:09:32 So, so this is the, this is the system.
02:09:35 Black goes here and then we all from white takes the pawn
02:09:37 and black takes the pawn.
02:09:40 So at some point I was watching one of my,
02:09:43 my father’s online blitz game, blitz game.
02:09:47 And as white, he played this, this.
02:09:52 So this is called the Karkhan defense.
02:09:54 He took the pawn.
02:09:58 It was taken back, then he went with the knight.
02:10:02 His opponent went here and then he played a bishop here.
02:10:05 So I, I’d never seen this opening before.
02:10:08 And I was like, wow, how on earth did he come up with that?
02:10:13 And he said, no, I just played the Rogozin
02:10:15 with the different colors
02:10:16 because if the knight was here,
02:10:18 it would be the same position.
02:10:19 I was like, I never, I was like,
02:10:22 how, how am I like one of the best players in the world?
02:10:27 And I’ve never thought about that.
02:10:28 So I actually started playing,
02:10:30 I started playing this line as white
02:10:34 with pretty decent result and then results.
02:10:36 And it actually became kind of popular
02:10:39 and everybody who asked about the line,
02:10:42 it’s like, I would always tell them,
02:10:43 yeah, that’s the Henry Carlson.
02:10:45 I wouldn’t necessarily explain why it was called that.
02:10:48 I would just always call it that.
02:10:50 So I really hope at this point, at some point,
02:10:52 this line will be, will find its rightful name.
02:10:56 In the, yeah, finds its way into the history books.
02:10:59 Can you, what, what, what’d you learn about life
02:11:02 from your dad?
02:11:03 What role has your dad played in your life?
02:11:08 He’s taught me a lot of things, but most of all,
02:11:11 as long as you win a chess, then everything else is fine.
02:11:15 I think my, especially my father,
02:11:21 but my parents in general, they,
02:11:23 they always wanted me to get a good education
02:11:28 and find a job and so on.
02:11:31 Even though my father loves chess
02:11:33 and he wanted me to play chess,
02:11:35 I don’t think he had any plans for me to be professional.
02:11:40 I think things changed at some point.
02:11:42 Like I was less and less interested in school
02:11:46 and for a long time, we were kind of going back and forth,
02:11:51 fighting about that, especially my father,
02:11:54 but also my mother a little bit.
02:11:56 It was at times a little bit difficult.
02:11:58 They wanted you to go to school.
02:11:59 Yeah, they sort of wanted me to do more school
02:12:02 to have more options.
02:12:04 And then I think at some point,
02:12:07 they just gave up, but I think that sort of coincided
02:12:11 when I was actually starting to make real money
02:12:13 off tournaments.
02:12:14 And after that, you know, everything’s been sort of easy
02:12:18 and like terms of the family,
02:12:21 like they’ve never put any pressure on me
02:12:26 or they’ve never put any demands on me.
02:12:29 There’s just, yeah, my ass has to focus on chess.
02:12:31 That’s that, that’s the thing.
02:12:34 That’s, that’s, that’s it.
02:12:38 Like, I think they taught me in general
02:12:41 to be curious about the world
02:12:43 and to get a decent general education,
02:12:49 not necessarily from school,
02:12:51 but like just knowing about the world around you
02:12:55 and knowing history and being, you know,
02:12:58 just being interested in society.
02:13:01 I think in that sense, they’ve done well.
02:13:04 And he’s been with you throughout your chess career.
02:13:07 I mean, there’s something to be said about just family,
02:13:12 support and love that you have that, you know,
02:13:16 this world is a lonely place.
02:13:18 It’s good to have people around you that are like,
02:13:21 yeah, they got your back kind of, you know?
02:13:24 Yeah.
02:13:26 It’s a cliche, but I think to some extent,
02:13:29 all the people you surround yourself with,
02:13:34 they can help you a lot.
02:13:36 It’s only family that only has their own interests at heart.
02:13:41 And so for that reason, like my father’s like the only one
02:13:45 that’s been like constantly in the team
02:13:49 that he’s always been around.
02:13:51 And it’s for that reason that I know he has my back,
02:13:54 no matter what.
02:13:55 Now there’s a cliche question here,
02:13:58 but let’s try to actually get to some deep truth perhaps.
02:14:03 But people who don’t know much about chess
02:14:06 seem to like to use chess as a metaphor
02:14:08 for everything in life.
02:14:10 But there is some aspect to the decision making
02:14:14 to the kind of reasoning involved in chess
02:14:16 that’s transferable to other things.
02:14:19 Can you speak to that in your own life and in general?
02:14:23 Like the kind of reasoning involved with chess,
02:14:27 how much does that transfer to life out there?
02:14:32 It just helps you make decisions.
02:14:34 Of all kinds.
02:14:36 Yeah, that would be my main takeaway.
02:14:38 That you learn to make informed guesses
02:14:40 in a limited amount of time.
02:14:43 I mean, does it frustrate you when you have
02:14:47 geopolitical thinkers and leaders?
02:14:49 You know, Henry Kissinger will often talk about
02:14:51 geopolitics as a game of chess or 3D chess.
02:14:55 Is that too oversimplified of a projection?
02:14:58 Or do you think that the kind of deliberations
02:15:02 you have on the world stage is similar
02:15:04 to the kind of decision making you have on the chessboard?
02:15:08 Well, I’m never trying to get reelected
02:15:11 when I play a game of chess.
02:15:14 There’s no special interest, you have to get happy.
02:15:16 Yeah, that kind of helps.
02:15:18 No, I can understand that.
02:15:23 Obviously, for every action, there’s a reaction
02:15:25 and you have to calculate far ahead.
02:15:29 It probably would be a good thing
02:15:31 if more big players on the international scene
02:15:35 thought a little bit more like a chess player in that sense,
02:15:40 like trying to make good decision
02:15:42 based on limited amount of data,
02:15:46 rather than thinking about other factors,
02:15:49 but it’s so tough.
02:15:51 But it does annoy me when people make moves
02:15:55 that they know are wrong for different reasons.
02:15:58 And they should know, if they did some calculation,
02:16:00 they should know they’re wrong.
02:16:01 Yeah, exactly, that they should know that are wrong.
02:16:04 And so much politics is like,
02:16:08 it’s, you’re often asked to do something
02:16:13 when it would be much better to do nothing.
02:16:18 Like, no, but that happens in chess all the time,
02:16:21 like you have a choice.
02:16:24 Like I often tell people that in certain situations,
02:16:28 you should not try and win,
02:16:29 you should just let your opponent lose.
02:16:32 And that happens in politics all the time.
02:16:37 But yeah, just let your opponents
02:16:40 continue whatever they’re doing,
02:16:42 and then you’ll win.
02:16:43 Don’t try to do something just to do something.
02:16:45 Often, they say in chess that having a bad plan
02:16:50 is better than having no plan.
02:16:52 It’s absolute nonsense.
02:16:55 I forget what General said it,
02:16:56 but it was like, don’t interrupt your enemy
02:16:59 when they’re making a mistake.
02:17:02 I think they’re…
02:17:02 Also, Petrosian, the former world champion said,
02:17:09 when your opponent wants to play Dutch defense,
02:17:11 don’t stop them.
02:17:13 I mean, chess players will know that it’s the same thing.
02:17:16 I mean, chess players will know that it’s the same thing.
02:17:19 Actually, this reminds me,
02:17:22 is there something you found really impressive
02:17:24 about Queen’s Gambit, the TV show?
02:17:26 You know, that’s one of the things that really captivated
02:17:28 the public imagination about chess.
02:17:30 People who don’t play chess became very curious
02:17:32 about the game, about the beauty of the game,
02:17:35 the drama of the game, all that kind of stuff.
02:17:37 Is there, in terms of accuracy,
02:17:38 in terms of the actual games played,
02:17:41 that you found impressive?
02:17:44 First of all, they did the chess well,
02:17:46 they did it accurately.
02:17:48 And also, they found actual games and positions
02:17:51 that I’d never seen before.
02:17:53 And it really captivated me.
02:17:55 Like, I would not follow the story at times.
02:17:59 I was just trying to, wow,
02:18:01 where the hell did I find that game?
02:18:03 Just trying to solve the positions.
02:18:06 So, Beth Harmon, the main character,
02:18:09 were you impressed by the play she was doing in the,
02:18:13 like, was there a particular style
02:18:15 that they developed consistently?
02:18:17 She was just, at the end, she was just totally universal.
02:18:20 Like, at the start, she was probably a bit too aggressive,
02:18:25 but no, she was absolutely universal.
02:18:28 Wait, what adjective are you using?
02:18:30 Universal in the sense that she could play in any style.
02:18:35 Oh, interesting.
02:18:37 And was dominant in that way.
02:18:38 So, wow, there was a development in style too
02:18:41 throughout the show.
02:18:42 Yeah, for sure.
02:18:43 It’s really interesting they did that.
02:18:44 Yeah.
02:18:45 And it actually happened with me a bit as well.
02:18:49 Like, I started out really aggressive.
02:18:51 Then I became probably too technical at some point,
02:18:56 taking a little bit too few risks
02:18:58 and not playing dynamic enough.
02:19:00 And then I started to get a little bit better at dynamics
02:19:03 so that now I’m,
02:19:05 I would say definitely the most universal player
02:19:07 in terms of style.
02:19:11 Are there any skills in chess
02:19:12 that are transferable to poker?
02:19:14 So as you’re playing around with poker a little bit now,
02:19:17 how fundamentally different of a game is it?
02:19:20 What I find the most transferable probably is
02:19:24 not letting past decisions dictate future thinking.
02:19:30 Yeah.
02:19:32 But in terms of the patterns in the betting strategies
02:19:34 and all that kind of stuff, what about bluffing?
02:19:37 I bluff way too much.
02:19:40 It does seem you enjoy bluffing
02:19:42 and Daniel Negrano was saying that you’re quite good at it.
02:19:46 But yeah, it has very little material to go by.
02:19:49 Sample size is small.
02:19:50 Yeah.
02:19:51 No, I mean, I enjoy bluffing
02:19:53 for more of the gambling aspects, the thrill of.
02:19:57 So not the technical aspect of the bluffing
02:19:59 like you would on the chessboard?
02:20:01 Not bluffing in the same sense, but there is some element.
02:20:05 But I do enjoy it on the chessboard.
02:20:09 Like if I know that like,
02:20:11 oh, I successfully scared away my opponent
02:20:13 from making the best move, that’s of course satisfying.
02:20:16 In that same way, it might be satisfying in poker, right?
02:20:20 That you represent something,
02:20:22 you scare away your opponent in the same kind of way.
02:20:25 And also like you tell a story,
02:20:27 you try and tell a story and then they believe it.
02:20:30 Yeah, tell a story with your betting,
02:20:32 with all the different other cues.
02:20:36 Do you like the money aspect, the betting strategies?
02:20:40 So it’s almost like another layer on top of it, right?
02:20:43 Like it’s the uncertainty in the cards,
02:20:49 but the betting, there’s so much freedom to the betting.
02:20:53 I’m not very good at that.
02:20:54 So I cannot say that I understand it completely.
02:20:58 You know, when it comes to different sizing and all that,
02:21:04 I just haven’t studied it enough.
02:21:05 How much of luck is part of poker would you say
02:21:08 from what you’ve seen versus skill?
02:21:12 I mean, it’s so different in the sense that you can be
02:21:15 one of the best players in the world
02:21:16 and lose two, three years in a row
02:21:18 without that being like a massive outlier.
02:21:23 Okay, the thing that more than one person told me
02:21:27 that you’re very good at is trash talking.
02:21:31 I don’t think I am.
02:21:32 A lot of people who make those observations about me,
02:21:38 I think they just expect very, very little.
02:21:40 So they expect from the best chess player in the world,
02:21:44 that just anything that’s non robotic is interesting.
02:21:50 Also, when it comes to trash talking,
02:21:52 like I have the biggest advantage in the world
02:21:54 that I’m the best at what I’m doing.
02:21:56 So trash talking becomes very, very, very easy
02:21:58 because I can back it up.
02:21:59 Yeah.
02:22:01 Yeah, but a lot of people that are extremely good at stuff
02:22:04 don’t trash talk and they’re not good at it.
02:22:06 I don’t think I’m very good at it.
02:22:07 It’s just that I can back it up,
02:22:09 which makes it seem that I’m better.
02:22:12 And also.
02:22:12 You’re even doing it now.
02:22:14 Also being non robotic or not completely robotic helps.
02:22:19 Yeah, yeah.
02:22:20 You’re not trash talking, you’re just stating facts.
02:22:22 That’s right.
02:22:23 Have you ever considered that there will be trash talking
02:22:28 and over the chess board and some of the big tournaments,
02:22:31 like adding that kind of component or even talking,
02:22:34 you know, would that completely distract
02:22:37 from the game of chess?
02:22:38 No, I think it could be fun in,
02:22:42 when people play off fan games,
02:22:44 when they play Blitz games,
02:22:46 like people trash talk all the time.
02:22:48 It’s a normal part of the game.
02:22:49 So you emphasize fun a lot.
02:22:53 Do you think we’re living inside of a simulation
02:22:57 that is trying to maximize fun?
02:23:03 But that’s only happened for the last 100 years or so.
02:23:08 No, that’s like the.
02:23:10 Fun has always been increasing, I think.
02:23:12 Yeah, okay.
02:23:13 It’s always been increasing,
02:23:14 but I feel like it’s been increasing exponentially.
02:23:18 Yeah.
02:23:19 I mean, or at least the importance of fun.
02:23:22 But I guess it depends on the society as well.
02:23:24 Like in the West, we’ve had such a Christian influence.
02:23:29 And I mean, Christianity hasn’t exactly embraced
02:23:33 the concept of fun over time.
02:23:37 Well, actually to push back,
02:23:38 I think forbidding certain things
02:23:40 kind of makes them more fun.
02:23:42 So sometimes I think you need to say,
02:23:44 you’re not allowed to do this.
02:23:46 And then a lot of people start doing it
02:23:48 and then they have fun doing that
02:23:49 because it’s like it’s doing a thing
02:23:53 in the face of the resistance of the thing.
02:23:55 So whenever there’s resistance,
02:23:57 that does somehow make it more fun.
02:23:59 Oppressive regimes has always kind of been
02:24:02 kind of good for comedy, no?
02:24:04 Like, no, but I heard.
02:24:06 Yes.
02:24:06 Supposedly like in the Soviet Union,
02:24:08 I don’t know about fun,
02:24:09 but supposedly comedy, like at least underground,
02:24:13 it thrived.
02:24:14 Yeah, there’s a, well, no, it permeates the entire culture.
02:24:16 There’s a dark humor.
02:24:18 Yeah.
02:24:19 That sort of the cruelty, the absurdity of life
02:24:21 really brings out the humor amongst the populace
02:24:24 plus vodka on top of that.
02:24:26 But this idea that, for example, Elon Musk has that
02:24:31 the most entertaining outcome is the most likely.
02:24:36 That it seems like the most absurd, silly, funny thing
02:24:39 seems to be the thing that.
02:24:41 So it happens more often than it should.
02:24:44 And it somehow becomes viral in our modern connected world.
02:24:49 And so the fun stuff, the memes spread,
02:24:53 and then we start to optimize for the fun meme
02:24:56 that seems to be a fundamental property
02:24:58 of the reality we live in.
02:25:01 And so emerges the fun maximizer in all walks of life,
02:25:06 like in chess, in poker, in everything.
02:25:13 I think.
02:25:14 You’re not skeptical.
02:25:15 No, I’m not skeptical.
02:25:15 I’m just, I’m just taking it all in.
02:25:20 But I find it interesting and not at all impossible.
02:25:25 Do you ever get lonely?
02:25:26 Oh yeah, for sure.
02:25:28 Like a chess player’s life is by definition pretty lonely
02:25:34 because you have nobody else to blame but yourself
02:25:36 when you lose or you don’t achieve the results
02:25:39 that you want to achieve.
02:25:41 It’s difficult for you to find comfort elsewhere.
02:25:44 It’s in your own mind.
02:25:46 Yeah.
02:25:47 It’s you versus yourself, really.
02:25:48 Yeah, really.
02:25:50 But it’s, you know, it’s part of the profession.
02:25:55 But I think any like sport or activity
02:25:58 where it’s just you and your own mind
02:26:02 is just by definition lonely.
02:26:04 Are you worried that it destroys you?
02:26:06 Oh, not at all.
02:26:08 As long as I’m aware of it, then it’s fine.
02:26:10 And I don’t think the inherent loneliness
02:26:15 of my profession really affects the rest of my life
02:26:20 in a major way.
02:26:23 What role does love play in the human condition
02:26:26 and in your lonely life of calculation?
02:26:30 Well, you know, I’m like everybody else trying, you know…
02:26:40 Trying to find love?
02:26:41 No, not necessarily like trying to find love.
02:26:43 Sometimes I am, sometimes I’m not.
02:26:46 I’m just trying to find my way.
02:26:48 Yeah.
02:26:49 And my love for the game,
02:26:54 obviously it comes and goes a little bit,
02:26:55 but there’s like, there’s always at least some level of love.
02:26:59 So that doesn’t go away.
02:27:01 But I think in other parts of life,
02:27:05 I think it’s just about doing things that make you happy,
02:27:11 that give you joy,
02:27:12 that also makes you more receptive to love in general.
02:27:16 So that has been my approach to love now
02:27:20 for quite a while that I’m just trying to live my best life
02:27:25 and then the love will come when it comes
02:27:30 and in terms of romantic love,
02:27:33 it has come and gone in my life.
02:27:35 It’s not there now, but I’m not worried about that.
02:27:42 I’m more worried about, you know, not worried,
02:27:45 but more like trying to just be a good version of myself.
02:27:50 I cannot always be the best version of myself,
02:27:53 but at least try to be good.
02:27:55 Yeah, and keep your heart open.
02:27:56 What is this Daniel Johnson song?
02:27:59 True love will find you in the end.
02:28:01 No, it may or may not.
02:28:03 But it will only find you if,
02:28:07 oh fuck, how does it go?
02:28:08 If you’re looking, so like you have to be open to it.
02:28:10 Yeah.
02:28:11 It may or may not.
02:28:12 Yeah, yeah.
02:28:13 And no matter what, you’re gonna lose it in the end
02:28:15 because it all ends, the whole thing ends.
02:28:17 Yeah, yeah.
02:28:19 I don’t think stressing over that,
02:28:22 like obviously it’s so human
02:28:26 that you can’t help it to some degree,
02:28:28 but I feel like stressing over love,
02:28:30 that’s the blueprint for whether you’re looking
02:28:34 or you’re not looking or you’re in a relationship
02:28:39 or married or anything,
02:28:41 like stressing over it is like the blueprint
02:28:44 for being unhappy.
02:28:46 Just to clarify confusion I have,
02:28:49 just a quick question.
02:28:50 How does the knight move?
02:28:52 Ha, so the knight moves in an L
02:28:57 and unlike in shogi it can move both forwards and backwards.
02:29:02 It is quite a nimble piece.
02:29:05 It can jump over everything,
02:29:08 but it’s less happy in open position
02:29:10 where it has to move from side to side quickly.
02:29:14 I am generally more of a bishops guy myself
02:29:18 for the old debate.
02:29:19 I just prefer quality over the intangibles,
02:29:24 but I can appreciate a good knight once in a while.
02:29:28 Last simple question.
02:29:30 What’s the meaning of life, Magnus Carlsen?
02:29:33 There’s obviously no meaning to life.
02:29:36 Is that obvious?
02:29:37 I think we’re here by accident.
02:29:39 There’s no meaning, it ends at some point,
02:29:42 but it’s still a great thing.
02:29:43 So.
02:29:44 Yeah, you can still have fun even if there’s no meaning.
02:29:47 Yeah, you can still have fun.
02:29:48 You can try and pursue your goals, whatever they may be,
02:29:52 but I’m pretty sure there’s no special meaning
02:29:55 and trying to find it also doesn’t make
02:29:59 a whole lot of sense to me.
02:30:01 For me, life is both meaningless and meaningful
02:30:05 for just being here, trying to make,
02:30:09 not necessarily the most of it,
02:30:10 but the things that make you happy
02:30:13 both short term and also long term.
02:30:15 Yeah, it seems to be full of cool stuff to enjoy.
02:30:18 It certainly does.
02:30:20 And one of those is having a conversation with you.
02:30:23 Magnus, it’s a huge honor to talk to you.
02:30:25 Thank you so much for spending this time with me.
02:30:28 I can’t wait to see what you do in this world
02:30:29 and thank you for creating so much elegance and beauty
02:30:32 on the chessboard and beyond.
02:30:34 So thanks for talking today, brother.
02:30:36 Thank you so much.
02:30:36 Thanks for having me.
02:30:38 And I wanted to say this at the start,
02:30:42 but I never really got the chance.
02:30:44 I was always a bit apprehensive about doing this podcast
02:30:49 because you are a very smart guy
02:30:50 and your audience is very smart
02:30:54 and I always had a bit of imposter syndrome.
02:30:58 So I’ll tell you this now after the podcast.
02:31:03 So please do judge me, but I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
02:31:07 I loved it.
02:31:08 You’re a brilliant man.
02:31:09 And I love the fact that you have imposter syndrome
02:31:12 because a lot of us do.
02:31:14 And so that’s beautiful to see even at the very top,
02:31:17 but you still feel like an imposter.
02:31:20 Thank you, brother.
02:31:21 Thanks for talking today.
02:31:22 Thanks for listening to this conversation
02:31:24 with Magnus Carlsen.
02:31:25 To support this podcast,
02:31:26 please check out our sponsors in the description.
02:31:29 And now let me leave you with some words from Bobby Fischer.
02:31:33 Chess is a war over the board.
02:31:36 The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.
02:31:39 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.