#330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness

Hikaru Nakamura is a chess super grandmaster and is currently the #1 ranked blitz chess player in the world. He is also one of the top chess streamers on Twitch and YouTube. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Mizzen+Main: https://mizzenandmain.com and use code LEX to get $35 off – InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off – NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour – SimpliSafe: https://simplisafe.com/lex EPISODE LINKS: Hikaru’s Twitch: https://twitch.tv/gmhikaru Hikaru’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/GMHikaru Hikaru’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/GMHikaru Hikaru’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/gmhikaru Hikaru’s Website: https://hikarunakamura.com Macauley Peterson’s video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tGXvcQP6VPo PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: – Check out the sponsors above, it’s the best way to support this podcast – Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman – Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman – Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) – Introduction (06:59) – A private game vs Magnus Carlsen (14:47) – Chess openings (30:59) – Mental preparation (39:40) – Chess tactics (50:03) – Solving chess (55:43) – Aggression and ego (1:00:28) – Hans Niemann cheating scandal (1:10:21) – How to cheat in chess (1:24:44) – Greatest chess player of all time (1:35:00) – Hikaru’s immortal game (1:47:26) – Paul Morphy (1:49:10) – World Chess Championship (1:51:59) – Magnus Carlsen (1:55:33) – Sergey Karjakin (1:58:00) – Beauty of chess (2:04:55) – Day in the life (2:19:34) – Streaming (2:34:13) – Taking risks (2:39:42) – Depression (2:44:31) – Advice for young people (2:51:51) – Love

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Hikaru Nakamura, a chess super grandmaster. He's one of the greatest chess players in the world, including currently being ranked world number one in blitz chess. He's also one of the most popular chess streamers on Twitch and YouTube, which you should definitely check out. His channel's name on both is GM Hikaru.

• 0:23Lex Fridman?

  And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got Mizzen and Maine for style, InsideTracker for bio monitoring, NetSuite for business management software, and Simple Safe for home security. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, on to the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too.

• 0:53Lex Fridman?

  This show is brought to you by Mizzen and Maine, the maker of comfortable stylish dress shirts and other menswear, and the maker of a brand name that's for some reason really fun to say. Mizzen and Maine. Mizzen and Maine, with a plus between the Mizzen and the Maine. They have a bunch of fancy, sexy, comfortable dress shirts, but I just have their black dress shirt, which I guess is all those things, comfortable and sexy and stylish, at least in my eyes.

• 1:26Lex Fridman?

  To me, the simplicity, the minimalism of a black dress shirt is just perfect. When I'm not wearing a suit and tie and I want to go for a dress shirt, whether with jeans or anything else, I always go with Mizzen and Maine. I just love the way it fits the body and so on, sort of from the shoulders to the waist. In fact, I wonder who designs those mannequins in stores on which they hang the clothes? I wonder if there's an art to that? Well, there's a certain way to design a mannequin in order to bring out the best from a shirt. Like, do you want it to be skinny? Do you want it to be muscular? I wonder, that's something actually I learned about when they were designing

• 2:07Lex Fridman?

  test dummies for for crashing cars to test the the safety of cars, that you should be doing all kinds of different dummies to represent different shapes and sizes and so on, age groups of the population. Anyway, at least for my body, I don't know about all the other bodies out there, but for my body, misery main fits perfect. I really love the way it feels. Right now, you can get a special discount. Just go to miserymain.com and use promo code Lex.

• 2:39Lex Fridman?

  This show is brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track biological data that comes from my own body. I've actually had a bunch of conversations about biology recently. And it's humbling and inspiring to think of the hierarchy of computation that is happening inside the human body, just from the basic cell or and the parts of the cell. Just looking at RNA alone, RNA and DNA, from the information to the information processing and the computation that happens there, the the translation mechanism that happens inside the cell to the the way the energy flows, the whole thing is fueled in such complicated ways. And all of that comes from the sun.

• 3:24Lex Fridman?

  Man, human biology is a truly marvelous creation. All of biology is a marvelous creation, and it really, from an engineering perspective, especially the resilience and the efficiency of energy use is just incredible. So anyway, you want to measure that particular biological machinery of yours if you want to make lifestyle decisions. For that, you should use InsideTracker and get special savings for a limited time when you go to inside tracker.com/lex.

• 3:57Lex Fridman?

  This show is also brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. It manages financials, human resources, inventory, e-commerce, and many business-related details, all of which I am completely behind on personally because I am in charge of it in my life and totally mismanaging. Or rather, not mismanaging, but procrastinating. Like, perhaps some of us, maybe a lot of us, are doing everything from the finances, on the tax organization side. Everything is always done last minute. And then just managing things in my life, people I work with. So I guess that's human resources. And just managing all the small and the big details.

• 4:41Lex Fridman?

  If you can use good tools for that kind of thing, you should. If you can hire help for that kind of thing, you should. But it's so tricky because it's so difficult to find the right tools and the right people to surround yourself with. NetSuite is one such tool that you should definitely integrate if you're a business. Go to netsuite.com/lex to access their one-of-a-kind financing program. This show is also brought to you by SimpliSafe, a home security company designed to be simple and effective. 30-minute setup and you can customize it to your needs. It was super easy to set up for me. It's the first layer of physical security in my life.

• 5:25Lex Fridman?

  There's many layers of physical security. There's many layers of cybersecurity. There is many layers of psychological security. Although, to be honest, the psychological one, that, because I make myself vulnerable to the world, it does not have enough layers. And I'm not sure I want those layers. I want to be easily hurt by the opinions of others. I think that means you're open and you're listening. But as long as I can protect the physical and the cyber, the digital, security, that's great. SimpliSafe is a great general solution for most people. I actually had a conversation, and we'll have several conversations, with cybersecurity experts on the defense side and on the former hacker side. I think it's such a fascinating...

• 6:11Lex Fridman?

  Space of skills because it's shrouded in mystery and darkness. And it's clearly becoming a bigger and bigger and bigger problem as the years and decades go on. Anyway, go to simplisafe.com/lex to customize your system and claim your free indoor security camera plus 20% off with interactive monitoring.

• 6:34Lex Fridman?

  This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Sukaru Nakamura.

• 6:59Lex Fridman?

  You and Magnus played a private game, 40 games of blitz in 2010 in Moscow at a hotel. This sounds and just feels legendary. Final score was 24.5 to 15.5 for Magnus.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Where did you find out the score? I'm actually curious. I don't think it was publicly said or it was very briefly said, but it wasn't ever like mentioned in a serious way. So.

• 7:22Lex Fridman?

  I think it's a deep dive based on a few links that started at a subreddit, which is how all great journeys start.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is kind of a crazy story. This was not pre-planned at all. I remember this quite well. I went out to dinner that final night with someone who was actually very high up within the Internet Chess Club at that time. I went out for a nice dinner. I think I had like a couple of drinks. Maybe it was wine, beer. I don't know what it was. And I think towards the end of the dinner, somehow they got word of this and they relayed the information to me that Magnus wanted to play a private match. Now, I agreed to play this match. Probably I should not have. And actually, it's nothing to do with like the state of having been out, had a few drinks, anything of that nature. But the reason that I probably should not have agreed to play this match and why I very oftentimes reference it as one of the biggest mistakes in terms of competitive chess

• 8:11Speaker 01

  that I made is specifically because it gave Magnus a chance to understand my style of chess. At the time, I actually had pretty good results against Magnus. I think maybe he was up one or two games, but there were many games where I had been pressing and close to winning against him prior to that match. And so when I went and played that match, there were a few things that happened. First of all, Magnus really started to understand my style because we played all sorts of different openings. And so I think he understood that at times I wasn't so great in the opening. And there were many openings where I would play slightly dubious variations as opposed to the main lines. And then secondly, from my standpoint, the problem that I realized is since we were playing with an increment, there are many games where I was close to winning and he would defend endgames amazingly well. He would

• 8:55Speaker 01

  defend what are technically drawn endgames, but where I would have like an extra pawn. It would be like rook and bishop versus rook and knight. Say I have four pawns, he has three pawns, endgames of this nature. Now, if you aren't super into chess, you might not understand what I'm referring to. If you are, you will. But there are endgames where one side might have extra material, an extra pawn, say extra two pawns, but theoretically it's a draw.

• 9:16Lex Fridman?

  Can you give an example of the set of pieces? We're talking about five, six, seven pieces?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  So, okay, like a very basic one would be rook and four pawns against rook and three pawns. So that would be nine total pieces on the board, four pawns on one side, three pawns on the other side. But it's all on the same side of the board. Now, this is a technical draw. It's been known for probably, let's just say, 70 years roughly, give or take, that this is a theoretical draw.

• 9:39Lex Fridman?

  No matter the position of the pawns.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Just all the pawns are on one side of the board. So like.

• 9:44Lex Fridman?

  But like where they are.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  So it's like, let's just say they're, let's just say they're four pawns right here. They're just four pawns. And black has three pawns. So your pawns are on h6, g6, and f6. And there are no other pawns on the board, something like this. And you both have rooks. And it's a draw. No matter what the next, like 50 moves of the game are, we know that it's a drawn endgame with perfect play. And so it was things like this where Magnus actually saved, I want to say like five or six of these. And I remember it quite well because I think the score was very, very close up until probably the last like 10 games of the match. And then at the end, he started winning, he started winning in spades. But there were a lot of situations where he was up like one game or maybe two games in the match, and I had some endgame like this, and I was not able to win the endgame.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  And so for me, after that match, it wasn't even so much that I lost the match or the margin I lost by, but it was the fact that I realized how hard it was to beat him, even once you got the advantage. And I think for Magnus, he learned that my weakness was openings. I remember, because I actually, I don't remember the game itself, but there was a game we played in Sicilian Nidor, and he played this variation with bishop g5 on move number 6. I'm sure you can, you can insert a graphic later, I can show you. And I think-

• 10:52Lex Fridman?

  Sicilian is a type of opening.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Sicilian's the opening, Nidor was the variation. It was played by Bobby Fischer, the former world champion, Garry Kasparov as well. And so we played all sorts of different openings, because of course, it's not a serious, it's, it's a serious match, but it's not serious where it's going to count for the rankings. So you're trying to fill out where your opponent's strong versus weak. And so there was one game, I remember this very clearly, he played the bishop g5 variation in the Nidor, and I think I played e5, or I played knight bd7 in e5, which is dubious, it's not the best response. And that's just one example where I was playing things that were a little bit dubious, and I was not playing the absolute main line with 20 moves of theory. So I was trying to get outside of theory, and I think Magnus learned from that, that even though it appeared that I was very well prepared in, in these openings, I wasn't quite at that level.

• 11:38Lex Fridman?

  Couldn't you have a different interpretation of you going outside of the main line, that you're willing to experiment, take risks, that you're chaotic, and that's actually a strength, not a weakness? Especially when you're sitting in a hotel room at late at night, this is past midnight,

• 11:55Lex Fridman?

  playing chess. I mean, why do you interpret that that's your weakness?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Because Magnus, going forward, was able to figure out the lines where you have to be super precise. You cannot deviate at all. And I got punished out of the opening in many games. So it was like, it wasn't about the Nidor, the, the opening or the variation specifically, but he knew what my repertoire was, and he would pick lines where I had to play the absolute best lines in order to equalize, or I would be much worse. And he was very effective at doing that.

• 12:22Lex Fridman?

  But nevertheless, it's pretty legendary that the two of you, you're one of the best chess players in the world throughout the whole period, still today. That you just sat down in a hotel room and played a ton of chess. Like, what was that like? I mean, what's the, there's a, I think there's a, there is a little here. There is a little video of it.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 12:45Lex Fridman?

  I mean, this is like epic, right? How did this video exist, by the way?

• 12:50Speaker 01

  I think there was one journalist, Macauley Peterson, who was, who was able to film parts of it. So it was, it was in a room. It was me, Magnus. I think Henrik was there. I think McCauley was there and that was it.

• 13:01Lex Fridman?

  People can go on YouTube and watch. It's on Chess Digital Strategies Macauley Peterson channel. For people who are just listening to this, there's a dimly lit room with a yellow light emerging out of the darkness of the two faces.

• 13:17Lex Fridman?

  I mean, and the deep focus here. And what time is this? This is must be.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  This is probably like one in the morning. This was, I believe, the day of, day after the, this was the day that the final round occurred and the closing ceremonies who were playing afterwards.

• 13:29Lex Fridman?

  I mean, are you able to appreciate the epicness of this?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Many of my favorite memories are actually similar to this. Another memory that I really have, that I recall very fondly was after the US Championship. It was called the 2005 US Chess Championship was held at the end of 2004 in, I believe it was in La Jolla in San Diego. I won that event. And after that, that event, I was playing blitz probably for like four or five hours in the lobby of the hotel. So it's the same kind of situation where you're just playing for the love of the game as opposed to anything else. Of course, nowadays, I think both for Magnus and myself, just playing a dimly lit room like this would almost certainly not happen. There would probably have to be certain stakes involved for, for us to play. But, you know, if you go back in time, these are the sorts of memories and moments that would happen all the time.

• 14:15Lex Fridman?

  So is there a part of you that doesn't regret that this happened?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  You know, I think it comes back to my general philosophy. I feel like everything happens for a reason. And so because I have that, that's one of my core beliefs. Like, I don't really look back on it as mistakes. I feel like everything has happened and things have transpired the way they have for a reason. If I look at it in terms of potentially like world championship aspirations, I think certainly it was a big mistake because from a competitive. Standpoint Magnus figured out what my weaknesses were at the time and he exploited it for many, many years. In fact, I think if you look at the match, I played against him in the Meltwater Tournament at the, I think that was in June. Or no, it was later. It was like September of 2020. We played this epic match. It was the finals of the tour and it went all the way to the seventh match.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Magnus won in Armageddon and in that match, my openings were much better. I was able to match him in the openings. I was not worse out of the opening in most of the games and that made a huge difference. But for many years, he was able to exploit my openings and I mean, that's why the score. I mean, it's not the only reason, but it's one of the reasons the score is so lopsided the way it is.

• 15:21Lex Fridman?

  Is there any of those games that you mentioned, seven games that are interesting to look at, to analyze? Ideas that you remember that are interesting to you?

• 15:29Speaker 01

  I mean, the whole, it was actually so to set it up and this probably will come into play in terms of world championship format. It was seven matches of four games. So he played a four game match. And after four games, Sam up two and a half, one and a half, I win match number one. Then, then it's so it's like you have to win four matches of four games.

• 15:46Lex Fridman?

  Do you remember how you won?

• 15:48Speaker 01

  There were a couple of Berlin games in the sixth, sixth match, I believe in the seventh match as well, where Magnus actually made some mistakes. And I won some critical games.

• 15:56Lex Fridman?

  You're gonna have to explain some basics here. So Berlin is the type of opening, what's that?

• 16:00Speaker 01

  The Rui Lopez or the Spanish opening. It actually existed all the way back in the 60s. But it really became popular in 2001, I believe it was, when Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik played their world championship match. Kasparov had been the world champion for a very long time. I think it was close, I think it was about 15, 15 years roughly, maybe a little bit more than that. And he lost the match because when Garry had the white pieces, Kasparov was not able to effectively get an advantage. A lot of those games were very quick draws and in chess, you want to put pressure on your opponent when you have the white pieces. So Kasparov was not able to do anything with the white pieces and Kramnik was able to beat him when the colors were reversed. Kramnik won a game in the Grunfeld. He won a game in one of the Queen's Gambit declined slash Nimzo variations as well.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  And that was the reason Garry Kasparov lost the world championship title was because of this, this variation.

• 16:49Lex Fridman?

  Can you teach me the Berlin opening?

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So the opening starts, let me just move this microphone up a little bit, starts with e4. And then it goes e5, knight f3, knight c6.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, bishop B5 and now knight to F6.

• 17:12Lex Fridman?

  And at which point is this the standard? Like, this is the Berlin?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is the Berlin. This is the starting position of the Berlin Defense. And White has many, many options here. Now, it's interesting because I did work with Gary at a certain point. And I remember I had access to his database. And he had something like 220 files on the Berlin Defense. Because what happened is, is Gary is somebody who, the way that he learned chess, it's very much like, there are certain openings that are okay. There are other openings that are not okay. And so this was considered dubious at the time. And so Gary basically decided to go into this endgame with castles. Knight takes pawn.

• 17:48Lex Fridman?

  Why is the castling an endgame?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  So I'll show you. Knight takes pawn. All these moves are very, very forced. You got pawn to d4.

• 17:56Lex Fridman?

  What does it mean they're very forced? That means like, those are the optimal things that you should be doing?

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. These moves are, I think they're almost, at least for Black, they're absolutely forced, or else you end up in trouble.

• 18:06Lex Fridman?

  You said knight takes d4?

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Uh, knight to d6.

• 18:08Lex Fridman?

  Oh, okay.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  So this attacks the bishop on B5.

• 18:12Lex Fridman?

  Got it.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  White takes. Black takes back with the pawn in front of the queen. Mm-hmm. Pawn takes pawn. Knight to F5.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  And then it goes queen takes queen.

• 18:25Lex Fridman?

  What?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  King takes queen.

• 18:27Lex Fridman?

  Very aggressive.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you get this position where we're in an endgame.

• 18:31Lex Fridman?

  Got it. You just ruined all the normal conventions, I guess.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Right. On the other hand, for Kramnik, it was quite brilliant because Gary, what he was known for was opening preparation and getting the advantage. He was a very tactical, very aggressive player. And you're playing an endgame right from the start. Now Gary basically thought that this was better for White, and he tried to prove it. And he was unable to prove it, I think, up until, maybe it was game, game nine or game 11. Actually, maybe I have the order wrong, because I think he was White in the even-numbered games. Basically, he spent four or five games with the white pieces trying to win this endgame. And he was not able to win. In fact, he didn't even come close to proving an advantage. So he kept wasting the white pieces in that match. And Kramnik basically took advantage. When he had the white pieces and Gary had the black pieces, he was able to win some games in very nice style, and that was the difference.

• 19:19Lex Fridman?

  Oh, that's kind of brilliant. So he had, this is a new problem presented in that match. And Gary's gut says.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  White is better.

• 19:27Lex Fridman?

  White is better. And so in white, I'm going to push with this position and I'm gonna not change anything from match to match. I'm going to try to find a way that this is better. So it's that kind of stubbornness. And what do you think about that? Like, what? That's, that's, that's the way of chess, right? That's not a mistake. That's, that's the way you should do it. If your gut says this position is better, you should capitalize, right?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  I think that's an old school way of thinking in chess, because before computers, basically it was up to humans. Your intuition, your calculation process really determined whether, whether a position is better. And so like, in Gary's time, if openings were dubious, they're dubious. It means somebody is better. But as we've learned with computers now, even small advantages, generally that doesn't mean anything. And a position is defendable, where you won't lose the game if you play optimal moves. Even if the advantage is like half a pawn, for example, like 0.50, with optimal play, a computer will still prove that that position, you can hold it and not lose the game. And so for Gary, he learned it where like, if an opening's not right, you're like, he knows it's not correct. He

• 20:33Speaker 01

  has to prove it. Now, finally, towards the end of the match, he tried to switch, but it was already way too late. And he didn't have time to win with the white pieces. He did come close in one of the later games. But he spent the whole match trying to prove that this Berlin defense is not playable.

• 20:46Lex Fridman?

  So this position, the computer would say that black is better?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  It would say that white's very slightly better, because black has moved the king, you're unable to castle the king, and it's kind of open in the center of the board.

• 20:57Lex Fridman?

  Oh, so wait, so Stockfish or the engine would agree with Gary's intuition?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Yes. But at the end of the day, when you go like five moves deeper in any number of the sequences, it's going to go to 0.00.

• 21:07Lex Fridman?

  Which means draw?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Yes, correct.

• 21:09Lex Fridman?

  And that's a bad thing, because white should be winning.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Well, you want to put pressure on your opponent when you have the white pieces in any tournament, any match.

• 21:16Lex Fridman?

  Got it. So if the engine says 0-0, that means you're not doing a good job of playing white.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Correct. You should be putting pressure. That doesn't mean you're going to win. There are going to be a lot of draws because the game of chess has drawish tendencies, but you want to try. Normally, the general approach these days because of computers is you try to put pressure on your opponent when you're white, and when you're black, you try to be solid, make a draw. That's the general approach now. When Gary was actually at his peak, it was quite the opposite. Gary was trying to win games with the black pieces as well by playing openings like the Sicilian Knight Or. But with modern technology, and I did a podcast recently where I also spoke about this, computers are so good and players can memorize so many lines that nowadays, trying to take risks with the black pieces, it almost always backfires. Or if you're very lucky, you might make the draw, but you never get the winning chances.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  So from a risk-reward standpoint, you have to play almost perfectly just to make the draw, but you're never going to have any winning chances. Where in the old days, generally, you might lose the games, but you're going to have chances to win as well. But now it's very much one-sided. So a lot of players try to be very solid.

• 22:19Lex Fridman?

  This is, by the way, the c2red podcast?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Correct, yes.

• 22:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, this is an amazing podcast. So shout out to those guys. I'm glad that they started a thing that seems to be a good thing, and I hope they keep going with this good thing. That was a great interview that I did with you.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  In that podcast, I talked about the Sicilian Knight Or, very aggressive opening. The problem is, white is the one who has the choices. After the first five to six moves, white has the choice of what do you want to do?

• 22:44Lex Fridman?

  Can you show me that?

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Sure. So it's, for example, that would be e4.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  I'll set it up. e4.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  c5.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  And now we get knight to f3, pawn to d6.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Pawn to d4, trade, knight to f6.

• 23:10Lex Fridman?

  Knight to f6.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  And now pawn to a6. So this is a knight orf. Bobby Fischer really popularized it in his run up to becoming the world champion. Gary played it for probably the last 15 to 20 years of his career. So it's a very solid, solid opening defense.

• 23:28Lex Fridman?

  What is, what are then, sorry to interrupt. What are the, what's interesting about this? So there's a, for people listening on the white side, there's a couple of knights out and.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  So black has many options. Black can play for b5 here to develop the bishop to b7. Because the pawn on a6 guards the pawn on b5. You can also play other setups, like potentially g6 and putting the bishop on g7.

• 23:54Lex Fridman?

  Okay, so bringing, doing different things and bringing out.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  You can also push the pawn to e5 or push the pawn to e6.

• 24:01Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  So there are many different setups and it's very, very flexible. But white is the one who, who has the choice here in terms of what to play. And there are many moves. There is this move that I mentioned before, bishop to g5, which Magnus played against me. There's also bishop to e3, bishop to c4. And now there are also moves like h3, h4, rook g1, even moves like a3 and a4. So there basically are nine or 10 moves that white can play here. But the move that white plays sort of dictates the direction of the game. And you have to be extremely precise, you're black. So if white plays something like bishop g5, this is very sharp and aggressive. But you can also play something like bishop to e3, pawn to e5 and something like knight to f3 here. And it goes in a positional direction.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  So the, again, this is very advanced. These are very advanced sort of setups and, and what I'm explaining is not, not at a basic level. But white is the one who chooses the type of game. Is it very aggressive, very sharp, or both sides have chances? Is it something very positional where if you're black, you're probably okay, but you have to play the best moves in order to equalize? Or you can end up worse?

• 25:05Lex Fridman?

  Okay, so you're always responding as black in this situation?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 25:08Lex Fridman?

  So, so how different are all those different variations? So like with the bishop, with the different, you said you, you bring out the bishop to this position, to this position and to that position. Like how, are those fundamentally different variations? Like I just wonder. From a AI computational perspective, like a single step.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I'll make it even simpler here. If you put the knight here, it's very positional. If you put the knight on this square, it's very aggressive because normally white is going to push this pawn from f2 to either f3 or f4 and potentially a pawn to g4 later. So even here, based on where you go, it changes whether it's a positional game or it's a very tactical.

• 25:46Lex Fridman?

  Just those little, and that, those are the choices you're constantly making. Am I going to be standard and basic and positional or am I going to be aggressive?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  And I can actually give you another example. So psychology plays a big role and in the candidates tournament, which I played in June of this past year in Madrid, Spain. I actually, I had the white piece against Ali Reza Farouzja, who is a rising junior originally from Iran, representing France. And I knew that he wanted very aggressive games because he doesn't normally play this silly night. And he chose to play it in this one tournament. So I knew that he wanted these very sharp positions where he can lose, but he can also win. And so when I played him, I intentionally played this variation because I knew that he was going to be unhappy. He wanted these sharp, exciting games. And here I am playing something very boring where if he plays it correctly, it's going to be a draw, but he's not going to be happy. And so he actually did something dubious because he wanted to create tension. He wanted to create chaos.

• 26:39Lex Fridman?

  So you knew by being boring, you would frustrate him and then he would make mistakes.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yes. Yes.

• 26:44Lex Fridman?

  That's the ultimate troll at the highest level of chess. Yeah. You mentioned psychology and then taking us back to the Magnus, even in 2010, the Magnus games. Reddit said that you've spoken about losing to Magnus being a hit on your confidence. Is there some truth to that? So is there some aspect about that 2010 match that's not just about Magnus figuring stuff out? But just a hit on confidence, like how important is confidence at that level when you're both young and like firing out all cylinders?

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Well, it's not just a problem with me. This is the problem. Everybody has to play against Magnus. Because what happens is, is on a broader level, when you play against somebody, no matter who you're playing against, but when they're somehow able to save positions where they're much worse, almost in miraculous. Ways, the way that Magnus has done against everybody. He's done it against me, done it against Eronian many times, done it against Kramnik, just about everybody. When, when someone's able to save games, it really starts to affect you because you don't know what to do. And more and more, the more and more times that happens, it starts adding up and it just affects you in a way that it's very, very hard to overcome. And I think every top player has that issue where if they've played against Magnus more than like five times, they've seen things happen in the game that don't happen against anybody else.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  And then psychologically, it becomes harder and harder to overcome it, which is why I think a lot of the junior players, they don't have this long history and it does affect them. As far as myself directly, um, certainly after that match though, it was not the same playing against Magnus. Because I viewed him completely differently too. After all those games where he was saving these, these end games, I started thinking like, this guy is superhuman. But you can't really have those thoughts when you're playing competitively, but in the back of your mind, it's always there. And I think every top player has that issue.

• 28:33Lex Fridman?

  Is there a way to overcome that? Cause you have to.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'll necessarily do better against Magnus going forward, but I felt that when I started playing against him, more than just a game here or there in classical chess, during the pandemic, I played in these online tournaments, seemed like every month. Um, I came very close. I beat him in one event. I think I lost in two others and then the tour final. But when I was playing against him more and more, he didn't feel superhuman. It felt like as I'm playing more and more and learning about his style, that I was doing better. So I think for me, the weird thing is that I just wasn't playing against him that many games. But when I start playing against him like 20, 30 games, during the course of a year, I actually started feeling more confident because I feel like I can compete. Whereas when I was only playing him like three or four times in classical chess in the previous couple of years,

• 29:20Speaker 01

  it wa- I wasn't doing great. And then you don't have, you don't have those glimpses of, you don't have those moments where you feel like you're going to be able to win against him. But when you start playing 20, 30 games and you get these opportunities, even if you don't convert, you feel like you have the chances. When you play three or four games and there, you might lose one, draw three, you never have those opportunities. And so you feel very negative about what's going on.

• 29:40Lex Fridman?

  When you were able to beat him or not necessarily win the game, but win positionally something, uh, what was the reason? Like technically speaking,

• 29:52Lex Fridman?

  The matchup between the two of you, what like, where were the holes that you were able to find?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  I mean, the the answer, I think, is actually quite simple. I think it's all psychological, actually, more than anything else. Because I didn't, it didn't, I didn't feel like I was doing anything differently, but I was also not making the mistakes that I was making before. So I think it was more psychological than.

• 30:14Lex Fridman?

  On your part versus his part?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  It's it's very weird, because when you, when you think about chess, it's a mental game.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  You know, but we, we all are capable of beating Magnus, all of us, but we all have very, very bad scores against him. And I think people underestimate how much of a role that plays. And for me, when I played him in these online events in 2020 specifically, I felt like there, there was really nothing to lose. Which also ties into everything else that happened during the pandemic as well. But I just felt like there was nothing to lose, and I felt like I was playing very freely, unlike, unlike before. Now, that's not to say that Magnus isn't a better player, that like somehow I expect to beat him. But I felt like I wasn't making the same mistakes that I was making in the previous years.

• 30:59Lex Fridman?

  If we dig into the psychological preparation, is there something to your mental preparation that you do that makes you successful? Like, what are the lessons over all these years that you learned? What works, what doesn't? Do you drink a bunch of whiskey the night before? Is there, is there? Is there some small hacks or major ones about how you approach the game?

• 31:17Speaker 01

  It's really hard, sort of in a way, because I feel like I'm two different people. I was one person up until the pandemic as a professional chess player solely, where I earned all my income. Everything was derived from that. And from the pandemic on, I'm sort of a different person, because that is not where, where I'm making my income from. And so the whole psychological profile that I had before is completely different from now. There, there's this, this, this joke about the, I literally don't care, phrase that I've used. And in a sense, what that means is not that I don't care. Obviously, I'm competitive. I want to do well. But if I lose a game, or I don't do well in a tournament, it's not the end of the world in the same kind of way that I felt it was before. Because that pressure of needing to always perform was very, very high.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  And so I think before, before the pandemic, what I would try to do more than anything is just not think about the previous game, for the most part. Like, say I had a bad game, I'd go out for a walk that evening, just clear my mind, these sorts of things. Now, they aren't really hacks, per se, but it's trying essentially to have short-term memory loss.

• 32:21Lex Fridman?

  So I literally don't care is not just a meme, it's a, it's a philosophy.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  In a sense it is.

• 32:26Lex Fridman?

  It's a way of being.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  I mean, it's, it's basically that, yes, like I do want to perform well, I'm going to give it my all. But it's not like if I lose a game, it's not the end of the world.

• 32:34Lex Fridman?

  That should be the title of your biography, autobiography and it should be, um, like, uh, I, I know you're probably immortal, but if you do happen to die, that should also be in your tombstone. Charles Bukowski has a don't try in his tombstone.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:51Lex Fridman?

  Which, which I think emphasizes a similar concept, but slightly different, more in the artistic domain, which is, um, well, a lot of people have different interpretations of that statement, but I think it means, don't take things too seriously.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I mean, I, I agree with that completely. I think that, if you, if you look at my career prior to the pandemic, I put huge amounts of pressure on myself because I really wanted to be as good as I could be, but, but it was the way I was earning a living. And one thing that's very difficult about chess is that only the top 20, maybe 30 players in the world make a living from the game. Now you make a very good living, um, no way am I diminishing chess, but the problem with it is it's not secure at all. So if you don't get invitations to the absolute top tournaments, which have prize funds from anywhere from maybe a hundred thousand up to potentially half a million dollars. If you don't get those invitations, it's very, very hard to earn a living. You can go from earning maybe 200,000, 300,000 dollars a year to earning like 50,000.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  So it's very, very unstable. And I think, um, for myself, I really put a lot of pressure on myself and in a way that it affected me and not, not, not in a good way, not in.

• 34:03Lex Fridman?

  So in part, it was also financial pressure. So like, once you're able to make money elsewhere, it, it, it makes you more free to take risks, to play the, the pure game of chess.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it makes, yeah, exactly. It makes, it made me, it took all that pressure off and I kind of, I'm just trying to play as well as I can and I don't really worry. Like if I lose a game, it's not the end all be all. And maybe that's just like psychological stuff that I should have tried to sort out before. I mean, I did at some period of time, like do certain things along those lines, but um, I, I just, yeah, I became, became free. And I think it, it definitely, it was not about the chess. And that's one of those things that's also very hard because when I look at myself and when I had these periods where it seemed like I played better or improved, one of these periods was in 2008 where I basically, I dropped out of college. I was about 2650 elo,

• 34:56Speaker 01

  so I was roughly top 100 in the world. And for the first probably half part of 2008, I played very little, almost not all. I went up to Vancouver. I was living on my own for the first time and I was not studying that much. And then after that period, I started playing and I actually improved very quickly and I broke 2700 shortly thereafter. So it had nothing to do with chess.

• 35:16Lex Fridman?

  When you moved to Vancouver and weren't doing much, what were you doing exactly?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Oh, I was enjoying nature. I was going outside, hiking mountains, like going and kayaking, all these things that I was not, that I had not done for many

• 35:31Lex Fridman?

  Beautiful. I'm glad I asked because I was imagining something else. I was imagining you like in a dark room, drinking and playing video games and uh, okay, cool. That, that's good. That, that's an interesting break. So dropping out of college and then giving, taking a break and then giving everything to chess in terms of preparation and so on. Uh, maybe actually if we can rewind back to the, to the beginning, you've said about yourself that you're not a naturally talented chess player. Uh, your brother was, but that's really fascinating because what would you say was the reason you're able? To break through and become one of the best chess players in the world, having been not a naturally talented chess player.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that this applies to actually chess or any number of sort of basic games, actually, for that matter, is that I'm not naturally talented, but if I don't get something, I'm, I try to figure out, why don't I get it? What am I doing wrong over and over and over again? And I mean, there are many games like this. There's this funny game on the phone. I'll just use it as an example. There's a game called Geometry Dash. Now, I'm not like, I'm not world class or anything at it. It's just a silly, silly little game on the phone that you play. You just tap and it goes up and down. People, people will probably know what that is. But like I, I played that for maybe like an hour or so. I just randomly played for one hour and I was terrible at it and I kind of forgot about it, about it for a week. And then I'm, then I came back, I saw on my phone, I'm like, okay, what am I doing wrong? Like, why am I not good at this game?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  So I spent like, probably like a hundred hours over the following month, just playing it nonstop over and over and over again to get, to get better at it. And again, I'm not like world class or anything, but I'm pretty good at the game. And so with chess is the same thing. It's like, when I started out, it's like, why am I not good? What am I doing wrong? And I basically refused to accept that I couldn't be good at the game. And so, um, you know, at the start, I actually, I played for a couple of months. I did very poorly. Um, and then my parents stopped me from playing for about six months. They just said, no, you're not playing. Your brother, your brother's quite good. And my brother was one of the top ranked players in his age group in the United States. So you're not playing. Then after about six months, they relented and they let me play. And the first tournament back, I actually, it was four games. I was playing against other kids

• 37:45Speaker 01

  and I won the first three games. So it was really good. And I lost the form of checkmate in the fourth game, um, which is of course quite ironic.

• 37:52Lex Fridman?

  How did you?

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:54Lex Fridman?

  Oh, I guess this is, how old were you at this time?

• 37:56Speaker 01

  I would have been about eight years old, seven or eight.

• 37:58Lex Fridman?

  So an eight-year-old, future, top-ranked chess player has, so it's great to know that, that somebody has lost to that checkmate. So it's possible to lose that checkmate.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  I, I remember that game quite well.

• 38:12Lex Fridman?

  Was it, I mean, at that time, did you know that that checkmate exists?

• 38:16Speaker 01

  I mean, I think I probably knew it existed, but I didn't. I was just playing like it's a completely different world than now. If a kid goes on their computer, they can immediately figure out what are the basic checkmates? All these different things. At the time, that didn't really exist. You'd have to find it in a book.

• 38:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, so this is just a basic blunder.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 38:33Lex Fridman?

  Cool.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's like I came back, it was a very good start and then I then I then I lose like this. But I stuck with it. I improved very, very quickly thereafter. Um, and yeah, it was very straightforward.

• 38:44Lex Fridman?

  What was the secret to that fast improvement? So you said, you said like this very first important step, which is saying like, what am I doing wrong? Like, I have to figure out what I'm doing wrong. But then you actually have to take the step of figuring out what you're doing wrong.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was just, I, I just, I played as much as I could. Like, it wasn't like I was consciously thinking about as an eight year old, you're not really thinking about those sorts of things with the big picture. So I just basically kept playing as much as I could, whether it was online, whether it was against my brother, reading these chess books as much as I could. I just devoured as much information.

• 39:16Lex Fridman?

  So you were studying chess books? You were.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  I was, I mean, I wasn't studying them cover to cover, though. It's like you just study certain diagrams, certain positions.

• 39:24Lex Fridman?

  So openings and stuff like that.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Uh, mostly tactics, actually. Openings were not, other than top level chess, openings were not a thing, probably. I want to say for players below maybe master level in a serious way until maybe like the early 2000s.

• 39:38Lex Fridman?

  So for people who don't know chess, what, what kind of tactical ideas are interesting and basic to understand? That once you understand, you, you take early leaps in improvement.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's things like forks, for example, where you attack two pieces at the same time, discovered attacks like checkmates. And again, winning like a queen or other material. Those are probably two most important ones. Um, batteries or batteries and pins, things of that, things of that nature.

• 40:07Lex Fridman?

  How many, how rich is the world of, and by the way, discovered attacks are when you move a piece.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. And you, you put a king in check to win like a rook, for example, or other material.

• 40:18Lex Fridman?

  And forking pieces is when you're attacking two pieces, so. Obviously, the other person can't move two pieces at a time. They're gonna have to lose one of them. Okay, so how big is the world, the universe of forks and discovered attacks? Like, you know, I, I, I, I myself know, so there's like knights attacking like, uh, what is, what is?

• 40:41Speaker 01

  They're, they're forks, knight attacking like a queen and a rook, for example, or like a pawn attacking a queen and a rook, um, or like a rook and a bishop. Um, it's innumerable there. I mean, but I will say that I think that with chess, the more of these patterns you see, the quicker you catch them. And that's how you improve, I think, the, the most is by learning these basic tactical themes at, at the beginner levels.

• 41:04Lex Fridman?

  Are you, when you're discovering those patterns, are you looking at the chessboard? Or are you looking at some like higher dimensional representation of the, the relative position of the pieces? You know, so basically something that's disjoint of the particular absolute position of the piece. But like, you're seeing patterns, like this kind of pattern, but elsewhere on the board. Like, are you thinking in, in patterns or in like absolute positions of the pieces?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Both. I think that, uh, at the higher levels, you're, you're always thinking about like, you're, you're thinking about the patterns on one side of the board specifically, but then also what happens is you play more and more, if you're a very strong player, you will be able to remember, say, pawn structures where the pawns are on certain squares from games that you've played like 15, 20 years ago, even potentially. Um, so it's a mix. I think a lot of it is more subconscious than actively thinking about it and like figuring it out like that. Um, the only thing for me that I definitely am doing very frequently when I, when I play is, is trying to look at my pieces. Are they placed on the optimal squares? Are there better squares? And then once I get past that, like using the basic logic, I start to think about, okay, what pure calculations,

• 42:11Speaker 01

  like what are the moves that make a lot of sense and start calculating direct moves? But one of the most basic things that I think that I do that a lot of people actually should do that they don't do is looking at the piece placement and trying to figure out what pieces look like they're on good squares versus bad squares.

• 42:26Lex Fridman?

  So am I, for each piece, asking the question, am I, am I a happy place? Am I, am I like optimally happy place?

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's very important. Like, if we look at this position on the board right now, that's a good example.

• 42:37Lex Fridman?

  Who is not in their happy place on the board right now?

• 42:40Speaker 01

  I think both, both sides are actually pretty happy right now. But the thing is, if you're playing with a black piece, there's, what is, what is a move that sticks out to you to like follow basic principles?

• 42:51Lex Fridman?

  Basic principles, probably bring out the bishop.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  And then castle the king.

• 42:55Lex Fridman?

  And castle the king.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. That's, that's correct. And, and that's what you should do. That's the best way to play the position. Now, once you do that, though-

• 43:03Lex Fridman?

  By the way, I have a vibrating device inside of me right now, so I knew that.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:08Lex Fridman?

  And so my rating is 3,400, which is what I believe Stockfish is.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  No, it's higher. It's like 3,800, actually.

• 43:14Lex Fridman?

  Is it 38?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  I think it is.

• 43:15Lex Fridman?

  I'm using an earlier version of Stockfish. Okay. Anyway, sorry, you were saying-

• 43:19Speaker 01

  So, like, that's, that's very basic. But then, if you move the bishop out, and you castle the king, well, let's just say, bishop B7, play this, you castle.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Okay, so now you've, you've done everything with the piece on the king's side. So what would be the next set of, what, what's the next way to try and develop the pieces?

• 43:38Lex Fridman?

  So, everything here is pretty strong, except maybe this pawn? I don't know.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Okay, but think about the pieces. So by pieces, I mean everything except the pawns.

• 43:46Lex Fridman?

  Okay, except the pawns, okay. Uh, probably either, either bishop or knight-

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:54Lex Fridman?

  On the other side.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, and that is correct. You want to bring out the bishop and the knight? So let's say you go bishop to e6.

• 44:00Lex Fridman?

  E6, yeah.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'll castle. Now, you can move the knight to either square. It's somewhat irrelevant, but just move the knight. I'll just play it.

• 44:08Lex Fridman?

  Knight to c6. What, what was your random move, bringing the bishop out?

• 44:12Speaker 01

  I just moved my rook to the center of the board.

• 44:13Lex Fridman?

  Oh, well, we, what's your unhappy place right now?

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Okay, so let me move the queen to just follow some basic principles. Okay, because I want to bring my rook to the center of the board.

• 44:20Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  So like, in this position, you've pretty much developed all your pieces. There are only two pieces that you haven't brought into the game.

• 44:27Lex Fridman?

  The, the queen-

• 44:28Speaker 01

  And the rook.

• 44:29Lex Fridman?

  And the rook. And this, you consider to be in the game because of-

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Um, I wouldn't say it's, it's in the game, but there isn't really a great square for that rook right now. But in this position, you would probably move your rook to c8. And then the middle game begins after that.

• 44:45Lex Fridman?

  Got it. So here.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Because now you've gotten your piece to all the optimal squares and now you have to look for a specific plan, but you have gotten these pieces developed out of the opening. And that's, that's like a very basic thing that I think a lot of people don't think about is like, what are the optimal placements for the pieces?

• 45:01Lex Fridman?

  So you're constantly thinking about the pieces that are not in their optimal placement as you're doing all the other kind of tactics and stuff like that.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  But that's a basic thing that people can follow. Actually doing pure calculations, like moving five or 10 moves in your head, that's not realistic. But trying to use basic logic to figure out what pieces look, what pieces are on squares that look correct is something anybody can do.

• 45:23Lex Fridman?

  What about looking at the other person's pieces and thinking about the optimal placement of them? Like if you see a bunch of pieces not in their optimal placement for the opponent, what does that tell you?

• 45:34Speaker 01

  I mean, that's a higher level concept, of course, that like I'm trying to give a beginner example. That is something that I do think about as well. Like I try to think about my opponent's pieces like that. That is basic logic. I think a lot of people these days at the upper levels of chess, they look at the game as something of pure calculation and you lose that human element. You're trying to just calculate all these different sequences of moves and you don't think about the basics. And it's something, it'll be interesting to see what happens with the next generation of kids who become very strong, because that is really how they approach the game. They learn with computers. Whereas like I learned with computers at a certain point, but it's, I did not start off with computers from the get go. So the human element still exists in my game. Actually Magnus, I think has said this too,

• 46:16Speaker 01

  where he did not use a computer, I think until he was maybe like 11 years old, something, something around there. And so we have that human element to our game that I think the newer generation won't have. Now, it doesn't mean they aren't going to be better than us, but it's going to be a completely different approach.

• 46:29Lex Fridman?

  What do you mean by human elements? Just basic logic versus raw calculation?

• 46:34Speaker 01

  So it's like. Anybody now will use a computer from the time they start the game. And you use a computer, you look at the evaluations after the game to see how you're doing. But you don't really ever have those moments where you're just, it's you. Or it's just you and your opponent. One thing that was great in the old days before computers simply became too strong is that you would actually do analysis with your opponent after the game. And that's very much this two humans analyzing a game. It's you and your opponent, two peers. And you come up with these human ideas. It's not automatically run back to your room, look with a computer and, oh, I should have played this move. And it's just like winning the game. So that is kind of something that has, that no longer exists in the game of chess. Because as I said, there's no reason to analyze with your opponent after the game.

• 47:18Lex Fridman?

  Are there ideas that the engine tells you that you can't reverse engineer with logic? Why that makes sense and you start to just memorize it that's good?

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Um, yes, so in the opening, for sure, there are certain positions where moves are playable. And I can even give you an example, actually, in this knight or if we can just set the position up a few moves earlier. Yeah, knight over on b8, bishop on c8. And just move the king back to the center. Bishop back to f8 and pawn to e7. So the pawn in front of the king just push it back two squares. So like, here's an example. There's a move here that nowadays humans will play, which is this move pawn to h4. And this, this is a move that 20 years ago, if someone showed this move to Kasparov, he would just laugh at them, no matter who you were. He would basically say, you're an idiot. What, what is this move? Like, you're pushing a pawn on the edge of the board.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  It does nothing. And this is something that's, it's playable. But even if you were to ask me or any other top grandmaster why it's playable or why it's, why it's a move that makes sense, we wouldn't be able to say why it makes sense. Because it, it doesn't. We just know that it's fine because the computer says it's fine.

• 48:28Lex Fridman?

  It's fine or is it good? It's just fine?

• 48:31Speaker 01

  It can, it probably like everything else is equal with perfect play. But it definitely, if you're not careful with black, you can be worse, for sure. But if you ask me, I can't say why it's a good move. I can say, okay, maybe I'm going to expand on the king's side. I'll push this pawn here and push the pawn forward. Maybe, maybe I can put the bishop on g5 and in some position the pawn guards the bishop. But I can't give like an actual good explanation for why it's a move that makes sense. Because it doesn't make sense.

• 48:56Lex Fridman?

  It's fascinating that young people today, kids these days, would probably do that move much more.

• 49:04Lex Fridman?

  Nonchalantly, you'll see that a lot more because they know it's safe at least.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Right, because I know the computer says it's fine, but I grew up without computers. And so to me, it's you're pushing a pawn on the edge. It's the opening phase. You don't do things like this. It's just, it, it looks ridiculous. Now, of course, I have worked with computers long enough that I know, like, I'm not. I, I, I know the computers are, um, computers proved that, that everything is fine. But still, to me, it does feel wrong.

• 49:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Well, I think as computers get better, they'll also get better at explaining, which they currently don't do. At, at basically being able to do.

• 49:41Lex Fridman?

  So first of all, simple language generation. So a set of chess moves to language conversion, explaining to us dumb humans of why this is an interesting tactical idea. They currently don't do that. You're supposed to figure that out yourself. Like, why? What's the deep wisdom in this particular pawn coming out in this kind of way? Let me ask you a ridiculous question.

• 50:07Lex Fridman?

  Do you think chess will ever get solved? From the opening position to where we'll know the optimal, optimal level of play?

• 50:14Speaker 01

  I highly doubt it. Um, without major advances in quantum computing, I don't think it's realistic to expect chess to be hard solved. I just, I don't think that will happen. Um, but I, I don't know. It could happen 20, 30 years maybe, but I, I think in the near future, it's not, not realistic.

• 50:32Lex Fridman?

  Well, then let's go up with a pod head follow up question. Suppose it does get solved. What opening do you think will be the optimal?

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Well, everything will be a draw for sure. After.

• 50:44Lex Fridman?

  For sure.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  After move one, yes.

• 50:46Lex Fridman?

  For sure. You're absolutely sure of that?

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes.

• 50:48Lex Fridman?

  That's, why are you so sure?

• 50:51Speaker 01

  I'm so sure because when you look at the computer games and you see these decisive results, it's because they played, the openings are set generally. They can't, they can't, for move one, they play set openings. Like you might play the knight or you might play the Berlin Defense. Normally it's set openings as opposed to, um, as opposed to computers being able to do whatever they want. I just believe in general, in the openings that are symmetric. Like e4, e5, d4, d5, the computers will draw. And I think the optimal opening, I think e4, e5, knight f3, knight f6 is probably a guaranteed draw. If there is perfect, if we have perfect information and we know that chess is solved, e4, e5, knight f3, knight f6, the Russian or the Petrov defense, that will be the optimal strategy.

• 51:35Lex Fridman?

  See, so that's symmetrical play is going to lead to a draw. But what if you can constantly as white maintain asymmetry, constantly keep the opponent off balance? So yes, e4, then you're always doing this symmetry. But what if chess inherently, there's something about the mathematics of the game that allows for like that thin line that you walk that maintains to the end game, the asymmetry constantly, that there's no move that can bring back the balance of the game.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:13Lex Fridman?

  You don't think that exists?

• 52:15Speaker 01

  I don't think it does. So basically I'm saying e4, e5, I think is a draw. I think d4, d5 is a draw. c4, c5, I think, I think basically symmetry, that's.

• 52:22Lex Fridman?

  All of it's a draw.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  I think that's, that's why it's a draw.

• 52:25Lex Fridman?

  So it doesn't even matter? Like you're saying, if it's solved, most openings will be a draw?

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yes, I think e4, d4, c4, knight f3 for sure will be a draw. Other openings I'm not sure about, but those first four possible starting moves, I think chess is a draw.

• 52:43Lex Fridman?

  Knight f3, what's the response to knight f3?

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Um, probably knight f6 again. Or to make it simple, if I play knight f3 on move one, black here can also play d5 on move one. And normally at some point, white's going to end up playing d4.

• 53:01Lex Fridman?

  So the order of.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  So it's probably going to lead back, yeah, all roads kind of lead back there as well. There probably are other ways which, where there is play, but I think that's at the end of the day, the symmetry is, symmetry is what's going to lead, lead to like a forced, forced equality or draw in the game of chess.

• 53:18Lex Fridman?

  So Demis Hassabis is the CEO of DeepMind. DeepMind helped create or created AlphaZero. He says that he's also a chess player and he's a fan of chess. And he says, the reason. His hypothesis is that the reason chess is interesting as a game is the creative quote unquote tension between the bishop and the knight. So like there's so many different dynamics that are created by those two pieces. You think there's truth to that? I mean, some of that is just poetry, but is there truth to that?

• 53:53Speaker 01

  I think it's definitely true. When you look at the imbalances that are not like crazy attacking positions, like one thing that Bobby Fischer was really, really good at when he was the world champion is playing endgames with a bishop versus a knight. Now, traditionally, we think of the knight being better than the bishop, even today in endgames, but Fischer proved that there are a lot of endgames where a bishop is better than a knight. So I do agree with that statement. It's like the imbalances between like bishops and knights in many positions, you never really know. There are many positions where a knight is better than a bishop, or knight and bishop are better than two bishops. Or like, it is all the imbalance. Generally, it is the imbalances, though, between the bishops and the knights or combinations of the two pieces that lead to the most interesting positions. So I agree with that.

• 54:35Lex Fridman?

  Interesting positions. What about fun? Is there like aspects that you find fun within the game itself? Not all the stuff around it, but just the purity of the game?

• 54:46Speaker 01

  I think for me these days, when I see some of these moves that computers suggest after a game that I play and I just go, wow, that is the beauty for me. Because these are not moves that I would ever consider. And when I then see the move and then like I might make a couple of moves to try and understand why, that is the beauty to me, is seeing all these things that just like 10 years ago, I never would have even seen because computers weren't at the level they're at today. And so the depth and creativity of what they're saying, even if it's not like in our language, but in the evaluation, that's where I find a lot of beauty.

• 55:17Lex Fridman?

  Oh, that's fun. So like the computer is a source, is a source of creative fulfillment for you?

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, I think also it's very humbling as well. Because like, you know, when you spend your whole life playing a game and you get pretty good, you think you're pretty good at it. But even like even for Magnus, I think when we look at it and you see like these things that we've spent 20, 30 years playing this game and it just, it doesn't click. And then you see it, it's just like, it really is beautiful.

• 55:44Lex Fridman?

  You're known for being a very aggressive player. What's your approach to being willing to take big risks at the chessboard?

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's another thing. I was a very aggressive player, probably until I got to about this 2,700 elo. And then it kind of my style changed a little bit. I think what it is, is I like to play attacking chess. I loved playing openings like the King's Indian, the Silly Night Orf as well, when I was a little bit younger. And it's just like, why not try to fight with both colors? Try to fight in every game and win if you can. Try as hard as you can. Now, one of the things is, as you get better and better, players are also better and better prepared. So you have diminishing returns when you play these very aggressive openings like the King's Indian, or even the Dutch, which I played for a while. You can only, it only takes you so far. And then at a point, people figure out what, how to respond to those choices.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  So I still do play these openings. For example, I played a tournament in St. Louis about three weeks ago. And I played a great King's Indian game, which I won against Jeffrey Zhang, an American junior player. So I still do play it here and there. But when you start playing it every game, there's a point at which when you lose these games, you just can't. It becomes too much. And I spoke about this in the C Squared podcast where I played the Night Orf. And then I played Fabiano Caruana, a very strong American player as well. And he just blew me off the board in like four straight games. I'm like, okay, enough, enough of this. I just can't, I can't keep doing it.

• 57:08Lex Fridman?

  Because, do you think he prepared for that opening then?

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 57:11Lex Fridman?

  Because you see, what have, what has my opponent been playing recently? Where's their ideas? And so I'm going to prepare for those ideas that they've been playing with.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, that's what you do. And also, you have to be very self-critical because for Fabiano, the Night Orf was the one opening he did very poorly against. But he worked really hard and he came up with a lot of different ideas and he solved that weakness.

• 57:33Lex Fridman?

  What's the role of, you're also known of having a bit of an ego? What's the role of ego in chess? Is it helpful or does it get in the way?

• 57:41Speaker 01

  I think it's a mix. I think there's a fine line. I think you have to be very confident in order to get to the top. I know some players are very expressive like myself, like Kasparov and others. There are other people like Anand who don't express it. But then there was a book that I think was released fairly recently where he basically said like he was really angry in his room and he was like banging walls or doing something with chairs. I don't remember the exact story, but like he was able to, in public, he kept it very like very buttoned up, but then in private he wasn't. I think, you know, you have to, you have to have that edge. If you don't have that edge and you don't get upset when you lose games, because you will lose games along the way, then it's impossible to get anywhere near the top. So I think every top player has that ego or extreme confidence that is necessary.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  If you don't have that, you'll never, I think, get to the top, probably in almost any field, frankly.

• 58:30Lex Fridman?

  Do you have to believe you're the best to have the capacity to be the best in the world?

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you have to have that. I think for me, it wasn't really ever about thinking I'm the best in the world, it's about like going into that game. That game, whoever I'm playing, I believe that I can beat them, or I know that I'm going to beat them, or I'm better than them. That's, for me, it was always about the, that whenever I'm in that moment in the game, just knowing that I can do that. I think that is also another thing that when you start playing more and more in these top tournaments, you kind of lose that sometimes because the positions, you have the same opening strategies. You end up with positions that are very drawish, where you reach endgames, things of this nature. And so it can also make you very jaded as well, after you've been up there for quite a long time.

• 59:11Lex Fridman?

  Were there times you were an asshole to someone and you regret it? At the chessboard or beyond?

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:19Lex Fridman?

  Asking internet questions?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, this is definitely true. I'm not going to pretend it isn't. When I was younger, I was very angry when I would lose games on the internet. Many of these stories are specifically from the internet, of course, and, you know, I think I look back on it and of course, I wish that I'd been able to like channel the anger differently. Basically, I think the simple gist of it is, I would play blitz games online and I lost, I would get angry at my opponents instead of getting angry at myself. Which of course, it's silly because they're playing the game, they're trying to win, like why shouldn't they try to beat you? I think for me, like I'm not happy about that when I was, when I was a young teenager, getting so angry over these online games and insulting a lot of people along the way.

• 59:58Lex Fridman?

  But maybe that paved the way to your streaming career.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  I think for me, like, I feel like having that me against the world attitude, though, it really fueled me when I was younger, feeling like it was me against the world, everyone hating me, or me hating the world. That was very important. I was able to channel that anger in a way that really helped me improve. So, like, do I regret it? On the one hand, yes. Of course, you don't, I think, I think you don't want to be like that. On the other hand, what I've gotten is good as I am. If it was different, I'm not so sure. So, mix.

• 1:00:28Lex Fridman?

  Well, then I'll ask you to empathize with somebody else who's currently has a me against the world attitude and is helping you, which is Hans Niemann. For several reasons, he has me against the world kind of attitude. Well, let me ask, there's been a chess controversy about cheating and so on that you've covered. People should subscribe to your channel. You're hilarious, entertaining, brilliant, and it's just fun to learn from you. Do you think, as we stand now, Hans ever cheated in over the board chess, as things stand now at the beginning of October?

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a very tough question for a couple of reasons. I think, first of all, when people refer to evidence in regards to whether Hans cheated over the board, there is not, and I don't think there ever will be, quote unquote, hard evidence. The only thing that would ever constitute that is if he's caught in the act. Literally, he's caught, like, using a phone with an earpiece, whatever it might be. That is the only way that there would ever be hard evidence. So, as it stands right now, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence. How much of it is legitimate or not remains to be seen. I know people have questioned the statistics. Some people think it's very convincing. Some people think it's complete nonsense. I think, I think that right now, I'm, I'm very undecided, but I do feel that within the next, like, three to six months, assuming Hans is able

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  to play over the board in more tournaments, the stats will make it very clear, one way or the other, based on our results, whether it's legitimate or not. I think, I think for me, I would say that regardless of whether, whether you, whether, like, I believe he cheated or not, he is playing at probably a 20, he's probably at least 2,650, no matter what. Regardless of whether he's cheating or not, he's already at that level, which is very, very high. So I think the stats will, will bear it out in the next, probably, I said, I said three to six months, probably I would say next six to 12 months, whether something happened, but. I really don't know.

• 1:02:23Lex Fridman?

  Do you find compelling or interesting the kind of analysis where you compare the correlation between engines and humans to try to determine if cheating was done in part?

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  So initially, I thought that that was actually quite legitimate, but as I as I found out much more recently, anybody can basically upload this data. So that whole theory, while it seemed very convincing at the time, it simply isn't isn't any statistical evidence in my opinion now. But there are games from some of those tournaments that definitely, considering where his rating was, look very suspicious in 2020, I would say. Again, that's not the role of like myself to decide or chess.com. That's obviously going to be up to FIDE, whether they think that's compelling evidence or not. I think for me, what I would say from an intuitive standpoint is that I've been in this world for a very,

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  very long time. I've seen most of the juniors as they've risen through the ranks, Magnus and many others. And there's always been something about them that has stood out to me. That's been like a brilliant game they played against someone who's much higher rated. I've just seen it from all of those players. I never really saw that with Hans Niemann. So it's very difficult for me to sort of, with my own two eyes, being in this chess world so long, see things a certain way. And then like something that's never happened before is happening. But at the end of the day, it is still possible. It is completely possible that Hans, something clicked at a certain age and he started improving in spite of the fact that, you know, the statistics look weird in terms of his rating improvement. So I don't know. I sort of, I think that in six to 12 months, I'll probably

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  be able to say one way or the other with very certain confidence, like, you know, whether whether he should be there or not.

• 1:04:05Lex Fridman?

  Speaking of statistics, I should ask, I'm not sure about this. Are you a data scientist?

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Right. That's a good one. No, of course I'm not. You know, but it's, that's the thing. You see, you see all these stats are thrown out there and you try to try to understand what's being said. But it's also very scary because when you see these things that look very legitimate and then they're disproven, or people say like you're cherry picking, like the dates and all these other things, it almost feels like you can come to any conclusion that you want to.

• 1:04:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  And that's why I think this is such a serious issue for the world of chess because Going forward, if we don't take it seriously now, I think at some point, there is the potential for a much, much larger scandal.

• 1:04:45Lex Fridman?

  Do you agree that like what Magnus, I think, said that it is an existential threat to chess? Like, this is a very serious problem that's only going to get bigger because it's you're basically, from a spectator perspective, from a competitor perspective, are not sure that you can trust any of the results.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's for sure true. When I think back to the last like five to 10 years, there are plenty of top level tournaments that I played in where there was no security at all.

• 1:05:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  You would just you would just go into the auditorium and play your games and that was that. So I do think it's a big issue. I think it has been a big issue, but the reason it's only coming to light now is because it features a very strong junior player who's very close to the world's elite. There have been many cheating scandals before. There was this French player, Sebastian Feller. There was this player Igor Rouses from Latvia. There was this, I think it's from Belarus, or maybe I have that wrong. Maybe it was Bulgaria. Boris Slavivonov as well. Those are three big cheating scandals, but they were not at the absolute top levels of chess, which I think is why it never became the huge news story that this is, or it wasn't viewed in the same kind of way. It's why I think organizers were perhaps a little bit too lax in terms of security.

• 1:05:55Lex Fridman?

  So you said 2,650. Is it possible that Hans is in fact a kind of Bobby Fischer level of genius and he's capable at times of genius at the chessboard?

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. 100%. That is absolutely possible. I think that's why I think for everybody in this situation, we want to see what happens in the next six to 12 months because I think it will be very clear. Also, it's very interesting to me because there are other stats from that 72-page report that chess.com compiled, which in essence say certain other junior players basically have peaked, that they're not likely to improve further. So it's also going to be very interesting when you look at those like, I think it was like 50 pages of graphs, because there are graphs that say like some of the other junior players are done. So when we look forward like in a year or two, if those players don't improve, it will also say something about their methods as well that they've used to sort of compile this data.

• 1:06:51Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I wonder what those junior players do if they look at that data. So there's a point where you should look at yourself like practically.

• 1:07:00Lex Fridman?

  Like, what is the actual empirical data over the past year of how much I've improved at a particular thing? Like, it's one thing to kind of tell yourself that these are the ways I need to improve, and it's another to actually look at the data and face the reality of it.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Right. I think also that could have a psychological effect. That is the other thing that makes the whole Hans situation so tough, because if you think that he's cheated, or you're unsure about what's going on, that is another psychological factor whenever you play against him.

• 1:07:30Lex Fridman?

  In his favor or against him?

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Definitely in his favor. Because, for example, if I go online and play against a computer, let's just say I go play against Stockfish tomorrow, I'm going to play a very certain type of opening strategy, try to keep the board closed, and maybe hope to get lucky. Now, computers have gotten so good that generally even that doesn't, I don't even have a chance even with such strategies, but you play differently than you normally would. And so if you're playing a game against him, and there's a move that looks really weird, it doesn't seem logical at all, that can also start to affect you, where you immediately make a mistake, or you start questioning yourself, you start thinking, well, what's going on here? Is there something unbecoming? Like, you start worrying about what is happening. And so it definitely is, it's a very tough situation.

• 1:08:14Lex Fridman?

  Do you agree with Magnus' decision to forfeit the match, his most recent match with Hans?

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  Tough question. I don't, in my heart of hearts, I feel like there had to be a better way to handle it than what Magnus did. On the other hand, sort of being in this world of top grandmasters, having heard these rumors for two years, I think that the fact that it was blown off and it wasn't treated seriously, I'm not sure if there was a better option. So in my heart of hearts, I feel like there had to be a better way to handle it, but in practicality, like in the practical world, I think he might have made the only decision where it became a big issue.

• 1:08:50Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I mean, I guess I would have loved to see just where 100% it's certain that there's no cheating involved that they play a bunch of games.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there was actually an article that was released today by Ken Rogoff, who is a grand master at chess, where he wrote this article in the Boston Globe and he essentially said that, like, have Hans and Magnus play a match and see what his score is, because statistically, if it's above a certain percentage, that means he's legitimate, because of course, you have security. If it's below, that might mean, that probably means that he's not at the level that he's at. So I don't know if that's a real way to settle it necessarily, because also for Magnus, to ask him to play against someone who's cheated, I think for him, he would never entertain the idea, because it's like, why am I going to play against someone who cheated? So, I don't know, it's very tough. And you know, the one other thing I would say on the topic that's really important to note is, this sort of came from left field

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  for most people who are in the general public or very casual chess players, but this is not something that wasn't known, wasn't even on the radar. I think this has not been said before, but there was one of these things where they talk about how Hans has, he's played better during a period of time when games were broadcast versus not broadcast. I actually heard this rumor two years ago, during one of the tournaments he's playing specifically. So that is the thing, is that this has been out there for a very long time. And so it's hard, because you do believe that Magnus could have handled it better, but if it was two years of these rumors and nothing was done about it, I don't know.

• 1:10:21Lex Fridman?

  And for people who don't understand, when it's broadcast, it's easier to cheat, because you can have, it removes one of the challenges of cheating, which is the one-way communication from the board to the engine. Here, the engine can just watch the broadcast, and then all you have to do is then signals right back. I mean, that's really, I've woken up to this fact, actually programmed, so setting all the silly sex toys aside, I have

• 1:10:54Lex Fridman?

  I have a bunch of these devices, so like of this is the size of a coin. And it has a high resolution vibration that you can send. So you can just have this in your pocket. It's basically your smartphone has ability to vibrate. You can do programmatic communication through anything. Bluetooth is the easiest. So like this made me wonder like, wait a minute, how often does this happen? Like at every level of play? And you said this only became a huge concern for at the highest level of play. But then how much cheating is going on at like the middle level of play? Especially when more money is involved.

• 1:11:35Lex Fridman?

  So in the game of poker, when like it really, it really made me think like the future will have devices like this much easier to like you will engineer smaller and smaller and smaller devices that have onboard compute that like, like this is the future. I mean, I just, it makes me, I think probably with all kinds of cybersecurity, that means the defense will just have to get, start to get better. Even with chess, it seems like the security is very clumsy, just looking at the scanning of the recent tournament.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  One thing you'll see is that a lot of people are talking about whether Hans is cheated or not. The one thing that almost nobody is doing is actually like trying to show how it can be done.

• 1:12:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Everyone's basically avoiding that. I think the single biggest reason for that is simply because it can be done very easily at like a weekend tournament. You play a weekend tournament where the top prize is a hundred dollars and the players are maybe master level, somebody could already do this. Because even in St. Louis now where they have the security, my understanding is the non-linear junction device they bought costs about $11,000. And organizers, if you have a weekend tournament at the, at the local club, you don't have $11,000 to spend on such a device. And so that is why a lot of people have been talking about it, but I think it is very, very serious. And it's, that's why it is good, even if, you know, aside from Hans even, it is a very important question or debate to be having at the present moment.

• 1:13:03Lex Fridman?

  I think it's good to talk about it, right? To make it so that the defenses will really step up. I think you could do pretty cheap, like the security, pretty cheaply. But you have to take it seriously.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  Right, right, of course. And again, we'll, we'll see what happens. I think that's gonna end up being on FIDE more than anyone else. To try and do that, I don't think, asking the organizers to do it. I mean, I feel like FIDE, they are the governing body. It will be on them at the end of the day to, to figure it out. But it's, uh, it's, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of months.

• 1:13:34Lex Fridman?

  Will you play Hans if the opportunity arises?

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  Well, right now, that's not in the near future for me. I think fortunately.

• 1:13:42Lex Fridman?

  Why not?

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Uh, well, because the, there's maybe only one tournament that I'm playing in, that he could be playing in potentially. It's not even set to be happening at the end of the year. There might be like a World Blitz and Rapid Chess Championship. So I don't think I'm gonna have to make that decision for at least six months.

• 1:13:56Lex Fridman?

  Challenge match. You're one of, you're

• 1:14:01Lex Fridman?

  the most famous super grandmaster in terms of online. So it makes sense in terms of chess is going through a kind of, um, like a serious controversy since it's not just like, um, the drama or something like this. This is in part an existential threat to the game in terms of how the public perceives the game. So if the story that lingers from this is chess is full of cheaters, like you never know who is cheating or not. That's not a good, uh, that's not good for the game. So it makes sense for a high profile person to, to go head to head. How, how do you think you'd do against Hans?

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I think I, I think I would probably beat him in, in Blitz and Rapid. Classical is a whole different question altogether. I think in Blitz and Rapid, I would. I mean, one thing actually that was very telling in both the report and also Hans's interview for all the other stuff that was said is the one thing he did say and seemed very adamant about was the fact that he had never cheated against me. Which, uh, so that was the one thing he did say that at least according to the report was truthful. So it's something possibly down the road to consider, um, but I do want. I want to see what happens with everything else first with Fide and their whatever they choose to do in regards to Hans and Magnus and then see where the smoke stands. But I think also, one other thing that is potentially very dangerous about the whole

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  situation is that I'm not convinced that Fide actually is the ultimate say in this, in that the top players, if they feel that he has cheated over the board, even if there's a report that says that Hans has not cheated, top players can still decide not to play him and sort of override whatever ultimate decision Fide comes to. So that's also why it's very unclear. You know, this tournament, the US Championship, Hans qualified, he's playing the tournament. But beyond this, there are no tournaments where he's automatically qualified to. And so it also is on the top players to sort of have to reach some conclusion on their own separate defeating.

• 1:16:04Lex Fridman?

  So to flip that, is there some part of you that regrets that the chess community, and you included, implied that Hans cheated early on? And I think without having evidence, and that kind of thing, as we learn now, can stick. Right? And it kind of divided the chess community in part, but like, I mean, I guess I do want to empathize. From your position, can you empathize with Hans that his reputation is essentially in part or in whole destroyed at this point?

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Yes, I absolutely can. Again, I think it comes down to the specifics of how it was handled. Now, as far as I go, I was covering the news. And this is what makes it so difficult for me versus, say, some of the other content creators, is that I do in a sense have that inside knowledge. You know, again, this is probably, this is also not really public knowledge. But when I went to St. Louis to play this Rapid and Blitz tournament before the St. Paul Cup happened, where Magnus and Hans were playing, there were people who told me very specifically that they thought he was cheating. Other players in the event, they even gave me like actual theories about like things in his shoes, things of this nature.

• 1:17:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  So I'm in a very awkward spot there as well, because I know why, I mean, I was like 99% sure why Magnus dropped out. It would have come out regardless, though. It would have come out no matter what, because Magnus was not going to back down on his stance about Hans, and others would have brought it up anyway. So. It's very tough. I think if you want to look for blame, I think probably it would be on chess.com ultimately because they were the ones who probably could have nipped all this in the bud at a much earlier stage and it wouldn't have gotten to where it got to.

• 1:17:52Lex Fridman?

  Because they could have released the online cheating and that would have...

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  I think, yeah, I think they could have released that. I think also they could have probably not let him play after it happened the second time as well because it seems like it happened like, I don't, I think it was like at least like four or five different times. I haven't looked very, very closely at that, but it wasn't just an isolated incident. And so I think if there is blame for that, it's definitely on chess.com, which should stop people from thinking that like my, that I'm in some way influenced by, by...

• 1:18:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, are you biased because are you supported in part by chess.com?

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  Yes, I am. I am.

• 1:18:27Lex Fridman?

  So does that affect your bias?

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't. I'm actually quite independent of them. One thing that's, that's interesting to note is that a lot of people are under the assumption that when I do like broadcasts of tournaments or things of this nature, that chess.com is actively helping me. They are not helping me. I'm an independent contractor and so my opinions are my own. And there are no lists given to me about like cheaters, anything of this nature. That has always been completely separate.

• 1:18:53Lex Fridman?

  Do they have compromising video of you that forces you, forces you to, if you don't follow the, the main narrative, that they will release that video publicly?

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  No, they definitely don't. But yeah, I think, I think when I look, look, look at it all, I feel like if there is, if, if people are looking for someone to blame, I don't think it's actually Magnus. At the end of the day, I think it is on chess.com very squarely for not handling, handling it sooner.

• 1:19:23Lex Fridman?

  So you're okay with like Magnus being silent for long periods of time?

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know why Magnus is still silent because my read of the situation was that there was some sort of NDA or there was some information that chess.com had that was, they, they could not release. And so my read of it was Magnus was essentially saying the same thing chess.com said where like I can't say anything about it because of whatever or whatnot. But then chess.com releases what I perceive to be the stuff that they could not talk about anyway. And Magnus still isn't saying anything. So I don't really understand why Magnus has not said anything further on the topic.

• 1:19:59Lex Fridman?

  There could be legal implications of accusing somebody of cheating. Uh, over the board. That could be like lawsuits that he just doesn't want the headaches. He just wants to focus on the game and have fun playing the game and not get bogged down into lawyers and all that kind of bullshit.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's definitely possible, but Magnus could also take the other route and just say, well, he cheated online in 100 games. Like, I'm not going to play against a cheater. That's very easy to say. That's factual. It's proven. And that doesn't have to go into the speculation of over the board. So I, I find it a little bit odd that Magnus hasn't said anything further. At the same time, it's also kind of peculiar because Magnus' reputation is also kind of in, in tatters in a sense. Like, a lot of people are not happy with him for what he's done. Uh, but still, he goes and plays this tournament in this European Club Cup tournament. And he's just gaining like 10 points as though nothing has happened. So I, I mean, I, I don't, I don't, I don't really know where Magnus' head is at. Cause like, if I was in that situation and everyone's coming after me for making such an accusation, I don't think there's any way I'd be, I would be able to play chess

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  anywhere near the level that Magnus is playing at. So the whole situation is, yeah, it's very strange.

• 1:21:06Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. I wonder where his mind is at that he's able to play at that level. Uh, let me, uh, before I forget, let me ask you a technical question about cheating. For at your level, at like a, not your level, but at a very high grandmaster level, how much information do you need? This is a technical question. It's like, so for me, in terms of Morse code and all those kinds of things, I would need the full information. So I would need probably in order to make a move, just let's think about a very simple representation. I would need two squares. The first to, to designate which piece and the second where the piece is moving. That's probably the easiest. What's the smallest amount of information you need to help you?

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Basically like a buzz in a critical position. That would be.

• 1:21:53Lex Fridman?

  And what would the buzz say?

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  It would, it basically would be something like one buzz means the position is, is great. And two buzzes means the position is completely, it's completely equal or there's no, nothing special in the position. That's simple.

• 1:22:05Lex Fridman?

  Just to know that it's great will tell you what.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  It will tell me that like my, my, with my intuition, like there are many times I've played blitz online. I'll say something, I'll say something along the lines of, I can feel like there's something here. Like intuitively, I feel like there has to be a good move or I'm probably winning. There's something there, but I don't know that. And most of the time, I'm actually right about it. Like, after the game, when I look with the computer, usually it's like, oh, I should have played this this move, and it would have given me a big advantage, or I would have outright won the game. So if I just know whether there's something there, that's good enough.

• 1:22:33Lex Fridman?

  That means it's worth worth it to calculate here.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  Yes, and I can follow that intuition probably to, because what what normally is going to happen in such a situation is there probably are two moves or three moves max that you're going to consider in a really critical position. Like, if I feel like there's something there, there are two to three moves. So if I know something is there, I will, I'll be able to figure it out if I know that the position is very good.

• 1:22:57Lex Fridman?

  Okay. One buzz for a good position, for the current position.

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  So I just need, I just need to know, I just need to know whether whether like there's there's something really good, the position's really good, or it's it's just like an equal position, or it's just normal. That's all I need to know.

• 1:23:09Lex Fridman?

  The current position, not even future moves, just the current position. There is a lot of problems here.

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:23:15Lex Fridman?

  Okay. What about the reverse, like, something's bad?

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  So you're saying if I'm if I'm in trouble in a game, and I and I I'm in the same situation, um, so I'm in trouble in a game.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  It's it's probably a little bit more, it's probably like, I would say, two to three times where I would need to know.

• 1:23:33Lex Fridman?

  The source of the trouble.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, I would need to know. Yeah, I would need to know, like, is there like one move that's good, or there's there's more than one move? Again, how you extrapolate that.

• 1:23:42Lex Fridman?

  Well, wouldn't it be useful to know the information that you're now in a position where the other person could create a lot of trouble for you? So find that, like, it's out there, find it.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  Like, if you look at Magnus' games, there are a lot of situations where the position is equal, but there's, or it's equal with one move, but only one move. If you don't find that one move, you're significantly worse. A lot of times, that's the case. So like, if I if I can somehow know that there's like only one move where I'm okay, I could figure it out.

• 1:24:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that's so that's one move is significantly better than the rest.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  I mean, I could give you like a perfect example as I played a game in the Canada's tournament last round against Ding Liren from China. There were many times where it was completely fine for me, but it started drifting. I started making some mistakes and I was worse. But there was one last moment where I think I had one move where I would have been able to draw the game quite easily. And every other move, I was significantly worse. And I did not find that move and I lost the game. But if I had known.

• 1:24:40Lex Fridman?

  It would have been nice to have a buzz right then.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Yes, I would have known.

• 1:24:44Lex Fridman?

  Who do you think is the greatest player of all time? You've talked from different angles on this. Magnus Carlsen, Garry Kasparov, Bobby Fischer, many others. Can you make the case for each? Can you make the case for you?

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I can't make the case for me, to be serious. I know. I know there are a lot of people who want that kind of like me to give off some kind of ego like that, but no, obviously, I'm nowhere near the conversation. I actually, on that note, I would say also, I know people wanted to know if I'm the greatest player to never have played for the world championship or to have not got, not become world champion. I don't think that I'm actually anywhere near the top of that conversation. I actually think Levon Aronian tops that conversation by a big margin, simply because he was number two in the world for a very, very long time and he never even got to the match. So as far as world champions and who's the GOAT, I think I think Magnus is the GOAT simply because he's playing the best chess.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  By a bigger margin, he has the highest elo of all time. On the other hand, chess is a game where you know, you build upon, you build upon the giants of the past. We learn, we learn from them. And so you can definitely make the case for Garry as well. I mean, he was the number one player in the world for 20 plus years. Lot of opening strategies he came up with and our people still play them today. Bobby, I'm not so sure you can really make that case because he was, he shot up really quickly, but he was the world champion for a very short window of time. And then he quit the game as soon as he became world champion. So I don't really feel like you can put Fischer in that, in that conversation simply because he didn't have that longevity at all. He was, he was up there for a couple of years. So I would say it's probably Magnus,

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  but I understand people can also say Garry's, Garry's the best player ever. Remains to be seen. But I think if Magnus is number one for probably another, let's say another three to four years, I don't think there's any debate at all.

• 1:26:36Lex Fridman?

  Can you break down what makes him so good? We've already talked about different angles of this and I would also try to get the same from you because we talked about early Hikaru. Like I'd like to talk about that for it, but first Magnus. What makes Magnus so good? What are the various aspects of his game that make him so good?

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  I think for Magnus, he just, you know that in the end game, in the end games, if you get there, he's just, he's not going to blunder. That's the first thing. So you know, if you reach an end game, he's not going to make a mistake. He obviously plays great openings and there's just really no defined weakness that he has. There's no weakness that I can think of very specifically. Many, there are many times where players actually out prepare him in the opening phase, but as soon as they're on their own and they have to think, very oftentimes they'll make mistakes. So there's just no weakness for Magnus, really no weakness. Unlike say Kasparov, like Kasparov, on the other hand, there, there are very clear weaknesses in his game, like Kramnik exploited him. First of all, very, I don't want to say like ego is the right word, but like very stubborn,

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  believing that his openings were infallible, that he could just win, he could just prove an advantage and win the game out of the opening, like against Kramnik when he ultimately lost. Also generally not a great defender either, very strong tactically. But if he was in positions that were defensive, he would make mistakes and lose in end games like he did in one of those games in the world championship against Kramnik. So there were very clear defined weaknesses in Kasparov's game. Whereas like Magnus, they're just, there are no clearly defined weaknesses. Maybe, maybe he doesn't like being attacked. Maybe that's the one thing. He likes king safety and he doesn't like being attacked, but that's not something that you can easily do. Whereas say if someone's very tactical and they're not as strong positionally, that is something you can def, that will happen quite frequently in games. You can steer games a certain way.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  Doesn't mean you'll always get there, but that is something tangible. Whereas king safety, that's not something tangible at all. It's very, very hard to attack someone based on, unless they play a certain style of openings.

• 1:28:37Lex Fridman?

  Do you think Garry Kasparov? Reflecting on your comment, would agree. Like, what is it about his relationship with Kramnik that was so challenging?

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's because Kramnik understood him. Actually, one thing that's funny, speaking of Kasparov, is that I think it got under his skin. Like, when I worked with him, Kramnik actually played a certain style, very aggressive, very risky opening play during the time when I was working with Garry. And I know that annoyed Garry because he's like, why couldn't Kramnik play like this against me? Because I think Garry felt if Kramnik did that against him, he would have just blown him off the board and had many great victories. So I think it's Kramnik understood Garry. They had worked together, I think, during the late 90s. I think Garry actually was very useful or very helpful in terms of Kramnik getting a spot on one of the Russian chess Olympiad teams in the mid 90s. So I think it's just Kramnik understood him very well and Garry just could not.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  He just, he couldn't figure it out. And I think also, another thing, coming back to psychological part, is that Kramnik actually beat Kasparov in many games in the King's Indian Defense. Kasparov played the King's Indian Defense for many years and they started losing like four or five games in a row in it to Kramnik, very similar to what I mentioned about the Silvian Night Orphan Fabiano. And Garry gave it up. He started switching to playing the Grunfeld Defense. And so I think that also instilled some psychological fear as well because Garry was, he was the boss in openings. No one could compare to him.

• 1:30:04Lex Fridman?

  What makes you so good? What's the breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of Fikaro Nakamura?

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  So, I think probably my biggest strength is that I'm a universal player. I can play pretty much any opening strategy. It doesn't really matter. Beyond that, I think it's mainly that I don't really make many blunders. I don't make blunders unless I'm under a lot of pressure generally. So, I mean, I know I'm oversimplifying. It's not as simple as that.

• 1:30:36Lex Fridman?

  Does this apply to blitz as well?

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  I think it's much more applicable to blitz in particular because my intuition is very good. So when I'm making less blunders with limited time on the clock, my opponents actually make a lot more blunders. That that's why I think it's much more pronounced in blitz than it is in classical chess. Because in blitz, when you're down to like 10 seconds in the game, both players have 10 seconds. My intuition is just better than theirs. I mean, Mag is maybe not so clear, but like if you look at other players, say Fabiano Caruana, a very strong player. When he gets down to 10 seconds or in these these uh these situations, he almost always makes a blunder. Almost always. So I'm just more precise and make less blunders. And that that really the the effect is much more dramatic in blitz.

• 1:31:18Lex Fridman?

  What do you think that intuition is like? Sorry for the kind of

• 1:31:25Lex Fridman?

  like almost philosophical question. What what is that? Is that is that calculation? Or is it some kind of weird memory recall? What is that? Like being able to do that short line prediction?

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  I think that's just playing so many games online and there's some kind of subconscious feel that I have. Because when you're that low on time, you can't calculate. It's just you have to look, you just have to figure out what's the move you want to play is. No calculation and just go with it. And I think just playing so many games probably, I mean, I'm guessing I've played over 300,000 games online. And I think just playing all those games, it's it's a feel. There's there's no tangible way that I can't put that really into words. It's just a feel.

• 1:32:06Lex Fridman?

  What do you visualize? And we should say that you're, I think, currently the number one ranked blitz player in the world. You have been for a while, you're unquestionably one of the great. So classical, rapid and blitz, you're one of the best people for many years in the world. Okay, but you're currently number one in blitz.

• 1:32:28Lex Fridman?

  So I'd love to kind of for you to dig into the secret to your success in blitz. Is it? As you're saying, that intuition, being able to, when the time is short, to not make blunders and then to make a close to optimal move.

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  I think it's generally that I'm able to keep the games going no matter what until we're low on time. I'm always able to do that.

• 1:32:53Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Uh, like if we play a game with three minutes, like there, there are games I will just win, win very quickly. But a lot of games between top players, players have to think you have to use time. And in those final critical stages, I just don't blunder. I, I just don't blunder really at the end of the day. That's, that's really the only difference because everybody's very, very strong. But it's sort of like, who is the, who is the better like brain? Who is the better like CPU or for lack of a better way of putting it? It's like, who makes a split to sec, split second decisions the best? And I do think that I'm extremely good at that in a way that almost nobody else is. That, that really is the only difference is that the split second decisions. Cause you can get a worse position, but again, if you keep the game going, players have to use the time.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  When you get down to those final 10, 15 seconds, I almost always end up winning in those situations.

• 1:33:40Lex Fridman?

  What are you visualizing like in those, when you're doing the fast, fast calculations? What, what is it?

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  Um, it's basically you look at a move and you see like when it's like five seconds or 10 seconds, you play a move and you just make sure that it's not a blunder. You just look, make sure it's not a blunder and you just go with it. And the first part though is the feel. So it's like, I see this move and it looks right. I don't know why it's right. I can't put that into words, but it looks like the right move. And then I look very, for like a split second, see as long as it's not some kind of blunder and you just play that move.

• 1:34:07Lex Fridman?

  Is there a bit of a tunnel vision? Are you able to understand the positions of all the other pieces on the board? Or are you just focusing on a very specific interaction?

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  It's just feel, it's really just feel. It's like this move feels right. And so I play it when you're, when you're at that stage of the game, it's, it's like, as long as it's not a blunder. And it just, that is just that feel. There's, there, there is no way for me to put that in.

• 1:34:26Lex Fridman?

  And that feel.

• 1:34:29Lex Fridman?

  Like empirically does result in low probability of blunder for you.

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:34Lex Fridman?

  It's like you don't blunder.

• 1:34:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:35Lex Fridman?

  Even though there could be, like, you don't forget, like, a random piece that was, like...

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  Very, very, I mean, it does happen, of course, but very rarely. And, I mean, I've done it on stream many times. Like, it's just, you, you go with the move that, for whatever reason, like, it just, intuitively, whether it's from playing hundreds of thousands of games on the internet, um, or just that, that experience, like, you just intuitively can, can feel like the move is right, and...

• 1:35:00Lex Fridman?

  So, over those 300,000 games, played over the board, online, all kinds of variations, what's a game that stands out to you as particularly one you're proud of, or, or maybe what's the Hikaru Immortal game, or a strong candidate for that?

• 1:35:17Speaker 01

  Yes, there, there are two games. There's a game that I won against Boris Gelfand, um, in 2010, where I offered a queen stack, I think on five consecutive moves.

• 1:35:25Lex Fridman?

  Sacrifice.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  Sacrifice the queen, yeah.

• 1:35:28Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  So...

• 1:35:29Lex Fridman?

  Coming through with the lingo. Can you take me to that game?

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  It's just, there's one sequence in the late middle game where, um, it, it's funny, because I actually, I, I, I think I, because I remember I tried to show this game to Peter, actually, Peter Till, and I confused the move order in, in the late middle game, so I don't want to do that again.

• 1:35:46Lex Fridman?

  2010?

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, 2010, it was, yeah.

• 1:35:48Lex Fridman?

  What, what kind of opening is this?

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  It's the King's Indian Defense.

• 1:35:55Lex Fridman?

  So, the knights are out. What's with the bringing the knight back?

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  Uh, you want to push the pawn. I, I have the black pieces, and you want to push the pawn.

• 1:36:02Lex Fridman?

  The, uh, the pawn, make room for the pawn.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, normally the King's Indian, you try to, it's sort of like storming with the pawns, uh, on the king's side where the white king is. So, you see now, I push, and I start pushing all my pawns forward.

• 1:36:14Lex Fridman?

  Are you happy with this position with all the pawns in diagonal like this, with the knights behind it? This looks...

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  This is, this is no, this is, this nowadays, this is very well-known as a standard theory, um, but at the time, I, I, the reason that I was aware of this is because I had played a tournament, I think, in Montreal. I think it was Montreal, like, the year, the summer before, and one of my friends had actually played this variation with the black pieces, so I was, I was aware of it, and it seemed very dangerous. But I

• 1:36:39Lex Fridman?

  From the black perspective.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like it's very hard for white to play. Yeah, very hard for white to play. It feels like you're getting attacked. Your king, you see the black pawns are coming down towards the king and it's very hard to defend. And also, a lot of players don't like being attacked. Generally, you try to avoid positions where your king is under fire, which comes back to what I said about Magnus as well. Like, he doesn't like it when his king is under fire. And so therefore, you can't always get that. But you see, white had to play along to get to this point as well. If white didn't want something this double edged and this complicated, he could have avoided it.

• 1:37:12Lex Fridman?

  So is the black bishop also a threat? Are you like?

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  Yes, the light square bishop in the king's Indian is vital to any attacking possibility.

• 1:37:20Lex Fridman?

  You're always like.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  You don't want to lose that bishop if you can help it.

• 1:37:24Lex Fridman?

  Got it. And so he's bringing out the knights. Is there a particular moment that's interesting to you here?

• 1:37:31Speaker 01

  So keep going. Yeah, there's, so I play rook f7. This is all standard.

• 1:37:35Lex Fridman?

  The rooks come out.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  So I take, take. Now, this is actually, this is an exception to the rule. Normally, the king's Indian, you don't want to break this pawn chain from the, these are the four pawns in a row that connect four.

• 1:37:46Lex Fridman?

  Why'd you break it?

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  Because it's an exception where you can do that. There almost are no variations in the king's Indian where you do that. You almost always retreat the bishop to guard the pawn, the bishop to f8. You break the pawn chain because it's an exception to the rule because you're not actually worried about the, about white being able to push the pawn to d6 here. It was probably the best game I ever played, so it keeps going. A5, g4. Yep.

• 1:38:13Lex Fridman?

  Now, the diagnosis there again, that's, that looks threatening.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  Right, like, white basically is trying to guard the king. He's going to retreat this bishop from c5 to g1, as you'll see in a second. Actually, not quite yet. Yeah, he goes, now he goes here. And so he's trying to guard his king with the bishop on g1, but I'm able to keep attacking here in the next.

• 1:38:34Lex Fridman?

  Is there any case to be made for you to take the pawn here?

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  Uh, no, that would actually be a mistake. I mean, it's very high level, but it's a mistake because white will actually not recapture the pawn. And, and I, yeah, this is very high level.

• 1:38:49Lex Fridman?

  Oh, so the pawn is, your pawn will be.

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  Ends up in front of the king. Yeah, it stops white from being, the white king from being attacked, basically.

• 1:38:57Lex Fridman?

  Oh, interesting. So your pawn is stopping the their king from being attacked. Cool.

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  So yeah, so it's

• 1:39:04Lex Fridman?

  The pressure continues from you.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  Right. And then I sack.

• 1:39:07Lex Fridman?

  Is that is that ov- wait, wait, what's the sack? Oh, the

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Knight takes pawn, yeah.

• 1:39:11Lex Fridman?

  Is this, uh, what are the strengths and weaknesses of you throwing the knight?

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  Well, basically, I'm gonna, uh, I'm destroying the protection in front of the white king, the white pawn's there.

• 1:39:23Lex Fridman?

  And willing to take risks by placing.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  I basically want to open up the king and try to checkmate. If I don't checkmate, I'm probably gonna lose the game here in the center of the board. So. Yeah, and now there are some very nice moves after pawn takes pawn. I take this. Cause now white takes the queen, I push the pawn forward and it's checkmate.

• 1:39:41Lex Fridman?

  Uh, so give me a second. So.

• 1:39:45Lex Fridman?

  Your knight is taking, you're losing pieces left and right.

• 1:39:49Speaker 01

  Right, but.

• 1:39:50Lex Fridman?

  And you're pushing the pawn forward, check. He takes the pawn. Uh, the rook check. So just check, check nonstop.

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, now I same theme though. I keep going for this checkmate with a pawn or a bishop on the square in front of the king. You see, the queen is still hanging. In fact, I actually sacked the queen again.

• 1:40:12Lex Fridman?

  He never took the queen.

• 1:40:13Speaker 01

  He couldn't take the queen because it would be checkmate.

• 1:40:15Lex Fridman?

  Got it.

• 1:40:17Lex Fridman?

  So constantly, and that's what you mean by sacrifice. He didn't actually.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:20Lex Fridman?

  There was.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, he couldn't take it. He would have gotten checkmated. But anyway, smoke clears and I'm up material here and. And I win this game. So this is the game that I would say is my.

• 1:40:28Lex Fridman?

  Why, why, why did it stand out? I mean, it's beautiful, but just the fact that.

• 1:40:33Speaker 01

  Um, it's mainly that I was able to to offer the queen sacrifice. So many moves in a row, you almost never have that opportunity. Um, and actually, normally the games you're gonna consider your best involve sacrifices. And if you can sacrifice the queen, that makes it, uh, very memorable. There's just this constant theme of, uh, this, this one checkmate idea.

• 1:40:51Lex Fridman?

  How often do you play with the sacrifice of of a major piece? Like, how often do you find yourself in that position?

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  Pretty rare because players tend to avoid these sorts of situations. Players don't like games that can go either way. So when, when, like, both players have to sort of cooperate, you have to want that kind of game. In order for that situation to arise. And a lot of games at the top, neither player wants to go into that situation for the most part. So you don't really have those opportunities.

• 1:41:22Lex Fridman?

  Nevertheless, Stockfish loves those opportunities, the sacrifices.

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  Well, that's one thing also that we're starting to learn more and more is that Stockfish and the other programs, they don't care about pawns. You can sacrifice one pawn, two pawns, three pawns in a lot of cases, if the rest of your pieces are very active. And that's something that we kind of knew on a basic level about the initiative is what we call it in chess, where like you'll give up material, but your pieces are very well placed. But we didn't realize just how important that is. And computers will do that all the time now, all the time. And even actually, like they're in this variant, Fisher Random is another variant where you arrange a piece on the back row. They will gladly sack rooks for bishops or for knights all the time, all the time. And so-

• 1:42:04Lex Fridman?

  What do you take from that?

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  Material imbalance, or the material you give up, doesn't matter as much as having this attack or having these pieces on certain squares.

• 1:42:13Lex Fridman?

  Well, as long as you can hold on to the attack.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  Right, and computers can't. But it's also very tricky, because when we as humans sometimes, you'll look at an opening variation, and you'll see something like this. And you want to do it in a game. But the problem is, we don't know how we're supposed to follow it up afterwards. And so if you do that, and you don't know how to follow up afterwards, very oftentimes, we'll make mistakes, we'll try to look at it in a human way, and then of course, you end up losing in the long term, because you've given up too much material. So it's a very double edged sword.

• 1:42:42Lex Fridman?

  But that's why it's dramatic and why people love those kinds of sacrifices, because you're putting it all on the line. What's the other game?

• 1:42:49Speaker 01

  It was a game also with a queen sacrifice. It was a game against this Polish player, Michael Krasnikow. It was played in Barcelona in 2007, I believe it was. I also sacrificed a queen for one pawn, to just bring the king out into the middle of the board.

• 1:43:03Lex Fridman?

  You actually sacrificed it?

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Yes, I did sacrifice. I took a pawn.

• 1:43:07Lex Fridman?

  Do you want to go to that game?

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:43:11Lex Fridman?

  And you're again black.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, this game, you can just skip forward to about like the 20th move roughly.

• 1:43:17Lex Fridman?

  What's the opening?

• 1:43:19Speaker 01

  This is, I think it's like a Catalan, it says neocatalan. So yeah, it's basically Catalan opening, generally very slow.

• 1:43:26Lex Fridman?

  Neocatalan declined?

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and now here I sack the queen for the pawn. Or no, sorry, I take the knight first, sorry. Knight c6, keep going.

• 1:43:36Lex Fridman?

  So-

• 1:43:39Lex Fridman?

  By the way, the pawn structure here is a mess or is missing.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, if I take the knight.

• 1:43:45Lex Fridman?

  Uh, you take the knight with a rook.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:48Lex Fridman?

  Uh, what's the discovery?

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  My queen's under attack now. So when he takes the knight, the rook on B1 is attacking my queen.

• 1:43:55Lex Fridman?

  Got it. So the just got it?

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  No, yeah.

• 1:43:58Lex Fridman?

  You, you, you.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:00Lex Fridman?

  You, you throw your queen into the middle, um, check, check the king. Wait a minute. That's not right.

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's one pawn. It's, it's a queen for a pawn.

• 1:44:11Lex Fridman?

  For a pawn.

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:13Lex Fridman?

  And the king takes your queen. What was the thinking here?

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:44:19Lex Fridman?

  Crazy madman.

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  The king is, king is, uh, king has to go up the board and the king is very vulnerable.

• 1:44:25Lex Fridman?

  In this position, see, but you're gonna have to keep checking here then.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:44:29Lex Fridman?

  Uh, bishop checks, king.

• 1:44:33Lex Fridman?

  Rook checks.

• 1:44:36Lex Fridman?

  Knight checks. Did you see all this ahead of time?

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I mean, I had not all of it, but I, I figured there had to be some way to win here with the king.

• 1:44:44Lex Fridman?

  Too many attacking pieces on your end that could do.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  Well, it's just basically the king, the only piece that can sort of guard the king is the queen on D1. That's the only piece. If I can just keep checking, I'm gonna be able to win, win here. So it goes there and now I think I played, yeah, I played this move.

• 1:44:59Lex Fridman?

  Oh, no check.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Cause I'm threatening to move the rook over one square and make a checkmate.

• 1:45:03Lex Fridman?

  Got it. And then the rook was that the rook takes your knight.

• 1:45:09Lex Fridman?

  And then you take it right back with a check.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Now I still want to scoot the rook over to check, check on the H6 square, the dark square. I think they resign here or did they make a move?

• 1:45:22Lex Fridman?

  He resigned. Yeah.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  He did resign here. Yeah. Because I just moved the rook over to that dark square in front of the pawn and that would be checkmate.

• 1:45:29Lex Fridman?

  Dark square in front of the pawn.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  So H6, yeah. Cause now the bishop covers the light square.

• 1:45:33Lex Fridman?

  Is there something he can do to, to mess?

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  Um, not really. There, I don't think there's any way to stop a checkmate.

• 1:45:40Lex Fridman?

  Nothing with the queen? I guess he's gonna lose the queen.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think it's just actually forced checkmate here on a couple of moves. I don't think there's any way to stop it.

• 1:45:48Lex Fridman?

  Even if he loses his queens.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a forced checkmate.

• 1:45:54Lex Fridman?

  Fascinating. So like that you can't purely calculate, but you can have some intuition.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  Also, I think what it is is in such situations, you know that there is at least a draw. I could always just check him with my rook if I wanted to, to make a draw. So that also gives me some margin where if I calculate, after I play the move and I calculate, it doesn't work out, I can still make the draw.

• 1:46:14Lex Fridman?

  Are you, I mean, for fun, do you do the sacrifices of this sort?

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  When it's not the serious competitive online events or over the board, I do actually do this quite frequently and I wish there were more opportunities, but top level chess, it's become harder and harder because due to computers, everybody's very, very well prepared in the opening. They know the first like 15 to 20 move sequences and no matter what you do. So it's very, the room for creativity is less and less, which makes it, which means you have less, less of those types of games.

• 1:46:45Lex Fridman?

  I think you played Levy Gotham chess with, without a queen. Was that a thing?

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  I think that was a bullet game. Yeah. The one minute game. I think so. Yeah.

• 1:46:55Lex Fridman?

  Is that an actual thing that you can pull off? Like would you be?

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  Like Levy or?

• 1:46:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, get somebody like Levy.

• 1:46:59Speaker 01

  In bullet, maybe I can win like 50%. It'll probably be.

• 1:47:02Lex Fridman?

  What's bullet? What's the timing?

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  One minute for the whole game.

• 1:47:05Lex Fridman?

  One minute for the whole game. Okay. What about, I mean, how much do you miss the queen? If it's gone against the international master?

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  You know, in a bullet game, like I said, maybe in bullet, I can maybe score 50% in a blitz game or anything, anything slower, maybe 10%, maybe one out of 10 I can win.

• 1:47:23Lex Fridman?

  One out of 10?

• 1:47:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:26Lex Fridman?

  On the topic of GOAT, let me ask about Paul Morphy.

• 1:47:31Lex Fridman?

  How good was he? Reddit asked me to ask you about this and why is he a tragic figure in chess?

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Paul Morphy was the best player in the world by a bigger margin, probably than anyone else in recent modern history. He was, I would say roughly, using today's ratings, around like 2,400 in my opinion. And the other best players are maybe around 2,000 or 2,100 at best. So he's the best player by a bigger margin. Fisher, for example, I think he was about 170 ish points better than Boris Spassky, but Morphy was 300 plus at least. Now, by modern standards, he would probably be a very strong IM, which, you know, isn't saying a whole lot, but at the time, no one was even close. So. I don't think you can put him in that category of like best ever, simply because he was not the best player for a long enough period of time.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  As far as why it's tragic, it's very tragic because he essentially quit chess. There was no competition for him. If you think about like Magnus talking about the world championship and feeling like it's not competitive enough. For Morphy, there was no one who could even beat him probably in individual games. So he ended up quitting chess. I think he was sort of like a lawyer kind of, but he spent probably the last 15, I think last 15, 20 years of his life just doing nothing. Now, I have actually seen his grave in New Orleans. I have been to where, where he lived. I think it's now Brennan's if I'm not mistaken, or it's something like that. So it's very tragic that there was no one who was competitive with him at the time.

• 1:48:58Speaker 01

  As far as best ever, I don't, I don't think you can say he's the GOAT, but I still think he's in the top 10 if we're using a criteria of players who are better than their peers by a big, big margin.

• 1:49:09Lex Fridman?

  So what do you think about the world championship? And what do you think about Magnus stepping down? Do you still see it as the height of chess?

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  I, I still think that there is merit in having the world championship the way it is. At the same time, the game is always evolving. And one of the things that has changed a lot in recent times is you now have a lot more blitz tournaments and also rapid tournaments. In the past, classical chess was the golden standard. There, that was the only thing that mattered. But in the last probably 10 years, slowly but surely, there probably are as many rapid slash blitz tournaments as there are classical tournaments now. Maybe it's not quite 50/50, but at the top level at least, it feels like it's getting very close to 50/50. And in terms of the world championship, I feel that the biggest issue is you have too many draws. The games can be exciting, but the games inevitably end in a draw. And the single biggest reason is because players have about six months or more to prepare for the match.

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  So for example, the Canada's tournament, which I just played, it was in June and July. It ended, I think around July 5th. The world championship match will probably be in February of March. So that's, you know, nine months. And when players have that much time to prepare, they are not going to have any weaknesses in the opening phase of the game. And so both players are likely going to be very solid. A lot of draws and in many cases it might come down to tie breaks Magnus in fact in two of the matches both against Kariakin and against Karuana he had to win in rapid tie breaks. So I think for Magnus he just doesn't feel like the format is right. I think he feels that there's just it's too long, too many draws. He doesn't get to play creative or exciting chess and that's why I think he pushed so hard for a change in the format.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  I don't know what the right change would be, but I do think that the format is becoming a little bit antiquated with all these classical games. If you don't want to change the format, the one suggestion that I've mentioned before, and I think is probably still valid is that the match should be held maybe one month after the candidates tournament to determine the challenger. It's held one month after that event. That's probably the only way to keep the format as it is where I think both players have time to prepare. But it's not something crazy because when you compare the candidates to other classical tournaments, let's just say. Let's just say St. Louis. I played, I played there recently. There was the, I played the Rapid Blitz, but there was the Sinkfield Cup.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  This was I think like September 10, something like that. Point is players probably came in and had a week or two to prepare for that tournament. Now there's the US Championship. Players had a little bit of time to prepare. You play the event. Normally players don't have these long breaks where they can prepare for very long periods of time. So they are very well prepared. But you still have a lot of exciting games because that window of preparation is so much smaller.

• 1:51:44Lex Fridman?

  But you had, you're pretty close, given how things rolled out to having having the opportunity to compete for the world championship. Hence the, the copia meme, which I still don't quite understand.

• 1:51:59Lex Fridman?

  Are you and Magnus friends, enemies, frenemies? What's the status of the relationship?

• 1:52:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think with all the rivalries in chess, everybody tries to hype it up like everyone hates each other. But the thing is, at the end of the day, yes, we're very competitive. We want to beat each other, whether it's myself or Magnus or other, other top players. But we also realize that it's a very small world. Like a lot of us are able to make a living playing the games professionals. And as I alluded to earlier, the top 20 to 30 players can make a living. So even though we're competitive against each other, we want to beat each other. There is a certain level of respect that we have and there is a sort of brotherhood, I would say. So all of us are, I would say frenemies. I think that's the simplest way of putting it.

• 1:52:43Lex Fridman?

  What do you love most about Magnus Carlsen as a human being?

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  As a human being, I think it's very similar, actually, to use a comparison to tennis and Roger Federer. In that it feels like with Magnus, everything comes very easily. It's, for example, we've seen the situation with Hans Niemann. Somehow it's rolled right off his back and he's playing amazing chess in this, in his latest event. So it's, it's really how easy he seems to make it look. And I know, like, because tennis is a sport that I've played a lot, I've followed it very closely. I remember hearing Andy Roddick say, say this about Federer, where it's like, somehow he handles it all. Like, there's no pressure, he makes it look easy. And how does he do all that? And I feel the same way about Magnus, where it seems too easy. Because I know for myself, when I play these games, like, there's stress, the pressure. And for Magnus, it's just, you don't, you don't ever see that. Now, I'm sure it's probably there, but we don't witness it.

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  So that's what I would say, is just how easy it is.

• 1:53:36Lex Fridman?

  It was sad to see Federer retire, I don't know why.

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:39Lex Fridman?

  Just greatness. You know, when Lionel Messi will retire, it'll also be sad.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:46Lex Fridman?

  Because there's certain people that are just singular.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:53:51Lex Fridman?

  In the history of a sport. I don't, I don't know if there's going to be another Messi. I don't know if there's going to be another Federer.

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, not for a long time.

• 1:53:59Lex Fridman?

  Is he greatest ever, would you say? Is he up there?

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  He's definitely up there. I mean, I, I grew up as like more of a Nadal fan, just because actually, like, I felt like Nadal, it never looked easy. It was the exact opposite. Like, for Nadal, it feels like he's always, he's running after every ball, he's exerting himself. It looked really, really hard. And like, for me, uh, since nothing really came easily for me in chess, like, I kind of, I can relate to that more. But at the same time, like, you know, especially when Federer started losing more and he seems more human, I started really liking him more as well. But, um, I think Federer, he changed the game. I don't know if you say he's the greatest ever, but the game changed forever because of him.

• 1:54:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's certain people, as you said, lasting impact, Sampras, Agassi, everybody. Okay, uh, who wins in a chessboxing match between you and Magnus?

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  Probably Magnus just because he's taller than me.

• 1:54:48Lex Fridman?

  Also, reach?

• 1:54:49Speaker 01

  He's taller, he has more reach, yeah. But I think he would win.

• 1:54:53Lex Fridman?

  Question from Reddit, in what sport do you think you can beat Magnus 10 out of 10 times?

• 1:54:58Speaker 01

  I think I could beat Magnus 10 out of 10 times in tennis. I mean, I took lessons for eight years. I tried to go out and hit two or three times every week. I think I could beat him in tennis, 10 out of 10.

• 1:55:07Lex Fridman?

  Backhand, forehand, what's your style of tennis play?

• 1:55:12Speaker 01

  I wish I was taller because I really like trying to come into the net. I like bowling a lot. But I am no Rod Laver. Rod Laver was very short, but he was able to make it work like 50, 60 years ago. I really like bowling, but I'm a little bit too short. So I kind of have to stay back. And I mean, I normally hit, like, I try to hit hard forehands and I try to slice or two-hand backhand.

• 1:55:34Lex Fridman?

  You mentioned Magnus and Karjakin.

• 1:55:38Lex Fridman?

  And I just wonder if you have ideas, thoughts about the fact that he was originally a qualifier for the Candidates Tournament and was disqualified by FIDE for breaching his code of ethics about, related to his support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

• 1:55:59Lex Fridman?

  Does that ever seep into the games that you play over the board? The geopolitics, the actual military conflict of it all? Do you feel the pressure of that? Because there's battles between nations. Nepo's, you know, Russia, there's America, there's, I mean, every nation is in some profound way represented on the chessboard.

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  Right. I've never really felt that. I think, actually, for me, it's very eye-opening to realize how difficult it is for a lot of the Russian chess players right now to play because of the situation, even Nepo for that matter. I remember when we were in St. Louis, he essentially has to bring cash because obviously Russia's cut off from SWIFT. No credit cards work. So if these Russians don't have cash, they can't play. And I know a lot of them have fled the country just to try and keep their chess career going. So it's a very, very, very tough situation for them, obviously for the Ukrainians who are suffering. It's really, really bad.

• 1:56:58Lex Fridman?

  Do you know if Nepo, has he talked, I haven't seen, has he talked about? The politics, the geopolitics of it all.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  I don't think he really has. I mean, I feel like most players try to avoid talking about it. I think it's very difficult. I remember when I was in St. Louis, there was another Russian player, Peter Sevidler, and I basically asked him, he's like, "Don't get me started because I can't, I just can't talk about it." So I think most of them are probably on the other side of the spectrum. I don't think they're probably supportive of what is going on right now. So it's very, it's a very, very, very difficult situation. But I don't really feel like that manifests itself in actual tensions when I play against the Russian players. I mean, maybe when I was younger, playing certain events, the one country that I felt like maybe it actually, I felt some tension, I really wanted to go out of my way

• 1:57:48Speaker 01

  to win against was against the Chinese, perhaps. That is maybe the one time I felt something along those lines. But generally, I feel like we treat the players as individuals. It's not about the country they represent.

• 1:57:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Let's go back to the philosophical of chess. What do you find most beautiful about the game of chess, looking back over your whole career?

• 1:58:10Speaker 01

  I think looking back, it's really, it's both over the board and also just like the memories that I've created. I think for me, the fact that I've been able to travel because of chess to meet so many people who are playing this great game from all different nationalities, all different backgrounds is probably the thing that I really like the most. Chess is one of the, maybe the only thing I can think of where you can have people, different backgrounds, different ages. Honestly, you can have someone who's a billionaire, talking to someone who's like a nine-year-old kid from the inner city, and when they're talking about the game of chess, they're on the same level. And I don't think that is really applicable to anything else in this world. You don't have that level of respect that is communicated

• 1:58:54Speaker 01

  through a game. So for me, that's probably the single most beautiful thing about chess and the chess world itself is that you have that. In terms of the game itself, the creativity, the possibility of different positions, learning something new even after I've played the game for 30 years, it's very inspiring to me, knowing that I've spent all this time, there still are new things that I can learn. Those are probably the two biggest, biggest things that I would refer to.

• 1:59:20Lex Fridman?

  Memories, big or small, like weird, surprising anecdotes from all those years of going to all the different places that stand out to you. Some of the darker times, weirder times, like weird places you've played, weird people you've played, weird people you hung out with, anything that jumps to memory?

• 1:59:37Speaker 01

  You know, I think we're, this is probably a little bit more like political, but I think one of the things that's great is whenever you go and play these tournaments, you have a certain impression of what a country is like or what the people are like. And probably the best example for me was in 2004, actually, no, sorry, it was 2003, I think it was, I played in the FIDE World Cup and it was held in Tripoli, the capital of Libya at the time when Gaddafi was still running the country. And, you know, you hear a lot of these things, but then when you go there and you see the people are so friendly, it's very eye-opening and sort of you look at it with a, without just believing things. You go to these places, you see how things truly are. And generally, I find that it's very different than how the media will portray it. One of my great regrets is, as someone who loves history, not going to see Magnus

• 2:00:21Speaker 01

  Lephta, which were the greatest ruins, I think greatest ruins in Africa from the Roman times, and of course, no longer exists. So I really do regret that. I think another thing that's very unique about chess is that all of us, even when we compete as children, like there are a lot of people like Nepo and others who I've known for a very, very long time. There are a lot of people who no longer play chess competitively, but inevitably, you end up talking to these people many years down the road. And so you never truly lose touch with the game or the people that you grew up playing it with. And there's so many of these people that like I connected with in the last couple of years who I knew when I was a kid and then they went off, did something else, but they, they still end up, you still end up talking to them and having, being able to share these, these, these old memories.

• 2:01:04Lex Fridman?

  So you said you're a bit of a student, a fan of history, even ancient history. Are there cultures, periods of time?

• 2:01:15Lex Fridman?

  People from human history that you draw wisdom from about human nature. That you're particularly drawn to.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  A lot. I mean, I probably study mostly like it'd be like ancient Roman history or pre, pre, uh, pre Roman empire. And of course, ancient Persia is another, um, another subject that I've studied a lot on. If you ask me, I, I would say, I mean, uh, there, there's, it depends. You're talking like military generals. You're talking like philosophers. I mean, there's.

• 2:01:44Lex Fridman?

  So yeah, so both, right? So, uh, philosophers is how people thought about the world.

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:50Lex Fridman?

  Uh, of course, military has to do with how the, uh, how, how people sort of conquered lands. Both are interesting because in part it seems so far away from what we are today. And it's cool to see that people were kind of the same in their ability to invent amazing things. And, uh, maybe the same and different in their willingness to go to war.

• 2:02:15Speaker 01

  So I think, I mean, one of my favorite books that, that I've read in the last couple of years is the histories by Herodotus. Uh, I mean, basically considered the father of history. And, um, I mean, I really love reading, reading about these things like Thermopylae or Marathon, these, these great ancient battles. Um, I don't know if there's like a specific like quote or, or wording or something like that, that I can come up with. But that is one of my favorite, favorite books on history by, by far.

• 2:02:39Lex Fridman?

  So those books were written a long time ago.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like 400, I think that was like 400 B.C. was when that was written.

• 2:02:45Lex Fridman?

  So what's that, what's that like? What's that like reading that?

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  It's just.

• 2:02:49Lex Fridman?

  Does it, does it seem ancient?

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  It does seem ancient. Like it's sort of, I feel like for myself, one of the things I really like doing is getting away from technology. When I have the opportunity, trying to disconnect these sorts of things. And so when I read books like that, besides just having a general interest, it sort of reminds you like, there is really a life without all this stuff. Or there was at least at some point. And so it's something that I can kind of relate to.

• 2:03:14Lex Fridman?

  Like humanity flourishes without all the stuff we take, we think is fundamental to our current culture. Like all the, all that we find beautiful about humanity can still exist without any of the technology.

• 2:03:25Speaker 01

  Yes, definitely.

• 2:03:27Lex Fridman?

  That, that's a really good reminder, given the, the contrast, of course, is beautiful because you're in the midst of the technology with streaming.

• 2:03:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:03:35Lex Fridman?

  Like it, to me, streaming somehow feels because of how.

• 2:03:40Lex Fridman?

  Many, how large of a percentage of the young, of young people are interested, like consumes streams, it feels to represent like the future. Because so many people kind of develop their mind by watching Twitch and YouTube.

• 2:03:58Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, that's, that's definitely true. For like for, for myself, I remember when I was a little bit younger and I was like 17, 18 around then. I would actually try one, one day a week on the weekend to try not to look at like my computer or my phone. Now phones weren't, weren't where they are today, obviously, but I was able to do that pretty easily. Now it's very hard. Like when I try to go one day recently, I tried to do that. Like I actually just pulled some books out of my garage and I started reading and it was a very foreign concept. So I do read a lot, but it's always on, it's always on an iPad. So, or Kindle. Yeah, both of those actually. So it's, it's very, very weird, but I do try when I can to get away from it all. I mean, another thing, like I said, I really like going out in the nature when I have the opportunity.

• 2:04:40Speaker 01

  I've spent a lot of time in Colorado, for example, hiking, hiking some of the 14ers. That is one of those life goals that I have to go and get to the top of every single one of them. So I try to disconnect when I can, but of course it's, it's very hard.

• 2:04:54Lex Fridman?

  So whether it's disconnecting or not, can you take me through a perfect day in the life of Fikar and the Kamora on a day of a big chess match?

• 2:05:04Speaker 01

  Well, actually. You can.

• 2:05:05Lex Fridman?

  Multiple days, right? We'll take one where it's a big chess match and one that's just like your representative average day.

• 2:05:12Speaker 01

  A perfect chess day, although I cannot do this. It would start like the night before I would get like nine hours of sleep, like a consistent nine hours. Like say 12 AM to 9 AM, for example, let's just say the round starts at like two o'clock and then nine to say 12 o'clock. I do preparation and then 12 to one, I go eat lunch and a one to two, I just nap or I walk or I do something completely unrelated to it. That would be the perfect day.

• 2:05:36Lex Fridman?

  When you're doing everything except the preparation, are you thinking about chess at all? Or you're trying not to think about chess?

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  Trying not to think about chess, definitely not.

• 2:05:44Lex Fridman?

  And what do you do? Is there any tricks to that?

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

  Well, I find that like if I go outside, I just try to try to hear like the birds or I try to listen. It's one of those like meditation kind of things like, you know, they always say when you meditate, you try to try to hear yourself breathing. It's like when you close your eyes, try to hear yourself breathing and just focus on that. So I do try to do things like that from time to time as well.

• 2:06:04Lex Fridman?

  So in terms of getting nine hours of sleep, that that that come difficult to you?

• 2:06:08Speaker 01

  That almost never happens. I mean, there've been a couple of times where it has happened like in Norway specifically, but generally it just, I don't sleep well during chess terms. I wish I did, but.

• 2:06:17Lex Fridman?

  But so we're talking about a perfect day. So sleep is really important. What about diet and stuff like that?

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think for a lot of people, they try to keep it light before the round. Actually, like, I remember hearing the story from Peter Seviller some years back, a Russian GM. And he said that Kasparov would go and eat like a big steak right before the game and he would he would be completely fine. But I think for most players, it's the exact opposite. You try to like eat like some snacks, like maybe some nuts, a few bars, things of this nature, or maybe just like maybe fish, something very light for lunch before the game. And then then you probably eat eat eat a lot after the game. That's generally what you try to do. But I don't think there's any like specific diet that makes a huge difference, but everyone is different, of course.

• 2:06:57Lex Fridman?

  So when you're actually at the board

• 2:07:02Lex Fridman?

  on that perfect day, how do you maintain focus for so many hours of classical chess? Like, like, you know what, like minute to minute, second to second, how are you able to maintain focus? Is there tricks to that? How difficult is that?

• 2:07:16Speaker 01

  I think it really depends on the type of the game that you're playing. I think if it's a game that's very, very calm and very slow, where not a lot happens at the start, it's a it's a lot easier because because you're not having to be super focused. Like your mind can drift and whatnot. And then at the critical moment, you have to sort of zone in. So those are the easiest ones. I think generally when when games are very complicated from the start,

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  what you're doing is you're you're just you're you're trying to not let your mind wander at all. Because when when games are complicated. Like that. One of the things that I've never been very good at is my mind does wander and you're always like, I'm always worrying about the next move is like, is this a blunder? What's, what's going on? Like, what, what am I going to do? So you're trying, I think, very much to block out the noise. I think that's actually the hardest thing. Is, is also because like, I can say this, when I played Magnus before, there have been times when I've gotten winning positions against him. And in that moment, when I had the winning position, very oftentimes my mind wanders like, okay, you're, you're about to win this game. You're like, okay, what happens after the game? You win this game, gain the rating points, all, all these different things, but you haven't actually won the game yet. And I think for a lot of players, that's the hardest thing is when you get a winning position, your mind does drift.

• 2:08:24Speaker 01

  It drifts to like, what the, what happens after, after you've won the game or what the outcome is.

• 2:08:29Lex Fridman?

  So drifting into the future and you should stay in the moment. You really should like hold on. And also, what is it? Uh, yeah, probably getting excited about the win. What is, what is it about that that makes you worse at playing? So interesting, like getting, uh,

• 2:08:47Speaker 01

  I think it's you, you get, it's like a nerve, it's nervous, but it's like you're, you're too excited. I think you just, you, you, it's like you're waiting for it to end. You expect it to end. And then, and then your opponent keeps, keeps defending and, and you can make mistakes.

• 2:08:59Lex Fridman?

  What about the flip side of that where you start getting frustrated? Like, how do you try to recover from that kind of thing?

• 2:09:06Speaker 01

  It's very difficult. I, I, I think for myself, I just try, I try to basically focus on it every single move. I just try and, again, you try to block out the noise, no, no matter which direction it's going in. So I try as best I can. I mean, sometimes I'm very poor at it. Like I just don't do a good job, uh, blocking out the noise at all. But I think generally I try to think, okay, just make this next move. Make your opponent have to find the best moves and just, just keep the game going no matter what. Just keep it going.

• 2:09:32Lex Fridman?

  By the way, what's a long day of classical chess? What's that look like?

• 2:09:36Speaker 01

  That's, it's pretty brutal. I mean, it would be something like, okay, so the game starts at two o'clock. So you've done all this other stuff. The game probably goes from like two to seven, for example, or maybe two to eight, five, six hours. Probably you eat, uh, you eat dinner for an hour or so, maybe clear, like I'll go clear my head for 30 minutes. And then immediately it's right back to studying for a couple of hours.

• 2:09:55Lex Fridman?

  Are you reviewing previous games or you're already?

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  Generally you're just moving on to the next game. That's what you're doing.

• 2:10:00Lex Fridman?

  And trying to, no matter what happened, put that behind you.

• 2:10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:04Lex Fridman?

  Win or lose or draw. Okay.

• 2:10:07Speaker 01

  So that's, that's also why, there's another question a lot of people wonder, which is why don't I play more of these classical tournaments? And sort of it gets back to the, you know, the literally don't care sort of stuff. But when I'm going to play in tournaments, I want to be able to give it my best shot. And if I don't feel that I can, I'm not going to play, which is why like I play here and there, but I do balance my schedule very carefully. Because I'm not just going to go and play a tournament simply because if I don't feel that I can put in the work, uh, it's not, it's not, it's not the right thing to do. Also because I'm taking away a spot from somebody else who probably will be putting in the work, who will want to compete in that event. And so when I look at the candidates or a lot of people say, well, why, why is he playing there like, okay, qualified, but he's not going to take it seriously.

• 2:10:51Speaker 01

  But I did give it everything I had in that tournament. And I always will, uh, as much as I can, if I can't do that, then I'm just not going to play.

• 2:11:00Lex Fridman?

  So what about a perfect day in the life of a car when you're not doing?

• 2:11:05Speaker 01

  Oh, a perfect day, a perfect day would be something along the lines of, I, I get up very early at like three, four o'clock in the morning, drive an hour away. And go climb mountains. That's the perfect day out into the mountains. Oh, oh, do you mean a normal, non?

• 2:11:19Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, a perfectly productive, normal day.

• 2:11:21Speaker 01

  Oh, perfectly productive. Okay. So perfectly productive would be along the lines of I wake up at like seven 30, eight o'clock. Probably I watch either Bloomberg or CNBC for 30 minutes to an hour. And then watch the markets for maybe, maybe an hour or two, look at certain things that are going on.

• 2:11:36Lex Fridman?

  You really care about investing?

• 2:11:37Speaker 01

  Uh, I do follow it quite closely. Yeah. I follow the markets very closely, closer than I should, but yes.

• 2:11:42Lex Fridman?

  For personal reasons or do you, do you comment on it like, do you like for personal investing reasons or for like philosophical understanding what's going on in the world?

• 2:11:52Speaker 01

  It's, it's sort of everything. I think first of all, obviously I'm interested in investing. I have been for many, many years. I've done investing, trading for at least a decade now. So like, I am very interested on that level. I'm also quite interested as well, because when you see the policy that's being dictated, like you look in the last, uh, last six months specifically, you see the Fed policy around things like interest rates, um, unemployment, things of this nature. It is something that. Also, because I do invest in real estate aside from the stock market. So therefore, I'm always keeping an eye on these sorts of things and always looking. And as a better example, like I'm looking for trends. So if we go back to, I think it was 20, I could have the year wrong. It was 2015 or 2016.

• 2:12:34Speaker 01

  There was a pattern that I found that on the Fed minutes that came out, you know, I believe 2, 215. I think it's on the Wednesday of every, third Wednesday of every month. That gold would actually, the gold ETFs and ETMs would actually go up. Every single, every single Wednesday of the month that the minutes came out. So I would follow things like that. Now, of course, I wasn't like trading huge, huge volume, but I found a trend there. Of course, it stopped working at a certain point, but those are the sorts of things that they just interest me. Even if it's not something I'm doing to make a living, trying to spot those trends. It's always been something that has, that has fascinated me.

• 2:13:09Lex Fridman?

  One Reddit said that you shorted Tesla some time ago.

• 2:13:14Lex Fridman?

  Do you regret doing so?

• 2:13:15Speaker 01

  Well, when I, when I did those plays, that was only, that was small amounts of money. And that was only via, via puts. That was where I would buy puts or put spreads on it. So it wasn't something where I straight shorting. I would, I would never actually do that because it's just, it's not worth the risk. And I don't want to ever be in a situation where I have to think about those sorts of things. And I think a better example is there was a period in 2016, actually shortly before the candidates, when I actually was in oil, I had a long position in oil. And this is when oil completely crashed. It went very, I don't think it went below, it go below 30 even. It went very low and, and of course, the Saudis were not cutting, they were not, I think they, they were, were they cutting or not cutting production?

• 2:13:59Speaker 01

  But anyway, there was a period in 2016 where I had a big long position in one of the 3X oil ETFs. And I, I, it kept going down day after day after day. And then, of course, right near the bottom, I finally couldn't take it anymore. I took a loss and that really sort of, it was very difficult dealing with that. The stress every day, looking, seeing those losses. And after that, I kind of decided I would never put myself in such a situation again. And so that's why like I don't, I don't do. And then separately, and I think I posted a reply to this comment, but in 2021, as Tesla started going up, I actually started selling puts. And I did quite well off of that. So it's it's sort of play both sides, never, never like become hard set with your conviction.

• 2:14:41Speaker 01

  Like where you refuse, like this is, this is just like, it has to go down or like it has to go up. Just sure you'd be, you have to be willing to adapt.

• 2:14:51Lex Fridman?

  Do you think shorting should is should be legal? Do you think it's ethical? Like to me, I'm not, I don't know much about investing, but I feel like it feels wrong. Now, I know if something is overinflated, it's good for there to be an opposing force to like balance it or something like that. But it just feels like in our current modern internet world, I think Tesla, I vaguely saw somewhere that's like the most shorted stock like ever. And so that incentivizes a lot of the publication of misinformation about it.

• 2:15:30Lex Fridman?

  Like, it just feels like the incentives are wrong, not when we look at the markets, but at the future of human civilization perspective. It just feels like shorting is somehow wrong, but maybe, maybe I'm misunderstanding the broader picture of markets.

• 2:15:45Speaker 01

  Well, I actually try not to do that. Like I almost only take long positions specifically because I feel like you're at betting, betting like on the world collapsing. I just, I feel like morally, I don't want to be in that, that I don't, I don't want to have that viewpoint. I think, you know, that's sort of is another thing that I've noticed. Like I've been very lucky. I've traveled a lot. I've met a lot of, lot of famous people. And the one thing that I've noticed is like a lot of, a lot of the people who are the most successful, they're the ones who are very optimistic. No matter what is happening day to day, they remain very optimistic about the future of where things are going. So, so I try not to end up in that situation. I think as far as like shorting specifically, the real danger to me is that anybody can now invest.

• 2:16:26Speaker 01

  And I feel like actually some of these apps like Robinhood, they go out of their way to try and make it seem like it's this fun game. Like I, I've seen people where you place a trade and it like, it gives you like, like. These stickers or these pop ups like of confetti and it's like, wait a second. What's what's going on here with the whole with the whole game? Like people are sort of, they're going after the wrong thing. So I don't think shorting like will be banned, but I think it's very dangerous that everybody has access to to being able to do things like that.

• 2:16:55Lex Fridman?

  So according to Reddit on the topic of Tesla, you have trouble admitting when you make a mistake. Is that true?

• 2:17:02Speaker 01

  Um, no, that's that's generally not true. Actually, I think that

• 2:17:06Lex Fridman?

  Wait, Reddit is not 100% accurate and truthful in its representation of a character? That's fascinating.

• 2:17:14Speaker 01

  No, I think I think the thing that I've learned is I'm obviously very good at chess, but that doesn't automatically mean that I'm a genius and everything else. And I feel like that's another thing, actually, that I really, really admire about Magnus is that he is the world champion. He's the best player, but he does not automatically believe that translates to every area of life. I feel like with some other world champions, they think that they're great no matter what they do. And that's not not like intentionally trying to be like be like rude. But I do feel like there are certain people who feel like that, like anything they say is right and they are the authority. When in reality, like we are the authorities when it comes to chess, like we know chess the best. We are the experts, but that doesn't automatically mean we're geniuses and everything else.

• 2:17:56Lex Fridman?

  That said, I think you said somewhere, it could have been on the on the C squared podcast, that I forget if it's chess or streaming that taught you to generalize to various, like you feel like you're able to do other things now. Was that streaming?

• 2:18:14Speaker 01

  I don't know if that's specifically streaming, but I think streaming has taught me a lot about sort of life and also how to run, run a business, honestly. Like I have read a lot of business books and one of the things with streaming is that when you start out, it's like this very small thing. It's just you, maybe you have a couple of people who help you along the way. But as it becomes bigger and bigger, if there's a boom, you suddenly start having to hire employees. You're basically running this business and Like for me, I've, I've learned a lot about that because one, one of, there was this book that I read some years back. I think it was by Mary Buffett. It was, it was on Warren Buffett and, and how like he tries to be hands off. Like when he buys these companies, it's hands off. Management stays the same. You don't do anything. And I actually, I try to do things kind of the same way where like, I try to be hands off.

• 2:18:58Speaker 01

  There are a couple of people around me. I leave a lot of the general day to day decisions up to them. And then like things that are really important, obviously I'm involved in, but I try to do things like that. So, um, streaming is, you, you learn a lot along the way. And I think now, having done that, there probably are several other potential careers that I, that I could have if I really wanted to.

• 2:19:17Lex Fridman?

  Almost about that, uh, generalized in terms of what it takes to build a business from the ground up. From the process of becoming a successful streamer, you have learned what it takes to start from the ground up with a single person. And to build the business as multiple people and a successful, uh, what, what, what do you attribute your success as a streamer to?

• 2:19:38Speaker 01

  I mean, many things. I think being a very strong chess player and having had a following was incredibly important at the start. I think anybody, whether it's chess or whatever field, if you have that following to begin with from, from your career or whatever activity or video game you do, that's already a big step up if you have that to begin with. So that definitely played a big role. I think more than that though, for me, it's about the fans. It's about hearing from people how they feel. I mean, there are trolls, obviously, but the positive messages you hear when you hear about people who are struggling, struggling in life, whether it's say, I've, I've heard people talk about having cancer. You hear about someone going through a divorce or they're just trying to make it through day to day.

• 2:20:18Speaker 01

  When you hear about things like that, I think it really puts it all into perspective about what it, what it all means at the end of the day. And, um, so for me, it really is the fans that they, they give me that motivation. They are, they are the reason I do it. And when I meet, when I meet some of these fans in person, like I have at a couple of, a couple of events, like just talking to them, hearing their story, just, just knowing that I can bring them some joy is, uh, again, at the end of the day, it's why are you doing it? That's, that's what it's about. If I can bring people joy, you know, if it's someone working, working like in a factory all day, someone in the middle of the country, if I bring them joy through my chess, that means a lot. You know, if it's, if it's a kid, for example, if I can inspire them to take up chess in a more serious way,

• 2:20:58Speaker 01

  or even honestly, if they just learn from chess, certain skills like critical thinking and that leads to them becoming like a great scientist or something down the road, that is what I'm, what I'm ultimately hoping. That's what I hope will come out of it.

• 2:21:10Lex Fridman?

  I mean, what gave you strength to have to turn on? I mean, I don't know how much you stream, but it's a lot. So day after day after day to be able to put that content out there. Is there some? Can you comment on the challenge of that? And maybe the low points and how you were able to overcome that?

• 2:21:26Speaker 01

  I actually don't feel the lows. And I think the main reason I don't feel the lows is because at the end of the day, I've been very fortunate, even as a chess player, very, very fortunate. Travel the world, meet people. I've lived a great life. So for me to see myself as a streamer, doing so well and bringing joy to people. I don't feel like I'm in a position, maybe this is wrong to say this because mental health is very important, but for myself, I feel like I'm very lucky. I don't really have any right to complain. So I don't really feel those lows in the same way. There are times when there are certain things like Reddit or otherwise that will, will get on my nerves a little bit, but I'm able to realize that I'm so fortunate. And so I don't generally struggle, struggle with the lows that much.

• 2:22:10Lex Fridman?

  Speaking of Reddit and trolls, Reddit asked me to ask you to tell me the story of Chess Bay, the Reddit moderator who pitted you against Eric Hansen, also known as Chessbra. I'm just saying things. I don't know, I don't know much about Eric Hansen. I guess Eric is another grandmaster. You guys had some drama and tension between each other. So we'll also ask you to tell me what you like best about Eric Hansen as a human being.

• 2:22:41Speaker 01

  Here's what I would say. The whole stream, streamers and the whole boom of chess. There are certain people, certain entities that are very, very important to what happened. You know, there are a lot of people in the right place at the right time. Myself, Botes, the Chessbras, Levy as well. We were all kind of in the right place at the right time. But just having the personalities alone is not enough. You need people who push things. And there are a lot of things that have been said about Chess Bay, about what she did. At the end of the day, the way that I view it is pretty straightforward. You don't have to agree with what she did, the manner in which she did things, but it pushed the game, it pushed the directory and chess on Twitch forward in a way that would not have been possible with anybody else at the time. Chess.com, for example, they were not directly pushing it.

• 2:23:25Speaker 01

  So you needed someone who was pushing it. And that, so to me, when I look at the whole boom actually of what happened on Twitch, in many ways, I think she is just as responsible as I was, Levy was, Botas was, and the bras were. All of us were extremely fortunate because if you didn't have someone pushing it forward, and Chess.com was not really that involved at the time, it never would have gotten to where it was. So you can sort of look at it and say, okay, you don't agree with what happened, but you needed someone like that who was gonna push, push really hard to get chess to where it is today.

• 2:23:55Lex Fridman?

  Can you comment on what happened for people who have no clue what you were talking about? Is that not useful?

• 2:24:00Speaker 01

  I don't think it's specifically useful to get into it. I think there are a lot of layers. People felt there are things like abuse of power, things of that nature. There are a lot of things that were said. You know, I don't want to be super negative about, about what happened specifically. But one thing people will note is that prior to what did happen in April of 20, I think that was 2021 now, there were a lot more collaborations. The chess world was much more together as a whole. A lot of streamers did things together. After what happened in April, there was a big sort of separation. A lot of streamers went off in their own directions because of what happened. So that is, I mean, that's not the whole story. There's a lot more to it, of course, but I think it's fair to say that.

• 2:24:40Lex Fridman?

  If I can just comment on the few times I've tuned into the streaming world, I do hate to see the silos that were created. One of the reasons I've been a fan and now a good friend of Joe Rogan, you call it collaborations, but it's basically everybody is supporting each other, gets excited for each other, promotes each other, and there's not that competitive feeling. With, with streamers, sometimes I've just noticed that there's a natural siloing effect. I don't know why that is exactly. Maybe because drama is somehow good for views and clicks and that kind of stuff. I don't know what that is, but I hate to see it because I love seeing kind of...

• 2:25:23Lex Fridman?

  Friendship and collaboration.

• 2:25:26Speaker 01

  I think this also goes like, again, try not to be super negative, but this also goes to the chess world as a whole. Like, one of the things that I've been in this chess world for a very long time, not talking about online, but just like the chess world itself. And I've been very fortunate because I've seen a couple booms and busts. Like, in the late, it actually wasn't late 90s, it was in the mid 90s, there was a period of time when Intel and IBM and all these tech companies were very big on chess. There was this PCA Grand Prix World Championship held in New York. There also were, I think there was like the Deep Blue stuff later on in the late 90s with Gary Kasparov. And you had a lot of interest at the time. And then it sort of went, went up in flames for a couple of different reasons. Also, in the late, late 2000s, or maybe mid

• 2:26:09Speaker 01

  2000s, there was a group in Seattle that was very big on chess. They hosted the US Championship, all these different things. There have been a lot of booms, booms and busts. Of course, if you go way back, there was the Fisher boom as well. But inevitably, what leads to these busts? And the thing that leads to it is, at the end of the day, people in the chess world have this natural tendency to want to not work together. You want to hang on to whatever, whatever piece of the chess world you have, as opposed to thinking about it from the standpoint of what's good for one is good for all. And so it's one of those things that now that I'm in this situation, having seen these booms and busts, I remember when I was younger, I would very oftentimes think, like, why is it the chess isn't bigger? Why do we struggle so much to grow the game? And I think, you know, we see the reason. So now, when I'm in

• 2:26:52Speaker 01

  this position, it's also very tough because like, I know what's happened. You try to learn from the past, but you still, it still feels very hard to break out from that. It feels very tough. And it's also difficult because another thing that people kind of misunderstand is, from time to time, I'll talk about myself, I'll actually talk about levy and incomes, or how well we're doing. And the main reason I talk about this is that I want it to inspire, like, FIDE, the governing bodies and others, feel like, wow, these people, they're having such success. Like, we surely, we can do something different, we can change things. And somehow, it has not happened, which is, in a way, very, very disheartening to me because I want to see more interest in chess. You know, you want to see more sponsors, more, more of the general public getting excited by the game. So it is one of those things that's very, very difficult.

• 2:27:37Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, so you want to see innovation on the parts of everybody, but also the organizations like FIDE and chess.com. To uh, how to inspire a large number of people, which is what, this is what streamers are doing. They're constantly innovating, I guess, of how, how to reach a very large audience. Uh, before we forget, just to put a little love.

• 2:27:58Speaker 01

  Oh, you want me to ask about Eric?

• 2:27:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A little love out there. What do you like best about Eric Hanson as a human being?

• 2:28:05Speaker 01

  Um, I think he's, it's mainly, he's just, he's, he's very, he's very charismatic. He's very charismatic. He, he knows the, the brand that he has and he's, he doesn't like, he doesn't pretend to fake it. Like, he knows what his brand is and, and he owns it.

• 2:28:18Lex Fridman?

  So he's a, just for people who don't know, and I don't know, he's a grandmaster.

• 2:28:22Speaker 01

  He's a very strong, yeah, he's a strong.

• 2:28:23Lex Fridman?

  He's a strong grandmaster, but he's also like a, a creator.

• 2:28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, one, one of the, one of the earliest major chess content creators on Twitch.

• 2:28:31Lex Fridman?

  Like educational stuff too?

• 2:28:32Speaker 01

  Uh, a mix, mix, mix of educational, mix of high level, mix of everything, yeah.

• 2:28:37Lex Fridman?

  Okay, awesome. Uh, what historical chess figure do you think would have the best streams?

• 2:28:43Speaker 01

  Historical chess figure? I would say probably Mikhail Tal. He was a former world champion. Um, now he lived a, he lived a very, um, very exciting life, let's put it that. He was somebody who drank, he, he's from, uh, he's from Latvia. He's gonna, he's called the, uh, the magician from Riga. Uh, so he drank a lot, uh, he smoked a lot, a lot of, a lot of, uh, other stuff as well.

• 2:29:06Lex Fridman?

  Oh, like, uh, sex, drugs and rock and roll?

• 2:29:08Speaker 01

  Kind of, yeah. He was, he was, I think if you look at, like, actually, not even just top grandmasters, but like, or not even world champs, but top grandmasters. He probably had the most, uh, most interesting life by, by far, by far. And even, even like, as an example of how much he loved chess and how, how, what a character he was. I think when he was, uh, dying in like 19, I think it was 1989 or maybe it was 91. When he was dying, he actually left the hospital to go play a blitz tournament in Moscow. And he actually beat Garry Kasparov in that blitz tournament in one of the games.

• 2:29:39Lex Fridman?

  Well, at what age?

• 2:29:41Speaker 01

  Uh, probably like late 50s, mid 50s, late 50s. I mean, he drank too much, so he died young. But, yeah, like, he left, he left the, the hospital in Moscow and went to play a blitz tournament. He beat Kasparov.

• 2:29:51Lex Fridman?

  Well, first of all, just to push back, I, I think we all die too young. And, uh, some of the most impactful people, uh, like, uh, Churchill did quite a bit of drinking and smoking, all that kind of stuff. So, um, you can still do brilliant things, even if you, uh, partake in the old. Whiskey and drugs and rock and roll and women.

• 2:30:12Speaker 01

  Okay, just about streaming, though. I there's there's this quote that I mean, it's that I love, which is a Steve Jobs quote, which is you can you can never connect the dots looking looking forwards. You can only connect them looking backwards. And when I look at how I got into streaming, there were all these things that happened along the way that were so beneficial. So one first thing would be that when I was young and I was I was growing up, I played a lot of blitz chess on the Internet Chess Club. It was one of the predecessors to chess.com. And there was no like, no cameras or audio or these things. But one thing that people did was you could commit. You would write comments about your games and things of this nature. And so I was actually doing very I was doing something very similar where instead of talking, I was writing and chatting during some of the games that I was playing.

• 2:30:57Speaker 01

  So that was something that I was doing that was very, very beneficial. Without that, I don't think that I would have been able to have the success that I've had streaming. I think it would have taken much longer to get used to it and feel comfortable with it, but I already had that built in advantage. Additionally, when I was younger, up until I think I was I was 10 or 11, I don't remember exactly, I did not actually have a TV. Well, I had a TV, but I didn't have cable, so I did not watch TV growing up. So I listened to the radio a lot. I listened to a lot of baseball games, New York Yankees specifically. And so I think by listening to those games, like I sort of I've heard a lot of announcers. And I think that's also it's one of those things where you learn from what you see kind of when when you're growing up, there are examples. And so I think that was very, very beneficial. And then a third thing in terms of like having some flair is when when I was growing up

• 2:31:42Speaker 01

  and I was homeschooled, probably about 14, 15, there were there was this great courses. I think they still they still do some of these great courses. And there was this, I don't remember who who the guy was, but he was a professor. And so I watched some of these DVDs of his lectures and he would always dress up as someone. It was like Middle Ages. So he would dress up and he was sort of like an orator and he would explain like, you know, what happened in 13, 1400s in this sort of style. And that's also something that obviously it's not something that I can consciously like internalize, but I think it's something as well that from having watched those courses and seeing that style of oration really helped me a lot as a streamer, too.

• 2:32:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, the yeah, all those little experiences contributed to life. That's that's definitely something I think about because I took a pretty nonlinear path to life. And I think they they somehow get integrated into the picture. But I do I do. Connect to your idea that you being good at chess was a part, was an important part of your successes. It's Jimmy. I think like, that's really good advice for people to, um, to be good, like in order to be a creator or a podcast or create videos, all that kind of stuff or stream. I feel like it enriches you if you, if you pursue with your whole heart, something else outside of that.

• 2:33:03Lex Fridman?

  Like you don't have to be obviously at your level of chess, but just you have to be developed in a passionate pursuit of something outside of that.

• 2:33:11Speaker 01

  You have to know what that passion, kind of what, what it is, I think for sure.

• 2:33:14Lex Fridman?

  I think if you're all only doing streaming, there's something, first of all, I feel like that's going to empty you over time. For some reason, I've seen some of the lows that people hit if they don't have this other passion pursuit outside of streaming. But also it'll just make you a better creator, uh, which is interesting. I think, um, I think again, with, with podcasting, this applies like, with Rogan, I think it's just would not, the reason his podcast is very good is because all of his passion is put into being a comedian and being a, a, a fight commentator. Like the podcast is a, is a, is a hot, is a side hobby. That's the way I feel about it too. That so,

• 2:33:57Lex Fridman?

  that's your main passion is outside of it. I don't know what that is. I think it puts everything in the, it's proper context and also allows you to mentally escape into that place that you find deeply,

• 2:34:11Lex Fridman?

  fulfilling. You mentioned, uh, uh, like offline, you told me that you're interested. You, you found it interesting that I said that I'm renting this particular place and I always rent because, um,

• 2:34:25Lex Fridman?

  Because of the sense of freedom it gives.

• 2:34:27Speaker 01

  I mean, I tend to actually try to be a minimalist for the most part. When it comes to things like clothes or like owning like cars, for example, or watches. Like I just, I don't own a lot of these, these material things. They don't really interest me. But at the end of the day, the one thing is, and this, this is, this might actually play a role in a lot of like the hiccups. Why I didn't get to maybe being closer to world champion is that one of the things from, from the time that I was, I was very young is like, I didn't, I didn't grow up from like a wealthy background. And like, I had a single mother for the first six years of my life. She worked as an elementary teacher to support my brother and myself. So like, I saw a lot of these sort of lows in life early on now, even, even once she remarried.

• 2:35:08Speaker 01

  Like all the money that my stepfather made was not all of it, but a lot of it was directed towards like my mom and I like traveling to tournaments internationally or even in the U.S. So seeing some of these struggles, like once I actually made as a chess player, and this, this goes back to investing as well. Is that it's kind of like you want to be secure at a certain point. So I've always looked at that. Like what is, you know, how do you get to that point at the end of the day? And, and again, like I said, with my experiences, seeing like, actually even now, my stepfather, he's 72 years old, still teaches chess all the time. Probably works harder than I do, actually. And so, so I see things like that and that, that really interested me. Like, how do you get from point A to point B?

• 2:35:49Speaker 01

  And that's, that's in large part what led to it. That being said, obviously, when you start owning things like properties, houses or condos and whatnot. There are headaches that come along with, you know, getting some of these bills in the mail or you see age away about a tenant not, um, you know, parking their car illegally. $50 that you have to, you have to pay in fees, these sorts of things. It is kind of a pain. But I try, I mean, I try to reduce the number of things that can really bother me in life. And that's really the only thing that I let, you know, not let, but it's one of those things, the only things that kind of ties me down in a way. And I, I still feel pretty free though, for the most part, despite owning.

• 2:36:27Lex Fridman?

  But you mentioned security. So that meaning like security, stability, that kind of thing?

• 2:36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry.

• 2:36:32Lex Fridman?

  So that's the thing you chase, you value.

• 2:36:36Speaker 01

  When it comes to chess, as I said, if you're a pro player, you can do very well, make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. Of course, I'm talking pre-tax. But if you do poorly in one year, that income dries up. And there is a chance you'll never get back there. So I feel like for much of my career, that was always on my mind. And maybe that held me back to some degree. I don't know those, the sort of, the sort of thoughts about things like that as opposed to purely being, being focused only, only on the chess, like worrying about the results, worrying about the prizes, things like this. It might've held me back, but that was always something that was all, it was, it was on my mind.

• 2:37:10Lex Fridman?

  For me, I really worked hard to make sure that I'm philosophically, intellectually, spiritually, in every way, I'm okay with having nothing. As close to nothing as you can get. And the reason I want that is so that I have the freedom to not crave stability. Or rather have stability because my bar for stability is so low. And that gives me the freedom to, to take big risks. And I thought that for me, I felt like the way I could really help the world is by optimizing, you know, the positive I can do. And for that, you have to take big risks. And big risks really does mean potentially losing everything.

• 2:37:55Speaker 01

  So you're saying like startups, you mean like that?

• 2:37:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, startups in every aspect, meaning pivoting

• 2:38:03Lex Fridman?

  career paths completely when everybody else is telling you not to do that.

• 2:38:06Speaker 01

  Actually, you know, it's interesting because like when I think about streaming, it's not like, it's not like a startup. Cause like, I'm not like investing money where I, where I can lose everything if it's not successful. But it was also a big risk for me doing that because at the time I was a professional player doing very well. When I, when I, when I kind of started in October 2018, I was still top 10 in the world doing very well. 2019 was actually a very bad year for me. I started playing much worse. And towards the end of 2019, I was, I intended to take a six month break. Last time I played was November 2019 in India. And then I was going to take a break until the US championship in April of 2020. So I did, in a sense, actually take a risk because I was potentially risking my career by spending this extra time that I had streaming. So it's not like, it's, it's not the risk where like financially I can lose everything.

• 2:38:51Speaker 01

  But it actually was a bit of a risk now, now that I think about it in a sense. Because if I lose my career as a, as a player, there's no guarantee that streaming is going to be anything, anything substantial.

• 2:39:01Lex Fridman?

  You didn't think it was a risk at the time?

• 2:39:04Speaker 01

  I think at the time, I just, I don't know, I thought it was just something fun to spend my time on. I like, I, I didn't somehow, I don't know, I wasn't, I figured that after a six month break, I would come back and play better chess, kind of. But like the stream, as far as streaming, I never thought of it as being something that would be a career or something viable. I just thought it's something fun to do. Uh, maybe it gives me, it gives fans some access to me. It broadens the platform. More people hear about me. And that, that was about it, really. I did not ever expect it to become what it did.

• 2:39:33Lex Fridman?

  You said, uh, growing up with a single mother,

• 2:39:38Lex Fridman?

  and just giving your whole life to chess at a certain point. Has there been through that low points? Maybe times when you felt lonely, isolated, maybe even depressed?

• 2:39:54Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Chess is very difficult. You're, you're, you're on your own. Like, you can have friends, people you compete against who are friends, but at the end of the day, it's a very singular pursuit. It's just you and your results dictate everything. So there have been many moments, um, throughout my life when, when like I've struggled. I, I think probably the, the biggest, uh, biggest time when that happened would have been about 2005 into 2006, where I stopped playing chess and I went to college. And that was mainly because I had gotten to a level where I was top 100 in the world, but I stagnated for that year, about 2005, 2006. And so I decided to go to college primarily because I had stagnated. I didn't feel like I was going anywhere. And then also kind of being on your own, just having a few friends here or

• 2:40:38Speaker 01

  there in the chess world. You kind of, you wonder what it's like. And especially because I was homeschooled as well, like that, that further added to kind of wanting to, um, be around other people. It really played a very big role in, in my decision to go to college. But at the end of the day, as, as I realized, college kind of was a big disappointment because the strongest, or the biggest strength of playing chess is that you mingle with people from all different backgrounds, all different ages. And when I went to college, the, the whole notion of basically people who are juniors and seniors being more important or more equal than others to do the animal farm line. Um, like when you're, when you're in that situation, it didn't really jive with my childhood and growing up in the world of chess. And that, that is one of the biggest

• 2:41:19Speaker 01

  reasons that I actually came back to chess. Cause it's like this world of where certain people can, are more important, like, and, and things are different. Like, I just could not really relate to that. And that, that was, that was one of the biggest reasons. It really was. That wasn't the only reason. The other reason, though, was that towards the end of my first semester, I played a tournament after not studying. Actually, when I was in college, when I wasn't actually studying for class, I was mainly on PokerStars, playing poker all night long. So like, towards the end of that semester, I actually went to play a tournament in Philadelphia, because I was going to college nearby. And with very little preparation, I won that tournament against other strong grandmasters. And that kind of made me think,

• 2:42:01Speaker 01

  well, okay, if I'm ever going to take a chance, it has to be now. If I stay in college for four years, probably get like, you know, probably, you know, get a major in political science, do something in the political arena. And then I felt like, I'm going to probably look back, like, five, 10 years from now, and wonder, what if? What if, what if, like, what if I had played chess? How far could I have gone? And if I had taken those four years, there would have been no opportunity for me to reach my full potential, or even see how far I go. So therefore, that was also a big, big reason.

• 2:42:31Lex Fridman?

  So another what-if question. If you didn't play chess, you mentioned political. What other possible

• 2:42:38Speaker 01

  That depends.

• 2:42:39Lex Fridman?

  Successful trajectory might have you had?

• 2:42:42Speaker 01

  That depends on what point, really, if, when you ask that question. I think if we're talking about the time of college, probably I would have done something in political science. Maybe lobbying, lobbyist or something, something terrible like that, honestly. If I was a little bit younger, there, you know, I really, I loved ancient history, archaeology, and also languages as well. So probably something along those lines. And if we talk like more recently, something, something in finance. I don't know what exactly, but something, something in finance.

• 2:43:12Lex Fridman?

  What do you think, like, when we talk again 30 years, what do you think you're doing?

• 2:43:17Speaker 01

  30 years? Um, I honestly want to believe that I'm just, you know, sitting in like a beach house in Malibu, just relaxing.

• 2:43:26Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, right. So like, you and I are in a yacht for some reason. Why are we in a yacht? You paid for it. It's you.

• 2:43:33Speaker 01

  I don't ever want to own a yacht.

• 2:43:35Lex Fridman?

  Nope. Okay, all right, fine.

• 2:43:38Speaker 01

  I mean, that's like the amount of money you waste on docking fees, the the gas, like, no way, no way.

• 2:43:45Lex Fridman?

  I was trying to construct an example, you're being super rich for some reason. It doesn't have to be.

• 2:43:49Speaker 01

  That actually, you know, I don't think that that's actually does not appeal to me at all. I think one of the, another great thing about chess is that within the chess world, I'm very prominent and famous. But I can go out to the supermarket and nobody recognized me. And so I am famous, but I'm not famous at the same time. So I don't actually want to be like, I don't want to be in a situation where everyone recognizes me or I'm super famous. It's not that, that to me, sounds like a very miserable life. I do not want TMZ chasing me down the street.

• 2:44:19Lex Fridman?

  So you're famous in a community you love and that, so whenever you plug into that community, it's always like, there's a deep connection there, you can always escape, we need to break.

• 2:44:32Lex Fridman?

  What advice would you give to young people about career, about life? Maybe they're in high school, maybe they're in college. Maybe they want to achieve the heights that you have achieved in chess. They want to do that for something they.

• 2:44:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think the main thing is follow your heart, follow your passion. One thing, we didn't touch on this, like, both my parents, my mom was, was a musician. She was, she was very good. I think she was like maybe all state in California when she was growing up on the violin. But she still was nowhere near good enough to get into Juilliard or the top music schools and pursue that as, as a career. And there are a lot of starving musicians who never are able to quite make it. So like, when I see my mom and, and, and what happened with her, you know, her passion, the fact she wasn't able to make it. Or then my stepfather, who, who we haven't talked about, my stepfather, actually, he's of Sri Lankan descent. He comes from a family of lawyers. His father was a lawyer, his, his uncle was a lawyer for the International Court of Justice.

• 2:45:30Speaker 01

  So it's a family of lawyers and my stepfather, he went to England to, to study law. He went to Southampton, I think it was University of Southampton. And at some point, he, he was going and playing these tournaments on the weekend and playing, playing at the school club, all these things. And his parents, actually, they, they took away his chessboard, they took away his chess books. They took everything away and told him he was going to become a lawyer. He would, he could not play chess. So when I look at my upbringing, you know, I, I feel very lucky that my parents, having had these experiences, they were so supportive of everything I did. And I think that at the end of the day, you have to pursue your passion. To whatever end that might be, you might, you might pursue it, you might fail, but I do think you have to pursue it. It's better, what's it, it's better to have tried and failed than have

• 2:46:15Speaker 01

  not tried at all. So I really do believe that's the most important thing is that you do that. And where it takes you, who knows, but the experiences I feel are much more important than, than like the what ifs and possibly missing out on living life.

• 2:46:27Lex Fridman?

  So even if it's, you know, everybody around you and your own judgment says that this is not going to be financially viable long term, you still pursue?

• 2:46:36Speaker 01

  I think, I mean, at some point you have to make those tough decisions, but absolutely, I feel like too many people follow the standard route. It's like you're supposed to, you know, go to college, get that degree, be $200,000 in debt, these sorts of things. But then, then at the end of the day, are you, are you really living? Are you pursuing what you want to pursue? It's just because that's what you're supposed to do. That's what society tells us that you're, the route you're supposed to go. So I, I, I think you just have to, you pursue it. Of course, at a certain point, if you're not making it, you have to make hard decisions. But I think that, you know, in life, the, the only thing really, you know, time and sort of experiences, those are the only things that you really can't put a price on.

• 2:47:14Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And, uh, you know, and really pursue it, you know, even like streaming, I'll see people like or YouTube or that kind of stuff. It's, it's a world and it may always foreign to me. It's like there's, there's levels to this game in that like, there's a way to really pursue it and there's a way to half ass it. And I guess the point is not to half ass it. Like, don't, you know, don't just keep it a hobby and make it a full time. If that's your passion, then go all out. So sometimes people can think that like, uh, these things they love is just a hobby, like music or something like that. But there's a way to do it seriously, to go all out. Yeah.

• 2:47:56Speaker 01

  So that's, that's probably my general advice is like, whatever it is, you pursue it because even with chess, when, when I dropped out of college, there was no guarantee that I was going to make it as, as a professional player. There was no guarantee, but like I, I took that chance and very, very fortunately for me, it worked out.

• 2:48:13Lex Fridman?

  Would you rather fight a horse sized duck or a hundred duck sized horses?

• 2:48:19Speaker 01

  Probably a, probably a horse sized duck. Just, just one, one enemy is better than having to keep an eye on a hundred.

• 2:48:25Lex Fridman?

  This, the stress or what? The anxiety? You don't?

• 2:48:30Lex Fridman?

  The why, why, why, why don't you like a hun- I mean, they're tiny.

• 2:48:34Speaker 01

  Tiny?

• 2:48:35Lex Fridman?

  Duck sized horses.

• 2:48:36Speaker 01

  If you have, well, I don't know if they're gonna attack or not, but I feel like having one enemy seeing like the clear objective. I would always, I prefer that.

• 2:48:45Lex Fridman?

  If you could be someone else for a day.

• 2:48:49Lex Fridman?

  Alive or dead. Who would you be?

• 2:48:52Speaker 01

  Who would I want to be for a day? Um, if I had to pick someone, actually, I would probably pick Elon. When, how many years ago is now, when, when, when the rockets were blowing up? I'd be very interested to see those processes of how they went through that and they got out on the other side. Cause like, I feel like most of the time when you hear about the startups, like, okay, you look at Amazon. You, you have the big investment to start, doesn't feel like there were those super, super lows.

• 2:49:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:21Speaker 01

  For, for like the Amazons of the world, maybe not when the three rockets blew up, but maybe when that, was it fourth or fifth one? Actually succeeded, but somewhere in that timeframe.

• 2:49:29Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that, that is probably one of the lowest lows that were publicly I've ever seen. Yeah, that's, yeah.

• 2:49:36Speaker 01

  Those are the moments that make us.

• 2:49:37Lex Fridman?

  If everyone on earth disappeared through a horrible atrocity and it was just you left, what would your days look like? What would you do?

• 2:49:46Speaker 01

  It's just me.

• 2:49:47Lex Fridman?

  Just dead bodies.

• 2:49:48Speaker 01

  There's really like this, right? It was like.

• 2:49:49Lex Fridman?

  There's many movies like this.

• 2:49:51Speaker 01

  Honestly, if I could, I would probably just, uh, but you're saying there's like no, no life, like no, no plants, not, none of this stuff.

• 2:49:58Lex Fridman?

  No, there's, there's life.

• 2:49:59Speaker 01

  There's, there's life, just not, just not.

• 2:50:00Lex Fridman?

  Not, not human life.

• 2:50:01Speaker 01

  Um.

• 2:50:02Lex Fridman?

  There's like goats and stuff.

• 2:50:04Speaker 01

  Is it, what was, I, I remember reading a, I mean, it's slightly, there was this sci-fi book I read many years ago. I think it was rendezvous with Rama, um, where I think there, there were people that were just going all over the land, like in this, this cylinder. And so I think for me, I would just explore, I've just like walk bicycle, maybe plant, plant some, uh, plant some trees, things of this nature.

• 2:50:24Lex Fridman?

  I wonder how that would experience, uh, change your experience of nature. Knowing that you, it truly is, cause like, that's one of the magical things with nature is it's humbling that it's just you out there or like.

• 2:50:36Speaker 01

  That's, that's why I love it. That's why I love going like hiking, um, cause obviously you get the exercise, but honestly, it's a reminder of how small we really are.

• 2:50:44Lex Fridman?

  And here you would realize like. I mean, it's an extra humbling effect of like, you really are alone out here.

• 2:50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, I don't know, I probably, I probably spent a lot of time just thinking about, thinking about everything, too.

• 2:51:02Lex Fridman?

  Do you hate losing in chess, or do you love winning?

• 2:51:05Speaker 01

  Do I hate losing, or do I love winning? I think I love, I love, I love, I love winning. I mean, maybe because I've, maybe because I'm doing so many different things, like, losing doesn't have the same effect on me that it, that it once did. So I think like, now I definitely love winning, winning more, but I think when I was younger, I hated, I hated losing much more than I, much more than I liked winning.

• 2:51:24Lex Fridman?

  What comforts you on bad days?

• 2:51:27Speaker 01

  I think similar to what gives me the motivation for streaming, it's the fact that, at the end of the day, no matter how bad things, things appear or seem, I mean, we've never been at a better time in human history. People have things much better off now than any other time. So I, I find it hard to really have pity, or not have pity, but like, feel really bad. I just use those sorts of things as like, the, the way to, to get over it, just knowing how, how lucky I am.

• 2:51:51Lex Fridman?

  What's the role of love in the human condition? Let me ask if Akar about love.

• 2:51:57Speaker 01

  Love is, love is, uh, I mean, I think it can be the greatest thing in the world. I think when it, you know, when, when things fall apart, like, you know, I, I've, I've, I've been through this quite a few times, actually. Some, some really, real highs, some, some really, real lows as well. Uh, I think love is, it, it can, it can inspire you to do things you never thought were possible. And without it, though, I think it's, I think life, life is very empty. I think it's the, probably the most important thing to have in life, in one, one way or another.

• 2:52:28Lex Fridman?

  Which is extra sad if you were the last person left on earth.

• 2:52:32Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I think, again, also in terms of chess, I think that, that it can be, as far as chess goes, like, or any competition, it can be the greatest thing in the world, it can also be the worst thing in the world, when, when you're in love. A lot of chess players, for many, it does not help them. It actually makes them play much worse chess, because you, you kind of, you, you don't have that energy or that drive in the same kind of way. Um, so it's, it's very mixed for chess. As far as me personally, though, I think, you know, I would say what I've said before, it's better to have loved and lost than have never have loved at all. And I definitely have been through that.

• 2:53:07Lex Fridman?

  I thought you don't care. I thought you don't care. Turns out you care sometimes, a little bit, a tiny bit, a very, very, very tiny bit. Hikaru, you're an amazing person. I'm a huge fan. It's really an honor that you would talk with me today. I can't wait to see what you do next.

• 2:53:22Speaker 01

  Thank you. It was good being here.

• 2:53:24Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with Hikaru Nakamura. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from David Bronstein. "It is my style to take my opponent and myself on to unknown grounds. A game of chess is not an examination of knowledge. It is a battle of nerves." Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.