Gambits and Game Theory

The Queen’s Gambit, game theory, and more – Neil deGrasse Tyson, Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice are talkin’ chess with grandmaster Maurice Ashley, A. I. expert Jonathan Schaeffer, and Alexandra Botez, Woman FIDE Master and host of BotezLive.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition, and today's topic is Gambits and Game Theories. Ooh, gotta, gotta love it. And who do I have? Of course, my intrepid co-hosts, Chuck Nice, Jack.

• 0:28Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Neil.

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, very good. You are not the professional athlete in this group. I would go to Gary O'Reilly for that.

• 0:35Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary. What's up, buddy? Hi, Neil. How you doing? Now, none of us have any particular competitive expertise in the stuff we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about game theory, we're gonna talk about 21st century chess, and there's a lot going on there. Is it a sport? Do we bring it into the Olympics? Or are computers beating us? What's going on? So we had to bring in an expert, okay? And so we're bringing in Dr. Jonathan Shaffer. Jonathan, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Thank you very much.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, you're a professor in the Computing Science Department at the University of Alberta, Canada. Formerly, you were dean there, but you quickly stepped down, I think wisely, so now you can actually get some work done, right? Is this how that works?

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. And we have on record here that you created a computer program called Chinook. This is now 25 years ago, that became the world champion of American checkers?

• 1:34Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay, now checkers, you know, but that's not chess, right? So...

• 1:39Chuck Nice?

  As, as, as checkers is often disparaged by that comparison.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that guy's playing checkers, not chess!

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just, that's right, that's right. That's what I'm just, I'm just saying. But what I liked especially is you're also behind the program Polaris, did I get that right? Great name, by the way. Had it getting good with every astronomer in the room. That plays the Texas Hold'em poker.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for me, that's, that's even more intriguing. But tell me, what, what kind of work have you been involved in with AI and game solving?

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Well, of course, I'm doing research in AI, and when I was young, I wanted to be the world chess champion. I mean, Bobby Fischer was my, my role model when I was young. But a lack of talent and an interesting girl sort of got in the way. And so I turned to AI to realize my dreams. If I couldn't be world champion, I'm gonna let my computer program be the world champion. So that led to, you know, building world champion caliber programs in checkers, uh, and poker and a variety of other games. And so I'm a very competitive person when I start one of these projects. We want to win and I don't let human egos get in the way of trying to build superhuman game playing programs.

• 2:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so what you're saying is you weren't, you weren't as good in chess as you wanted to be, as inspired as you were by Bobby Fischer. So you started writing software and code that could beat not only you but...

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Kick his ass.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could kick your own ass?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Basically. That's what he was like, you know, if I can't be the best, I'm gonna make the thing that's gonna be the best. And then by proxy, I am the best.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I see. Even if he can't be the best.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Even if I, I am a genius.

• 3:28Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm a genius.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  I am a genius.

• 3:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so this is in movies, right? They're saying, oh, you wanna kick my ass away, first you have to kick my robot's ass, okay? Then you gotta get to me.

• 3:38Gary O'Reilly?

  That's how this works.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  But you know Chuck, Chuck, to your point, one of the most traumatic moments in my life was working on my chess program. And I'm a chess master. And the day that it finally beat me, I almost cried and cheered with delight.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know what, I, I, I know that feeling. I have it every time I have an argument with my 14-year-old son and lose.

• 4:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Darth Vader Skywalker moment.

• 4:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but it could also be, it's very sort of Pygmalion, right? It's like your creation. Um, you fall, did you fall in love with your program?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  No comment.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. That's a different AI program you're working on.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  That's the robot girlfriend, that was the young lady that got him interested in something else.

• 4:31Gary O'Reilly?

  You just asked a chess master that question and you saw his move there, didn't you?

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a couple of years back, we, I had Maurice Ashley, chess grandmaster, American grandmaster, come to, uh, he visited. I, I forgot whether he was in town or we nabbed him or I forgot how we got him into my office. But a chess grandmaster and I, I asked him about Bobby Fischer.

• 4:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what it is to get a machine to learn how to play chess, do you learn the way Bobby Fischer learned or the other rules? Let's find out what he said. Grandmaster Maurice Ashley.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was Fischer innovatively brilliant because nobody trained him? And he had to figure it all out on his own. So therefore, he came out of someplace else. Because had he been formally trained, everyone would know he learned these moves that way and that. And if you come from somewhere else, if you're self taught, nobody knows how to play you. Is there some of that in there?

• 5:33Speaker 04

  I think there is some of that in there. Fischer was his own freak. I mean, he had his own genius. And his main forte, in addition to being immensely gifted, was his work ethic. He studied everything, looked at everything, looked at other languages so that he could read stuff in Russian. Uh, he, he was incredibly gifted at just consuming information. And then him being himself, he would

• 6:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On top of that.

• 6:04Speaker 04

  He would just add his own twist to it. And the, you had to realize, a whole Soviet school was pitted against him. They wanted to destroy this upstart. And they knew it from when he was 14, 15, 16 years old. I mean, this was, this was a, a star in the firmament that they spotted and said, that kid can play. And, you know, it doesn't take much. I don't care what country you're from or race you're from, gender, I mean, you name it. You start playing chess moves and chess players are like, this person will kick your ass. Watch out. And they knew it from when he was young. And he was bent on taking them down because he was, uh, he was a perfectionist and he wanted to play against the best.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  So that drive, that energy, uh, was, was unmatched, was unparalleled. Maybe, maybe Kasparov, we could argue matches, matches that kind of focus. But there, there's very few players in the history of chess that had that burning desire to simply eviscerate you. And that was Fisher. And, and he said it. He just, he loves that moment.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All these battle terms.

• 7:09Speaker 04

  That's, that was, that's the game.

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will crush and destroy you. I will eviscerate you.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  That is, that is a war game.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just pieces on a board.

• 7:15Speaker 04

  Oh, no. Oh, no. You know.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, this.

• 7:18Speaker 04

  I gotta go. What? This is chess we're talking about. Chess is, chess is life. And that's, that's a direct quote from Fisher.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. So, so Jonathan, uh, if, if Bobby Fischer was sort of a perfect learning machine, uh, today, in modern sort of A I, A I models, are they perfect learning machines like Bobby Fischer? Is he some, some system, some method and operation to follow? Or has A I found even more clever pathways to success?

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Well, humans are fundamentally different than computers and they do things very differently. Bobby Fischer was absolutely remarkable. What he did in, in the span of time that he was on the top of his game is, is incredible. But what we learned from experience is that if you feed human knowledge into A I's, they don't play as well as if they can learn on their own. Take a look at, uh.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, that's cold. That's just not right.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, it just makes perfect sense, though. But it, it does in a way, and if you take a look at the AlphaZero chess program, it starts off with just the rules of the game. And then it plays against itself. It's a very lonely experience, but it plays against itself millions of times. And it becomes superhuman. And not only does it superhuman, it plays chess in a way that is so different than humans do, that we can actually learn from these A I's. The nice thing about these A I's, though, is they, they don't have an ego. They're not gonna make a snide remark when they, they beat you.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  And, well, it's a completely different and

• 8:59Chuck Nice?

  You can program it, Jonathan. Programming, though.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, Jonathan, you could program the AI to make snide remarks.

• 9:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Wouldn't that be funny?

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Actually.

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And to trash talk during the game.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Actually, in my first chess program, that's exactly what I did, because, well, there's a competitive spirit behind the facade of an AI researcher.

• 9:18Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, that's so cool. Oh, why didn't you leave that in there? I want so badly to give somebody, because, you know, these chess programs are immensely popular right now.

• 9:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 9:29Chuck Nice?

  And, you know, they have some of the free versions online where you can get, like, the beginner versions and you'll, I guess that's how they kind of suck you in. They give you the beginner version for free and then you, like, you play that and then you move up. But it would be so great just to have that program saying things like, "That's all you got?" Or...

• 9:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, no, Chuck, now you, you gotta give him the Schwarzenegger Terminator voice.

• 10:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 10:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, so now, now you gotta up the game and, and sort of characterize the voice and have certain movie characters to come in there and just, then you can trash.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 10:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Queen to base to four, you're going down.

• 10:17Gary O'Reilly?

  You know who you want to do next, don't you?

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. So, Jonathan, you said it plays millions of games. How quickly can it play a million games against itself?

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Very quickly. And the reason is because these computers are operating at the speed of light. You know, the human brain is amazing, but it's incredibly slow. When Bobby Fischer plays chess, he's analyzing roughly two chess positions per second, which is fast for humans, but slow by computers. Take a look at Deep Blue. We all know who Deep Blue is, chess program built in 1997, which defeated.

• 10:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By IBM, just to give the credit. Where it goes.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  1997 technology, that's 23 years ago. That program was looking at two.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Hundred million chess positions per second compared to Garry Kasparov's two. You know what's amazing that the media doesn't get it right? People are stunned when they say, "Oh, computers are better than humans." And I say, "Well, that's not such an interesting technology story." What's much more interesting is that the humans withstood the technological onslaught of computers for as long as they did. Because when you look at those numbers, the computers have an enormous speed advantage.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, so computers are better... Well, what, what, okay, let me, let me slice it, let me thread a needle here. Are computers better than us because they're faster than us? Or are they better than us because they are more clever? Because if they're simply faster, of course they're faster, all right? I'm not gonna, you know, take, I'm not gonna find the square root of an eight-digit number on my own. Give it to the damn computer, all right? So, so can you tell me that the AI is coming from a whole other place in where it's going?

• 12:01Speaker 02

  So, the AI is two things, or as are human chess players. There's search and knowledge. And humans do search very slowly. They only look at two positions at a time. Computers can go millions of times faster, and that's a huge advantage. Humans make up for the search by knowledge. Garry Kasparov can tell you amazing things about chess. My AIs, maybe, not so much. And so...

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, most of those million moves are not interesting, and a, and an expert chess player would never...

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  There's a majority of the moves, an overwhelming majority of the moves, that are immaterial. They're ruled out right away.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, but if you're building an AI that's, uh, um, got all these speed advantages, it costs nothing to look at all these moves. And yeah, 99% of them are, are bad. But if you don't look at all of them, you might miss something really good.

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  When you talk about pattern recognition and machine learning as opposed to actual intelligence that human beings possess, which is an actual, the same type of thing, but executed differently. In a chess program, has there ever been the computer that has come up with the innovation?

• 13:16Chuck Nice?

  So it's wow, look at that. Nobody's ever thought of that.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what Jonathan said. It said they play the game completely differently. As a result of having explored all the parameter space.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  And they find all these amazing things that humans never even thought of looking at. Or quite frankly, humans overlooked.

• 13:37Gary O'Reilly?

  So Jonathan, if if we've got this powerful speed freak of AI, could it then go away and bring together or bring forward something like Nash's equilibrium? Or is it just going to deliver in a certain way, but not create things like that that will allow to roll out into all sorts of different areas of life?

• 13:57Chuck Nice?

  Wait, what's Nash's equilibrium?

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, do we have to explain everything to you?

• 14:01Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. That's why I'm here.

• 14:04Gary O'Reilly?

  And me.

• 14:04Chuck Nice?

  Exactly why I'm here. So you guys can explain everything to me. So what is Nash's equilibrium?

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hold on, more broadly, what role does game theory play? And and which is how and when and why you might even find a Nash equilibrium in the middle of it?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  So this one type of game is called a perfect information game. It's like chess and checkers. At every point in the game, you know exactly what's going on. You know where the pieces are. You know whose turn it is. You have complete information. There's another kind of game called imperfect information. That's where some of the information is hidden. That's like a game like poker where you know your cards, but you don't know your opponent's cards. John Nash came up with this.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that would include even bridge, where you're playing with someone, but you don't know their cards, even though you're on the same side. Right?

• 14:54Speaker 02

  Right. Let's stick to poker because I think more people understand that the the real concept of poker, which is fundamental concept, which is bluffing, which is a really important concept in in poker. And what Nash came up with was this brilliant idea that in these imperfect information games, you can get to a point where everybody has a strategy they can follow and everybody breaks even. And if you deviate from that strategy. You're gonna lose. And so this Nash equilibrium is something that is quite surprising. John Nash got the Nobel Prize for it.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In economics.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  In economics, that's right. And many of your listeners may recognize John Nash from the amazing movie called A Beautiful Mind, which details his, at times tragic, life. What's interesting, though, about this Nash equilibrium, since you bring it up, is that people think of poker as being a game of deception and bluffing. And it is. But the reality is, is that that's a human concept. And the AIs, remember when we talked about chess, they play very differently. They play almost alien-like in terms of how they play chess. But when it comes to poker, my poker programs have no knowledge of bluffing or deception. It turns out that it all falls out in the mathematics. And so when you take the mathematical area of game theory,

• 16:20Speaker 02

  the Nash's equilibrium, and you use these concepts in your program, you get bluffing and deception for free. And the net result is you get poker-playing programs that can, just like in chess, can beat all humans.

• 16:34Gary O'Reilly?

  So you don't need to teach them how to read a tell or a facial micro-expression?

• 16:38Chuck Nice?

  I mean, listen, because you're playing the percentages at all times. You're playing the math. It doesn't make a difference. Why do I care what your face looks like if I know that you have a 4% probability of having a particular hand? I'm gonna bet that 4% because I have a 96% chance of winning.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, that's not it. It's whether there's a 4% chance he had the hand that will beat your hand.

• 17:00Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's what I'm saying. No, no. I want you to have the pan that I will lose, Neil.

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just clarifying for precision here.

• 17:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so wait, wait, I'm very fascinated by this. What you're saying is this notion that I'm gonna read, you know, they're gonna wear dark sunglasses so you can't see their eyes, so they can't see their emotions, so they can't see this. You're saying that AI playing AI will bluff without having to read anybody's body language?

• 17:29Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 17:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 17:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's so cool.

• 17:32Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Not only will they bluff, they'll do it well.

• 17:36Chuck Nice?

  The cool thing is if you watch the world championships of poker, they have an AI playing along with the game that's being played.

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Chuck Nice?

  So that you can actually see all of the mathematical probabilities and percentages of each hand, so that you can see how well the actual human players are playing against one another as opposed to the measure of an AI. And I think it makes it, it's the only reason I watch.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Char. So Jonathan, we gotta bring this segment to a close, but just let's exit with, I got one question for you.

• 18:13Chuck Nice?

  Let's keep this guy. This is fascinating stuff.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's our new best friend. Yeah, our new best friend, right. Because you want to win some poker game, that's all you want to do. That's why you like to do that.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Actually, I'd like to play Chuck in poker. I think there's a real opportunity there for me.

• 18:28Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 18:31Chuck Nice?

  Jonathan, Jonathan?

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He just, that was just a, that was a smackdown right there.

• 18:36Chuck Nice?

  Not really, because let me tell you something. I would be offended if my poker face wasn't, "You gonna lose, you gonna lose."

• 18:45Speaker 02

  I'm afraid I will just have to use my best Arnold Schwarzenegger takedown and put you in your place.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So are you working on any programs now to beat something in the future that you're going to show up in the news?

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Uh, right now, no. I'm working on some fundamental problems to do with games, but not to build superhuman game playing programs.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what I'd like is, you know, we do games, game, the whole gaming universe is rising up in everyone's awareness, especially ours. And so if we can bring you back to talk about other games that show up, that'd be great to have you as our sort of man at arm's reach for when we need expertise on this.

• 19:21Chuck Nice?

  How are you at Monopoly?

• 19:25Speaker 02

  I'm really good at rolling the dice. I've practiced a lot.

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. All right. So Jonathan, it's been a delight to have you on. We will definitely find an excuse to bring you back since you're apparently you're our best friend now. There you go. All right, Jonathan Shaver, thanks for joining us.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Pleasure.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we'll be back. This is StarTalk Sports Edition, Gambits and Game Theory when we return.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition, Gambits and Game Theory. And in this segment, we're going to focus on chess in the 21st century. You know, chess brings back all these images of like old crusty men playing at tables and things. And I think that that's been changing of late. And so in this segment, I want to sort of broaden this out. But before we do so, let me reintroduce my co-host Chuck Nice.

• 20:43Chuck Nice?

  Hey.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, what's that shirt you're wearing?

• 20:46Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I kind of recognize.

• 20:49Chuck Nice?

  It says, "Science is true whether or not you believe in it."

• 20:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've heard of that quote.

• 20:59Chuck Nice?

  You resemble that quote.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 21:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, no. So this is a cool new StarTalk shirt that.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I don't even have one yet. Okay.

• 21:08Chuck Nice?

  No, yes, so.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got on the early list for that.

• 21:12Chuck Nice?

  I did. I got this and I got it along with a vaccine. So I'm just good now.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, he pretended he was 90 years old and stepped ahead of some little old lady.

• 21:23Chuck Nice?

  No, but yeah, you can pick these up now. You can order these now, people. Look at that, and it's really cool. I mean, what a cool look.

• 21:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't seen it yet, so that's a... You're all doing this behind my back.

• 21:34Chuck Nice?

  Very cool.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary. Yes. Always good to have you, ma'am. Thank you, my friend. Okay, I love your sports sense. So here's with it, none of us play chess, or if we do, we're probably not good at it.

• 21:44Chuck Nice?

  No, exactly.

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we needed somebody who had some street cred in this at all. So, we've got somebody who won the girls nationals, US girls nationals at age fifteen.

• 21:56Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, our currently ranked women's FIDE master, okay? That's a title, alright? And your host, uh, she's host of Botez Live, alright? On Twitch alongside her kid sister Andrea. And she's a twenty-four-year-old trash-talking chess player and internet influencer, Alexandria Botez. Alexandria, welcome to StarTalk.

• 22:22Speaker 05

  Thank you so much for having me, I'm super excited.

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent. I gotta ask you the, like, the perfunctory questions, like, what got you interested in chess? Let's get these out of the way. So, so, give us a, give us a short history of your interest in chess.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, so traditionally in the US, chess has been seen as a game for nerds. But in Eastern Europe, it's a game for everyone. And my parents came from Romania, where there was a very heavy chess culture. So my dad actually started teaching me when I was six.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, so this is just, that's like here, like you go out with your kids and, and play ball. Yeah. Then they set you up in front of a chessboard. Man, that's badass, okay?

• 23:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, all of the kids have to do it, it's just kind of a rite of passage.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, but, but, but, but you didn't reject it? So not everyone is gonna embrace it, so what's different about you? She wanted to eat. No!

• 23:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh!

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Chuck, there's a window on your parenting skills.

• 23:22Speaker 05

  I mean, he's not wrong.

• 23:26Speaker 05

  Um, actually, I think it started just because I was super competitive, which I got from my dad. So he actually wanted to troll my mom, uh, who didn't play very much chess. And he said, I'm gonna teach my six-year-old daughter how to play, and I bet she can beat you in two weeks.

• 23:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the trash talking is in the house. So it's in the blood.

• 23:51Speaker 05

  I grew up like this, so when I say things, it's not my fault. It's been ingrained since a young age, you know?

• 23:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, all right, so you, that's your baptism, your chess baptism. And wait, wait, two weeks later, what happened?

• 24:06Speaker 05

  An opening trick. I mean, think of the Terminator coming into chess with like a four-move tactical combination he remembered. And then I just got lucky and my dad just will never let my mom forget.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you beat your mother after two weeks? He won the bet.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  At chess, at chess, Neil, careful.

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's take a peek at, uh, my next clip with Maurice Ashley. Cause I asked him, what did it take to make it to the top of the game? Generally, what is required for this to happen? Let's check it out. You made a strong case for being possessed in your early days in your love for chess.

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can someone reach international grandmaster just simply by studying, but not being completely possessed by it?

• 25:00Speaker 04

  No.

• 25:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 25:02Speaker 04

  No, you cannot become an international grandmaster.

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That means all the international grandmasters, there's something a little different about them.

• 25:07Speaker 04

  Absolutely, absolutely. To, to want to be a grandmaster at chess.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  I think Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours. That's not enough. I mean, you have to have-

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Play 10,000 games.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forget the 10,000 hours.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  You have to have the passion. You have to have the will. You have to have the determination. You have to have the desire to study that much, to put in that amount of data into your brain. And on top of it, you have to have the thickest skin to tolerate being humiliated over and over on your way to the top. I've seen many talented young players. Players where people say, "He's got the gift. He's the next Bobby Fischer."

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're all puffed up.

• 25:56Speaker 04

  And you can see that they're excellent players. But the moment they get to a level where they start getting punched in the nose, and they can't quite win as easily as they did back in the young days, they suddenly start to feel a little less comfortable, and suddenly the game's not as much fun, and suddenly they don't want to do it as much. And that struggle to get past that critical point has stopped many a prodigy.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that happened to my son. Because he was, he beat people easily throughout elementary school, middle school-

• 26:28Speaker 04

  Bad thing to do.

• 26:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into high school. And he started beating me when he was 12. And by the time he was 14, I would take one game out of 30 from him. And then he goes into high school tournaments, and now, like, national tournaments. And then you start seeing people his age, even younger, and it's like, "Oh, it's not so easy anymore." It's not so, you know... And I think the effort that it actually requires to be the best had eluded him all those previous years. And so I think he might have been a casualty in just the way you described.

• 27:06Speaker 04

  Yes, I don't know that that's what happened to him, but that happens to a lot of young people. They, especially when it comes easy. You know, that, one of those things, things should not come too easily to you. You're gifted, but you shouldn't feel like, "Oh, come on, I'm gonna beat everyone." Because it takes so much work. And the thing is- Everybody at the top is gifted. Every last one of them is tremendously gifted, no matter which one of those players. Magnus Carlsen happens to be the best of the best of the best. But everyone after him is a freak. And they all have to work really hard, extremely hard, to maintain that level because there's some kid who's 16 years old in China right now, who everybody's pointing at and saying,

• 27:51Speaker 04

  "He's the next one."

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And China's got a billion people to choose from.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  And they're knocking on the door and you're sitting at the top like, "Man, I'm trying to hold on to this title. I'm trying to be one of the best because as soon as that player comes up, you're gonna, somebody is gonna get replaced."

• 28:07Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Alexandra, so are you weirdly obsessed, possessed?

• 28:11Chuck Nice?

  And are you like thoroughly depressed now after that, hearing all that?

• 28:17Speaker 05

  I am not a grandmaster, I'm a master.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a master.

• 28:23Speaker 05

  I know.

• 28:24Chuck Nice?

  Why do, why do we, why are we even talking to her?

• 28:29Chuck Nice?

  Why are we wasting our time here, guys? She's just a master.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, but so, so tell us, what level of weird, preoccupying obsession has to descend upon people, or does it?

• 28:44Speaker 05

  It absolutely does. You have to live and breathe chess. There's moments in your life where it's your number one priority. And to end up being a professional chess player is worse than becoming a struggling artist. I just feel like it's worse. Actually, I'm sure artists also have it pretty bad. But the point is, hmm, there's not a lot of money in chess unless you're in the top 10 in the world, so you're only doing it because of your pure obsession and being competitive for the sake of being the best. So you have to have a very strong why to why you play.

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. So, so just to restate what you just said, you're saying, in so many other professions, there's a lot of money awaiting people who are all really good at it. But here, the money's only awaiting the very few, so you got, you're not driven by money?

• 29:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. It's a pure passion sport.

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gee, okay.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  So, so, so, okay, in, in the words of a soon to be former president, why, why would you do it?

• 29:53Speaker 05

  I actually think that's the question and that was one thing that really changed my trajectory because when I won girls nationals, I got offered a full ride to be on the chess team at University of Texas.

• 30:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's a reason.

• 30:07Speaker 05

  That, that is a good reason.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, there's some money in there, okay.

• 30:10Speaker 05

  That's a good reason. That, that is a good reason, but it would also mean that that would be my number one priority. And I realized that if I wanted to do chess, that's all I could ever do. And for me, that wasn't a compelling why. I'm much more passionate about things like making really good content for chess and getting the average person into it, which I think is so beneficial and so inspiring that that's why I switched more to the content side of it.

• 30:34Chuck Nice?

  So you, you see being more of an ambassador for the game, the sport, the endeavor, whatever anybody's gonna call it. We'll get to whether or not it's a sport, I'm sure, at some point. So I don't wanna, I don't wanna be, I don't wanna chime in right there. But i- is, is the ambassadorship where your passion is? That's what you feel is, uh, cuz I think that that's, you know, based on what we were listening to with Maurice. I mean, you're talking about an extremely high, uh, litmus, uh, for anybody to, to, to pass i- in terms of, uh, that kind of dedication. There are very few people who have that kind of dedication to anything, so...

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, that's right, that's right, that's right. If you look at Edison talking about how much he worked.

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, yeah, no one is saying, "Oh, he's just naturally brilliant, that boy worked his ass off."

• 31:23Chuck Nice?

  Right, he worked his ass off, so, yeah.

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so Alexandra, are you, so what you're saying is, um, some of your chess energy that might just be purely put into chess, you are also spreading into, um, as, as, as Chuck said, becoming an ambassador for the sport, raising the awareness level just to increase the health of the sport in general? Is that now a priority?

• 31:50Speaker 05

  That is my, my biggest priority right now. And I had to have that switch because I know what it's like to be obsessed with chess and that's what got me to the level that I'm at right now. But I think it's also extremely fascinating to be able to... Explain these difficult concepts to people who maybe never would have been into the game otherwise.

• 32:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At all. And what's helping you, of course, is the runaway success of The Queen's Gambit on Netflix. We made time for that, saw it maybe within two days of it posted. But all anecdotal evidence suggests that, I mean, from the sales of chess boards over the holidays to the chatter that's going on and the membership and the number of total games played, that's had a real effect on things. I mean, the two of you, right?

• 32:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, The Queen's Gambit's success has absolutely bled into all types of chess events and chess content and chess equipment, like boards. So it's been super exciting to see.

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Gary, did you hear she used the word "bled"? That's very warlike. It didn't spill, overflow. No, you bled.

• 33:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Look, we've already heard Maurice Ashley talk about a bitter ration.

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 33:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Anyone thinks, "This is tea and biscuits."

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But something as simple as, "I want to sell more chess boards," will bleed into it. This is pretty...

• 33:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, I mean, all right, we are looking at brutality.

• 33:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, just want to be clear. I didn't want that to go by without somebody other than me noticing. Okay, keep going, Alexander.

• 33:27Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, you won't make me bleed my own blood. Isn't that one of my quotes?

• 33:31Speaker 05

  I mean, you've got to think of these super passionate chess players. Nobody ever cared about this game when I was growing up. It was nerdy, people made fun of it. And now, all of a sudden, it's a number one hit on Netflix? You never have a moment like this as a chess enthusiast in your entire life. So we're just all trying to make the most of it and are so excited to see regular people like this game. Yeah.

• 33:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and I think you're right to do it. I think you're right to ride this wave because what I hear is Parcheesi is on your heels.

• 34:06Chuck Nice?

  You know, once that catch is on, forget about it. That new Netflix show about the Parcheesi champion.

• 34:15Speaker 05

  Oh, man, I'm intimidated already.

• 34:18Gary O'Reilly?

  So the thing is, Alexandra, you look at... Your sport and then being twenty something, you see it through your natural lens of digital, social media.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's a 21st century person, right?

• 34:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, and she's going to look at it and say, this thing needs to be electrified.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, let's establish this, let's establish this clearly. So you're 24 going on 25.

• 34:42Speaker 05

  I actually turned 25, but...

• 34:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You turned 25, okay, so what it means is you barely have a memory of the 20th century. If all, if you are a normal human, because our earliest memories are when we're four, typically if you're really precocious, maybe three, but basically between three and five. So the, so the 20th century is some, is you are all made branded, made in the 21st century. So what is that doing to chess? Because I don't want to entirely credit The Queen's Gambit, Netflix series for this, because you're out there, you got a huge following, you, and you got, and you track, the fun with you and your sister, you know, I caught some of those, you know, that's just fun to, just to watch the confusion, right?

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and it's fun confusion because there's always an objective there. So you, I'm not, you, you can't tell me you're not a participant on this landscape.

• 35:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's made me shift how I prioritize what we're doing with chess. Before, it was all about accuracy. It's a game of perfect information. All you're trying to optimize is for the most accurate play. That's your number one goal. But now with playing online, when you're playing fast games, it's not just about accuracy, it's also about playing trickier things that are hard to calculate in a specific time. And then when you add an audience on top of that, the number one goal is making it either entertaining or educational, or if you're talented, both.

• 36:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's see what Maurice Ashley had to say, because I asked him about 21st century chess. This interview is only a couple of years old, but let's find out what he tells us.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  I think that chess has definitely married well with the 21st century. It's now a big online game. Everybody goes online and plays. Everybody all over the world. You can just get online and playing these internet chess clubs and chess.com and all these great sites. And you just go on and you play players from all over the world. And I think that you're right. There is something that's lost in that face-to-face, personal, mono, mono, and also just the interaction between people at a board. But at the same time, it also there's something enhanced because the game has gotten much more international. And if I'm a kid in Brooklyn, I could get online and be playing some kid in South Africa or in Tokyo or in Australia, just like that.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's to stop someone getting online? Because there's not a picture of you there. You're just this probably a name handle. What's to stop someone from attaching a computer to the other side? And then you end up playing the computer.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. The only thing that stops them is their integrity. And if there's a deficit of that, then you're going to be playing against a computer and that's it. I think there's, I mean, clearly there's some people who do that, but most people are online to have a good time. And you can pretty much very quickly see when someone's playing a little out of their league. And most people just want to have fun, so very rarely do they cheat.

• 37:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Alexandra, what Maurice is not imagining here, because he's saying 21st century, you're exploiting the electronics and the internet and the web. What he's not imagining is turning that activity into a spectator sport, which is what you've done.

• 37:56Speaker 05

  Right. I mean, nobody expected that for games either. It seemed a little bit counterintuitive for anybody to enjoy watching somebody else play a game.

• 38:05Chuck Nice?

  Play video games, which is huge.

• 38:07Speaker 05

  Right. And when you think about it, it's kind of similar to sports. Why would you watch sports instead of just play it yourself? Because you're looking at the people who are the best at this particular game. And it's really entertaining and you learn more from it. You get inspired. And chess is now having a very similar uprising on the internet, where all of a sudden, people think it's entertaining or educational to watch.

• 38:32Gary O'Reilly?

  See, that's it. You do emulate your heroes, Neil. You know, as a young boy growing up watching soccer, I wanted to be Pele. I wanted to be the world's greats and emulate them. And I think-

• 38:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, did you do the backwards bicycle kick into the goal?

• 38:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, but I missed the ball pretty much every time.

• 38:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You missed the ball? You did the move, you just missed the ball?

• 38:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, and maybe I wasn't as naturally blessed as I imagined. All I look at when we listen to Alexandra is, you know, chess may be becoming the new rock and roll, but am I looking at the new lead singer here?

• 39:06Speaker 05

  Oh, wow, that's very flattering. Are you talking about Neil?

• 39:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He needs me to flatter him, right?

• 39:15Speaker 05

  I mean, it's really weird to even think that. But yeah, I mean, I've definitely become one of the most well-known female chess figures. And I think that's what it usually goes like with the intersection of social media and any sport. It's the person who is good at that sport, but also very good at spreading content and learning how to reach a wide audience.

• 39:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and that's what I don't think Maurice was imagining as a 21st century manifestation of chess. So, right, so this is interesting. So Alexandra, you could have birthed an entire an entire stratum of chess enthusiasts where, well, you could be spoiling them because they think this is what chess is. If they get really good and they go to the international contest and there's the Russian across the table, now they just want to smack talk it and you're not supposed to do that.

• 40:10Speaker 05

  That's true, but I actually wonder what the desires of the average person is. Because anyone can play in an over-the-board tournament and they can enjoy it because they are also going to get matched with people who have a similar ranking to them. But for the hobbyist, now you can enjoy chess just by playing it online. So maybe it's going to be a difference where people are playing the most chess ever online before they've even ever played a game that lasts over two hours, which is insane to me.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, wow, okay, that's just a difference.

• 40:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Neil, we've been discussing strategies and Nash equilibrium with Dr. Schaefer. And here I'm listening to a chess master. Whose strategies are very much 21st century. I want to trash talk someone. I'm actually going to illustrate my moves as I play. So there's an educational part of it. There's a time, if you play blitz, that you'll play complicated moves. So as that person has to calculate in a short space of time. This is evil, by the way, just so as everyone knows. That's how I think about it because I can't play chess. But this is strategy all the same. And Alexandra seems to be working it to her own, her own advances.

• 41:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we got to take a break. When we come back, we'll get into her gameplay and just find out because Alexandra, we saved the part three for just sort of shoot the shit, right? So I just want to get into so what your tactics are and how successful are they? And what role you have your sister, your kid sister playing in all of this. So we're going to take a quick break. This is StarTalk Sports Edition Gambits and Game Theory when we return.

• 42:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about Gambits and game theory as applied to chess. And I got Chuck. Chuck. Hey. Always there, Gary.

• 42:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey, Neil.

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're helping me do this and we had to bring in someone who had at least some expertise in chess, unlike the three of us. And so we went straight to the internet top. Alexandra Botez. Alexandra, welcome to StarTalk. This is our third segment where we're just trying, we just unscripted, just try to learn some stuff, free association. But what, why is there, there's a particular kind of gambit associated with you in particular? What is that? What?

• 42:50Speaker 05

  That's called the Botez Gambit.

• 42:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Botez Gambit. Well, first tell me what a gambit is, just what is a gambit?

• 42:56Speaker 05

  I will, but for those listening, don't try these at home.

• 43:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't try these.

• 43:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright.

• 43:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can put your eye out. Don't try this at home.

• 43:04Speaker 05

  Use it at your own risk. So Gambits are usually when you give up some material for some kind of compensation that is along the lines of piece activation. So say you give a pawn, and even though you're down a pawn, your pieces are going to be more active. So it usually feels fair.

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I see. So sacrificing for an advantage, or sacrificing to disadvantage?

• 43:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, sometimes you disadvantage yourself. That's what mine does.

• 43:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the Botas Gambit is what now?

• 43:38Speaker 05

  So, you know, it's a little bit embarrassing, but when you play chess that lasts only 60 seconds, you make a lot more mistakes. And I kept-

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What kind of chess is 60-second chess?

• 43:49Speaker 05

  It's called bullet. So the entire game can't last longer than two minutes.

• 43:54Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So one minute for each of you?

• 43:56Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay.

• 43:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright.

• 43:58Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I kept blundering my queen, which means giving it away. So I joked that it was a gambit, and that I would get compensation as a way of kind of trying to overcome what happened. And then it just ended up growing from there, even though people use it mostly as a joke.

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so-

• 44:16Speaker 05

  Hey, Magnus Carlsen Botas Gambit-ed like two weeks ago. It happens to everyone. That's what I'm saying.

• 44:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, now you're hiding behind Carlsen now, right?

• 44:25Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly.

• 44:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so isn't the question, you accidentally Gambit your queen, but do you come out on top at the end?

• 44:33Speaker 05

  It's interesting. I actually played some games where I would give it up on purpose to see what my rating was, without a queen against somebody my rating. And it was like a Class 8 player without my queen.

• 44:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 44:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that was pretty decent.

• 44:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's good. That's good. Now, I heard, wasn't there-

• 44:51Chuck Nice?

  It's the equivalent of playing with one arm tied behind your back, basically.

• 44:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 44:56Speaker 05

  Oh, I'd say two arms, because it's your most valuable-

• 45:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All he can do is bite them.

• 45:01Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 45:05Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, that's hilarious.

• 45:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, so, uh, I had, I had my son do some checking on you. And so he dug up a series of games you played where every game, your opponent, you, you played someone better than you, so you put, you introduced some kind of handicap. So they introduced the Botest handicap on your opponent. And so if I remember this correctly, your opponent had to sacrifice the queen within the first 10 moves of those games. Did I get that right?

• 45:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that, that was exactly.

• 45:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's hilarious.

• 45:39Speaker 05

  I know, it was so much fun, but he actually prepared for it. He used a computer to find the best lines to sacrifice your queen, so that they're actually things that he could play and win. It was fantastic.

• 45:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 45:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you take that as a compliment? That someone, that, that someone goes to that lengths to just say, right, okay.

• 45:56Speaker 05

  Well, actually, it's just a competitive chess player in him. He wanted to win the match, so whatever it takes.

• 46:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, plus, that, that's just gotta be fun to watch, right? And, and just to, to follow it and you cheer on and, and I bet, uh, people, I mean, are there many chess trolls out there or is it all just in good fun?

• 46:14Speaker 05

  I, I think there's a lot of chess trolls. I mean, when you look at the chess.com chatroom, I love chess.com, but it reminds me a little bit of what you'd find in like a, an online dungeon or something.

• 46:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 46:27Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Whoa, I love it.

• 46:32Speaker 05

  Please don't drop me, chess.com.

• 46:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We, we got your back. We got your back.

• 46:38Chuck Nice?

  You're not leaving the comments, you're just reporting on them, not.

• 46:41Speaker 05

  Exactly, exactly.

• 46:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, what did you major in in college?

• 46:44Speaker 05

  I studied international relations with a focus on East Asia, because I wanted to do US-China policy.

• 46:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow, look at you. Okay. You're going all Condoleezza Rice on us.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, she actually gave me my diploma.

• 46:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wow. She's ex-Stanford, right? Oh, she's best, they took her back.

• 47:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and she was in international relations as well.

• 47:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you say, I said that, I said they took her back?

• 47:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you play Go?

• 47:12Speaker 05

  I've never played Go. I'm worried that if I try another strategic game, I'll get addicted and then I won't get better at chess.

• 47:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, I mean, you've got a handful of devious strategies, well, I say that, more than a handful, I'm sure, for chess. I dare say you'll create something for a game like Go.

• 47:30Speaker 05

  I mean, most of my devious strategies come within the frame of time games. So if it's a one-minute game, I do come up with a lot of tricks because it's almost as if there's some luck involved. You can guess that your opponent might make a mistake just because they don't have time.

• 47:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, interesting. So, so, okay, so you should now publish a book called, you know, The Book of Botes Tricks, right?

• 47:55Speaker 05

  I could, and I think I would make a lot of people upset on the internet because people get really upset when you dirty flag them.

• 48:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay, what is a dirty flag?

• 48:05Speaker 05

  It means when you make your opponent run out of time in a position they're completely winning.

• 48:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 48:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if it's a timed event, who cares? You win.

• 48:15Speaker 05

  That's what I say. I said it's within the rules. I'm not doing anything wrong.

• 48:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you win four corners on them.

• 48:24Chuck Nice?

  They're like, you can't do that.

• 48:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so how much, how much, I have to ask, just because that is what we do here. Other than your chess geek underbelly, did you have any other geekiness where you were Star Wars or, you know, did you like physics or math? Anything like total card-carrying geek?

• 48:44Speaker 05

  I was always just really nerdy. I loved school so much because school was like a game. You know what your why is? Your why is do the best in school because it helps your life. So I would go and study by myself. I mean, I came from a really poor middle school. My family were immigrants, so we didn't have a lot of resources. So I spent all of my free time just studying for the classes that I was taking.

• 49:09Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 49:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so.

• 49:10Chuck Nice?

  You know what, there are kids right now watching this going, "God, I hate this woman."

• 49:19Gary O'Reilly?

  And they're watching, saying, "That's exactly right." "That's how you break the code. That's how you work." "But you've got a big gig now." "Have you just signed with, uh..."

• 49:31Chuck Nice?

  Envy.

• 49:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Envy Gaming?

• 49:32Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, we just signed with Envy.

• 49:34Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, congratulations.

• 49:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, you and your sister?

• 49:36Speaker 05

  Yes, me and my sister, absolutely.

• 49:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 49:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Can you explain, I mean, not the finances, but how all of that is going to pan out? Because this is esports, legit.

• 49:47Chuck Nice?

  Are you gonna be, now, are you gonna be doing esports chess? Or is it going to be competitive chess as watched on the internet?

• 49:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's what I think it should be, and then you answer. I'm thinking, they should let you do whatever the hell you want.

• 50:02Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 50:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just now has a more visible platform. Because they're only interested in you because of you doing what you wanted to do.

• 50:08Chuck Nice?

  Well, that would be, that would be smart.

• 50:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you lead the entire creative presence on the internet. So what's going down?

• 50:16Speaker 05

  That's actually exactly what they want to do. So they're already esports champions. They've won so many titles in different games. And now what they want to do is they want to help make the content even better. So we have a ton of tournaments, chess-related tournaments, that are really good and entertaining for the average person. And they're gonna help with the production, with getting it out to media, with helping our ideas come to life.

• 50:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because they've got the resources to do that.

• 50:41Chuck Nice?

  So are you going to, are you going to take this bullet chess? And feature that? Because, I'm gonna be honest, of everything that we talked about today, I mean, you're talking about a 1,500-year-old game that has resurged, that has seen a resurgence. I have never heard of this bullet chess.

• 51:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, that's only one of three or four fast chess words, right? What are the others? What are the others?

• 51:08Speaker 05

  Um, it's bullet and blitz. Blitz is usually five minutes or three minutes. And there's also rapid, which is usually 15 minutes.

• 51:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And regular chess is what? And regular chess is what?

• 51:20Speaker 05

  Regular chess is an hour and a half with 30 seconds per move. And you usually get 40 minutes or 30 minutes after the 40th move. So it could last like six hours.

• 51:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's not what we're talking about.

• 51:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not what they're buying from you.

• 51:35Speaker 05

  This is the TikTok age. We can't watch more than 12 scenes.

• 51:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we're not talking about that. But I'm just telling you right now, this whole idea of a game lasting two minutes is, I mean, I think you want to talk about something that's compelling to watch on screen. That's an amazing, uh, that's an amazing place to be.

• 51:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Think about it, Chuck. Think about the landscape for esports right now. Our drone racing league, guys, our friends at the drone racing league, those races last just over a minute, minute 10 seconds. So everything is snappy. Everything is like really pacey. So this is a good thing.

• 52:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Alexandra, we interviewed a leading drone racing champion. And that's a whole other esport thing because it's all electronically controlled. We only have a couple of minutes left. So Alexandra, have you thought of playing quantum chess? That's why I asked you how much physics geek is in you. Because quantum chess sounds like if you get bored with chess and you want to take it up a notch.

• 52:33Speaker 05

  I actually watched videos on quantum chess and I played 5D chess. The thing is, these variants are so hard to do well, but they're very, very interesting. And I did.

• 52:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is 5D chess?

• 52:45Speaker 05

  5D chess is basically you have five planes of chess. So you have to make sure you're checkmating the person in all of the different planes, if I explain that correctly.

• 52:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay. Well, that's two dimensions higher than 3D chess.

• 52:58Chuck Nice?

  How about the Star Wars? How about the Star Wars chess? Have you ever played that, where your monster kills another monster?

• 53:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I saw that. That was in that holographic thing.

• 53:09Speaker 05

  My dad actually told me if I didn't watch Star Wars as a kid, I wasn't his kid, so.

• 53:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, his highlight of the week is watching Mandalorian and sharing to my mom what baby Yoda did.

• 53:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wow. Okay. All right. So that's going on.

• 53:25Chuck Nice?

  Your dad's a good man.

• 53:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good man. That's a good man. So you played 5D? I have a crack team of researchers that said you played 5D chess after three beers.

• 53:34Speaker 05

  Well, yes, that was not the best preparation for the game.

• 53:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's 3B 5D, that's what that is.

• 53:47Speaker 05

  Exactly, exactly.

• 53:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So did The Queen's Gambit on Netflix, did that influence you at all? And did you, were you like me when I see a sci-fi movie and I say, "That couldn't happen, "That's not right, they didn't do that right." I think they had some good researchers on this, but how would you say overall they captured the reality of chess?

• 54:03Speaker 05

  This was the best depiction of chess on a screen ever.

• 54:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, it is, okay.

• 54:10Speaker 05

  That's the one-liner, and it's not just me who thinks this, it's everyone in the chess community from what I've heard so far. So this was just fantastic for that, but it was also super entertaining on top of being accurate. What more could you want?

• 54:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Yeah. Right, and the lead actress in that, she's got those creepy eyes, it's like, and I found out she was in horror movies before this one, and you look at her eyes, it's like, "Yeah, put that woman in a horror movie."

• 54:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neil. That's what she was, I didn't make this up. He's right, he's absolutely right. I didn't, she's got this stare, it's like you... Yeah, it is.

• 54:44Speaker 05

  Well, it's a great intensity for chess. I actually watched her interview, she did an interview with Judith Polgar, the greatest woman to ever play chess. She was ranked number seven, so she was the only to ever break top 10 in the world. And that was the only part of the show that I would say was inaccurate.

• 55:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Inaccurate.

• 55:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it was basically, I like that they didn't make it about being a female in chess, but...

• 55:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember thinking that exactly, once they got past the registration scene, which was very interesting. Yeah, it was just, here's someone who wants to win, right?

• 55:17Speaker 05

  Right, but for example, if you would have thought in that timeframe, if you're actually a female chess player, the first female to ever qualify for the candidates, which the winner of Competes for the World Championship, was denied being able to play because she was female. So if this was realistic, then, you know, Beth Arum would have actually faced a lot more sexism, but what I loved about it is, it shows you what it would be like to play chess if there was no sexism involved, and that is so inspiring.

• 55:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and so that becomes the standard of how we all, and plus, all the people who were sort of trash-talking her for being female became her close friends later on.

• 55:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 55:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And wanted to help her, and she got better than all of them. So this, if you haven't seen it, highly recommend it. Um, well Alexandra, it's been a delight to have you on, and we're gonna keep following your, your career, you and that of your sister, and, uh, good luck with your new, uh, your new sports contract.

• 56:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 56:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And maybe one day we'll find competitive chess in the Olympics.

• 56:14Speaker 05

  I mean, we have an Olympiad right now, so, that's already pretty cool, but thank you so much for having me, this was an absolute pleasure.

• 56:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, excellent, excellent guys, okay. And Chuck, always good to have you. Always a pleasure. And you're tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic. Thank you, sir. Gary, you're still tweeting at? My three left feet. You're, my three left feet, and I don't know what the hell that means. And Alexandra, just tell us where to find you on Twitch?

• 56:39Speaker 05

  Botez Live, B-O-T-E-Z-L-I-V-E.

• 56:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Botez Live, and do you tweet?

• 56:44Speaker 05

  Yes, Alexandra V Botez.

• 56:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and Instagram?

• 56:49Speaker 05

  Miss Botez. I wish I could've had all the same names, but they were taken.

• 56:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Alexandra, thanks for all those handles. Uh, we can find everybody here on the internet, and do so. You've been watching, possibly just listening, to StarTalk Sports Edition: Gambits and Game Theory. Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.