The Joe Rogan Experience - #2275 - Magnus Carlsen

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Magnus Carlsen is a chess grandmaster. He is a five-time World Chess Champion, five-time World Rapid Chess Champion, and a reigning World Blitz Chess Champion. www.magnuscarlsen.com This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Zero Day is now playing, only on Netflix. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. All right, we're up and rolling. Magnus Carlsen, ladies and gentlemen. You want some coffee? No, oh, this is water. Thanks, thanks. Tell Jeff to bring in the coffee.

I forgot to bring in the coffee. No, no, I'm good with water. I need coffee. I'm going to keep up with you, buddy And of course Tony Hedgegluf is here Who's a gigantic chess fan and just creamed his pants yesterday when I told him you were coming in and then immediately I said you got to come with me and so Tony's here as well It's an honor to meet you man. I'm I I'm always fascinated by people that are at the top of Something that's insanely difficult, like chess.

And I'm always wondering, like, how much time is involved? How often do you play? And when did you start? How old were you when you first started playing? I think my dad is an avid chess player. So I think he thought that I might have some talent. So he taught me pretty early at around five years old. But at that time I wasn't that interested. I was mostly into Legos and I was into maths and

like sports stats and I had my little flag book with all the countries in the world, their flags and their inhabitants and area and everything. And I sort of, that's what I did, generally just taking in all the stats that I could also with sports, reading the sports section every day. And I didn't find chess that fun. A couple of years later, my older sister is a year and a half older than me. She had, she did a lot of chess with my dad. I started sitting in on them a bit, and I started liking it. I really, really wanted to beat my sister as well at generally everything. And yeah, from there on, it really just became my thing. And it's been my main

hobby and eventually work as well since. Yeah, obviously. It's so funny though, a spark, a competitive spark with your sister is really what ignited you to get going with it. Yeah, the funny thing is like she's not competitive at all. So she hated the fact that I wanted to play, especially when I realized that I could beat her.

And she liked chess, but she stopped for a while and only started when I had become good enough that there wasn't a competition. So it turned out, my dad was right after all, I just needed that extra push. Yeah, what a call. I think you've got some talent. What a call. I think you've got some talent. What a call.

Grandmaster at 12, was it? 13, so actually the record is 12, but most kids these days, honestly, they start so early. I was at a tournament in India a few months ago, and there's this guy who's like a 1600 rated player and he's three years old and like I'm seeing the games like they are actually decent. And yeah now there's this one kid from Argentina like they call him the Messi of chess who's

going to become a grandmaster soon. I think he's only 10, so they're really, really playing early these days. But it's good to see though, because like information is so easily accessible these days, like it takes a lot shorter time to get good at something. Well it seems like now chess, because of social media, it's like everything else. It's kind of exploding, because there's so many fascinating videos out. And then, of course, there was the big controversy

with that young man who you believe is a big old cheater, that guy. I need to know the anal beads thing. Is that a legitimate theory? So it actually started in one of my friends streamer channel that like one random guy said Made made a comment about anal beads and he was and he was like yeah Yeah, maybe and then I think it it became

It started taking the rounds and read it and then Elon saw it became, it started taking the rounds in Reddit and then Elon saw it, tweeted about it and then obviously it blew up. I actually spoke to, I think it was Mark Andreessen who said like, that would be one way to do it. Yes. But I really, really, really don't believe that that has happened. I think it has no connection to reality, but it just became a thing of its own. So unfortunately this young man, we'll explain the Anal Beads thing, but this young man is a very talented

player but does have a history of some shenanigans, correct? And you've admitted that he did a little bit of cheating in order to move his rating higher so he could play better players. Yeah, I mean, he's not admitted to nearly the extent of his cheating. But if you sort of take what chess.com say then yeah, he cheated a bunch online in a certain period of time, partly in tournaments but mostly in casual games as he set himself to sort of get himself up the standings and play the best players in the world.

But he is a very good player. I think he has become a very good player, yeah. Interesting, okay. So what made you convinced that he was cheating in that particular game? And by what method do you think he could possibly have been doing this? Could you hear something? Was it like, brrr? Were you hearing vibrations? been doing this could you hear something was it like

Hearing vibrations She'd shift yeah, you're smelling something. There's a way of something in the air Yeah, I mean that would have been would have been the smoking gun I suppose I Think there was a combination of things though based on the chess level that I thought that he had and that I'd seen from his game, both playing against him, analyzing a little with him and looking at his other games. There were a lot of stories back then.

The thing is also there's a Netflix documentary coming in a few months that sort of, where I'm telling my side of the story. So I like, I cannot go too deep into everything. But what I can say was that there were a lot of factors that made me very, very suspicious. And I think ever since then, he has become better, but there's still something off, both then and now. That's so fascinating that as an elite chess player you'd be able to recognize that something is happening that's outside of his capabilities.

Again, I'm not ruling out the factor that chess players are becoming more and more paranoid because we do have chess engines that basically have perfect chess, right? Anybody with their phone can, as I think Elon tweeted to Gary once, like my iPhone can beat you at chess. Which is the truth. And this means that anybody having access to information, it's incredibly dangerous. And I think top-level chess has been a lot based on trust. And whenever you have outsiders whom there are these stories about,

everybody gets a bit jittery. There's like people who either like they burst onto the scene then they establish themselves and people know that they're legit and so on. It's not a problem. With him specifically, I don't know, it was... It's just, he doesn't seem to be playing, or didn't at that point seem to be playing with a particular style it seemed that he either played kind of eh or he just more or less played any position very well in certain games. Like he could just switch from tactical to positional play

very easily and it was yeah it didn't didn't smell good to me. It still doesn't, but, you know, to some extent, like he had his lawsuit. We've all kind of moved a little bit on. I think I don't trust him. A lot of other top players still don't trust him. He certainly doesn't trust me or chess.com or Hikari or whomever he felt wrong by. The problem is like once someone admits that they cheated a game, especially a game that has a lot of trust in it like chess, you're always going to think, like, is he cheating now?

Always. But the question is, like, what method? Like, what do people do? So if you're sitting there, you have no phone, your pockets are empty, like, what could you be doing that could possibly be aiding you? Well, first of all, like, an invisible airpiece that people use for exams and so on.

Like, so, but he would have to have a partner. Yeah, he would. That would not have been detected by the security system that they used at that tournament. They amped up the security after the whole thing happened. Did they check your ears? Yeah, they start checking our ears and then, you know, we had a live tournament in Paris last year where I played him, where there was proper security, where all of these things would be picked up and he didn't play to nearly the same level there.

So I think, well, I'm not an expert in all of that, but that's what I've heard from people, that that's the most obvious thing that someone could have done. And it wouldn't be really that hard to pull off, considering the kind of security we have at chess tournaments. And this tournament had a little bit of security. A lot of them, like open tournaments,

people are like wandering in and out of the playing hall. There are people in the playing hall, like spectators with their smartphones on and taking pictures or whatever, like going in and out. Like they could make signals. It's, yeah, it's, it's, it's hard. It's a big problem in chess for sure. Yeah, so the anal beads thing for people

who don't know what we're talking about, the theory was that he had vibrating anal beads that would somehow or another, through some sort of code, explain to him the moves. And I've thought about this for a lot longer than I care to admit like what? What kind of code are you getting from inside your butt that you like? Okay got it? Well, it would be like, you know c4 or whatever like it could tell you but how would it say it in your butt? Well, I mean it's more to show you Luckily I brought one. I have some in right now.

No, it would be like, it would buzz, right? It would buzz the letters and then the numbers that would indicate where you would move, and there would only be a piece or two. So like the first three vibrations would be letter C, and then, yeah, okay. Yeah, it's just a sort of technological version of ways people have cheated before. There was a scandal back in 2010 where the captain of the French team was helping one of his, one of the French players by cheating. He was basically just standing in certain spots around the table to tell him where to move. Oh wow.

That's crazy. Oh wow. Dirty people out there. It's wild. Well, it's such a competitive thing. Whenever you have competitive things, you always have people that just want to win at any cost, right? Yeah, it's also funny that one of his teammates from that tournament Worked with me for a long time and he told me at like this guy was like going out every night

It's not taking the term but seriously at all But it yeah, he had a good reason like he knew he was gonna he's party in here who's gonna win That's hilarious. So that is that the most egregious form of cheating you've ever seen or heard of No, I actually played an open tournament in Denmark about 20 years ago where there was a guy who was playing Grandmaster in the first round like this is not a very good player and he came drunk to the table and just literally pulled out his phone and opened a chess program but of course he was immediately um So that wasn't of course nearly as as nefarious, but yeah, that's just a moron. Yeah. Yeah. He was just yeah probably Some other some other issues there. There's just such a

Is such a fascinating game because it's impossible to play if you're dumb like there's games that you could just be a savant, like an idiot savant, but chess is like, it's the most impressive thing for people to be unbelievably good at. I don't know, I think you can be, I think you can be dumb and be like fairly good at chess. I think it, like some intelligence certainly helps, but after all, a lot of chess is about learning

patterns, right? And basically anybody can do that. So applying them at a higher level, learning how to evaluate and so on, that sort of is what sets the really the best players apart from merely good players. But I feel like anybody could become quite decent at the game. But I do love the fact that there are no coincidences, there are no outside factors, other than cheating of course but it's just yeah you're either outsmarting your opponent or you're getting outsmarted

so for a guy like you that excels above all what is the difference in your preparation is it just simply who you are as a person you think or is it something about the difference in your preparation without giving away any secrets obviously? I'm like known a little in the chess world for being like a little bit lazy. I think the the thing is that I Can I yeah, yeah, what do you mean lazy? How is that possible? No, the thing is I've never been the kind of person who wakes up in the morning, works six, seven hours and just like a normal job. Because a lot of them study computers and stuff.

Yeah, exactly. I think about the game all the time. I play online I I Look at I look at games. I may read some anonymously. I used to do that all the time What a bloodbath that must be but But I think I got humbled one time by this Russian grandmaster who

I think I got humbled one time by this Russian grandmaster who asked, somebody else asked me like if a certain account and a certain website was me. And I was like, yeah, I don't know, like I don't know who that is. And this guy went like, yes, that is you. And he listed up like five other accounts that I thought nobody knew about. Oh, wow. That were also me. How did we know? By the way you play?

Yeah, I think it's playing strength, playing style, because I tried to switch up my openings on different accounts to not make it obvious that it's me and I have like a style where I switch that up a lot so it makes it a bit easier. But I think you could just tell by By the playing style so that is crazy these these days. I just I play with my My own name. I like I'm I don't really care about that anymore. Yeah so Do most professional players study chess all day long at the highest level? I think, I think quite a few do.

I mean, I don't know, like people's day to day activities. So you guys don't talk about it? Not that much. The people that I've worked with, they certainly study chess a lot. But others, I'm not quite sure. The thing is that chess has always like still been a bit of a hobby for me that once it starts to feel like work then it's harder for me. I had a chess coach when I was little. I went to have sessions once a week, which I loved. And then he started giving me homework. And yeah, I told him quickly, I don't like homework.

But I would still spend a lot of time reading books, playing the things that I still do, but I would do them for fun. And that was the difference between me and the other kids is that they would go to chess practice, they would maybe even do their homework, but they weren't living and breathing sort of the game that in the way that I was. I think about it all the time. I'm thinking about the game while I'm sitting on this chair. I'm still analyzing a game that I played today like it never goes completely out of out of my mind

And I think a lot of very good chess players do that, but like casual chess players No, of course, so maybe the thing is discipline versus enthusiasm enthusiasm causes obsession and enjoyment which probably leads to better retention of information whereas just pure discipline for the sake of like I have to do the work in order to get better you're missing this enjoyment you're missing this enthusiasm for it that you have managed to although absorbing so much information and playing all the time you've managed to, although absorbing so much information and playing all the time, you've managed to keep it playful and fun.

I think so. I think this is definitely the way that works for me, maybe for others. I think for anybody, like if you want to be great at something, you have to be obsessed with it. Yes. And yeah, it has to come from, it has to come from within. Like nobody can, yeah, maybe in certain sports, you can get that good purely by very, very targeted practice and a lot of hours. But yeah, I think for me, it's just the way that it works.

For me, it's just the way that it works and I do process it even though I don't necessarily study, I don't deliberately practice all the time, I still process the information. So it's still, whatever the method is, it certainly works. But it's interesting because you've been able to excel above so many. And it makes me wonder, I always am fascinated by some, whether it's a Tiger Woods or whatever the athlete is or whatever the game they play, what separates the very best from everyone else? I know in martial arts, there's a series of factors

that have to do with genetics, training, coaches, sparring partners, and then ultimately discipline and drive. But with chess, it's all mental. Physical has nothing to do with it. So do you think it's a genetic thing? Do you think you have a unique mind for chess? You think it's this balance that you keep with enthusiasm and obsession? What do you think separates you from everyone else?

I think it has to be a variety of factors. I think there's no doubt that I'm incredibly naturally gifted at the game, otherwise I wouldn't have come this far. My dad is incredibly good with numbers. He started playing chess quite late but became decent. My mother was quite smart and my sisters are very intelligent too. So like it's clear that you know there are some good genes and I just you know I happen to find also an environment early on where I lived near Oslo which had probably the best chess environment there was in Norway at the very least where there were I had access to two coaches and I

had access to like a little training group of of other ambitious kids after that you know I think the most important thing that I've that I've done is that I haven't really listened to people who want me to do things like a certain way because that's the way things have always been done, especially with the Soviet chess school that was the dominant one for so many years. So I've always sort of gone my own way, tried to have as much fun, everything has to be about enjoyment. And yeah, I cannot tell you why, but I just like understand the game better than the others. Like I don't calculate necessarily as far as the other, but my intuition like for shortlines, constantly evaluating is just better. It's always just such an interesting thing to analyze, like high performers, and just to wonder what it is that separates high performers.

When you say your father started playing late, how old was he? I think he started playing about 14, 15, something like that. In chess, that's very, but he never, he never like took it seriously enough that he wanted to, like he pursued it, but. As a hobby. As a hobby, yeah.

Well, when you say take it seriously, you mean like you do, right? This is what makes me think about epigenetics. We still don't exactly know how much information is transferred between parents to children. It seems like there's a lot of talents, whether it's singing talent or sports talent, that you have to wonder, is that coming from genes or is that coming from the environment which this child grows up, which this person, or is it a combination of all those factors? I wonder if someone gets really, a very intelligent person gets very good at chess early on, I

wonder if some information or some proclivity for the game gets transferred. I think the reaction in the chess community, at least with certain people, was more along the lines of how could such a lousy player have such a good son at chess with my dad. And the fact is as well that there are practically no, there are many couples of, you know, like both mother and father are grandmasters in chess, but I don't think any of them have had sons or daughters that are grandmasters. So where is you see anywhere like in the NBA or the NHL or in football or wherever, like it happens all the time. So I cannot say exactly why that is, but it does suggest that, you know, it's not a given at least with genetics that your children are going to do the same thing.

I have an alternate theory for that. I wonder if you're a child and your parents are absolutely obsessed with the game if it's annoying and you're like child and your parents are absolutely obsessed with a game if it's annoying and And you're like fuck this game like I want to go play in the park and my parents don't even pay attention to me This is bullshit, right? You know like like there's a lot of children of alcoholics that will not drink They won't even try it because they've seen the effects of it I wonder that if it's like you see because chess is an obsessive game Like I remember when Howard Stern was

playing it, I would listen to him talk about it on the radio and about how he started hiring a coach and he was playing all the time and he's improving his rating and I was like, oh, this is eating up your mind. Like it's a game that gets in your bones. It really does because like the entry is not so easy, right? You don't just get it immediately, and you don't necessarily get enjoyment out of it immediately as you start to play. So you have to spend time on it. And then I think when you're trying to do something hard, then it becomes much more rewarding and it becomes easier for that to become an obsession when you start to get

that reward. So the good thing about that controversy with cheating was that I think it elevated the profile of chess. Because it became mainstream news. It was like a big issue. I think there was a positive aspect of it in terms of the publicity of the game. Do you agree with that? Oh yeah, for sure. I think for any field that's trying to achieve something with publicity, there's always going to be a little bit of a negative with what exactly we're connected with, right? Because everybody knows chess and cheating. But overall, I think it's been massively positive. Hopefully, the Netflix thing coming up in a year, even though like-

Can you explain to people what the Netflix is? It's a Netflix untold documentary. Basically, it's a series of sports documentaries and they're doing that. It's not something that I wanted to necessarily be part of, but I do recognize the fact that these things raise the profile of the game and you see now everywhere people, like chess is showing up in people's algorithms on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, everywhere. So it's just like much more in the zeitgeist

than it used to be. Yeah, it's certainly showing up on mine. It shows up on mine all the time, yours, right? Oh yeah. But you've always been a giant chess fan. Well, it's actually a newer thing, but when I got into it, it was just everything. Now it's what I do right before bed.

I fall asleep. Usually I fall asleep during actual games, online, on my phone. You're driving him crazy. Yeah. How could that happen? I'm exhausted. What do you do when you wake up?

Oh, that's, yeah, that's total opposite. You wake up and you're lost. Coffee, yeah. No, I wake up and I look at the board and it said you resigned Because I went over my time or whatever. I just ran out of time. How many times have you resigned? It happens in embarrassing a lot amount it's how I fall asleep now is playing chess But what you will appreciate is that when I fall asleep playing chess like when I fall asleep I'm still playing the game in my dream sometimes and sometimes the game will go all night And it'll be like this never-ending game and pieces will pop back up That I've already gone that that sounds amazing like I would like obviously that would never happen to me like I

You know I like to play a game of chess on my phone or my iPad whenever I have some time, especially if I know that I have 15 minutes or whatever. And then if something comes up, like my wife tells me I have to be somewhere, I have to do something, it's like, can you just finish the game? I'm like, no, I cannot resign the camera. What are you talking about? Yeah? Yeah, obviously that's different. Yeah. Yeah, you can't just resign. That's no you gotta ride that bitch out. Yeah This episode is brought to you by zero day a new Netflix limited series This conspiracy thriller is about a devastating cyber attack that downs America's infrastructure

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Yeah, especially if I'm playing somebody who is a little bit of a rival. It's like, yeah, no, that's especially if I'm playing somebody whom I'm Who is a little bit of a rival? No chance I mean because like every time like I lose games They it's it's a little bit of a story right and yeah chess world so I preferred To happen as a seldom as possible I played a little bit of chess when I was young, but I never really got into it But my real introduction where I got fascinated with chess was actually at a pool hall because people in the pool hall would play chess sometimes, but there was this one guy who went to jail and In jail he learned how to play chess with his head in his in his mind

And then there was a young kid who was a grandmaster who was like 16 17 years old somewhere around then. Really, really good chess player who kind of like lost his way and started hanging around in pool halls and gambling and being a weirdo. And I watched these two guys play chess with just words and I was like, what are you doing? Like what I was like I think I was 22 or 23 at the time And I was like what are you doing and they're explaining to me that they're playing chess Memorizing the board in their head and I'm like that's fucking crazy, and then I saw a video of you Blindfolded playing how many people how many how many people did you play was the most people you've ever played blindfolded?

I think I've played 12, but the world record is something like 50. That's crazy. 12. You've played 12 people blindfolded. Yeah. For me, that's, as long as people are, the people I'm playing are kind of decent at chess, that actually kind of makes, that makes it easier because it's easier to store the games when I Recognize the patterns and so on when people start making weird moves that I cannot really so you know

Oh, so this is another one actually this is a blindfold timed Simult like there are fewer games, but what's difficult about these is that the moves do not come to me in a sequence. So like the presenter will tell me on board 2, E takes D5, and then all of a sudden on board 1, E6, and then on board 2 again and so on. So that makes a bit... Oh, so you have to jump back and forth. So in the other games, there's a sequence where the player, even though if they know what move they're going to take, they must wait until their turn.

Exactly. That's kind of the normal way of playing a simul. I think the last time that I played a proper blindfold simul was at an event in Vienna back in I think 2015. And then I had some very nice but spicy Chinese food before the game I Sat down and like my stomach was acting up. I couldn't think so I I played for 10 minutes I realized that I cannot do this. I like I ran away for for 15 minutes and then I came back I finished the game.

But ever since that, it feels like I've done it. And now it just seems incredibly hard to do again. Do you prepare when you're doing something like this? When you're getting ready to do a blindfolded multi-game thing? Not really because it's like if my mind is on then it's really not that hard I feel. So no, the preparation that I do is right there. I see my opponents so like I sign a certain face to a certain seat like a certain number and and so on so that's just about what I what I do so you assign their face and you think of their face as they're playing yeah yeah face like

number one it's that position right yeah and so on. And are you... What are you seeing in your mind when you're envisioning the table? When you're looking at the board? Are you... Are you merely thinking of positions? Are you actually thinking of the pieces? Like, how are you breaking it down? No, I just see the chessboard in my head. Just see a completely 3D chessboard in your head. Yeah, so it's, and then when I'm playing a simul, I just really think about one at a time, and I kind of store the others away. But that's so crazy, like when your five, six moves in, and you're thinking of all these pieces moving around, and you've got it remembered,

you've completely memorized each position of 12 different boards. Yeah, so like the difficult, difficult part of it that where things sometimes go wrong is that, so generally I remember all the games that I've played, but I don't remember every move. I remember like the in broad strokes what happened. And this is what can happen in these blindfold games as well sometimes. I can remember everything that's going on, but maybe there's a pawn on the side

that I cannot remember if it moved one square or not. That's the thing that can be difficult. And I do, we used to have these blindfold, like professional tournaments actually, that used to be like both fun, but also totally exhausting. And then we would play on a computer. So we'd have like a blank, like a blank chessboard where we would just click from one square to another and then whenever your opponent moved

their move would pop up on on the screen and I've had and also the software will tell you if you're making an illegal move, so I've had people like lose track and then you see them just clicking phonetically And then you see them just clicking phonetically Trying to figure out what the position was like there was one guy whom I played like he thought his rook was on a certain File and if it was on that file, he would be able to save a draw So I think he tried every single rook move on that file Hoping that the rook was there but like obviously I knew that that it that it wasn't but yeah overall overall I feel like honestly like blindfold chess is is a bit of a party trick in the sense that

for the very top players it's not that hard but obviously for non like serious chess players it seems it seems incredibly hard. But I'm sure that, for instance, solving Rubik's Cube is really, really easy for those who know how to do it quickly. Right? But it still looks incredibly impressive for outsiders. Have you seen they used a computer with AI to do a Rubik's Cube in less than a second?

No, I didn't see that. Yeah. See if you find it Jamie. It's crazy. It just goes And just spins it I've never figured that shit out. That's crazy It's that there is a sequence of moves if you follow a sequence of moves you can actually get it to do it automatically Yeah, someone explained it to me once and they did it and I was like what I don't remember what it was because I don't Give a fuck. Yeah, it was just like eight eight and they did it and I was like what? I don't remember what it was because I don't give a fuck Yeah, it was just like eight eight times this way eight times that way times this time You just keep doing it and then eventually it'll be all flattened out at a certain point in time Yeah, but this computer does it like you do Rubik's Cube to no no no no I am I'm talking out of my ass like I know

I think the world record is only like three seconds or something like it's it's something absolutely Insane imagine the time you could have spent building a business raising a family Fucking world record Yeah, well we all have to spend our time. Let's watch this, watch this computer do it. Wow. How crazy is that? Ready, way, go.

Brrrr, whee. Yeah, less than a second. Wow. That is crazy. Show it again in real time. So give up kids. Give up. Give up the computer, figure it out. That's a dumb game.

But do you play other games as well? No, not that much. My parents sort of brainwashed me when I was young into thinking that computer games are no fun. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're a grown man now. You've realized that's a lie.

Yeah, yeah, I have, but it's still- I can see you call duty fucking people up with headphones on. The thing is like, the thing is I actually got a PlayStation recently, but my wife is playing GTA and all of these FPS games and I'm playing some, you know, chill FIFA or something. But the thing about that is that I didn't really spend that much time on those things when I was little, which I think was a good thing.

I was doing some sports and I was doing a lot of chess. Not so much school, but I kind of found time for everything else. I think it was an important part of my chess education as well that I think some of the kids today are missing, that I actually learned chess on a physical board. I was able to practice from a fairly young age playing online but I wasn't allowed to use the computer for more than a couple of hours a week right so I had to spend that really well playing chess otherwise I would just sit there with with my board, with my books, and you know try and figure things out. Yeah the thing about video games is the narrative was always

video games are a huge waste of time and if you do it you're not going to get anywhere in life. The problem with that is now people make a lot of money playing video games and they've also shown that there's some there's some benefits from video games and they've also shown that there's some benefits from video games that leak over into other things. For instance, they found out that surgeons who play video games regularly make, what is it like 25% less errors? It's 37%. 37% less errors.

I would feel like if there was a factor in medical school and they said well if you do not Do this you will make 37 percent more mistakes. They would force you To engage in that whatever it is. It's like whatever whatever particular discipline That was like if you want to be a surgeon you must do this I would say if you want to be a surgeon you should fucking play video games because these people are 37% less likely to screw up an operation. That's why I'm not a surgeon. But I'm saying is like video games are not necessarily a waste of time and they've also shown there's cognitive benefits that can be gotten from playing video games on a regular basis things that which does make sense

But it just it seems like a frivolous pursuit whereas chess is like a noble and very Respected pursuit. I'm glad you say that like we've we've official that that is what just has though that It it is very respected among the general population and it does have that different standings from another A lot of other games. It's like I'm not here to shit on video games for sure. I know like you do that There are studies that show that it can be helpful. I think with anything If you obsess over something the only thing you will become good at is that particular thing like I have with With with chess. I just think for me specifically

For me specifically it was probably a a good thing that that made me just sit and focus on on chess rather than Rather than do all sorts of other things Oh most certainly Rather than do all sorts of other things. Oh most certainly Because video games are very very addictive. I had to stop playing video games We used to have a whole local area network at our old studio We'd all play quake and it was a real problem like I was just I just wanted to end the podcast so I could go play quick and then we play for hours and Eventually got to point where I was like, okay, I gotta quit again.

Just cold turkey, never again, leave it alone. Cause they're just too fun and if you have other things you have obligations, like chess, like you're an actual professional chess player, call of duty or whatever you're playing, quake, it's gonna eat your time. I remember like when I first moved out, I was technically a chess professional, but I didn't have a lot of time to, I had a lot of time to kill when I was home.

So, and I got myself a PlayStation, played a ton of FIFA back then, and there was a GameStop near me that they made a lot of money on me just buying new controllers all the time because I would throw them into to the wall but I have that same personality that I become become obsessed with things and then I I am same I just have to quit cold turkey that's the only way that that works yeah I think I mean this is why I've avoided golf and like Tony's big on golf and so is Jamie. It's like I see what it is I'm sure I would

love it but I don't have that time the time during the day. Well I can tell you that I always thought well I wouldn't say that but I always thought that I would get into golf later in life and then I decided more or less a year ago that I was going to start. And now I am obsessed and it's all I want to do. So I can 100% relate. But my wife knows that I'm so happy when I come back from golf that it's like better if I get to do it quite often. Yeah.

Even if you fake being happy so you can keep doing it No, no, no like Yeah, they say that's ruining Canelo Alvarez You know there's been a lot of criticism in the boxing world and particularly in like you know some of his Promoters and things along those lines where they've criticized his his he's obsessive. He plays every day, even when he's in camp. Yeah, it's a tricky thing. If they do that with him, and I obviously see them do it with Trump,

but you have to golf to understand what golfing does to you. It appears from the outside that people are drinking and smoking pot and having a good old time out there and giggling around, farting around with their friends. But the touch grass meditative element, it truly is like he was saying, like I'm in such a crazy good mood after golf. Everybody at the comedy club can notice it.

Like, it's like an upper, it gives you a massive burst of energy. So like the, what am I thinking of? The, you know, just the bad reputation that golf has. Like I would want my president golfing a couple times a week, knowing the effects that it gives you. A much clearer mind, a big burst of energy. You would think it would be exhausting walking around the woods or grass for four hours, but for some reason, it's totally the opposite.

Whether it's the sun, the grass, the this, the that, the differential, going from a powerful thing to a mid-range thing to the delicate touch and accuracy of putting these repetitive things, for some reason, it's a mind clearer and Kind of an energy giver where video games and other things make you depressed I don't you know, it's almost impossible to be down or depressed after golfing. Mm-hmm Well, it's certainly a stimulating game right because you're it's hand-eye coordination

game, right? Because it's hand-eye coordination, calculation, you know, managing the the lay of the land, the way the rolls of the hills are, and all those factors. I think like this is something that I think people genuinely need in life, and I think it's one of the reasons why people respect chess so much is because they know how difficult it is, and they know that all this is going on and they see you two just staring at the board, looking at these pieces and calculating this insane number of possibilities that could emit from each individual move. It's like that stimulation, when someone gets good at a game, I think it's very valuable for you and I think that can apply to all sorts of things in life. So I agree with you, I would want the president

to play golf too. I'd want him to find something, whatever it is, find a thing that you can excel at other than just being the president. Yeah. Yeah, even if it was Call of Duty. Yeah. That would be wild.

I wouldn't want that. The president going, fuck yeah, ta ta ta ta ta. We had that, it was George W. Bush, and there was no video games Dark yeah, it is dark well I mean they literally use PlayStation fucking controllers when they were using drones. I don't know if they still do it now I think now they have more sophisticated setups But that one of the reasons why they were using it was because so many people were accustomed to those you get kids that have been playing you know Madden 10 hours a day for 15 fucking years and then you give them the same

controller and they're like oh yeah I could fucking drop some bombs on people like not a problem at all that's that's horrible it's dark yeah and all of a sudden like these kills that you have in a video game like if you think of it in the same way like it Well, it really haunts those people apparently there's a very specific type of PTSD that drone operators get That's it's because they see the people sometimes for days in advance So they're doing surveillance. They're waiting for the moment when they get the green light. They see these people they see them with their families They're watching them from above and then and then they drop the bombs on them And then they cease to exist and this is happening on completely the other side of the world

Yeah, there's press X on the control. Yeah But if you want to get good at that probably play video games It's a job for everybody out there Magnus I'm also trying to think like could you could you get surgeons to be drone operators? Probably doesn't work that way. No, it probably doesn't work that way. Well, I bet surgeons just, whatever hand-eye coordination that they have is probably so intricate that they could probably excel at anything.

They'd probably get good at video games. Like, a very good surgeon who's never played video games would probably get really good at video games really quickly because very good surgeon who's never played video games, probably get really good at video games really quickly because the the communication between your hands. There's also probably a tricky part of that stat where the younger people are the ones playing the video games that probably wouldn't slip up with their hands as easily as an older surgeon that has never played video games, right? Yes, right, right, right. Yeah, that's a good point. It's interesting that chess is uniquely

the game that's respected. Like probably, out of all, even if you played golf, people could think, oh, you're a fuck up. You say you played chess, like, oh, that must be an intelligent man. It's probably the most uniquely rewarded game in terms of the way people respect it in society. Yeah, we're very lucky that it has this unique position.

Whether that's deserved, I don't know, but there's just something about the fact that it's a very, very simple game, but it's still so infinitely difficult. The thing now, though, is that we're trying to actually make it a bit more difficult for a classical form of chess, because now computers are so strong, preparation has gone so far that the thought of like sitting down at the board and just thinking on your own from the very get-go, it's not there anymore. Anybody who's really good at chess, anybody can can learn the best openings like very quickly even if you go like 10-20 years ago you could play you could play for instance in the Chess Olympiad which is the which is the the biggest team like nation tournament in the world and you could play against the best player from from let's say Colombia and you know you would know that they have a certain skills

but they might not have the same set of openings, right? Now all of these, like there are kids everywhere and they just like they know their stuff so well. So now we're like testing out new formats, one that we call freestyle, which is basically there are 960 starting possible starting positions if you shuffle the pieces on the first rank. And basically like you start out, you just draw the position 10 minutes before the game, no preparation whatsoever. And you basically start with like in gaming a new map every single game. So that's sort of for the traditionalists that's not like the same game so like there are

some people who don't like it but for the professionals it's a chance like to use their skills because otherwise chess is moving like it's becoming faster. Chess used to be an art, science, everything. With the way things are now it's just very fast and it's all games, sports and so on. I feel like with thinking from the very first move you're bringing some of the other factors back as well. I think what's really unique about today is that kids today who are coming up are not just studying from books and from coaching,

but you can watch so many great games instantaneously anytime you want. This is what's so unique about today. And I think it applies to all sports And I think it applies to all sports. I think it applies to all games. I think it applies to stand-up comedy as well. I think it's one of the reasons why the younger guys are so good. It's like you get to see very high-level stuff, which gets into your mind,

that this is how to play at a very early age. And you can be obsessed and just absorb so much more. Yeah and you see there are such different approaches as well even with the kids. Like I had a training camp a few years ago with a kid called Alireza Firouza. He plays for France now but he's from Iran originally. I think he was about 14 then. And my chess coach has recommended that we bring him in, because he said that this is the most talented kid out there. So we have this camper. Typically, everybody has their laptop, and there's a chessboard in the middle, and you sort of look

at your own thing and then some things together on the board and you throw out ideas, mostly for openings, but also sometimes other little exercises and so on. And this kid, he would have his laptop where he would analyze a certain position and then he would play games like for money on that same site at the same time so that he could buy Cloud Engine times. Because the very best engines, they're stronger if they're in the Cloud than from your own laptop,

generally. So he would buy time for that by playing games, like one minute games on that server. He would play five minute games on another server. And he would analyze with us on the board. And he was still following everything. He had no problems whatsoever just being there. So like it's just, yeah, that's one way of doing it.

Like he basically became one of the best players in the world by just constantly playing chess all the time and mostly like really quick games. And then you have the current classical world champion from India, Gokesh. Like he doesn't play casual games at all. He just studies his ass off all the time. And he's also like, he's not good at rapid chess, he's not good at blitz, he's not good at other forms.

But he has made all his studies about classical chess. He didn't even own chess software on his computer before he was like 13. Wow. And he was a Grandmaster. Wow. At that time. But it's interesting to see that there are such different ways to develop even these days. I just think it's fascinating human beings capacity

to excel at things and that you really only know when someone pushes it a little bit further, like this guy playing all these games simultaneously. You know what I mean? It's like, if everybody's doing it one way, if everybody's only playing a few games a day and hanging out, you'll probably all stay at the same level. But if you've got one fucking psychopath in the group that's online and is playing and

is reading books, that guy's gonna pass everybody. And then everybody else realizes, like, oh, that's possible. I could have gotten as good as him. I better really bear down. Yeah, because you could also see that in these guys' playing style. The guy who has been playing constantly all the time from when he was little, he has fantastic instincts,

especially with little time. He just knows where the pieces go. And he's the only one of the kids who has that kind of feeling. The Indian guy, on the other hand, from the way he studies, he's like, during games, like he's meticulous, he calculates, like he sees every position as a problem he has to solve, more than, oh, what does my intuition tell me? Oh, I'll do this. It's like, for him it's more, well, this is possible, this is possible, let me try and see this

all the way through. So it's just, yeah, it's just very, very different. And they call it like the tortoise and the hare sometimes, and then in certain situations the tortoise and the hare sometimes and then in certain situations the tortoise will win and in other situations the hare will win. So there's different types of tournaments and there's some tournaments that have no time limit for moves? There's always a time limit.

What's the traditional time limit? What it used to be in chess was you'd have two hours for 40 moves, then you'd have an hour for the next 20 moves, and then half an hour for the rest of the game, so a maximum of seven hours. And that form is still being played. And then you have faster forms of chess, which is Blitz chess, which is usually five or three minutes, and rapid chess, which is somewhere from 10 to 30 minutes.

Did you ever, before you were known, did you ever go to Washington Square Park and play those hustlers? No, I actually went there in 2010 but I think some people recognized me back then as well. I think it's a bit of a myth though, how good they are like. They're like okay but they're not like. Your level. No, they're not Grandmaster level. There was one guy though, I don't remember what was, what's the name of, like it's up by Columbia University, there's a park up there where they're playing chess as well.

There I played against a guy who played like a very strange opening as well, like he put like just a couple of pawns, one square forward, and then he started developing his pieces very slowly. So at first I thought this guy has no idea what he's doing. But then it turned out like he actually had a system. So after like 10, 15 moves, I was in a lot of trouble. And then like the game became super concrete and tactical and I won. But it struck me that this guy had it just I think he just played in a park all his life so he had developed a certain system

that was actually like kind of effective if you don't know what you're doing against it. So that was that was kind of kind of interesting. He was fairly old so I'm sure he'd played chess his whole life without ever learning any kind of opening theory or something like that. He just had, yeah, he was doing his own thing. That's fascinating. Can you ever learn something from people that have an unorthodox approach like that? Oh yeah, for sure. It's happened several times. There was, like my dad used to play a ton of chess at home, like he used to have a home office and then certain times he'd appear to be focused on his work, but I knew like a certain look in his eye which told me that he was actually playing chess. So I would go over and watch. He was like, I don't know, go away. And then at some point where I was already

a lot better than him, he played a certain opening as white. And I told him, what is this opening? Where did you learn this? And he said, well, you taught me the very same opening, but with the black pieces. So I thought I was going to play it as white, like with one tempo more, right? Because you're moving first.

I was like, I'm one of the best players in the world, and I never thought of that. So I actually took up that line, and I used it with success against some of the best players in the world. Wow. So I don't know if that variation has a name. I've seen some other players play it afterwards as well, but I just call it the Henry Carlson variation.

That's really interesting. Your dad must be pretty proud of that. He is very proud. Yeah. It's funny though that my dad and my sisters, two of my sisters, they played a bit of competitive chess as well. I think at some point in time, they wanted to learn a couple of openings, so I taught them a couple of openings.

And I think all of them just never played anything else basically. So they certainly didn't have the same kind of passion to study but I'm glad I was able to push them into some decent lines at the very least. How do you decide what opening to choose? And do you ever decide an opening and go, fuck shouldn't done that one? Yeah, it's sometimes honestly Sometimes I I don't know what to do. So I just randomize because I think

At a certain time like you might think that Against this opponent you should play a little bit of more of an aggressive opening, but then maybe I feel good about my tournament standings, I don't want to mess that up, so it's easy to go for a safer approach when the optimal approach would be a bit more aggressive, and then if you randomize it, then you will occasionally go for the more aggressive approach. So that's what I sometimes do. It's just I randomize it, and then I just accept the outcome. And it makes me more unpredictable.

It makes me harder to prepare against as well. So that's what I sometimes do. It's not going to be out there, but it's going to be between two or three options that I think are roughly equivalent. They're just slightly stylistically different. So when you say randomized, like how many openings do you have that you pursue on a regular basis? Oh, it's, it's hard to, that's hard to say. Probably, probably with whites, I have like five or six options

that I can go to, but only like two or three that I feel really good about. And I think similarly with black. And then when you randomize, you just go in your head, and one of them stands out for you and you say, okay. No, I just like have an app on my phone. Oh really? That's a real one.

Roll the dice. Oh wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. And I think, honestly, a lot of people could benefit from that because you agonize over these minute decisions. Like you spend a lot of mental energy before a certain game,

agonizing over what opening you're going to play. And if you know that you're going to make a decent choice, but you leave all the agonizing to, like there's nothing because it's left to chance. It makes it a lot easier. That makes sense. Now you were saying mental energy. Do you, you were talking about the spicy Chinese food incident, but do you normally have a

method of like when you eat vitamins you take, is there certain things that you do to optimize your clarity? Yeah, like if I'm playing an early afternoon game, for instance, like starting at 1, I try to eat like one big meal before that, which is generally like a big omelette with some kind of salad. But you eat pretty clean before a big... Yeah, I usually do. Sometimes after games I will eat something, even some desserts and so on. But before the games I try and keep it fairly clean. I actually learned that when I was little, sometimes my parents... They were generally quite strict about sweets and so on, but sometimes I would eat sweets during tournament, then my blood sugar would drop like crazy and I would start making mistakes.

So that's something that I learned quite quickly that I shouldn't do. Do you ever mess around with vitamins or nootropics or anything like that things nutrients that help memory? No, I think I think it's a little bit about the way that I was was raised like I'd never take medicine unless I I kind of have to I don't really take supplements or or or or anything like that, so I probably should. It's not a bad idea. My wife is half American.

She's completely different. She takes five kinds of vitamins every single day. She's very meticulous about it. But yeah, I don't know. I've never. Just get her to make you up some little packets. Yeah, maybe. I think it'll probably have an impact on you.

I mean, it's extraordinary if you think about how good you are without it. Like any little thing that could give you a very slight edge, and I think that vitamins for sure give you a slight edge, particularly in nootropics. There's a bunch of different vitamins that have been shown through clinical trials to improve cognitive performance

you know theanine there's a Acetylcholine a bunch of different things that enhance memory that are essentially just nutrients. What's the new thing that people are doing like? Keratin or something like that ketamine no no no not ketamine No, no, it's not ketamine Creatine creatine creatine creatine yes Creatine is was a bodybuilding supplement that was almost akin to steroids in the 1990s people you think it was cheating and then they realize Well, it's just a component of food, but one of the things that creatine does that's very extraordinary is it aids in performance when you're sleep deprived.

So if you ever find yourself sleep deprived and you have to do something where you have to use your mind, creatine is a fantastic supplement for that. Well, I mean, I woke up today and I think my watch said it was that my sleep was like I sleep was, like I slept for five hours, but I got 15 minutes of REM sleep. Like it was really, really bad. So that's what I could have,

I could have used that, because I was playing chess earlier today. So I could have used that, but. Yeah, creatine is something that everybody should take. Men, women, children, everybody should take creatine. It's a really good supplement super safe and Does it aids in strength and muscle recovery and stuff like that? But it also has a lot of cognitive benefits just generally just like a very good safe supplement to take

What does it say here Jane cognitive function study suggests that creatine supplementation may improve cognitive function including memory attention and reasoning It may increase brain energy levels by boosting andosine triphosphate production, ATP, which is essential for brain function. Creatine has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that may protect brain cells from damage caused by oxidative stress and neurotoxins may help produce. So it does a lot of different things. If you Google it, there's a ton of different benefits. I take it in gummy form.

I take creatine gummies every day. They're delicious, it's easy. I just pop a bunch of them. Like five milligrams? I don't know. Do we have any of those tri-creates here? I don't think so. Yeah, I think I have them out there.

But they're great. It's easy. I put a bag in my car, take them all the time. I've noticed a difference. I just think with a guy like you, well, your brain is everything. But you're kicking ass, so why listen to me? No, no, no, but-

Eat cheeseburgers and fuck around and see what happens. No, but it is the thing, though. On certain days, I sort of just accept that my brain is not gonna work as good. Work as good. And it's frustrating, especially if you got a big game and you know that you're starting down to zero because your brain is not working the way it's supposed to be

Yeah I feel that with podcasting all the time and the real danger is if I do that if my brain's not on full tilt And I'm talking to a scientist Like we have to talk about quantum physics like this. I have to like have good questions You have to be able to follow what you're saying because it's so esoteric. It's weird that the brain just doesn't always work exactly how you want it to.

And honestly, chess is one of the worst things to do sleep deprived because I think creativity usually is enhanced when you're not feeling well, when you're sleep deprived, but that's generally not what you need in chess. You need to minimize mistakes. You need precision. And all of my intuition, all of that, is just so much worse when I'm not feeling on top of my game.

Do you have a specific thing you do when you're feeling not on top of your game? Do you have a specific thing you do when you're feeling not on top of your game? Do you double check things in your mind? Do you have a process you follow? I just try to play a simpler game, where it's not as complicated, really. And when you're feeling good, then you go for it? No, honestly, when I feel good, I

don't think about these things. It's just a state of flow where I know how much risk to take. Like, I just, yeah. So what is the mindset? Like, if you're in a world championship game, and it's down to these, what is the state of mind like when you're in the middle of it? Honestly, when I'm at my best, I'm just pure laser focused and I'm just calm and not thinking about anything other than...

Just in the moment. Just in the moment, yeah. The work is already done, you already know the game, so the moment yeah just in the work has already done you already know the game so now it's just reacting and moving and calculating yeah i mean i i had um i had a game and 20 last classical world championship i played in 2021 where um the first five games were drawn honestly like i could have probably been down at that point as well. Sixth game was a super, super long game, almost eight hours. And I think for the last hour and a half, two hours, I was pretty short on time.

But I remember I was just so focused and so calm. And afterwards, I was just like, yeah, I could have kept going forever. I was just there. And, I could have kept going forever. I was just there. And it was exactly what I needed. I ended up grinding out a win. And in those classical games, once you get a lead, that is so big because it's so hard to actually win

games at that level with that level of preparation. So that was really big. But yeah, that's, I've only, I've only had, I feel like a few days where I feel like I'm just like completely in the moment. Usually it's a bit more messy than that. But like when it happens, it's just, yeah, the best feeling. That's amazing. It's only been a few days where you've been fully in the moment. I'm rarely happy after I play. I'm happier now like I'm honestly like my standards for myself like are a little

bit lower that have gone down a little bit the older I've gotten because I sort of accept that I don't have, my brain is not as fast as it used to be. So I'm going to have occasional letdowns. So my top level is like, I think, as good as it's ever been or at least very, very close to but like the average level is It's just it's just too hard when your brain is not that fast anymore But but but yeah, generally I am I'm always thinking well, yeah, I could have always done something better like You always miss some things but I always feel like yeah, are avoidable mistakes that I'm still making. So this as you've gotten older this lowering

expectations is that a recognition of the fact that being hard on yourself over minute details doesn't benefit you and that you've just had a more healthy approach? Yeah I think so. It just makes everything a bit easier. Also, honestly, the randomizing opening choices has made things easier as well. Everything just to sort of lower the pressure a bit. Have you ever consulted a mental coach or someone who

works with people on mindsets to try to capture what is happening when you are in that complete total flow state of laser focussness and try to recreate that because there's a bunch of different mind coaches that will tell you for a bunch of different pursuits that What you have to do is when you get to that state whatever that state is recognize that you're there and then try to get a map of the territory and try to Will yourself back into that thing?

will yourself back into that thing. But then there's another school of thought that says no it just has to happen organically and that you just have you just need to be obsessed and focused and take care of yourself and meditate and just when it comes it's going to come but it just you have to accept that it's a gift and it's just not always going to be there. Yeah I'm definitely in the latter camp. I've talked to people who have suggested mental coaches like plenty of times, both in the past and more recently as well. I've just like always been worried

that somebody's gonna mess something up in my head. Paralysis by analysis. Yeah, that's really what it is for me. So I feel at some point I'm just more or less content with the way things are. That most days that I'm playing, I'm going to be fairly good. On some days, I'm going to be at my very best. Other days, I'm going to be very far from my best.

And it's sort of the way it is. I'm definitely much more open to doing things to prevent me from having those very worst days. Because those are the ones that really hurt you. Especially now that we're playing a lot of faster tournaments, where there are knockouts where basically like if you have one bad day you're out and it doesn't matter. Like back in the days with classical tournaments, like you could have a really bad day but then you can always bounce back but nowadays it's not it's not that easy Do you ever try to map out what are the factors that lead you to hit that state? That's that flow state do you ever try to think about your day? Like what did I do? What did I eat?

How did I sleep did I avoid toxic people around me? Did I stay offline? Like what did I do that allowed me to get to that spot? Yeah, I mean doing everything sort of right before the game definitely helps like getting getting good sleep like reading a book instead of being on some sort of device before I go to sleep. Then just focusing as little as possible on chess before the game definitely definitely. Really, little as possible? Yeah. Because you want it to be fresh in your mind?

You want it to be something exciting? Yeah, I just want to have two or three ideas of what I'm going to play and not. I just don't want to use mental energy that I could have used on the game before. So I think one of my better tournaments that I played, I used to play every year at this seaside resort in the Netherlands and it's in the middle of winter so it's not very short like it's just rainy and windy and there's basically nothing there except this big tournaments that's

been there for for 80 years and it's for three weeks every every January so for me there's not there's not a lot to do so what I would do like every day is, I'd wake up, I'd go for a walk, and then I would watch like 30 to 45 minutes of NBA highlights from the day before, look at chess for 15 minutes, whatever my coach has sent me of preparation that we discussed the day before. Eat and then go play. And that worked really, really well.

It's just keeping it as simple as possible, honestly. So get inspired a little bit, a little bit of energy from watching NBA highlights, right? Yeah. Just a tiny amount of information from the coach, just like get your brain locked in, but not too much energy. Don't focus too much on it. Yeah, a lot of people like they do,

they will spend three, four hours preparing on a game on that very day. And it can be beneficial like if your opponent goes into specifically the lines that you prepared and so on. But overall, I think having a fresh mind is so important. And I'm also like, even if I haven't had the perfect preparation like I'm really good at just blocking everything out, forgetting everything that's happened, and just focusing there and then.

But it's still not as good, of course. That's just being in a good state of mind. Do you ever get to the point where you feel burnout, or you wanna just take days off, a week off, and not think about chess, not touch a chessboard? Or is it just constantly playing in the background no matter what you do? But I really love it. Why take time off?

No, no, no. I'm fine with taking breaks from tournaments and so on. But having like at least days, several days in a row without like looking at a chess game or I mean I don't have to play every day but not having a yeah not looking at anything like not reading some chess stuff or like yeah I mean it's my favorite hobby so I don't yeah I don't see why I would want to do that. That's probably why you're one of the best of all time, if not the best. That's a beautiful approach, right? If you can find a thing that you love so much that even though you do it all the time and

you've done it since you were a child, you're still obsessing and loving it. Yeah, I do have those moments where I just take a breath and think about how lucky that I am. And there are just moments where I just sort of, I wouldn't say rediscover my love for the game, but where I just think like, I'm obsessed with this game and I'm completely fine with that. Well, that's a beautiful way to live your life. If people can find a thing like that in their life, that really is the key to an enjoyable life. If the thing that you do all the time you're obsessed with, and we talk about it all the

time at our comedy club, we're all in the green room, we're like, we are so lucky that this is actually what we do for a job. And pretty much everybody who's good at it is obsessed with it and they think about it all the time it's kind of the only way but I'd need time off sometimes because I think that's different because it's always different ideas and different things you're working on sometimes you need time just to refresh your perspective but with a game like chess I guess you don't really need time off. No, I think, again, it's different for different people, but I don't know.

I don't feel like it takes away energy. It just gives me joy and energy when I do that. Like, I will just, on a certain day, I will just log in to chess.com and observe random people play and that is something I can do and be very happy about it. Yeah, it's just the way I am. Well, you're just very fortunate. You found a thing that you really locked into.

That perspective is very important for people to recognize. Like the perspective of gratitude, of appreciation that you're so fortunate to have found something. People go their whole lives and never find a thing that they're truly, absolutely passionate about. And for a guy like you, I mean, it's a shiny example for people, I think. I think that's one of the things that I enjoy the most about super high performers is that they provide an insane amount of inspiration to other people.

When someone sees you play chess at the highest level or sees Michael Jordan play basketball or whatever it is, you get this feeling of what human beings can do and it elevates your own expectations of yourself and of people around you. Yeah I think I've thought about it many times like what am I actually like doing with my life that's that's useful to other people and it always comes comes back to to that every time that I hear that people people are inspired by what I do, maybe it helped them through

like a difficult time to watch my games and to get into Rediscover or find the love for the game. That's really nice. And again, in the process, I'm just doing what I love. And that's really what people wanna see from me, is just competing and doing well at chess. So that's also what I'm giving as often as possible. Well, that's what people want out of life,

is something that they love, that they do, that they're very good at, and they get recognized for it. And when a person like you does it and does it publicly and it's inspiring, it's a great gift for other people. I mean, it truly is. Who has been, are there particular players that you really enjoy watching play and particular styles that you enjoy?

I think my favorite probably player of all time is sort of the young Kasparov before he became world champion. The thing is like, what I find fascinating about that is that he played with a style that was so unique and so dynamic That

That I know that I could never replicate it. It's just not the way that I I play So that's something I admire a lot Usually I'm whatever I'm into like be it soccer or golf or basketball or whatever like I admire like What people do not necessarily like it's about the people themselves So that's the way it has been for me in in in chess as well That I try to like learn from from people's games and what they what they do and when I talk to them and I've been very fortunate about that, being able to study with Gary back in the day,

and Anand, who was the world champion before me. Because it's only then, when you study, you talk to them. You understand how good they really are and how much they they understand. For instance with Ana, I had a training session in 2008 where we had both played a tournament where I'd done reasonably well and he had sort of towards the end he had mailed it in but he was preparing for the classical world championship championship. So I think I had two days off and he was living outside Madrid. And so I went to Madrid for a couple of days because the other tournament was in the north of Spain.

Then I went to his house and as soon as that training camp started, something just switched with him and he was just so focused. We played a bunch of training games and from being this guy who seemed completely disinterested in this other tournament, all of a sudden he was crushing me. He had a massive plus score in our games and it felt like everything we analyzed. He just had a much deeper understanding of the game, it seemed that he was faster tactically and everything, and it made me appreciate how good,

how good he actually was, yeah. When you are playing someone like that, you're getting your ass kicked, does this inspire you and enact change in your game or does it not change your game? You just do the same game but more focused? Yeah, I think it's more of the latter. It was just a reality check for me because I thought at that point that I was ranked I think third in the world. I had very briefly been ranked number one already

at that point, like, for a week. And I thought, before that, I thought I was maybe one of the best two, three players in the world. And it made me realize that I wasn't and that maybe I was able to have better results than my actual level because of youth, energy, and optimism. Right?

And that made me just, yeah, it just made me realize that I have a lot to learn and that I should be patient and not expect everything to sort of come that fast. Because at that point, I'd had a year of more or less constant rise. I was just winning tournaments every time I would lose a game. I just believed that I could strive back immediately. And I realize now that I was delusional. I thought I was a lot better than what I was. And that was probably why I was having such good results.

Because you're so confident. Because I was so confident. But having a little bit of a reality check, I think, helped me later to actually understand the game a bit better. But I've still taken away that I think in chess, the optimal state when you're playing a game is somewhere between optimistic and delusionally optimistic.

Because if you're realistic realistic you're just never going to to be opportunistic enough to to sort of exploit your opponent's mistakes. It's I think another factor is the way you analyze things that you were able to say I was a little delusional and Even though I'm doing very well I got a trust in this process of growth and development and that it is a very very long process Yeah, exactly and Like very soon after that I started working with with Garret Kasparov as well and that made me realize that I know even less and

What kind of guy like Garret Kasparov tell you that makes you know that you know even less? Back then it was really like my Style has become a bit more dynamic over time, but back then I Like I really really lacked understanding of more dynamic positions in chess. You can have more static or more dynamic pawn structures, like if there are a lot of possible

pawn breaks for both sides and both kings are under attack, then it's sort of more dynamic and tactical, or it could be more about gaining some minutes, positional advantages. And that's sort of what I was excelling at, the latter. And working with him, it just improved sort of the more dynamic part of my game a lot and that helped me very much short term and also it's helped me a lot because it improved my understanding of the game. My strength, my main strength is still more in the more static structures but that work made me so much more versatile and I still definitely profit from that. What is a coach for you today? What benefit is a coach today? A couple of things.

The main benefit that I have from my chess coach is opening work. That's like the low hanging fruit. That's really what you can get the most out of from game to game. A couple of other things, like my coach is also an old friend of mine he's Danish so we can communicate in the same language and he's also just as obsessed with golf as as I am so that every time like we have like a chess training camp there's always also a lot of a lot of golf being played. So yeah, those are a few things. But chess-wise, it's mainly about the opening work.

And so it's essentially, he's obviously very good at chess as well, but it's essentially bouncing things off of each other and going over positions. Yeah, and then he is very good at using chess engines to get slightly different results than maybe others do. Do you occasionally, or do you at all, analyze other people's games and break them down together? Not really. When it comes to analyzing other games, it's more useful for me to look at what the engine is saying. Because the engines are just smarter than people.

Yeah, they are. And I'm good enough that I can interpret what the engine is saying to understand why a certain thing happens. So it's still interesting to analyze together as humans, but we always want to double check what we're saying with the engines. Isn't it fascinating that that's a gigantic factor now, ever since Deep Blue, right?

Yeah, so the thing about I know, I don't know if you've talked to Gary, but he has this whole thing with, with Deep Blue. I'm not sure if Deep Blue was actually better than, than Gary, but it, yeah, it started, it started the downfall of us, of us humans when it, when it comes to chess. And it's now been a long time where we just accepted that our computer overlords are just a lot better and there are serious benefits for improving players for kids like the engines help people improve a lot faster so that's a great thing.

Additionally people watching chess games, like one problem is that you cannot easily tell. It's not like one guy is being punched and the other guy is punching. Like it takes some skill to see what's going on. But with the help of the engines, like you could actually have a real time score all the time, because it tells you who is who is winning and who is not to be it becomes a lot easier to to follow as well. Because honestly, like most people when they can

consume sports, they're mostly interested about who is going to win and who is going to lose. So now at least you can you can have that factor in chess. You can see that. And it's very interesting for me to read what people were writing about computer chess, not 30, but like 50, 60 years ago and so on, when there was an actual discussion whether computers could ever beat a grandmaster at chess and now it's

very much settled of course. Well they have that same discussion about Go, right? Well Go is much more complicated than chess. I don't know what has happened since AlphaGo, if the best masters are still a little bit better or where the state is at. I think Go is better than everybody, the computer is, but I think a new factor is that the computer has devised creative moves that were never used before before that have now been implemented. They're part of like general strategy Which I think they thought was very shocking

So see if you're finding is like kind of bluffing moves or I do not know because I don't understand go I was just reading an article about the extraordinary leaps that AI has taken and that one of the more shocking things was Was that it was able to beat the best players at go Which they didn't they thought it was like a long time coming Yeah, I mean I I did watch I watched the movie alpha go and I mean how long ago was that that's like five No, maybe like six seven years ago in AI time. That's like stone ages Which is so crazy and I think like a year or two later, there was AlphaZero in chess. So chess engines, they were always like kind of built

by humans and instructed by humans. Then AlphaZero came along, which is a neural network that just learned chess on its own. And it became more or less as good or maybe slightly slightly worse than the best traditional chess engines. What's interesting is that the neural networks played chess a lot more like humans. They were much less concerned about material factors. They were more about positional play and long-term thinking and so on,

because it was not based on brute force in the way that traditional engines would. And you would see funny, like they have computer tournaments as well with the best engine in the world. And you would you will still see like Lila zero that's sort of the clone of Alpha Zero because they discontinued the Alpha Zero project after a while. It will make like elementary tactical blunders almost. That's crazy. entry tactical blunders almost. That's crazy.

Because it, I don't know, it doesn't have, it just thinks about chess differently than traditional engines, but it will also like do things that just confounds the very best chess engines in the world still. So that's very interesting to see and like all the best coaches and players now when you work with chess computers like you always have both like a neural net and a traditional chess engine running as well as some others who are now like hybrid who are who have a little bit of both. It's just fascinating that it would make blunders. Yeah, well, I don't know if it's something about

it's search, I really don't know. But it would also make some fascinating decisions, like when you promote to pawn, like you usually promote a pawn like you usually promote to a Queen because that's almost always the best unless you sometimes want to promote a Knight specifically to to give a check or sometimes you know to avoid stalemate but that's that's less frequent but then what Lila and AlphaZero would sometimes do is that they would promote to a different piece.

Because if it's a piece that's anyway going to be captured, just to give your opponent like a slight chance of making a mistake by making another move, which is something like a human would never ever do but it's like it's really funny a little bit of a parallel to what's going on in go I think with this gamesmanship that is going on with with the new neural nets so that's crazy that it would just trick you yeah it would would try and trick it like it probably wouldn't trick a human because because a human would be like, that's weird, okay, I'll just take it, whatever. But another engine would be, oh, okay.

Well, I have another alternative that seems equivalent, more or less. Maybe I'll go for that. It's very strange. So what are the best programs that people play on? There are a few there's one that was Originally developed by new eagin called stockfish that's still considered The best so I think like I think the best now is stockfish like stock fridge Hybrid that's part neural and part traditional engine.

And then I think- So do you have to be connected online to use that? Yeah, I mean, most people use either, most people use remote engines, like some kind of cloud service to have as much computing power as possible. So the kind of computing power that's on your phone, like, can you beat your phone at the highest level? No, no chance.'s so crazy cuz deep blue wasn't it like as big as a room yeah deep blue was a wasn't like a stack of computers right but I'm sure it's still less powerful than your the computer on your

phone yeah and I was just shocking no, I have no chance against my phone. That's so crazy. There was actually one time where I played corporate simul, and there was this guy who said, I built a chess program in my university class, can I let that play against you again? Instead of myself, I was like, yeah, sure, why not? And I actually beat it fairly handily

because I played some kind of anti-computer chess where I just close up the position as much as possible and just let it have as few possibilities as possible to out calculate me so that it's a purely strategical game. That doesn't work against very good engines but it can work against weaker ones. But no, humans like we don't have any... There was a Grandmaster who played a match recently against Leela which is like the best neural network engine now.

They were playing classical chess and he started with a night more. And they played a 10 game match and he won five and a half to four and a half. Wow. Which is crazy. Like it's a night more. Like that's, it should not be possible for any, like if God was playing chess, that shouldn't be, you shouldn't be able to beat a Grandmaster in any game like that, so the Grandmaster was still able to win.

But yeah, for me, I rarely play against engines at all because they just make me feel so stupid and useless. I think about it more as a tool than anything else. And often, when you play against them, the moves that they make, they are not necessarily relevant as to what a human would do in that situation. Because we just think differently. Do you ever try to think like the computer? Yeah, well, specifically the neural nets have improved our understanding of the game immensely. immensely and the AVOZERO paper came out very late 2018 and Actually, I played our world championship match late 2018 as well against an American Fabiano Corona That was the best match. I think that I've ever played we played

12 draws actually and then I won in a tiebreak But like the games were super high quality and and he was he was very evenly matched and then I won in a tie break. But the games were of super high quality, and he was very evenly matched. And then he was actually using Leela, the AlphaZero clone, which we didn't have access to. We didn't even know that was the thing. But the thing is, after AlphaZero came out in late 2018, there was a period, half a year maybe, early 2019, where you could very clearly see which players have been using

these neural networks or knew how to use them and which players didn't. And my coach, he got into it very quickly and we got an advantage of basically everybody but that guy who had been using it during the match. And it just made us understand the game a lot better. There were, as I said, like a couple of things about long-term king safety. Pushing pawns on the side of the board was maybe the biggest takeaway that often you would push pawns and not as an attacking tool, which used to be the way that you would push a pawn like trying to break open your king. What you would do is that you would have a little hook on the side of the board that you could use 20 or 30 moves later to make the opponent's king

less safe then. This is something that humans didn't really do and I still see some people allowing these pawn advances and I wonder if they didn't didn't learn their lesson from from 2019 But it was very clear to see At a certain time before everybody sort of caught up with the new information And that's also when I had maybe my best stretch of chess ever Because I just understood these new things Better better than others because I just understood these new things better, better

than others. It's almost counterintuitive that you wouldn't want to play the computer because the computer makes you look stupid. Because the idea in my mind would be like, well, you should play the best thing that you could possibly play. And if that's a computer, great. If that's another human being, then play the human being.

But I would imagine that playing something that makes you feel stupid would at the very least teach you something about the game. Yeah, it does. But at the same time, you know that these are usually things that humans cannot replicate. And to be fair, the kids these days, a lot of them play a more concrete brand of chess that is more similar to engines than we have seen in the past. Because they've had so much exposure to it. Yeah.

They're less dogmatic, more concrete in their thinking, but then I know that there are usually other things that are lacking, so I could sort of steer the game there as well. So, I don't know, I haven't found it particularly useful, but maybe I'm just, yeah, I don't wanna... Is it partly because you just don't wanna lose? Yeah, of course. And it's also because, as you said, chess is a very lonely game.

When you lose, it's because you're worse than your opponent. And imagine losing to somebody who you know is completely stupid, which traditional chess computers aren't. They're stupid. They just have much more computing power than you do. So losing over and over again to something that's so stupid, that's not a good feeling.

Could you help explain to me what are the factors? What is it doing that you can't do in terms of calculating positions and moves and strategies? Well first of all is infinitely faster so there will there will be certain possibilities that I will rule out because of my intuition but it is able to calculate in a very short time that it's possible. It will never make blunders like simple tactical mistakes. The neural networks sometimes do, but traditional engines don't. And like I can keep, like most of the moves that I make will be the same as they do. But they just like, they don't make any real blunders at all.

Like they may make slight positional mistakes, but honestly most of the time that I think an engine makes a compositional mistake is because I don't understand it well enough. So it's not really a mistake. And it might look like one, but it's long term? Yeah, it's just that my understanding is not good enough. That is useful. Then that does help me learn.

What is the difference between the approach that the neural network takes versus a traditional engine? Why is one of them approaching the game differently? Because one of them is constantly calculating based on sort of what what humans have taught them is like the value of like the value, what is the value of a pawn, what's the value of a the value what is the value of pawn what's the value of a knight and what is the value of you know far advanced pawn and all of this

like it calculates based on that. A neural network just you teach you just show it the rules of chess and you know play against yourself a lot of times and get better and it just has a it has a different approach like what it does is just based on the game games that it's played against itself right so it's just it will have completely different different ideas at times. Like imagine like in 2019, because of these neural networks, like every opening that had been played

for hundreds of years had to be rechecked by coaches. Because there could be a difference in evaluation because there is this new neural network that just thinks in a completely different way. Wow. So these neural networks could go back and look at a classic game from like 1963 and say, well, you know what? I would have fucked that dude up because I would have done this, that, and the other thing. Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of it was based on it just emphasizes different factors than traditional engines do.

And that ultimately just leads to different results, really. It was extremely fascinating for a while. But now it's just led to really more parity in the world of chess, because everybody just has access to that information. It used to be a thing back in the time that some people would really be ahead of others not only in 2019 but also other times like they had more computing power, better cloud engines, like they had started to use different engines and so on. But now you could prepare for a world championship, honestly, and in two weeks, and you'd be completely

with just a regular laptop that's connected to a cloud. It's very different and so much easier today. That is so fascinating that it's changed the game so much. Could you get a computer, whether it is a traditional engine or whether it's a neural network, could you get one to imitate a specific style? Like, could you get one to say, I want you to play like Garry Kasparov when he was younger?

So we actually did this back in the day. We actually started an app called Play Magnus where you could play against myself at different ages. And the style, it was based on, the guy who built Stockfish built this engine as well. So it was based like an old version of that, but it would have my openings and try to emulate my style at certain ages. Obviously, it wasn't perfect, but it was a start. I think it's still difficult to build a very good clone because essentially, at least with traditional engines, it's not possible.

Maybe with AI, you can get there, but I still think we fundamentally think differently about chess, but yeah, maybe. Well, the interesting thing would be to take you, because there's so many games that can be observed and put into the calculations, and then I would really be fascinated to watch you play you. I mean, what would that be like?

You play you when you were 20. No, so the thing about it is that you would have, also what you would have to calibrate is that It would make Occasional like tactical blunders, right? Right and which would engines. Yeah Right, they wouldn't want to and so what we would do what would happen in the play minus app is that it would make Occasional blunders, but those would be like a little bit too outrageous Because it's like really hard to emulate the kinds of mistakes a human would make by

By by the engines hmm So I think that would probably still be like the most difficult part like the main Issue in order to to make such a thing if the play Magnus thing was dialed in like a hundred percent What would be do you think now would be the scariest age to play you? Yeah, yeah, are you better now than ever before No, I I think I think I think my my peak level is is close to the best because chest level or proficiency at anything is about making use of the knowledge and making it into skill, right?

And I definitely have more knowledge now than I've ever had. But I think probably the best combination I had of knowledge and and energy and that translated the best into scale was probably in 2019. I was more like a young Kasparov than I'd ever been before. Very dynamic. What is the difference between you and 2019, you today? A few things. First, I couldn't play the same openings as I played then because they have been worked out to a point where they're basically, yeah, they're just too analyzed and unplayable. So that's one thing.

Apart from that, I think I could do, like, my average level would probably be a little bit lower because I'm a little bit older and my brain is not quite as fast. But I could do I think most of those things. What I don't think I could do is like the other sort of best version of me which was 2013-2014 when I was in the best shape of my life and I was just a relentless beast at the board, grinding down my opponents in very long end games, never giving them any respite whatsoever. Like purely skill wise that was far from the best version, sorry knowledge wise that was far from the best version of me. But I was just, yeah, it was just like the average level of my game definitely was higher than because I barely, I rarely played really bad games at all because I was always sort of on, I had so much willpower and energy.

Well you're saying you were in the best shape of your life, do you mean physically or do you mean just physically? Yeah, yeah, physically. Yeah, well these are two factors you're talking about like physical like fitness and nutrition and exercise Like that these things you don't really take too much into consideration But they obviously played a huge factor in the most successful period of your life Yeah, it did but then cuz you're only 34. It's not that's that that's true, but I

It's not like you're an old man. No, no, no. That's true. But I just feel it with these kids. Their brains are just so much faster than mine. I've felt it for years as well. That no, I'm not old, but I can never be at that level of pure computing power. But- Is that generally accepted with chess

that there's a certain age where it just drops off? Like who has won the world championships at like the oldest age? No, well, back in the days when you couldn't get information that quickly, it took people a lot longer to develop. And then it was considered that the best age was like late 30s or early 40s. Obviously the

drop-off is not nearly as steep as it would be in physical sports like that goes without saying but I think the peak years are pretty much the same for most people, like mid-20s to early 30s. to my peak if I focused fully on all the things that I can control. Physical fitness, nutrition, vitamins. All of those things, yeah. You don't do that? I don't understand. If you're so obsessed with chess, that seems to have a primary factor.

Yeah, that's a good thing. I feel like I generally do the right things when I'm at tournaments, but then in between, I don't know, I want to enjoy life as well. I'm generally obsessed with chess, but I'm not always obsessed with competing. Like certain times, there will be certain days, certain tournaments where I know that I'm not going to be at my best and I can sort of, I can feel it and then I'm not able to take it as seriously. I feel like I cannot, I'm not a Michael Jordan type who has to go all out in every game. I used to, but now I don't think I have that in me because my main motivation for playing chess is that I love to play

Um, I don't have concrete goals of what I wanted what I wanted to do Um things I want to achieve is that sort of relaxed attitude that you have is that drive other people crazy? That you're still able to beat them That would drive me fucking nuts If I was just fully obsessed and studying moves all day just taking my vitamins drinking only purified water And it's kind of a thing that you're known for right like a lot of other people are known to work all the time And you've kind of always at least a reputation Played the player right isn't that what you're? Yeah, and also the thing is like I was known for for like being fit and all

of these things but now I think there are a lot of other players who take these things a lot more seriously than I do. I think the reason why I got that reputation is that I really like doing a lot of sports from when I was little and I've always kind of done them for fun. So I think that was why you don't see a lot of chess players playing soccer or tennis or whatever. Not that I'm great at any of those things, but I was usually better than a lot of other a lot of other chess players I yeah I guess I do have I don't know I don't know what a reputation I have for the others like I don't really care yeah it's not much you could do about your reputation I'm just saying like in a in a game or a sport where it's so computer

Involved and analyzed and there's geniuses wearing suits and glasses and things you're kind of known as a laid-back Intimidating force with a legacy Do you have other other special things you do kind of like more like a poker player or anything to intimidate your opponents ever? Like I've seen you like show up late to big tournaments where they're like waiting for you and stuff. That's really cool. That's a me a multi-musashi move No samurai. Yeah. Yeah honestly like that's Me being late is Down to a couple of things first. I hate waiting

But also I just I'm terrible at planning. So that's why I keep showing up late. You are terrible at planning. You know how funny that is? That's literally what you do. Better than anybody. Like, my planning is always based on everything going perfectly. And like, making a time plan based on that. And if something goes a little bit wrong, then I'm going to be late.

And something usually goes wrong or often enough that it becomes the thing. As you talked about in chess, there's this video that a lot of people have talked about where I come. There's a blitz game, right? That's three minutes, where I come there's a blitz game right and I that's three minutes and I come like two and a half minutes late because I've been I've been skiing in the mountains and there was a there was an accident on the roads that that delayed me like half an hour like most people would have planned for that had a little bit of

buffer but I was like eh that was probably going to be fine. Suddenly there's an accident and I'm going to be late and I'm just running into the playing hall in my sweatpants and not even realizing that the game has started. I just thought I was so late that I should be and I saw that everybody was there and then randomly turned out half a minute left when when I got to the got to the board so that's kind of more how did you play the game did you did you like have a different approach because you knew you only had 30 seconds no the thing is like there you have a two second increment for move so I'm not going to lose on time automatically I just had to play a little bit faster but it was it was okay

but as I said like I don't do those things to intimidate my opponents I'm not going to lose on time automatically. I just had to play a little bit faster. But it was okay. But as I said, I don't do those things to intimidate my opponents. I'm just bad at playing. That would be such a mindfuck. Guy shows up two and a half minutes late and still stomps you. Yeah, I don't think many people know

about the skiing delay or anything. I think it was thought of as like a, I'm a badass, I'm coming in late. No, honestly that was, the world championships in chess, like they're being held in the weirdest places. So this was in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which is this like really during winter at least, pretty polluted, not very nice city.

And then just half an hour out of the city, you have basically the Alps, you have beautiful mountains that goes up to to three and a half thousand meters, where it's just fantastic. And you can you can like, get yeah, from from the city, it's like an hour and you're at the top of the mountain and having a beautiful ski vacation. And I just like was so miserable being down in the city that I thought for this day, like if I'm going to perform at all today, like I need some fresh air.

I need to get out of here. And so that's why I took the risk and it was yeah, definitely not Not to to play to play mind games because I I Bobby Fisher said about chess that I don't believe in psychology I believe in good moves like I believe in like a little bit of both, but I'm more in his school that I just I think I'm going to make better moves and I don't need I think I'm going to make better moves that I don't need That all those other things did you ever have an opponent that was doing something Psychological that kind of messed you up or threw you off like back when I was a wrestler in high school some guys wouldn't shower And it would be disgusting

Is there anything like that in chess yeah that specific thing has has happened for sure. I'm not sure if it's been If it's been a conscious choice by my opponents. I'm sure I've been guilty of it as well. That's true. I don't know really. I think the only thing is not to bring that up again, but I think when I think that my opponent might be cheating, that's the only time that I'm really off. It's just weird that you can cheat and do it for so long

and yet still play in the best tournaments. You would think that like in the UFC, like say if you get caught with steroids, you get a long ban, and if you get caught again, you get a long ban and you can't and if you get caught again You get an even longer ban and I think it's like a three strike thing if you cut third time you're out of the sport forever No, it's The the thing is that we think harsher penalties would discourage. Oh, yeah for sure Especially for online because there's been this thinking that

Cheating over the board and over online is very different. But the thing is, once people are cheating online, then having these meteoric rises over the board as well, it makes you think, that's a bit strange. So yeah, there definitely needs to be harsher penalties. One thing that chess.com used to do is that they would let people sort of confess privately and then get their account back, but now they're moving to more naming and shaming sort of thing with them and banning people for longer, which I think is, yeah, it's a lot better. But a lot of it is about incentives as well, right? Like if you think that you can get away with cheating,

and there are monetary incentives to cheat, people are going to cheat. It's as simple as that. Yeah. Well, I guess that's just with every pursuit. There's always going to be people that look for shortcuts. There's always going to be someone that looks to skirt around the difficult path. No, that's true. But the thing is, there's so little you need in chess. And the engines are so powerful. If I started cheating, you would never know. The thing is I would get a move here and there. That's all I need.

Or maybe, imagine I'm playing a tournament. I just find a system where I get somebody to signal me when there's a critical moment. If there's a moment where I get somebody to signal me when there's a critical moment. Like if a certain move, if there's a moment where a certain move is much better than the others. That's really all I would need to go from being the best to being like practically unbeatable, right? So it really is a scary situation. There have been these cases of, so many cases of people who are acting suspiciously and who are making suspicious, having suspicious results based on the data.

But they're very, like if you're not cheating in a dumb way, there rarely is going to be a smoking gun. Without that smoking gun, it's really hard to catch people. How would you eliminate that? Other than security, would you have it so there's no audience members at all and have them only in a room together? So that has been done in World Championships for instance. We're basically playing in a glass box where you cannot see the audience and you cannot hear anything.

So it's a glass proof box. You kind of don't want that. You want there to be, like, I really like having chess more like an esports setting where people can be as loud as they want. It's just, you have players sit down like boxers with headsets and... But don't headsets open up the possibility of cheating? But then, like, the headsets would be all provided by the organizers Right with some sort and you'd have to have like both

We have had that in tournament like tournaments that you have to have white noise and some kind of sound from like Spotify or Whatever if you want to listen to classical music or whatever you can do that Yeah, yeah, so you can listen to Wu-Tang Clan while you play chess? Yeah, I mean, honestly, playing Blitz chess helps. Listening to music usually helps me, because doing tasks that are more intuition-based then that helps with the flow. With longer games, you probably don't want that disturbance,

but I've definitely played some of my best BlizzChest, just, yeah, listening to music, and sitting there bopping. Yeah, I think- Some wild Norwegian music? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rammstein or something? That's actually German, but

That's a good stuff. That's a good song No, I think my best my just my best chest has probably been a Norwegian rap Norwegian rap really What's a good Norwegian rap band that you could have a rap group that you could recommend? There's a guy called Mr. Pimp lotionotion and Oral B. Mr. Pimp Lotion. And Oral B. They're kind of, it's like a little bit ironic,

but they're like doing like American, like West Coast rap in Norwegian. Oh, that sounds badass. This is a bit of a difference. But I actually did a song with them. Mr. Pimp Lotion. I actually did a song with mr. Pimplotion. I did a song with those guys What a great name mr. Pimplotion

Yeah, my verse is like right at the end I like it too because I don't have any idea what the words are saying. Yours is at the end? No, basically there's... That's not like a real play. Yeah, the thing about... what happened was that they did a show and they have this thing called Spinoor, which is like a moisturizer mostly used for animals. But like this Mr. Pimple Ocean, he's obsessed with that one and somebody apparently stole that from backstage at their concert and so they they didn't know who it was but they eventually found out and they made a

song about it and so they had a bunch of people like sending their verses incredible the difference between America and Norway what the rappers are Bunch of people like send in their verses Incredible the difference between America and Norway what the rappers are rapping about Gang wars and shootings. Yeah, always somebody's like who stole my look Yeah There were actually was a There actually was a popular song about 20 years ago that referenced specifically that in Norwegian that there was nothing to rap about because nothing bad ever happens. That's what he's saying in English.

Don't make me pull out the gun. It's best if someone speak out. Who stole this bean off? Who stole my lotion? Yeah. Basically there's a bunch of verses like people accusing each other and then I'd randomly come in at the very end and solve the mystery. Was it you?

It wasn't me. I was not at that particular show but Yeah, I think I I think like the best online chess that I've ever played was probably listening listening to their to their music Do you mix it up? Do you ever listen to like Led Zeppelin or no? I I listened to a lot of a lot lot of older stuff as well. So yeah, I have no idea what's on the chart these days in general. I find out through Tony. I find out through the young guys at the club.

I'm like, what are you listening to? What is this? And I'll do Shazam on it and put it on my Spotify playlist. That sometimes happens to me as well, maybe like once a year or something. Otherwise, I remember I asked my sister probably like 10 years ago, I saw his playlist and I was like, do you have anything from before 2000?

And she was like, yeah, of course. Britney Spears, baby, one more time, 1999. So I'm kind of the opposite of that. Well, that's awesome. Well, listen, man, it's been awesome having you in here. I really appreciate you doing this. And tell everybody when the Netflix show is out. I don't know, but it's in in an within a few months for sure.

Jamie do you know? Didn't say when it's coming out. Well we will put it up on the Instagram when it's out and it's been awesome talking to you man I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for coming in. Alright Tony. Goodbye everybody.