In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the world's best chess player, Magnus Carlson, joins us to talk about his life in chess, his rise to the top of the game, and why he thinks someone is cheating.
00:00:25.000And, of course, Tony Hagecliffe is here, who's a gigantic chess fan and just creamed his pants yesterday when I told him you were coming in.
00:00:32.000And then immediately I said, you've got to come with me.
00:04:41.000But I really, really, really don't believe that that has happened.
00:04:46.000Like, I think it has no connection to reality, but it just became a thing of its own.
00:04:53.000So, 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.
00:05:26.000What 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 just set himself to get himself up the standings and play the best players in the world.
00:06:13.000There's a whiff of something in the air.
00:06:15.000Yeah, I mean, that would have been the smoking gun, I suppose.
00:06:22.000I think there was a combination of things, though, based on the chess level that I... 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.
00:06:42.000There were a lot of stories back then.
00:06:48.000The thing is also there's a Netflix documentary coming in a few months where I'm telling my side of the story.
00:07:00.000So I cannot go too deep into everything.
00:07:05.000But what I can say was that there were a lot of factors that made me very, very suspicious.
00:07:16.000And I think ever since then, he has become better.
00:07:31.000That'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.
00:07:42.000Again, 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?
00:07:56.000Anybody with their phone can, as I think Elon tweeted to Gary once, like, my iPhone can beat you at chess, which is the truth.
00:08:07.000And this means that anybody having access to information, it's incredibly dangerous.
00:08:15.000And I think top-level chess has been a lot based on trust.
00:08:20.000And whenever you have outsiders, Whom there are these stories about, everybody gets a bit jittery.
00:08:30.000There'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.
00:09:55.000The problem is 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, is he cheating now?
00:10:46.000And then, you know, we had a live tournament in Paris last year when I played him, where there was proper security, where all of these things would be picked up.
00:10:56.000And he didn't play to nearly the same level there.
00:11:51.000It's a big problem in chess, for sure.
00:11:53.000Yeah, so the anal beads thing, for people who don't know what we're talking about, 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?
00:12:10.000What kind of code are you getting from inside your butt that you like?
00:13:14.000Whenever you have competitive things, you always have people that just want to win at any cost, right?
00:13:19.000Yeah, it's also funny that one of his teammates from that tournament worked with me for a long time, and he told me, like, this guy was like...
00:13:28.000Going out every night, not taking the tournament seriously at all.
00:13:43.000No, 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 was 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...
00:14:02.000So that wasn't, of course, nearly as nefarious, but yeah.
00:14:53.000So applying them at a higher level, learning how to evaluate and so on, that sort of is what sets really the best players apart from merely good players.
00:15:06.000But I feel like anybody could become...
00:18:05.000The thing is that chess is always like...
00:18:08.000It's still been a bit of a hobby for me that once it starts to feel like work, then it's harder for me.
00:18:18.000I had a chess coach when I was little.
00:18:21.000I went to have sessions once a week, which I loved.
00:18:25.000And then he started giving me homework.
00:18:29.000I told him quickly, I don't like homework.
00:18:37.000I would still spend a lot of time reading books, playing online, the things that I still do, but I would do them for fun.
00:18:44.000And 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...
00:19:00.000I'm thinking about the game while I'm sitting on this chair.
00:19:04.000I'm still analyzing a game that I played today.
00:19:07.000It never goes completely out of my mind.
00:19:11.000And I think a lot of very good chess players do that, but casual chess players, no, of course.
00:19:16.000So maybe the thing is discipline versus enthusiasm.
00:19:22.000Enthusiasm causes obsession and enjoyment, which probably leads to better retention of information.
00:19:30.000Whereas just pure discipline for the sake of, like, I have to do the work in order to get better, you're missing this enjoyment.
00:19:37.000You'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 keep it playful and fun.
00:20:04.000Maybe in certain sports, you can get that good purely by very, very targeted practice and a lot of hours.
00:20:20.000For me, it's just the way that it works.
00:20:26.000Even though I don't necessarily study, I don't deliberately practice all the time, I still process the information.
00:20:37.000Whatever the method is, it certainly works.
00:20:41.000But it's interesting because you've been able to excel above so many.
00:20:46.000It makes me wonder like what I always am fascinated by some whether it's a Tiger Woods or whether whatever the the athlete is or whatever the game they play What separates the very best from everyone else like I know in martial arts?
00:21:01.000There'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.
00:22:07.000And I just, you know, I happened to find also an environment early on where I lived near Oslo, which had probably the best Chester environment there was in Norway, at the very least, where I had access to coaches and I had access to a little training group of other ambitious kids.
00:22:32.000After that, you know, I think the most important thing 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.
00:22:55.000So I've always sort of gone my own way, tried to have as much...
00:23:00.000Fun, everything has to be about enjoyment.
00:23:03.000And yeah, I cannot tell you why, but I just understand the game better than the others.
00:23:13.000I don't calculate necessarily as far as the other, but my intuition for short lines, constantly evaluating is just better.
00:23:28.000It's always just such an interesting thing to analyze, like, high performers, you know, and just to wonder, like, what it is that separates high performers.
00:23:37.000When you say your father started playing late, how old was he?
00:23:41.000Oh, I think he started playing about 14, 15, something like that.
00:24:03.000This is what makes me think about epigenetics.
00:24:05.000We still don't exactly know how much information is transferred between parents to children.
00:24:11.000And it seems like there's a lot of talents, whether it's like singing talent or sports talent, that you have to wonder, like, is that coming from genes?
00:24:20.000Or is that coming from the environment which this child grows up, which this person?
00:24:24.000Or is it a combination of all those factors?
00:24:26.000I wonder if someone gets really, a very intelligent person gets very good at chess early on.
00:24:31.000I wonder if some information or some proclivity for the game gets transferred.
00:24:37.000I 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.
00:24:52.000And 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.
00:25:15.000So where is you see anywhere like in the NBA or the NHL or in football or wherever, like it happens all the time.
00:25:25.000So 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.
00:26:03.000I remember when Howard Stern was playing it.
00:26:05.000I 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.
00:26:13.000I was like, oh, this is eating up your mind.
00:26:24.000Like, you don't, like, just get it immediately, and you don't necessarily get enjoyment out of it immediately as you start to play.
00:26:30.000So 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's easier for that to become an obsession when you start to get that reward.
00:27:05.000I 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?
00:27:22.000Because everybody knows chess and cheating.
00:27:27.000But overall, I think it's been massively positive.
00:27:33.000Hopefully, the Netflix thing coming up in a year, even though...
00:27:39.000Can you explain to people what the Netflix thing is?
00:27:40.000Yeah, it's a Netflix untold documentary.
00:28:55.000It happens in embarrassing a lot amount.
00:28:58.000It's how I fall asleep now is playing chess.
00:29:01.000But 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 dreams sometimes.
00:29:09.000And sometimes the game will go all night and it'll be like this never-ending game and pieces will pop back up that have already gone.
00:30:19.000not the White House not the CIA if the public finds out how deep this really is I don't think we survive Robert De Niro is absolutely legendary in his first TV series and you don't really know if he's the good guy or the bad guy till the end zero
00:30:43.000Zero Day has an incredible supporting cast including Angela Bissette, Jesse Plemons, Lizzie Kaplan and Connie Britton.
00:30:51.000Zero Day is now playing only on Netflix.
00:30:55.000Yeah, that would be like psychologically torturous, right?
00:31:00.000Yeah, especially if I'm playing somebody whom I'm...
00:31:05.000Who is a little bit of a rival, but it's like, yeah, no.
00:33:06.000The presenter will tell me on board Oh, so you have to jump back and forth.
00:33:22.000So 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.
00:35:25.000And then when I'm playing a simul, I just...
00:35:29.000Really think about one at a time, and I kind of store the others away.
00:35:34.000But 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.
00:35:41.000You've completely memorized each position of 12 different boards.
00:35:46.000Yeah, so, like, the difficult part of it, where things sometimes go wrong, is that...
00:35:56.000So generally, I remember all the games that I've played, but I don't remember every move.
00:36:02.000I remember in broad strokes what happened.
00:36:06.000And this is what can happen in these blindfold games as well sometimes.
00:36:09.000I 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.
00:36:18.000That's the thing that can be difficult.
00:36:24.000We used to have these blindfold professional tournaments, actually.
00:36:29.000That used to be both fun, but also totally exhausting.
00:36:34.000And then we would play on a computer, so we'd have 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 the screen.
00:36:52.000And also the software will tell you if you're making an illegal move.
00:36:56.000So I've had people like lose track and then you see them just clicking phonetically.
00:37:03.000Trying to figure out what the position was.
00:37:06.000Like, 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.
00:37:14.000So I think he tried every single rook move on that file, hoping that the rook was there.
00:37:20.000But, like, obviously I knew that it wasn't.
00:39:56.000I can see you Call of Duty fucking people up with headphones on.
00:40:01.000The 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 chill FIFA or something.
00:40:14.000But 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.
00:40:26.000I was doing some sports and I was doing a lot of chess.
00:40:31.000Not so much school, but I kind of found time for everything else.
00:40:39.000I 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.
00:40:48.000I 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?
00:40:58.000So I had to spend that really well playing chess.
00:41:01.000Otherwise, I would just sit there with my board, with my books, and, you know, try and figure things out.
00:41:10.000The thing about video games is the narrative was always video games are a huge waste of time.
00:41:15.000And if you do it, you're not going to get anywhere in life.
00:41:18.000The problem with that is now people make a lot of money playing video games.
00:41:23.000And they've also shown that there's some benefits from video games that leak over into other things.
00:41:29.000Like, for instance, they found out that surgeons...
00:41:32.000Who play video games regularly make was like 25% less errors 37% 37% less errors That's a bit like 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% more mistakes.
00:41:50.000They would force you To engage in that, whatever it is.
00:41:55.000It's like whatever particular discipline that was.
00:41:57.000Like, if you want to be a surgeon, you must do this.
00:41:59.000I would say, if you want to be a surgeon, you should fucking play video games.
00:42:02.000Because these people are 37% less likely to screw up an operation.
00:43:40.000And it eventually got to a point where I was like, okay, I gotta quit again.
00:43:45.000Just cold turkey, never again, leave it alone.
00:43:49.000Because 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 going to eat your time.
00:44:01.000I remember when I first moved out, I was technically a chess professional, but I didn't have a lot of time to...
00:44:12.000I had a lot of time to kill when I was home.
00:44:15.000And I got myself a PlayStation, played a ton of FIFA back then.
00:44:18.000And 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 the wall.
00:44:30.000But I have that same personality that I become obsessed with things.
00:44:41.000Yeah, I think, I mean, this is why I've avoided golf, and like, Tony's big on golf, and so is Jamie.
00:44:46.000It'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.
00:44:54.000Well, 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...
00:45:06.000I was going to start and now I am obsessed and it's all I want to do.
00:45:30.000They say that's ruining Canelo Alvarez.
00:45:33.000There's been a lot of criticism in the boxing world, and particularly in some of his promoters and things along those lines, where they've criticized his...
00:45:48.000If they do that with him, and I obviously see them do it with Trump, but...
00:45:54.000You have to golf to understand what golfing does to you.
00:45:59.000It 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.
00:46:07.000But the touch grass meditative element, it truly is.
00:46:12.000Like he was saying, I'm in such a crazy good mood after golf.
00:46:16.000Everybody at the comedy club can notice it.
00:46:30.000Just the bad reputation that golf has.
00:46:32.000I would want my president golfing a couple times a week, knowing the effects that it gives you.
00:46:38.000A much clearer mind, a big burst of energy.
00:46:41.000You would think it would be exhausting walking around the woods or grass for four hours, but for some reason it's totally the opposite.
00:46:50.000Whether 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.
00:47:03.000For some reason, it's a mind clearer and kind of an energy giver.
00:47:09.000Whereas video games and other things make you depressed.
00:47:11.000It's almost impossible to be down or depressed after golfing.
00:47:18.000Well, it's certainly a stimulating game, right?
00:47:21.000Because it's hand-eye coordination, calculation, managing the lay of the land, the way the rolls of the hills are.
00:47:31.000And all those factors, I think like this is something that I think people genuinely need in life.
00:47:37.000And 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 that 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.
00:48:38.000I think now they have more sophisticated setups.
00:48:41.000One of the reasons why they were using them was because so many people were accustomed to those.
00:48:45.000You get kids that have been playing 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.
00:49:50.000At best, surgeons, just whatever hand-eye coordination that they have is probably so intricate that they could probably excel at anything.
00:49:59.000They'd probably get good at video games.
00:50:00.000Like, a very good surgeon who's never played video games would probably get really good at video games really quickly because the communication between your hands and your mind.
00:50:10.000Tricky 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?
00:50:25.000It's interesting that chess is uniquely the game that's respected.
00:50:32.000Even if you play golf, people can think, oh, you're a fuck-up.
00:50:36.000You say you play chess, like, oh, that must be an intelligent man.
00:50:39.000It's probably the most uniquely rewarded game in terms of the way the people respect it in society.
00:50:49.000Yeah, we're very lucky that it has this unique position.
00:50:53.000Whether that's deserved, I don't know.
00:50:57.000But there's just something about the fact that it's a very, very simple game.
00:51:02.000But it's still so infinitely difficult.
00:51:07.000The 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.
00:51:25.000The thought of sitting down at the board and just thinking on your own from the very get-go, it's not there anymore.
00:51:33.000Anybody who's really good at chess, anybody can learn the best openings very quickly.
00:51:43.000Even if you go 10, 20 years ago, you could play...
00:51:50.000You could play, for instance, in the Chess Olympiad, which is the biggest team nation tournament in the world.
00:51:57.000And you could play against the best player from, let's say, Colombia.
00:52:03.000And, you know, you would know that they have certain skills, but they might not have the same set of openings, right?
00:52:10.000Now, all of these, like, there are kids everywhere.
00:52:15.000And they just, like, they know their stuff so well.
00:52:19.000So now we're, like, testing out new formats.
00:52:22.000One that we call freestyle, which is basically, there are 960 starting, possible starting positions if you shuffle the pieces on the first rank.
00:52:31.000And basically, like, you start out, you just draw the position 10 minutes before the game, no preparation whatsoever.
00:52:39.000And you basically start with, like, in gaming, a new map every single game.
00:52:45.000So that's sort of for the traditionalists.
00:53:08.000Chess used to be an art, science, everything.
00:53:12.000With the way things are now, it's just very fast and it's all games, sports and so on.
00:53:19.000I feel like with thinking from the very first move, you're bringing some of the other factors back as well.
00:53:27.000I 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.
00:53:37.000So many great games, instantaneously, anytime you want.
00:54:34.000Typically, everybody has their laptop and there's a chessboard in the middle where 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.
00:54:53.000And this kid, he would have his laptop where he would analyze a certain position and then he would...
00:55:03.000Play games, like, for money on that same site at the same time so that he could buy cloud engine times because, like, the very best engines, they're stronger, like, if they're in the cloud than from your own laptop, generally.
00:55:24.000So he would buy time for that by playing games, like, one-minute games on that server.
00:56:48.000Human 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.
00:57:02.000If 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.
00:57:10.000But if you've got one fucking psychopath in the group that's online and is playing and is reading books, that guy's going to pass everybody.
00:57:18.000And then everybody else realizes, oh, that's possible.
00:58:19.000They call it like the tortoise and the hare sometimes and then in certain situations the tortoise will win and other situations the hare will win.
00:59:05.000And 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.
00:59:17.000Before you were known, did you ever go to Washington Square Park and play those hustlers?
00:59:22.000No, I actually went there in 2010, but I think some people recognized me back then as well.
01:02:23.000It's funny though that my dad and my sisters, two of my sisters, they played a bit of competitive chess as well.
01:02:34.000I 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.
01:02:46.000So 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.
01:02:56.000How do you decide what opening to choose?
01:06:20.000When I was little, sometimes my parents, they were generally quite strict about sweets and so on, but sometimes I would eat sweets during tournament.
01:06:28.000Then my blood sugar would drop like crazy and I would start making mistakes.
01:06:37.000So that's something that I learned quite quickly that I shouldn't do.
01:06:41.000Do you ever mess around with vitamins or nootropics or anything like that?
01:08:12.000Creatine was a bodybuilding supplement that was almost akin to steroids in the 1990s.
01:08:18.000People would think it was cheating and then they realized it was just a component of food.
01:08:21.000But one of the things that creatine does that's very extraordinary is it aids in performance when you're sleep deprived.
01:08:30.000So 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.
01:08:38.000Well, I mean, I woke up today, and I think my watch said that my sleep was...
01:08:44.000I slept for five hours, but I got 15 minutes of REM sleep.
01:08:49.000It was really, really bad, so that's what I could have...
01:08:51.000I could have used that, because I was playing a chess tournament earlier today, so I could have used that, but...
01:08:58.000Yeah, creatine is something that everybody should take.
01:09:01.000Men, women, children, everybody should take creatine.
01:09:03.000It's a really good supplement, super safe, and it aids in strength and muscle recovery and stuff like that, but it also has a lot of cognitive benefits, which is generally just like a very good, safe supplement to take.
01:09:18.000Studies suggest that creatine supplementation may improve cognitive function, including memory, attention, and reasoning.
01:09:22.000It may increase brain energy levels by boosting endosine triphosphate production, ATP, which is essential for brain function.
01:09:31.000Creatine has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that may protect brain cells from damage caused by oxidative stress and neurotoxins.
01:10:13.000On certain days, I sort of just accept that...
01:10:17.000You know, my brain is not going to work as good.
01:10:20.000And it's frustrating, especially if you've 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.
01:10:30.000Yeah, I feel that with podcasting all the time.
01:10:32.000And the real danger is if I do that, if my brain's not on full tilt and I'm talking to a scientist, and I'm like, oh, we have to talk about quantum physics.
01:15:04.000It just makes everything a bit easier.
01:15:09.000Also, honestly, the randomizing opening choices has made things easier.
01:15:16.000As well, everything just to sort of lower the pressure a bit.
01:15:20.000Have you ever consulted a mental coach or, you know, 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-focusedness and try to recreate that?
01:15:40.000Because there's a bunch of different mind coaches that will tell you for a bunch of different pursuits that...
01:15:45.000What 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.
01:16:04.000But then there's another school of thought that says, no, it just has to happen organically.
01:16:09.000And that you just need to be obsessed and focused and take care of yourself and meditate.
01:16:15.000When it comes, it's going to come, but you have to accept that it's a gift and it's just not always going to be there.
01:16:21.000Yeah, I'm definitely in the latter camp.
01:16:25.000I've talked to people who have suggested mental coaches plenty of times, both in the past and more recently as well.
01:16:34.000I've just always been worried that Somebody's going to mess something up in my head.
01:17:10.000I'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 if you have one bad day, you're out and it doesn't matter.
01:17:35.000Back in the days with classical tournaments, you could have a really bad day, but then you can always bounce back.
01:18:51.000One of my better tournaments that I've 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 resort-like.
01:19:03.000It's just rainy and windy, and there's basically nothing there except this big tournament that's been there for 80 years, and it's for three weeks every January.
01:19:18.000So what I would do, like, Every day 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,
01:19:40.000look at chess for 15 minutes, whatever my coach has sent me of preparation that we discussed the day before, eat, and then And then go play.
01:20:20.000And it can be beneficial if your opponent goes into specifically the lines that you've prepared and so on.
01:20:28.000But overall, I think having a fresh mind is so important.
01:20:38.000And I'm also like, even if I haven't had the perfect preparation...
01:20:43.000I'm really good at just blocking everything out, forgetting everything that's happened, and just focusing there and then.
01:20:50.000But it's still not as good, of course, as just being in a good state of mind.
01:20:56.000Do you ever get to the point where you feel burnout, where you want to just take days off, a week off, and not think about chess, not touch a chessboard?
01:21:05.000Or is it just constantly playing in the background no matter what you do?
01:21:54.000If 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.
01:22:01.000Yeah, I do have those moments where I just...
01:22:04.000I just take a breath and think about how lucky that I am.
01:22:09.000And 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.
01:22:24.000Well, that's a beautiful way to live your life.
01:22:26.000If people can find a thing like that in their life, that really is the key to an enjoyable life.
01:22:32.000If 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.
01:22:44.000And pretty much everybody who's good at it is obsessed with it, and they think about it all the time.
01:23:37.000You found a thing that you really locked into.
01:23:41.000That perspective is very important for people to recognize, like the perspective of gratitude, of appreciation that you're so fortunate to have found something.
01:23:51.000People go their whole lives and never find a thing that they're truly, absolutely passionate about.
01:23:59.000I mean, it's a shiny example for people, I think.
01:24:02.000I 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.
01:24:12.000When someone sees you play chess at the highest level or sees, you know, 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.
01:24:28.000Yeah, I think I've thought about it many times.
01:24:32.000Like, what am I actually doing with my life that's useful to other people?
01:24:36.000And it always comes back to that every time that I hear that people are inspired by what I do.
01:24:45.000Maybe it helped them through a difficult time to watch my games and to get in to rediscover or find the love for the game.
01:24:58.000Again, in the process, I'm just doing what I love, right?
01:25:03.000And that's really what people want to see from me.
01:25:07.000It's just competing and doing well at chess.
01:25:10.000So that's also what I'm giving as often as possible.
01:25:15.000Well, that's what people want out of life.
01:25:17.000It's something that they love that they do.
01:25:21.000They'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.
01:25:31.000I mean it truly is who's been like Are there particular players that you really enjoy watching play and particular styles that you enjoy?
01:25:43.000I think my favorite probably player of all time is It's sort of the young Kasparov before he became world champion.
01:25:57.000The thing is, what I find fascinating about that is that he played with a style that was so unique and so dynamic that I know that I could never replicate it.
01:26:19.000Usually, whatever I'm into, be it soccer or golf or basketball or whatever, I admire what people do, not necessarily like it's about the people themselves.
01:26:32.000So that's the way it has been for me in chess as well, that I try to learn from people's games and what they do and when I talk to them.
01:26:46.000About that, being able to study with Gary back in the day.
01:26:51.000And Anand, who was the world champion before me.
01:26:55.000Because it's only then when you study, you talk to them, you understand how good they really are and how much they understand.
01:27:05.000For instance, with Anand, I had a training session in 2008 where we had both played a tournament where...
01:27:15.000I'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.
01:27:24.000So, I think I had two days off, and he was living outside Madrid.
01:27:29.000And so I went to Madrid for a couple of days, because the other tournament was in the north of Spain.
01:27:33.000Then I went to his house, and as soon as that training camp started, it's like something just switched with him, and he was...
01:27:46.000We 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.
01:27:56.000He 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.
01:28:07.000It seemed that he was faster tactically and everything, and it made me appreciate how good...
01:29:01.000That maybe I was able to have better results than my actual level because of youth energy and optimism, right?
01:29:09.000And 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.
01:29:23.000Because at that point I'd had a year of more or less constant rise.
01:29:59.000But having a little bit of a reality check I think helped me later to actually understand the game a bit better.
01:30:08.000But 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.
01:30:23.000Because If you're realistic, you're just never going to be opportunistic enough to sort of exploit your opponent's mistakes.
01:30:33.000I 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 to trust in this process of growth and development, and that it is a very, very long process.
01:31:12.000My style has become a bit more dynamic over time, but back then, I... I really, really lacked understanding of more dynamic positions in chess.
01:31:27.000You can have more static or more dynamic pawn structures.
01:31:34.000If there are a lot of possible pawn breaks for both sides and both kings are under attack, then it's sort of more...
01:31:42.000More dynamic and tactical, or it could be more about gaining some minute positional advantages.
01:31:50.000And that's sort of what I was excelling at, the latter.
01:31:53.000And working with him, it just improved sort of the more dynamic part of my game a lot.
01:32:01.000And that helped me very much short term.
01:32:08.000Also, it's helped me later because it improved my understanding of the game.
01:32:13.000My 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.
01:35:39.000But with the help of the engines, you could actually have a real-time score all the time because it tells you who is winning and who is not.
01:35:54.000Because honestly, like most people, when they consume sports, they're mostly interested about who is going to win and who is going to lose.
01:36:01.000So now at least you can have that factor in chess that you can see that.
01:36:07.000And it's very interesting for me to read what people were writing about computer chess.
01:36:15.00030, 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.
01:36:24.000And now it's very much settled, of course.
01:36:29.000Well, they have that same discussion about Go, right?
01:36:33.000Well, Go is much more complicated than chess.
01:36:38.000But I don't know what has happened since AlphaGo.
01:36:45.000If, like, the best masters are still a little bit better or where the state is at?
01:36:50.000I think Go is better than everybody, the computer is.
01:36:54.000But I think a new factor is that the computer has devised creative moves that were never used before, that have now been implemented.
01:37:04.000They're part of, like, general strategy, which I think they thought was very shocking.
01:37:10.000See if you can find anything about that.
01:37:13.000I do not know because I don't understand Go.
01:37:15.000I was just reading an article about the extraordinary leaps that AI has taken and that one of the more shocking things was that it was able to beat the best players at Go, which they thought was like a long time coming.
01:37:28.000Yeah, I mean, I did watch the movie AlphaGo.
01:38:40.000And you would see funny, like, they have computer tournaments as well with the best engine in the world.
01:38:46.000And you will still see, like, Leela Zero, that's sort of the clone of Alpha Zero because they discontinued the Alpha Zero project after a while.
01:38:58.000It will make, like, elementary tactical blunders, almost.
01:39:09.000Things about chess differently than traditional engines, but it will also do things that just confounds the very best chess engines in the world still.
01:39:25.000And all the best coaches and players now, when you work with chess computers, you always have...
01:39:33.000Both like a neural net and a traditional chess engine running as well as some others who are now like hybrid who have a little bit of both.
01:39:44.000It's just fascinating that it would make blunders.
01:39:47.000Yeah, well, I don't know if it's something about its search.
01:39:59.000But it would also make some fascinating decisions like When you promote a pawn, you usually promote to a queen because that's almost always the best unless you sometimes want to promote a knight specifically to give a check or sometimes to avoid stalemate, but that's less frequent.
01:40:20.000But then what Lila and AlphaZero would sometimes do is that they would promote to a different piece because...
01:40:31.000If it's a piece that's anyway going to be captured, just to give your opponent a slight chance of making a mistake by making another move, which is something a human would never ever do.
01:42:31.000There 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.
01:42:44.000Can I let that play against you instead of myself?
01:42:48.000And I actually, like, beat it fairly handily because I played some kind of, like...
01:42:53.000Anti-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.
01:43:07.000That doesn't work against very good engines, but it can work against weaker ones.
01:44:18.000And 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.
01:44:30.000Do you ever try to think like the computer?
01:44:33.000Yeah, well, specifically the neural nets have improved our understanding of the game immensely.
01:44:41.000The AvoZero paper came out very late 2018. And actually, I played a World Championship match late 2018 as well against an American, Fabiano Caruana.
01:44:53.000That was the best match, I think, that I've ever played.
01:44:56.000We played 12 draws, actually, and then I won in a tiebreak.
01:45:01.000But the games were super high quality, and he was very evenly matched.
01:45:13.000But 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.
01:45:32.000And my coach, he got into it very quickly.
01:45:36.000And we got an advantage of basically everybody but that guy who had been using it during the match.
01:45:46.000And it just made us understand the game a lot better.
01:45:51.000There were, as I said, a couple of things about long-term king safety.
01:45:56.000Pushing pawns on the side of the board was maybe the biggest takeaway.
01:46:06.000And not as an attacking tool, which used to be the way that you would push upon, like trying to break open your king.
01:46:15.000What 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.
01:46:34.000And I still see some people allowing these pawn advances.
01:46:39.000And I wonder if they didn't learn their lesson from 2019. But it was very clear to see at a certain time before everybody sort of caught up with the new information.
01:46:55.000And that's also when I had maybe my best stretch of chess.
01:48:50.000They just have much more computing power than you do.
01:48:53.000So losing over and over again to something that's so stupid, that's not a good feeling.
01:48:59.000Could you help explain to me what are the factors?
01:49:02.000What is it doing that you can't do in terms of calculating positions and moves and strategies?
01:49:10.000Well, first of all, it's infinitely faster.
01:49:15.000So 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.
01:49:26.000It will never make blunders, like simple tactical mistakes.
01:49:33.000The neural networks sometimes do, but traditional engines don't.
01:49:45.000Most of the moves that I make will be the same as they do, but they don't make any real blunders at all.
01:49:56.000They may make slight positional mistakes, but honestly, most of the time that I think an engine makes a positional mistake is because I don't understand it well enough.
01:51:11.000What it does is just based on the games that it's played against itself.
01:51:16.000It will have completely different ideas at times.
01:51:27.000Imagine in 2019, because of these neural networks, every opening that had been played for 100 years...
01:51:34.000Hundreds 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.
01:52:04.000It just, 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.
01:52:22.000But it's, yeah, it was extremely fascinating for a while, but now...
01:52:29.000It's just led to really more parity in the world of chess because everybody just has access to that information.
01:52:42.000It 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.
01:52:57.000Started to use different engines and so on.
01:53:00.000But now you could prepare for a world championship, honestly, in two weeks and you'd be completely with just a regular laptop that's connected to cloud.
01:53:18.000It's very different and so much easier today.
01:53:25.000That is so fascinating that it's changed the game so much.
01:53:28.000Could 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?
01:53:37.000Like, could you get one to say, I want you to play like Garry Kasparov when he was younger?
01:53:42.000So we actually did this back in the day.
01:53:46.000We actually started an app called Play Magnus where you could play against myself at different ages.
01:55:56.000Yeah, are you better now than ever before?
01:55:58.000No, I think my peak level is close to the best because chess level or proficiency at anything, it's about making use of the knowledge and making it into skill, right?
01:56:14.000And I definitely have more knowledge now than I've ever had.
01:56:18.000But I think probably the best combination I had of knowledge and energy that translated the best into skill was probably in 2019, like first half of the year when I was 28. And when I was...
01:56:43.000More like a young Kasparov than I'd ever been before.
01:57:16.000Apart from that, I think I could do...
01:57:18.000My average level would probably be a little bit lower because I'm a little bit older and my brain is not quite as fast.
01:57:29.000I could do, I think, most of those things.
01:57:31.000What 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...
01:57:54.000Opponents in very long endgames, never giving them any respite whatsoever.
01:58:01.000Like, purely skill-wise, that was far from the best version.
01:58:06.000Sorry, knowledge-wise, that was far from the best version of me.
01:58:40.000There's two factors you're talking about, like physical fitness and nutrition and exercise.
01:58:48.000These 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.
02:00:43.000I 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.
02:00:57.000So I'm generally obsessed with chess, but I'm not always obsessed with compagnies.
02:01:06.000Like, 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 feel it, and then I'm not able to take it as seriously.
02:02:21.000Yeah, and also the thing is, I was known for 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.
02:02:37.000I think the reason why I got that reputation is that I really like doing a lot of...
02:02:45.000I did a lot of sports when I was little and I've always kind of done them for fun.
02:02:51.000So I think that was why you don't see a lot of chess players playing soccer or tennis or whatever.
02:02:59.000Not that I'm great at any of those things, but I was usually better than a lot of other chess players.
02:03:17.000Yeah, there's not much you can do about your reputation.
02:03:19.000I'm just saying, like, 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.
02:03:36.000Are there special things you do more like a poker player or anything to intimidate your opponents ever?
02:03:42.000I've seen you show up late to big tournaments where they're waiting for you and stuff.
02:04:45.000And that's three minutes and I come, like, two and a half minutes late because I've been skiing in the mountains and...
02:04:52.000There was an accident on the road that delayed me like half an hour.
02:05:00.000Most people would have planned for that, had a little bit of buffer, but I was like, eh, that was probably going to be fine.
02:05:05.000Suddenly 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.
02:05:19.000Thought I was so late that I should be.
02:06:05.000Like, the world championships in chess, like, they were being held in the weirdest places.
02:06:10.000So this was in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which is this, like, really, during winter at least, pretty polluted, not very nice city.
02:06:21.000And then just half an hour out of the city, you have basically the Alps.
02:06:25.000You have beautiful mountains that goes up to 3,500 meters.
02:06:33.000Where it's just fantastic and you can get from the city it's like an hour and you're at the top of the mountain and having a beautiful ski vacation.
02:06:48.000And I just was so miserable being down in the city that I thought for this day if I'm going to perform at all today I need some fresh air.
02:07:57.000I 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.
02:08:11.000It's just weird that you can cheat and do it for so long and yet still play in the best tournaments.
02:08:17.000You would think that, like in the UFC, say if you get caught with steroids, you get a long ban.
02:08:23.000And if you get caught again, you get an even longer ban.
02:08:27.000And I think it's like a three-strike thing.
02:08:28.000If you get caught a third time, you're out of the sport forever.
02:12:22.000So you can listen to Wu-Tang Clan while you play chess?
02:12:24.000Yeah, I mean, honestly, playing Blitzchess, listening to music usually helps me because, like...
02:12:32.000Doing tasks that are more intuition-based, then that helps with the flow.
02:12:39.000With longer games, you probably don't want that disturbance, but I've definitely played some of my best Blizz Chess, just listening to music and sitting there bopping.