#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
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Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day. Joe Rogan podcast. All right. We're up and rolling. Magnus Carlson, ladies and gentlemen. You want some coffee? No. Oh, this is water. 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 Hitchcliff 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 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, around five years old. But at that time, I wasn't that interested. I was mostly into Legos and...

I was into maths and 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. 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 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 hobby.

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, like, 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, like, good enough that there wasn't a competition. So it turned out, like, my dad was right after all. I just needed...

I just needed that extra push. Yeah, 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 I'm seeing the games, they're actually decent.

And yeah, now there's this one kid from Argentina, like they call him the Messi of chess, who's gonna 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 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 like 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 friend's streamer channel. Like one random guy said, made a comment about anal beads. And he was like, yeah, maybe. And then I think 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 Marc 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 even admitted shenanigans.

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...

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, brr? Ha ha ha ha ha!

You're hearing vibrations. You see his seat shift. You're smelling something. There's a whiff of something in the air. Yeah, I mean, that would have been the smoking gun, I suppose. But...

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 about

The thing is also there's a Netflix documentary coming in a few months where I'm telling my side of the story. So I kind of go too deep into everything. But what I can say was that there were a lot of factors that made me very, very suspicious about

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...

lot based on on trust and Whenever you have Outsiders whom there are these stories about everybody gets a bit a bit jittery there there's like as people who either like the burst onto the scene that then they establish themselves and people People know that they're legit and so on that it's it's not a it's not a problem with with him specifically I don't know it was

It's just he doesn't seem to be playing or it didn't at that point seem to be playing with 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 in certain games like he could just switch from tactical to positional play very easily and it was

It didn't smell good to me. It still doesn't, but to some extent 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 Hikaru or whomever he felt like.

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aged and bottled by Buffalo Trace Distillery, 90 proof, Franklin County, Kentucky, Buffalo Trace, American, family owned, independent, and perfectly untamed. 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 is,

Like what 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 air piece That people use for exams and so on like so but he would have to have a partner. Yeah, he would yeah, yeah that would Not have been detected by the security system that they they used at that tournament

They amped up the security after the whole thing happened. Did they check your ears? Yeah, they started 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 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, going in and out. They could make signals. 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 kind of code are you getting from inside your butt that you're like, okay, I got it? Well, it would be like, you know, C4 or whatever. Like, it could tell you. How would it say it in your butt, though? Bop, bop, bop, bop.

Well, I mean, I'd have to show you. Luckily, I brought one. So I'm 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.

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 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. Um...

Dirty people out there. It's wild. But 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, like, this guy was, like, going out every night, not taking the tournament seriously at all. But, yeah, he had a good reason. Like, he knew he was going to win. That's hilarious. So is that the most egregious form of cheating that 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 was, he came drunk to the table and just literally pulled out his phone and opened a chess program. But of course, like he was immediately... So that wasn't, of course, nearly as nefarious, but... That's just a moron. Yeah, yeah. He was just...

Probably some other issues there. There's just such a, it 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 dumb and be fairly good at chess. I think 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. Well, if you don't talk... 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? Yeah.

I'm known in the chess world for being a little bit lazy, I think. The thing is that I... Can I pause you there? 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 in chess like a normal job, and then...

Because a lot of them study computers and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Like, I think about the game all the time. Like, I play online. I look at games. I may read something. Do you ever play anonymously? I used to do that all the time. What a bloodbath that must be. Yeah. But...

But I think I got humbled one time by this Russian grandmaster who asked, somebody else asked me like if a certain account on 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. How did he know? By the way you play? Yeah, I think it's,

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 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. 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...

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, like, I don't like homework. But I would...

But I would still spend a lot of time reading books, playing online, 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 chess.

sort of the game that in the way that I was like I think about it all the time like I'm thinking about the game while I'm sitting on this chair like I'm still analyzing a game that I played today like it never goes completely out of my mind and

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 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. And yeah, 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 and I do like process it even though like I don't necessarily study, like 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 like 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 and

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? Do you think it's this balance that you keep with enthusiasm and obsession? Like, what do you think separates you from everyone else? I think it has to be a...

a variety of factors. I think there's no doubt that I'm incredibly naturally gifted at the game, like otherwise I wouldn't have come this far. And my dad is incredibly good with numbers. He started playing chess quite late, but became decent. Like 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 happened 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 coaches and I had access to like a little training group of other ambitious kids and

And after 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. 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 understand the game better than the others. I don't calculate necessarily as far as the other, but my intuition for short lines, constantly evaluating is just better. It's just...

It'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 when you say your father started playing late How old was he? Oh, I think he started playing about 14 15 something like that I've in chess that's that's right, but he never he never like took it took it seriously not right that he wanted to like he pursued it but

- As a hobby. - As a hobby, yeah. - When you say take it seriously, you mean like you do. This is what makes me think about epigenetics. We still don't exactly know how much information is transferred between parents to children, and 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 or is that coming from the environment, which this child grows up, which this person, or is it a combination of all those factors? Like, 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. Yeah.

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 whereas 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...

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 a game, if it's annoying. And you're like, fuck this game. I want to go play in the park and my parents don't even pay attention to me. This is bullshit. 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. Because chess is an obsessive game. 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. It's a game that gets in your bones. It really does because the entry is...

not so easy, right? Like you don't like 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, 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, it's 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 of chess,

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... Can you explain it to people? Yeah, it's a Netflix untold documentary. So 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 every...

Everywhere people, 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 shown 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 How could that like how could that happen I'm exhausted. What do you do when you wake up? Oh, that's that's the yeah, though. It's total Yeah, no I wake up and I look at the board and it said you resigned because I went over my time or whatever Yeah, I just ran out of time. How many times have you resigned?

It happens an 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 dreams 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 are already gone. 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.

My own my phone or my iPad whenever I have some yeah whenever I have some time especially like if I know that I have 15 minutes or whatever and then if something comes up like my wife tells me like I have to be somewhere I have to do something it's like can you just finish the game like no I can't Yeah, obviously that's different yeah, yeah, yeah, you can't just resign that's no you gotta ride that bitch out yeah, I

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Yeah, especially if I'm playing somebody who is a little bit of a rival. It's like, yeah, no. Right. That's not going to happen. No chance. Because every time I lose games, it's a little bit of a story, right, in the chess world. So I prefer not to lose.

to happen as 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

And in jail, he learned how to play chess with his head 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? I think I was 22 or 23 at the time. And I was like, what are you doing? And they were 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 people did you play? What's 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. Yeah.

For me, that's... As long as the people I'm playing are kind of decent at chess, that actually kind of 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 recognize... So here you are. Oh, so this is another one, actually. This is a blindfold timed...

There are fewer games, but what's difficult about these is that the moves do not come to me in a sequence. So 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 it 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 played for 10 minutes I realized that I cannot do this I like I ran away for 15 minutes and then I came back and I finished the game but ever since that

It feels like I've done it, but 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 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 assign a certain face to a certain seat, like a certain number and so on. So that's just about 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, 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 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. You 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 you're 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, in broad strokes what happened. And this is what can happen in these blindfold games as well sometimes. Like, 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 professional tournaments, actually. That used to be both fun but also totally exhausting. And then we would play on a computer. So we'd have 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 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 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 wasn't but yeah or

Overall, I feel like, honestly, like, Blindfold Chess 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 incredibly hard. But I...

I'm sure that, for instance, like solving Rubik's Cube is really, really easy for those who know how to do it quickly, right? Yeah. 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. Oh, wow. Yeah. See if you can find it, Jamie. It's crazy. It just goes...

It just spins it. I've never figured that shit out. That's crazy. 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 times this way, eight times that way, eight times this way. And 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 too? No, no, no, no. I'm talking out of my ass. I think the world record is only like three seconds or something. It's something absolutely insane. Imagine the time you could have spent building a business, raising a family.

I feel like you're the fucking world record Rubik's Cube guy. All the same color. Green, red. So dumb. Yeah. Well, we all have to spend our time. Watch this. Watch this computer do it. Wow. How crazy is that? Ready? Way to go. Yeah, less than a second. 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 a 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 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, like 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. And 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. So I had to spend that pretty well playing chess. Otherwise, I would just sit there with my board, with my books and 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 benefits from video games that leak over into other things. Like for instance, they found out that surgeons who

who play video games regularly make, what is it like 25% less errors? - It's 37%. - 37% less errors. - Wow. - That's a, 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." They would force you.

To engage in that, whatever it is. It's like 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. Ha ha ha.

But I'm saying it's 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 officially, that is what chess has though, that it,

it is very respected among the general population and it does have that different standing from from another a lot of other games it's like I'm not here to shit on video games for sure like I know like like you do that that

There are studies that show that it can be helpful, I think, with anything. If you're obsessed over something, the only thing you will become good at is that particular thing, like I have with chess. I just think for me specifically, it was probably a good thing that that made me just sit and focus on chess rather than...

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 where we'd all play Quake. And it was a real problem. I just wanted to end the podcast so I could go play Quake.

And then we'd play for hours. And eventually got to a point where I was like, okay, I got to quit again. Just cold turkey, never again, leave it alone. Because 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.

I remember 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 I got myself a PlayStation, played a ton of FIFA back then, and there was a GameStop near me

That like they made a lot of money on me just buying new controllers all the time because I would throw them into the wall. But I have that same personality that I become obsessed with things and then I just have to quit cold turkey. That's the only way 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. Yeah.

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 say obviously see them do it with Trump but there

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 level,

it gives you a massive burst of energy. So like the, the,

What am I thinking of? Just the bad reputation that golf has. 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 golfing

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. Whereas video games and other things make you depressed. It's almost impossible to be down or depressed after golfing.

Well, it's certainly a stimulating game, right? Because it's hand-eye coordination, calculation, managing the lay of the land, the way the rolls of the hills are, and all those factors. I think this is something that I think people genuinely need in life. Yeah.

Yeah.

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'd 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. We had that. It was George W. Bush. And there was no video game system. Oh, fuck.

That was dark. Yeah, it is dark. Well, I mean, they literally used 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 one of the reasons why they were using them 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 horrible. It's dark. Yeah, and all of a sudden, these kills that you have in a video game, you think of it in the same way. Well, it really haunts those people, apparently. There's a very specific type of PTSD that drone operators get. 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, they just press X on the controller. But if you want to get good at that, you should probably play video games. It's a job for everybody out there, Magnus.

I'm also trying to think like could you get surgeons to be drone operators? Probably doesn't work that way. No, probably doesn't work that way. At best 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 game. Like 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 is

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 play golf people could think oh you're a fuck-up you say you play chess like oh there must be an intelligent man it's probably the most uniquely rewarded game in terms of the way the people respect it in society yeah this

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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 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 learn the best openings very quickly. Even if you go 10, 20 years ago, you could play...

You could play, for instance, in the Chess Olympiad, which is the biggest team nation tournament in the world. And you could play against the best player from, let's say, Colombia. And you would know that they have certain skills, but they might not have the same set of openings, right? Now, all of these, like there are kids everywhere, right?

and they just know their stuff so well. So now we're testing out new formats, one that we call freestyle, which is basically there are 960 possible starting positions if you shuffle the pieces on the first rank. And basically, 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 it's just very fast and it's all games sports and so on like i feel like with with thinking from the very first move you're bringing some of the other factors um back as well i think what i think is 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. 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 Firoucha from... He plays for France now, but he's from Iran originally. I think he was about 14 then. And my...

chess coach has had like recommended that we 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 their laptop and there's a chess board in the middle where you sort of and you sort of look at your own thing and then some things together on the board and you you throw out ideas mostly for 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 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 rabid 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, even

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 when you when if everybody's doing it one way if everybody's only playing you know a few games a day and hanging out like you'll probably all stay at the same level but if you got one fucking psychopath in the group that's online and is playing and is reading books and is

that guy's going to 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 like constantly all the time from when he was little he has fantastic instincts especially with with little time he just knows where the pieces go and like he's the only one of the kids who has that kind of feeling um the Indian guy on the other hand from the way he studies he's like

During games, he's meticulous. He calculates. 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 very, very different than...

They 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. Right. 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 would 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. Before you were known, did you ever go to Washington Square Park and play those hustlers? No.

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. They're 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... 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 a very strange opening as well. He put just a couple of pawns, one square forward, and then he started developing his pieces very slowly. At first, I thought this guy has no idea what he's doing. Then it turned out he actually had a system. After 10, 15 moves...

I was in a lot of trouble. And then the game became super concrete and tactical and I won. But it struck me that this guy had...

I think he just played in the park all his life. So he had developed a certain system that was actually kind of effective if you don't know what you're doing against it. So that was 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. He used to have a home office and then certain times he'd appear to be...

focused on his in 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 and watch him like go away and then at some point where I was already a lot better than him um he played a certain opening as as white and I told him like what what is this opening like 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 playing, you're moving first. I was like, I never, 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...

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, like, 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. How do you decide what opening to choose? Um...

And do you ever decide an opening and go, fuck, I shouldn't have done that one? Yeah, sometimes. Honestly, sometimes 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 more of an aggressive opening. But then maybe I feel good about my tournament standing, so 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

for the more aggressive approach. So that's what I sometimes do. It's just I randomize it and then I just sort of accept the outcome and it makes me more unpredictable. It makes me harder to...

to prepare against as well. So that's what I sometimes do. It's not like, it's not going to be out there, but it's going to be between like two or three options that I think are roughly equivalent. They're just stylistically different. So when you say randomized, like how many openings do you have that you pursue on a regular basis? Oh, it's hard to say. 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. So, and then when you randomize, you just go in your head and one of them stands out for you and you say, okay, this is it. No, I just like have an app on my phone. Oh, really? I just roll the dice. Oh, wow. Wow. Wow. I think...

Honestly, a lot of people could benefit from that because you agonize over these minute decisions. 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... There's nothing because it's left to chance. It makes it...

Makes it a lot a lot easier that makes sense when no you were saying mental energy is 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 your clarity and

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 and

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, you know, my blood sugar would drop like crazy and I would start making mistakes. And 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? Nutrients that help memory? No, I think...

I think it's a little bit about the way that I was raised. Like, I'd never take medicine unless I kind of have to. I don't really take supplements or anything like that. So I probably should. Like, it's not a bad idea. Like, my wife is half American. Like, she's completely different. Like, she takes five pills.

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 nootropics.

There's a bunch of different vitamins that have been shown through clinical trials to improve cognitive performance.

There's theanine. There's 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, no. It's not ketamine. Creatine? Creatine. Creatine. Creatine, yes. Creatine.

Creatine was a bodybuilding supplement that was almost akin to steroids in the 1990s. People would think it was cheating, and then they realized, 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, like, I think my watch said it was that my sleep was, like, I got 15, 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 a chess tournament 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 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.

What does it say here, Jane?

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. 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, where your brain is everything. But you're kicking ass, so why listen to me? No, no, no. Eat cheeseburgers and fuck around. See what happens. No, but it is the thing, though. On certain days, I sort of just accept that

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you know, my brain is not going to 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...

And I'm like, oh, like we have to talk about quantum physics like this. I have to like have good questions. I have to be able to follow what you're saying because it's so esoteric. You know, it's weird that the brain just doesn't always work exactly how you want it to.

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 well.

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

Just the work is already done. You already know the game. So now it's just reacting and moving and calculating. Yeah, I mean, I had a game in the last Classical World Championship I played in 2021 where the first five games were drawn. Honestly, 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 like I was just so focused and so calm that

And afterwards, I was just like, yeah, I could have kept going forever. Like, I was just there. And it was exactly what I needed. I ended up grinding out a win. And in those classical games, like, once you get a lead, like, that is so big because it's so hard to win, actually win games at that level, with that level of preparation. So that was really big. But, yeah, that's... I've only...

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 and 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 on

Honestly, my standards for myself are a little bit lower, 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, I think, as...

good as it's ever been or at least very very close to um but like the average level is it's just it's just too hard when your brain is not that fast anymore uh but but but yeah generally i um i'm i'm always thinking well yeah i could have always done something better like i

You always miss some things, but I always feel like, yeah, there 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...

be it easier. Also, honestly, like the randomizing opening choices has made, has made things easier as, as well. Everything just to, just sort of, yeah, lower the pressure a bit. Have you ever consulted a mental coach or, you know, someone who, 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 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. 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, plenty of times, both in, in the past and, and more recently as well. I've just like always been worried that I,

somebody's going to 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...

Yeah, 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 if you have one bad day, you're out and it doesn't matter. Like...

Back in the days with classical tournaments, you could have a really bad day, but then you can always bounce back. But nowadays, it's not that easy. Do you ever try to map out what are the factors that lead you to hit that state, 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 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...

Before the game definitely really little as possible. Yeah, you want it to be fresh in your mind. What's been something exciting? Yeah, I just I just want to have like two or three ideas of what I'm what I'm going to play and not like I I just don't want to like 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 resort-like. It's just rainy and windy, and there's basically nothing there except those big tournaments that's been there for 80 years. And it's for three weeks every January. So for me, 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

but not too much energy. Don't focus too much on it. Yeah, a lot of people, they will spend three, four hours preparing on a game on that very day. And it can be beneficial if your opponent goes into specifically the lines that you prepared and so on. But overall, I think having a fresh mind is important.

is so important. And I'm also like, even if I haven't had the perfect preparation, 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, as just being...

in a good state of mind. Do you ever get to the point where you feel burnout or you want to 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?

i i really love it so why take time yeah why take no no no i'm fine with taking uh breaks from from tournaments and so on um but having like at least days several days in a row without like looking at a chess game um 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. I mean, 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 joy.

and energy when, when I, when I do that. Like, I will just, on, on a certain day, I will just log in to chess.com and, and observe random people play, and I'm, that is something I can do and be very happy about it. Um, yeah, it's just the way I am. Well, you're just very fortunate. You found a thing that you really locked into. It's, uh,

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 useful to other people? And it always comes back to that every time that I hear that people are inspired by what I do. Maybe it helped them through like

um a difficult time to watch to watch my games and to get in to rediscover or find the love for the game that's really um that's really nice and again in the process i'm just doing doing what i what i love right and that's that's really what people want to want to see from me it's just competing and doing well at chess so that's that's also what i'm um

Giving us as often as possible. Well, that's what people want out of life It's 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 like

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 play. So that's something I admire a lot. Usually, 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.

So 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. 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, like you talk to them, like you understand how good they really are and how much they understand. For instance, with Anna, 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.

So we... 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, it's like something just switched with him. And he was...

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, like, he was crushing me. Like, he had a massive plus score in our games, and it felt like everything we analyzed, he was just... He just had a much deeper understanding of the game. It seemed that he was faster tactically and everything. And it made me, like, appreciate, like, how good...

how good he actually was, yeah. When you are playing someone like that and 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...

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... Yeah, it's just winning... Winning tournaments. Every time I would lose a game, I would just believe that I could strike back immediately. And I realized now that I was just... 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, like, the optimal state when you're playing a game is somewhere between optimistic and delusionally optimistic.

Because if you're realistic, you're just never going to be opportunistic enough to sort of exploit your opponent's mistakes. 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 to trust in this process of growth and development. And that it is a very, very long process.

Yeah, exactly. And very soon after that, I started working with Garry Kasparov as well, and that made me realize that I know even less. What can a guy like Garry 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 really, really lacked understanding of more dynamic positions in chess. You can have...

You can have more static or more dynamic pawn structures. If there are a lot of possible pawn breaks for both sides and both kings are under attack, then it's more dynamic and tactical. Or it could be more about gaining some minutes, positional advantages. And that's 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 later because it improved my understanding of the game. My strength, main strength, is still more in the more static structures. But...

that work like made me so much more more versatile and I still definitely profit from that what what is a coach for you today like what what benefit is a coach today a couple things um the main benefits that I have from my chess coach is opening work that's like the the low hanging fruit that's that's really what

you know, 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 I am. So every time like we have

Like a chess training camp, there's also 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's very good at using chess engines to, you know...

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...

It's more useful for me to look at what the engine is saying. Because the engines are just smarter than you. Yeah, they are. And I'm good enough that I can interpret what the engine is saying to understand why a certain thing...

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, like, I don't know if you talked to Gary, but he has this whole thing with Deep Blue. I'm not sure if Deep Blue was actually better than Gary, but...

It started the downfall of us humans 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

That's a great thing. Additionally, people watching chess games... One problem is that you cannot easily tell... It's not like one guy is being punched and the other guy is punching. It takes some skill to see what's going on. But with the help of the engines, you could actually have...

a real-time score all the time because it tells you who is who is winning and who who is not so it becomes a lot easier to um um to to follow as well because honestly like most people when they 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 that you can you can you can see that and um

It's very interesting for me to read what people were writing about computer chess 30... 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...

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 like 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 that have now been implemented. They're part of like general strategy, which I think they thought was very shocking.

So you can find a lot 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 off ago 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 alpha zero in chess So chess engines they were always like kind of built by humans and instructed by humans and then alpha zero came along and

which is a neural network that just, you know, 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. Yeah.

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...

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 will still see like Lila Zero, that's sort of the clone of AlphaZero because they discontinued the AlphaZero project after a while. It will make like elementary tactical blunders almost. Yeah.

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 do things that just confounds the very best chess engines in the world still. So that's very interesting to see, and all the best coaches and players now, when you work with chess computers, 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 uh who have a little bit of both um it's just fascinating that it would make blunders yeah well i don't know if it's something about it's it's um it's it's search i i really i really don't i really don't know but 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. 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 a slight chance of making a mistake by making another move, which is something a human would never ever do. But 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 the new neural nets. That's crazy that it would just trick you.

Yeah, it would try and trick it. Like, it probably wouldn't trick a human because a human would be like, that's weird. Okay, I'll just take it, whatever. But another engine, 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 Norwegian called Stockfish that's still considered the best. So I think the best now is Stockfish, like Stockfish hybrid that's part neural and part traditional engine. 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. Isn't that crazy?

No chance. That's so crazy because Deep Blue, wasn't it like as big as a room? Yeah. Deep Blue wasn't like a stack of computers, right? But I'm sure it's still less powerful than the computer on your phone is today, right? Yeah, and that's just shocking. No, 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 and

can I let that play against you again instead of myself? And 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...

against weaker ones. But no, humans, like, we don't have any... There was a grandmaster who played a match recently against Lila, which is, like, the best neural network engine now. They were playing classical chess, and he started with a knight more. And they played a 10-game match, and he won 5.5 to 4.5. Wow. Which...

As crazy, like it's a nightmare. It should not be possible for any... Like if God was playing chess, you shouldn't be able to beat a Grandmaster in any game like that. So the Grandmaster was still able to win. But 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, more 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. And the AVAZERO paper came out very late 2018. And actually, I played a world championship match late 2018 as well against an American, Fabiano Caruana. 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 the games were super high quality and he was very evenly matched. And then he was actually using Lila, the AlphaZero clone, which we didn't have access to. We didn't even know that was a 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 better

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 your king, like to make the opponent's king less safe then. And this is something that humans didn't really do and I still see some people like allowing these pawn advances and

And I don't, like... 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. And that's also when I had maybe my best stretch of chess ever because I just...

understood these new things 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. Like 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 want to... Is it partly because you just don't want to 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...

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, it's infinitely faster.

So 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...

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 positional 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 mistakes.

Yeah, it's just that my understanding is not good enough. And that is useful. 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 humans have taught them is like the value of...

like the value what is the value of pawn what's the value of a knight and what is the value of you know a 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 your yourself a lot of times and get better and

It just has a different approach. What it does is just based on the games that it's played against itself. It will have completely different ideas at times. Imagine in 2019, because of these neural networks, 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. Yeah.

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. But it was extremely fascinating for a while. But now it's just led to really more parity in...

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 they had more computing power, better cloud engines, they had started to use different engines and so on. But now...

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 a cloud. It's very different now.

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 can play against myself against... At different ages. And the...

The style, it was based on... The guy who built Stockfish built this engine as well. So it was based on 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 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.

You know, I mean like what would that be like like you play you when you were 20? No, so the thing about it is is that you would also be what you would have to calibrate is that It would make Occasional like tactical blunders right right and which was engines. Yeah And so what we would do what would happen in the play - app is that it would make occasional blunders but those would be like a little bit too outrageous and

Because it's really hard to emulate the kinds of mistakes a human would make by the engines. So I think that would probably still be the most difficult part, the main issue in order to make such a thing. If the Play Magnus thing was dialed in 100%,

What would be, do you think now would be the scariest age to play you? Does that question make sense? Yeah, are you better now than ever before? No, 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?

And I definitely have more knowledge now than I've ever had. But 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...

More like a young Kasparov than I'd ever been before. Very dynamic. What is the difference between you and 2019 and 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... My average level would probably be a little bit lower because I'm a little bit older and...

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's just like the average level of my game definitely was higher than because I barely 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 physically? Physically. Yeah. Well, there's two factors you're talking about, like physical fitness and nutrition and exercise. 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... Because you're only 34. 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 mean, I've felt it for years as well that, no, I'm not old, but I can never be...

That level of pure like computing power But is that generally accepted with chess that there's a certain age where it just drops off 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 To develop and then it was considered that the best age was like late 30s or early 40s. Mm-hmm

Obviously, the drop-off is not nearly as steep as it would be in physical sports. That goes without saying. But I think the peak years are pretty much the same for most people, like mid-20s to early 30s. I think I could still...

I could still be very, very close to my peak if I focused fully on...

on all the things that I can control. Physical fitness, nutrition, vitamins. All of those things, yeah. And yet you don't do that? I don't understand. If you're so obsessed with chess, that seems to have a primary factor. Yeah, it'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.

So... And, like, 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. I don't have concrete goals of what I want to do.

things I want to achieve. Does that sort of relaxed attitude that you have, does 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 and just taking my vitamins and 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 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

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 chess players. Yeah, I guess I do have, I don't know,

I don't know what a reputation I have for the others. I don't really care. Yeah, there's not much you can do about your reputation. I'm just saying, 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, are there 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 Miyamoto Musashi move. Samurai? Yeah. Honestly, like that's, me being late is...

down to a couple of things. First, I hate waiting. But also, 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? It's literally what you do. Better than anybody. My planning is always based on everything going perfectly and 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.

goes wrong or often enough that it becomes a thing. Like as you talked about in chess, like there's this video that a lot of people have talked about where I come... There's a Blitz game, right? And that's three minutes and I come like two and a half minutes late because I've been skiing in the mountains and there was an accident on the road 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 I got to the board. So that's kind of more... How did you play the game? Did you have a different approach because you knew you only had 30 seconds? No, the thing is there you have a two-second increment per move. So 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... 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...

Like the world championships in chess, like they're being held in the weirdest places. So this was in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which is 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 three and a half thousand meters and

where it's just fantastic and you can get...

Yeah, 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 like I need to get out of here. And so that's why I took the risk. And it was great.

Yeah, definitely not to play mind games. Because Bobby Fischer said about chess that I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves. Like, I believe in a little bit of both, but I'm more in his school that I just...

I think I'm going to make better moves that I don't need. 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. Was there anything like that in chess? Yeah, that specific thing 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...

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 an even longer ban. And I think it's like a three-strike thing. If you get caught a third time, you're out of the sport forever. No, it's...

The thing is that... But you think harsher penalties would discourage people? 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, hmm, that's a bit strange. Yeah.

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 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 who looks to skirt around the difficult path.

No, that's true. But the thing is, like, there's so little you need in chess. And the engines are so powerful. Like, if I started cheating, you would never know. The thing is, like, I would get, like, 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. 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...

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? That has been done in world championships, for instance. We've basically been playing in a glass box where you can see...

where you can see... Like you cannot see the audience and you cannot hear anything. So it's a glass-proof box. I kind of... That's like... 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

But don't headsets open up the possibility of cheating? But then like the headsets would be all provided by the organizers. Right. So some sort of sound. And you'd have to have like both. We have had that in tournaments that you have to have white noise and some kind of sound from like Spotify or 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, listening to music usually helps me because doing tasks that are more intuition-based, then that helps with the flow. With larger games, you probably don't want that disturbance. But I've definitely played some of my best Blitz chess just...

Yeah, listening to music. What do you listen to? Sitting there bopping. Bopping. Yeah, I think... Some wild Norwegian music? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rammstein or something? That's actually German, but they have some good songs. Yeah.

No, I think my best chess has probably been Norwegian rap. Norwegian rap, really? What's a good Norwegian rap band that you could, or rap group that you could recommend? There's a guy called Mr. Pimp Lotion 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 different one.

But I actually did a song with those guys. What a great name, Mr. Pimp Lotion. That's incredible. Yeah, my verse is 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...

Yeah, the thing about what happened was that they did a show and they have this thing called Spanoul, which is like a moisturizer mostly used for animals. But like this, Mr. Pimplotion, like he's obsessed with that one. And somebody apparently stole that from backstage at their concert. And so 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 rapping about. Gang wars and shootings. In Norway, somebody's like, who stole my lotion? Yeah. There actually was a popular song like about 20 years ago.

that reference 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 that 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 randomly come in at the very end and solve the mystery. Was it you? No.

It wasn't me. I was not at that particular show. I think the best online chess that I've ever played was probably listening to their music. Do you mix it up? Do you ever listen to Led Zeppelin? No, I listen to a lot of older stuff as well.

So, yeah, I'm like, I have no idea what's on the chart these days in general, but I find out through Tony.

I do. 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, it's... I remember I asked my sister probably like 10 years ago. I saw her 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. Yeah.

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 within a few months for sure. Jamie, do you know? I didn't say. 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.

All right, Tony. Fun times. Fun times. All right. Goodbye, everybody. Bye.