back to indexMagnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time | Lex Fridman Podcast #315
link |
The following is a conversation with Magnus Carlsen,
link |
the number one ranked chess player in the world
link |
and widely considered to be one of,
link |
if not the greatest chess player of all time.
link |
The camera on Magnus died 20 minutes into the conversation.
link |
Most folks still just listen to the audio
link |
through a podcast player anyway,
link |
but if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify,
link |
we did our best to still make it interesting
link |
by adding relevant image overlays.
link |
I mess things up sometimes, like in this case,
link |
but I'm always working hard to improve.
link |
I hope you understand.
link |
Thank you for your patience and support along the way.
link |
This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
link |
To support it, please check out our sponsors
link |
in the description.
link |
And now, dear friends, here's Magnus Carlsen.
link |
You're considered by many to be one of the greatest,
link |
if not the greatest chess players of all time,
link |
but you're also one of the best fantasy football,
link |
AKA soccer, competitors in the world,
link |
plus recently picking up poker
link |
and competing at a world class level.
link |
So before chess, let's talk football and greatness.
link |
You're a Real Madrid fan,
link |
so let me ask you the ridiculous big question.
link |
Who do you think is the greatest football,
link |
AKA soccer player of all time?
link |
Can you make the case for Messi?
link |
Can you make the case for Cristiano Ronaldo, Pele,
link |
Maradona, does anybody jump to mind?
link |
I think it's pretty hard to make a case
link |
for anybody else than Messi for his all around game.
link |
And frankly, my Real Madrid fandom
link |
sort of predates the Ronaldo era,
link |
the second Ronaldo, not the first one.
link |
So I always liked Ronaldo,
link |
but I always kind of thought that Messi was better.
link |
And I went to quite a number of Madrid games
link |
and they've always been super helpful to me down there.
link |
The only thing is that, like they asked me,
link |
they were gonna do an interview
link |
and they were gonna ask me who my favorite player was.
link |
And I said somebody else,
link |
I think I said Isco at that point,
link |
and I was like, okay, take two now you say Ronaldo.
link |
So for them it was very important,
link |
but it wasn't that huge to me.
link |
So Messi over Maradona.
link |
Yeah, but I think just like with chess,
link |
it's hard to compare eras.
link |
Obviously the improvements in football
link |
have been like in technique and such
link |
have been even greater than they have been in chess,
link |
but it's always a weird discussion to have.
link |
But just as a fan,
link |
what do you think is beautiful about the game?
link |
What defines greatness?
link |
Is it, you know, with Messi,
link |
one, he's really good at finishing,
link |
two, very good at assist,
link |
like three, there's just magic.
link |
It's just beautiful to see the play.
link |
So it's not just about the finishing.
link |
There's some, it's like Maradona's hand of God.
link |
There's some creativity on the pitch.
link |
Is that important or is it very important
link |
to get the World Cups and the big championships
link |
and that kind of stuff?
link |
I think the World Cup is pretty overrated,
link |
seeing as it's such a small sample size.
link |
So it sort of annoys me always when, you know,
link |
titles are always appreciated so much,
link |
even though that particular title can be a lot of luck
link |
or at least some luck.
link |
So I do appreciate the statistics a bit
link |
and all the statistics say that Messi's
link |
the best finisher of all time,
link |
which I think helps a lot.
link |
And then there's the intangibles as well.
link |
The flip side of that is the small sample size
link |
is what really creates the magic.
link |
It's so, it's just like the Olympics.
link |
You basically train your whole life for this.
link |
You live your whole life for this and it's a rare moment.
link |
One mistake and it's all over.
link |
That's, for some reason, a lot of people
link |
either break under that pressure
link |
or rise up under that pressure.
link |
You don't admire the magic of that?
link |
I just think that rising under pressure
link |
and breaking under the pressure
link |
is often a really oversimplified take
link |
on what's happening.
link |
Yeah, we do romanticize the game.
link |
Well, let me ask you another ridiculous question.
link |
You're also a fan of basketball.
link |
Let me ask the goat question.
link |
I'm biased because I went to high school in Chicago,
link |
Chicago Bulls during the Michael Jordan era.
link |
Let me ask the Jordan versus LeBron James question.
link |
Let's continue on this thread of greatness.
link |
Which one do you pick or somebody else?
link |
So I'll give you a completely different answer.
link |
Depending on my mood and depending on whom I talk to,
link |
I pick one of the two and then I try to argue for that.
link |
With the quantum mechanical thing.
link |
Well, can you, what, again, what would,
link |
if you were to argue for either one,
link |
statistically, I think LeBron James
link |
is going to surpass Jordan.
link |
And so again, there's a debate between.
link |
Unquantifiable greatness, no?
link |
I mean, that's the whole, that's the whole debate.
link |
So it's, well, it's quantifiable versus unquantifiable.
link |
What's more important?
link |
And you're depending on mood all over the place.
link |
But what do you lean in general with these folks,
link |
with soccer, with anything in life,
link |
towards the unquantifiable more?
link |
No, definitely towards the quantifiable.
link |
So when you're unsure, lean towards the numbers.
link |
But see, like, it's later generations.
link |
There's something, that's what people say about Maradona
link |
is, you know, he took a arguably somewhat mediocre team
link |
So there's that also uplifting nature of the player
link |
to be able to rise up, it is a team sport.
link |
So are you gonna, like, are you gonna punish Messi
link |
for taking a mediocre Argentine squad
link |
to the final in 2014 and punish him
link |
because they lost to a great team very narrowly
link |
after they missed?
link |
The internet does.
link |
He set up, like, a great chance for Higuain
link |
in the first half, which he, which he fluffed.
link |
And then, yeah, eventually they lost the game.
link |
Yeah, they do criticize Cristiano Ronaldo,
link |
Messi for being on really strong squads
link |
in terms of the club teams and saying,
link |
yeah, okay, it's easy when you have like Ronaldinho
link |
or whoever on your team.
link |
It would be very interesting
link |
just if the league could make a decision.
link |
Yeah, just random, random allocation.
link |
And just every single game, just keep reallocating
link |
or maybe once a season or every season you get random.
link |
But let's say every, every player,
link |
if let's say they sign a five year contract for a team,
link |
like one of them, you're gonna get randomly allocated
link |
to, to let's say a bottom half team.
link |
I bet you there's gonna be so much corruption around that.
link |
It could be random.
link |
Obviously it wouldn't, wouldn't ever happen or work,
link |
but I think it's interesting to think about.
link |
So on chess, let's zoom out.
link |
If you break down your approach to chess
link |
when you're at your best,
link |
what do you think,
link |
what do you think contributes to that approach?
link |
Is it memory recall, specific lines and positions?
link |
How much of it is intuition?
link |
How much of it is pure calculation?
link |
How much of it is messing with the strategy of the opponent?
link |
So the game theory aspect in terms of what contributes
link |
to the highest level of play that you do.
link |
I think the answer differs a little bit now
link |
from what it did eight years ago.
link |
For instance, like I've, I feel like I've had like two peaks
link |
and in my career in 2014,
link |
well, 2013, 2014, and also in 2019.
link |
And in those years, I was very different
link |
in terms of, of my strength,
link |
strength as specifically in 2019,
link |
I benefited a lot from opening preparation
link |
while in 2013, 2014,
link |
I mostly tried to avoid my opponent's preparation
link |
rather than that being a, being a strength.
link |
So I'm mentioning that also because it's something,
link |
something you didn't, didn't mention.
link |
I think like my intuitive understanding of chess has
link |
over those years always been a little bit better
link |
than the others, even though it has evolved as well.
link |
Certainly there are, there are things that I understand now
link |
that I didn't understand back then,
link |
but that's not only for me, that's for, for others as well.
link |
I was younger back then.
link |
So I played with more energy,
link |
which meant that I could play better
link |
in long drawn out games,
link |
which was also a necessity for me
link |
because I didn't, I couldn't,
link |
couldn't beat people in the, in the openings.
link |
But in terms of calculation,
link |
that's always been a weird issue for me.
link |
Like I've always been really, really bad
link |
at solving exercises in chess.
link |
Like that's been like a blind spot for me.
link |
First of all, I found it hard to concentrate on them
link |
and to look, to look deep enough.
link |
So this is like a puzzle, a position, mate in X.
link |
I mean, one thing is mate, but find the best move.
link |
That's generally the exercise,
link |
like find the best move, find the best line.
link |
You, you just don't connect with it.
link |
Usually like you have to, to look, look deep.
link |
And then when I get these lines during the game,
link |
I very often find the, the, the right solution,
link |
even though, even though it's not still
link |
the best part of my game to, to calculate very, very deeply.
link |
But it doesn't feel like calculation you're saying
link |
And it does sometimes, but for me,
link |
it's more like I'm at the board trying to find,
link |
trying to find the solution.
link |
And I understand like the training at home
link |
is like trying a little bit to, to replicate that.
link |
Like you give somebody half an hour in a position,
link |
like in this instance, you might've thought
link |
for half an hour if you play the game,
link |
but I just, I just cannot do it.
link |
One thing I know that I am good at though,
link |
is calculating short lines because I calculate them,
link |
them well, I'm good at seeing little details
link |
and I'm also much better than, than most at evaluating,
link |
which I think is something that sets me,
link |
sets me apart from, from others.
link |
So evaluating specific position, if I,
link |
if I make this move and the position changes in this way,
link |
is this a step in the right direction?
link |
Like in a big picture way?
link |
Like you calculate a few moves ahead and then you evaluate
link |
because a lot of, a lot of time, a lot of the times
link |
you cannot, the branches become so big
link |
that you cannot calculate everything.
link |
So you have to, yeah.
link |
So you have to, you have to make evaluations based on,
link |
you know, based mostly on knowledge
link |
and intuition and somehow I seem to do that pretty well.
link |
When you say you're good at short lines,
link |
what's that, what's, what's short?
link |
That's usually like lines of two to four moves each.
link |
Okay, so that, that's directly applicable
link |
to even faster games like blitz, chess and so on.
link |
Yeah, blitz is a lot about calculating forest lines.
link |
So those, you can see pretty clearly that the players
link |
who struggle at blitz who are great at classical
link |
are those who rely on a deep calculating ability
link |
because you simply don't have time for that in blitz.
link |
You have to calculate quickly and rely a lot on intuition.
link |
Can you try to, I know it's really difficult.
link |
Can you try to talk through what's actually
link |
being visualized in your head?
link |
Is there, is there a visual component?
link |
Yeah, no, I just visualized the board.
link |
I mean, the board is in my head.
link |
My interpretation is that it is two dimensional.
link |
Like what color is, is it brown tinted?
link |
Is it, like what's the theme?
link |
Is it a big board, small board?
link |
Are the, what do the pawns look like?
link |
Or is it more in the space of concepts?
link |
Yeah, there aren't a lot of colors.
link |
It's mostly, yeah.
link |
Queen's gambit on the ceiling, whatever.
link |
I'm trying now to imagine it.
link |
What about when you do the branching,
link |
when you have multiple boards and so on?
link |
What, how does that look?
link |
No, but it's only one at a time.
link |
One position at a time.
link |
One position at a time.
link |
So then I go back and that's what, when,
link |
when people play, or at least that's what I do.
link |
When I play blindfold chess against several people,
link |
then it's just always one board at a time.
link |
And the rest are stored away somewhere.
link |
But how do you store them away?
link |
So like, you went down one branch.
link |
You're like, all right, that's, I got that.
link |
I understand that there's some good there,
link |
there's some bad there.
link |
Now let me go down another branch.
link |
Like, how do you store away the information?
link |
You just put it on a shelf, kind of?
link |
I try and store it away.
link |
Sometimes I have to sort of repeat it because I forget.
link |
And it does happen frequently in games
link |
that you're thinking for,
link |
especially if you're thinking for a long,
link |
let's say a half an hour,
link |
or even more than that, that you play a move
link |
and then your opponent plays a move,
link |
then you play a move and they play a move again.
link |
And you realize, oh, I actually calculated that.
link |
I just forgot about it.
link |
So that's obviously what happens
link |
when you store the information and you cannot retrieve it.
link |
When you think about a move for 20, 30 minutes,
link |
like how do you break that down?
link |
Can you describe what,
link |
like what's the algorithm here
link |
that takes 30 minutes to run?
link |
30 minutes is, at least for me, it's usually a waste.
link |
30 minutes usually means that I don't know what to do.
link |
You're just running into the wall over and over.
link |
Yeah, I'm trying to find something that isn't there.
link |
I think 10 to 15 minutes things
link |
in complicated positions can be really, really helpful.
link |
Then you can spend your time pretty efficiently.
link |
Just means that the branches are getting wide.
link |
There's a lot to run through,
link |
both in terms of calculation
link |
and lots you have to evaluate as well.
link |
And then based on that 10 to 15 minute thing,
link |
you have a pretty good idea what to do.
link |
I mean, it's very rare that I would think for half an hour
link |
and I would have a eureka moment during the game.
link |
Like if I haven't seen it in 10 minutes,
link |
I'm probably not gonna see it at all.
link |
You're going to different branches.
link |
And like after 15 minutes, it's like.
link |
But it mainly to the middle game,
link |
because when you get to the end game,
link |
it's usually brute force calculation
link |
that makes you spend so much time.
link |
So middle game is normally,
link |
it's a complicated mix of brute force calculation
link |
and like creativity and evaluation.
link |
So end game, it's easier in that sense.
link |
Well, you're good at every aspect of chess,
link |
but you're also your end game is legendary.
link |
It baffles experts.
link |
So can you linger on that then try to explain
link |
what the heck is going on there?
link |
Like if you look at game six
link |
of the previous world championship,
link |
the longest game ever played in chess,
link |
it was I think his queen versus your rook knight in two pawns.
link |
There's so many options there.
link |
It's such an interesting little dance
link |
and it's kind of not obvious that it wouldn't be a draw.
link |
So how do you escape it not being a draw
link |
and you win that match?
link |
No, I knew that for most of the time,
link |
it was a theoretical draw
link |
since chess with seven or less pieces on the board is solved.
link |
So you can, like people watching online,
link |
they can just check it.
link |
They can check and they can check a so called table base
link |
and they, it just gonna spit out win for white,
link |
win for black or draw.
link |
So, and also I knew that,
link |
I knew that didn't know that position specifically,
link |
but I knew that it had to be a draw.
link |
So for me, it was about staying alert.
link |
First of all, trying to look for the best way
link |
to put my pieces, but yeah,
link |
those end games are a bit, they're a bit unusual.
link |
They don't happen too often.
link |
So what I'm usually good at is I'm using my strength
link |
that I also use in middle games
link |
is that I evaluate well
link |
and I calculate short variations quite.
link |
Even for the end game, short variations matter?
link |
Yes, it does matter in some simpler end games.
link |
Yeah, but also like there are these theoretical end games
link |
with very few pieces like rook knights
link |
and two pawns versus Queens,
link |
but a lot of end games are simply defined
link |
by the Queens being exchanged
link |
and there are a lot of other pieces left
link |
and then it's usually not brute force.
link |
It's usually more of understanding and evaluation
link |
and then I can use my strengths very well.
link |
Why are you so damn good at the end game?
link |
Isn't there a lot of moves from when the end game starts
link |
to when the end game finishes and you have a few pieces
link |
and you have to figure out,
link |
it's like a sequence of little games that happens, right?
link |
Like little pattern.
link |
Like how does it being able to evaluate a single position
link |
lead you to evaluate a long sequence of positions
link |
that eventually lead to a checkmate?
link |
Well, I think if you evaluate well at the start,
link |
you know what plans to go for
link |
and then usually the play from there
link |
is often pretty simple.
link |
Let's say you understand how to arrange your pieces
link |
and often also how to arrange your pawns
link |
early in the end game then that makes all the difference
link |
and after that is like what we call technique very often
link |
that it's technique basically just means
link |
that the moves are simple and these are moves
link |
that a lot of players could make
link |
not only the very strongest ones.
link |
These are moves that are kind of understood
link |
So with the evaluation,
link |
you're just constantly improving a little bit
link |
and that just leads to suffocating the position
link |
and then eventually to the win
link |
as long as you're doing the evaluation well,
link |
one step at a time.
link |
Also, yeah, I said like if you evaluate it better
link |
and thus accumulated some small advantages
link |
then you can often make your life pretty easy
link |
towards the end of the end game.
link |
So you said in 2019 sort of the second phase
link |
of why you're so damn good.
link |
You did a lot of opening preparation.
link |
What's the goal for you of the opening game of chess?
link |
Is it to throw the opponent off from any prepared lines?
link |
Is there something you could put into words
link |
about why you're so damn good at the openings?
link |
Again, these things have changed a lot over time.
link |
Back in Kasparov's days, for instance,
link |
he very often got huge advantages
link |
from the opening as white.
link |
Can you explain why?
link |
There were several reasons for that.
link |
First of all, he worked harder.
link |
He was more creative in finding ideas.
link |
He was able to look places others didn't.
link |
Also, he had a very strong team of people
link |
who had specific strengths in openings that he could use.
link |
So they would come up with ideas
link |
and he would integrate those ideas into...
link |
Yeah, and he would also very often
link |
come up with them himself.
link |
Also, at the start, he had some of the first computer engines
link |
to work for him to find his ideas,
link |
to look deeper, to verify his ideas.
link |
He was better at using them than a lot of others.
link |
Now, I feel like the playing field is a lot more level.
link |
There are both computer engines, neural networks,
link |
and hybrid engines available to practically anybody.
link |
So it's much harder to find ideas now
link |
that actually give you an advantage
link |
with the white pieces.
link |
I mean, people don't expect to find those ideas anymore.
link |
Now it's all about finding ideas
link |
that are missed by the engines.
link |
Either they're missed entirely
link |
or they're missed at low depth
link |
and using them to gain some advantage
link |
in the sense that you have more knowledge.
link |
And it's also good to know that usually
link |
these are not complete bluffs, these are like semi bluffs
link |
so that you know that even if your opponent
link |
makes all the right moves, you can still make a draw.
link |
And also at the start of 2019,
link |
neural networks had just started to be a thing in chess.
link |
And I'm not entirely sure,
link |
but there were at least some players
link |
even in the top events who you could see did not use them
link |
or did not use them in the right way.
link |
And then you could gain a huge advantage
link |
because a lot of positions,
link |
they were being evaluated differently
link |
by the neural networks than traditional chess engines
link |
because they simply think about chess
link |
in a very, very different way.
link |
So short answer is these days,
link |
it's all about surprising your opponent
link |
and taking it into positions where you have more knowledge.
link |
So is there some sense in which it's okay
link |
to make suboptimal quote unquote moves?
link |
I mean, you have to because the best moves
link |
have been analyzed to death mostly.
link |
So that's a kind of, when you say semi bluff,
link |
that's a kind of sacrifice.
link |
You're sacrificing the optimal move,
link |
the optimal position so that you can take the opponent.
link |
I mean, that's a game theoretic sense.
link |
You take the opponent to something they didn't prepare well.
link |
Yeah, but you could also look at it another way
link |
that regardless, like if you turn on whatever engine
link |
you turn on, like if you try to analyze
link |
either from the starting position
link |
or the starting position of some popular opening,
link |
like if you analyze long enough,
link |
it's always gonna end up in a draw.
link |
So in that sense, you may not be going
link |
for like the objective, the tries
link |
that are objectively the most difficult to draw against,
link |
but you are trying to look at least
link |
at the less obvious paths.
link |
How much do you use engines?
link |
Do you use Leela, Stockfish in your preparations?
link |
Personally, I try not to use them too much
link |
on my own because I know that when I play,
link |
you obviously cannot have help from engines.
link |
And often I feel like often having imperfect
link |
or knowledge about a position or some engine knowledge
link |
can be a lot worse than having no knowledge.
link |
So I try to look at engines as little as possible.
link |
So yeah, so your team uses them for research
link |
for a generation of ideas.
link |
But you are relying primarily on your human resources.
link |
You can evaluate well.
link |
Yeah, I can evaluate as a human.
link |
I can know what they find unpleasant and so on.
link |
And it's very often the case for me to some extent,
link |
but a lot for others that you arrive in a position
link |
and your opponent plays a move that you didn't expect
link |
and if you didn't expect it,
link |
you know that it's probably not a great move
link |
since it hasn't been expected by the engine.
link |
But if it's not obvious why it's not a good move,
link |
it's usually very, very hard to figure it out.
link |
And so then looking at the engines doesn't necessarily help
link |
because at that point, like you're facing a human,
link |
you have to sort of think as a human.
link |
I was chatting with Demis Ashabis, CEO of DeepMind
link |
a couple of days ago and he asked me to ask you
link |
about what you first felt when you saw the play of AlphaZero.
link |
Like interesting ideas in your creativity.
link |
Did you feel fear that the machine is taking over?
link |
Were you inspired?
link |
And what was going on in your mind and heart?
link |
Funny thing about Demis is he doesn't play chess at all
link |
like an AI, he plays in a very, very human way.
link |
No, I was hugely inspired when I saw the games at first.
link |
And in terms of man versus machine,
link |
I mean that battle was kind of lost for humans
link |
even before I entered top level chess.
link |
So that's never been an issue for me.
link |
I never liked playing against computers much anyway.
link |
So that's completely fine.
link |
But it was amazing to see how they quote unquote
link |
thought about chess in such a different way
link |
and in a way that you could mistake for creativity.
link |
Mistake for creativity, strong words.
link |
Is it wild to you how many sacrifices it's willing to make
link |
that like sacrifice pieces and then wait
link |
for prolonged periods of time
link |
before doing anything with that?
link |
Is that weird to you that that's part of chess?
link |
No, it's one of the things that's hardest to replicate
link |
as a human as well, or at least for my playing style
link |
that usually when I sacrifice, I feel like I'm,
link |
I don't do it unless I feel like I'm getting something
link |
like tangible in return and.
link |
Like a few moves down the line.
link |
A few moves down the line,
link |
you can see that you can either retrieve the material
link |
or you can put your opponent's king under pressure
link |
or have some very like very concrete positional advantage
link |
that sort of compensates for it.
link |
For instance, in chess,
link |
so bishops and knights are fairly equivalent.
link |
We both give them three points,
link |
but bishops are a little bit better.
link |
And especially a bishop pair is a lot better
link |
than a bishop and a knight.
link |
So, or especially two knights depends on the position,
link |
but like on average they are.
link |
So like sacrificing a pawn in order to get a bishop pair,
link |
that's one of the most common sacrifices in chess.
link |
Oh, you're okay making that sacrifice?
link |
Yeah, I mean, it depends on the situation,
link |
but generally that's fine.
link |
And there are a lot of openings that are based on that,
link |
that you sacrifice a pawn for the bishop pair,
link |
and then eventually it's some sort of positional equality.
link |
But the way AlphaZero would sacrifice a knight
link |
or sometimes two pawns, three pawns,
link |
and you could see that it's looking
link |
for some sort of positional domination,
link |
but it's hard to understand.
link |
And it was really fascinating to see.
link |
Yeah, in 2019, I was sacrificing a lot of pawns,
link |
especially, and it was a great joy.
link |
Unfortunately, it's not so easy to continue to do that.
link |
People have found more solid opening lines since
link |
that don't allow me to do that as often.
link |
I'm still trying both to get those positions
link |
and still trying to learn the art of sacrificing pieces.
link |
So Demis also made a comment that was interesting
link |
to my new chess brain, which is one of the reasons
link |
that chess is fun is because of the, quote,
link |
creative tension between the bishop and the knight.
link |
So you're talking about this interesting difference
link |
between the two pieces, that there's some kind of,
link |
how would you convert that?
link |
I mean, that's like a poetic statement about chess.
link |
I think he said that, why has chess been played
link |
for such a long time?
link |
Why is it so fun to play at every level?
link |
That if you can reduce it to one thing,
link |
is it the bishop and the knight,
link |
some kind of weird dynamics that they create in chess.
link |
Is there any truth to that?
link |
It sounds very good.
link |
I haven't tried a lot of other games,
link |
but I tried to play a little bit of shogi.
link |
And for my new shogi brain, comparing it to chess,
link |
what annoyed me about that game is how much the pieces suck.
link |
Basically, you have one rook and you have one bishop
link |
that move like in chess.
link |
And the rest of the pieces are really not very powerful.
link |
So I think that's one of the attractions of chess,
link |
like how powerful, especially the queen is, which.
link |
I kind of think makes it a lot of fun.
link |
So you think power is more fun than like variety?
link |
No, there is a variety in chess as well, though.
link |
But not much more so than like go or something.
link |
No, no, no, no, that's for.
link |
So like knight, I mean, they all move in different ways.
link |
They're all like weird.
link |
There's just all these weird patterns and positions
link |
The difference in the pieces create
link |
all kinds of interesting dynamics,
link |
I guess is what I'm trying to say.
link |
Yeah, and I guess it is quite fascinating
link |
that all those years ago,
link |
they created the knight and the bishop
link |
without probably realizing that they would be
link |
almost equally strong with such different qualities.
link |
That's crazy that this, you know,
link |
like when you design computer games,
link |
it's like an art form.
link |
It's science and an art to balance it.
link |
You know, you talk about Starcraft and all those games,
link |
like so that you can have competitive play
link |
at the highest level with all those different units.
link |
In the case of chess, it's different pieces.
link |
And they somehow designed a game
link |
that was super competitive.
link |
But there's probably some kind of natural selection
link |
that the chess just wouldn't last if it was designed poorly.
link |
Yeah, and I think the rules have changed over time
link |
a little bit, but I would be,
link |
I mean, speaking of games and all that,
link |
I'm also interested to play other games like chess 960
link |
or Fisher random, as they call it,
link |
like that you have 960 maps instead of one.
link |
Yeah, so for people who don't know,
link |
a Fisher random chess, chess 960s.
link |
Yeah, that basically just means
link |
that the pawns are in the same way
link |
and the major pieces are distributed randomly
link |
Only that there have to be obviously
link |
bishops of opposite color
link |
and the king has to be in between the rooks
link |
so that you can castle both ways.
link |
Oh, you can still castle in chess 960.
link |
You can still castle, but it makes it interesting.
link |
So you still have, it still castles in the same way.
link |
So let's say the king is like here.
link |
Yeah, what happens in that case?
link |
Yeah, let's say the king is in the corner.
link |
So to castle this side,
link |
you have to clear a whole lot of pieces.
link |
Well, what would castling look like though?
link |
No, the king would go here and the rook would go there.
link |
And that's happened in my games as well.
link |
Like I forgot about castling
link |
and I've been like attacking a king over here
link |
and then all of a sudden it escapes to the other side.
link |
I think Fischer chess is good that it's,
link |
the maps will generally be worse than regular chess.
link |
Like I think the starting position is as close to ideal
link |
for creating a competitive game as possible,
link |
but they will still be like interesting and diverse enough
link |
that you can play very interesting games.
link |
So when you say maps, there's 960 different options
link |
and like what fraction of that creates interesting games
link |
at the highest level?
link |
This is something that a lot of people are curious about
link |
because when you challenge a great chess player
link |
like yourself to look at a random starting position
link |
that feels like it pushes you to play pure chess
link |
versus memorizing lines.
link |
Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.
link |
But that's the whole idea.
link |
That's what you want.
link |
How hard is it to play?
link |
I mean, can you talk about what it feels like to you
link |
to play with a random starting position?
link |
Is there some intuition you've been building up?
link |
It's very, very different.
link |
And I mean, understandably engines have
link |
an even greater advantage in 960
link |
than they have in classical chess.
link |
No, it's super interesting.
link |
And that's why also I really wish
link |
that we played more classical chess,
link |
like long games, four to seven hours
link |
and in fish random chess, chess 960,
link |
because then you really need that time,
link |
even on the first moves.
link |
What usually happens is that you get 15 minutes
link |
before the game, you're getting told the position
link |
15 minutes before the game,
link |
and then you can think about it a little bit,
link |
even, you know, check the computer,
link |
but that's all the time you have,
link |
but then you really need to figure it out.
link |
And like some of the positions obviously
link |
are a lot more interesting than the others.
link |
In some of them, it appears that like,
link |
if you don't play symmetrically at the start,
link |
then you're probably gonna be in a pretty bad position.
link |
What do you mean with the pawns?
link |
With the pawns, yeah.
link |
Why does that make sense?
link |
That's the thing about chess though.
link |
So let's say white opens with E4,
link |
which is, which has always been the most played move.
link |
There are many ways to meet that,
link |
but the most solid ways of playing
link |
has always been the symmetrical response.
link |
With E5, and then there's the,
link |
through Lopez, there's the Petrov opening and so on.
link |
And if you just banned symmetry on the first move in chess,
link |
you would get more interesting games.
link |
Or you'd get more decisive, decisive games.
link |
So that's the good thing about chess
link |
is that we've played it so long
link |
that we've actually devised non symmetrical openings
link |
that are also fairly equal and.
link |
But symmetry is a good default.
link |
But yeah, symmetry is a good default.
link |
And it's a problem that by playing symmetrical
link |
armed with good preparation in regular chess,
link |
it's just a little bit too easy to,
link |
it's a little bit too dryish.
link |
And I guess if you analyzed,
link |
if you analyzed a lot in chess 960,
link |
then the, a lot of the positions
link |
would end up being pretty dryish as well.
link |
Because the random starting points are so shitty,
link |
You're actually forced to play symmetrically.
link |
Like you cannot actually try and play
link |
in a more sort of interesting, interesting manner.
link |
Is there any other kind of variations
link |
that are interesting to you?
link |
Oh yeah, there are, there are several.
link |
So no castling chess has been,
link |
has been promoted by former world champion,
link |
There have been a few tournaments with that,
link |
not any that I've participated in though.
link |
I kind of like it.
link |
Also, my coach uses like non castling engines quite a bit
link |
to analyze regular positions
link |
to just to get a different, different perspective.
link |
So castling is like a defensive thing.
link |
So if you remove castling,
link |
it forces you to be more offensive, is that why?
link |
Yeah, it just, yeah, for sure.
link |
It seems like a tiny little difference.
link |
No castling probably forces you
link |
to be a little bit more defensive at the start,
link |
or I would guess so,
link |
because you cannot suddenly escape with the kings.
link |
It's going to make the game a bit slower at the start,
link |
but I feel like eventually it's going to,
link |
it's going to make the more games more,
link |
well, less droish for sure.
link |
Then you have some weirder variants,
link |
like where the pawns can move both diagonally and forward.
link |
And also you have self capture chess,
link |
which is quite interesting.
link |
So that pawns can,
link |
or pieces could commit suicide or what?
link |
Why would that be a good move?
link |
No, sometimes one of your pieces occupy a square.
link |
I mean, let me just set up a position.
link |
Let's put it like this, for instance, like here.
link |
I mean, there are a lot of ways to checkmate for white,
link |
like this for instance, or there are several ways,
link |
but like this would be a checkmate.
link |
For people who are just listening,
link |
yeah, basically you're bringing in a knight close
link |
to the whole, the king, the queen and so on,
link |
and you replace the knight with a queen.
link |
Yeah, that's interesting.
link |
So you can have like a front of pieces,
link |
and then you just replace them with the second piece.
link |
Yeah, I mean, that could be interesting.
link |
I think also maybe sometimes it's just clearance,
link |
basically it adds an extra element of clearance.
link |
So I think there are many, many different variants.
link |
I don't think any of them are better than the one
link |
that has been played for at least a thousand years,
link |
but it's certainly interesting to see.
link |
So one of your goals is to reach
link |
the FIDEELO chess rating of 2900.
link |
Maybe you can comment on how is this rating calculated
link |
and what does it take to get there?
link |
Is it possible for a human being to get there?
link |
Basically you play with a factor of 10,
link |
which means that if I were to play against an opponent
link |
who's rated the same as me, I would be expected
link |
to score 50%, obviously, and that means
link |
that I would win five points with a win,
link |
lose five points with a draw, and then equal if I draw.
link |
If your opponent is 200 points lower rated,
link |
you're expected to score 75% and so on.
link |
And you establish that rating by playing a lot of people,
link |
and then it slowly converges towards an estimate
link |
of how likely you are to win or lose against different people.
link |
Yeah, and my rating is obviously carried
link |
through thousands of games.
link |
Right now, my rating is 2861, which is decent.
link |
I think that pretty much corresponds
link |
to the level I have at the moment,
link |
which means in order to reach 2900,
link |
I would have to either get better at chess,
link |
which I think is fairly hard to do,
link |
at least considerably better.
link |
So what I would need to do is try and optimize
link |
even more in terms of preparations, everything.
link |
Not necessarily like selecting tournaments and so on,
link |
but just optimizing in terms of preparation,
link |
making sure I never have any bad days.
link |
So you basically can't lose.
link |
Yeah, I basically can't fuck up ever
link |
if I wanna reach that goal.
link |
And so I think reaching 2900 is pretty unlikely.
link |
The reason I've set the goal is to have something
link |
to play for, to have a motivation
link |
to actually try and be at my best when I play.
link |
Because otherwise, I'm playing to some extent,
link |
mostly for fun these days in that I love to play,
link |
I love to try and win, but I don't have a lot to prove
link |
or anything, but that gives me at least the motivation
link |
to try and be at my best all the time,
link |
which I think is something to aim for.
link |
So at the moment, I'm quite enjoying that process
link |
of trying to, yeah, trying to optimize.
link |
What would you say motivates you in this now
link |
and in the years leading up to now?
link |
The love of winning or the fear of losing?
link |
So for the World Championship,
link |
it's been fear of losing for sure.
link |
Other tournaments, love of winning is a great, great factor
link |
and that's why I also get more joy
link |
from winning most tournaments than I do
link |
for winning the World Championship
link |
because then it's mostly been a relief.
link |
I also think I enjoy winning more now than I did before
link |
because I feel like I'm a little bit more relaxed now.
link |
And I also know that it's not gonna last forever.
link |
So every little win, I appreciate a lot more now.
link |
And yeah, in terms of fear of losing,
link |
that's a huge reason why I'm not gonna play
link |
the World Championship
link |
because it really didn't give me a lot of joy.
link |
It really was all about avoiding losing.
link |
Why is it that the World Championship
link |
really makes you feel this way, the anxiety?
link |
So when you say losing, do you mean not just the match
link |
but every single position, like the fear of a blunder?
link |
No, I mean, the blunder is okay.
link |
Like when I sit down at the board,
link |
then it's mostly been fine because then I'm focused on.
link |
Then I'm focused on the game
link |
and then I know that I can play the game.
link |
It's a time like in between, like knowing that,
link |
you know, I feel like losing is not an option
link |
because it's the World Championship
link |
and because in a World Championship, there are two players.
link |
There's a winner and a loser.
link |
If I don't win a random tournament that I play,
link |
then, you know, I'm usually, it depends on the tournament.
link |
I might be disappointed for sure.
link |
Might even be pretty pissed,
link |
but ultimately, you know, you go on to the next one.
link |
With the World Championship,
link |
you don't go on to the next one.
link |
It's like, it's years.
link |
And it also has been like,
link |
it's been a core part of my identity for a while now
link |
that I am World Champion.
link |
And so there's not an option of losing that.
link |
Yeah, there's, you're gonna have to,
link |
at least for a couple of years,
link |
carry the weight of having lost.
link |
You're the former World Champion now,
link |
if you lose versus the current World Champion.
link |
There are certain sports that create that anxiety
link |
and others that don't.
link |
For example, I think UFC, like mixed martial arts
link |
are a little better with losing.
link |
It's understood, like everybody loses.
link |
Not everybody though.
link |
Khabib entered the chat.
link |
But in boxing, there is like that extra pressure
link |
of like maintaining the championship.
link |
I mean, maybe you could say the same thing
link |
about the UFC as well.
link |
So for you personally, for a person who loves chess,
link |
the first time you won the World Championship,
link |
that was the big, that was the thing that was fun.
link |
And then everything after is like stressful.
link |
There was certainly stress involved the first time as well.
link |
But it was nothing compared to the others.
link |
So the only World Championship after that
link |
that I really enjoyed was the one in 2018
link |
against the American Fabiano Caruana.
link |
And what that made that different
link |
is that I'd been kind of slumping for a bit
link |
and he'd been on the rise.
link |
So our ratings were very, very similar.
link |
They were so close that if at any point during the match
link |
I'd lost the game,
link |
he would have been ranked as number one in the world.
link |
Like our ratings were so close that for each draw,
link |
And the game itself was close.
link |
Yeah, the games themselves were very close.
link |
I had a winning position in the first game
link |
that I couldn't really get anywhere for a lot of games.
link |
Then he had a couple of games
link |
where he could potentially have won.
link |
Then in the last game I was a little bit better.
link |
And eventually they were all drawn.
link |
But I felt like all the way
link |
that this is an interesting match against an opponent
link |
who is at this position at this point equal to me.
link |
And so losing that would not have been this disaster.
link |
Because in all the other matches,
link |
I would know that I would have lost against somebody
link |
who I know I'm much better than.
link |
And that would be a lot harder for me to take.
link |
Well, that's fascinating and beautiful
link |
that the stress isn't from losing.
link |
Because you have fun.
link |
You enjoy playing against somebody who's as good as you,
link |
maybe better than you.
link |
That's exciting to you.
link |
It's losing at this high stakes thing
link |
that only happens rarely to a person
link |
who's not as good as you.
link |
Yeah, and that's why it's also been incredibly frustrating
link |
in other matches, like when I know,
link |
when we play draw after draw.
link |
And I can just, I know that I'm better.
link |
I can sense during the game
link |
that I understand it better than them.
link |
But I cannot get over the hump.
link |
So you are the best chess player in the world.
link |
And you not playing the World Championship
link |
really makes the World Championship not seem important.
link |
Or I mean, there's an argument to be made for that.
link |
Is there anything you would like to see
link |
if you had a change about the World Championship
link |
that would make it more fun for you?
link |
And better for the game of chess period
link |
for everybody involved?
link |
So I think 12 games or now 14 games
link |
that there is for the World Championship
link |
is a fairly, fairly low sample size.
link |
If you want to determine who the best player is,
link |
or at least the best player in that particular matchup,
link |
you need more games.
link |
And I think to some extent,
link |
if you're gonna have a World Champion
link |
and call them the best players,
link |
best player, you gotta make sure
link |
that the format increases the chance
link |
of finding the best player.
link |
So I think having more games,
link |
and if you're gonna have a lot more games,
link |
then you need to decrease the time control a bit,
link |
which in turn, I think is also a good thing
link |
because in very long time controls with deep preparation,
link |
you can sort of mask a lot of your deficiencies
link |
because you have a lot of time to think and to defend.
link |
And also, yeah, you have deep preparation.
link |
So I think those would be, for me to play,
link |
those would be the main things,
link |
more games and less time.
link |
So you want to see more games
link |
and rules that emphasize pure chess?
link |
Yeah, but already less time emphasizes pure chess
link |
because defensive techniques are much harder
link |
to execute with a little time.
link |
What do you think, is there a sweet spot in terms of,
link |
are we talking about Blitz?
link |
Is it, how many minutes?
link |
I think Blitz is a bit too fast.
link |
To their credit, this was suggested by Fieda as well.
link |
For a start to have two games per day,
link |
and let's say you have 45 minutes a game
link |
plus 15 or 30 seconds per move,
link |
that means that each sessions will probably be about,
link |
or a little less than two hours.
link |
That would be a start.
link |
Also what we're playing in the tournament
link |
that I'm playing here in Miami,
link |
which is four games a day
link |
with 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per move,
link |
those four would be more interesting
link |
than the one there is now.
link |
And I understand that there are a lot of traditions.
link |
People don't want to change the World Championship.
link |
I just think that the World Championship
link |
should do a better job of trying to reflect
link |
who's the best overall chess player.
link |
So would you say like, if it's faster games,
link |
you'd probably be able to get a sample size
link |
of like over 20 games, 20, 30, 40.
link |
You think there's a number that's good
link |
over a long period of time?
link |
Well, I would prefer as many as possible.
link |
So like a hundred?
link |
Yeah, but let's say you play 12 days, two games a day.
link |
You know, that's 24.
link |
I feel like that's already quite a bit better.
link |
You play like one black game, one white game each day.
link |
Endurance wise, that's okay?
link |
Yeah, I think that's fine.
link |
Like you will have free days as well.
link |
So I don't think that will be a problem.
link |
And also you have to prepare two sets of openings
link |
for each day, which makes it more difficult
link |
for the teams preparing, which I think is also good.
link |
Let me ask you a fun question.
link |
If Hikaru Nakamura was one of the two people,
link |
I guess, I apologize.
link |
Yeah, he could have finished second.
link |
So he lost the last round of the candidates.
link |
Yeah, and maybe you can explain to me,
link |
internet speed copium is something you tweeted.
link |
But if he got second, would you just despite him
link |
still play the world championship?
link |
That's internet question.
link |
And when the internet asks, I must abide.
link |
Thank you, internet.
link |
So after the last match, I did an interview
link |
right after where I talked about the fact
link |
that I was unlikely to play the next one.
link |
I'd spoken privately to both family, friends,
link |
and of course also my chess team
link |
that this was likely going to be the last match.
link |
What happened was that right before
link |
the world championship match,
link |
there was this young player, Alireza Firouzsa.
link |
He had a dramatic rise.
link |
He rose to second in the world rankings.
link |
He was 18 then, he's 19 now.
link |
He qualified for the candidates.
link |
And it felt like there was like at least
link |
a half realistic possibility that he could be the challenger
link |
for the next world championship.
link |
And that sort of lit a fire under me.
link |
Do you like that idea?
link |
Yeah, I like that a lot.
link |
I love the idea of playing him in the next world championship.
link |
And originally, I was sure that I wanted to announce
link |
right after the tournament, the match,
link |
that this was it, I'm done.
link |
I'm not playing the next one.
link |
But this lit a fire under me.
link |
So that made me think, this actually motivates me.
link |
And I just wanted to get it out there for several reasons
link |
to create more hype about the candidates,
link |
to sort of motivate myself a little bit,
link |
maybe motivate him.
link |
Also, obviously I wanted to give people a heads up
link |
for the candidates that you might be playing
link |
for more than first place.
link |
Normally, the candidates is first place or best.
link |
It's like the world championship.
link |
And then, so Nakamura was one of many people
link |
who just didn't believe me, which is fair.
link |
Because I've talked before about not necessarily wanting
link |
But I never talked as concretely or was as serious as this time.
link |
So he simply didn't believe me.
link |
And he was very vocal about that.
link |
And he said, nobody believed me, no other players,
link |
which may or may not have been true.
link |
And then, yeah, he lost the last game.
link |
And he didn't qualify.
link |
But to answer the question, no, I'd already at that point
link |
decided that I wouldn't play.
link |
I would have liked it less if he had not lost the last round.
link |
But the decision was already made.
link |
Does it break your heart a little bit
link |
that you're walking away from it?
link |
In all the ways that you mentioned
link |
that it's just not fun, there's a bunch of ways
link |
that it doesn't seem to bring out the best kind of chess.
link |
It doesn't bring out the best out of you
link |
in the particular opponents involved.
link |
Does it just break your heart a little bit?
link |
Like you're walking away from something,
link |
or maybe the entire chess community
link |
is walking away from a kind of a historic event that
link |
was so important in the 20th century at least?
link |
So I won the championship in 2013.
link |
I said no to the candidates in 2011.
link |
I didn't particularly like the format.
link |
I also wasn't, I was just not in the mood.
link |
I didn't want the pressure that was connected with the World
link |
And I was perfectly content at the time
link |
to play the tournaments that I did play,
link |
also to be ranked number one in the world.
link |
I was comfortable with the fact that I knew that I was the best
link |
and I didn't need a title to show others.
link |
And what happened later is I suddenly decided to play.
link |
In 2013, they changed the format.
link |
I liked it better.
link |
I just decided, it could be interesting.
link |
Let's try and get this.
link |
There really wasn't more than that to it.
link |
It wasn't like fulfilling lifelong dream or anything.
link |
I just thought, let's play.
link |
So it's just a cool tournament, a good challenge.
link |
Yeah, it's a cool tournament, it's a good challenge.
link |
It's something that could be a motivation.
link |
It motivated me to get in the best shape of my life
link |
that I had been until then.
link |
So it was a good thing.
link |
And 2013 match brought me a lot of joy as well.
link |
So I'm very, very happy that I did that.
link |
But I never had any thoughts that I'm
link |
going to keep the title for a long time.
link |
Immediately after the match in 2013,
link |
also before the match, I'd spoken against the fact
link |
that the champion is seeded into the final, which
link |
I thought was unfair.
link |
After the match, I made a proposal
link |
that we have a different system where the champion doesn't
link |
have these privileges.
link |
And people's reaction, both players and chess community,
link |
was generally like, OK, we're good.
link |
We don't want that.
link |
You keep your privileges.
link |
And I was like, OK, whatever.
link |
So you want to fight for it every time?
link |
Yeah, I want that.
link |
I have to ask, just in case you have an opinion,
link |
if you can maybe from a fantasy chess perspective
link |
analyze Ding versus Nepo, who wins?
link |
The current, the two people that would
link |
play if you're not playing.
link |
Generally, I would consider that Ding has a slightly better
link |
overall chess strength.
link |
What are the strengths and weaknesses of each,
link |
if you can summarize it?
link |
So Nepo, he's even better at calculating short lines
link |
But he can sometimes lack a little bit of depth.
link |
In short lines, he's an absolute calculation monster.
link |
He's extremely quick.
link |
But he can sometimes lack a bit of depth.
link |
Also recently, he's improved his openings quite a bit.
link |
So now he has a lot of good ideas.
link |
And he's very, very solid.
link |
Ding is not quite as well prepared.
link |
But he has an excellent understanding
link |
of dynamics and imbalances in chess, I would say.
link |
What do you mean by imbalances?
link |
Imbalances like bishops against knights
link |
and material imbalances.
link |
He can take advantage of those.
link |
Yes, I would say he's very, very good at that
link |
and understanding the dynamic factors,
link |
as we call them, like material versus time, especially.
link |
I think Nepo got the better of him and the candidates.
link |
So what's your sense why Ding has
link |
an edge in the championship?
link |
I feel like individual past results hasn't necessarily
link |
been a great indicator of world championship results.
link |
I feel like overall chess strength is more important.
link |
To be fair, I only think Ding has a very small edge.
link |
Difference is not big at all.
link |
But our individual head to head record
link |
was probably the main reason that a lot of people
link |
thought Nepo had a good chance against me as well.
link |
It was like 4 to 1 in his favor before the match.
link |
But that was just another example
link |
of why that may not necessarily mean anything.
link |
Also in our case, it was a very, very low sample size,
link |
I think, about the size of the match in total, 14 games.
link |
And that generally doesn't mean much.
link |
How close were those games, would you say, in your mind
link |
for the previous championship?
link |
So that game six was a turning point where you won.
link |
Was there any doubt in your mind that if you
link |
do a much larger sample size that you'll
link |
get the better of Nepo?
link |
No, no, larger sample size is always good for me.
link |
So world championship, it's a great parallel to football
link |
because it's a low scoring game.
link |
And if the better player or the better team scores,
link |
they win most of the time.
link |
Oh, that's generally for championships or in general?
link |
Yeah, for championships.
link |
They generally, generally win because the other slightly
link |
weaker team, they're good enough to defend
link |
to make it very, very difficult for the others.
link |
But when they actually have to create the chances,
link |
then they have no chance.
link |
And then it very often ends with a blowout
link |
as it did in our match.
link |
If I hadn't won game six, it probably
link |
would have been very, very close.
link |
He might have edged it.
link |
There's obviously a bigger chance
link |
that I would have edged it.
link |
But this is just what happens a lot in chess,
link |
but also in football that matches are close
link |
and then they somebody scores, somebody scores
link |
and then things change.
link |
And this gives people the illusion
link |
that the matchup was very close.
link |
Well, actually, it just means that the nature of the game
link |
makes the matches close very often.
link |
But it's always much more likely that one of the teams
link |
is going to or one of the players
link |
is going to break away than the others.
link |
And in other matches as well, even though a lot of people
link |
before the match in 2016 against Karjakin,
link |
there were people who thought before the match
link |
that I was massively overrated as a favorite
link |
and that essentially the match was pretty, pretty close,
link |
like whatever, 60, 40, or some people even said like 55, 45.
link |
And what I felt was that the match went very, very wrong
link |
for me and I still won.
link |
And some people saw that as an indication
link |
that the pre match probabilities were probably
link |
a bit closer than people thought.
link |
Well, I would look at it in the way that everything went wrong
link |
and I still won, which probably means
link |
that I was a pretty big favorite to begin with.
link |
I do have a question to you about that match, but first,
link |
so Sergei Karjakin was originally a qualifier
link |
for the candidate tournament, but was disqualified
link |
for breaching the FIDE code of ethics
link |
after publicly expressing approval
link |
for the 2022 Russian invasion in Ukraine.
link |
You look at the Cold War and some of the US
link |
versus Russian games of the past,
link |
does politics, does some of this geopolitics,
link |
politics ever creep its way into the game?
link |
Do you feel the pressure, the immensity of that
link |
as it does sometimes for the Olympics,
link |
these big nations playing each other,
link |
competing against each other,
link |
almost like fighting out in a friendly way,
link |
the battles, the tensions that they have
link |
in the space of geopolitics?
link |
Yeah, I think it still does.
link |
So the president of the World Chess Federation
link |
who was just reelected is a Russian.
link |
Like I like him personally, for sure,
link |
but he is quite connected to the Kremlin.
link |
And it's quite clear that the Kremlin
link |
considers it at least a semi important goal
link |
to bring the chess crown home to Russia.
link |
So it's still definitely a factor.
link |
And I mean, I can answer for in the Karjakin case,
link |
like I don't have a strong opinion
link |
on whether he should have been banned or not.
link |
Obviously, I don't agree with anything
link |
But in principle, I think that you should ban
link |
either no Russians or all Russians.
link |
I'm generally not particularly against either,
link |
but I don't love banning wrong opinions,
link |
even if they are as reprehensible as his have been.
link |
Yeah, there's something about the World Chess Championships
link |
or the Olympics where it feels like banning
link |
is counterproductive to the alleviating
link |
some of the conflicts.
link |
This is the thing though.
link |
We really don't know about the long term conflicts.
link |
And a lot of people try to do the right thing in this sense,
link |
which I don't really blame at all.
link |
It's just that we don't know.
link |
And I guess sometimes there are other ways
link |
you wanna try and help as well.
link |
See, like within the competition,
link |
within some of those battles of US versus Russia
link |
or so on of the past,
link |
there's also between the individuals,
link |
maybe you'll disagree with this,
link |
but from a spectator perspective,
link |
there's still a camaraderie.
link |
Like at the end of the day,
link |
there's a thing that unites you,
link |
which is this like appreciation
link |
of the fight over the chessboard.
link |
Even if you hate each other.
link |
I think for every match that's been,
link |
you would briefly discuss the game
link |
with your opponent after the game,
link |
no matter how much you hate each other.
link |
And I think that's lovely.
link |
And Kasparov, I mean, he was quoted,
link |
like when somebody in his team asked him like,
link |
why are you talking to Karpov after the game?
link |
Like you hate that guy.
link |
And he's like, yeah, sure.
link |
But he's the only one who understands me.
link |
Yeah, the only one who understands.
link |
So that's, no, I think that's really lovely.
link |
And I would love to see that in other areas as well,
link |
that you can, regardless of what happens,
link |
you can have a good chat about the game.
link |
You can just talk about the ideas
link |
with people who understand what you understand.
link |
So if you're not playing the world championships,
link |
there's a lot of people who are saying
link |
that perhaps the world championships don't matter anymore.
link |
Do you think there's some truth to that?
link |
I said that back a long time ago as well,
link |
that for me, I don't know if it never happened.
link |
So I don't know what would have happened,
link |
but I was thinking like the moment that I realized
link |
that I'm not the best player in the world,
link |
like I felt like morally I have to renounce
link |
the world championship title, you know,
link |
because it doesn't mean anything
link |
as long as you're not the best player.
link |
So the ratings really tell a bigger, a clearer story.
link |
I think so, at least over time.
link |
Like I'm a lot more proud of my streak
link |
of being rated number one in the world,
link |
which is now since I think the summer of 2011.
link |
I'm a lot more proud of that than the world championships.
link |
How much anxiety or even fear do you have
link |
before making a difficult decision on the chessboard?
link |
So it's a high stakes game.
link |
How nervous do you get?
link |
How much anxiety do you have in all that calculations?
link |
You're sitting there for 10, 15 minutes
link |
because you're in a fog.
link |
There's always a possibility of a blunder, of a mistake.
link |
Are you anxious about it?
link |
Are you afraid of it?
link |
I have been at times.
link |
I think the most nervous I ever been was game 10
link |
of the world championships in 2018.
link |
I know that was just a thrilling game.
link |
I basically abandoned the queen side at some point
link |
to attack him on the king side.
link |
And I knew that my attack, if it doesn't work,
link |
I'm going to lose, but I had so much adrenaline.
link |
I thought I was going to win.
link |
Then at some point I realized that it's not so clear
link |
and that my time was ticking and I was just getting
link |
I still remember what happened.
link |
Like we played this time trouble phase
link |
where he had very little time, but I had even less.
link |
And I just remember, I kind of remember much of it,
link |
just that when it was over, I was just so relieved
link |
because then it was clear that the position
link |
was probably gonna be routed in a draw.
link |
Otherwise I'm often nervous before games,
link |
but when I get there, it's all business.
link |
And especially when I'm playing well,
link |
I'm never afraid of losing when I play
link |
because I trust my instincts.
link |
I trust my skills.
link |
How much psychological intimidation is there
link |
from you to the other person, from the other person to you?
link |
I think people would play a lot better
link |
if they played against an anonymous me.
link |
I would love to have a tournament online
link |
where let's say you play 10 of the best players in the world
link |
and for each round you don't know who you're playing.
link |
That's an interesting question.
link |
There's these videos where people eat McDonald's
link |
or Burger King or Diet Coke versus Diet Pepsi.
link |
Would people be able to tell they're playing you
link |
from the style of play, do you think?
link |
Or from the strength of play?
link |
If there was a decent sample size, sure.
link |
And what about you?
link |
Would you be able to tell others?
link |
What sample size would you need to tell accurately?
link |
I feel like this is science.
link |
Yeah, I think 20 games would help a lot.
link |
But I know that they've already developed AI bots
link |
that are pretty good at recognizing somebody's style.
link |
Which is quite fascinating.
link |
And it'd be fascinating if those bots
link |
were able to summarize the style somehow.
link |
Maybe great attacking chess,
link |
like some of the same characteristics
link |
you've been describing like great at short line calculations
link |
all that kind of stuff.
link |
Or did you just talk shit?
link |
No, but really all the best chess players,
link |
there are basically just two camps.
link |
People who are good at longer lines or shorter lines.
link |
It's the hare and the tortoise, basically.
link |
And sometimes, you know,
link |
I feel like I'm the closest you can get
link |
to a high bridge of those.
link |
Because you got both,
link |
you're good in every position.
link |
So the middle game and end game.
link |
Yeah, and also I can think to some extent
link |
both rapidly and deeply,
link |
which a lot of people, they can't do both.
link |
But I mean, to answer your question from before,
link |
I sometimes can get a little bit intimidated
link |
but it's mostly if there's something unknown.
link |
It's mostly if it's something
link |
that I don't understand fully.
link |
And I do think, especially when I'm playing,
link |
well, people, they just play more timidly against me
link |
than they do against each other.
link |
Sometimes without even realizing it.
link |
And I certainly use that to my advantage.
link |
If I sense that my opponent is apprehensive,
link |
if I sense that they are not gonna necessarily
link |
take all their chances,
link |
it just means that I can take more risk.
link |
And I always try and find that balance.
link |
To shake them up a little bit.
link |
What's been the toughest loss of your career
link |
that you remember?
link |
Would that be the World Championship match?
link |
Oh yeah, for sure.
link |
Game eight in 2016.
link |
And who was it against?
link |
Against Karjakin in New York.
link |
Can you take it through the story of that game?
link |
Where were you before that game
link |
in terms of game one through seven?
link |
Yeah, so game one and two, not much happened.
link |
Game three and four, I was winning in both of them.
link |
And normally, I should definitely have converted both.
link |
I couldn't, partly due to good defense on his part,
link |
but mostly because I just, I messed up.
link |
And then after that, games five, six, and seven,
link |
not much happened.
link |
I was getting impatient at that point.
link |
So for game eight, I was probably ready
link |
to take a little bit more risks than I had
link |
before, which I guess was insane
link |
because I knew that he couldn't beat me
link |
unless I beat myself.
link |
Like he wasn't strong enough to outplay me.
link |
And that was leading to impatience somehow?
link |
No, because I knew that I was better.
link |
I knew that I was better.
link |
I knew that I just needed to win one game
link |
and then the match is over.
link |
That's what happened in 2021 as well.
link |
Like when I won the first game against Nebo,
link |
I knew that the match was over
link |
unless I like fuck up royally,
link |
then he's not gonna be able to beat me.
link |
So what happened was that I played
link |
a kind of an innocuous opening as White,
link |
just trying to get a game,
link |
trying to get him out of book as soon as possible.
link |
Okay, can you elaborate?
link |
Innocuous, get him out of the book.
link |
No, basically I set up pretty defensively as White.
link |
I wasn't really crossing into his half at the start at all.
link |
I was just, I played more like a system
link |
more than like a concrete opening.
link |
It was like, I'm gonna set up my pieces this way.
link |
You can set them up however you want.
link |
And then later where sort of the armies are gonna meet.
link |
I'm not gonna try and bother you at the start.
link |
And that means you're gonna have
link |
with as many pieces as possible
link |
kind of pure chess in the middle game
link |
without any of the lines,
link |
the standard lines in the opening.
link |
And so there was at some point
link |
a couple of exchanges,
link |
then some maneuvering, a little bit better.
link |
Then he was sort of equalizing
link |
and then I started to take too many risks.
link |
And I was still sort of fine,
link |
but then at some point I realized
link |
that I'd gone a bit too far
link |
and I had to be really careful.
link |
Then I just froze.
link |
I just completely froze.
link |
I realized that all the thoughts of I might lose this.
link |
Why did I take so many risks?
link |
I knew that I could have drawn at any moment.
link |
Don't give him these opportunities.
link |
What triggered that phase transition in your mind?
link |
No, it was just a position on the board.
link |
Realizing there was one particular move he played
link |
And then I realized that this could potentially
link |
So then I made another couple of mistakes
link |
and he, to his credit,
link |
once he realized he had the chance,
link |
he knew that this was his one chance.
link |
He had to take it.
link |
And yeah, that's the worst I've ever felt
link |
after a chess game.
link |
I realized that I'm probably gonna lose my title
link |
against somebody who's not even close to my level.
link |
And I've done it because of my own stupidity, most of all.
link |
And that was really, really...
link |
At the time, I was all in my own head.
link |
That was hard to deal with.
link |
And I felt like I didn't really recover too much
link |
for the next game.
link |
So what I did, there was a free day after the eighth game.
link |
So I did something that I never did
link |
at any other world championship.
link |
Like after game eight, I just,
link |
I got drunk with my team.
link |
That's not a standard procedure.
link |
That's the only time that's happened
link |
in the world championship during the match.
link |
So yeah, I just tried to forget.
link |
But still before game nine...
link |
Game nine, I was a little bit more relaxed,
link |
but I was still a bit nervous.
link |
Then game nine, I almost lost as well.
link |
Then only game 10.
link |
Game 10, I was still, I wasn't in a great mood.
link |
I was really, really tense.
link |
The opening was good.
link |
I had some advantage.
link |
I was getting optimistic.
link |
Then I made one mistake.
link |
He could have forced a draw.
link |
And then all the negativity came back.
link |
Like, I was thinking during the game,
link |
like how am I going to play for a win with Black
link |
Like, what am I doing?
link |
And then, you know, eventually it ended well.
link |
It didn't find the right line.
link |
I ground him down.
link |
Actually, I played at some point pretty well
link |
And after that game, like there was such a weight.
link |
No, after that, there was like no thought
link |
of losing the match whatsoever.
link |
I knew that, okay, I'd basically gotten away with,
link |
not with murder, but gotten away with something.
link |
What can you say about the after game eight?
link |
Where are the places you've gone in your mind?
link |
Do you go to some dark places?
link |
We're talking about like depression.
link |
Do you think about quitting at that point?
link |
No, I mean, I think about quitting
link |
every time I lose a classical game.
link |
Or at least I used to.
link |
Like, especially if it's in a stupid way,
link |
I'm thinking like, okay, if I'm gonna play like this,
link |
if I'm gonna do things that I know are wrong,
link |
then, you know, I might as well quit.
link |
No, that's happened a bunch of times.
link |
And I've definitely gotten a bit more carefree
link |
about losing these days,
link |
which it's not necessarily a good thing.
link |
Like my hatred of losing led to me not losing a lot.
link |
Losing a lot and it also lit the fire under me
link |
that I think my performance after losses
link |
in classical chess over the last 10 years
link |
is like over 2,900.
link |
Like I really play well after a loss,
link |
even though it's really, really unpleasant.
link |
So apparently like I don't think the way
link |
that I dealt with them is particularly healthy,
link |
It's worked so far.
link |
But then you've discovered now a love for winning
link |
to where ultimately longevity wise creates more fun.
link |
What's the perfect day in the life of Magnus Carlsen
link |
on a day of a big chess match?
link |
It doesn't have to be world championship,
link |
but if it's a chess match you care about,
link |
what time do you wake up?
link |
Oh, it depends on when the game is,
link |
but let's say the game is at three,
link |
I'll probably wake up pretty late at about 11.
link |
Then I'll go for a walk,
link |
might listen to some podcasts.
link |
Maybe I'll spend a little bit of time
link |
looking at some NBA game from last night or whatever.
link |
So not chess related stuff?
link |
Then I'll get back, I'll have a big lunch,
link |
like usually like a big omelet
link |
with a bunch of salad and stuff.
link |
Then go to the game, win like a very nice clean game.
link |
Just go back after, relax.
link |
Like the things that make me the happiest at tournaments
link |
is just having a good routine and feeling well.
link |
I don't like it when too much is happening around me.
link |
So the tournament that I came from now was
link |
the Chess Olympiad, which is the team event.
link |
So we were a team Norway.
link |
I did okay, but the team in general did horribly.
link |
You won that Italy?
link |
No, no, Italy beat us, but Uzbekistan won in the end.
link |
They were this amazing team of young players.
link |
It was really impressive.
link |
But the thing is like we had a good comradery in the team.
link |
We had our meals together.
link |
We played a bit of football, went swimming,
link |
and I couldn't understand why things went wrong.
link |
And I still don't understand.
link |
But the thing is for me, it was all very nice,
link |
but now I'm so happy to be on my own at a tournament
link |
just to have my own routines, not see too many people.
link |
Otherwise just have like a very small team of people
link |
You are a kind of celebrity now.
link |
So people within the chess tournament and outside
link |
would recognize you, want to socialize,
link |
want to tell you about how much you mean to them,
link |
how much you inspire them, all that kind of stuff.
link |
Does that get in the way for you
link |
when you're like trying to really focus on the match?
link |
Are you able to block that?
link |
Like are you able to enjoy those little interactions
link |
and still keep your focus?
link |
Yeah, most of the time that's fine
link |
as long as it's not too much.
link |
But I have to admit, when I'm at home in Norway,
link |
I rarely go out without big headphones and something.
link |
Oh, like a disguise?
link |
No, not a disguise, just to block out the world.
link |
Don't make eye contact?
link |
Yeah, no, so the thing is people in general are nice.
link |
I mean, people, they wish me well,
link |
and they don't bother me.
link |
Also, when I have the headphones on,
link |
I don't notice as much people turning around and all of that
link |
so I can be more of in my own world.
link |
Yeah, what about in this perfect day after the game?
link |
Do you try to analyze what happened?
link |
Do you try to think through systematically
link |
or do you just kind of loosely think about like...
link |
No, I just loosely think about it.
link |
I've never been very structured in that sense.
link |
I know that it was always recommended
link |
that you analyze your own games,
link |
but I generally felt that I mostly had a good idea
link |
Like nowadays, I will loosely see what the engine says
link |
at a certain point if I'm curious about that.
link |
Otherwise, I usually move on to the next.
link |
You said omelet and salad and so on.
link |
I heard in your conversation with the other Magnus,
link |
Magnus number two, about you had like this bet about meat.
link |
One of you are gonna go vegan if you lose,
link |
I forget which bet.
link |
Vegetarian though.
link |
Vegetarian, sorry.
link |
And you both have an admiration for meat.
link |
Is there some aspect about optimal performance
link |
that you look for in food?
link |
Like maybe eating only like once or twice a day
link |
or a particular kind of food,
link |
like meat heavy diet.
link |
Is there anything like that?
link |
Or are you just trying to have fun with the food?
link |
I think whenever I'm at tournaments,
link |
like it's very natural to eat,
link |
at least for me to eat only twice a day.
link |
So usually I do that when I'm at home as well.
link |
So you do eat before the tournament though.
link |
You don't play fasted.
link |
But I try not to eat too heavy before the game
link |
or in general to avoid sugary stuff
link |
to have a pretty stable blood sugar level.
link |
Cause that's the easiest way to make mistake
link |
that your energy levels just suddenly drop
link |
and they don't necessarily need to be too high
link |
as long as they're pretty stable, yeah.
link |
Have you ever tried playing fasted,
link |
like intermittent fasting?
link |
So playing without having eaten.
link |
I mean, the reason I ask, you know,
link |
especially when you do a low carb diet,
link |
when I've done a person at low carb diet,
link |
I'm able to fast for a long time,
link |
like eat once a day, maybe twice a day.
link |
But I just, the mind is most focused
link |
on like really difficult thinking tasks when it's fasted.
link |
It's an interesting,
link |
and a lot of people kind of talk about that.
link |
Yeah, but you're able to kind of like zoom in
link |
and if you're doing a low carb diet,
link |
you don't have the energy stable.
link |
You know, that is true.
link |
Maybe that will be interesting to try.
link |
So what's happened for me,
link |
I played a few tournaments where I've had food poisoning
link |
and then that generally means
link |
that you're both sleep deprived and you have no energy.
link |
And what I've found is that it makes me,
link |
it makes me very calm, of course,
link |
because I don't have the energy
link |
and it makes me super creative.
link |
Sleep deprived probably I think in general
link |
makes you creative.
link |
Just the first thing that goes away
link |
is the ability to do the simple things.
link |
That's what it affects you the most.
link |
Like you cannot be precise.
link |
So that's the only thing I'm worried about.
link |
Like if I'm fasted that I won't be precise when I play.
link |
But you might be more creative.
link |
It's an interesting trial.
link |
Fasted, yeah, potentially.
link |
What about you have been known to
link |
on a rare occasion play drunk.
link |
Is there a mathematical formula
link |
for sort of on the X axis how many drinks you had
link |
and on the Y axis your performance slash creativity?
link |
Is there like an optimal for,
link |
would you suggest for the FIDE World Championship
link |
that people would be required to drink?
link |
Would that change things in interesting ways?
link |
Maybe for rapid, but for Blitz,
link |
think if you're playing Blitz,
link |
you're mostly playing on short calculation and intuition.
link |
And I think those are probably enhanced
link |
if you've had a little bit of, a little bit to drink.
link |
Can you explain the physiology of why that's,
link |
why it's enhanced or the?
link |
You're just, you're thinking less.
link |
You're more confident.
link |
Oh yeah, it's confidence.
link |
I think it's just confidence.
link |
I think also like a lot of people feel like they're better
link |
at speaking languages, for instance,
link |
if they've drunk a little bit,
link |
it's just like removing these barriers.
link |
I think that it's a little bit of the same in chess.
link |
In 2012, I played the World Blitz Championship.
link |
And then I was doing horribly for a long time.
link |
I also had food poisoning there.
link |
I couldn't play at all for three days.
link |
So before the last break,
link |
I was like in the middle of the pack, like in,
link |
I don't know, 20th place or something.
link |
And so I decided like, as the last, last gasp,
link |
I'm going to go to the mini bar and just have a few drinks.
link |
And what happened is that I came back
link |
and I was suddenly relaxed and I was playing fast
link |
and I was playing confidence.
link |
And I thought I was playing so well.
link |
I wasn't playing nearly as well as I thought,
link |
but it still helped me.
link |
Like I won my remaining eight games.
link |
And if there had been one more round,
link |
I probably would have won the whole thing.
link |
But finally I was second.
link |
So generally I wouldn't recommend that,
link |
but maybe as the last resort sometimes,
link |
like if you feel that you have the ability,
link |
like obviously none of this is remotely relevant
link |
if you don't feel like you have the ability to begin with.
link |
But if you feel like you have the ability,
link |
there are just factors that make it impossible
link |
for you to show it.
link |
Like numbing your mind a bit can probably be a good thing.
link |
Yeah, well, it's interesting, especially during training,
link |
you have all kinds of sports that have interacted
link |
with a lot of athletes and grappling sports.
link |
It's different when you train under extreme exhaustion.
link |
For example, you start becoming,
link |
you start to discover interesting things.
link |
You start being more creative.
link |
A lot of people, at least in Brazilian jiu jitsu,
link |
they'll smoke weed.
link |
It creates this kind of anxiety and relaxation
link |
that kind of enables that creative aspect.
link |
It's interesting for training.
link |
Of course you can't rely on any one of those things too much,
link |
but it's cool to throw in like a few drinks
link |
every once in a while to, yeah.
link |
One, first of all, to relax and have fun.
link |
And two, to kind of try things differently,
link |
to unlock a different part of your brain.
link |
What about supplements?
link |
Do you, are you a coffee guy?
link |
I quite like the taste of coffee.
link |
But the thing is I've never had a job.
link |
So I've never needed to wake up early.
link |
So my thought is basically that if I'm tired, I'm tired.
link |
Then I'll, you know, then I'll work it out.
link |
So I don't wanna ever make my brain get used to coffee.
link |
Like if you see me drinking coffee,
link |
that's, that probably means that I'm massively,
link |
massively hungover and I don't,
link |
I just want to try anything to make my brain work.
link |
Yeah, that's interesting.
link |
But for a lot of people, like you said, taste of coffee,
link |
for a lot of people coffee is part
link |
of a certain kind of ritual.
link |
That they enjoy, you know.
link |
So, but you can have rituals without that.
link |
I know that I would enjoy it a lot.
link |
Yeah, just you don't wanna rely on it.
link |
I also like the taste, so there's no problem there.
link |
What about exercise?
link |
So how does that, what like, what, you know,
link |
a lot of people talk about the extreme
link |
stress that chest puts in your body,
link |
physically and mentally.
link |
How do you prepare for that, to be physically and mentally?
link |
Is it just through playing chess,
link |
or do you do cardio and any of that kind of stuff?
link |
This is kind of it up and down.
link |
Like, as I said in 2013, I was in, I was in great shape.
link |
Like, I mean, generally I was exercising,
link |
doing sports every day, either playing football
link |
or tennis or even other, other sports.
link |
Otherwise, if I couldn't do that,
link |
I would try and take my bike for a ride.
link |
I had a few training camps and I played tennis
link |
against one of my seconds.
link |
Like, he's not a super fit guy,
link |
but he's always been very good at tennis.
link |
And I never like played in any organized way.
link |
And that was like, that was the perfect exercise
link |
because I was running around enough
link |
to make the games pretty competitive.
link |
And it meant that he had to run a bit less as well.
link |
But he was just, he said like,
link |
he was shocked that if we played like for two hours,
link |
I wouldn't flinch at all.
link |
So like a combination of fun
link |
and the differential between skill
link |
result in good cardio.
link |
Yeah, but it's just that, so in those days I was pretty,
link |
I was pretty fit in that sense.
link |
I've always liked doing sports, but at times, you know,
link |
I think in winter, especially,
link |
like I never had like a schedule.
link |
So at times I'll let myself go a little bit.
link |
And I've always kind of done it more for fun
link |
than like for a concrete benefit.
link |
But now I'm at least after the pandemic,
link |
I was not in great shape.
link |
So now I'm trying to get back, get better,
link |
get better habits and so on.
link |
But I feel like I've always been the poster boy
link |
for making being fit a big thing in chess.
link |
And I always felt that it was not really a deserve
link |
because I never liked doing weights much at all.
link |
I run a bit at times, but I never liked it too much.
link |
You just love playing sports.
link |
I just love playing sports.
link |
So that I think people confuse that
link |
because I'm not like massively athletic,
link |
but I do, I am decent at sports
link |
and that sort of helped build that perception.
link |
Even though others who are top level chess players,
link |
they're more fit like Karana, for instance,
link |
he's really, really, his body is really, really strong.
link |
It's just that he doesn't.
link |
He like goes to the gym and.
link |
Yeah, if he doesn't play sports, that's the difference.
link |
And the thing about sports is also is just,
link |
It helps you forget for a brief moment
link |
about like the obsessions, the pursuits of the main thing,
link |
And I think it's, it also helps your main pursuit
link |
to feel that you're even if not mastering,
link |
but like doing well in something, in something else.
link |
Like I found that if I just juggle a ball,
link |
that makes me feel better before a game.
link |
So a skilled activity.
link |
Juggle of football, yeah.
link |
Yeah, skilled activity that you can improve on over time.
link |
It like flexes the same kind of muscle,
link |
but on the thing that you're much worse at.
link |
It focuses you, relaxes you, that's really interesting.
link |
What's the perfect day in the life of Magnus Carlsen
link |
when he's training?
link |
So like, what's a good training regimen
link |
in terms of, you know, daily kind of training
link |
that you have to put in across many days, months, and years
link |
to just keep yourself sharp in terms of chess?
link |
I would say when I'm at home, I do very little
link |
deliberate practice.
link |
I've never been that guy at all.
link |
Like I could never force myself to just sit down and work.
link |
So deliberate practice, just so maybe you can educate me,
link |
for some grandmasters, what would that look like?
link |
Just doing puzzles kind of thing?
link |
Yeah, doing puzzles and opening analysis.
link |
That would be the main things.
link |
Just studying games, yeah, a little bit.
link |
But I feel like that's something that I do.
link |
But it's not deliberate, it's like reading an article
link |
or reading a book.
link |
Like I love chess books, I'll read just anything
link |
and I'll find something interesting.
link |
So chess books that are like on openings
link |
and stuff like that, or chess books
link |
that go over different games?
link |
Yeah, books on, so there are three main categories.
link |
There are books on openings and there are books
link |
on strategy and there are books on chess history
link |
and I find all of them very, very interesting.
link |
Like what fraction of the day would you say
link |
you have a chess board floating somewhere in your head?
link |
Meaning like you're thinking about it.
link |
Probably be a better question to ask,
link |
how many hours a day I don't have a chess board floating.
link |
I mean it could be just floating there and nothing's
link |
happening, but like.
link |
I often do it parallel to some other activity though.
link |
And what does that look like?
link |
Like are you daydreaming like different,
link |
is it actual positions you're just fucking around with?
link |
Like fumbling with different pieces in your head?
link |
Often I've looked at a random game on my phone for instance
link |
or in a book and then my brain just keeps going
link |
at the same position analyzing it and often it goes
link |
all the way to the end game.
link |
And those are actual games or you conjure up like fake games?
link |
No, they were often based on real games
link |
and then I'm thinking like oh, but it wouldn't be
link |
more interesting if the pieces were a little bit different
link |
and then often I play it out from there.
link |
So you don't have, like you don't sit behind a computer
link |
or a chess board and you lay out the pieces and then you're.
link |
No, I'm not at all a poster boy for deliberate practice.
link |
I could never, I could never work that way.
link |
My first coach, he gave me some exercises
link |
that are at home sometimes, but he realized at some point
link |
that wasn't gonna work.
link |
Because I wouldn't do it really or enjoy it.
link |
So what he would do instead is that at the school
link |
where I had the trainings with him,
link |
there was this massive chess library.
link |
So he was just like yeah, pick out books.
link |
You can have anything, you can have anything you want.
link |
Just pick out books you like
link |
and then you give it back the next time.
link |
So that's what I did instead.
link |
Yeah, I just absolutely raided the,
link |
then my next tournament I will try out one of the openings
link |
from that book if it was an opening book and so on.
link |
Does it feel like a struggle, like challenging?
link |
Like to be thinking those positions
link |
or is it fun and relaxing?
link |
No, it's completely fine.
link |
Like if it's a difficult position to figure out,
link |
you know, like to calculate.
link |
Then I go on to something else.
link |
Like if I can't figure it out, then you know, I go on.
link |
Change it so that it's easier to figure out.
link |
There was a point in your life
link |
where Kasparov was interested in being your coach
link |
or at least training with you.
link |
Why did you choose not to go with him?
link |
That's a pretty bold move.
link |
Was there a good reason for this?
link |
No, the first like homework exercise he gave me
link |
was to analyze, like he picked out, I think,
link |
three or four of my worst losses
link |
and he wanted me to analyze them and give him my thoughts.
link |
And it wasn't that there were painful losses or anything
link |
that that was a problem.
link |
I just didn't really enjoy that.
link |
Also, I felt that this whole structured approach
link |
I just felt like from the start, it was a hassle.
link |
So I loved the idea of being able to pick his brain
link |
but everything else, I just, you know,
link |
couldn't see myself, couldn't see myself enjoying.
link |
And at the end of the day,
link |
I did then and always have played for fun.
link |
That's always been the main reason, so.
link |
It's great that you had the confidence
link |
to sort of basically turn down the approach
link |
of one of the greatest chess players of all time.
link |
At that time, probably the greatest chess player
link |
I don't think I thought of it that way.
link |
I just thought this is not for me.
link |
I wouldn't try another way.
link |
I don't think I was particularly thinking
link |
that this is my one opportunity or anything.
link |
It was just, yeah, I don't enjoy this.
link |
Let's try something else.
link |
When you were 13, you faced Kasparov
link |
and he wasn't able to beat you.
link |
Can you go through that match?
link |
What did that feel like?
link |
How important was that?
link |
Was that, how epic was that?
link |
We played three games.
link |
I lost two and I drew one.
link |
Right, but one draw.
link |
And but didn't you say
link |
that you kind of had a better position in that?
link |
Yeah, I remember that day very well.
link |
There was a Blitz game.
link |
This was a rapid tournament
link |
and there was a Blitz tournament the day before
link |
which determined the pairings for the rapid.
link |
For people who don't know,
link |
super short games are called bullet.
link |
Kind of short games are called Blitz.
link |
Semi short games are called rapid.
link |
And classic chess, I guess, is like very super long.
link |
Yeah, basically, bullet is just never played
link |
So in terms of over the board chess,
link |
Blitz is the shortest.
link |
Rapid is like a hybrid between classical and Blitz.
link |
You need to have the skills to both
link |
and then classical is long.
link |
The Blitz tournament, which didn't go so well.
link |
Like I got a couple of wins,
link |
but I was beaten badly in a lot of games,
link |
including by Gary.
link |
And so there was the pairing that I had to play him
link |
which was pretty exciting.
link |
So I remember I was so tired after the Blitz tournament.
link |
Like I slept for 12 hours or something.
link |
Then I woke up like,
link |
okay, I'll turn on my computer.
link |
I'll search chess space for Kasparov
link |
and we'll go from there.
link |
So before that, I hadn't spent like a lot of time
link |
specifically studying his games.
link |
It was super intimidating
link |
because a lot of these openings I knew.
link |
I was like, oh, he was the first one to play that.
link |
Oh, that was his idea.
link |
I actually didn't know that.
link |
So I was a bit intimidated before we played.
link |
Then of course the first game,
link |
he arrived a bit late because they changed the time
link |
from the first day to the other, which was a bit strange.
link |
But everybody else had noticed it but him.
link |
Then he tried to surprise me in the opening.
link |
I think like psychologically,
link |
the situation was not so easy for him.
link |
Like clearly it would be embarrassing for him
link |
if he didn't win both games against me.
link |
Then like I was spending way too much time on my moves
link |
because I was playing Kasparov.
link |
I was double checking everything too much.
link |
Like normally I would be playing pretty fast in those days.
link |
And then at some point I calculated better than him.
link |
He missed a crucial detail and had a much better position.
link |
I couldn't convert it though.
link |
I knew what line I had to go for
link |
in order to have a chance to win.
link |
But I thought like, I'll play a bit more carefully.
link |
Maybe I can win still.
link |
And then I lost the second game pretty badly,
link |
which it wasn't majorly upsetting,
link |
but I felt that I had two black games
link |
against Kasparov both in the blitz and the rapid
link |
and I lost both of them without any fight whatsoever.
link |
I wasn't happy about that at all.
link |
That was like less than I thought I could be able to do.
link |
So to me, yeah, I was proud of that, but it was a gimmick.
link |
That was like a very strong IAM that had GM strength.
link |
I was like, it can happen that a player of that strength
link |
makes a draw against Gary once in a while.
link |
But I mean, I understand that I'm 13,
link |
but like still I felt a bit more gimmicky than anything.
link |
I mean, I guess it's a good thing that made me noticed,
link |
but apart from that, it wasn't.
link |
And for people who don't know,
link |
IAM is international master and GM is grand master.
link |
And you were just on the, I guess,
link |
on the verge of becoming a youngest grand master ever.
link |
I was the second youngest ever.
link |
I think I'm like the seventh youngest now.
link |
I mean, these kids these days.
link |
Yeah, but I was the youngest grand master at the time
link |
So there is a, you say it's gimmicky,
link |
but there's a romantic notions,
link |
especially as things have turned out, right?
link |
And have you talked to Gary since then about that?
link |
I think he's immersed.
link |
He's still bitter, you think?
link |
No, I don't think he's bitter,
link |
but I think the game in itself was a bit embarrassing for him.
link |
Even he can't see past like...
link |
I think he's completely fine with that.
link |
I think like in retrospect, it's a good story.
link |
He appreciates that.
link |
I don't think that's the problem,
link |
but it never made sense for me to broach the subject with him.
link |
Yeah, it's funny just having interacted with Gary,
link |
now having talked to you,
link |
there is a little thing you still hate losing.
link |
No matter how beautiful like that moment is,
link |
because it's like, in a way it's a passing of the baton
link |
from like one great champion to another, right?
link |
But you still just don't like the fact
link |
that you didn't play a good game from Gary's perspective.
link |
Like he still is just annoyed probably
link |
that he could have played better.
link |
And we did, so we did work together in 2009, quite a lot.
link |
And that corporation ended early 2010,
link |
but we did play a lot of training games in 2009,
link |
which was interesting because he was still very, very strong.
link |
And at that time it was fairly equal.
link |
Like he was out playing me quite a bit,
link |
but I was fighting well, so it was pretty even then.
link |
So I mean, I appreciate those games a lot more
link |
than some random game from when I was 13.
link |
And maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about,
link |
but I've always found it, at least based on that game,
link |
you couldn't tell that I was gonna take his,
link |
that I was gonna take his spot.
link |
Like I made a horrible blunder and lost to an Uzbek kid
link |
in the World Rapid Championship in 2018.
link |
And I mean, granted he was part of the team
link |
that now won gold in the Chess Olympia,
link |
but he wasn't the crucial part.
link |
He barely played any games.
link |
Like it wasn't like I would think
link |
that he would become world champion because he beat me.
link |
I'm always skeptical of those who said
link |
that they knew that I was gonna be world champion
link |
after that game or at all at that time.
link |
I mean, it was easy to see
link |
that I would become a very, very strong player.
link |
Everybody could see that,
link |
but to be the best in the world or one of the best ever,
link |
that's hard to say.
link |
It is hard to say, but I do remember seeing Messi
link |
when he was 16 and 17.
link |
But hasn't that happened with other players though?
link |
Yeah, but I just had a personal experience.
link |
He did look different than, there's like magic there.
link |
Maybe you can't tell he would be one of the greatest ever,
link |
but there's still magic.
link |
Most of the time we try to project,
link |
we see a young kid being an older person
link |
and you start to think,
link |
okay, this could be the next great person.
link |
Then we forget when they don't become that.
link |
That's I think what happens.
link |
But when it does become.
link |
Or maybe some people are just so good
link |
at seeing these patterns that they can actually see.
link |
Aren't you supposed to do that kind of thing
link |
with fantasy football, like see the long shot
link |
and bet on them and then they turn out to be good?
link |
That's the whole point.
link |
No, you make a lot of long shot bets
link |
and then some of them come good.
link |
And then people call you a genius for making the bet.
link |
Well, let me ask you the goat question again,
link |
from fantasy perspective.
link |
Can you make the case for the greatest chess player
link |
of all time for each yourself, Magnus Carlsen,
link |
for Garry Kasparov, I don't know who else,
link |
Bobby Fischer, Mikhail Atal, anyone else,
link |
for Hikaru Nakamura?
link |
Yeah, I think I can make a case for myself,
link |
for Garry and for Fischer.
link |
So I'll start with Fischer.
link |
For him, it's very, very simple.
link |
He was ahead of his time, but that's like intangible.
link |
You can say that about a lot of people.
link |
But he had a peak from 1970 to 72
link |
when he was so much better than the others.
link |
He won 20 games in a row.
link |
Also the way that he played was so powerful
link |
and with so few mistakes
link |
that he just had no opposition there.
link |
So he had just a peak that's been better than anybody.
link |
The gap between first and second was the highest.
link |
The gap between him and others was greater
link |
than it's ever been in history at any other time.
link |
And that would be the argument for him.
link |
For Garry, he's played in a very competitive era
link |
and he's beaten several generations.
link |
He was the best, well, he was the consensus best player,
link |
I would say for almost 20 years,
link |
which nobody else has done at least in recent time.
link |
The longevity for sure.
link |
Also at his peak, he was not quite the level of Fisher
link |
in terms of the gap, but it was similar to,
link |
or I think even a little bit better than mine.
link |
As for me, I'm of course unbeaten
link |
as a world champion in five tries.
link |
I've been world number one for 11 years straight
link |
in an even more competitive era than Garry.
link |
I have the highest chest rating of all time.
link |
I have the longest streak ever without losing a game.
link |
I think for me, the main argument would be about the era
link |
where the engines have leveled the playing field so much
link |
that it's harder to dominate.
link |
And still, I haven't always been a clear number one,
link |
but I've been number one for 11 years.
link |
And for a lot of the time, the gap has been pretty big.
link |
So I think there are decent arguments for all of them.
link |
I've said before, and I haven't changed my mind
link |
that Garry generally edges it
link |
because of the longevity in the competitive era,
link |
but there are arguments.
link |
But people also talk about you
link |
in terms of the style of play.
link |
So it's not just about dominance or the height or the,
link |
it's like just the creative genius of it.
link |
Yeah, but I'm not interested in that.
link |
In terms of greatest of all time,
link |
I'm not interested in questions of style.
link |
So for Messi, you don't give credit for the style,
link |
for the stylistic.
link |
I like, no, I like watching it, I just.
link |
But you're not gonna give points for the,
link |
so Messi gets the best ever because of the finishing.
link |
Yeah, it's the, no, it's not because of the finishing,
link |
it's because of his overall impact on the game.
link |
It's higher than anybody else's.
link |
He contributes, he just contributes more to winning
link |
than anybody else does.
link |
What's, so you're somebody who was advocated for
link |
and has done quite a bit of study of classic games.
link |
What would you say is, I mean, maybe the number one
link |
or maybe top three games of chess ever played?
link |
That doesn't interest me at all.
link |
You don't think of them, that was very curious.
link |
No, I don't think of it.
link |
I mean, I try to, I find the games interesting.
link |
I try to learn from them, but like trying to rank them
link |
has never interested me.
link |
What games pop out to you as like super interesting then?
link |
Is there things like where idea, like old school games
link |
where there was like interesting ideas that you go back,
link |
that you go back or like you find surprising
link |
and pretty cool that those ideas are developed like that?
link |
Is there something that jumps to mind?
link |
Yeah, there are several games of young Kasparov,
link |
like before he became world champion.
link |
If you're gonna ask for like my favorite player
link |
or favorite style, that's probably.
link |
Can you describe stylistically or in any other way
link |
what young Kasparov was like that you like?
link |
It was just an overflow energy in his play.
link |
Yeah, extremely aggressive, dynamic chess.
link |
It probably appeals to me a lot because these are the things
link |
that I cannot do as well,
link |
that it just feels very special to me.
link |
But yeah, in terms of games,
link |
I never thought about that too much.
link |
Is there memories, big or small, weird, surprising,
link |
just any kind of beautiful anecdote from your chess career?
link |
Like stuff that pops out that people might not know about?
link |
Just stuff when you look back, it just makes you smile.
link |
No, so I'll tell you about the most satisfying
link |
tournament victory of my career.
link |
So that was the Norwegian championship under 11 in 2000.
link |
Before that tournament, I was super anxious
link |
because I started like kind of late at chess.
link |
I played my first tournament when I was eight and a half.
link |
And a lot of my competitors had already played
link |
for a couple of years or even three, four years
link |
And the first time I,
link |
so I played the under 11 championship in 99.
link |
I was like a little over the middle of the pack.
link |
I'd never played against any of them before.
link |
So I didn't know what to expect at all.
link |
And then over the next year,
link |
I was just like edging a little bit closer.
link |
In each tournament, I felt like I was getting
link |
a little bit better.
link |
And when we had the championship,
link |
I knew that I was ready,
link |
that I was now at the same level of the best players.
link |
I was so anxious to show it.
link |
I remember I was just,
link |
the feeling of excitement and nervousness
link |
before the tournament was incredible.
link |
The tournament was weird because I started out,
link |
I gave away a draw to a weaker player,
link |
whom I shouldn't have drawn to.
link |
And then I drew against the other guy
link |
who was clearly like the best or second best.
link |
And at that point, I thought it was over
link |
because I thought he wouldn't give away points to others.
link |
And then the very next day he lost to somebody.
link |
So then the rest of the tournament,
link |
I was always like playing my game and watching his.
link |
And we both won the rest of our games,
link |
but it meant that I was half a point ahead.
link |
Like the feeling when I realized that I was gonna win,
link |
that was just so amazing.
link |
It was like the first time that I was the best at my age.
link |
And at that point.
link |
Yeah, at that point I realized,
link |
I could actually be very good at this.
link |
So you kind of saw,
link |
what did you think your ceiling would be?
link |
Did you see that one day you could be the number one?
link |
No, I didn't think that was possible at all.
link |
When did you first?
link |
I could be the best in Norway.
link |
The best in Norway?
link |
When did you first?
link |
Because like I started relatively late.
link |
I knew that I studied a lot more than the others.
link |
I knew that I had a passion that they didn't have.
link |
They saw chess as something like,
link |
It was like an activity.
link |
It was like going to football practice
link |
or any other sports.
link |
you practice like once or twice a week,
link |
and then you play a tournament at the weekend.
link |
That's what you did.
link |
For me, it wasn't like that.
link |
Like I would go with my books and my board
link |
every day after school.
link |
And I would just constantly
link |
be trying to learn new things.
link |
I had like two hours of internet time
link |
on the computer each week.
link |
And I would always spend them on chess.
link |
Like I think before I was 13 or 14,
link |
I'd never opened a browser
link |
for any other reason than to play chess.
link |
Would you describe that as love or as obsession
link |
or something in between?
link |
Yeah, everything, so I mean,
link |
it wasn't hard for me to tell at that point
link |
that I had something that the other kids didn't
link |
because I was never the one to grasp something
link |
very, very quickly.
link |
But once I started, I always got hooked
link |
and then I never stopped learning.
link |
What would you say,
link |
you've talked about the middle game
link |
as a place where you can play pure chess.
link |
What do you think is beautiful to you about chess?
link |
Like the thing when you were 11.
link |
What is beautiful to me is when your opponent
link |
can predict every single one of your moves
link |
and they still lose.
link |
How does that happen?
link |
No, like it means that at some point early,
link |
your planning, your evaluation has been better.
link |
So that you play just very simply, very clearly.
link |
It looks like you did nothing special
link |
and your opponent lost without a chance.
link |
So you're, how do you think about that?
link |
By the way, are you basically narrowed down
link |
this gigantic tree of options
link |
to where your opponent has less and less and less options
link |
to win, to escape, and then they're trapped.
link |
Is there some aspect to the patterns themselves,
link |
to the positions, to the elegance of like
link |
the dynamics of the game that you just find beautiful
link |
that doesn't, that where you forget about the opponent?
link |
General, I try and create harmony on the board.
link |
Like what I would usually find harmonious is that
link |
the pieces work together, that they protect each other
link |
and that there are no pieces that are suboptimally placed.
link |
Or if they are suboptimally placed,
link |
they can be improved pretty easily.
link |
Like I hate when I have one piece that I know
link |
is badly placed and I can't improve it.
link |
When, yeah, when you're thinking about the harmony
link |
of the pieces, when you're looking at the position,
link |
you're evaluating it, are you looking at the whole board
link |
or is it like a bunch of groupings of pieces overlapping?
link |
I would like dancing together kind of thing.
link |
I would say it's more of the latter
link |
that would be more precise that you look.
link |
I mean, I look mostly closer to the middle,
link |
but then I would focus on one,
link |
like there are usually like one grouping of pieces
link |
on one side and then some more closer to the other side.
link |
So I would think of it a little bit that way.
link |
So, and everything's kind of gravitating to the middle.
link |
If it's going well, then yes.
link |
Or like if you can control the middle,
link |
you can more easily attack on both sides.
link |
That applies to pretty much any game.
link |
It's as simple as that.
link |
And like attacking on one side without control of the middle
link |
would feel very nonharmonious for me.
link |
Like I talked about the 10th game
link |
in the World Championship.
link |
Like that's the time I was the most nervous.
link |
And it was because it was the kind of attack that I hate
link |
where you just have to, you're abandoned one side
link |
and the attack has to work.
link |
There was one side and part of the middle as well,
link |
which I didn't control at all.
link |
And that's like the opposite of harmony for me.
link |
What advice would you give to chess players
link |
of different levels, how to improve in chess?
link |
Very beginner, complete beginner.
link |
I mean, at every level, is there something you can say?
link |
It's very hard for me to say.
link |
Because I mean, the easiest way is like love chess,
link |
Well, that's a really important statement.
link |
But that doesn't work for everybody.
link |
So I feel like it can feel like a grind.
link |
So you're saying the less it can feel like a grind,
link |
the better, at least for you.
link |
But I'm also very, very skeptical about giving advice
link |
because I think, again, my way only works
link |
if you have some combination of talent and obsession.
link |
So I'm not sure that I'd generally recommend it.
link |
Like what I've done doesn't go with
link |
what most coaches suggest for their kids.
link |
I've been lucky that I've had coaches from early on
link |
that have been very, very hands off
link |
and just allowed me to do my thing, basically.
link |
Well, there's a lot to be said
link |
about cultivating the obsession.
link |
Like really letting that flourish
link |
to where you spend a lot of hours
link |
like with the chessboard in your head
link |
and it doesn't feel like a struggle.
link |
No, so like just letting me do my thing.
link |
Like if you give me a bunch of work,
link |
it will probably feel like a chore.
link |
And if you don't give me,
link |
I will spend all of that time on my own
link |
without thinking that it's work
link |
or without thought that I'm doing this to improve my chess.
link |
Well, in terms of learning stuff, like books,
link |
there's one thing that's relatively novel
link |
from your perspective that people are starting now
link |
is there's YouTube.
link |
There's a lot of good YouTubers.
link |
You're a part time YouTuber.
link |
You have stuff on YouTube, I guess.
link |
Yeah, I have, but if you've seen my YouTube,
link |
it's mostly like, it's carefree.
link |
It's generally not high effort content.
link |
Yeah, but do you like any particular YouTubers?
link |
I could just recommend like stuff I've seen.
link |
So Aged Madar, Gotham Chess, Botez Live.
link |
I really like St. Louis Chess Club,
link |
Daniel Narodetsky, and John Bartholomew.
link |
Those are good channels,
link |
but is there something you can recommend?
link |
No, all of them are good.
link |
You know, the best recommendation I could give
link |
is Aged Madar, purely.
link |
How much did he pay you to say that?
link |
No, so the thing about that is that I haven't really,
link |
I have, so I can tell you I've never watched
link |
any of his videos from start to finish.
link |
I'm not like, I'm not the target audience, obviously.
link |
But I think the only chess YouTube video
link |
that my dad has ever watched from start to finish
link |
is Aged Madar, and he said, like,
link |
I watched one of his videos,
link |
I wanted to know what it was all about,
link |
because I think Aged Madar is like the same strength
link |
as my father, or maybe just a little bit weaker,
link |
like 1900 or something.
link |
My father is probably about 2000.
link |
And my father has played chess his whole life.
link |
He loves, he absolutely loves the game.
link |
It was like, that's the only time he's actually sat through
link |
one of those videos, and he said, like,
link |
yeah, I get it, I enjoy it.
link |
So that's the best recommendation I could give.
link |
That's the only channel that my father actually enjoys.
link |
This is hilarious.
link |
I talked to him before this to ask him
link |
if he has any questions for you.
link |
And he said, no, just do your thing, you know.
link |
No, he's so careful, he wouldn't do that.
link |
He did mention jokingly about Evan's Gambit, I think.
link |
It's some weird thing he made up.
link |
It might be an inside joke.
link |
I don't know, but he asked me to.
link |
Yeah, I didn't even get the...
link |
It's something he made up.
link |
I didn't even realize that he plays the Evan's Gambit.
link |
Like, he plays a lot of Gambits that are...
link |
Wait, Evan's Gambit is a thing?
link |
Yeah, yeah, that's a thing.
link |
Like, that's an old opening from the 1800s.
link |
Captain Evans apparently invented it.
link |
Why would he mention that particular one?
link |
Yeah, I don't know.
link |
Is there something hilarious about that one?
link |
I don't think I've ever faced the Evan's Gambit in a game.
link |
I feel like both of you are trolling me right now.
link |
But I mean, he's played a lot of other Gambits.
link |
Maybe this is the one he wanted to mention.
link |
So this, maybe this is called the Evan's Gambit as well.
link |
But I just know it as like the 2G4 Gambit.
link |
Maybe this is the one.
link |
Like this one, he has played a bunch.
link |
And he's been telling me a lot about his games
link |
It's like, oh, it's not so bad.
link |
And I'm like, yeah, but you're a pawn down.
link |
Yeah, but I can sort of see it.
link |
I can sort of understand it.
link |
And he's like, he's proud of the fact
link |
that nobody like told him to play this line or anything.
link |
He came up with it himself.
link |
And there's this, I'll tell you another story
link |
So there's this line that I call,
link |
that I called the Henry Carlson line.
link |
So at some point, you know,
link |
he never knew a lot of openings in chess,
link |
but I taught him a couple of openings as black.
link |
It's the, it's the Sveshnikov's Sicilian
link |
that I played a lot myself also
link |
during the world championship in 2018.
link |
I won a bunch of games in 2019 as well.
link |
So that's one opening.
link |
And I also taught him as black
link |
to play the Rogozin defense.
link |
And then, so the Rogozin defense goes like,
link |
It's characterized by this bishop move.
link |
And so he would play those openings pretty,
link |
pretty exclusively as black
link |
in the tournaments that he did play.
link |
And also the Sveshnikov Sicilian is like,
link |
that's the only, two of my sisters play,
link |
have played a bunch of chess tournaments as well.
link |
And that's the only opening they know as well.
link |
So my family's portrait is very narrow.
link |
So, so this is the, this is the system.
link |
Black goes here and then we all from white takes the pawn
link |
and black takes the pawn.
link |
So at some point I was watching one of my,
link |
my father's online blitz game, blitz game.
link |
And as white, he played this, this.
link |
So this is called the Karkhan defense.
link |
It was taken back, then he went with the knight.
link |
His opponent went here and then he played a bishop here.
link |
So I, I'd never seen this opening before.
link |
And I was like, wow, how on earth did he come up with that?
link |
And he said, no, I just played the Rogozin
link |
with the different colors
link |
because if the knight was here,
link |
it would be the same position.
link |
I was like, I never, I was like,
link |
how, how am I like one of the best players in the world?
link |
And I've never thought about that.
link |
So I actually started playing,
link |
I started playing this line as white
link |
with pretty decent result and then results.
link |
And it actually became kind of popular
link |
and everybody who asked about the line,
link |
it's like, I would always tell them,
link |
yeah, that's the Henry Carlson.
link |
I wouldn't necessarily explain why it was called that.
link |
I would just always call it that.
link |
So I really hope at this point, at some point,
link |
this line will be, will find its rightful name.
link |
In the, yeah, finds its way into the history books.
link |
Can you, what, what, what'd you learn about life
link |
What role has your dad played in your life?
link |
He's taught me a lot of things, but most of all,
link |
as long as you win a chess, then everything else is fine.
link |
I think my, especially my father,
link |
but my parents in general, they,
link |
they always wanted me to get a good education
link |
and find a job and so on.
link |
Even though my father loves chess
link |
and he wanted me to play chess,
link |
I don't think he had any plans for me to be professional.
link |
I think things changed at some point.
link |
Like I was less and less interested in school
link |
and for a long time, we were kind of going back and forth,
link |
fighting about that, especially my father,
link |
but also my mother a little bit.
link |
It was at times a little bit difficult.
link |
They wanted you to go to school.
link |
Yeah, they sort of wanted me to do more school
link |
to have more options.
link |
And then I think at some point,
link |
they just gave up, but I think that sort of coincided
link |
when I was actually starting to make real money
link |
And after that, you know, everything's been sort of easy
link |
and like terms of the family,
link |
like they've never put any pressure on me
link |
or they've never put any demands on me.
link |
There's just, yeah, my ass has to focus on chess.
link |
That's that, that's the thing.
link |
That's, that's, that's it.
link |
Like, I think they taught me in general
link |
to be curious about the world
link |
and to get a decent general education,
link |
not necessarily from school,
link |
but like just knowing about the world around you
link |
and knowing history and being, you know,
link |
just being interested in society.
link |
I think in that sense, they've done well.
link |
And he's been with you throughout your chess career.
link |
I mean, there's something to be said about just family,
link |
support and love that you have that, you know,
link |
this world is a lonely place.
link |
It's good to have people around you that are like,
link |
yeah, they got your back kind of, you know?
link |
It's a cliche, but I think to some extent,
link |
all the people you surround yourself with,
link |
they can help you a lot.
link |
It's only family that only has their own interests at heart.
link |
And so for that reason, like my father's like the only one
link |
that's been like constantly in the team
link |
that he's always been around.
link |
And it's for that reason that I know he has my back,
link |
Now there's a cliche question here,
link |
but let's try to actually get to some deep truth perhaps.
link |
But people who don't know much about chess
link |
seem to like to use chess as a metaphor
link |
for everything in life.
link |
But there is some aspect to the decision making
link |
to the kind of reasoning involved in chess
link |
that's transferable to other things.
link |
Can you speak to that in your own life and in general?
link |
Like the kind of reasoning involved with chess,
link |
how much does that transfer to life out there?
link |
It just helps you make decisions.
link |
Yeah, that would be my main takeaway.
link |
That you learn to make informed guesses
link |
in a limited amount of time.
link |
I mean, does it frustrate you when you have
link |
geopolitical thinkers and leaders?
link |
You know, Henry Kissinger will often talk about
link |
geopolitics as a game of chess or 3D chess.
link |
Is that too oversimplified of a projection?
link |
Or do you think that the kind of deliberations
link |
you have on the world stage is similar
link |
to the kind of decision making you have on the chessboard?
link |
Well, I'm never trying to get reelected
link |
when I play a game of chess.
link |
There's no special interest, you have to get happy.
link |
Yeah, that kind of helps.
link |
No, I can understand that.
link |
Obviously, for every action, there's a reaction
link |
and you have to calculate far ahead.
link |
It probably would be a good thing
link |
if more big players on the international scene
link |
thought a little bit more like a chess player in that sense,
link |
like trying to make good decision
link |
based on limited amount of data,
link |
rather than thinking about other factors,
link |
but it's so tough.
link |
But it does annoy me when people make moves
link |
that they know are wrong for different reasons.
link |
And they should know, if they did some calculation,
link |
they should know they're wrong.
link |
Yeah, exactly, that they should know that are wrong.
link |
And so much politics is like,
link |
it's, you're often asked to do something
link |
when it would be much better to do nothing.
link |
Like, no, but that happens in chess all the time,
link |
like you have a choice.
link |
Like I often tell people that in certain situations,
link |
you should not try and win,
link |
you should just let your opponent lose.
link |
And that happens in politics all the time.
link |
But yeah, just let your opponents
link |
continue whatever they're doing,
link |
and then you'll win.
link |
Don't try to do something just to do something.
link |
Often, they say in chess that having a bad plan
link |
is better than having no plan.
link |
It's absolute nonsense.
link |
I forget what General said it,
link |
but it was like, don't interrupt your enemy
link |
when they're making a mistake.
link |
I think they're...
link |
Also, Petrosian, the former world champion said,
link |
when your opponent wants to play Dutch defense,
link |
I mean, chess players will know that it's the same thing.
link |
I mean, chess players will know that it's the same thing.
link |
Actually, this reminds me,
link |
is there something you found really impressive
link |
about Queen's Gambit, the TV show?
link |
You know, that's one of the things that really captivated
link |
the public imagination about chess.
link |
People who don't play chess became very curious
link |
about the game, about the beauty of the game,
link |
the drama of the game, all that kind of stuff.
link |
Is there, in terms of accuracy,
link |
in terms of the actual games played,
link |
that you found impressive?
link |
First of all, they did the chess well,
link |
they did it accurately.
link |
And also, they found actual games and positions
link |
that I'd never seen before.
link |
And it really captivated me.
link |
Like, I would not follow the story at times.
link |
I was just trying to, wow,
link |
where the hell did I find that game?
link |
Just trying to solve the positions.
link |
So, Beth Harmon, the main character,
link |
were you impressed by the play she was doing in the,
link |
like, was there a particular style
link |
that they developed consistently?
link |
She was just, at the end, she was just totally universal.
link |
Like, at the start, she was probably a bit too aggressive,
link |
but no, she was absolutely universal.
link |
Wait, what adjective are you using?
link |
Universal in the sense that she could play in any style.
link |
And was dominant in that way.
link |
So, wow, there was a development in style too
link |
throughout the show.
link |
It's really interesting they did that.
link |
And it actually happened with me a bit as well.
link |
Like, I started out really aggressive.
link |
Then I became probably too technical at some point,
link |
taking a little bit too few risks
link |
and not playing dynamic enough.
link |
And then I started to get a little bit better at dynamics
link |
I would say definitely the most universal player
link |
in terms of style.
link |
Are there any skills in chess
link |
that are transferable to poker?
link |
So as you're playing around with poker a little bit now,
link |
how fundamentally different of a game is it?
link |
What I find the most transferable probably is
link |
not letting past decisions dictate future thinking.
link |
But in terms of the patterns in the betting strategies
link |
and all that kind of stuff, what about bluffing?
link |
I bluff way too much.
link |
It does seem you enjoy bluffing
link |
and Daniel Negrano was saying that you're quite good at it.
link |
But yeah, it has very little material to go by.
link |
Sample size is small.
link |
No, I mean, I enjoy bluffing
link |
for more of the gambling aspects, the thrill of.
link |
So not the technical aspect of the bluffing
link |
like you would on the chessboard?
link |
Not bluffing in the same sense, but there is some element.
link |
But I do enjoy it on the chessboard.
link |
Like if I know that like,
link |
oh, I successfully scared away my opponent
link |
from making the best move, that's of course satisfying.
link |
In that same way, it might be satisfying in poker, right?
link |
That you represent something,
link |
you scare away your opponent in the same kind of way.
link |
And also like you tell a story,
link |
you try and tell a story and then they believe it.
link |
Yeah, tell a story with your betting,
link |
with all the different other cues.
link |
Do you like the money aspect, the betting strategies?
link |
So it's almost like another layer on top of it, right?
link |
Like it's the uncertainty in the cards,
link |
but the betting, there's so much freedom to the betting.
link |
I'm not very good at that.
link |
So I cannot say that I understand it completely.
link |
You know, when it comes to different sizing and all that,
link |
I just haven't studied it enough.
link |
How much of luck is part of poker would you say
link |
from what you've seen versus skill?
link |
I mean, it's so different in the sense that you can be
link |
one of the best players in the world
link |
and lose two, three years in a row
link |
without that being like a massive outlier.
link |
Okay, the thing that more than one person told me
link |
that you're very good at is trash talking.
link |
I don't think I am.
link |
A lot of people who make those observations about me,
link |
I think they just expect very, very little.
link |
So they expect from the best chess player in the world,
link |
that just anything that's non robotic is interesting.
link |
Also, when it comes to trash talking,
link |
like I have the biggest advantage in the world
link |
that I'm the best at what I'm doing.
link |
So trash talking becomes very, very, very easy
link |
because I can back it up.
link |
Yeah, but a lot of people that are extremely good at stuff
link |
don't trash talk and they're not good at it.
link |
I don't think I'm very good at it.
link |
It's just that I can back it up,
link |
which makes it seem that I'm better.
link |
You're even doing it now.
link |
Also being non robotic or not completely robotic helps.
link |
You're not trash talking, you're just stating facts.
link |
Have you ever considered that there will be trash talking
link |
and over the chess board and some of the big tournaments,
link |
like adding that kind of component or even talking,
link |
you know, would that completely distract
link |
from the game of chess?
link |
No, I think it could be fun in,
link |
when people play off fan games,
link |
when they play Blitz games,
link |
like people trash talk all the time.
link |
It's a normal part of the game.
link |
So you emphasize fun a lot.
link |
Do you think we're living inside of a simulation
link |
that is trying to maximize fun?
link |
But that's only happened for the last 100 years or so.
link |
No, that's like the.
link |
Fun has always been increasing, I think.
link |
It's always been increasing,
link |
but I feel like it's been increasing exponentially.
link |
I mean, or at least the importance of fun.
link |
But I guess it depends on the society as well.
link |
Like in the West, we've had such a Christian influence.
link |
And I mean, Christianity hasn't exactly embraced
link |
the concept of fun over time.
link |
Well, actually to push back,
link |
I think forbidding certain things
link |
kind of makes them more fun.
link |
So sometimes I think you need to say,
link |
you're not allowed to do this.
link |
And then a lot of people start doing it
link |
and then they have fun doing that
link |
because it's like it's doing a thing
link |
in the face of the resistance of the thing.
link |
So whenever there's resistance,
link |
that does somehow make it more fun.
link |
Oppressive regimes has always kind of been
link |
kind of good for comedy, no?
link |
Like, no, but I heard.
link |
Supposedly like in the Soviet Union,
link |
I don't know about fun,
link |
but supposedly comedy, like at least underground,
link |
Yeah, there's a, well, no, it permeates the entire culture.
link |
There's a dark humor.
link |
That sort of the cruelty, the absurdity of life
link |
really brings out the humor amongst the populace
link |
plus vodka on top of that.
link |
But this idea that, for example, Elon Musk has that
link |
the most entertaining outcome is the most likely.
link |
That it seems like the most absurd, silly, funny thing
link |
seems to be the thing that.
link |
So it happens more often than it should.
link |
And it somehow becomes viral in our modern connected world.
link |
And so the fun stuff, the memes spread,
link |
and then we start to optimize for the fun meme
link |
that seems to be a fundamental property
link |
of the reality we live in.
link |
And so emerges the fun maximizer in all walks of life,
link |
like in chess, in poker, in everything.
link |
You're not skeptical.
link |
No, I'm not skeptical.
link |
I'm just, I'm just taking it all in.
link |
But I find it interesting and not at all impossible.
link |
Do you ever get lonely?
link |
Oh yeah, for sure.
link |
Like a chess player's life is by definition pretty lonely
link |
because you have nobody else to blame but yourself
link |
when you lose or you don't achieve the results
link |
that you want to achieve.
link |
It's difficult for you to find comfort elsewhere.
link |
It's in your own mind.
link |
It's you versus yourself, really.
link |
But it's, you know, it's part of the profession.
link |
But I think any like sport or activity
link |
where it's just you and your own mind
link |
is just by definition lonely.
link |
Are you worried that it destroys you?
link |
As long as I'm aware of it, then it's fine.
link |
And I don't think the inherent loneliness
link |
of my profession really affects the rest of my life
link |
What role does love play in the human condition
link |
and in your lonely life of calculation?
link |
Well, you know, I'm like everybody else trying, you know...
link |
Trying to find love?
link |
No, not necessarily like trying to find love.
link |
Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not.
link |
I'm just trying to find my way.
link |
And my love for the game,
link |
obviously it comes and goes a little bit,
link |
but there's like, there's always at least some level of love.
link |
So that doesn't go away.
link |
But I think in other parts of life,
link |
I think it's just about doing things that make you happy,
link |
that give you joy,
link |
that also makes you more receptive to love in general.
link |
So that has been my approach to love now
link |
for quite a while that I'm just trying to live my best life
link |
and then the love will come when it comes
link |
and in terms of romantic love,
link |
it has come and gone in my life.
link |
It's not there now, but I'm not worried about that.
link |
I'm more worried about, you know, not worried,
link |
but more like trying to just be a good version of myself.
link |
I cannot always be the best version of myself,
link |
but at least try to be good.
link |
Yeah, and keep your heart open.
link |
What is this Daniel Johnson song?
link |
True love will find you in the end.
link |
No, it may or may not.
link |
But it will only find you if,
link |
oh fuck, how does it go?
link |
If you're looking, so like you have to be open to it.
link |
It may or may not.
link |
And no matter what, you're gonna lose it in the end
link |
because it all ends, the whole thing ends.
link |
I don't think stressing over that,
link |
like obviously it's so human
link |
that you can't help it to some degree,
link |
but I feel like stressing over love,
link |
that's the blueprint for whether you're looking
link |
or you're not looking or you're in a relationship
link |
or married or anything,
link |
like stressing over it is like the blueprint
link |
for being unhappy.
link |
Just to clarify confusion I have,
link |
just a quick question.
link |
How does the knight move?
link |
Ha, so the knight moves in an L
link |
and unlike in shogi it can move both forwards and backwards.
link |
It is quite a nimble piece.
link |
It can jump over everything,
link |
but it's less happy in open position
link |
where it has to move from side to side quickly.
link |
I am generally more of a bishops guy myself
link |
for the old debate.
link |
I just prefer quality over the intangibles,
link |
but I can appreciate a good knight once in a while.
link |
Last simple question.
link |
What's the meaning of life, Magnus Carlsen?
link |
There's obviously no meaning to life.
link |
I think we're here by accident.
link |
There's no meaning, it ends at some point,
link |
but it's still a great thing.
link |
Yeah, you can still have fun even if there's no meaning.
link |
Yeah, you can still have fun.
link |
You can try and pursue your goals, whatever they may be,
link |
but I'm pretty sure there's no special meaning
link |
and trying to find it also doesn't make
link |
a whole lot of sense to me.
link |
For me, life is both meaningless and meaningful
link |
for just being here, trying to make,
link |
not necessarily the most of it,
link |
but the things that make you happy
link |
both short term and also long term.
link |
Yeah, it seems to be full of cool stuff to enjoy.
link |
It certainly does.
link |
And one of those is having a conversation with you.
link |
Magnus, it's a huge honor to talk to you.
link |
Thank you so much for spending this time with me.
link |
I can't wait to see what you do in this world
link |
and thank you for creating so much elegance and beauty
link |
on the chessboard and beyond.
link |
So thanks for talking today, brother.
link |
Thank you so much.
link |
Thanks for having me.
link |
And I wanted to say this at the start,
link |
but I never really got the chance.
link |
I was always a bit apprehensive about doing this podcast
link |
because you are a very smart guy
link |
and your audience is very smart
link |
and I always had a bit of imposter syndrome.
link |
So I'll tell you this now after the podcast.
link |
So please do judge me, but I hope you've enjoyed it.
link |
You're a brilliant man.
link |
And I love the fact that you have imposter syndrome
link |
because a lot of us do.
link |
And so that's beautiful to see even at the very top,
link |
but you still feel like an imposter.
link |
Thank you, brother.
link |
Thanks for talking today.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation
link |
with Magnus Carlsen.
link |
To support this podcast,
link |
please check out our sponsors in the description.
link |
And now let me leave you with some words from Bobby Fischer.
link |
Chess is a war over the board.
link |
The object is to crush the opponent's mind.
link |
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.