Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game

25:31In fact, Karuna's approach you could almost exaggerate and say, it's closer to a computer than many other humans. Of course, he's 1 % of the way closer, but it doesn't matter. And there are players who approach Chessanamo systematic way, and they're the ones who tend to find exceptional ideas and things like that because of the way they don't rule out stuff just on dogmatic grounds or something like that. But we are talking very small differences. I think one of the understanding is much closer to let's say Carlson's than thing. But yes, his approach is to calculate everything and look for very specific solutions.

26:04Carlson's, as this is, hand will make them move. You just know where the pieces go, and then you don't need the details. And how do you prepare differently against each type of player? I don't get down to that level of detail. If I was playing a match, I could try to incorporate that approach. But so much of chess is just getting the opening right, the moves right, the concepts right, that you don't have time to microtaug it like that. It just doesn't work. And you're more of a bit... Perhaps others are able to do it. I would think the maximum level you could do it at is to choose the kind of opening which favors you the most intuitively and say, from what I know of my opponent, this is the position where his fidgeting uncomfortably in his chair.

26:45And once you've chosen the opening, you hope that, well, that insight actually plays out. But at least for me, I've never been able to target much more. Like I said, when I was playing Topala, I used my insight into saying, well, these openings will work for me and you know, he'll get impatient, he'll try to do something active. Maybe I can punish him. But once I've done that, the rest are just long lines and I can't use that insight anymore in the games. You'll have flashes of this at most, but chess is actually mostly long variations. What goes on inside your head during a match that no normal human could guess at?

27:20Surprisingly, how distracted we are during a match, even in very critical moments, I'll be thinking, what I can have a dinner, what I should have done yesterday, that I met that jerk yesterday and you know this kind of stuff. And your brain wanders off and it's almost, it's almost like taking your foot off the gas. Your brain wants to wander off for a while, you let it and then you come back and you keep one part focused on what's happening but while you're open and thinking you can wander off. Whenever somebody tells me, I don't know how you concentrate for Salinas, I understand that they don't know how we play chess or that they haven't played chess themselves because we do not concentrate for Salinas.

27:56very few people do it and I would think even the brain simply says goes on strike periodically and then comes back so I think that's how it works. You've argued in your career you had a down period something like 2011 to 2013 until recently Karawana seemed to have a down period for a while. Why does that happen to very top players? It's very hard to explain I mean if you could even see it coming you could start to think about it but my feeling is it catches most people of God They repeat a recipe probably too long and it's not like anybody else spotted it coming. Suddenly notice, hey, it's not winning, after one or two tournaments you think, it's not winning quite as much as you used to, didn't you?

28:38And then you take a look and you realize that slowly some resistance has built up in his games, resistance to the free flow, the most natural flow, but it's very hard to see it coming and then when you're stuck in it, it's very hard to see how to get out of it. And in most cases, at least my experience, the way to get out of it is to stop thinking about how to solve it and almost lighten yourself and get back to playing a normal game for normal reasons. And you'd think that method could be refined and you could apply it systematically, but if it did, nobody would have slumps anymore in form. So there is something clearly that we can't quite pick up on.

29:18It's a kind of staleness that gets into your game. It's probably an accumulation that if you're doing too well for too long, others have been working non -stop trying to understand you. And at some point, without you, or them realizing it, the gap is closed. And then you're encountering more resistance. You're doing what worked perfectly before, but you're encountering more resistance. You can't see why. And the opponents don't understand why they're not losing, but they suddenly think, yeah, this is the work that are better for me. And somehow the gap closes, and the time has come for you to move on or something else, bring some fresh perspective.

29:51What's your favorite multi -pithe on skate? I like the one with the Pope. There's several with the Pope. Well that's true, basically Michelangelo. Michelangelo, Michelangelo. I like argument clinic very much. Yes, and there's a lot of nice stuff with the Ministry of silly wallets. So the parrot is very good. Yes, cheese shop is very good. Yes, the dead parrot is very good. Summer rice proust, you know that one? They didn't show that one that much. Yeah, no that I missed, but those were nice. And also the Yokshaman, these guys all talking about how poor they were in their childhood. Yes, that's fantastic.

30:27I love the idea of cardboard box in the highway. Was faulty tower as ever is good as Marty Python? I'll tell you the first time I was staying with... I visited the Indian Consul General in the Hague. And he invited me for a stay for lunch because he's also from Chennai. So he invited me to stay for lunch. And so I said, well, that's very nice. Thank you, Elstey. Either before we were about to have lunch or about, or after we had lunch, he said, OK, I'll put some. He put a cassette in, and it was faulty toes. And I started watching. At first, I didn't understand the humor at all. I wasn't even that familiar with multipython then.

31:06It gives you an idea. But the humor seems strange. And then there's always this one situation which is so absurd that you just can't stop laughing. At some point I was laughing, but like a person who could not stop. And I was choking almost. And that's when I knew, so I would have to say, Faltitas are as good. There are lines which are fantastic. There are simply, don't mention the word, right? Don't mention the word, maybe I've just watched it way too much, but this hotel inspector is great. The health inspector is good. and what I love is this blind or well this deaf old lady who comes by and complains about everything and he says what were you expecting from a hotel window talking and also the lovely thing yes madam that's the sea it's between the land of the sky it's perfect stuff what's the most underrated queen song I don't know I I rate all of them very highly bright in rock I might pick I've heard Bohemian orhapsody too many times at this point yes I've heard Bohemian orhapsody as well and my problem is my son recently discovered Queen so we listened to it again almost in overdrive.

32:14I don't think I have a underrated Queen song. I'm aware that there might be songs that I've underrated. You're right. But for me I rate them perfectly highly. But I have this habit of listening to my four or five favorite songs in an album and kind of ignoring the ones I don't like. My son is more disciplined in that way. He'll actually listen to the whole album. So he asked me questions about songs I'll, some I'll be, I'll give him in, two or descriptions. Other ones I'll say, you know, I've never heard that one. In chess, opening preparation, where does that end? What's the bottleneck? Does it just keep on going until the first 33 moves are pre -packaged?

32:53Some lines will go that far, but equally you can use the computer to solve the problem that the computer has created, which is that if you take a single line you can go very far. But you can also deviate an earlier and earlier stage and you can always, you can have it running on 20 lines and you go for line number 17 and you think and you'll find that you're not able to work it out just as thoroughly. You need time to do it and before you do that you move to the next one. So no one's quite able to nail every possible. You can always surprise someone. We saw this with Ding recently and he actually went H3 in one position.

33:31It was a surprise. Surprise backfired because Yahn seemed to know exactly which line to play. And he went for the one line where H3 turns out to be a disadvantage. That's very hard to nail down. You have to get quite deep into it. Mostly that works. But yes, even with that qualification, the opening preparation everywhere is just building up and up. There are lines I neglect for six months, and then I come back to them and I realize, my God, I have to update everything. I'm not sure of anything, any of this preparation anymore. The problem in preparation is not whether it's detailed. The problem is whether you can believe in it.

34:07And if you have not checked it 100%, it's worthless. I mean, it's like a 99 % guarantee before you go to the operation. You want to have 100 % guarantee, right? So it's 99 % is simply not good enough, and that's the problem with opening preparation as well that the computer allows you to question everything. Every new version, every new program, every new piece of hardware, each one of those things can drive it. So every six months or a year, you start, I have to start all over again cleaning your stuff. On the other hand, it's one of the great joys in chess research is to come to an opening that you're not seen in five years.

34:40And that first day, you're discovering everything new. Every single line you refute and clean up and You feel like you've cleaned your entire house of clutter and you feel wonderful. So that's, it's a double -edged sword. I will concede that, but it's a pain in the neck when you want to lay on something. The people are playing the Geo -Corpiano again. Is it that we've discovered it's better than Ruello Pes or just we're sick of all the old lines and we're going to try something different for three years and then move on and the two night's game is even coming a bit into fashion. And is it cycling or continuous improvement?

35:14It's a lot of it cycling. At some point, I don't remember maybe five or six years ago, there was a kind of individualistic collective sense that maybe the Rylopus is neglected territory, let's go back there and try that because of Italian and the Giacopiano, my God, there's nothing left to find. And then we do, everybody goes after the Rylopus for a year and suddenly a couple of guys say, let's look at the Italian again and you think, There are a few things we haven't picked up on, so you swing back there. And it goes like this, but it's an arms race and we're not winning. Was it a kind of market inefficiency that the King's Indian defense could survive for so long?

35:55I mean, Rajabhav did pretty well with it until recently. You've played it a fair amount, but it just seems like a bad move, right? There's a time when it looked just lost. Yeah. No, I mean there was a time maybe five, six years ago when the King's Indian just looked lost because the computer always said it was lost. And recently, maybe even a year ago, the computer said, no, I confirm it's dead lost. But people have always said that there's something fundamentally unsound about the King's Indian, but it couldn't quite prove it. And that was where people are going on. You know the famous quote of Kochnai, right?

36:26He said, he told the Iron Picket, the King's Indian is not an opening, it's a disease. And so he was basically, he had it right all along. And so recently Fabiano started playing head six in the Kings and the classical Kings Indian. And the beauty of that is it's not quite a futile. It's got just enough life to drag on for a while and people come to parts of the Kings Indian that they like. So the Kings Indian that aligns you that you find difficult to play. But if you come in from a Grunfeld move order and white does something against anti -Grunfeld and you swing from there back to the Kings Indian or you come from a Benony move order and you get into the Kings Indian or even you put the Bishop on E7 and rotate it this way that way.

37:07Kings Indian concepts turn out to be very dynamic and healthy, even if you're not getting to it in the same structure opening. So Kings Indian players have found a way to get the Kings Indian fix for the week without having to go down the old main line. And that's how it goes. But computers will contradict themselves every couple of years. So maybe the pendulum has swung to the farthest side. Does Fisher random have a future? Or it's just a side thing forever. Fisher random actually has a brilliant future because it is a form of chess which has not been understood at all. However, with this thing, Fisher random was conceived as a way of avoiding opening theory.

37:50Later on people rediscovered it as a way of avoiding computers. Now we realize we are not avoiding computers at all. They are just as good at Fisher random or no -castling as they are at chess. new versions we are never going to catch up with computers. But for playing amongst ourselves this is completely new territory and we can there's a lot of scope for creativity and everything we used to look for. It's a variant with a lot of promise. Maybe the one which I just play is the most comfortable with. However, in the meantime I have played no no -carsling a few times. That turns out to be fascinating.

38:22The first time I sat with my computer and I had to play a night of three rook G1 and repeated four corners, all four rooks and nights so that white couldn't castle anymore and then switch on the engine and analyze openings like this. And I realize that almost every opening can be re -evaluated if you're king com castle. And so everywhere the right plan turns out to be H4, H5, rook H4 thing except the ones where it's not and you don't, there are no general rules yet or we have not come that far. So we find every little detail. Now, there are lots of other versions that are coming up. And you can, versions you can have as many as you dream of.

39:00So you can have pawns moving sideways, pawns capturing straight and moving diagonally. You can have every which variant you want. You program it into the computer and let it play a million games and see what comes pops out. So this may be a solution for the distant future, but for the moment, just looks healthy enough. especially if you vary people who have played too much classical chess have around of faster controls and then we need to do too many faster controls you go back to classical and if you keep varying like this that's one thing that keeps the game moving along. The second thing that works very well is for instance what they do in a data style which is to have a mixed field.

39:37Not all super prepared top gm's but a mixture of very young courageous juniors with top gm's you have that mix that and it also leads to a lot of unpredictability. So if you keep moving around, you change the format, change the variant, change the time control, change the change that you just keep shuffling, we can go on for quite some time. Is there a chance that 10 years from now say rapid play is the world's just championship? I wouldn't rule it out. I wouldn't rule it out, but I feel that classical would still exist. It's just public taste would have moved along. And the same could be said for Blitz just if you want.

40:11And we're also dealing now with thanks to the revolution of the last five or six years, which in general, I mean, what happened with the Queen's Gambit, what happened in the last couple of years, which is that maybe the number of people who are casual fans of chess are far greater than serious fans of chess. Sure, of course. And they are actually following the game now. But before they would follow it once in a while, now they actually have an impact and you sense it in the numbers. Thanks to them, I think they may not have this old attachment to classical chess. They may also not know who Cup of Lanka was.

40:45And when that is felt in the sport, then the sport will inevitably cater to their tastes more and more. But I don't think that classical chess will disappear. It's just that it used to be 100 % of chess. Then for the last couple of decades, it's been about 80 % of chess. Now I would say it's closer to 30 % or 40 % of chess, which leaves the other variance fighting with 60%. The other time control is fighting with 60%. And it's a question of the mix. There will always be some role for having a lot of time to think and find interesting stuff. But all the time is very hard, especially given modern preparation.

41:16How is it you think that playing so much as a streamer seems to have made Nakamura a better? Psychologically better too, right? I don't think the streaming helps him become a better player, but what it has done is it's taken a lot of pressure off him. He really felt he had only one way to show who he was, that was the chess board. And now he suddenly realizes, I've got this other method where people appreciate me and cheer me. In fact, many years ago in 2011 in Tata, still he made a winner's speech. And I was kind of surprised the way he said, it's so wonderful to be in Holland where we're appreciated for our chess in the US nobody would care or something like that.

41:50And he did this as the winner in the closing speech. And I thought, well, quite a strange thing to say. But if you keep that thought in the background, now he's got the adulation he wants. In fact, he seems to crave it. He goes back and does a recap every day and things like that. He really seems to want it. What I think is helping him is playing Blitz tournaments nonstop online. That allows him to keep there. And it might be the best way to train for a modern computerized opening preparation here where there's so little to do with preparation because the computer solves everything. But you can test every concept a million times, practice over the board.

42:22And that's why he's so good at it. And that's why all the best players now are playing these online blitz events. You can put me in the spot and say, well, if you think that's the case, why aren't you doing it? I haven't gotten around, I do some training online, but I don't feel like sitting from midnight to three in the morning, playing online blitz these Tuesday events and so on. But if you were much younger, could you imagine yourself as a streamer? I can imagine being a streamer now very easily, but what I don't see myself doing is spending all night playing. Also, I don't feel like playing that much, Blitz.

42:55I always tell myself, I should do a bit more, but in the end, the body just doesn't get up and then that's it, you just don't go there. I easily see myself trying streaming or something, but it's a question of how long you want to invest in it. I mean, again, success is not gonna come very fast. There's a lot of crocodiles already in that watering hole. You'll have to spend some quite some time and do stuff daily and things like that. And so it's a big time commitment is what I'm trying to say. and then so I could very easily see myself doing it. And I've done versions of it over the last couple of years.

43:26I did a lot of online coaching, lots of my talks that I used to give for companies I do online as well nowadays. So I've done versions of it. I could see myself doing that, especially commentary on how difficult it is instead of going to a tournament and doing commentary from there just to sit in your room and do it. It's very easy. So that I could see the other bit. Probably I'm just a bit old. I think it was MVL who made the remark that in a post -alpha zero world, what we've learned is how much chess is truly the concrete and how huge generalizations there are. Does that make sense to you? What do you think we've learned from alpha zero?

44:03That's a broad agenda. I don't even know if it starts with alpha zero, but maybe that's where it became the most visible. But he's right. There are no general principles anymore. In fact, new general principles emerge. Now, what is we push the H &A ponds so whenever we want and it's not a bad move. But 20 years ago these mows would have been considered betraying the complete lack of an interest education. Now, it's not there. So everything we used to think was bad, we forced to evaluate move by move. Some of them will turn out to be bad, many of them won't. And you just have to know specific reasons and you'll just have to get into the details.

44:40So he's right about that. I think it's probably a cry from a person who's I mean to prepare this stuff all the time, but anyway, he's right, I think. Just nowadays it's about finding out exceptions to everything. And that's where a lot of the growth is at chess player. Because all of us be hardwired to think these things are good, these things are bad. But imagine that you now have to wander in the field of everything you thought was bad and realize that half of it might be good. That's kind of where we see ourselves now. Rukchi won against the Nidor. Is that a novelty move or actually a very good move?

45:09Because no one played it in the time of Fisher, right? No, not at all. But even when Fisher played H3, people thought, what the hell is this? And then they said, oh, but Fisher did it. It's OK. So I need a stamp of approval. And the computer is now the new stamp of approval. Rukchi won by the way, pre -dates Alpha 0 and it pre -dates modern engines. We're talking at least 15, 20 years. Bishop D2 on No6. That is such nonsense. Even when the computer is running, I think about this is nonsense. The fact that it doesn't lose on the spot tells me that, especially with a computer, It doesn't lose on the spot.

45:39It tells me nothing but this is nonsense. But there are people who play it and then mixing, you know, this theory building up. At age 53, you're still in the world top 10. There's no one else in the top 10 close to your age. And you have been India's number one for what? 37 years? 38 years? 37 years. What keeps you going? What motivates you? I like playing chess. A couple of years ago, I decided to that maybe playing full time, playing the whole year round and trying to compete at the highest level. It wasn't worth it in terms of the amount of time and effort I would have to put in for the results I expected.

46:11So I decided to semi -retire. A decision made easy in the pandemic, because everyone was semi -retired in the pandemic. But the key thing was not to come back after the pandemic was over. So I played a little bit here and there when I could. Because I still like playing. And I like, for me, just tournaments are primarily social events. You meet everyone and you hang out with everyone again. So when I did all that, I enjoyed myself and then I'll say, okay, now for four months, I'm not going to play anything. much longer break than before. Also, I'm living in India more or less the whole time when I'm not playing, so that's increased, changed a lot.

46:42Some of it is family. You know, my son is growing up, so you also want to prioritize what you're doing with your time and so on. But I really enjoy the few tournaments that I play. So when I play these rapid -rubbed blitzes and I have these one or two events in the year, I try to four or five months before leading up to them. I start training again. Just to get back back in this frame of mind where it's just is not just some philosophical thing where you can do this and you can do that. It's concrete moves, like Enveil said. And the most important skill in chess is if I was sitting at a board now with the clock ticking, what would I make in this position?

47:20And then suddenly the infinite variety of choices you have becomes irrelevant. You have to make only one move. And how do you switch to that frame of mind? I try to stick there. But I really love analyzing and working on chess. And maybe even just like Fahikaru having something else fill part of your life allows you to come back to chess with much more enthusiasm. These long breaks, then when I get back to chess, I'm much more enthusiastic about playing and I look forward to it. So that might be a huge fact as well. You hate losing as much as Kasparov does? To me, it seems he isn't even close to me, but I admit I can't see him from the inside and he probably can't see me from the inside.

47:57When I lose, I can't imagine any one of the world who loses as barely as I do inside. inside. So you think you're the worst at losing? Hi. At least that I know of. Couple of years ago I know a people will say but how are you such a good loser and I'd say I'm not a good loser, I'm a good actor. I know how to stay composed in public. I can even pretend for five minutes but I can only do it for five minutes because I know that once the press conference is over once I can finish talking to you, I can go back to my room and hit my head against the wall because that's what I'm longing to do now. And in fact, it's gotten even worse because as you get on, you think, I should have known that, I should have known that, I should have known not to do that.

48:36What is the point of doing this a thousand times and not learning it and you get angry with yourself much more? So I hate losing much more, even then before I think. There's an interview with Magnus on YouTube and they asked him to rate your sanity on the scale of 1 to 10. I don't know if you've seen this. And he gives you a 10, is he wrong? No, he's completely right. He's completely right. I think sanity is being able to show the world that you are saying, even when you're in saying. And therefore, I'm 11. Overall, how happy you think top chess players are. So, you top 20 players. I think they're very happy.

49:11They understand that they're able to beat chess players. They can have a pretty good life doing so. So, just like anybody who finds that they're doing what they wanted to do, what they would be doing anyway, even in other worst circumstances. but they're able to do it in a pretty nice way and challenging way. Then we understand the privilege. In fact, the funny thing is how many chess players are happy even not being top players. Because they just again, one of these callings, you find yourself in it and you really enjoy it. It's very quite hard for a chess player to quit and switch to something else.

49:43They always have this time lag. I was quite surprised to see when Kenneth Rogoff became an economist. That's odd, yeah. Yeah, well, he became an economist, but recently, maybe seven, eight years ago, somebody asked him, so what's it like thinking about chess again because he had come to a chess tournament? He said, but I never stopped thinking about it. And for me, that was strange because I would assume that after five years, it drops way below. But apparently, he kept at it all that time. He would think about chess every day. When I see him, maybe you know the dynamics. Right. Well, yeah, he doesn't want to talk economics with me.

50:17Sure. If you had to boil down, your cognitive ability or abilities into a small number of dimensions as possible. What's the cognitive ability you have that makes you special? I think the ability is, well, is it cognitive? The ability to pull out details from a mass of information that I've seen. So, in just, we may see a thousand games from this, and then at the board, I may be able to distill the right idea from all that. So, being able to extract useful ideas from a lot of information. Also, good visual intelligence, just in chess, the only skill which a top chess player has to have really is the sense that something is going wrong.

50:58And that's a visual thing, because with very few details, you suddenly think, I feel uncomfortable, there's something wrong here. That's one of the most important skills you can have in chess. And besides, probably just the usual mix, a bit of memory, good memory, at least for things that I'm interested in, ability to focus on one thing and keep at it. So, and is there some other area where you have also a remarkable ability? Wow. So Magnus seems to be great at fantasy football, some chess players are great at bridge. I'm sort of good in games and lots of these games you play just for fun. You mean, I find that I started an acceptable level, so maybe that is some skill there, but I have not thought about it that much.

51:38That's two questions. There's so many talented young chess players from Tomonado. you, obviously you know them, you play with them. And if you're looking for who will really climb to the top, like Praga, Gukesh, other than just how well they play at the moment, what else do you look for? If they're very young, I want to see a certain amount of fanatism. Fanatism is good when you're in your teens, but quite a few of them have that. I think maturity is maybe the most important thing, because pregnant and Gukesh have taken some horrible blows. But whatever you realize is that they're quite strong.

52:11In a way that I'm amazed, maybe because for me losing hurts so much more, I get to no longer understand people who are relaxed about losing. And maybe I was once more relaxed, I don't know. But Pragan Gukesh, both have taken some of the tough times recently quite well and come out of it. Now they're both going gangbusters and it's great. But they've had difficult times as well. And there are things I look for on the chess board, just a sense that they understand a lot of stuff without having to just like I mentioned earlier, they know where the pieces go and if I look at their games I can quickly get a sense of which area they're focusing.

52:45I mean some of them have no understanding of just at all but they have amazing sporting qualities which is that they're tenacious, they're able to keep resisting. You can see that they don't have this dip of being annoyed with themselves up at the position and therefore their performance goes down. If anything they're still finding only moves, they're still hanging in there. So some things like this will alert me to some sporting qualities but the chest qualities I think I look for first. If not, I wonder, well, they don't have this. What could I want? They're positively bring to the table that composes for it and then I realize, ah, they have these other sporting qualities, maybe even their fitness, their ability to hang in there, things like that.

53:23Last question, where's the best place to eat in Chennai? You should go to some of these would -be homes and we have some places where they serve traditional South Indian breakfast. I think that and not in the bigger places. You have to go. I went on idly, I went to, that was very good. Morgan Adley is very good, there's some nice ODP joints, there's Matsya, you can try that. We go to the old Dasa chain as well, there used to be something called Dasa Brakesh, so that's nice. Well for me it's almost a childhood thing, literally that's how we used to snack when we were young. And besides that some place with the good tali gives you, I think a good sampling of everything in Botswath Indian and Indian cuisine.

54:02Peshyanand, thank you very much. Thank you, Plesha. Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter, I'm At Tyler Cowan, and the show is At Cowan Convose. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.