How to Achieve Peak Performance in Any Field: Chess GM Hikaru's Life Lesson

23:05And that also hurts the motivation. And do you think a lot of people in the top 20, and again, we're talking, let's say in the world, there's 600 million people who play chess. Right now, of those 600 million, you're number two. There's Magnus Carlsen and then Hikaru. And do you think a lot of the people in the top 20 have kind of become dejected with Magnus there because it's like this wall they keep hitting? Yeah, absolutely. I think there are definitely some of the players from the older generation now. To be clear, chess is changing. There are kids who are becoming very strong who are now the top 10.

23:38But definitely when you look at the players, I would say there are some American players. There's a Russian player. It's this wall. Your goal ultimately, I think, and no one's going to admit this because we're all competitors, but your goal is just to get to the world championship. That's the goal. And then you expect to lose to Magus. To be fair, I think when you expect to lose to someone, you automatically say they're better than you. more often than not, you're going to lose some because it's in your head as well. Chess is very psychological. Yeah, like let's say two people have equal skill and you have this mindset that, oh, you know, this guy's better than me.

24:10What's the percentage mindset plays a role in an individual game? Huge role. I mean, actually, I don't know if I've said this, but, you know, a lot of tournaments, I would say between like 27 and 2019, Magnus was playing in the same events I was. And my goal was just to make a draw against them and try to beat other people in the tournament. My goal was to make a draw. It was not to try and beat him or take risks, any of these things. It was to make a draw and then try to beat the other players in a tournament. And I think a lot of players are like this in general. And you do. Unfortunately, I mean, it's hard to explain because it's not like a sport.

24:39But since I've played tennis and it's what I follow the most, it's just one of those things where Magnus in the critical moments, he finds a way to get it done. He finds a way to win the critical games always. And that's what great champions do. And when you see that more and more and more over like a decade or decade or decade or decade and a half, it gets in your mind. And you just you think this person's unbeatable. You really do start to believe that.

25:02Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at Alcatra at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

25:23look as a manager of people as an employer as an entrepreneur and as even an investor in startups i can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire the best part is that great candidates are already on linkedin employees hired through linkedin are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues, who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

26:06And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash Altature. Then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs new AI Assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's LinkedIn.com slash Altature. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

26:42This message comes from Capital One. With the Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2 % cash back on every purchase and get big purchasing power so your business can spend more and earn more. Steven, Brandon, and Bruno, the business owners of SandCloud, reinvested their 2 % cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash spark cash plus term supply.

27:14If Magnus didn't exist, you might be the Roger Federer of chess. You know what I mean? Like I look at your games and I say that, you know, you get it done. Particularly like when I watch you stream, I don't know how you save yourself out of some of these positions against like some of the best players in history. You're getting it done. Yeah, so I mean, that's where like we can talk about sort of the sort of where I branched out. I would say around 2019, things started going really poorly because I fell from about number seven or eight in the world all the way down to number 20. I was basically in this danger zone where I might not get invitations to top-level tournaments, and my income could essentially dry up overnight.

27:53I wouldn't disappear completely, but it would go down significantly, I would say, 50 % or more. And that's kind of when, at the end of 2019, I made this very conscious decision that I was going to take a long break from chess. Normally, there are certain periods, certain months when you always play tournaments. so between like 2010 and 2019 i always played a tournament in january and i decided at the end of 2019 i was going to take about a six month break and come back in april of 2020 to play the united states chess championship and i was just going to get this break refresh reset myself completely and then start start going back into it did you play at all during this break or no so so what happened is i took this break and i was actually i streamed a little bit and i would say december and january i was doing some live streaming 2019 already and then in february i made this decision to go to Hawaii to take a two-week vacation.

28:37As soon as I was going to come back from that vacation was when I was going to get serious, start studying chess every day, and get ready for the U.S. Championship in April. And I went to Hawaii, and I think it might have been the first night or the second night that I was there. And I think it was like, I woke up really early because I wanted to go hiking. That's another one of my great passions. And I looked at my phone, I think I looked at the Yahoo Finance app or one of those apps, and I saw markets down like three or 4%. And of course, that's because I think there was a case in Italy or something of COVID.

29:03And that really started the shift. And so I got out of Hawaii just before lockdowns began. I went back to Florida where I live and I was stuck at home. So what to do? Now you don't know if the US championship is going to happen. What am I supposed to do? So I was very lucky because I had already started streaming in 2019. So I was able to jump right into streaming with nothing else to do. And that made that made a world of difference. But I guess that's probably a separate topic. So what I would say, getting back to the chess, is because of what happened with the pandemic, because sort of my whole revenue stream changed and sort of the way that I went about my life changed as a whole, when I came back to chess in 2022, I did not play with any of these fears.

29:41So you can say it's a good thing or a bad thing with something like chess that, you know, the financial situation is the way it is where you only have maybe 10 to 15 players in the world who make a living. For me, I was able to find another avenue to make a living. And because of that, when you play chess terms without any of these fears, I think I basically freed my mind to use a matrix term where I basically freed my mind where when I played play terms from then to now, the only goal that I set for myself is to be competitive. As long as I'm not losing every single game, that's my only goal.

30:08And I also say getting back to the point that I made about Magnus, how I play for a draw. I don't even think that way when I play Magnus anymore. I just go and I try to enjoy playing against him. I don't worry about winning the game or losing the game. I just want to show that I can compete with these players and so it's a complete mind shift and I think if not for that I don't know where I'd be right now in chess but because I've been able to just play the game purely for the love and the enjoyment of it and trying to trying to have the best time that I can and perform the best that I can really it's just I'm playing better now almost than I ever ever was I know it's really I don't know maybe of another instance where someone went from being number two in the world to dropping out of the top 20 and falling in rating as you did And then you went into a completely different career, the streaming.

30:49And again, it really seems like because you, like you said, you've freed your mind from the anxieties of chess and money, you diversified your income streams very well. You, it sort of freed your play somehow. Like, can you think of another chess player where in history that maybe had a bounce back like that? From there all the way to the top, I can't actually think about it, especially because like I'm getting older. If I did this when I was between like 20 and 25, that's one thing. But, you know, the pandemic hit in 2021. I was already 33, 34. So I'm already towards that 40 mark, which, of course, is close to retirement.

31:26So, no, I can't leave anyone who did it. I also think, honestly, though, one of the reasons I think Magnus dominates as much as he does, because I think a lot of players of the older generation, they do have this mindset. Maybe it's not the fears, but it's about making sure they maintain their world ranking as opposed to trying to win tournaments and play their absolute best chess. Because ultimately, you have to pay the bills and you have to make a living. And so I think a lot of top players from my generation, they struggle with this because they're not actually playing chess for the right reason.

31:52Yeah, there was one interview I saw with Magnus yesterday where he was going through his calculations while he was trying to decide what to do with in his last game. And he was looking at your game and he made the calculation, OK, no matter what. Oh, no, this is this is the calculations he made after losing, I guess, the third game to Prague. okay, if he does this, this, this for the rest of the tournament, he'll maintain his number one status. So like, these are the things he's thinking. It's very important for him, that number one status in the world. Like he's kept it for so long, he wants to still keep it.

32:23And for you, what I see is, of course you want to win, but then you have a secondary thing, which is like you say, you want to be competitive. Then you have a third thing, which is you want to be entertaining. Yes. I mean, I think that at the end of the day, I mean, a lot of people sort of it's very hard to understand sort of the separation. A lot of people assume that my streaming career, which, of course, I do stream chess, is sort of connected to my playing career. There's somehow they're symbiotic. I would say they aren't really at this point. You know, even if I were to do very poorly, a lot of fans who watch me online, they still are going to watch my live streams, even if I fall to number 20 in the world.

33:00Now, for me, if I fall to number 20 in the world, I probably just won't play professional chess anymore because I won't be competitive. If I'm not competitive, I'm obviously not going to enjoy losing every game. So yeah, I think for Magnus being number one, I matter a lot. For me, something like being number one in the world was not a realistic goal, I would say, after maybe 2010 or 2011. And when something like that isn't a realistic goal, it's not something that ever factors in. But I would also say the thing with Magnus, and this comes back to great champions, is that even if you might think that would add a lot of pressure on him, he makes the right decisions and the right things happen in all these critical moments.

33:34You look at the world championship in 2018, if he lost even a single game in that match, he would not have been the number one player in the world. But the thing, but you know, champions, they have that way of getting it done when it ultimately matters. And you know, as far as myself, obviously it's not on the same level, but you are right that in recent years when I do compete, I actually have found this, I do have this tendency to be a big clutch performer and win games when I need to as well. So yeah. That's amazing. And do you think that's because, like, when I used to day trade, so for many years I was a day trader, and then if I had a bad day day trading, I would feel really horrible.

34:08But as long as you have other interests, you could diversify. And like, let's say I would go online and play chess, as an example. Yeah, and I'm not playing at any kind of level, but it was just a way to get my mind off of day trading or losing the money with something I enjoy doing. And I'm wondering if a little bit you got into streaming and because you're so excited and proud of how you're doing there and you're obviously making good money there, that allows you to take chances or risks in chess that maybe you wouldn't have done before. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I think having that stability where I'm not dependent on my income from the results off of chess tournaments changed everything.

34:49If that were not the case, I don't think I would be number two in the world right now. I really don't. I think there's a good chance that I wouldn't be playing chess professionally. If you look at where I was in 2019, my rating was down. I was in a very bad place mentally. If not for the pandemic and sort of that whole shift in everything in my life, I don't think I would even be playing chess professionally. I really don't think I would. So, yeah, streaming definitely has helped me a lot in terms of, like, in terms of being able to just enjoy chess for what it is instead of it being this job.

35:15And when you say you were in a bad place mentally, were you like, I mean, I hate to answer this, but were you crying? or were you? Yeah, so like, let me, let me, let me, let me give you an example. I think there's a, there's a Steve, one of my favorite videos that I watch from time to time periodically is Steve Jobs' Stanford speech, which I think many people are familiar with. And he says something like, he says, it's something like you have to enjoy the work you do, you have to love it or something for work and lovers. I forget the exact quote, but I would say that I did not love chess. When I was playing chess, I was thinking, oh man, I have to go waste five hours preparing for this chess game that I'm going to play the next day.

35:48I'm going to go play. Probably it's going to be a draw probably it's not even going to be exciting we're not going to create any new ideas in the game and what i mean by that is that chess is a lot of theory so many games first 20 moves you play something and generally it can be very boring and there are a lot of draws at the top level nobody wins the game it's just a tie so basically my says okay i have to go waste five hours preparing for this game of chess probably it's going to be very boring and we're going to draw the game okay i'm going to maybe finish in fourth or fifth place in a tournament okay great i travel to the next tournament do this on and on for the whole year and in 2019 actually this was the case because I traveled for something like 280 days a year playing chess competitions.

36:21And it's just the mindset when you're when you're sort of very negative, and you're expecting bad things to happen, I found that bad things do actually happen more often than not. And I'd also say that as I've gotten older, like, you know, there's certain things like manifestation, things of this nature that I when I was younger, I thought were complete garbage, complete nonsense. And now I actually on some level kind of kind of believe in those things. But it's just when you expect bad things to happen, when you're not enjoying it, you're like, Oh, I have to go waste time doing this, it's going to be, you know, I'm going to do okay, but Magnus is going to win every tournament, these sorts of things.

36:49Like it's not productive. And in general, it's just, it's this, this loop of negativity and that does not help. And there's also this fear, right? Because you're, let's say you're, you're 33 and you've devoted your entire life to just getting good at chess. Like you said, you were traveling 280 days in that year for, for chess. And to think that this might not be what you continue doing. Like, did you think I'm going off a cliff here? What am I going to do? Yeah. I mean, it was obviously very scary for me at that time because I am thinking about it. And if I don't get these invitations, my income goes down.

37:20I mean, I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know. And like, what are you going to even, what's your choice? Are you going to be an accountant? Like what's going to be, what are your choices? Yeah. I mean, that's, that's one of the very tough things about chess is at a young age, you have to make that decision, whether you're going to approach it professionally or whether you're going to go into another field. And so, yeah, I mean, I think what I would, what I would have done, I mean, maybe I would have try to do something like streaming anyway. But it's very scary because you have no safety net.

37:43And it was definitely on my mind in 2019. Specifically, I didn't know what I was going to do. And it's very scary at that age with no safety net. I mean, potentially no career as a chess player. I mean, there are other things you can do in chess, but obviously, it's not like teaching chess you can do, but it's not not a lot of fun for most people. And also my stepfather teaches. So it's something I'm very familiar with and not something I ever want to do. So So yeah, you just, you don't know what to do. So you're, you're, you're, you feel like desperate on, on some level. And I think when you have this desperation and this great fear, it does impact your play as well.

38:13And so there's a lot of streamers out there. And I think back in like 2020, there was a lot of streamers who weren't necessarily good chess players. You had Aged Madar, King Crusher, you know, all these guys. And, and to look at them, it was actually very inspirational that chess was creating all these opportunities, even if you weren't, you know, Magnus or Hikaru and among the best, you could still make a good living. And just like a sportscaster doesn't have to be a great football player. They could be a sportscaster instead and make millions of dollars. But suddenly chess was creating these opportunities.

38:47And then you start, I think you kind of changed the game a little bit with streaming because you were a great player who was now streaming. But again, a lot of good players stream. They don't also always have the skills of streaming And maybe like, how did you develop? You have to be a good entertainer. You have millions of people watch you. Right. So again, I think what I would say to that is, again, to use the Steve Jobs, there's this quote I remember quite well, which is, you know, you can only connect the dots looking backwards, not looking forward. And for me, in a way, when I look back, it makes perfect sense how this happened.

39:20Because when I was very young, I actually played a lot of chess on the internet. Chess club when I was young. This is like late 90s, early 2000s. By the way, you know, I helped start ICC back in 1992. I wrote some of the code for that. Very nice. So like I would play there. And one of the things that I did, sometimes I'd actually type in moves or type sort of commentary while I was playing. I was doing this when I was like 11, 12, 13 years old. And it's a different form of communication versus say live stream where you're actually talking out loud versus typing. But I already had some of this stuff from my younger days where I was doing this.

39:53So it was actually not so difficult for me to transition into it. I started live streaming, but definitely at the start, I was very awkward. I think one thing, and this is one thing that I've definitely tried very hard, I think, to change about chess, or I hope people can appreciate, is that a lot of people think of chess players as being these massive geniuses who are super smart and everything else. And I do think there is, you know, the stereotype exists for a reason. So I think if you go back maybe 100, 200 years ago, a lot of the top chess players were actually geniuses. Many of them were like engineers.

40:23They were like pianists or economists or all these different things or math professors. I mean, one of the world champions was actually a math professor. That was his main job. So for me, I've really tried very hard to sort of convey that chess players aren't geniuses. And I think the thing is with chess players, because chess players get treated a certain way within the chess world where people think they're geniuses, they're treated with so much respect. It's very hard to kind of open up and share with people who don't necessarily treat you that way or you're in a situation where it's completely foreign.

40:52You're just talking to random people. So I think that's one of the biggest difficulties for the top players is, you know, finding a way to communicate with people who are not completely in awe of them. Because in the chess world, people are completely in awe of the top players. That's just how it goes. And to your point, I think culturally, like in the world, I mean, chess, which let's say it's, I don't know how old, but let's say it's 1 ,500 years old. It was a game of kings, right? It wasn't like the serfs or peasants played chess. It was called the royal game. The kings played chess. And then there is an association of chess with being superior in strategy, being like a military kind of thing.

41:29It's usually used as a metaphor for military. In almost every single TV show, when they try to show that the characters are smart or strategic or even sneaky, they have them playing chess at some point in the show. So, yeah, there's this cultural value to being a good chess player. Yeah, absolutely. And I think also, you know, one thing for most of my life, I always wondered why Chet's wasn't bigger. Now, I'm very fortunate that I actually saw some really memorable events. I mean, for me, my favorite, probably favorite Chet's experience ever was in 1995. There was a world championship between Garry Kasparov and Vishwanathan Anand that was held at the World Trade Center.

42:05I was very lucky I actually got to go to that match on one of the days they played there. But even besides seeing that, you know, I'm someone who, like, for example, I'll watch CNBC or something like this. And I feel like, I mean, I don't know how frequent it is, but it feels like probably once an hour, you'll see some ad where there's someone in a park playing chess. Like it could be insurance. It could be any number of things or strategy. But you see chess is everywhere in culture. I think from a very young age, I always wondered why chess wasn't bigger. Like why is it, why do I see it everywhere?

42:30But it's not that big of a deal. And I think also like, you know, even if it's subconscious, I think when I went into creating content, just to be clear, I mean, there is a slight difference between live streaming and say making YouTube videos just because live streaming, you're live in person. videos you can edit and do all these different things but i think when i went into doing all the content creation i saw a path to try and do something that could make chess bigger and much more accessible and i mean i was right and there's a lot i mean when it comes back to strategy i think one thing that chess players are very bad at i mean not trying to make not trying to speak poorly about like my colleagues or anything but i think the notion of transition that i think the the thing with chess is if you can take those lessons and transition them i mean assume you're not a top player.

43:13But if you can take those lessons and transition them to other areas of life or other areas of business, I think that that's the biggest, I mean, that's the biggest thing chess can give you is the ability to do that. Whether you can apply that is always a tough, tough question, because in chess, you come with a strategy, you come with thinking ahead, but can you actually think ahead when it matters? I think for me, when I look at the live streaming specifically, in 2020, there was a lot of planning that went into many different things. And I would say one thing actually, and this comes back to playing chess is very early on, I had a tough decision when I was making YouTube videos and I started doing some of these recaps of my games where after I play, I do these 15-minute videos was whether I wanted to dumb down my content.

43:49Now, if you look at chess, the smart move is, of course, to reach the biggest audience. I mean, that's in business too. You know, you're looking, where is the biggest group of consumers? And in chess, that group is players who are basically beginner. I'm not gonna use ratings, but basically beginner level. There's a big pocket. I'd say probably, I'm gonna guess like 85 % of players or people who just started the game or played for a couple of months. That is the biggest market by far. But is that a market that's passionate about viewing chess online? I mean, I think they want to watch it. But the thing is, if I do stuff that's not stuff that they don't understand, because I'm talking high level chess concepts, some amount of them are never going to watch my content, no matter what I do, no matter who I am.

44:28But I made the decision actually very early on to not cater to this, to try and keep the level high, because I always did think that I would want to play top level chess. And this comes back to another area of chess too. But generally chess is a game where I would say the simplest way of putting it is you learn a thousand rules. And then you learn how to break every single rule as you get better and better at the game as you progress through the levels. And with chess, if you start doing things at a very basic level, and a lot of people who teach chess have this issue, you start thinking about the game in a much more simplistic way.

44:57And so instead of sort of seeing the 1 ,000 rules and how to break them, you see the 1 ,000 rules and you're trying to follow them to a T because that's what you're trying to convey to your viewers or you're trying to convey to your students if you're teaching chess.

45:24So for me, very early on, I made a conscious decision that I was not going to dumb it down because I was always hoping that I would be able to play in top-level tournaments. It's just one example of strategy where maybe it was right, maybe it was wrong. That's interesting because let's say everybody's out there making educational videos like, oh, have an open file, grab it, or blah, blah, blah. And you were saying it seems like even like in your earlier videos, you were like doing one-minute chess, which people advise, obviously, teachers advise not to play. You were doing disrespect runs where you were just giving up a queen and then crushing people.

45:58so you weren't playing by the rules even of you know the the top streamers out there who were trying to be educational like oh here's a classic game here's what capablanca did in this point you were just kind of going in there and and you had a different vision of how entertaining chess could be yeah i mean i think certainly i mean like i obviously could try to be different but but definitely well different relative term of course but yeah i decided very early on that i was going to try to stay true to my roots of being this top level player and i mean i would also say that there is nobody else doing it too so you know if you want to talk about having a mode or having some advantage like in a way that does give me a bit of an advantage because there's no one else doing it i'm the only only only game in town but i think that no one else doing it is because it's hard like like i think other people tried no i mean you're i would i would say actually i don't think any of the other top top players really have tried you've had maybe one or two who have i think that the big the biggest thing is that with chess players i think i think they have this this mentality that the the world and i think this also comes from actually what i was saying earlier about how when you play when you play tournaments and you start getting into this is work it's grinding it's do this little things here and there it's more about maintaining what you have it's not about taking risks i think a lot of top players they sort of view you have this old world mentality where you're supposed to do things in chess a certain way especially as it relates to training for games getting ready for tournaments playing competitions where you're basically you're supposed to prepare before the term spend x amount of hours every single day looking in chess before the event you play the event same thing after the event same thing where you're doing this day after day after day and you're not supposed to be doing these things that are like improper or whimsical or however you want to put it and are you afraid like are people afraid their peers will look down on them?

47:44They might look down, but they also think it's going to hurt their chest. They think it's actually going to be detract from what they're doing in chess versus being added value. It's one of these things where it's like, okay, you take three hours string or something. Okay, what am I doing? It's going to hurt my chest, and I'm not making a lot of money. Why bother? What am I doing? Now, to be fair, I mean, obviously I was in the right place at the right time with the pandemic, but none of these top players during the pandemic actually try to do it. You know, when the pandemic happened in March of 2020, I don't think any other player who's in the top 50 in the world did live streaming probably until I would say the middle of 2021.

48:18None of them even tried, even though they were all at home and they had the they had the ability. I think it's just because this the trying something new or doing something they thought might perhaps hurt their chest. They didn't want to take that risk. They didn't want to take that risk. And I was lucky enough that I was in a position where I could take the risk. and I mean, maybe not could, but I was doing so poorly in terms that there was nothing to lose from taking that risk, I guess you could say. When did you first start to feel like, oh, this streaming thing is getting bigger, I might be good at it?

48:47And you did have skills at it. Like, I think a lot of top players, when I see them play chess online, they just sort of play and they don't talk and they make little tiny comments here and there. Like, you know, there used to be the banter blitz stuff and it was almost very uncomfortable to watch some of that. And, but you had, you were engaging the audience and you had formats that you would play, like, you know, kind of the speedrun style or, you know, today I'm going to sacrifice my queen or I'm just going to play king to E2 on the second move, you know, the bond cloud opening. And you made it fun as a great player.

49:21Yeah, so I think when I look back, when it started to become very real for me, it was probably, it was around April or May of 2020. And what happened during that period of time is that the big streamers on Twitch at the time, they started getting into chess. And one of the ways that you can grow the base or get people really interested is having this crossover between different communities. So if you have the chess community, there's a certain amount of people in it, but there are a lot of people who are not in the chess community who maybe they'll get an interest in it. Let's just say you have a million people.

49:51If even 10 % of those people get interested in chess and start consuming content for some amount of time, let's say six to 12 months, that's already huge versus not having them find that spark to get into chess at all. And it was in April of 2020 when I did some collaborations with the biggest streamer on the platform at the time, his name is XQC, that it really started to change. Because prior to that, I would say I was averaging maybe a few thousand viewers. It was actually already quite a big size. It was already probably 3 ,000, 4 ,000, I think, on average prior to that. But once I did that collaboration, it exploded to north of 10 ,000 concurrent viewers that I had every single day.

50:26That's when I started to realize that it was for real. But when I combine that with the event that happened shortly thereafter, it was called Podchamps, which had big streamers from across different communities who competed in the chess tournament, which was in June of 2020. When those two events happened and then the pandemic was not ending at that time, that's when I actually started to realize that this probably was going to be my job. Also, I mean, to be fair at this time, because it was because there were no sports or anything else going on, there were a lot of sponsorship opportunities that I never had during my chess career either.

50:59So like the income was already already shooting up as well. So this is I would say it was this period between April and June that I started to realize it was going to be very serious. And then I would say by the end of 2020, I kind of I already knew that that I was never going back to playing playing 10, 10 to 12 chess tournaments a year and doing that as my main main job. And what skills do you think you were learning at this time to become a better streamer? And I always do use the word entertainment because I think you can't just be a great chess player. You can't just be a great anything. You have to be able to communicate that to the world and through some entertaining means.

51:33And you did develop skills. Yeah, I think the, I mean, it's silly to say this, but I think the most important thing that I learned along the way is to not be so serious about myself. I think from the time I was very young, I would say probably from the time I was 10 or 11, the way that I got really good at chess was sort of having a me against the world attitude. Sort of, you know, like I enjoyed the hate. I enjoyed people not liking. I enjoyed just wanting to like prove people wrong, shove it in your face, all this sort of stuff. And probably growing up in New York didn't hurt with that, having that attitude.

52:03But I would say that I always had that, you know, like me against the world attitude being super serious all the time. And I think when I learned to kind of just like not be that serious, to kind of relax and not be so angry, that helped me a lot. That's a long process even before streaming. But I think for streaming specifically, learning to sort of not hold things personally. You know, I think even now sometimes I can get annoyed by comments on the internet. But in general, it's just like not being so serious, not being so tense about everything and just trying to share your personality, what you've done.

52:32Because, you know, I think this happened the other day and I saw a levy actually, Gotham Chess. He made a tweet about how Barcelona is his new favorite city. And, you know, when you grow up with a certain perspective of the world, like let's just say traveling, for example, for me, when I was 10 years old, I went to Barcelona because my brother played a youth tournament. I was there. I think I played. I went to Barcelona. I was 11, 12, 13. And it's very easy when you grow up with a certain perspective of thinking certain things are normal when they actually are not normal. And that is the second thing is that I also learned that what's normal to me is actually not normal for most people.

53:07And it's very fascinating to hear about traveling around the world or, you know, meeting different people, all these different things. And it also comes back to another point, which like when I was on Twitch, sometimes I'd watch people do these IRL streams where they go out, they walk around like Tokyo or they go to some city. And to me, I'm just like, what is this nonsense? There's nothing special to this. But of course, I've been out there in the world. I've traveled a lot. So to me, it's not special or exciting. But for a lot of people who don't have these opportunities in life, it really is.

53:32So it's really learning how to convey those stories, convey everything that I've done in a way that I think people who haven't had the chance to experience them will enjoy hearing about. And there are a lot of these stories, a lot of these stories. Yeah, because think about it. You've been like the top 20 or let's say the top 50 players. How many of them have you known since you were 12 years old? Yeah, exactly. Most of them. I mean, that's an odd thing. Yeah, it's like I was doing some interview recently. I was thinking to myself, like, in a way, outside of my direct family, like somebody like Magnus, even though he's like, he's a major competitor of someone that on some level, like, I don't like him or things like this.

54:08Of course, I respect him. But he's like, in a way, when I quit, he's like one of the few people that I'm actually going to have shared most of my life experiences with him, Fabiano, and a few others more than anyone else. And so it's like, we're like enemies, but we're also friends and all these other things. You ever call each other and just like, hey, how's it going? I mean, not now, but I mean, I think especially as I would say, especially as we get older and the end is closer than the beginning, I think you sort of the bygones become bygones and it's all about the respect. So maybe not now, but I wouldn't be shocked in a few years if that's the case.

54:38And the streaming. OK, so it's kicking off. You're getting sponsors. You're realizing this is a business. How has it become a business? Like how many employees do you do you hire to run this business for you? And how have you grown and expanded it? Yeah. So at the very start, I mean, it was basically myself, one moderator that I had, and then a few other unpaid employees. And that grew very quickly. I think that live streaming is not particularly difficult from the standpoint of the staff that you need to maintain it. But when you start creating, trying to create content, unless you have someone who can do all the different things, for example, editing, thumbnails, you know, the tags, the titles, all these different things.

55:19And there are people who are geniuses at this, but you need to have more people. So at the very start, it was actually is really just three people. I had one moderator that I paid and I one editor slash thumbnail artist. He did both who was doing all my videos throughout 2020. But one of the things is, and this speaks to how difficult it is as an online content creator influencer, however you want to coin the term, is that in order to be successful, you're very beholden to the algorithms. And probably the golden rule, I would say, with any form of content creation is that you're very consistent.

55:50And that means doing it basically every day. So in 2020, when you're riding these new highs every day, whether it's in live sharing the viewership numbers, ad revenue sponsors, or creating YouTube content where the numbers are so out of this world high that you almost can't believe it, very easy to run on the adrenaline. But once you see the downtick, which I think started after Queen's Gambit, I would say like March, April, 2021, it's people burned out. So I ended up having to hire actually multiple thumbnail artists. I have quite a few people making the thumbnails. I have, I would say, three to four editors as well.

56:24So all in all, my team is probably, it's about, I would say I pay 10 people, 10 people. And what about people to pursue sponsorships and business development, stuff like that? So, I mean, we live in a very different world now than we did at the time. In 2020, I would say 2020 through 2022, there were a lot of sponsorship opportunities for many mainstream companies. So I actually had representatives. I was at United Talent Agency, and then I was the other one, WME, William Morris Endeavor. in recent times i'm not actually with an agency i think it's as i look at the landscape now i i don't want to i mean luckily i i will say i'm glad that like i don't like run a company or something which is like publicly traded because i i don't have it in me to sort of like make up things or try to sound always sound super rosy when i when i'm not but the sponsorship opportunities are very few and far between i think that live streaming is still very big but it's not but it's not confined, I would say, to like one platform the way that it used to be.

57:19And so there just aren't the same opportunities. And for that reason, mostly I'm just on my own these days. I have a couple of people who help with emails, but I don't have an agency or anything along those lines. So what do you think is the next evolution in terms of like staying in either content creation or streaming? Like what's going to happen? Or what do you see? You mean chess or in general? And chess streaming, chess content creation. I mean, chess content creation, I think it's very stable right now. You have certain channels are doing very well. You have Levy, of course, Gotham Chess.

57:45You have myself, where we're by far and away the two biggest. I think that what needs to happen is you need more of the top players getting into it. One of the exciting things currently is that a lot of the top players are juniors. There are many kids who are coming up through the ranks or starting to break through. So they're not as dogmatic. They're not stuck in the old ways as much. And even, you know, as another example of something that's changed, I was talking about right and wrong, like you do things a certain way. When I was growing up, almost none of the top chess players played chess online.

58:12They just didn't compete online. I mean, can you imagine, like, I was saying this, can you imagine, like, Petrosian or Smyslaw being, like, a Twitch streamer? Like, it's just crazy about that style of player. And that's earlier than the 90s, but... Right, and even Kasparov, I mean, even Anod. I mean, those guys, they played very sporadically. But now what you have is, like, everybody plays online, which is very good for the game because it gives these kids in a lot of these poor countries a chance to compete against the best players in the world. And the whole view of online chess is that it's actually very serious.

58:41It's legitimate. It's worth spending time to go online and play Blitz because there are competitive tournaments. You have Magnus online, you have me online. And so that has shifted completely. And that's one way it's shifted. And so like all the kids now who are breaking into the top 10 in the world, these kids have grown up where that is a new normal. They do actually play a lot of chess online. So I'm somewhat optimistic that because there's already this shift where playing online is normal, that even seeing someone like me making this content will be perceived as being more normal as well. And these kids will actually take up that mantle and they'll get into it.

59:12I think that's the big question is whether these kids, whether they choose to pursue this or whether they start doing what everyone else has done in the past. And I don't know the answer to that, but I think if they start doing it, the future could be very, very bright. And there's always the danger like you had in 2020 though, where, okay, you're hitting, or 2019, you're hitting this cliff in potential income of chess. So you go into streaming at some point, whether it's because interest slows or there's too much competition, perhaps there becomes that cliff even in streaming or content creation.

59:44And I've seen and I've heard that you've been diversifying your income further, like you've been getting more into it. And you talk about this on your stream, you were getting more into investing and whether it's stocks or real estate. I know you do some real estate stuff. Like what other things are you doing now? Yes, there's a lot of stuff that I do. I mean, I obviously own a lot of properties in real estate, a lot of rentals. Why is it obvious? I didn't know that. Oh, I meant obvious because I assume you listen to my stream. Sorry. I do listen to your film. I just didn't know. Sorry. To one extent, you've owned a lot of properties.

1:00:13Yeah, I mean, I would say actually that was one of the smart things. One of the things, and I mean, maybe I'm unique in this way, but this is also very true of chess in general. There are a lot of people, whether they're in the chess world, and by that I mean like players or organizers or sponsors, or people who just played as kids and then moved on. And there are a lot of people I know from my childhood who have gone and been very successful in other areas. And I actually try very hard to keep in contact with a lot of these people because you never know when there will be opportunities outside of chess.

1:00:44So I think I can say his name. You actually probably know AJ, I'm guessing. You've heard the name. But one of the people that I think I'm based with friends with him, but we never met. Yeah, well, he challenged Peter to like a game for a million dollars or something. One of those marketing gimmicks. But, you know, one of my good friends in Florida, AJ Seidman, he's actually been in real estate for a long time. And I think it was in 2017 or 2018 that he approached me, you know, about trying to buy some properties, you know, basically renting them out on the usual get a mortgage, rent them out and everything.

1:01:13And kind of that coincided with the rise in my income in 2018, 2019 and 2020. So we actually acquired a lot of properties, which we currently own in Florida and Georgia, although one of them is a bit of an issue right now because it's a Section 8 and there are these sorts of things, which are always a hassle. but uh that's one thing but then also of course i'm not of course i say of course because i think of myself with all the things i've said on my stream but from a video that's good by the way like like take someone like me i watch your stream listen to it but i think i haven't listened to every single thing yeah yeah yeah and in my mind i'm thinking that i've said these things probably 100 times on my streams i think yeah of course it's obvious right but it's not to the listener the other thing and this is much more longer term support than that that's it of course stop uh I'm starting to talk like a streamer again.

1:01:58So from a very young age, I've had an interest in investing. I think this started, it's two things. It's the perspective of the childhood and what I remember of my childhood in the early days, very specifically when I spent the first about five, six years of my life in the Mojave Desert, about two hours north of Los Angeles. And let's just say lower middle class, I would say lower middle class. And a lot of the memories I have or the memories I remember as a kid are from that time period more than actually than sort of a more affluent period of my life in White Plains outside the city. So like I've internalized a lot of that from a very young age, those sort of struggles, you know, and and then I think it was when I was about 15 or 16.

1:02:38My mom actually she bought me this book on investing one of our neighbors in the building we lived in White Plains, he'd written a book, I actually found it recently, but I don't remember what the title is right off. It's about investing was mostly about like mutual funds, things like this. That got me quite interested in not in the stock market specifically, but in trying to create long term wealth. And then around 17 or 18, I, my favorite book that I that I read was it was the Bogle book, Bogle on mutual funds. That's just this red book, I remember reading it many times that of Jeremy Siegel's book stocks for the long run.

1:03:06So I read a lot of books about it. And I also had a little bit of money at the time. So I started very early on investing in mutual funds. Eventually, I shifted over to ETFs. They weren't really that popular so much of a thing in the mid 2000s, but I slowly shifted over there. And the main reason that I got into the market is because I didn't think chess was something I was going to be doing forever. And I really did. I wanted to be able to support myself and have passive income down the road. So that's something I've been doing on and off since the mid 2000s. These days, it's pretty boring. It's mostly index funds or companies that pay good dividends.

1:03:40I still do gamble like in GameStop every so often. And it's hard not to view view the market as a game, I think. Right. But but one thing there's there's another good friend of mine who I know who also also does a lot in business. And he said this and he's right. One of, I think, the big advantages to playing chess as it relates to the stock market or life in general, actually, is that in in a single game of chess, you're making so many decisions, so many calculations. Do I play this move? Do I play that move? And in life, very rarely do you make that many decisions. Very, very rarely. I mean, what are the big decisions you make in life?

1:04:14I mean, probably whether to get married, whether to kids, whether to buy a house or maybe buy a nice car. Those are really, I think, where to go to college probably. Those are probably the only five things in life I can think of that are major decisions. So in life, generally, you're not having to make a lot of decisions. You're not thinking about it. I think many people are averse to making decisions. I mean, you look at a lot of companies. You don't have individuals making them. It's like a panel. It's a board. I mean, it's a group decision as opposed to individuals making decisions. That's a good point.

1:04:39So for me, that's one of the great things that I like about the market is that I'm trying to calculate, but I'm making these decisions. And making decisions comes very naturally to me because I'm already doing that in chess. So it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to make great decisions. You obviously can make mistakes. Most people do. But I really enjoy the process of trying to analyze and come to conclusions and make the right decisions. I'm wondering if there's an analogy, too, in terms of analyzing risk. Like, let's say you're playing a chess game. And again, it's, it's, I'm not going to try to put myself in your mind during a game, but let's say you're trying to make a decision in chess.

1:05:15There's a lot of good possibilities. Like, oh, if I move this, make this move, maybe I can attack the king. But then, okay, you could have that idea in a half a second. And then the rest of your thinking is, what are the risks? How do I, how do you remove risks from that position? And just like in the market or in business in general, oh, this would be a great idea. it's easy to come up with a great idea, but then the rest of the time is removing risk from that idea. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, like to go back to Chels for a second, that's definitely true. There's definitely games where you try to control it, where it's like, you essentially want to make sure that you have the tie, but if your opponent makes one wrong move, you have a chance to win the game, but there's no chance of a loss.

1:05:50You want to have like basically a 66 % chance of getting the optimal outcome or 33 % chance of getting the absolute outcome and 33 % of an okay one. Or 63 % of an okay one. Sorry, 66 % OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two results. Two results instead of three results. So yeah, it's exactly 66 % draw, 33 % win, but 0 % chance of loss. So definitely in chess for myself, there are situations where I try to mitigate the risk. And I think that the best players in the world at the quicker forms of chess, like blitz chess, where you play games in five minutes for the whole game, are Magnus and myself because we are able to actually incorporate that into those games as well, not just in the slow games where you have a ton of time to think about it.

1:06:28So and then back to the market, of course, I mean, a lot of it is analyzing and thinking about the outcomes. I think in many cases, you don't people don't generally. I mean, I'm talking about like the everyday person. You aren't in situations where you think about these sorts of things. It's just not something that's in your life. That's why I think for Chaz, it's a great thing to take up because the ability to analyze, even if it's not going to make some huge difference in your life overall, I think it can be beneficial. And, you know, with real estate, I agree with you, by the way, that real estate is potentially a good investment if you don't live in the real estate.

1:07:00So I think I and I, by the way, I own a home. So I'm giving it like I'm giving advice against what I've actually ended up doing in the past few years. Like for a while, I would never own a home. I hated the idea. I lost money on every home I owned. And I didn't even like renting. I would just live in Airbnbs for a long time and just live very minimally. but it's very hard to make money. I think if you're thinking about in terms of like, I want to live in this home and then make money on it, it's better to say, Oh, I'm going to try to get a good deal in a good place. Maybe not where I would live, but I'll wear a lot of other people.

1:07:29It gives you much more opportunity to make a good investment. If you don't have to live in the investment. You know, one thing that I would say is when I think about, when I think about just the general, general, general public is, is that I feel that people, they look at the stock market as a way of getting rich. And I sort of blame the media for that. I think when I was much younger, I remember this very clearly. Now, of course, it's magnified. But you see all these articles about how this person makes a million dollars a year to retire, how this person made $250 ,000. I think when I was younger, I remember I got this ad for this guy, Bernie Schaefer, the CDs, these options things.

1:08:03You're probably very familiar with that. And it's all about get rich. And I feel like for someone who doesn't, I mean, nowadays, indexing is much more common. and a lot of people, the information is much better in terms of what people should do towards passive investing. But I feel like that a lot of people look at it as get rich. And I feel like most people, when they do try to get into the market, if you go and you invest, you're probably going to lose money unless you're indexing. A lot of people try to hit it rich, buy options that are far out of the money. The average investor doesn't beat the market.

1:08:32Exactly. And I feel like with real estate, for someone who just buys their house and they're going to live in it for 20 years, unless they have access to information or they're curious and they research deeper, it's probably going to be better than trying to invest in the market. I think for most people - Yeah, that's probably true. But I think for just your average Joe, they're going to be better off buying a house and living for 30 years and having that equity in the house versus investing in the market. Yeah, I think that's true because I think people have to be very careful investing. Like there's a lot, let's say 95 % of the information out there, including what's on CNBC or the Wall Street Journal, It's just bad information.

1:09:08Like you just don't know. Okay. NVIDIA is the biggest AI company in the world and AI is a trend that's going to keep going, but we really have no insight onto how NVIDIA is going to perform next to its peers next year. So it's hard. No, there's no way to predict. Yeah. I mean, there are many things like I would even use like the roaring kitty thing, like as, as another example, like I don't even know if I believe it's true because if I were in that situation, like when the stock was 60 plus after hours, of course he should be shorting against the box, selling stock against 120 ,000 calls. Even that, I'm sorry, I'm using a modern example.

1:09:42No, it's okay. But it's just an example of any sane person would be doing that. I mean, I'm not even in finance in that kind of way. And I would be doing that, of course, just to lock in the lock of the 400 % or whatever it is. So yeah, I feel like that's a thing. And also, my wife, I remember she's someone who asked me about the marks a few years ago when we were dating initially. And she, of course, used the Robinhood app. And I was absolutely appalled that maybe the first time that I saw her phone, I saw the app, there were literally animations and graphics when she would buy a site. I'm like, wait, what is this?

1:10:14Yeah, they gamified it. I was actually shocked by that because that's, of course, going the wrong direction. I mean, the way that you make wealth is by long-term investing. I mean, you hold stocks for a long time and the market does go up over the long term. And so it's interesting. So you're doing the stuff with real estate. Obviously, you're building the streaming. Obviously, you've come back strong on the chess. Actually, how do you, like all the other chess players are studying, like you say, three, four, 10 hours a day. How do you keep up with the chess? I mean, you're playing a lot of the day, so maybe that helps, but I don't know.

1:10:47Well, there are many things. I think for a short period of time after the pandemic, my results are really good solely because I had been playing online every day against the top players in the world i think many people would be surprised to hear this but professional chess players can be very lazy i think that for the most part during the pandemic from about march i would say september all the other top players they were just sitting at home in their underwear just like watching netflix or doing stuff but not actually studying chess whereas i was playing as top players online and that actually helped me sharpen my game quite a bit so there i think was a period when i came back where i was just better than everybody else simply because i was actually sharper even though it was online these were competitive games were you analyzing your blitz games at all or i guess i think it was more the the alpha zero approach is just you play over and over and over again you just i mean of course i'm playing against other players not not against myself but you just play over and over and over again and i i think that that really you do benefit off of that it's not something that i think you can quantify i mean as an example when you start playing chess the easiest way to improve is just keep playing games against other players over and over again because you subconsciously start connecting the dots you start seeing these patterns the pattern recognition forms even if you're not trying to do it it's just one of those things that subconsciously occurs.

1:11:55So so that I think gave me a big edge at the start. I think you know, there are a couple different things. I made this joke to you about how chess is very psychological or mental. And it definitely is. And I think for myself, one of the things that gives me a big advantage over a lot of my fellow competitors is that when I do these live streams, I'm actually actually explaining my thought process in a very high level way, because I chose not to simplify it. And these players, they might not all admit it. But at some point or or another during the pandemic. I know like Magnus, Fabiano, Wesley, all these talk guys, they watch my stream.

1:12:26And you can analyze games with a player, but when you actually see someone day after day, or I shouldn't say day after day, but game after game, hour after hour, explaining these very high level concepts, it actually makes you more impressed by them than talking to them individually and analyzing a one-off game that you played against them. So you can see hundreds of games. And that actually, I think, changed the perception of me as a player because then they actually start to respect me more than they used to. So maybe you're saying you built up this persona of that now you're intimidating to a lot of the players that's part of it yeah i'm giving the the many factors i think that's a big part of it though is that like they probably didn't realize just how good i am now that's not to say that like if i watch one of them do it if they were to try and do it i might not be like wow he's so good like he's seeing all these great ideas it could it could cut the other way too but i think that's one of the things is that they they've seen this they realize how good i am in a way that they didn't before secondarily i think also it's very hard to rationalize the fact that i don't study chess every day i don't do things the proper way, I'm still very successful.

1:13:22So it's like, if I'm not doing this proper way, then I think in their mind, there's also this confusion about, wait, is he studying chess at all? What's going on? Like, is he studying? He's not saying, what do I play? Should I play this opening or not opening? I mean, I think it becomes very tricky to figure out. And then the third component as well is that the style of chess that I play now is very different. And when you play against people for many, many years, over decades, you get very familiar with the style, the sort of choices they make. And the simplest thing I would say is that it's almost like I scramble my brain.

1:13:51So the decision-making process that I take now is not the same process I had in 2019, for example, or even 2015. It's completely different because you're supposed to play a certain way to minimize the risk at times. You're not supposed to play aggressive openings and critical moments. You're supposed to get the desired result, usually a tie or have a chance to win. But I take risks in certain moments when it seems completely illogical. Point in case would be this candidates tournament, the one where you play the world championship. And I needed to qualify for that candidates tournament. So I was playing the last round of this open event in the Isle of Man.

1:14:23And common thought or the way someone would think that I would approach the game is that if I tie this game, I get the draw, I'm going to qualify for the candidates. Qualifying for the candidates has to be the ultimate goal because that gets to the world championship. It gets back to the cycle I was talking about with when you're breaking through about, you know, point A, point B, point C. And so getting to the candidates, that has to be the ultimate goal. That should be the only thing that matters. So if you only need the tie to get there, what are you supposed to do? You're supposed to play the most solid opening and not take any risk.

1:14:47And then in the game, I didn't do that. And my opponent was actually very confused. He was surprised by it. Well, what opening did you play? I played a Sicilian. I played the Kalashnikov variation, the Sicilian. But my opponent did not expect that because the common thought or the way that you approach it is, it's like, why would you do that? You only need this result to get there. But for me, it's also like, I want to enjoy it at the same time. It's not, and also I want to be very unpredictable too. Like the unpredictability factor matters a lot as well.

1:15:27I think the streaming gives you the unpredictability card because your worst case scenario is, okay, I didn't make it to the candidates. That's because I'm a streamer, but this is great content. And so I'm going to use it this way. And then lo and behold, you win because you have the unpredictability. Right, right. Right. But I would say like, but it's all those things combined. It's all those things. But the unpredictability, like I said, there's a certain approach, a certain way that you think about it. Everybody thinks the same way. When everybody has the same thinking, I mean, if the way you're thinking about it is different, you can surprise people much more and you can actually do very well.

1:16:01But I would also say the other thing is that the way that I study chess is much better. It's much smarter than it used to be. And I think that also comes back to having more confidence. Like, I don't, I would say when I was younger and I would play against Magnus, I would literally review every opening of the Sun. I'd be so afraid, I'd be, honestly, I'd say I'd be so afraid of Magnus that I'd be looking at like five different opening systems or six or seven versus looking at the two that he's probably going to play. Now, of course, you have to look at, you know, little bits here and there. But when you're trying to look at seven different things and you're burning out, you're spending all this energy before a game trying to get ready, the odds are going to say that he's most likely going to play one or two.

1:16:36He's not going to play this seventh option out here. But if you're so afraid of the player, you're so worried or lacking confidence that you need to do that, it's not smart. You're wasting time looking at things that are not going to happen. And so I've gotten a lot better at that too. It's just sort of being practical and trusting myself in a lot of situations. Like when you play Magnus now, let's say in this Norway chess tournament, you go in there with a Nimzo. Did you think specifically what variations he would respond with? I did. I mean, I had a feeling he'd probably play something very close to what he did play in the game.

1:17:08I think I've actually gotten very good at predicting. I think I'm able to understand how players approach the game. But I think that if you look at a couple of opening systems and then you have some general idea elsewhere. So I would say it's like if there are five openings, you have something for three of the openings. And the last two, you know a couple of the moves or lines you're going to do. And that's it. And you don't really look very closely at it. But in the old days, it's more like spending an hour on all five of these or spending, say, like an hour and a half on these three and then just looking for five minutes to the other two.

1:17:34And how good do you think is your memory now? Like, you know, you play thousands of games online, but you still seem to, I see when you're online, you say, oh, I had this game against Kamski in the 2009, you know, whatever, and he played this, this, this, but now I'm going to try this. And it seems like your memory is still holding up. Do you feel like with age, there's any decline? I think my long-term memory is better than my short-term memory. I think that a lot of things from the past I remember better than things that I just learned in the moment for sure. But it changes. I don't think that it's necessarily worse or better.

1:18:10I don't think it's something that ultimately changes that much for the game, whether it's long-term or short-term. But definitely my long-term is better. I would also say, though, as I get older, I'm definitely slower. One of the big shifts is when I was younger, I really liked Blitz Chess the most. and now I think I actually like classical chess the most because I like thinking more than I ever used to but you're still clearly like I mean your blitz rating at times has exceeded Magnus's at least on chess.com I mean you've been a number one on chess.com quite a bit and so so it's not like your blitz is suffering but I'm wondering if like these young kids who are you know it's interesting by the way the top 20 is made up almost entirely of people in their 30s like yourself, Magnus, Jan, and others, or kids in their late teens, or at the most, age 20.

1:18:54Like, Ali Reza is now 20. And where happened to the people in the 20s? There's nobody in their 20s. Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably just a generation gap. For whatever reason, they're just, they're the people who, yeah, I actually don't know. I think it could just be a generation. Like, I feel in chess, normally there's a gap about, I feel like the world championship champions, usually it's 13 year gap between them or around there something along those lines i feel like if i'm not mistaken i think about kramnik to magnus specifically or karpov to kasparov so i think i think there's there's like a 12 13 year gap in in general and i think it might just be a lost generation really if if you were to ask me but i i don't but i do think going forward more and more kids i think chess players are going to be getting better younger and younger ages i think a lot of things that we thought were you know impossible in chess five years ago like a grand master at maybe 10 or 11 years old is going to happen in the near future.

1:19:50And I wonder about that. Like they always say, and I know this is a spurious statistic, but they always say, oh, it takes 10 ,000 hours to master something. And obviously every year you have more and more experience with chess. And yet there's these 18 year old, you know, like Prague, 18 years old here in this tournament who, who beat Magnus, where is he getting his information from? Like, how does he have as much knowledge and depth in the game as someone who still studies it every day who's the number one in the world or number two in the world yeah i think that comes down to this actually i think a large part of it is is related specifically to the chess boom that occurred during covet times and what i what i mean by that is information is basically power in the game of chess and more specifically the opening phase of the game i would say that if you can get through the first 20 moves the the big advantage between the absolute top players and say someone who's number 50 or number 100 in the world is the opening phase if someone who's 100 of the world can get through the first 20 moves of the game and they're not at some big disadvantage it's very unlikely they're going to lose to mac it's very unlikely now they could lose them they could lose to me but i would say that if they get through the 20 moves they're going to lose maybe 10 of the time if that so it's a one out of 10 so the big advantage is the opening phase and because of the pandemic what happened is a lot of people in chess saw these these financial opportunities to try and make more money and so there's a site called chessable which started basically promoting chess courses and a lot of strong grandmasters i mean people who were like top 100 in the world, people who were like top 10 even in the world started making these courses and putting all this information out there.

1:21:20And what that does is in the past, you would have to hire these people, pay them, and they would give you some of their secret, the secret sauce, some of the work that they would do. But now you can basically pay 50 bucks and get all this information for free. And it's not just like one top player. There are many top players doing this. And even if you try to hide some of that information, like one line here, one line there isn't actually the absolute best variation. And you're going to play something else if you have it in your games, it's still so much information. These players can go through it and consume it and really just remember it better than past generations.

1:21:51I mean, kids these days, they grow up with computers, and that has made a world of difference. It's just the amount of information out there from openings to playing Blitz online to all these courses, everything. It's just so much better for the kids today. And I think they can just do it hour after hour. They grow up with iPads and phones these days, so they're just much better at processing the information and in a much shorter time of course because they're also much younger you know and this is going to get a little bit more into the actually before i get totally into the weeds of chess just for a second in the in the candidates this recent candidates you know gukesh one 17 year old the youngest person to ever win the candidates is going to challenge the world champion ding loren i saw an interview right after the candidates obviously you were emotional even you know let's say teared up a little bit and then you were trying to explain in the interview why you teared up but i think it was pretty clear you were disappointed you didn't win the candidates no that's not the reason unfortunately well tell me no i mean part of it is it's actually not about me directly what i would say is that for me i'm very realistic about the future and in that event like my parents were there my brother actually came for one day and like i don't want to sound like morbid or anything but you know there's there's saying that you know when you're dying or something like your life flashes in front of your eyes something along these lines i've heard this quote quite a few times.

1:23:07And it's sort of just seeing the whole progression from the start to where I am today, and sort of sort of realizing how great it's been, but how much I could have accomplished. And actually, like the hardest part of the candidates was not about me. It's that I had all these these members who actually wanted me to win it more than I did. So like that actually was the pressure for me than than the pressure that I put on myself for that event. But certainly, I mean, it was a disappointment considering how close I was. But I also would say that it wasn't that big of a shock to me because when I go back to 2016, I already knew there was a bit of a luck component there.

1:23:40And you could make the argument that in this past event, like there were a couple of critical matchups at the end that were in the player's favor, the one who won. Now, mind you, he deserved to win. Like I'm not saying he didn't deserve to win, but if Fabiano or myself or Nepo or some of the other players had gotten that same pairing, there's a very good chance we could have won. So yeah, I mean, it was definitely a little bit disappointed, but on the other hand, it's like I've always said, and maybe it's just a mindset thing. You know, I felt like I've been playing with house money. And I also felt that it really comes full circle.

1:24:07So when I compare the candidates tournament that I played in 2020, just now in 2024 versus 2016, specifically 2016, I had the same start. I drew a game early and then I lost. And once I lost, I came early. I felt very much like there was this pressure. I have to win the next game. I have to take these risks. I must win a game. Like as opposed to being patient and waiting for the opportunities to present themselves. and in the one that I just played in 2024 when I tied a game early and then lost I actually, I had a couple more ties and then I started winning some games towards the middle and towards the latter half of the event and that is something that if I look at my chessboard prior to streaming, I never could have done that in the candidates never, so I was also very proud of the performance, but disappointment I would say, I mean mildly disappointed but it was never like a massive disappointment simply because I never had a chance to win the game I never had that moment in a game where I can say hey, if I play this move, I win the tournament.

1:24:57But was there a sense that, ugh, this might be the last time? But actually, just to a side note, I can't say that about this tournament, which is why I'm actually more disappointed with this event than that event, because there was a game here against Ali Reza Frugia, I think in the eighth round, I believe it was. I had the game won. If I played one move, I would have won that game. So there's much more disappointment with this event than that one. By the way, I was in the audience for that game. And so again, I didn't have access to computer or commentary or anything. and it did look like you had, you know, after Bishop C4, it looked like you had two choices, C6 and Rook D8.

1:25:29And I was really curious, how did you decide between the two? The way that I decided between the two is I thought that if I won C6, the pawn structure would become fixed in the center. And I thought that after Rook D8, I'd be able to play B6 and go after the pawns on D4 and C5. That's what I thought. I thought the rook on D5, the pawns on D4 and C5 were weaker. If I go C6, there's only the one open E file and I can't really open up the queen side. And then I don't know, but like if C6, Queen E1, you just you did rook d8 he did queen e1 and penetrated c6 queen e1 what do you do to kind of stop him from i just take the pawn h5 and play rook e8 to take the e file uh all right so yeah but i mean again that's kind of beside the point but the thing is i had the chance like that game if i play that move i probably i mean i would say probably like 80 certainty that i win that game so like i actually am much more upset about that because i had the chance to win whereas in the candidates i never had the chance to actually win and then back to your other point about whether it's the end.

1:26:21I mean, obviously, I think these days, I think about a lot more than I ever used to. It's not so much that I'm not competitive. It's more that like, you know, I want to live life. I don't I think a lot of people see whether it's content creation or playing chess is like a lot of fun. And it is fun. But there's also a lot to it that is pretty negative having built the trolls on the internet day in and day out having to make content every single day like it does. There is a lot of wear and tear. And it's very easy to burn out. So yes, definitely. I think when when you ask about being emotional or thinking about the last time definitely could be absolutely and yeah so what would be like even if you get burnt out on like the content creation stuff or the or the chess world in general like what would be next as you're still very young yeah i don't know i mean i've i've i have some thoughts about possibilities do something with with ai something something maybe start a company do something chess related in ai that's one of the thoughts i've had primarily i would say also because some of the some of some of the um content i do now for example but like on one of my channels, it's all AI generated thumbnails, for example.

1:27:19I don't actually have someone doing that. It's just on one of my backup channels. But that's made me start to think about the possibilities of what could be possible down the road. You sort of like testing the waters to see what excites you. Yeah, I would say something along those lines. I mean, I certainly think that I want to do something with chess going forward, even if I stop playing or I stop making content. I mean, I think I have a pretty good idea of when that time is going to come for me. But yeah, there are other things that I have an interest in. I mean, probably, I don't know, something related to finance, maybe down the road, who knows, possibly.

1:27:50But I mean, even that, there's stresses there too. There's a lot of stresses in there. But there's a lot of, you know what I've noticed is that in every subculture that's interesting and exciting, and I would say the chess subculture is one, the finance world, to some extent, to some, you know, some areas of the finance world, but there's always going to be like really bad people. And they're the ones who are going to be in your face the more successful you get. So you have to kind of figure out how to balance that. Yeah, I mean, it's very difficult dealing with that. And that also, I mean, I think that that's one thing with streaming specifically, I learned very early on in order to be successful is that you can't take things personally, you really do have to just let it roll off your back.

1:28:28And it's very hard as a chess player. I mean, for most of my life, I've been incapable of that. But you just you have to sort of just let it let it go at some point. And it's very hard. Like, as a writer, I've often written controversial stuff that's, I don't want to say has gotten me into trouble, but it's gotten me the viral trolls. And unfortunately, I learned too late. The best way to respond is to not respond. Because when you respond, you're lending them your entire audience that you've spent, let's say, 20 years building. You're just giving it to some troll to piggyback off of. Yeah, actually, I was going to say, I forgot there was a second part of that.

1:29:01Like, besides letting it roll off your back, one thing that I learned very early on, this might even be the most valuable thing. Probably, I mean, it's not most valuable in terms of like being financially successful, but most valuable in terms of being successful just as an online content creator is that when people write really nasty things, one of the best things or the best thing I would say that you can do is actually take the words and turn it into a joke in a way. It's like you take the sting out of the word. When someone says something and you turn into a bit of a joke or it becomes funny, that takes all the sting out of what they're trying to do.

1:29:30Right. And it makes some of their followers, you appear likable to them. It also kind of energizes your crew. It's tricky though. that's a that's a hard balance like lately i've been taking the tack just to ignore because it's too easy to just fall into the rabbit hole of trolldom if when you were yeah no no absolutely i think i mean for example i feel like every day i see some comment on my youtube videos or i see some comment on on x and you see that and it's just like you know that if you respond they've actually succeeded in a way right so because they watch you all the time and you don't know them so they know what buttons to press but you don't know what buttons you can press on them yeah yeah so it's trouble yeah so so you mentioned earlier about break and i know you're busy i really appreciate the time i'll i just really do want to get in the weeds now i have the number two world player in the world sitting in front of me you say said earlier you know first you learn the thousand rules but then a big challenge for the top players is you you break all the rules and i have seen this in your games like when i'm looking at openings and i see oh hikaru has played this line i'm i usually i pay attention so for instance and i'm really getting in the weeds so listeners I apologize.

1:30:37You can tune out if you want. The B4 Kings Indian, the Bayonet Kings Indian, okay, for 30 years, people have been playing A5. But you went back to what would be kind of a classic line, Knight E8, which I think is brilliant because you're going for that F5, F4. And everybody has forgotten the reason why that's a bad move or maybe not as good as A5. So I've started playing Knight E8 because of you. Thank you very much. My highest rated wins ever from that line but do you try to to kind of go back and clean up the old now that we have computers to look at these things i think that's actually the most exciting thing for me when i when i look at chess these days is that effectively anything is anything is acceptable computers have basically shown you can play almost anything unless it is outright losing the game right away and that actually makes chess very exciting because then you do start to think about all like rules maybe the wrong way but you think about all these openings that you discarded in the past because they were just considered bad by what was modern modern theory at the time so that that is that is very true like i do that quite frequently you look at some variation if it's not losing you play it i played this thing against fabiano in the candidates for example in the first round it's something that probably you know for the last 40 years people were saying you don't do this i remember there was a time i was working with a strong grandmaster i was like 11 years old and he said well why don't you push this pawn to e5 and he said well because white plays his bishop check so for a long time like it was considered just bad but now because the computers and the strength you can you can you can play that and it's completely acceptable and it's not the only instance there are many many instances so chess is very rich i think that's where when we look at the future it gives me a lot of hope for classical chess for a slow form of chess because when you have these kids playing the game where they've actually learned that way that you can play almost anything you can take these risks and still be fine as long as you know what you're doing versus like the older generation where it's like try to be super fundamentally sound and play a certain way if the young players keep playing in that style chess is going to continue to move forward it's going to remain a very, very exciting game versus all the players who play some of these boring systems like the Berlin defense, as an example.

1:32:33So with the kids learning this way, playing all these exciting openings versus the older generation where we kind of, we play these fundamentally sound openings. As long as they keep playing the exciting way, these exciting opening strategies, chess is going to remain very exciting for a long time. And yeah, I look at these Norway chess games, though. I think, I don't know for sure, but I think the only Sicilian was when Magnus attempted it against Prague and lost. and the commentators I was listening to said, oh, maybe Magnus is not going to try this risky style anymore against these kids. And then a lot of the games were just E4, E5 and Spanish or Italian.

1:33:03And maybe there's some fluctuation in there, like Magnus changing the move order slightly against Fabio. Fabiano wrote the course on the opening they played yesterday and Magnus played a special move order, but it wasn't that huge of a risk. Yeah, I mean, I think that's because the players in this event specifically, some of them were coming off the Canada's Tournament where they had done a lot of preparation for the event. And as I said, it's easier to be lazy. If you have certain opening strategies that you've looked at a lot recently, why do you want to go and try to learn something new? It's better to be lazy, or it's easier to be lazy, I should say.

1:33:34And then also, I mean, you have players who didn't have great ambitions. I mean, you had Ding Loren, for example, the current world champion, where his aspirations, I think, were simply to just perform. He wasn't looking to try and win games or do anything special. So I think the field definitely plays a huge role. And I think when you have more and more tournaments with the younger kids who are hungrier and more ambitious, you're going to see more exciting games. And now you've won, you know, an example of risky play, you've won so many exciting games against the world's top players, against world champion players with the Kings Indian.

1:34:05But I don't really see people play Kings Indian anymore in these top level tournaments. Yeah, I think the reason people don't play the Kings Indian is because it's a situation where you think about why do you play such an opening? And the reason you play the opening is you're hoping to get winning chances with the black pieces. Generally, it's very hard to win games with the black piece at the top level. So because of that, you're looking for something exciting. And the reason I think many people don't play it, including myself, is that because of computers, white can play almost any system and get a small advantage.

1:34:33And they don't have to go for the systems that are exciting. They can go for this two-result situation where they play something very boring, where they have a good chance to win. But if they mess it up, it's only going to be a draw. Whereas in some of the most exciting lines, white's either going to win the game or lose the game. You're looking at two results, but it's a white win or a black win. And I think that's the main reason is because there's too many ways for right to get a small advantage and not play something that you're really hoping for, which is an exciting game of chess in the Kings India.

1:34:57I'm just trying to think of more of this. I just want to squeeze the chess knowledge out of you a little bit. Well, if you were starting a lot of your listeners, if you were just starting chess, how should people learn the rules of them and then learn to break the rules? Like, how do you how do you really make the fastest strides in chess? I think actually the 10 ,000 hours is definitely applicable in this case. Actually, I did a podcast with Malcolm a couple of years ago. And I think that just playing as much as you can, getting a basic opening strategy where you're not going to lose the game in, say, the first four to ten moves.

1:35:34Once you have a basic opening strategy, just play as much as you can, whether you're a kid or even whether you're an adult. Because actually, I mean, the other great thing is that you see some adults now who are actually trying this where they just play for hours and hours and hours, and they get very, very good very quickly. Now, of course, very good is relative. But you get to, I would say, a reasonable amateur level without too much difficulty if you just play, if you just keep playing. But it's very hard because when you do poorly, it also takes a certain mindset to be able to keep pushing forward rather than just stopping after you have a bad day and you lose like 10 games in a row.

1:36:03Yeah, like how do you get that bounce back mindset? That I don't know. The mindset, I can't speak to. Because you've had it lately and maybe you didn't have it in 2019. Yeah, I mean, I think it's just that because ultimately for myself, when I think about the bigger picture, I just believe that good things are going to happen or I know that everything is going to be okay versus looking at it as like I'm worrying about everything and where things are going to go at the end of the day. Like do you feel your self-worth is not as tied to your rating? Yeah, I mean I don't think it has anything to do with the rating.

1:36:34It's just the self-worth is tied to the income I make from the chest tournament. Like the rating matters as much as you get the invitation if you don't, if you maintain or don't maintain it. But I think it's just that ultimately, like it's how I do in the tournament is not going to change my life at the end of the day. It's not going to have an adverse or positive, positive effect either way, whether I win or I lose because of everything else I've accomplished. You know, I wonder, like, so just in, you know, relative terms, like in the 90s, I hit about 2250. I played your brother at the Marshall chess club in the nineties.

1:37:09I remember you were, you were there watching the game. And then as soon as the game was over, your brother won. And as soon as the game was over, you were like throwing the pieces all over the board. Like, Oh, you could have done this. You could have done this. You could have done this. You probably obviously don't remember, but I remember. And then I stopped playing right, right around then. And only recently I've started playing again. And it's like an immediate drop of 200 rating points. And then I just can't, I feel like I have knowledge, but I don't, I've lost some ability to win or to kill.

1:37:37And I don't know if it's an age thing or because I've done a lot of other things in my life, but I'm just not sure how to get back that killer mentality. Well, I think there are a couple of things. I'm sure that you are lacking the killer mentality, but you are lacking that and probably being older doesn't help. But I would actually say probably the biggest thing is that chess is just, it's just a very different game now. So it's a lot tougher. I think that the quality of the competition is much better across the board at all levels, just because of the amount of information out there. So I'd say it's a combination of many things, but I think probably, I mean, it's so tough, though.

1:38:12It's so tough because you're at a level where you're pretty good, but there probably are a lot of really good, if you plan online, there are probably a lot of really good players at that level who are aspiring to get better. Yeah, who are aspiring to get really good. They're trying to get better. Yeah, I'm not sure. Honestly, I don't like to be negative, but I think it's actually a game. It's just different. It's very, very hard. And I actually see this a lot with my wife, for example, where she's a very strong chess player, about 2300, similar level. And then she started teaching about like six or seven years ago.

1:38:39And now she's trying to play again competitively. But she runs into all these kids who are super well prepared. Her two to three opening systems that she played her whole life, it's just not good enough. You have to play many different opening systems and strategies. So I think it's just because the game is different. It's not even necessarily a you thing. I think it's probably just the game. It's a much harder game now, much harder at all levels. Yeah, I feel that's true. I mean, I've been trying my best and I've been studying. I study it every day and get coached and all sorts of things. But, yeah, when I actually sit down for a game, I'll even get winning positions much more than I'll get losing positions out of the opening.

1:39:12But I just can't. Kids are good at defending. They're good at the tactics. They move fast because they'll make any move that is just – you know, they're very good at making pretty good moves. Yeah, practical decisions. Yeah, and I have to learn that. Like I'm trying to make the perfect move if I run out of time. Actually, I would say that's one thing. I worked with Garry Kasparov in 2011, and that's one of the biggest differences in modern-day chess versus when Kasparov or Karpov are these great champions of pass for playing. The goal was to play the perfect move. You wanted to play the perfect move.

1:39:43And again, I think technology has changed things because when you look at positions with computers now, there are a lot of positions where you might be a little bit worse. But it's very rare there's a situation where there's one move that's winning unless it's a straightforward sequence of 10-moves calculation. When I think about like Kasparov, for example, he grew up with like there's one better It's not where you have a computer telling you, well, you can play three moves and they're all almost equally good.

1:40:30of the moves. Don't waste 20 minutes on this move. Pick one of the three good moves. I mean, the accumulation of good moves is going to be more important than trying to play like two perfect moves because the two perfect moves are not going to win you the game. That's a really good point. And I think that also is about patience too. It's just like you're not going to get rich quick on one stock. It's not necessarily the case that every move you have to win the game. Like it's just a cut. There's a compounding effect to making these pretty good moves. Yes, I agree with that. I mean, like it's fairly abstract, but I argue that's why when you see Magnus make blunders, more often than not he makes blunders and unless it's one of those howlers that lose the game, somehow he's still in the game after the blunder because the accumulation of all the good moves, it kind of balances out versus the blunder.

1:41:12So definitely, I mean, being practical is something that players today are much more cognizant of because you do look with computers and the computer most of the time will just laugh and be like, okay, you can defend this way, that way, everything is fine, whereas in the old school approach, it's not defensible. If you play the best move, you will win the game, but that's just not not reality. And computers have shown us that, that it's very, very rich. And there's so many different possibilities. Why'd you stop working with Kasparov at the end of 2011? Mainly because our styles didn't really fit that well, I would say.

1:41:41I mean, his approach was perhaps I felt like a little bit dated on the one hand. He was too serious. He also took too much credit. He made certain decisions for me as well. And I mean, I'm not going to fault him for that. I mean, I understand who is his personality. There were just a lot of little things that just it didn't really work out the way that I was hoping to because I felt like, you know, Kasparov is too much of a dominant figure. And in some ways, I was too deferential for obvious reasons to him. So, yeah, it just wasn't it wasn't it wasn't a good match. And I also think, you know, when I look at just in general, whether it's chess or or anything I do, like I'm somebody where I really believe that certain people have talents, have talents.

1:42:19And you can find ways to go about about showcasing those talents. They don't have to be the absolute top players. For example, the people that I work with in all the content creation, many of them are misfits. Some of those people, they're on depressants all the time. Some of them are smoking weed. They have issues in their life, but they're extremely good at what they do. And I think when I look at chess, the person I work with mostly on chess, he's only about 2 ,300. He's not the strongest player. I mean, he can't play complete games of chess. He'll get winning positions, blunder and lose games just like you will.

1:42:49but what I what he what I need him for is for him to do the preparation where he can look at the opening strategies get me to the position and then I can take over and play and if he can do that he's done his job and that is actually the most important thing because ultimately it's on me to make the right decisions you know when I'm when I'm in the when I'm in the game do you feel he's gotten better working with you I mean I think he understands me very well I don't think it's something that anybody could do certainly but he he is a better trust player now than he is at the start I mean I think the start is maybe like 2000 when he started working with me now I was probably 2300.

1:43:20But, you know, I also would say like, it's like if you look at business, for example, I think it's like, I think it's Bezos. He said something about like, you know, what is the role of a CEO? And I think the role is basically make a couple of very big decisions. And when you put that in the context of chess, the goal, my goal is to make those big decisions in the games. Like if I can play 15 moves, they're going to that middle game strategy where they're five, six moves in a row. Those are the critical decisions that are going to determine the outcome. So as long as I can do that, I've done my job and other people can get me to that point, then they've done their job too.

1:43:49So you don't necessarily need the absolute best chess player in order to be successful. Well, Hikaru, you mentioned your wife earlier. We've got to get you to her. Thank you so much for sitting down with me. I really appreciate it. It's been an interview I've been looking forward to for a long time. And congratulations again. I think Norway chess was outstanding, at least as a spectator, to watch you in action and your success, the results from winning number two, getting back to number two in the world, getting over 2 ,800 again for the first time, what, since 2015? 2015, yeah. Amazing. But it's different.

1:44:23You know, like to add one more point to that about being 2 ,800, I remember when I got to 2 ,800 in 2015 and it was a big accomplishment, but then there's like, okay, what next? And at the time when I was thinking about it, it's just like, if I draw against people at a lower rate, I lose ranking points. How am I going to maintain this ranking? It was more about like trying to maintain it. whereas now when I have this rating I don't really expect to keep the rating for forever but I'm but I'm enjoying it I'm not thinking about oh the dread of like I have to maintain the brain to get the tournaments or like you know I have to say number two in the world I have to be ahead of certain players I don't have any of those thoughts anymore so I don't have the baggage or the burden that I once did and and so I think that's why in many ways I'm you know I'm playing better than I ever did so it's I hope the listeners enjoy it and I hope they find it fascinating and I think it's this healthy approach to all these things like in particular chess or streaming the idea of not being attached to one artificial idea like rating or viewers or whatever actually contributes to success it allows you to be your own actually i keep keep going on but one other thing i would say is very very you don't really want to have lunch with your wife you're just you want to no i'm just but but what i was just going to say like it's very important when it comes you know to to like live stream a lot of people have this misconception about you know the streamers aren't smart they don't know what they're doing but it is really important that that you understand that the viewers who are watching it, like they see you for who you are.

1:45:40I'm talking about like live stream, not YouTube videos so much. But they see you for who you are. And what I mean by that is that a lot of people who, if you go into it for the wrong reasons, you're not going to have success. So I think one of the reasons a lot of people in chess have not been successful with starting recent times is because the reason that they go into it is the wrong reason. They're going into it, hoping to make a lot of money because they see the success that I've had or others have had along the way. And I think the viewers are actually very smart and they see right through that.

1:46:04And so if you go into it with that approach versus just doing it because it's something you try out, something that's exciting, something you enjoy as more of a passion, then you're not going to be successful. And when I started out, of course, I had none of these aspirations. I just thought it's something to do, it's something exciting, maybe share a chest with a slightly broader audience. And then it became something much bigger. But I did not go in with the intention of it becoming my main job or how I would make a living. I think you're absolutely right. I did stand-up comedy for many years, and I owned a comedy club in New York, Stand-Up New York on 78th and Broadway.

1:46:31way. And one thing I learned very quickly is that the audience is an x-ray machine. Like they, if you're even the slightest bit nervous, they know it and they destroy you. And you always have to be, you always have to have the mindset that this is my party and you guys are just invited and I don't give a shit if you want to leave. Yeah, no, it's very true. Because also sometimes when I'm in a very bad mood, the viewership is lower and that's not by accents because it's just, it's not an enjoyable atmosphere for them. Yeah. Well, again, Hikaru, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And you're welcome back anytime.

1:47:04And when you start a chess AI company, let me know I'll invest in it. So thank you very much. Sure, no problem. All right, sir. Thank you.