Inside the Global Chess Revolution with Peter Doggers

28:54So let me ask you this. You've been in the chess world for decades. Close to two decades. Two decades, but you were a player since you were a kid. Are chess players smart? Yeah, that's what we talk about, what I talk about in the third chapter, which is all about science and chess. Well, I think, yeah, I think on average, they are a bit smarter than, let's say, the general population. But, of course, the main question is, was it chess that made them smart? Or are people with a higher IQ somehow a little bit more attracted to the game? And so there is a bigger chance they will actually pick chess up.

29:37And therefore, they will be better represented in the population of chess players. I think it's the latter, to be honest. But at the same time, there are some benefits of the game and that will indirectly help them to probably use their intelligence well also, I think. Because, well, if you're young, a very clear example, I think, is it kind of teaches you to be more patient, to not make these spontaneous decisions without thinking. I mean, I'm teaching my own nephew who is 11 now. I'm teaching him chess. And it's still, we're now playing chess for one and a half years. And still, whenever I'm giving him a puzzle, he immediately wants to give the answer.

30:28And now he's sort of slowly learning that it actually makes sense to try to be a bit quiet and think about the position first and then come out. And that is, of course, some value that is useful for every life. In chess, we call it sitting on your hands. So you sort of, it will make yourself, it will make it harder to actually make a move on the board because it will take time to get your hands out of your, under your legs, right? And yeah, so you're building this, your appreciation of being patient and being thoughtful. And that can only help in other aspects, I think. And, you know, also there's, it's hard to get good at chess and this is all relative.

31:14Like no matter what your starting point is, it takes work to get better. And, and it's, it's not like getting, okay, you're a runner. It would be impossible for me essentially to start starting from where I am now to run a marathon anytime soon. but with chess is something anybody can sort of starting from scratch can get better enough that they feel good about their progress they could notice their progress but it does take actual work and you learn that skill of getting better at something like that meta skill of getting better at something by sticking to a domain like chess which is a very you know concrete domain it's it's as you mentioned in the book it's a game of perfect information you could study different aspects of the game and you could see your progress by measuring very quickly whether you're winning or losing.

32:04And, you know, one thing I always wonder, and I'm wondering it now because I'm going through this, how does one get better? I mean, I think people don't really know the answer, even though we all have worked at it. Yeah, well, my answer is the best way to get better at chess is to have this intrinsic deep love for the game. Because that basically means that you're automatically going to spend a lot of time on it. And that's the start you need. You really need that. And what is both beautiful and interesting and also a bit of a downside of the game of chess is that I've always felt that when you start on it, when you're an absolute beginner and you learn the rules and you start making the first tricks maybe, the game is not that great yet.

33:03It feels a little bit like, yeah, why is everybody so crazy about this? It's not that great right now. But then if you are somehow able to go further than a certain step, certain threshold, simply because you do kind of like it or a friend urges you to play a lot or you got this brilliant book from the library or from the bookstore and you just absolutely loved it and you finished it all the way through and you somehow managed to keep learning for a couple of months and you actually get to a slightly higher level, you realize that the game becomes richer. The game immediately becomes a bit bigger than you thought.

33:42And that is a process that will continue for a couple of years. For a couple of years, you're playing this game and it's sort of growing because there's this famous exponential thing to it, of course, with the number of possible chess games to be played being bigger than the number of atoms in the universe. That is, you're learning, there are so many things that can be enjoyed. There are so many beautiful themes and tricks and ways of winning. Just like other sports, you can win in an aggressive way. You can win beautifully by defending beautifully. You can be artful, like Michael Tall was playing with lots of sacrifices.

34:22You can be super beautifully positional, like Petrosian and Carp were doing. So there's all these styles, like you also have in other sports, where you can play. Well, in tennis, we used to have, what is it called? Baseline play, but there was also surface folly. It doesn't really exist that much anymore. And in football, you have the catonaccio from the Italians, and you have the attacking play. For my own country, total football, you know? So all these things are also happening in chess, and the better you get at it, the more you will discover. And that's why I think a lot of players, a lot of people, there's still a lot of potential for this game to grow also, because if more people sort of become a bit better, they will all sort of make all these new discoveries, and only then will they sort of realize how beautiful this game is.

35:16well what did you do as you were getting better to kind of what do you think was the biggest sort of aspect that you studied or learned that that increased your strength um i think it was sort of two things uh by the way we're talking about early 90s so it was sort of just just before computer influence and internet influence started for me it was late 80s yeah Yeah, but it was a similar age, I think, because basically the internet just started in like 93, 94 only, or ICC is from 95. By the way, you have a great quote about ICC, but we can get to it later. I saw it. Thank you very much. No, ICC started because I had already left Pittsburgh in 94.

36:01ICC was around in like 92. Yeah, yeah. But I believe it was still ICS, the internet chess server. Oh, yeah. And it became ICC in like 95. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. We're talking about the early 90s. But anyway, for me, I think it was a combination of two things. I got a bunch of books from the library, and I like that. I mean, it helps when you actually like to go through books that are about chess, and you like to actually put the positions on your own chess set, and you like to read and check the annotations. When you are enjoying that, and you can read book after book, that seriously helps in getting better at chess.

36:38There's a lot of people who simply are not a big fan of doing that. They just want to play games. And yeah, and that's it. And that also works. You can also get very good by playing a lot of chess games. But for me, it was this love for going through books. And also from the very early start, I was introduced to Bobby Fischer and his, well, not to him personally, but to his story. His incredible story, him being a prodigy and becoming a grandmaster at 15 years old in the 60s or late 50s. And yeah, beating all the Soviets, of course, and his famous match in 72. And I actually watched his games with Spassky in 92 because 20 years later they had this rematch.

37:27And it was right before the internet sort of started in the Netherlands. But we had the games on Teletext, on the television. The British called it CFAX. We call it Teletext. By the way, in Holland, it's still quite popular. It sort of disappeared in almost every country. But in the Netherlands, we still use Teletext a lot. And the moves were coming in. They were playing in Sveti Stefanland in Belgrade. And it was amazing. Bobby Fischer was on the board again. It was huge. It was worldwide news. And the games were, the moves were coming in live through Teletext. And I had this chess set in the living room and I was literally following the game and looking at it.

38:06And that also helped. So it helps. My point is it helps when you have someone to look up to. You have a hero that you really like and you can study his games. I had this book with all his 750 games all in one book. So I played through almost all of them. And so that's the second thing I believe that I had this, this guy I looked up to and I wanted to be like him and I wanted to, I started playing his chess openings with white and with black. I was started copying what he was doing and, and I wanted to play in his style. And it also, it really helps if you have someone like that also.

38:55and you know it's interesting also like speaking of bobby fisher who contributed so much to chess being popular in the u.s particularly in the 70s there's so much drama in chess like again we've recently seen it with the magnus carlson and hans nieman cheating stuff but that's minimal compared to like like bobby fisher versus spassie it was like the west versus you know the soviets and And then Fisher was like already very eccentric at that time in 1972. And, you know, Henry Kissinger, the secretary of state, had to call Bobby Fisher and beg him to play. And then he lost the first game, forfeited the second game.

39:40It was unclear. I mean, there was so much drama. And then the drama didn't stop. Like, as you point out, like Kortenai Karpov in the Philippines a few years later, huge drama. it became the basis maybe you know some of the basis for the the the theater show chess that tim rice did yeah and then karpov kasprov like and and how kasprov like did all these draws to avoid losing the match maybe the longest match ever and then the match was canceled when karpov started to break i mean every kind of sort of decade or or set of years there's another huge dramatic story that's like a thriller definitely somehow chess lends itself to these personalities and these these dramas that i feel like other sports don't really have yeah yeah it's true yeah and um i think partly this is because of the same things we were talking about uh it is in the end it is a game that just everybody knows because it is everywhere.

40:44Actually, I don't write it in this book, but I see it as a bit of a paradox because it is a niche, but at the same time, it's mainstream. So it's the most mainstream niche that we have in our culture, sort of. Right. 600 million people play it, you say. Well, yeah, I think more. I think more these days. Yeah. Yeah. So let's say a billion people play it. And yet, like you say, it's considered this odd thing if you're really good at it. A little bit odd, maybe, yeah. But let's put it this way. I think in 72, when it was West versus East and Nixon was involved and Nixon invited Fisher to the White House after he won and all that.

41:29The thing is, it was the Cold War and it was also, So what is it, 10 years after the Cuba crisis, a missile crisis, and it was still this feeling of a nuclear arms race and will this lead to World War III? That was always, I believe, a little bit in the background of people's minds. And suddenly you have these two guys from representing the two sides playing a game that is, in fact, from its origin, two armies opposing each other and getting into a battle. and then the next day again and the next day again. So it is this perfect metaphor for everything that is related to the human clash and the possible war between countries and stuff.

42:17So I think that played a very large role as well there. Plus the eccentricity. Yeah, exactly. The personalities were very important as well. And the funny thing is, I actually also spoke to Tim Rice, as you mentioned, behind the musical Chess. And he went into watching this match and thinking about it like, well, the West are the good guys, right? And then the commies are the ones we're fighting, right? And then it turned out that Fischer was actually a very problematic person. And maybe you could say maybe not a very nice person, actually. and Spassky was this very soft human being, a lovely guy and he sort of allows all the shenanigans that Fischer was putting into this match and you could say that Spassky was the one who saved the match because the whole team, they were actually telling him we should stop here, this is too much, what Fischer is doing and all his demands with the cameras have to go out of the room and all that and Spassky was like, no, no, no, I want to play this, I want to play this.

43:22So in essence, he saved the match actually together with the FIDE president at the time, Mats Öwe. So it's this interesting paradox of their personalities. And then, yeah, well, in 1978, Karpov was a very strong communist representative, but Korchnoi had actually defected. Korchnoi was a Soviet player, but he defected to Europe. So suddenly it was also a West versus East. And Korchnoi and Karpov were both not that soft. They really didn't like each other. And there were all these real things happening. Korchnoi wearing reflective sunglasses to annoy his opponent. Yeah, because he thought Karpov brought a parapsychologist.

44:07Yeah, exactly. Who was sitting in the first row. And then the story of the famous blueberry yogurt brought to Karpov's board. That led to a protest because bringing a yogurt during the game can be a sign of cheating, of course. because it's a way of giving information maybe. So after that, he was only allowed to get the yogurt at the exact same time every day so that it couldn't be a sign anymore. And these kind of dramas and stories aren't just in the modern era. Like in the 1860s, Paul Morphy, an American, suddenly became out of nowhere the best player in the world and was like blowing up Europe in terms of like just destroying everyone.

44:45But he also was this eccentric, conflicted person who after like flaming all over the world, like he just was the best ever. And then suddenly he completely rejected chess and refused to play it or talk about it. And Steinitz, the world champion, tried to play him and he wouldn't play. No, of course the chess fans always feel it's such a huge pity that Morphe played only a couple of years actually. And he had this unbelievable tour going through Europe and he was clearly better than the rest. He had this unbelievable talent and was crushing all the masters in Europe. And then just a few years later, he already quit, which is just unfathomable, basically, yeah.

45:30And unfortunately, yeah, he's also an example of someone who had mental issues later in life. And yeah. I wonder if to be so obsessed with something, there's a danger always of tipping over into that mental instability. Yeah, I think so, yeah. I do think that you run a higher risk with that. But at the same time, I think just a handful of people have created this image that all chess players must be a little bit crazy, right? Because they are so good at chess. I think that is extremely exaggerated. I mean, we had Morphy, who was mentally ill at the end of his life, while Fisher was not great. So let's put it that way.

46:22At the end, later in his life, he'd be a strong anti-Semite, for example, and a conspiracy theorist that anyone these days would be proud of. And now, unfortunately, what, as I said, what Vladimir Kramnik is doing is also starting to edge towards the very weird areas. but yeah let's say let's face it we had thousands and thousands of strong chess players and if it's only uh if we can only mention a handful of people going in that direction maybe it's not that different from everyday life you know you know another thing that's interesting and this like let's compare this to tennis for instance if you take the best tennis players from the 60s like say arthur ash and you take them at their peak time travel them to now and put them up against you know federer let's say at his peak yeah federer is going to destroy it like there won't it would be 6060 every match even though arthur ash was the best player maybe in history at his time and chess has a similar kind of thing like like sports and games evolve and And the best of any one era is always going to be better than the best of the eras before.

47:37And I once read some quote that Caruana, who's ranked number two in the world, Fabiano Caruana, somebody once told me that if Caruana time-traveled back into the 1950s, he could basically beat any prior world champion while blindfolded. And that's probably true. but if you're saying teleported to the 1950s you always have to ask yourself are you teleporting him with all the knowledge that he currently has about the game or are you sort of letting him grow uh grow up in that era because then of course it's a very different story well that is the question so if you take like uh uh so so let's take the world champion from like the 20s uh jose capablanca and if you time traveled him as a kid to now, would he have the talent and strength to learn how to be among the top players or even be the number one player as he was then?

48:31Well, yeah, and then we get into the era of would he have the personality to work with computers, for example? I mean, a famous quote from Jan Timman, for years the strongest player of the Netherlands and he was actually number two in the world in 1981, best of the West, we called him. Jan Timman said, I don't think I would have been a chess player at all in the modern age because he really liked how chess was before the computers were there. The preparation wasn't that much. They didn't, maybe they looked at something for half an hour in one of the books they brought in their suitcase. That was about it.

49:11And afterward, they would go for a drink and they would get drunk and they would have these amazing discussions at the bar with the other participants. And these days, it's three hours of computer prep in your hotel room. You play the game and then you need to also do a bit of fitness. You have your dinner. You need to get to bed early. Maybe if you're Hikaru Nakamura, you're streaming your game. You're explaining it to your fans how you played that day. And then you go to bed and the next day you rinse and repeat. So it's a very different lifestyle. And to be honest, if you mentioned Capablanca, who was also famous for doing pretty well with women.

49:45I don't know if he would have enjoyed this life that much, actually. But maybe someone like Lasker, who was a very good mathematician as well, maybe he would have been someone who could actually be pretty good these days. But interestingly, Lasker is very unusual in that he was still world champion when he was over 60 years old, I believe. And there's one section in your book that's actually part of the chapter on cheating, but you mentioned this player Gaussis is his last name? Rousis, yeah. Rousis. And he was, people suspected of him cheating because it was unusual for someone of his age, he was 58, to suddenly improve so much.

50:27And I'm sitting here thinking at 56, hey, I'd like to improve, but maybe it's just not possible. I don't know. Like, here's somebody who actually was suspected of cheating simply because he went up like 100 rating points. And it turned out he was cheating. So, you know, I'm 49, you're in your 50s. To be honest, I do think that people like us can improve. But I don't think almost anybody of us wants to make the sacrifice that it needs. Because I think we would have to spend at least four hours a day seriously on chess on a daily basis, doing lots of training, working with good training program and maybe a bit of fitness even.

51:12We would have to play at least six tournaments a year, I believe, get the games properly analyzed or analyzed ourselves. It's like you would have to change your lifestyle completely and just about half of your day, every single day, half of your day should be dedicated to the game. For one thing, are we really going to enjoy that? And second thing is we will have so many other commitments and we just cannot do that. But only if you really can make that enormous change in your life and you can sort of put it in the highest priority, sort of, I do think we can still improve. Yeah. But, yeah, who has the time for that at this stage, right?

51:50Yeah, but I do think kids have some extra benefits they bring to the table. Of course, yeah, of course. They have more energy. They have more stamina. Yes. Their brains are, like this is like scientifically shown, their brains are just quicker. And the part of their brain that does calculation and visualization is probably faster than when they get older. No, that's for sure. Yeah, that's for sure. And I think that means that if they would do the same, maybe in the same period of six months to a year, maybe they would get 150 ELO points stronger or even 200. And we would only get 75 ELO points stronger for the same effort.

52:30because yeah exactly we uh our brains are not that great anymore at this age yeah so so now with with a billion people playing movies coming out the the streamers have have taken this to a whole new level of popularity like you know because it's not just like like as you said earlier oh our chess players somewhat nerds or nerdish like you see these streamers They're all like good-looking people. And just like in any game or sport, the good-looking women do very good streaming and the great players do very good streaming. And so there's all these things that are contributing to its popularity, like the internet, the culture, the entertainment world, the rise of platforms like chess.com so everybody can play all.

53:21I mean, how many games are going to be played on chess.com this month? I don't know the numbers, but we're talking about more than, I think, these days, I don't know, what is it, like 30 million a month or something like that? This is a number I vaguely remember. I think like over a billion a month. So maybe 30 million is actually daily then? Yeah, I think it's 30 million a day. Yeah, that's probably a day, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the number I have in my mind, but I forgot. So this boom is going to continue. and what does that mean? Should everybody learn to play chess just the way everybody learns to play golf or whatever?

54:01I wish chess was like golf. I wish you could professionally hang out with a bunch of CEOs and network by playing chess, but that doesn't really happen yet. Oh, I don't know. Sometimes it does. I mean, there have been some events. Actually, I remember, but actually quite a while ago, maybe more than 10 years ago, Magnus was at some point on a tour through California and he actually met several billionaires. He met with Mark Zuckerberg. He was on television with Bill Gates where he destroyed Bill Gates in like seven moves or something. And he met a few others and there was like a party where some of them also gathered.

54:46So this kind of thing sometimes gets organized. and I think there's more stuff happening. We are making connections with the NFL, for example. We had an event in April with the NFL. There was a disc golf chess connection, also a disc golf event where chess players were participating. Magnus himself, by the way, is seriously into golf these days and he's improving rapidly. Of course he is because he's getting good at almost everything he does, but not on the level of chess. But still, I wouldn't be surprised if that in the future could lead to some kind of golf cooperation with chess in our platform.

55:23So there are so many possibilities. There's another aspect too, which is kind of the subculture aspect, which is like you've been playing in tournaments since you were a teenager, right? So there's people you probably run into that you've known for decades now because of the chess world. I think this is what Walter Tevis, the guy who wrote The Queen's Gambit, captured so well, is there's an interesting subculture once you get into it. Just like there is with – Walter Tevis, by the way, he wrote the book The Hustler, which is a great movie with Paul Newman, and that has an interesting subculture.

56:00And he also wrote The Color of Money, which is also in the pool subculture. And it's interesting. Yeah, it offers movies. Yeah, it offers movies as well. Yeah. and I bet a lot of people don't know that the same guy who wrote Queen's Gambit wrote The Hustler but he was very good at capturing subcultures and you know Rounders which he didn't right that was Brian Koppelman but Rounders is a great movie about the subculture of poker and Chess has that feel as well there's something nice to me about that subculture definitely and more of that we can see it should be done I think also So, yeah, for me personally, I have a great group of friends.

56:42And we actually, for example, we get together every year at the famous Waikansai tournament in the Netherlands. And we always play the first three days, which is what we call the weekender, a three-day event. And we always book a hotel already in August for January. And, yeah, it's always so great to get together again. And it's like sort of a yearly reunion, although now we're also playing a bit more often in other events sometimes. And yeah, it's a great way of sharing friendship and having this common thing that you do. But yeah, there's so much to talk about. I mean, the way people prepare these days, but also the way people behave in the playing hall and what they wear.

57:27And some tournaments having a dress code and others don't. And yeah, well, also to be honest, also how we're still struggling, I have to admit, with female participation and how we should really improve that because we have also had things like sexual harassment cases in recent years. So there is a lot that can still be talked about and I would love to see more of that. To be honest, there is something new coming out also. It's actually already out, which is about the Kasparov Deep Blue matches, which we haven't talked about. But yeah, the big part of the book is also about AI. And this is part of Deep Blue, IBM's Deep Blue.

58:09That was always seen as this big moment, of course, for AI and for chess because the human player lost to the machine. And there's now this series, this great series. I've watched all six episodes already. I've posted a review of the series. It's called Rematch. Where is it, Aaron? Where can I find it? Yeah, well, you can find it on this Art of France website. but yeah it's the thing is it's not really available in many countries i believe i mean it's basically for french for a french audience but it is in english and i believe it should be soon on hbo and maybe even disney plus because it and especially disney plus because that is actually what it's saying at the start of every episode that there's this cooperation with disney plus so it should be appearing there but i'm not sure when and is it documentary style no no it's actually a drama.

59:00It's like the Queen's Gambit. It's actors and they play this whole thing and they add all kinds of elements that actually never happened but make it even more exciting, to be honest. I was very positive about this series. I really loved it. Again, an example of this event that was happening in 1997, it became so much bigger than just a chess event. It's part of our common culture where AI and chess came together and And famous enough and important enough to now be put into cinema. Well, and the reason is because people thought that was the goal of AI. That if AI could somehow beat humans at chess, then it was thinking like a human.

59:46Yeah, that was supposed to be intelligent. Yeah, that was considered the goal of AI initially. And look, before Deep Blue was Deep Blue at IBM. It was called Deep Thought. it was at carnegie mountain university and before that it was called chip test so even when it was chip test i was deep chip test slash d blue was my office mate when i was in graduate school like all those guys were we were office mates and i was the chess player among them and i would just play chip test all day long and then when icc or ics was around i actually did use chip test once to cheat against somebody I didn't like very much who I was playing and I just wanted to crush him.

1:00:29But, uh, so I, I think I'm the very first online chess cheater and that's the one and only time I will do it. I did it. But, uh, and then Danny Slater, who, you know, who, who, you know, was the real founder of ICS. He, um, he basically said, don't do that anymore. So So I'm going to stop doing it. That's good stuff, yeah. But yeah, and now it's so interesting that AI has crushed humans. Yeah, and of course now we're, what is it, 27 years after this match. And it's also very interesting how AI continued to develop. And also how we now look back at this match and think very differently about it.

1:01:10Kasparov himself, as I'm describing, right very soon after this match, there was not a rematch coming it didn't make any sense for IBM to do another third match I want to say and Gary always says himself I did win the first match so in a way you could say there were two sets and it's 1-1 and there should have been a third set but okay but yeah after that Gary really started to embrace this concept of why don't we cooperate with AI instead of fight against it so he actually played chess matches where it was actually allowed to have a computer next to you and use it. He called it advanced chess.

1:01:49It only took a few years, but it was an interesting experiment. Yeah, I remember that. And there were more human-machine matches, and I'm sort of explaining that the real moment where computers became too strong for humans actually was a few years later, I would say around 2005. And then the whole development of computers becoming this big tool because they were too strong to play against. They became this big tool for helping analyzing games, analyzing chess openings. And then, of course, the next step, Alpha Zero by Google DeepMind. Well, we all know Demis Hassabis, founder of Google DeepMind, got a Nobel Prize a few weeks ago for chemistry.

1:02:33Yeah, chemistry. And it was about the protein folding discoveries that they made. And they used algorithms that had before been used to play chess and to play Go. So again, we see that our game was sort of the early laboratory, the smaller limited area to test things out. And it later became this very important algorithm that brought us further in chemistry. So, yeah, what I want to say is basically what Kasparov said is He looks now back at it and basically says it was a very strong computer, but it was limited intelligence. He was good at playing chess. And he said it was like losing to an alarm clock.

1:03:26Well, it's interesting because Deep Blue then, it was all hardware. Their insight when they made Deep Blue was to get rid of as much of the software as possible, Make it as dumb a chess player as possible, and then code that into the circuitry itself. So there wouldn't be software. It actually was in the chip. And that made it 10 times faster or 100 times faster than any other chess computer. And basically, Gary was beaten by speed, whereas the reverse is AlphaZero, made by DeepMind and then Google, where AlphaZero is really, quote-unquote, intelligent. It has chess intelligence. even if it only looks one move ahead, it's supposedly like a 2 ,400 rated player at just one move ahead.

1:04:12No, Deep Blue was able to calculate at the peak performance, I believe 200 million moves per second. And I think AlphaZero only got to like 30 ,000 million.

1:04:25I think much less. It was much less. It doesn't really matter the numbers, but AlphaZero much less than that, which automatically means that the way it's thinking about the moves was much smarter. And of course, it's all based on similar techniques as, for example, ChatGPT or in this case, Google Gemini. We're talking about large learning models and self-learning mechanisms playing millions of times against itself, improving it that way instead of putting code into it and telling it what is good and what is bad. And it's interesting, the strategies that AlphaZero has developed using this completely different, more AI-like approach is very almost human in approach, but just better.

1:05:12It's like a superior human race, you know, improve the strategies of chess. And so guys like Magnus Carlsen, the best in the world, learn from studying AlphaZero's games. Yeah, that's true. It was immediately when the first games of AlphaZero came out, it really felt like it was playing in Kasparov style or Michael Tull style with a lot of beautiful peace sacrifices. But there are also these very specific positional themes running with the rook pawns up the board. It's a famous one. Or a very different evaluation of king safety where you can actually do much more with an open king than we thought before was possible.

1:05:56And there's other examples. And clearly the year after it came out, so we're talking about 2018, yeah there are several examples where Carlson really adopts some of those ideas in his own games so we have this direct influence of AI on the style of the best player, the best human player yeah like he was able to continue learning after being the best player in the world because he relied on the computers to teach him so it's very interesting again it's all part of the cultural history and you know you take a guy like Kasparov who famously lost to Deep Blue in 1997, that ultimately, through history, will be what he will be known for.

1:06:37It's like this pivotal AI chess moment. And even though Kasparov is such a great player and such a great player in chess history, that's where he stands out. By the way, it's literally what he says. I don't want to give too many spoilers, but it's literally what the actor says in the sixth episode of Rematch. He says, I will be remembered for two things, that I was a world champion and that I lost to Deep Blue. yeah yeah and and look even though he might be the greatest of all time there's always that there's always the just like in basketball or tennis there's always the question like who's the greatest of all time and and you know gary magnus and bobby fisher are the leading contenders i would still say put in capablanca into that but you know it's hard no and someone else told me that i should have mentioned uh morphy as well in terms of how much he dominated his peers in the 19th century and i would argue that yeah i was curious you you you measured them in in the book you used you quoted people who measured based on how how high quality the computer ranked their moves on average but what about in terms of in terms of who dominated their number numbers two through ten and during their time who who's the biggest who had the biggest gap uh between themselves and their competitors.

1:07:54Right. Yeah, no, and then I think we actually have to put both Morphy and Fischer somewhere number one, number two. I guess Fischer might be number one there. And I'm also mentioning that this is what I'm doing in Chapter 4 where I'm discussing these three players, Fischer, Sparrow and Carlsen, and then I'm giving this whole discussion of who was the greatest of all time. and yeah so the sort of the conclusion is that you can sort of argue between Kasparov and Carlsen but because Kasparov has been at the top longer than Carlsen has we still have to consider that he was the best and Carlsen himself considers Kasparov the best of all time but well I think he's being polite like he's not going to say well I'm the best of all time.

1:08:42I'm not sure because he recently repeated it but let's say if he continues for a few more years and he will always remain the number one in the rating list, then at some point I think he might change his mind. I think Carlson is extremely honest about these things. About himself, always very self-critical. But anyway, what I do make the point is that I'm basically comparing Fischer to Bob Beeman, who had this incredible world record in the long jump at the Mexico, I think Mexico 68 Olympics it was. And only in 91, it was broken. So it was a very long time. We were talking about athletes getting stronger and bigger just about every five years.

1:09:24But this was a record that stood very long. And that is a comparison I make with... You can also talk about Jones Griffith in the speed, in 100 meters, of course. She was maybe even a better example of being ahead of her time. And that is where I put Fischer. You're right. As we talk about dominating his pairs the most, and being the most ahead of their time, it was probably Fisher, because if you look at his performance of 1971 and 1972, he was basically playing on 2800 level. And that is, who are we talking about these days? We have one player above 2800, or two actually, I think now Karuana and Magnus, and this talent from India, Arjun Eric Ise, he's on the verge of breaking 2800 as well.

1:10:13So we're talking about a level of the absolute best players in the world of today. and Fischer was doing that in the 70s. So really... By himself. By himself. Which makes it really... Without the computer, exactly. Without the help of the computer also, yeah. The way the rating system works, in order to maintain that 2800 level, you have to dominate really heavily. Like you have to do what Fischer did, which is win matches six to zero, no draws. Yeah, exactly. And it's hard to imagine any two players, Magnus and any other player in the top 100, where it being like a 6-0, 6-0. No. But Fischer did two and a half matches.

1:10:49By the way, one of the reasons for that is important to mention is that the computer has helped today's top players to become better defenders. I mean, Fischer's opponents were not defending well in bad positions in these matches and in other tournaments. But these days, all these top players have learned from the computer that bad positions can often still be defended to a draw. and they've learned that the evaluation they feel might not be the biggest problem and also they've learned the techniques of the computer of how to do that and so more bad positions are defended to a draw these days than in those days.

1:11:30So that's a part of it, I think. Just as a last thing, and I'm just curious, what are your favorite chess novels? So obviously The Queen's Gambit was a great novel by Walter Tevis. is there any others that you read or grew fond of? Yeah, well I do like Nabokov's novel a lot, Luzhin's Defense or This Defense and I'm also quite fond of the movie by the way with John Turturro and what's her name, was it Emily Watson? Oh my god, I never saw it there's a movie of The Defense? Yes, definitely and it's actually directed by a Dutch director. So yeah, you should see it. It's already 20 years old or something.

1:12:17It's quite a while ago. Wow, I never even heard of it. I kind of liked it too. Yeah, it's not a spectacular movie, but I like it. I mean, John Turturro was pretty good in it, yeah. And you should see the movie Fresh. I noticed you didn't mention the movie Fresh. When you listen to some movies, you didn't mention the movie Fresh, which is really great. A Washington Square Park chess movie. Okay. Okay, I will make a note. It had a thriller aspect to it as well. Ah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're talking about movies now, but I remember seeing Night Moves for the first time with Christopher Lambert. I also really loved that at the time.

1:12:51I don't know if I would still love it today, but when I was young, it was a thriller from the 90s and also with chess, and I was like, wow, this is quite funny. Yeah, novels. Well, it's not really a novel, but yeah, I mean, just about everyone loved this. but we're talking about Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice in Wonderland. I mean, that's just absolutely brilliant. And of course, also beautiful movies made out of it. But just, yeah, this great, great writer with brilliant feeling for English language. And yeah, making chess such a big theme in what is still one of the most important chess children's books in literature is also amazing.

1:13:37Well, now you have entered your own entry into the kind of oeuvre of chess literature with the chess revolution. Look, Peter, I always enjoy talking chess with you. We've run into each other now in Norway and in Amsterdam as observers, simple observers to these mega chess events with all the greatest players. Those are so much fun for me to go to, but it's hard to do it. You have to really take a break from your life to attend those. But always a pleasure running into you and talking to you about chess. Yeah, likewise. And one thing I remember, the first time I ran into you in Norway, when we were at Norway Chess, and I said, oh, do you play?

1:14:26And you're like, nah. And here you are, like a 2 ,300 player. I've noticed that these big tournaments, everyone who says they don't play chess, it means they're like 2 ,400 or at least 2 ,200. Well, I'm now 2 ,150, but yeah, I used to be better even. But yeah, I guess I can say I'm not a horrible player. No, you're a great player. And thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And having this fun discussion about my favorite topic. You'll have to write another book about chess and come on again. Talk more about it. Sure. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. It was great.

1:15:05Thank you.