#2275 - Magnus Carlsen

0:03The Joe Rogan Experienz Dramed by Dave Joe Rogan podcast by night all day All right, we're up and going Magnus Carlson ladies and gentlemen you want some coffee? No, oh this is water Tell Jeff to bring in the coffee, forgot to bring in the coffee No, no, I'm good with water But I need coffee, I'm gonna keep up with you buddy And of course Tony Hitchcliffe is here who's a gigantic chess fan And just cramed his pants yesterday when I told him you were coming in and then immediately I said you got to come with me and so Tony's here as well It's an honor to meet you man, I'm always fascinated by people that are at the top of something that's insanely difficult like chess And I'm always wondering like how much time is involved?

0:49How often do you play and when did you start? How old were you when you first started playing? I think my dad, my dad is an avid chess player so I think he thought that I might have some talent so he taught me pretty early around five years old But at that time I wasn't that interested I was mostly into Legos and I was into maths and like sports stats and I had my little flag book with all the countries in the world They're flags and they're inhabitants and area and everything and I sort of that's what I did generally just taking in all the stats that I could also with sports reading the sports section every day And I didn't find chess that fun A couple of years later my older sister is a year and a half older than me She had, she did a lot of chess with my dad I started sitting in on them a bit and I started liking it, I really really wanted to beat my sister as well at generally everything And from there on it really just became my thing and it's been my main hobby and eventually work as well since Yeah, obviously It's so funny that was spark a competitive spark with your sister is really what it ignited you to get going with it Yeah, the funny thing is like she's not competitive at all So she hated the fact that I wanted to play especially when I realized that I could beat her And she liked chess but she stopped for a while and only started when I had become good enough that there wasn't a competition So it turned out like my dad was right after all I just needed I just needed that extra push Yeah, what a what a call I think you've got some talent what a call Grandmaster 12 was it 13 so actually the record is the record is 12 but most kids these days honestly they start so early I was at a tournament in India a few months ago and there's this guy who's like a 1600 rated player and he's three years old And like I'm seeing I'm seeing the games like they are actually they're actually decent And yeah now there's this one kid from Argentina like they call him the messie of chess Who's going to become a grandmaster soon?

3:25I think he's he's only 10 so there they're really really playing early these days But it's it's it's good to see though because like information is so easily accessible these days Like it takes a lot shorter time to to get to get good at something Well, it seems like now chess because of social media and it's like everything else It's kind of exploding because there's so many fascinating videos out And then of course there was like the big controversy with that young man who you believe is a big old cheater that guy I need to know the anal beads thing is that a legitimate theory? So it actually started in one of my friends streamer channel like one random guy said Made made a comment about anal beads and he was and he was like yeah maybe And then I think it it became it started taking the rounds and read it and then Elon saw it tweeted about it And then obviously it blew up I actually spoke to I think it was Mark Andreessen who said like that would be one way to do it Yes, but I really really really don't believe that that has happened Like I think it has no no connection to reality, but it just became it's a thing of its own So unfortunately this young man we will explain the anal beads thing But this this young man is a very talented player but does has have a history of some shenanigans correct And even admitted that he did a little bit of cheating in order to move his rating higher so he could play better players Yeah, I mean he he's not admitted to nearly the extent of his of his cheating But if you sort of if you sort of take what what Chester Com say then yeah he cheated a bunch online in a certain period of time Partly in tournaments, but mostly in in casual games I see I see to set himself to sort of get himself up the standings and play the best players in the world But he has a very good player I think he has become a very good player yeah interesting Okay, so what made you convinced that he was cheating in that particular game and by what method do you think he could possibly have been doing this Could you hear something was it like burnt?

6:06You're hearing vibrations You see his seat shift? You're smelling something there's a lot of something in the air? Yeah, I mean that would have been the smoking gun I suppose But I think there was a combination of things though based on you know the chess level that I that I thought that he he had and that I'd seen from from his game both playing against him Analyzing a little with him and looking at his at his other games There were a lot of stories back then The thing is also there's there's a Netflix documentary coming in a few months that sort of ex where I'm telling my side of the story So I like I cannot go too deep into into everything but what I can say was that there were there were a lot of factors that made me very very suspicious And I think ever since then he has become better but there's some still something there's still something off both then and now but That's so fascinating that as an elite chess player you'd be able to recognize that something is happening that's outside of his capabilities

7:43Again, I'm not ruling out the factor that chess players are becoming more and more paranoid because we do have chess engines that basically have perfect chess Anybody with their their phone can as I think Elon tweeted to to Gary wants like my iPhone can beat you at chess which is which is which is the truth and this means that you know anybody having access to information It's it's incredibly it's incredibly dangerous and I think top level chess has been a lot based on trust and Whenever you have outsiders whom there are these stories about everybody gets a bit a bit jittery there there's like As people who either like they burst onto the scene then they then they establish themselves and people people know that they're legit and so on that it's not It's not a problem with with him specifically I don't know it was it's just it doesn't seem to be playing or it didn't at that point seem to be playing with with a particular style it seemed that he either played kind of Yeah, or he just more or less played any position very well in in certain games like he could just switch from tactical to positional play very easily and It was it didn't didn't smell good to me it's still it's still doesn't but You know to some extent like he he had his he had his lawsuit with all kind of moved a little bit on I think I don't trust him a lot of other top players still I don't trust him he certainly doesn't doesn't trust me or chess calm or he career or whomever he felt wrong but this episode is brought to you by the farmers dog We all want to do the best for our dogs but there's a lot of mixed messaging out there especially around dog food take kibble for example you don't do a lot of digging to learn that Kibble is actually ultra processed they put the words like premium on their bag next to pictures of real ingredients but food doesn't end up as burnt down pellets without extreme processing for decades it was the Default dog food but not anymore the farmers dog is healthy food made with real meat and vegetables by people who care about what goes Into your dog's body the recipes are developed by board certified nutritionists to be complete and balanced and their food is made to the same safety standards as human food It's lightly cooked to retain vital nutrients and then it's pre -porsh to suit your dog's needs so try the farmers dog today and get 50 % off your first box of healthy freshly made food plus free shipping Just go to the farmers dog dot com slash Rogan tap the banner or visit this episodes page to learn more the offer is for new customers only this episode is brought to you by visible is your wireless full of stuff you didn't sign up for don't need or don't understand visible gives you everything you want from wireless and nothing you don't no confusing plans no hidden fees no nonsense with visible you just get unlimited everything unlimited data talk text and hotspot all powered by Verizon's 5G network plus they're an all digital wireless service so you can easily switch within a matter of minutes from your phone either in their app or online ready to switch visible has an offer for you the Joe Rogan experience listeners joined by March 24 and new members can get the visible plus plan for just 30 dollars per month for 25 months that's visible's best plan with premium data for 15 dollars off each month for 25 months get visible's fastest network now with even more savings switch at visible dot com slash Rogan with the promo code Rogan for this offer from visible didn't think wireless could be so transparent so visible well now you know switch today at visible dot com slash Rogan terms apply see visible dot com for network management details but this problem is like once someone admits that they cheated a game especially a game that has a lot of trust you're always going to think like is he cheating now always but the question is like what method like what what do people do so if you're sitting there you have no phone your pockets are empty like what could you be doing that could possibly be eating you well first of all like an invisible air piece that people use for exams and so on like so we but he would have to have a partner yeah he would yeah yeah that would not have been detected by the security system that they they used at that tournament they out of the security after the whole thing happened check your ears yeah they start checking there are ears and then you know we had a live tournament in in Paris last year what I played him where there was proper security were all of these things would be picked up and he didn't like he didn't play to nearly the same to nearly the same level there so I think I well I'm not an expert in all of that but that's what I've heard from people that that's like the most obvious thing that it could have that someone could have done and it wouldn't be really that hard to pull off considering the kind of security we have it at chess tournaments and this tournament had like little bit of security a lot of them like open tournaments people are like wandering in and out of the playing hole there are people in the playing hole like spectators with their with their smartphones on and taking pictures or or whatever like going in and out like they could make signals it's it's it's it's it's hard it's it's a big problem in chess for sure yeah the so the anal beads thing for people don't know what we're talking about the the theory was that he had vibrating anal beads that would somehow or another through some sort of code explained to him the moves and I've thought about this for a lot longer than I care to admit like what what kind of code are you getting from inside your butt that you like okay got it well it would be like you know C4 or whatever like it could tell you but how would it sit in your butt that I'm well I mean it's more I'd have to show you

14:57yeah yeah yeah yeah something right now no it would be like it would it would buzz right it would buzz the letters and then the numbers that would indicate where you would move and there would only be a piece or two so like the first three vibrations would be letter C and then yeah okay yeah it's just a sort of take not technological version of ways people have cheated before there was a scandal back in 2010 where the captain of the French team was helping one of his one of the French players by cheating he was basically just standing in certain spots around the table to tell him where to where to move oh wow that's crazy oh wow 30 people out there it's wild but such a competitive thing whenever you have competitive things you always have people that just want to win at any cost right yeah it's also funny that one of his teammates from that tournament worked with me for a long time and he told me that like this guy was like going out every night not taking the tournament seriously at all but yeah he had a good reason like he knew he's gonna he knew he was gonna win that's hilarious so that is at the most egregious form of cheating that you've ever seen or heard of no I actually played an open tournament in Denmark about 20 years ago where there was a guy who was playing Grandmaster in the first round like this is not a very good player and he was he came drunk to the table and he just literally pulled out his phone open the chess program but of course like he was immediately he um so that that was and of course nearly as as nefarious but yeah that's just a moron yeah yeah he was just yeah probably um some other some other issues there there's just such a it is such a fascinating game because it's impossible to play if you're dumb like there's games that you could just be a savant like an idiot savant but chess is like it's the most impressive thing for people to be unbelievably good at I don't know I think you can be I think you can be can be dumb and be like fairly good at at chess I think it like some intelligence certainly certainly helps but after all you a lot of chess is about learning patterns right and basically anybody can can do that so like applying them at a higher level learning how to evaluate and so on that sort of is what sets the the really the best players apart from from merely good players but I feel like anybody could come become quite decent at at the game but I do love the fact that you know uh there are no coincidences like there are no outside factors well if you uh if you don't talk other than cheating of course um but it's just um um yeah you are either outsmarting your opponent or you're getting outsmarting so for a guy like you that excels above all what is the difference in your preparation is it just simply who you are as a person you think or is it something about the difference in your preparation without giving away any secrets obviously um I'm like known in the chess world for being like a little bit lazy I think uh the the thing is that I um what do you mean lazy like how's that possible no the thing is like I've never been the kind of person who wakes up in the morning works six seven hours and and chess like a normal a normal job and then um because a lot of them study computers yeah exactly like I've I think about the game all the time like I play online I I look at I look at games I may read some do you play anonymously I used to do that all the time um what a blood bath that must be yeah but but I think I got humbled um one time by this Russian grandmaster who um asked somebody else asked me like if a certain account on a certain website with me and I was like yeah um I don't know like I don't know who that is and this guy went like yes that is you and he listed up like five other accounts that I thought nobody knew about that were wow that were how did he miss me by the way you play yeah I think it's it's it's playing strength playing style because I tried to switch up my openings on different accounts to not make it obvious that it's it's me and I have like a style where I switch that up a lot so it makes it a bit easier but I think you could just tell by um by the playing style so that is crazy these these days I just I play with my um my own name um I like I'm I don't really care about that anymore yeah um so do most professional players study chess all day long at the highest level I think um I think quite a few do uh I I mean I don't know like people's day -to -day activities so you guys don't talk about it not that much um the people that I've worked with they certainly study chess a lot uh but others I'm not quite sure um the thing is that chess has always like still been a bit of a hobby for me that once it starts starts to feel like work then it's it's it's it's harder for me I had a I had a chess coach when I was uh when I was little I I was like I went to have sessions once a week which I loved and then he started giving me homework and I yeah I I told him like quickly like I I don't like I don't like homework but I would still spend a lot of time like reading books playing a line this the things that I still do but I would do them for fun and that was the difference between me and the other kids is that they would go to chess practice they would maybe even do their homework but they weren't living and breathing um sort of the game that that uh in the way that I was like I think about it all the time like I'm thinking about the game while I'm sitting on on this chair like I'm still analyzing a game that I played today like it never goes completely out of out of my mind um and I think a lot of very good chess players do that but like casual chess players no of course so maybe the thing is discipline versus enthusiasm enthusiasm causes obsession and enjoyment which probably leads to better retention of information whereas just pure discipline for the sake of like I have to do the work in order to get better you're missing this enjoyment you're missing this enthusiasm for it that you have managed to although absorbing so much information and playing all the time you've managed to keep it playful and fun I think so I think this is definitely the way that works for me maybe for others um I think for anybody like if you want to be great at something you have to be obsessed with it yes and yeah it has to come from it has to come from within like nobody can um yeah maybe in in certain in certain sports you can get you can get that good purely by very very targeted practice than a lot of a lot of hours but um yeah I think um for me it's just the way that it's just the way that it um that it works and um I do like process the even though like I don't necessarily study like I don't don't deliberately practice all the time I still process the information so it's still whatever whatever the method is it certainly works but it's interesting because you've been able to excel above so many and it makes me wonder like what I always am fascinated by some whether it's a tiger woods or whether whatever the athlete is or whatever the the game they play what separates the very best from everyone else like I know in martial arts there's a series of factors that I have to do with genetics training coaches sparring partners and then ultimately discipline and drive but with chess it's all mental is physical has nothing to do with it so do you think it's a genetic thing do you think you have a unique mind for chess is it's it you think it's this balance that you keep with enthusiasm and obsession like what do you think separates you from everyone else I think it has to be a um a variety of factors I think there's no doubt that I'm incredibly naturally gifted at the game like otherwise I wouldn't have come come this far and my my dad um is incredibly good with with numbers he started playing chess quite late but became um but but became decent like my mother was quite smart and my my sisters are very intelligent too so like it's clear that you know there are some good good genes and I just you know I happened to find also an environment early on um where I lived near Oslo which had um the probably the best chess environment there was in Norway at the very least where there were um I had access to the coaches and I had access to like a little training group of of other ambitious kids um after that you know um I think the most important thing that I've that I've done is that I haven't really listened to people who want me to do things like a certain way because that's the way things have always been done especially with the the Soviet chess school that was the dominant one for for so many years so I've always sort of gone my own way try to have as much fun everything has to be about enjoyment and yeah I I cannot tell you why but I just like understand the game better better than the others like I I'm I don't calculate necessarily as far as the other but my intuition like for short lines um constantly evaluating is it's just it's just better it's just it's always just such an interesting thing to analyze like high performers you know and just to wonder like what it is it separates high performers when you say your father started playing late how old was he oh I think he started playing um about 14 15 something like that I've in chess that's that's very but he never he never like took it took it seriously right that he wanted to like he pursued it but um as a hobby as a hobby well you when you say take it seriously you mean like you do yeah what this is what makes me think about epigenetics like we we still don't exactly know how much information is transferred between parents to children and it seems like there's a lot of talents whether it's like singing talent or sports talent that you have to wonder like is that coming from jeans or is that coming from the environment which is child grows up which is person or is it a combination of all those factors like I wonder if someone gets really a very intelligent person gets very good at chess early and I wonder if some information or some perclivity for the game gets transferred I think the reaction in in the chess community at least with certain people was more along the lines of how could search a lousy player have such a good son at chess with with my dad um and the fact is as well that I there are practically no um there are many couples of um you know like both mother and father are grandmasters in chess but I don't think any of them have had sons or daughters that are grandmasters so what where where is you see anywhere like in the NBA or the NHL or in football or wherever like it happens all the time um so I kind of say exactly what why that is but it does suggest that you know it's not a given at least with genetics that your um that your children are are gonna have an ultimate theory for that I wonder if you're child and your parents are absolutely obsessed with a game if it's annoying and you're like fuck this game like I want to go play in the park my parents don't even pay attention to me this is bullshit right and you know like like like there's a lot of children of alcoholics that will not drink they won't even try it because they've seen the effects of it I wonder that if it's like you see because chess is an obsessive game like I remember when Howard Stern was playing it and I would listen to him talk about it on the radio and about how he started hiring a coach and he was playing all the time and he's improving his rating this and I was like oh this is eating up your mind like it's a game that gets in your bones it rated us because like the entry is not so easy right like you don't like just get it immediately and you don't necessarily get enjoyment out of it immediately as you start to play so you have to spend you have to spend time on it and then I think when you're trying to do something hard then it becomes much more rewarding and it becomes it's easier for that to become an obsession when when you start to get that reward so the good thing about that controversy with cheating was that I think it elevated the profile of chess because it became mainstream news it was like a big issue do they like I think there was a positive aspect of it in terms of the publicity of the game do you do you agree with that oh yeah for sure I think for for any for you know for any field of that's trying to to achieve something you know with with publicity there's always going to be a little bit of a negative with what exactly we're we're connected with right because this is everybody knows chess and cheating but overall I think it's been it's been massively massively positive you know hopefully the the Netflix thing going coming up in a year even though like I explained to people what yeah it's it's a not Netflix untold documentaries so basically it's a series of sports documentaries and they're doing that it's not something that I like wanted to necessarily be be part of but I do recognize the fact that these things race the profile of of the game and and you see now like every everywhere people people like it chases showing up in people's algorithms on YouTube TikTok Instagram everywhere so it's just like much more in the in the sci -fi than it used to be yeah so it's certainly shown up on mine it shows up on mine all of them right yeah well you've always been a giant chess fan well it's actually a newer thing but when I when I got into it it was just everything now it's what I do right before bed I fall asleep usually I fall asleep during actual games online on my phone you driving crazy yeah how could that it like how could that happen I'm exhausted what do you do when you wake up oh that's that's yeah no it's total I wake up and I look at the board and it said you resigned because I went over my time or whatever I just ran out of time how many times have you resigned it happens in embarrassing a lot amount it's how I fall asleep now is playing chess but what you will appreciate is that when I fall asleep playing chess like when I fall asleep I'm still playing the game in my dream sometimes and sometimes the game will go all night and it'll be like this never ending game and pieces will pop back up that are already gone that that sounds amazing like I would like obviously that would never happen to me I'm like I you know I like to play a game of chess on my on my my phone or my iPad whenever I have some yeah whenever I have some time especially like if I know that I have 15 minutes or whatever and then if something comes up like my wife tells me like I have to be somewhere I have to do something it's like can you just finish the game like no I kind of resign the camera right what are you talking about yeah yeah obviously that's different though yeah yeah you can't just resign that's no you got to ride that bitch out yeah this episode is brought to you by zero day a new Netflix limited series this conspiracy thriller is about a devastating cyber attack that downs America's infrastructure take a listen thousands died on zero day congress is authorizing a special zero -day commission he's just gonna grab people up the streets from our warrants actually you are I run this investigation not the White House not the CIA if they're probably find out I don't think this really is I don't think we survive

33:05Robert De Niro is absolutely legendary in his first TV series and you don't really know if he's the good guy or the bad guy till the end zero day has an incredible supporting cast including Angela Bassett Jesse Plemons Lizzie Kaplan and Connie Britton zero day is now playing only on Netflix yeah that would be like psychologically torturous right yeah especially if especially if I'm playing somebody whom I'm who is a little bit of arrival but yeah right that's not gonna happen no chance I mean because like every time like I lose games it's it's a little bit of a story right in the chess world so I prefer to happen as seldom as possible I played a little bit of chess when I was young but I never really got into it but my real introduction where I got fascinated with chess was actually at a pool hall because people in the pool hall would play chess sometimes but there was this one guy who went to jail and in jail he learned how to play chess with his head in his in his mind and then there was a young kid who was a grandmaster who was like 16 17 years old somewhere on that really really good chess player who kind of like lost his way and started hanging around in pool halls and gambling and been a weirdo and I watched these two guys play chess with just words and I was like what are you doing like what I was like I think I was 22 or 23 at the time and I was like what are you doing and they're explaining to me that they're playing chess memorizing the board in their head and I'm like that's fucking crazy and then I saw a video of you blindfolded playing how many people how many how many people did you play was the most people you've ever played blindfolded I think I've played 12 but the world record is something like 50 it's that's that's crazy like 12 you've played 12 people blindfolded yeah um for me that's as long as people are the people I'm playing are kind of decent that chess that actually kind of make that makes it easier because it's easier to store the games when I recognize the patterns and so on when people start making weird moves that I kind of read it right nice oh so this this is another one actually this is a blindfold timed similar like there are fewer games but what's difficult about these is that the moves do not come to me in a sequence so like the presenter will tell me on boot on board um two it takes the five and then all of a sudden on board one e six and then on board on board two again and so on so that that makes it a bit um oh so you have to jump back and forth so in the other games there's a sequence with a player even though if they know what move they're gonna take they must wait until their turn exactly that's kind of the normal way of playing a playing a simile I think the last time that I played a proper blindfold simile was at an event um in Vienna back in I think 2015 and then I had some very nice but spicy Chinese food before the game I sat down and like my stomach was acting up I couldn't think so I played for 10 minutes I realized that I cannot do this I like I ran away for for 15 minutes and then I came back I finished I finished the game but ever ever since that um it feels like um I like I've done it but it and now it just seems incredibly incredibly hard to um to do again but do you prepare when you're doing something like this when you get ready to do a blindfolded multi -game thing not not really because it's like if if my mind is on then it's really not that hard I feel um so no uh I the the preparation that I do is right there I see my my opponents so like I sign a certain face to a certain seat like a certain number and and and so on uh so that's just about what what I um what I do so you assign their face and you think of their face as they're playing yeah face like number one it's that position right yeah and so on and are you what are you seeing in your mind when you're envisioning the the table when you're when you're looking at the board are you are you merely thinking of positions are you actually thinking of the pieces like how are you breaking it down no I just see the chessboard in my head just see it completely like 3d chessboard in your head yeah so it's um and then when I'm playing a simul I just really think about one at a time and I kind of store the others um away and um but that's so crazy like when your five six moves in and you're thinking of all these pieces moving around and you've got it towards yeah so like the difficult difficult part of it that where things sometimes go wrong is that so generally I remember all the games that I've played but I don't remember every move I remember like the in broad strokes what happened and this is what can happen in these blindfold games as well sometimes like I can remember everything that's going on but maybe there's a pawn on the side that I cannot remember if it moved one square or not that's the thing that can be that can be a difficult and I do we used to have these blindfold like professional tournaments actually that used to be like both fun but also totally exhausting and then we would play on on a computer so we'd have like a blank like a blank chessboard where we would just click from one square to another and then whenever your opponent moved their move would pop up on the screen and I've had and also the software will tell you if you're making an illegal move so I've had people like loose track and then you see them just clicking frenetically trying to figure out what the position was like there was one guy whom I played like he thought his rook was on a certain file and if it wasn't that file he would be able to save a draw so I think he tried every single rook move on that file hoping that the rook was there but like obviously I knew that that it wasn't but yeah overall I feel like honestly like blindfold chess is is a bit of a party trick in the sense that for the very top players it's not that hard but obviously for non like serious chess players it seems it seems incredibly incredibly hard but I I'm I'm I'm sure that for instance like solving Ruby's cube is really really easy for those who who know how to do it quickly right but it still looks incredibly impressive for outsiders have you seen they used a computer with AI to do a Rubik's cube and less than the second no I didn't see yeah see if you find it Jamie it's crazy I just go it just spins it I've never figured that shit out that's crazy it's there is a sequence of moves if you follow a sequence of moves you can actually get it to do it automatically yeah someone explained it to me once and they did it and I was like what I don't remember what it was because I don't give a fuck yeah it was just like eight eight times this way eight times that way times this time you just keep doing it and then eventually it'll be all flattened out a certain point in time yeah but this computer does it like you do Rubik's cube too no no no I am I'm talking out of my ass like I know I think the world record is only like three seconds or something like it's it's something absolutely insane imagine the time you could have expect building a business raising a family like the fucking world record all the same color it's read so dumb yeah well we all have to watch this watch this computer do it wow how crazy is that ready ready go yeah less than a second wow that's crazy show it again in real time so give up kids give up give up big computer figure it out that's that's a dumb game but do you play other games as well no not that I'm not how much my parents sort of brainwashed me when when I was young into thinking that computer games are no fun and really yeah yeah but you're a grown man now you've realized that's a lot yeah yeah I have but I could see you call a duty fucker people up no the thing is like the thing is like I actually got a I got a PlayStation recently but like my my wife is playing GTA and all of these FPS games and I'm like playing some you know chill FIFA or something so but the thing about that is that I didn't really spend that much time on those those things when I was I was little which I think was a good thing like I was doing I was doing some sports and I was doing a lot of a lot of chess not so much school but I kind of found time for for everything else and I think um I think it was an important part of my chess education as well that I think some of the kids today are are missing that I actually learned chess on a physical board I was able to practice from a fairly young age playing online but I wasn't allowed to use the computer for more than a couple of hours a week right so I had to spend them really well playing chess otherwise I would figure things out yeah the the thing about video games is the narrative was always video games are a huge waste of time and if you do it you're not going to get anywhere in life the problem with that is now people make a lot of money playing video games and they've also shown that there's some there's some benefits from video games that leak over and other things like for instance they found out that surgeons who play video games regularly make was like 25 % less errors 37 % 37 % less errors that's a like I would feel like if there was a factor in medical school and they said well if you do not do this you will make 37 % more mistakes they would force you to engage in that whatever it is it's like whatever particular discipline that was like if you want to be a surgeon you must do this I would say if you want to be a surgeon you should fucking play video games because these people are 37 % less likely to screw up an operation that's why I'm not a surgeon but I'm saying it's like video games are not necessarily waste of time and they've also shown there's cognitive benefits that can be gotten from playing video games on a regular basis things that what which does make sense but it just it seems like a frivolous pursuit whereas chess is like a noble and very respected pursuit I'm glad you say that like we've we've officially that that is what chess has though that it it is very respected among the general population and it does have that different standings from from another a lot of other games it's like I'm not here to shit on video games for sure like I I know like like you do that there there are studies that show that it's that it can be be helpful I think with with anything if you obsess over something the only thing you will become good at is that particular thing like I have with with with chess I just think for me specifically for me specifically it was probably a a good thing that that made me just sit and focus on on chess rather than rather than do all sorts of other things oh most certainly it because video games are very very addictive yeah I had to stop playing video games we used to have a whole local area network in our old studio we don't play Quake and it was a real problem like it's just I just wanted to end the podcast so I could go play Quake and then we play for hours and eventually got to point where I was like okay I got a quit again just cold turkey never again leave it alone because they're just too fun and if you have other things you have obligations like chess like you're an actual professional chess player call a duty or whatever you're playing Quake it's going to eat your time I remember like when when I first moved out you know I was technically a chess professional but I didn't have a lot of time to yeah I had a lot of time to kill when I when I was home so and I got myself a PlayStation played a ton of FIFA back then and there was there was a game stop near me that like they they made a lot of money on me just buying new controllers all the time because I would throw them into to the wall but I have that same personality that I become become obsessed with things and then I yeah same I just have to quit cold turkey that's the only way that that works yeah I think I mean this is why I've avoided golf and like Tony's big on golf and so's Jamie it's like I see what it is I'm sure I would love it but I don't have that time the time during the day well I can tell you that I always thought well I wouldn't say that but I always thought that I would get into golf later in life and then I decided more or less a year ago that I was going to start and now I am obsessed and it's all I want to do yeah I can I can 100 percent I can 100 percent relate but my wife knows that I'm so happy when I come back from golf that it's like better if I get to do it quite often yeah even if you fake being happy so you doing it no no like yeah they say that's ruining Canelo Alvarez you know there's been a lot of criticism in the boxing world and particularly in like you know some of his promoters and things along those lines where they've criticized his his he's obsessive he plays every day even when he's in camp yeah it's a tricky thing if they do that with him and I say I obviously see them do it with Trump but there you have to golf to understand what golfing does to you it appears from the outside the people are drinking and smoking pot and having a good old time out there and giggling around farting around with their friends but the touch grass meditative element it truly is like he was saying like I'm in such a crazy good mood after golf everybody at the comedy club can notice it like it's like an upper it gives you a massive burst of energy so like the the what am I thinking of the you know just the bad reputation the golf has like I would want my president golfing a couple times a week knowing the effects that it gives you a much clearer mind a big burst of energy you would think it would be exhausting walking around the woods or grass for four hours but for some reason it's totally the opposite it's it's it's whether it's the sun the grass the this the that the differential going from a powerful thing to a mid -range thing to the delicate touch and accuracy of putting these repetitive things for some reason it's a mind clearer and kind of an energy giver where is video games and other things make you depressed I don't you know it's almost impossible to be down or depressed after golfing well it's it's certainly a stimulating game right because you are it's hand -eye coordination calculation you know managing the the lay of the land the way the rolls of the hills are and all those factors I think like this is something that I think people genuinely need in life and I think it's one of the reasons why people respect chess so much is because they know how difficult it is and they know that all this is going on and that they see you two just staring at the board looking at these pieces and calculating this insane number of possibilities that could emit from each individual move it's like that stimulation when when someone gets good at a game I think it's very valuable for you and I think that can apply to all sorts of things in life so I agree with you I don't want the president to play golf too yeah I'd want to find something whatever it is find a thing that you can excel out other than just being the president yeah yeah even if it was called you to you yeah if I wouldn't want that the president going fuck it we had that it was George W.

50:56Bush and there was no video game stark yeah it is dark well I mean they literally used playstation fucking controllers when they were using drones I don't know if they still do it now I think now they have more sophisticated setups but that one of the reasons why they were using it was because so many people were accustomed to those you get kids that have been playing you know madden 10 hours a day for 15 fucking years and then you give them the same controller and they're like oh yeah I could fucking drop some bombs on people like not problem at all that's that's horrible it's dark yeah no all of a sudden like these kills that you're having a video game like you think of it in the same way I like it well it really haunts those people apparently there's a very specific type of PTSD that drone operators get it's it's because they see the people sometimes for days in advance so they're doing surveillance they're waiting for the moment when they get the green light they see these people they see them with their families they're watching them from above and then and then they drop the bombs on them and then they cease to exist and this is happening on completely the outside of the world yeah they just press X on the controller yeah yeah but if you want to get good at that you probably play video games it's it's a job for everybody out there Magnus I'm also trying to think like could you get surgeons to be throwing up radars probably doesn't work that no probably doesn't work that well I best surgeons just whatever hand -eye coordination that they have is probably so intricate that they could probably excel at anything they'd probably get good at video game like a very good surgeon who's never played video games probably get really good at video games really quickly because the the communication between your hands there's also probably a tricky part of that stat where the younger people are the ones playing the video games that probably wouldn't slip up with their hands as easily as an older surgeon that has never played video games right yes right right yeah that's a good point it's it's you know it's interesting that chess is uniquely the game that's respected like probably out of all even if you play golf people can think oh you're a fuck up you say you played chess like oh that must be an intelligent man it's probably the most uniquely rewarded game in terms of the way the people respected yeah in society yeah this episode is brought to you by life lock tax season is already stressful you shouldn't have to worry about identity theft on top of everything else and trust me it's a big worry especially since during tax season your sensitive info does a lot of traveling to places you can't control it goes through payroll your accountant or your tax consultant and countless other data centers on its way to the IRS any of them can expose you to identity theft because they all have the info on your W2 just the ticket for criminals to steal 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insurance quotes and see how much you could save that's policy genius dot com slash j r e we're very lucky that it has this unique position whether that's deserved um i don't know but there's just something about the fact that it's you know it's a very very simple game um but it's it's still so infinitely uh difficult the thing now the thing now though is that we're trying to actually make it a bit more more difficult for a classical formula of of chess um because now computers are so strong preparation has gone so far that the thought of like sitting down at the board and just thinking on your own from the very get go it's not it's not there anymore anybody who's really good at chess like they um anybody can can learn the best openings like very quickly even if you go like 10 20 years ago um you could play um you you could play for instance in the chasalumpia it was which is the which is the the biggest team like nation tournament in the world and you could play against uh the best player from from let's say colombia and you know you would know that they have a certain skills but they might not have the same set of openings now all of these like there are kids everywhere um and they just like then know their stuff so well so now we're like testing out new formats uh one that we call freestyle which is basically there are 960 starting possible starting positions if you shuffle the pieces on the first rank and basically like you start out you just draw the position 10 minutes before the game no preparation whatsoever and you basically start with like in gaming and you map every single game um so that's sort of for the traditionalists that's not like the same the same game so like there are some people who don't like it but for the professionals it's in it's a chance like to um to use uh to use their their skills because otherwise chess is moving like it's becoming becoming faster like chess used to be used to be an art science everything with the way things are now it's it's just very fast and it's all game sports and so on like I feel like with with thinking from the very first move you're bringing some of the other factors um back as well I think what I think it's really unique about today is that kids today who are coming up are not just studying from books and from coaching but you can watch so many great games instantaneously anytime you want this is what's so unique about today and I think it applies to all sports I think it applies to all games I think it applies to almost I think it applies to stand -up comedy as well I think it's one of the reasons why the younger guys are so good it's like you get to see very high level stuff which gets into your mind that this is how to play at a very early age and you can be obsessed and just absorb so much more yeah and and you see there are such different approaches as well even even with uh with the kids like uh I had a training camp a few years ago with uh with a quick kid called Alireza Ferrusia from uh he plays for France now but he's from Iran originally he was about 14 then and my my chess coach has had like recommended that we um that we bring him in because he said that this is the most talented kid out there so we have this camper typically everybody has their their laptop and there's a chess board in the middle where you sort of um and you sort of look at your own thing and then some things together on the board and you you throw out ideas mostly for for openings but also sometimes other little exercises and so on and this kid he would have his have his laptop where he would um where he would analyze a certain position and then he would play games like for money on that same site at the same time so that he could buy clouds um cloud engine times because like the very best engines um they're they're stronger like if they're in the cloud then from your own uh then from your own laptop generally so he would buy a time for for that by playing games like one minute games on that server he would play five minute games on another server and he would analyze with us on the board and he was still like following everything like he had no problems whatsoever just being there so like it's just um yeah that's that's one way of doing it like he basically became one of the best players in the world by just constantly playing chess all the time and mostly like really quick games and then you have the current classical world champion from from India your cash like he doesn't play casual games at all he just studies his ass off all the time um and he's also like he's not good at at rabid chess he's not good at blitz he's not good at all the other forms uh but he has he has made all his study studies about uh classical chess uh he didn't even own uh like chess software on his computer before he was like 13 wow and he was a grandmaster wow at that time um but it's it's interesting to see that there are such different ways um to develop even even these days i think i just think it's fascinating human beings capacity to excel at things and that you really only know when someone pushes it a little bit further like this guy playing these all these games simultaneously you know what i mean it's like when you when if everybody's doing it one way if everybody's only playing you know a few games a day and hanging out like you'll probably all stay at the same level but if you got one fucking psychopath in the group that's online and is playing and is reading books and is that guy is gonna pass everybody and then everybody else realizes like oh that's possible you i could have gotten as good as him i better really bear down yeah because you you could also see that in the sky is playing style the guy who has been playing like constantly all the time from when he he was little he has fantastic instincts especially with the little time he just knows where the pieces go and like he's the only one of the kids who has that kind of feeling um the Indian guy on the other hand from the way he studies he's like during games like he's meticulous he calculates like he sees every position as a problem he has to solve more than oh what does my intuition tell me oh i'll do i'll do this uh it's like for him it's more well this is possible this is possible let me like try and uh see this all all the way all the way through so it's just yeah it's it's just very very different and um they they call it like the tortoise and the hare sometimes and then in certain situations the tortoise will win and all the other situations the hare will win right so in so there's different types of tournaments and there's some tournaments that have no time limit for for moves uh there's always a time there's always a time limit what a traditional time limit uh what he used to be in chess was um you'd have two hours for 40 moves then you would have an hour for the next 20 moves and then half an hour for the rest of the game so a maximum of seven hours um and uh that form is still is still being played uh and then you have faster forms of chess which is blitz chess which is usually five or three minutes and rapid chess uh which is somewhere from from ten to uh to to thirty minutes did you ever before you were known did you ever go to Washington Square Park and play those hustlers uh no i actually went there in um twenty uh twenty ten but i think i think some people recognize me back back then as well i think it's a bit of a myth though um how uh how good they are like right they're they're they're they're like okay but they're not like your level no they're not grandmaster level there was one guy though i don't remember i don't remember what was um uh what's the name of like it's up by um you know a Columbia University there's a park up there where they're playing chess as well there i played against the guy um who played like a very strange opening as what like he put like just a couple of ponds one square forward and then he started developing his pieces very slowly so i for at first i thought this guy has no idea what he he's doing but then it turned out like he actually had a system so after like ten fifteen moves i was in a lot of trouble uh and then and then like the game became super uh concrete and tactical and and and i and i won um but it yeah it struck me that this guy like had it just i think you just played in a park all his life so he had developed a certain system wow that was actually like kind of effective if you don't know what you're doing uh against it so that was that was kind of kind of interesting i i'm like he was fairly old so i'm sure he'd played chess his whole life without ever learning any kind of opening theory or or or something like that he just had yeah he was doing his own fascinating did you can you ever learn something from people that have an own orthodox approach like that oh yeah for sure um it's it's happened several times um there was um there was like my dad used to play a ton of chess at home like he used to have a home office and then certain times he'd appear to be um focused on his in his work but i knew like a certain look in his eye which told me that he was actually playing chess so i would go over and and watch he was like yeah i don't and then at some point where i was already a lot better than him um he played a certain opening as as white and i told him like what what is this opening like where did you learn this and he said well you taught me the very same opening but with the black pieces so i thought i was going to play as white like with with um one tempo more right because you're playing you're moving first i was like i didn't like i never like i'm one of the best players in the world and i never thought of that so i actually took up that line and i used it i used it with success against some of the best players in the world wow so i like i i don't know if that variation has a name like i've seen some other players play it afterwards as well uh but i just call it um the Henry Carlson variation that's really interesting you dad must be pretty proud of that he is very proud it's funny though that my my my dad and my my sisters my two of my sisters they they played a bit of competitive chess as well um i think at some point in time like i they wanted to learn a couple of openings so i taught them a couple of openings and i think all of them just never played anything anything else uh basically so they they certainly didn't have the same kind of passion to um to study but i'm glad i was able to um to push them into to some some decent lines that very how do you decide what opening to choose um and do you ever decide an opening or fuck i shouldn't have done that one yeah yeah it's sometimes honestly uh sometimes i i don't know what to do so i just randomize because i think um at a certain time like you might think that against this opponent you should play a little bit more more of an aggressive opening but then maybe i feel good about my tournament standings i don't want to mess that up so it's easy to go for a safer approach when like the optimal approach would be a bit more aggressive and then like if you randomize it then you will occasionally go for the for the more aggressive approach so that's what i sometimes do it's just i randomize it and then i just sort of accept the the outcome and it makes me more um more unpredictable it makes me harder to um to prepare against um as well so that's what i sometimes do it's not like it's not going to be out there but it's going to be between like two or three options that i i think are roughly equivalent they're just statically statically different so when you say randomize like how many openings do you have that you pursue on a regular basis oh it's it's hard to this hard to say um probably probably with why it's i have like uh five or six options that i can that i can go to but only like two or three that i i feel really good about and i think similarly um seem literally with black so and then when you randomize you just go in your head and one of them stands out for you and you say okay no i just like have up on my phone oh really it's a roll the dice yeah oh wow wow wow and i i think on honestly a lot of people could could benefit from that because you you agonize over these minute decisions like you spend a lot of mental energy before a certain game agonizing over what opening you're going to play and if you know that you you're going to make a decent choice but you leave all the agonizing to to like there's nothing because it's it's left to to challenge it makes it makes it a lot a lot easier that makes sense when no you're saying mental energy is do you you were talking about the spicy Chinese food incident but do you uh normally have a method of like when you eat vitamins you take there's a certain things that you do to optimize your your your clarity yeah like if if i'm playing if i'm playing an early early afternoon game for instance like starting at one i try to eat like one big meal before that which is generally like a big omelette with some some kind of solid and um but you eat pretty clean before big yeah usually i usually do um sometimes like after games like i will eat something like even some desserts and so on uh but before the games i try and keep it keep it fairly fairly clean and i actually learned that when i was when i was little like sometimes like my parents they were generally quite strict about sweets and so on but sometimes i would eat sweets during tournament then you know my um my blood sugar board drop like crazy and i would start making making mistakes uh and so that's something that i i learned quite quickly that i shouldn't do do you ever mess around with vitamins or neutropics or anything like that things nutrients that help memory no i i think um i think it's a little bit about the way that i was was raised like i'd never take medicine unless i i kind of have to i don't really take supplements or or um or or anything like that so um i probably i probably should like it's it's not a bad idea um like my wife is half american like she's completely different like she takes five kinds of vitamins every every single day she's very meticulous about it but yeah i don't know i've never um just get it and make you up some little packets yeah maybe i i think you'll probably have an impact on you i mean it's extraordinary if you think about how good you are without it like any little thing that could give you a very slight edge and i think that vitamins for sure give you a slight edge particularly in um neutropics there's a bunch of different vitamins that have been shown through clinical trials to improve cognitive performance you know um thienine there's a acetylcholine a bunch of different things that enhance memory that are essentially just nutrients what's the new thing that people are doing like uh caratine or something like that ketamine no no no not ketamine but uh no no it's not ketamine um creatine creatine creatine creatine yes creatine is uh was a body building supplement that was almost akin to steroids in the 1990s people you'd think it was cheating and then they realized it was just a component of food but uh one of the things that creatine does very extraordinary is um it aids in performance when you're sleep deprived so if you ever find yourself sleep deprived and you have to do something where you have to use your mind creatine is a fantastic supplement for that well i mean i woke up today and like i think my my watch that was that my sleep was like i got 15 like i slept for five hours but i got 15 minutes of random sleep like it was really really bad so that's what i could have i could i could i use that um because i was playing a chess armate earlier today so i could i could have used that but yeah creatine is something that everybody should take men, women, children, everybody should take creatine it's a really good supplement super safe and uh it does it aids in strength in muscle recovery and stuff like that but it also has a lot of cognitive benefits just generally just like a very good safe supplement to take what does it say here Jayne?

1:14:42Cognitive functions studies suggest that creatine supplementation may improve cognitive function including memory attention and reasoning it may increase brain energy levels by boosting endocene triphosphate production ATP which is essential for brain function creatine as antioxidant and anti -inflammatory properties that may protect brain cells from damage caused by oxidative stress and neurotoxins may help produce so it does a lot of different things if you google it there's a ton of different benefits i take it in gummy form i take creatine gummies every day they're delicious it's easy i just pop a bunch five milligrams i don't know we have any of those try try creates here i don't think so yeah i think i have them out there um but they're great you know it's easy i put a bag my car take them all time i've noticed a difference i just think with a guy like you where your brain is everything but you're you're kicking ass like why listen to me no no but it cheeseburgers and fuck around it happens but it it is the thing though on certain days i said i said i just accept that this episode is brought to you by focus features new film last breath make every breath count based on the extraordinary true story last breath takes you hundreds of feet below the ocean surface for the deadliest job on earth when a deep sea diver becomes trapped at the bottom of the ocean his teammates must devise a daring plan to save him before his oxygen runs out starring witty harrelson simulieu and fin coal this pulse pounding thriller is the ultimate tale of endurance bravery and survival hold your breath and experience the most thrilling movie of the year on the big screen last breath rated pg 13 may be inappropriate for children under 13 only in theaters february 28 you know my brain is not going to work as work as good and it's it's frustrating especially if you got a if you got a big game and you know that you're starting down to zero because your brain is not working the way it's supposed to be yeah i feel that with podcasting all the time and the the real danger is if i do that if my brain's not on full tilt and i'm talking to a scientist and i'm like oh like we have to talk about quantum physics like this i have to like have good questions you have to be able to follow what you're saying because it's so esoteric you know it's weird that the brain just doesn't always work exactly how you want it to and honestly i've chess is one of the worst things to do sleep deprived because i think creative creativity usually is enhanced when you're when you're not feeling well when you're when you're sleep deprived but that's generally not what you need in chess like you need to minimize mistakes you need precision and all of all of my intuition all of that it's just so much worse when i'm not feeling uh not feeling on top of uh on top of my game so do you have a specific thing you do when you're feeling not on top of your game do you like double check things in your mind do you have a process you follow i just tried to play like a simpler game where where it's not as where it's not as complicated reading uh and when you're feeling good then you go for it no honestly when i when i feel like good i don't think about these things it's just a state of it's just a state of flow uh where i know i know how much risks to take like i i i just yeah uh so what it what is the mindset like if you're in a world championship game and you it's down to these like what what is the state of mind like when you're in the middle of it honestly when i'm at my best i'm just like pure laser focused and um i'm just calm and not thinking about anything other than just in the moment just in the moment yeah just in the the work is already done you already know the game so now it's just reacting and moving and calculating yeah i mean i i had um i had a game and 20 last uh classical world championship i played in 2021 where um the first five games were drawn honestly like i could have probably been down at that point as well sixth game was a super super long game um almost eight hours and i think for the last hour and a half two hours i was pretty short on time but i remember like i was just so focused and so calm and afterwards i was just like yeah i could have kept going forever like i was just there um and it was exactly what i needed i ended up grinding out grinding out win and in those classical games like once you get a lead like that is so big because it's so hard to win actually win games at that that level with that level of preparation um so that was that was really big but yeah that's that i've only i've only had i feel like a few days where i feel like i'm just like completely in the moment usually it's a bit more messy than that but like when it happens it's just um yeah the best feeling that's amazing and it's only been a few days where you've been fully in the moment i'm rarely happy after i play i'm i'm i'm happier now like i'm honest like my standards for myself like are a little bit lower that have gone down a little bit the older i've gotten um because i sort of accept that i don't i don't have my brain is not as fast as it used to be so i'm going to have occasional letdowns so my top level is like i think as good as it's ever been or at least very very close to um but like the average level is it's just it's just too hard when your brain is not that fast anymore um but but but yeah generally i um i'm i'm always thinking well yeah i could have always done something better like you always miss some things but i always feel like yeah there are avoidable mistakes that i'm still making so this as you've got an older this lowering expectations is that a recognition of the fact that being hard on yourself over minute details doesn't benefit you and that you've just had a more healthy approach?

1:21:13yeah i think so um it just makes everything a bit bit easier um also honestly like the randomizing opening choices has made uh has made things easier as um as well uh everything just to sort of yeah lower the pressure of it? have you ever consulted a mental coach or uh you know someone who uh works with people on mindsets to try to capture what is happening when you are in that complete total flow state of laser focusness and try to recreate that because there's a bunch of different mind coaches that will tell you for a bunch of different pursuits that what you have to do is when you get to that state whatever that state is recognize that you're there and then try to get a map of the territory and try to will yourself back into that thing but then there's another school thought that says no it just has to happen organically and that you just have you and it comes it's going to come but it just you have to accept that it's a gift and it's just not always going to be there yeah i'm definitely the in the lottery camp um i've talked to people who have suggested mental coaches like plenty of plenty of times um both in in the past and and more recently as well i've just like always been worried that somebody's going to mess something up in in in my head paralysis by analysis yeah that that's really that's really what it is for me so i feel at some point i'm i'm just like more or less content with the way things things are that most days that i'm playing i'm going to be fairly good on some days i'm going to be at my very best that other days i'm going to be very far from from my best and it's it's sort of yeah it's sort of the the way it is i'm much definitely much more open to doing things to prevent me from having those very worse days because that those are the ones that really that really hurt you especially now that we're playing a lot of faster tournaments where there are where there are no cows we're basically like if you have one bad day you're you're out and it doesn't matter like back in the days with classical tournaments like you could you could have a really bad day uh but then you can always bounce back but nowadays it's not it's not that easy do you ever try to map out what are the factors that lead you to hit that state that's that flow state do you ever try to think about your day like what did i do what did i eat how how did i sleep did i avoid toxic people around me did i stay offline like what did i do that allowed me to get to that spot um yeah i mean doing everything sort of right before the game definitely helps like getting um getting getting good good sleep like reading reading a book instead of being on some sort of device before i go to go to sleep um then just focusing as little as possible and unchess before um before the game definitely really little as possible yeah um because you want it to be fresh in your mind you want it to be something exciting yeah i just i just want to have like two or three ideas of what i'm what i'm going to play and not like i just don't want to like use mental energy that i could have used on the game before right right right so um i think one of my better tournaments that i played um it's i used to play every year at this um seaside resort in in the Netherlands and it's in the middle of winter so it's not very short like it's just rainy and windy and there's basically nothing there except those big tournaments that's been there for for 80 years and it's for three weeks every every January so for me there's not there's not a lot to do uh so what i would do like every day is i'd um i'd uh i'd wake up i'd go for a walk um and then i would watch like 30 to 45 minutes of um NBA highlights from the day before look at chess for for 15 minutes whatever my coach has sent me of preparation that we'd discussed the day before um eat and then and then go play and um that worked really really well it's just keeping it as simple as possible honestly so get inspired a little bit a little bit of energy from watching NBA highlights right yeah just a tiny amount of information from the coach just like get your brain locked in but not too much energy don't focus too much on it yeah a lot of people like they do they will spend three four hours preparing on a game on that very day uh and it like it can be beneficial like if your opponent goes into specifically the lines that you prepared and and so on but overall i think um yeah having having having a fresh mind is is so important um and i'm also like even if i haven't had the perfect preparation like i'm really good at just blocking everything out forgetting everything that's happened and just focusing there and then but it's still not as good of course as just being um in in in a good state of mind do you ever get to the point where you feel burned out or you want to just take days off a week off and not think about chess not touch a chess board or is it just constantly playing in the background no matter what you do but i i really love it so yeah why take no no no no i'm fine with taking uh breaks from from tournaments and so on um but having like at least days several days and row without like looking at a chess game um or i mean i don't have to play every day but not having a having a yeah not looking at anything like not reading some chess stuff or like yeah i mean it's it's my favorite hobby so i i don't um yeah i don't i don't see why i would want to do that that's probably why you're one of the best of all time if not the best i mean that's a beautiful approach right if you can find a thing that you love so much that even though you do it all the time and you've done it since you were a child you're still obsessing and loving it yeah i i i do have those moments where i just i just take a breath and i'm and think about how lucky that i am and there are just moments where i just sort of i wouldn't say rediscover my love for the game but i just think like i'm obsessed with this game and i'm completely uh fine with that well that's a beautiful way to live your life if people can find a thing like that in their life that really is the key to an enjoyable life if the thing that you do all the time you're obsessed with now we talk about it all the time at our comedy club we're we're all in the green room we're like we are so lucky that this is actually what we do for a job and pretty much everybody who's good at it is obsessed with it and they think about it all the time it's kind of the only way but i need time off sometimes because i think that's different because it's always different ideas and different things you're working on sometimes you need time just to refresh your perspective but with a game like chess i guess you don't really need time off no i think again it's it's different from for for different people but i don't know i don't feel i don't feel like it it takes away energy it just gives me joy and and energy when when i when i do like i will just on on a certain day i will just log into chess .com and observe random people play and that is something i can do and be very happy about it um yeah it's just the way i you're just very fortunate you found a thing that you really locked into it's uh that that perspective is very important for people to recognize like the perspective of gratitude and of appreciation that you're so fortunate to have found something people go their whole lives and never find a thing that they're truly absolutely passionate about and for a guy like you i mean it's a it's a shiny example for people i think i think that's one of the things that i enjoy the most about super high performers is that they provide an insane amount of inspiration to other people when someone sees you play chess at the highest level or sees and you know Michael Jordan play basketball or whatever it is you get this feeling of what human beings can do and it elevates your own expectations of yourself and of people around you.

1:30:40yeah i think um i thought about it many times like what am i actually like doing with my life that's that's useful to other people and it always comes comes back to to that every time that i hear that people um people are inspired by by what i do maybe it helped them through like um a difficult time to watch to watch my games and to get into rediscover or find the the love for the game that's really um that's really nice and i can in the process i'm just doing doing what i what i love right and that's that's really what people want to want to see for me it's just competing and and doing well in chess so that's that's also what i'm uh giving us as often as um possibly well that's what people want out of life is something that they love that they do that they're very good at and they get recognized for it and when a person like you does it and does it publicly and it's inspiring it's a great gift for other people i mean it truly is who has been like are there particular players that you really enjoy watching play and the particular styles that you enjoy uh i think my favorite probably player of all time is is sort of the young Kasparov before before he became world champion the thing is like what i find fascinating about that is that he played with a style um that was so unique and so dynamic um that that i know that i could never replicate it it's just not the way that i i play um so that's something i i admire a lot usually i'm whatever i'm into like be it soccer or golf or basketball or whatever like i admire like what people do not necessarily like it's about the people themselves um so that's the way it has been for me in in in chess as well um that i try to like learn from from people's games and what they what they do and when i talk to them um and i've been very fortunate about about that being able to study with um with uh Gary back in the day uh and uh Anand who was the world champion before me um because it's it's only then when like when you when you study like you talk to them like you understand like how good they really are and how much they they understand um for instance with Anand i had a training session um in 2008 where we had both played a tournament where um i'd done reasonably well and he had sort of towards the end he had mailed it in but he was preparing for the classical world championship so we i i think i had two days off and he was living outside Madrid and so i went to Madrid for a couple of days because the other tournament was in in north of spain then i went to his house and as soon as like that training camp started it's like something just switched with him and he was he was just so focused we played a bunch of training games and from being this guy who seemed completely disinterested in this other tournament all of a sudden like he was crushing me like he had a massive plus score in our games and it felt like everything we analyzed he was just he just had a much deeper understanding of the game it seemed that he was faster technically and everything and it made me like appreciate like how good uh how good he actually um actually was yeah when you were playing someone like that you're getting your ass kicked um does this inspire you and enact change in your game or does it does it not change your game you just do the same game but more focused yeah i think i think it's more of more of the ladder um it was just a reality check for me because i thought that that point that i was um i was ranked i think third in the world i'd very briefly be in ranked number one um already at that point like for for a week and i thought before that i thought i was maybe one of the best two three players in the world and it made me realize that i wasn't and that maybe i was able to have better results than my actual level because of because of youth energy and and optimism right and that made me just yeah it just made me realize that i i have a lot a lot to learn and that i should be i should be patient and not expect everything to to sort of um to sort of calm that fast because at that point i had a year of more or less constant rise i was yeah it's just winning winning tournaments every time i would lose a game i was just to believe that i could strive back immediately and i and i like i realized now that i was just i was delusional i thought i was a lot better than than what i was and that was probably why i was having so such good results because you're so confident because i was so confident but having a like a little bit of a reality check i think helped me later to actually understand the game a bit better but i still i've still taken away that i think it's in chess like the optimal state when you're playing a game is somewhere between optimistic and delusional optimistic because if you're realistic you're just never going to to be opportunistic enough to to sort of exploit your opponents mistakes it's i think another factor is the way you analyze things that you were able to say i was a little delusional and even though i'm doing very well i got a trust in this process of growth and development and that it is a very very long process yeah exactly and i look like very soon after that i started working with with garqasparav as well and that made me realize that i know even less and what kind of guy like garqasparav tell you that makes you know that you know even less back then it was really like my style has become a bit more dynamic over time but back then i like i really really lacked understanding of more dynamic positions in chess like you can have you can have like more static or more dynamics pawn structures like if there are a lot of possible pawn breaks for for both sides and both kings are under attack then it's sort of more more dynamic and tactical or it could be more a lot more about gaining some minutes positional advantages and that's sort of what I was excelling at the ladder and working with him it just improved sort of the the more dynamic part of my game a lot and that helped me very much short term and also also it's helped me ladder because it it improved my understanding of the game my strength main strength is still more in the more static structures but that worked like made me so much more more versatile and i still definitely a profit from that what what is a coach for you today like what what benefit is a coach today a couple of things the main benefits that i have from my chess coach is opening work that's like the the low hanging fruit that's that's really what you know you can you can get the most out of on from game to game a couple of other things like my my coach is is also an old friend of mine he's Danish so we can communicate in the same language and he's also just as obsessed with golf as i am so that every every time like we have like a chess training camp there's also a lot of a lot of golf being played so yeah those are a few things but chess wise it's it's mainly about the the the opening work and so it's essentially he's obviously very good at chess as well but it's essentially bouncing things off of each other and going over positions yeah and then he's very good at using chess engines to you know to get slightly different different results than than maybe other others do you occasionally or do you at all analyze other people's games and break them down together not not really when it comes to analyzing other games like it's it's it's more useful for me to to look at what the engine is is saying so like now the engines are just smarter than yeah that they are and i'm i'm good enough that i can interpret what the engine is is saying to like understand why a certain thing a certain thing happened happens so it's still interesting to analyze together us as humans but we always want to double check what we're what we're saying with the engines isn't it fascinating that that's that's a gigantic factor now ever since deep blue right yeah so the thing about i know like i don't know if you if you talk to Gary but he has this whole thing with with deep i i'm not sure if deep blue was actually better than than Gary but it yeah it started it started the the downfall of us humans when it when it comes to chess and it's now been a long time we're just accepted that our computer overlords are are just a lot better and there are serious benefits for for improving players for for kids like the engines how people improve a lot faster so that's that's a great thing additionally people watching chess games like one problem is that you cannot easily tell like it's not like one guy is being punched and the other guy is is punching like it takes some skill to to see what's going on but with the help of the engines like you could actually have a real -time score all the time because it tells you who is who is winning and who who is not because it becomes a lot easier to to to follow as well because honestly like most people when they consume sports they're most interested about who is going to win and who is going to lose so now at least you can you can have that factor in chess that you can you can you can see that and it's very interesting for me to read what people were writing about computer chess 30 not not 30 but like 50 60 years ago and so on when there was an actual discussion whether computers could ever beat a grandmaster at chess and now it's it's very much settled of course well they have that same discussion about go right well go is much much more complicated than than than than chess so but I I don't know what has happened since alpha go if if like the best masters are a little still a little bit better or where the state is at I think go is better than everybody now the the computer is but I think a new factor is that the computer has devised creative moves that were never used before that have now been implemented they're a part of like general strategy which I think they thought was very shocking so let's see if you find any kind of bluffing moves or I do not know because I don't understand go I was just reading an article about the extraordinary leaps that AI has taken and that one of the more shocking things was was that it was able to beat the best players at go which they didn't they thought it was like a long time coming yeah I mean I I did watch watch the movie alpha go and I mean how long ago was that that's like five no maybe like six seven years ago in AI time that's like stone ages which is so crazy and I think like a year or two later there was alpha zero in chess so chess engines there were always like kind of built by humans and instructed by humans and then alpha zero came along and which is a neural network that just you know learn chess on it on its own and it became more or less as good or maybe slightly slightly worse than the best traditional chess engines what's interesting is that the neural networks played chess a lot more like humans they were much less concerned about material factors there were more about like positional play and long -term thinking and so on because it was not based on brute force in the way that that traditional engines would and you would see funny like they have computer tournaments as well with with with the best engine in the world and you would you will still see like Lila zero that's sort of the clone of alpha zero because they discontinued the alpha zero project after a while it will make like elementary tactical blunders almost that's crazy because it I don't know it engines but it will also like do things that just confounds the very best chess engines in the world still so that's very interesting to to see and like all the best coaches and players now when when you work with chess computers like you always have both like a neural net and a traditional chess engine running as well as some others who are now like hybrid who are who have a little bit of both it's just fascinating that it would make blunders yeah well I don't know if it's something about it's it's it's it's search I really I really don't I really don't know but it would also make some fascinating decisions like when you promote upon like you usually promote to a queen because that's almost always the best unless you sometimes want to promote night specifically to to give a check or sometimes you know to avoid stalemate but that's that's less frequent but then what Lila and alpha zero would sometimes do is that they would promote to a different piece because if it's a piece that's anyway going to be captured just to give your opponent like a slight chance of making mistake by making another move which is something like human would never ever do but it's like it's really funny a little bit of a parallel to what's going on and go I think with this gamesmanship that is going on with with the new neural nets so that's crazy that it would just trick you yeah would try and trick it like it probably wouldn't trick human because the human would be like that's weird okay I'll just take it whatever but another engine oh okay well I have another alternative that seems wow equivalent more or less maybe I'll go for maybe I'll go for that um wow it's it's it's it's very strange so what are the best programs that people play on um there are a few there's one that was originally developed by new engine called stockfish that's still considered um the best so I think like I think the best now is stockfish like stockbridge hybrid that's part neural and part traditional engine and then I think do you have to be connected online to use that um yeah I mean most people use either most people use remote engines like some kind of cloud service to have as much computing power as possible so the kind of computing power that's on your phone like can you beat your phone at the highest level no no chance no chance that's so crazy because deep blue wasn't it like as big as a room yeah deep blue was a wasn't like a stack of computers right but I'm sure it's still less powerful than your the computer on your phone yesterday I was shocking um no no I have no chance against against um I guess my phone there was there was there was actually one time where I played a corporate simle and there was this guy who said um I built a chess program in in my university class can I let that play against you again and instead of myself I was like yeah sure why not and I actually like beat it fairly handily uh because I played some kind of like anti computer chess where I just close up the position as much as possible and just let it has have as few possibilities as possible to to out calculate me so that it's a purely strategic game that doesn't work against very good engines but it can work against um against weaker ones but no um humans like we don't have any there was there was a grandmaster who played a match recently against lila which is like the best and neural network engine now uh they were playing classical chess and he started with a knight more and they played a 10 10 game match and he won the five and a half to four and a half wow which is crazy like it's a night more like that's it should not be possible for any like if god was playing chess that shouldn't be you shouldn't be able to beat a grandmaster in any game like that so the grandmaster was still able to win but yeah for me uh I rarely play against engines at all because they just make me feel so stupid and useless so I think about it more as than as a tool um more than more than than anything else and often like when you play against them the moves that they make they are not necessary relevant as to what a human would do in that why in that situation because we just think we just think differently do you ever try to think like the computer um yeah well specifically the neural nets have improved our understanding of the game immensely and the avo zero paper came out very late 2018 and actually I played our world championship match late 2018 as well against um an american fabiana carona that was the best match I think that I've ever played we played um 12 draws actually and then I won in a tie break but like the games were of super high quality and and he was he was very evenly matched and then he was actually using lila the the avo zero clone which we didn't have access to like we didn't even know that was the thing but the thing is like after avo zero came out in 2018 there was a period half a year maybe early 2019 where you could very clearly see which players have been using these new neural network not works or knew how to use them and which players didn't and my coach he got into it very quickly and we got an advantage of basically everybody but that but that guy who had been using it during the match and it just made us understand the game a lot better uh there were as I said like a couple of things about long -term king safety pushing pawns on the side of the board was maybe the biggest takeaway that often you would push pawns and not as an attacking tool which used to be the way that you would push a pawn like train trying to break open your open your king what you would do is that you would have a little hook on the side of the board that you could use 20 or 30 moves later um to make your king uh like like to make the opponent's king less safe then and this is something that humans didn't really do and I still see some people like allowing these pawn advances and and I don't like I wonder if they didn't didn't learn their lesson from from 2019 uh but it was very clear to see um at a certain time before everybody sort of caught up with the new information and that's also when I had maybe my best stretch of chess ever because I just understood these new things um better better than others it's almost counterintuitive that you wouldn't want to play the computer because the computer makes you look stupid because the idea in my mind would be like well you should play the best thing that you could possibly play and if that's a computer great if that's another human being then play the human being but I would imagine that playing something that makes you feel stupid with at the very least teach you something about the game yeah it does but at the same time like you know that these are usually things that humans cannot replicate and to be fair like the kids these days a lot of them play like a more concrete brand of of chess that um is more similar to to um two engines than than we have seen in the past because they've had so much exposure to yeah um like they're they're less the dogmatic more concrete in their their thinking but then I know that there are usually other things that are are lacking so I could I could sort of steer the game there as well so I don't know um I haven't I haven't found it particularly useful but but maybe I'm just yeah I don't want um is it partly because you just don't want to lose yeah of course and it's also because as you said like chess is a very lonely game like when you lose it's because you're worse than your opponent and imagine the losing to somebody who you know is like completely stupid which which like traditional chess computers aren't they're stupid they just have much more computing power than you do so losing over and over again to something that's so stupid like that's not a good feeling could you help explain to me what are the factors like how can it what is it doing that you can't do in terms of calculating positions and moves and strategies well first of all is infinitely faster um so there will there will be certain possibilities that I will rule out because of my intuition but it is able to calculate in a very short time that it's it's it's possible it will never make blunders like simple tactical mistakes the neural networks sometimes to you but traditional engines traditional engines don't um and like I can I can keep like most of the moves that I make will be the same as they as they do um but they just like they don't make any real blunders at all like they may may make slight positional mistakes but honestly most of the time that I think a engine makes a positional mistake is because I don't understand it well enough hmm so it's not really a mistake and it might look like one but it's long -term yeah it's just that my understanding is it's not good enough and that that is useful then that does help me learn um what are the like what is the difference between the approach that the neural network takes versus a traditional engine like why is one of them approaching the game because one of them is constantly calculating um based on sort of what what humans have taught them is like the value of like the value what is the value of pawn what's the value of a knight and what is the value of um you know of far advanced pawn and all of this like it calculates based on that and neural network just you teach you just show it the rules of chess and you know play against your yourself a lot of times and get better and it's it just has uh it has a different approach like what it does it's just based on the game games that it's that is played against itself right so it's it's it's just it will have completely different different ideas um at times like imagine like in 2019 because of these neural networks like every opening that I've been played for hundreds of years had to be rechecked by by coaches because there could be a difference in evaluation because there is this new neural network that just things in a completely different way wow so the these neural networks could go back and look at you know a classic game from like 1963 and say well you know what I don't fuck that dude up because I would have done this that and the other thing yeah exactly and um it just I think a lot of it was based on it just emphasizes different factors than traditional to end engines do and and that ultimately just leads to to to different to different results really um but it's um yeah it was extremely fascinating for a while but now it's just led to really more parity uh in in the world of chess because yeah uh everybody just has access to um to that information it used to be a thing back in the time that people some people would really be ahead of all there's not only in 2019 but also other times like they had more computing power better better cloud engines like they had started to use different engines and so on but now now you could prepare for world championship honestly and in two weeks and you'd be completely um with like just a regular um regular like laptop that's connected to to cloud like it's it's it's very different on so much so much easier um today that is so fascinating that it's changed the game so much could you get a computer whether it is traditional engine or whether it's a neural network could you get one to imitate a specific style like could you get one say i want you to play like garicess bar off when he was younger so we actually did this back in back in the day um um we actually started a an app called play magnus where you could play against myself against uh at different ages um and the um the uh the uh the style it was based on the guy who built stockfish built this engine as well so it was based like an old version of that but it would have my openings and tried to emulate my style at certain certain ages obviously it wasn't it wasn't perfect but it was it was it was it was a start um i think it's still difficult to build like a very good clone because essentially um at least with traditional engines it's not possible maybe with AI you can you can get there but I still think we fundamentally think differently about about chess but yeah maybe well the interesting thing would be to take you because there's so many games that can be observed and put into the calculations and then i would i would really be fascinated to watch you play you you know i mean like what would that be like like you play you when you were 20 no so the thing about it is is that you would also you would you would have to calibrate is that um it would make occasional like tactical blunders right right and which engines yeah and so what we would do what would happen in the playminus app is that it would make occasional blunders but those would be like a little bit too outrageous because it's like really hard to emulate the kinds of mistakes a human would make by um by by the engines um so i think that would probably still be like the most difficult part like the main issue in order to to make such a thing if the playmagnus thing was dialed in like a hundred percent what would be do you think now would be the scariest age to play you uh does that make sense yeah yeah are you better now than ever before no i i think i think my i think my my peak level is is close to the best because chess level or proficiency at anything it's about making use of the knowledge and making it into skill right uh and i definitely have more knowledge now than i've ever had but i think probably my the combination best combination i had of knowledge and and energy and that translated the best into skill was probably um in 2019 like first half of the year when i was when i was 28 and when i was more more like a young cuspar than i'd ever been before uh very dynamic um what is the difference between you and 2019 you today a few things uh first it's i couldn't play the same openings as i played then because they have been worked out to a point where they're basically um yeah they're just too analyzed and and i'm playable uh so that's that's one thing um apart from that i think i could do like my average level probably be a little bit lower because i'm a little bit uh i'm a little bit older and uh and my brain is not quite as fast um but i could do i think most of those things but i don't think i could do is like the other sort of best version of me which was 2013 2014 uh when i was in um the best shape of of my life uh and i was just a relentless beast at the board grinding down my my um opponents in very long end games never gaming them any any respite whatsoever um like purely skill wise that was far from the best version uh sorry knowledge wise that was far from the best version of me um but i was just um yeah it was just like the average level of my game definitely was was higher than because i barely i rarely played really by by games at all because i was always always sort of on i had so much um so much um willpower and energy well you're saying you were in the best shape of your life do you mean physically or do you mean physically yeah uh physically yeah well these these two factors you're talking about like physical like fitness and nutrition and exercise like that that these things you don't really take too much into consideration but they obviously play it a huge factor in the most successful period of your life uh yeah um it did but then because you're only 34 it's only no no no that's that that's true but i i just i just feel it with these these kids like their brains are just so much faster than mine um i mean i felt it for years as well that no i'm i'm not i'm not i'm not old uh but i can i can i can i can never be at that level and of pure like computing power but is that generally accepted with chess that there's a certain age where it just drops off uh who is one the world championships that like the oldest age no well um back in the days when you couldn't get information that quickly it took people a lot longer to um to develop and then it was considered that the best age was like late 30s early 40s um obviously the drop off is not nearly as deep as it would be in in physical sports like that's that goes without saying but i think the peak years are pretty much the same um for for most people like mid mid 20s to to early uh to early 30s um i think i could still i i could be i could still be very very close to to my peak if i focused fully on um on yeah all the the things that i can that i can control like yeah all of those yeah yeah yeah you don't do that i don't understand if you're self -sessed with chess and that seems to have a primary factor yeah that's it's a good thing i i feel like i do i generally like do the right thing things when i'm a tournaments but then in between i don't know i want to enjoy life as as well um so um and like i'm generally obsessed with with with chess but i'm not always obsessed with competing like certain times there will be certain days certain tournaments where i i know that i'm not going to be at my best and i i can i can sort of i can feel it and then i i'm not able to um to to um to take it as as seriously like i feel like i cannot i'm i'm not a Michael Jordan type who has to like go all out and every in in every game i i used to but now i don't i i don't think i have that um that in me because my main motivation for playing chess is that i love to play um i don't have concrete goals of what i wanted but i wanted to um things i want to achieve like does that sort of relax attitude that you have is that drive other people crazy that you're still able to beat them i think that would drive me fucking nuts if i was just fully obsessed in studying moves all day just taking my vitamins and drinking only purified water and it's kind of a thing that you're known for right like a lot of other people are known to work all the time and you've kind of always at least a reputation played the player right isn't that what you're yeah and also the thing is like i was known for um for like being fit and all of these things but now i think there are a lot of other players who take these things a lot more seriously than i than i do i think the reason why i got that reputation is that i really like doing a lot of uh like i did a lot of sports from i was little and i've always like kind of done them for for fun so i think that was the that was why like you don't see a lot of chess players playing uh playing soccer or tennis or or whatever um not that i'm greater than any of those things but i was usually better than than a lot of other a lot of other chess players um i i yeah i guess i do have i don't know i don't know what a reputation i have for the others like i don't yeah it's not much you can do about your reputation i'm just saying like in a in a in a game or sport where it could it's so computer involved and analyzed and there's geniuses wearing suits and glasses and things you're kind of known as a laid back intimidating force with a legacy do you have other other special things you do kind of like more like a poker player or anything to intimidate your opponents ever like i've seen you like show up late to big tournaments where they're like waiting for you and stuff that's really cool that's a Miyamoto Musashi move no samurai yeah yeah obviously like that's um me being late is down to a couple of things first i hate waiting uh but also i just i'm terrible at planning so that's why i keep showing up way more terrible at planning no no funny that is it's literally what you do no than anybody like my planning is always based on everything going perfectly and like making a time plan based on that and if something goes a little bit wrong then i'm going to be late and like something usually goes goes wrong or often enough that it becomes becomes the thing um like like um like as you talked about in in in chess like there's this video that a lot of people have talked about where i come there's um there's a blitz game right and i that's three minutes and i come like two and a half minutes late because i've been i've been skiing in the mountains and there was a there was an accident on the roads that that delayed me like half an hour like most people would have planned for that had a little bit of buffer but i was like eh that was probably going to be fine certainly suddenly there's an accident and i'm going to be late and i'm just running into the playing hall in my in my sweatpants and not really even realizing that the game has started i just thought i was so late that i should be uh and i saw that everybody was there and then randomly turned out half a minute left when when i got to the go to the board so that's kind of more how to play the game did you did you like have a different approach because you knew you only had 30 seconds no the the thing is like in there you have a two second increment for move so i'm not going to lose some time automatically i just had to play a little bit faster but it was it was okay but as i said like i don't do those things to intimidate my opponents i'm just that would be such a blind fuck guy shows up two and a half minutes late it still stomps you yeah i don't think many people know about the the skiing delay or anything i think it was thought of is like a this i'm i'm a bad -ass i'm coming in late no honestly that was um like the world championships and chess like they're being held in the weirdest places so this was in in all multi -classics done which um this is like really uh during winter at least pretty polluted not very nice city and then just half an hour out of the city you have basically the alps you have beautiful mountains that goes up to um to three and a half thousand meters where it's just fantastic and you can you can like get um yeah from from the city it's like an hour and you're at the top of the mountain and having a beautiful ski vacation uh and i just like was so miserable being down in the city that i thought for this day like if i'm going to perform it all today like i need some freershare i like i need to get out of here and so that's why i took the risk and it was yeah definitely not um not to um to play to play in mind games because i i Bobby Fisher said about chess that i don't believe in psychology i believe in good moves like i believe in like a little bit of both but i'm more in his school that i just um i think i'm going to make better moves than i don't need um that all those other things did you ever have an opponent that was doing something psychological that kind of messed you up or threw you off like back when i was a wrestler in high school some guys wouldn't shower and it would be disgusting right was there anything like that in chess yeah that specific thing has has happened for sure i'm not sure if it's been if it's been a conscious choice by my opponents i'm sure i've been guilty guilty over it as well um that's that that's true um i don't know really i i i think the only thing is not to bring that up again but i think when when i think that my my opponent might be cheating that's that's the only time that i'm really i'm ready um off it's just weird that you can cheat and do it for so long and yet still play in the best tournaments you would think that like like in the ufc like say if you get caught with steroids you get a long ban and you can't and if you get caught again you get an even longer ban and i think it's like a three -strike thing if you cut third time you're out of the sport forever yeah no it's the the thing is that we think harsher penalties would discourage oh yeah for sure especially for for online because there's been this thinking that cheating over the board and over online is like very different but the thing is like once people um once people are cheating online then having these meteoric rises over the board as well it makes you think that's a bit strange yeah um so yeah there definitely needs to be um to be harsher penalties one thing that chest .com used to do is that they they would let people sort of confess privately and then get their account back but now they're moving to more naming and shaming sort of sort of thing with um um and and batting people for longer which i think is yeah it's a lot it's a lot better um but a lot of it is a lot of it is about incentives as well right like if you if you think that you can get get away with cheating um and there are monetary incentives to cheating people are going to cheat right yeah well i guess that's just with every pursuit there's always going to be people that look for shortcuts there's always going to be someone who looks to skirt around the difficult path no that's true but the the thing is like there's so little you need in chest and and the dungeons are so powerful um like if i started cheating that you would never know the thing is like i would i would get like a move here and there that's all i need or maybe imagine i'm playing in tournament i just find a system where i get somebody to signal me when there's a critical moment like if a certain move if there's a moment where a certain move is much better than the others that's really all i would need to to go from being the best to being like practically unbeatable right so it really is a scary situation situation and there have been these cases of so many cases of people who are acting suspiciously and who are making suspicious um having suspicious results based on the data but they're very like if you're not cheating in a dumb way they're rarely is going to be a smoking gun without that smoking gun is really hard to catch catch people how would you eliminate that other than security would you have it so there's no audience members at all and have them only in a room that that so that has been that has been done in world championships for instance like we're basically play we're basically been playing like in a glass box that where you can see um where you can see uh where you like you cannot see the audience and you cannot hear anything so it's a glass proof glass proof box um i kind of that's like you kind of don't want that you want there to be like i really like having chest more like an esports setting where people can be as loud as they want it's just you have players sit down like boxers with headsets and but don't headsets open up the possibility of cheating but then like the headsets would be all provided by the organizers right so some sort of and you'd have to have like both we have had that internment like tournaments that you have to have white noise and some kind of sound from like Spotify or what if you want to listen to classical music or or whatever you can do that yeah yeah so you can listen to wootang clan while you play chest yeah i mean honestly honestly playing blitz chest help listening to music usually it helps me because like doing tasks that are more intuition based um then that helps with the flow with longer games um you probably don't want that disturbance but i've definitely played some of my best blitz chest just um yeah listening listening to music listening they're bopping um popping um yeah i think uh will some white or weogen music or maybe we might use a rock rock shine or something that's actually German but that's a good that's a good song No, I think it my best my just my best chas has probably been Norwegian rap Norwegian rap really what's a good Norwegian rap band that you could Rap group that you could recommend.

2:19:32There's a guy called mr. Pimplosion and oral B. Mr. Pimplosion and oral B. They're kind of They it's like a little bit ironic, but they're like doing like American like West Coast rap in in the region. Oh, that sounds bad ass And this is a bit of a different But I actually I actually did a song with mr. Pimplosion. I actually did a song with those guys What a great name mr. Pimplosion Yeah

2:20:07Yeah, my verses like right up down I like it too because I don't have any idea what the words are saying. Yeah, yours is at the end. No, basically there's um Yeah, the thing about the what happened was that they did a show and they have this The this thing called spinal which is like a moisturizer mostly used for for animals But like this mr. Pimplosion like he's obsessed with that one and somebody apparently stole the that from backstage um at their concert and So they they didn't know who it was But they eventually found out and they made a song about it And so they had a bunch of people like send in their verses uh Incredible the difference between america and norway though what the rappers are rapping about just gang wars and shootings and the norway is somebody's like who stole my love Yeah uh There there actually was a uh There actually was a uh popular song um like about 20 years ago That reference specifically that in Norwegian that there was nothing to wrap about because nothing bad ever happens Uh, that's what he's saying and don't leave pull up the gun.

2:21:30It's best. It's someone speak out who stole this being all Who stole my lotion? Yeah hahaha Basically there's a bunch of verses like people accusing each other and then i randomly come in at the very end Um and solve the mystery Uh, was it you? It wasn't me um i i was i was know that that particular show but um yeah i think i i think like the best online chess that i've ever played was probably listening listening to their um to their music Wow Do you mix it up? Do you ever listen to like Led Zeppelin or no i i i listened to a lot of a lot of older older stuff um as well um So yeah, i'm like i have no idea what's on the um chart these days um in general, but I find out through Tony I find i do i find out to the young guys at the club Like what do you listen to what is this?

2:22:35Yeah, and i'll you know do shazam on it and put it on my spot No, like that sometimes happens to me as well. Maybe like once a year or something. Yeah, otherwise it's um I remember like i asked my sister Uh, probably like 10 years ago. Like i source playlists and like do you have anything from before 2000 or so? I was like yeah, of course Britney Spears baby one more time night tonight and i Okay

2:23:01So i'm kind of the opposite of that Well, it's awesome Well, this is meant It's been awesome having you in here. I really appreciate you doing this and tell everybody when the Netflix shows out I don't know, but it's it's another within a few months for sure Uh Jamie, do you know Didn't say when it's coming out well we will put it up on the instagram when it's out and It's been awesome talking to you man. I really appreciate it Thank you. Thanks for coming in. All right, Tony. Fun times, fun jobs. All right, goodbye.