Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
magnus carlsen the number one ranked
chess player in the world and widely
considered to be one of if not the
greatest chess player of all time
the camera magnus died 20 minutes into
the conversation most folks still just
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in the description and now dear friends
here's magnus carlsen
you're considered by many to be one of
the greatest if not the greatest chess
players of all time but you're also one
of the best fantasy football aka soccer
competitors in the world plus recently
picking up poker and
competing at a world-class level so
before chess let's talk football and
greatness
you're a real madrid fan
so let me ask you the ridiculous big
question who do you think is the
greatest football
aka soccer player of all time can you
make the case for messi can you make the
case for cristiano ronaldo
pele maradona does something anybody
jump to mind
i think it's pretty hard to make a case
for
anybody else
than messi for his uh for his all-around
game
and uh
frankly like my
real madrid fandom sort of
uh predates the ronaldo
era era uh this the second ronaldo not
not not the first one so i always liked
ronaldo but i always kind of thought
that
messi was
was better
and
i went to quite a number of madrid games
and they've always been super helpful to
me down there the only thing is that
like they asked me
they were gonna do an interview and they
were gonna ask me who my favorite player
was and
um
i said somebody else i think i said isko
at that point and i was like okay take
two now you say ronaldo
so for them it was um it was very
important but it wasn't wasn't that huge
too um
to me so messy over maradona
yeah but it's i think
just like with chess it's hard to
compare eras
obviously the improvements in football
have been like
in in technique and such have been even
greater than they have been in in in
just but it's um
it's always um it's always a weird weird
discussion uh to have but just as a fan
what do you
think is
beautiful about the game what defines
greatness is it
you know with messi
one he's really good at finishing
two very good at assists
like three there's just magic it's just
beautiful to see the play so it's not
just about the finishing there's some
it's like marduna's hand of god there's
some
creativity
on the pitch is is that important or is
it very important to get the world cups
and the big championships and that kind
of stuff i think the world cup is pretty
pretty overrated seeing us um as it's uh
such a small sample size so
uh
uh it sort of annoys me always when you
know titles are always um
always appreciated so much
even though
that particular title can be
can be a lot of a lot of
luck or at least some
at least some luck
so i do appreciate um
statistics a bit and all the statistics
say that mess is
the best finisher of all time which i
think helps a lot
and then there's the intangibles as well
the flip side of that is the small
sample size
is what
really
creates the magic
it's so it's just like the olympics
you you basically train your whole life
for this you live your whole life for
this and it's a rare moment one mistake
and it's all over
that's
for some reason a lot of people
either break under that pressure or rise
up under that pressure you don't you
don't admire the magic of that no i i do
i just think that like rising and
to the pressure and breaking on the
under the pressure is often a really
oversimplified
like
uh taken on what's um on what's
happening we're yeah we do romanticize
the game yeah well let me ask you
another ridiculous question another
you're also a fan of basketball
yes
let me ask the goat question do you i
you know i'm biased because uh i went to
high school in chicago
uh you know chicago bulls during the the
michael jordan era uh let me ask the the
jordan versus lebron james question
let's let's continue on this threat of
greatness which one do you pick or
somebody else
so i'll give you a completely different
answer
um
depending on my mood and depending who
on whom i talk to i pick one of one of
the two and then i tried to argue the
quantum mechanical thing well can you
what
again what
what would uh if you were to argue for
either one
statistically i think lebron james is
going to surpass jordan yeah no doubt
and so
again there's a
debate between
unquantifiable greatness no that i mean
that's the whole that's the whole debate
yes so it's well it's quantifiable
versus unquantifiable yeah what's more
important and you're depending on mood
yeah all over the place
but what do you lean in general with
these f with these folks with with
soccer with anything in life
towards the unquantifiable more no
definitely towards the quantifiable so
when you're unsure lean towards the
numbers yeah but see like it's later
generations
there's something that's what people say
about maradona is you know he took uh
arguably somewhat mediocre team
to a world cup
so there's that also uplifting nature of
the player to be able to rise up the
whole it is a team sport so are you
gonna like are you gonna punish um
messi for
taking a mediocre argentine squad to to
the to the final in 2014 and punish him
because they lost to
a great team very narrowly after they
missed
he set up like a great chance for iguain
in the first half which he
um which he fluffed and then yeah
eventually they lost the game
yeah they they do criticize cristiano
ronaldo messi for being on really strong
squads in terms of the club
teams and saying yeah okay it's easy
when you have like ronaldinho or whoever
on your team
it would be very interesting just uh if
the league could make a
decision
yeah just random random allocation yeah
um
and just every single game just keep
relocating or maybe once a season um or
every season you get random but let's
say every
every player
um
if let's say they sign a five-year
contract for a team like one of them
you're going to get randomly allocated
to
to let's say a bottom half team
i bet you there's going to be so much
corruption around that could be not
obviously it wouldn't
ever happen or or work but i think it's
if you never know first thing to think
about so on chess
let's uh zoom out
if you break down your approach to chess
when you're at your best
uh what
what do you think um
what do you think contributes to that
approach is it memory recall specific
lines and positions is it intuition how
much of it is intuition how much of it
is pure calculation how much of it is
messing with the strategy of the
opponent so the game theory aspect
in terms of what contributes to the
highest level of play that um that you
do
i think
the answer
differs a little bit now from what it
did
eight years ago
for instance like i've i feel like i've
had like two peaks in in my career in
uh well 2013 2014 and also in 2019 and
in those
years i i was very different
um
in terms of um
of my strength
strengths as specifically in 2019 i
benefited a lot from
opening preparation
uh while in 2013 2014 i mostly tried to
avoid my
uh opponent's
preparation rather than that being a um
being a strength
so
i'm mentioning that also because it's
something something you didn't um
didn't mention i think like my
intuitive understanding of chess has
over those years
always been a little bit
better than the others even though it
has
evolved as well um
certainly there are there are things
that i understand now that i didn't
understand
back then but that's not only for me
that's for
for others as well
i was younger back then so i played with
more energy which meant that i could
play better in long drawn out
games
which was also a necessity for me
because i didn't i couldn't
couldn't beat people in the
in the openings um
but
in terms of calculation that's always
been a weird issue for
me like i've always been really really
um
bad at solving exercises in chess like
that's been
like a blind spot for me first of all i
found it hard to
concentrate on them um
and to look
uh to look deep enough so this is like a
puzzle a position yeah me in x i mean
one thing is made but
find the best move that's generally the
exercise like find the best move find
the best line
you just don't connect with it usually
like you have to to look look deep and
then when i get these lines during
the game i've
very often find
the
the right solution even though
um
even though i'm it's not still
the best part of my game
to to calculate very
very deeply but it doesn't feel like
calculation you're saying
in terms of no it does sometimes but
for me it's more like i'm at the board
trying to find trying to find the
solution and i understand like the
training
at home is like trying a little bit to
to replicate that like you give somebody
half an hour um in a position like in
this
instance you might have thought for half
an hour if you play the game but i just
i just cannot do it one thing i know
that i am good at though
is
calculating
short lines
because i calculate them them well i'm
good at seeing
little details and i'm also
much better than than most at uh
evaluating
which i think is something that sets me
sets me uh apart from from others so
evaluating specific position
if i
if i make this move and the position
changes in this way
is this the step in the right direction
like in a big picture way yeah like you
calculate a few moves ahead and then you
evaluate because a lot a lot of time
a lot of the times you cannot
um the branches become so big that you
cannot calculate everything so you have
a fog yeah so you have to you have to
make evaluations based on you know
based based mostly on knowledge and and
intuition and somehow i seem to do that
uh pretty well when you say you're good
at short lines what's that what's what's
short
that's usually like lines of um
two to four moves each okay so that
that's directly applicable to even
faster games like blitz chess and so on
yeah um blitz is
a lot about
calculating force lines
so those
you can see pretty clearly that the
players who struggle at blitz who are
great at classical are those who rely on
a deep calculating ability because you
simply ha don't have time for for that
templates you have to calculate quickly
and rely a lot on iteration can you try
to i know it's really difficult can you
try to
talk through what's actually being
visualized in your head
is there
is there a visual component yeah no i
just visualized the board i mean the
board isn't as in as in my head
two-dimensional my interpretation is
that it's it is too uh two-dimensional
like what color is is is it brown tinted
is it black is it
uh like what's the theme is it a big
bore small board
are the
uh what do the pawns look
like or is it more in the space of
concepts
like uh
yeah
there are there aren't a lot of colors
it's it's mostly
[Laughter]
so what is it queen's gambit on the
ceiling whatever
to imagine it what about when you do the
branching when you have multiple boards
and so on what how does that look are
you no there's only one at a time so
like position in time one position at a
time so then i go back
and and that's what when when people
play
or at least that's what i do when i play
blindfold chess against several people
then it's just always one border at a
time and
the rest are stored away somewhere but
how do you store them away so like you
went down one branch you're like all
right that's i got that
i understand that that's there's some
good there there's some bad there now
let me go down another branch like how
do you store away the information you
just put on a shelf kind of
i i try and store it away sometimes i
have to sort of repeat it because i
forget
and it does happen frequently in games
that
um
you're thinking for
especially if you're thinking for long
let's say half an hour or even more than
that that you play a move and then your
opponent plays a move then you play a
move and they play a move again and you
realize oh
i actually calculated that i just forgot
about it
um so that's obviously what happens when
you store the information and you cannot
retrieve it when you think about a move
for 20 30 minutes
like how do you break that down
what can you describe what
like what's the algorithm here that
takes 30 minutes to run
30 minutes is uh
at least for me it's usually a waste um
30 minutes
usually means that i don't know what to
do
and i'm trying i'm just running into the
wall over here yeah i'm trying to find
something that isn't there i think
um 10 to 15 minutes things in
complicated positions can be really
really
uh helpful then you can
spend your time pretty
um efficiently um just
it just means that the branches are
getting getting wider so there's a lot
to
um to run through um both in terms of
calculation and a lot you have to
evaluate as well and then based on based
on that 10 to 15 minutes think you you
have a pretty good idea uh what to
what to do i mean it's it's very rare
that i would think for half an hour and
i would have a eureka moment
during the game like if i haven't seen
it in 10 minutes i'm probably not going
to see it at all you're going to
different branches yeah and like after
15 minutes it's like
mainly to the middle game because when
you get to the end game it's
usually brute force calculation that
makes you spend so much time so middle
game is
normally it's it's it's a complicated
mix of brute force calculation and and
uh and um
by creativity and evaluation so end game
it's it's it's more it's it's easier in
that sense well
you're good at
every aspect of chess but you're also
your end game is legendary it baffles
experts so uh can you linger on that
then try to explain what the heck is
going on there like if you look at game
six of the previous world championship
uh the longest game
ever
played in chess
it was uh
i think
uh his queen versus your rook knight in
two pawns yeah there's so many options
there it's such an interesting little
little dance and it's kind of not
obvious that it wouldn't be a draw so
how do you escape
the it not being a draw and you win that
match
no i knew um that for most of the time
it was a theoretical draw since um
chess with seven or less pieces on the
board is solved so you can like people
who watching online they can just check
it they can check and
they can check a so-called table base
and they it just gonna spit out when for
white win for black or a draw so
and and also i i knew that i knew that
didn't know that
position specifically but i knew that it
had to be a draw so for me it was
about
staying alert
first of all
trying to look for
the best way to put my pieces
uh but but
yeah those end games are a bit
they're a bit unusual they don't happen
too often so what i'm usually
good at is i'm using my my strengths
that i also use in
in middle games is that i
evaluate well and i calculate short
variations
quite uh even for the end game short
variations matter yes it does matter in
some simpler end games yeah but also
like
there are
these theoretical end games with very
few pieces like rook knights and two
pawns versus queens but a lot of end
games are simply defined by the queens
being exchanged
and there are a lot of other pieces left
and then
it's usually not brute force it's
usually
more of understanding and evaluation and
then then i can use my my strengths um
very well
why are you so damn good at the end game
isn't there a lot of moves
from
when the end game starts to when the end
game finishes and you have a few pieces
you have to figure out it's like a
sequence of little games that happens
right like little pattern like how how
does it being able to evaluate a single
position lead you to
evaluate a long sequence of positions
that eventually lead to a checkmate well
i think if you evaluate well at the
start you know what plans to go for and
then
usually the play from there is
is often pretty simple
let's say you understand
how
to
arrange your pieces and
often also how to arrange your pawns
early in the end game
then
that makes
all all the
all the difference and
after that is like what we call
technique
of very often uh that it's
technique basically just
means that
the moves are simple and uh
these are moves that you know
a lot of players could
could make not only
not only the very strongest ones these
are moves that are kind of
understood and unknown so with the
evaluation you're just constantly
improving a little bit and that just
leads to suffocating the position and
then eventually to the wind as long as
you're doing the evaluation well
one step at a time to some extent
also yeah as i said like if you evaluate
it better and thus accumulated some
some small advantages then you can you
can often make your
your your life pretty easy uh towards
the end of the end game so you said in
uh 2019 sort of the second phase of why
you're so damn good
you uh you did a lot of opening
preparation
what's the goal
for you
of uh the opening game of chess is it to
throw the opponent off from any prepared
lines
is there something you could put into
words about why you're so damn good at
the openings
again these things have changed
a lot over time
back in kasparov's days for instance
um he very often got
huge advantages from the opening as
as white can explain why
there were
several reasons for for that first of
all he he worked harder he was more
creative and finding ideas he was able
to look places others
didn't
also he had a very strong team of people
who had
specific strengths in
in openings that he could use
so they would come up with ideas and he
would he would integrate those ideas
into yeah and he would also very often
come up with them them himself also
at the start
he had
some of the first computer engines to to
work um for him to
define his ideas to look deeper to
verify as ideas he was better at using
them
than a lot of others
now i feel like the
playing field is a lot more
level there are
both computer engines neural networks
and hybrid engines available to
practically
anybody so it's it's much harder to
find ideas
now that um
that actually like give you an advantage
with what the the white pieces i mean
people don't expect to find those ideas
anymore now it's all about
finding ideas that
are missed by the
engines either they're missed
entirely or they're missed at low depth
and using them to
you know gain some advantage in the
sense that you have more more knowledge
and
you know it's also
good to know that usually
these are not complete bluffs these are
like semi bluffs so that you know that
even if your opponent makes all the
right moves you can still
make a draw
and also at the start of 2019
neural networks had just started to be a
thing in in chess and uh
i'm not entirely sure but there were at
least some players
in
even in the top events you who you could
see did not use them or did not use them
in the right way and then you could gain
a huge advantage because a lot of
positions they were
being evaluated differently by the
neural networks than traditional chess
engines
because they simply think about chess in
a very very
different way so
short answer is these days it's all
about surprising your your opponent and
taking it into position where you have
more more knowledge so is there some
sense in which it's okay to make
suboptimal quote-unquote moves no but
you have to
i mean you you have to
because the best moves have been
analyzed to to death mostly so that's a
kind of when you say sami bluff that's a
kind of sacrifice
you're you're sacrificing the optimal
move the optimal position
so that you can take the opponent i mean
that's the game theoretics yes you take
the opponent into something they didn't
prepare well yeah but you could also
look at it another way
that
regardless like if you turn on
whatever engine you turn on like if you
try to analyze either from
the starting position or the starting
position of some popular opening
like if you um analyze long enough it's
always going to end up in a draw
so
in in that sense you may not be going
for like the objective
the tries that are
objectively the most difficult to draw
against
but you know you are trying to look at
least at the less obvious um paths okay
how much do you use engines do you use
lila
stock fish
in your preparations my team does
personally i try not to use them too
much
on on my own uh because i know that when
i play you can obviously cannot have
help from from engines and
often i feel like often having
imperfect
or knowledge about a position uh or some
engine knowledge can be a lot worse than
than having no knowledge
uh so i try to look at engines as little
as possible
so yeah so your team uses them for
research for a generation of ideas yeah
but you are
uh relying primarily on your human
resources
yeah for sure you can evaluate well
you don't leave yeah i can evaluate as a
human i can know what they find
unpleasant and
and and so on and
it's
very often the case
for me to some extent but
a lot for for others that you arrive in
a position
and your opponent plays a move that you
didn't expect and
you know if you didn't expect it you
know that it's probably not a great move
since it hasn't been expected by by the
engine but
if it's not
if it's not obvious why it's not a good
move
it's usually very very hard to figure it
out
and so then
looking at the engines doesn't
necessarily help because at that point
like you're facing a human you have to
sort of
think as a human i was chatting with the
demonstrable ceo of deepmind a couple
days ago and he asked me to ask you
about what you first felt
when you saw the the play of alpha zero
like interesting ideas any creativity um
did you feel fear that the machine is
taking over did you were you inspired
and you what was going on in your mind
and heart
funny thing about dem is is he he
doesn't play chess at all uh like uh
like an ai
yeah he um plays in a very very
human way
no uh i was
hugely inspired when i i saw the games
at first um
and in terms of
man versus machine i mean that battle
was
was kind of lost for humans even
before i
entered top level chess um so that's
never been an issue uh for me i never
never liked playing against computers
much anyway so so that's completely fine
but it was amazing to see uh how
they quote-unquote thought about chess
and in such a different way and in a way
that you could
mistake for creativity
mistake for cr strong words uh is it
wild to you how many sacrifices it's
willing to make that like sacrifice
pieces and then wait for prolonged
periods of time before doing anything
with that is that
is that weird to you that that's part of
chess no it's one of the things that's
hardest to replicate
as a human as well or at least for my
playing
playing style
that usually when i i sacrifice i feel
like i'm
you know
i don't do it unless i feel like i'm
getting something like tangible uh in in
return and um like a few moves down the
line a few moves down the line you can
see that you can either retrieve the
material or you can put your opponent's
king under pressure or have some very
like very concrete
uh positional advantage this sort of
compensates for it
for instance
in chess so bishops and knights are
fairly equivalent
we both give them three points but
bishops are a little bit better and
especially a bishop pair is a lot better
than
than a bishop and a knight so or
especially two knights
depends on the position but
like
on average they are so like
sacrificing a pawn in order to get
get a bishop pair that's one of the most
common sacrifices in general you're okay
making a second yeah i mean it depends
on the situation but
generally that's fine and there are a
lot of openings that are based on that
that you sacrifice
upon for the bishop pair and then
eventually it's some sort of positional
equality um
so that's fine but um
the way alpha zero would
would sacrifice a knight or sometimes
two pawns three pawns
and you could see that it's looking for
some sort of positional domination but
it's
it's hard to understand and it's um it
was
really fascinating to see um
yeah in 2019 i was sacrificing a lot of
a lot of puns especially and it was
it was a great joy
unfortunately it's not so easy to
continue to do that people
people have found
more solid opening lines since that
don't allow me to to do that as often
i'm still trying both to get those
positions and still trying to
to learn the art of of sacrificing
pieces
so
uh demis also
made a comment that was interesting to
my newb chess brain which is one of the
reasons that chess is fun is because of
the quote creative tension between the
bishop and the knight so you're talking
about this
interesting um
difference between two pieces that
there's some kind of
how would you convert that i mean that's
like a poetic statement about chess
i think he said that why has chess been
played for such a long time why is it so
fun to play at every level that if you
can reduce it to one thing is is it's
the bishop
and the knight some kind of weird
dynamics that they create in chess is
there any truth to that
it sounds very good
i haven't tried a lot of other games but
i tried to play a little bit of shogi
and
for my noob shogi brain um comparing it
to chess what annoyed me about that game
is how much
the pieces suck
basically you have one rook and you have
one bishop that move like in chess and
the rest of the pieces are really
not very powerful so i think that's one
of the
attractions of chess like how powerful
especially the queen
is
which interesting i kind of think makes
it makes a lot of fun see you you think
power
is more fun
than like variety
no there is variety in chess as well
though just but not much more so than
like
like no no
they all move in different ways they're
all like weird
there's just all these weird patterns
and positions that can emerge the
difference in the pieces create all
kinds of interesting dynamics i guess is
what i'm trying to say yeah and i guess
it is quite fascinating that
all those years ago they created
the knight and the bishop
without probably realizing that they
would be
almost equally equally strong with such
different qualities yeah it's crazy that
this you know the like when you design
computer games
it's it's like an art form it's science
and an art to to balance it you know you
talk about starcraft and all those games
like so that you can have competitive
play at the highest level
with all those different units and
in in case of chess it's different
pieces
and they somehow designed a game that
was super competitive but there's
probably some kind of natural selection
that the chest just wouldn't last if it
was designed poorly yeah and i think the
the rules have changed
over time a little little bit
but i would be i mean speaking of games
and all that i'm also
interested to play
other
other games like
chess 960 or fisher random as they call
it like that you have 960 maps instead
of one
yeah so for people who don't know a
fisher random chest chest 960s yeah that
basically just means that the pawns are
in the same way and
the major pieces are
uh distributed randomly on the on the
last rank only that there have to be
obviously bishops of opposite color and
the king has to be in between the rooks
so that you can castle both ways oh you
can still castle and you can still
castle but it makes it interesting so
you still have
it still castles in the same way so
let's say the king is like
yeah what happens in that case yeah like
let's say the king is in the corner
um
so to to castle this side you have you
have to clear a whole lot of pieces
no the king would go here and the rook
would go there oh okay um and that's
happened in my games as well like i
forgot about castling
uh and i'd be like attacking a king over
here and then all of a sudden it escapes
to the other side i think um
i think fisher chess is
is good that it it's
the maps will
generally
be worse than regular chest like i think
the
starting position is as close to
ideal for creating a competitive game
as possible but they will still be like
interesting and diverse enough that you
can play very
very interesting games so when you say
maps there's 960 different options and
like what fraction of that creates
interesting games at the highest level
and this is something that a lot of
people are curious about because uh when
you challenge
a great chess player like yourself to um
to look at a random starting position
that feels like it pushes you to play
pure chess versus memorizing live yeah
for sure for sure but that's that's the
whole idea yeah that's what you want and
uh how hard is it to play i mean can you
talk about what what it feels like to
you to play with a random starting
position is there some intuition you've
been building up it's very very
different and i mean
understandably engines have
an even greater advantage in 960 than
they have in
in classical chess
no it's it's super interesting and
that's why i also
i really wish that
we uh
played more classical chess like
long games
four to seven hours and
in
fish random chess chest 960 because then
you really need
you really need that time even on the
first moves
what what usually happens is that you
get 15 minutes before the game you
you're getting told the position 15
minutes before the game and then you
you can think about it a little bit even
you know check the computer but that's
all the time
you have but then you really need to
figure it out then
like
some of the positions obviously are a
lot more interesting in than the others
in some of them it appears that like if
you don't play symmetrically
at
the start
then
you're probably going to be in a pretty
bad bad position what do you mean with
the pawns with the pawns yeah
why so that's the thing about that's the
thing about chess though so let's say
white opens with e4 which is which has
always been the most played move
there are many ways to meet that but the
most solid ways of playing has always
been the symmetrical response yeah uh
with the e5 and then there's the
the real lopez there's the there's the
petrov opening and and so on and
if you just banned symmetry on the first
move in chess
you would get more interesting games oh
interesting or you you get more decisive
um
decisive games so that's the good thing
about chess is that we've played it so
long that we've actually devised
non-symmetrical openings that are also
fairly equal
and
symmetry is a good default but yeah
symmetry is a good default and it's a
problem that
by playing symmetrical armed with good
preparation in regular chess is just a
little bit
too easy to uh it's a little bit too too
dryish and
um i guess if you analyzed
if you analyzed a lot in in just 960
then
um the um
a lot of the position would end up be
being um
pretty drawish as well um but
because the random starting point is so
shitty you're forced to you're actually
forced to play symmetrically like you
cannot actually try and play in a more
sort of interesting uh interesting
manner
uh is there any other kind of variations
that are interesting to you
oh yeah there are there are several
so no castling chess has been
has been promoted by former world
champion vladimir kramnik there have
been a few tournaments
with that not
any that i've participated in though um
i kind of like it also my coach uses
like non-castling
engines quite a bit to analyze
regular positions to just to get
a different
different perspective um so castling is
like a defensive thing so if you remove
castling it forces you to be more
offensive is that why
yeah it just yeah for for sure um it
seems like a i think it will be
different um
no castling probably forces you to be a
little bit more
defensive at the start or i would guess
so
because you cannot suddenly escape with
the
with with the kings that it's going to
make the game a bit slower at the start
but
i feel like eventually it's gonna
uh it's gonna make the more games more
um
uh well less drawish for for sure then
you have some weirder variants like
where the pawns can move both
diagonally and
and forward
and also you have self-captured chests
which is quite interesting so their
pawns can
or
commit suicide or yeah people can why
would that be a use a good move no
sometimes one of your pieces occupy a
square i mean
uh let me just set up a position let's
put it
put it like this
for instance like here i mean there are
a lot of ways to checkmate for white
like this for instance or there are
several ways
um but like this would be uh
would be uh
oh cool for people who are just
listening yeah basically you're bringing
in a knight close to the the whole the
the king the queen and so on yeah and
you replace the knight with a queen yeah
that's interesting so you have like a a
front
of of uh pieces and then you just
replace them with the with the second
yeah uh that's cool i mean that could be
interesting i think also maybe sometimes
in
it's just clearance basically it adds an
extra element of
of clearance so
i think there are many um
many uh different variants i don't think
any of them are
better than
the one that has been played for uh at
least a thousand years but um
it's certainly interesting to um
to see
so one of your goals is to reach the
feed a elo chest rating of 2 900.
maybe you can comment on how's this
rating calculated and what does it take
to get there
is it possible for a human being to get
there basically you play with a factor
of um 10
which means that if i were to play
against
um an opponent who's rated the same as
me i would be expected
to score fifty percent obviously and
that means that i would win five points
with a win and lose five points with the
draw and then equal if i if i draw if
your opponent is 200 points lower rated
you're expected to score 75 and and and
so on
and you establish that rating by playing
a lot of people and then it slowly
converges towards an estimate of how
likely you are to win or lose against
differences yeah and uh
my rating is obviously carried through
thousands of
of games um
right now my rating is 28 61
which is decent like i think that pretty
much
corresponds to to the level i have at
at the moment which means in order to
reach 2900
i would have to
either get better at chess which i think
is
fairly hard to
to do at least considerably better so
what i would need to do is
try and optimize
even more in terms of
the matchups preparations everything but
not not necessarily like selecting
tournaments and so on but like just
optimizing in terms of
of preparation like making sure i'm
i'm i never have any bad days and you so
you basically can't lose yeah i
basically can't fuck up ever uh if i
wanna
if if i wanna reach that goal and so i i
think
reaching 2900 is pretty unlikely
the reason i've set the goal is
to have something to
to play for to have like
to have a motivation to
actually try and and be at my best when
i play because otherwise
i'm
playing to some extent mostly for for
fun these days uh in that i love to play
i love to try and win but i don't have
like a lot to
uh i don't have a lot to prove or
anything but that gives me at least the
motivation to try and
try and be at my best all the time which
i think is something to um to to aim for
so at the moment i'm quite
enjoying that process of
um uh of trying to um
yeah trying to optimize what would you
say motivates you in this
now and in the years leading up to now
the love of winning or the fear of
losing
so for
the world championship it's been fair of
losing for sure
other tournaments
love of winning is
a great great factor
and that's why i also get more joy from
from winning most tournaments than i do
for
winning the world championship because
then it's mostly been a
a relief i also think i enjoy winning
more now than i did
before
because i feel like i'm a little bit
more relaxed now
and um i also know that it's you know
it's not gonna last forever so every
every little win i
i appreciate um appreciate a lot more
now and and yeah in terms of fear for
losing like that's a huge
reason why i'm not gonna play the world
championship because
uh i it really didn't give me give me a
lot of joy it really was all about
avoiding losing
why is it that the world championship
really makes you feel this way
the anxiety so and when you say losing
do you mean
not just a match but like every single
position like like no it's just the fear
of a blunder
no i mean the blunder is okay like when
i sit down at the board then it's it's
mostly been fine because then i then i'm
focused on got it then i'm focused on
the game and i know i know that i can
play the game it's a time like in
between like knowing that
you know
i feel like losing is not an option
because it's the world championship and
because in a world championship there
are two players there's there's a winner
and a loser if i don't win a random
tournament that i play then you know i'm
usually
it depends on the tournament i might be
disappointed for sure
might even be pretty pissed but
ultimately you know you go on to the
next one with the world championship you
don't go on to the next one it's like
it's years
yeah and
it also has been like it's been a core
part of my identity for a while now that
i am world champion
and so there's not an option of
of losing that yeah
yeah there's uh you're gonna have to at
least for a couple of years carry the
the weight of having lost
you're
the former world champion now if you
lose
versus the current world champion
there are certain sports that
create that anxiety and others that
don't for example i think ufc like mixed
martial arts are a little better with
losing
it's understood like everybody loses
but there's not everybody though not
everybody not everybody not everybody
yes
could be bent to the chat
[Laughter]
but in boxing there is like that extra
pressure of like maintaining the
championship i mean maybe you could say
the same thing about the the ufc as well
so for you personally for a person
who loves chess
the first time you won the world
championship that was that was the big
that was the thing that was fun
yeah and then everything after
is like stressful yeah
uh essentially there was certainly
stress uh involved the first time as
well um
but
it was nothing compared to uh
compared to the others
so the only world championship after
that that i really enjoyed was the one
in 2018 against the american fabiano
corona and what that made that different
is
that i'd been kind of slumping for a bit
and he'd been on the rise so our ratings
were very very similar they were so
close that if at any point during the
during the match
i'd lost the game
um
he would have been ranked as number one
in world like our ratings were so close
that for each draw they didn't move
and and the game itself was close yeah
games themselves were very close uh i
i had a winning position in in the first
game that i couldn't really get anywhere
for a lot of games and he he had a
couple of games where he could
potentially have won um then in the last
game i was a little bit better
and eventually there they were all they
were all drawn but i felt like all the
way that this is an interesting match
against an an opponent who is at this
position
uh at this point equal to me
and so losing that would not have been
this disaster
because all in all the other matches i
would know that i would i've lost
against somebody
who i know
i'm much better than and that would be
would be a lot harder for me to um to
take well that's fascinating and
beautiful that the stress isn't from
losing this
because you have fun
you enjoy playing against somebody who's
as good as you may be better than you
that's exciting to you yeah uh it's it's
it's losing at this high stakes thing
that only happens
rarely to a person who's not as good as
you yeah and that's why it's also been
incredibly frustrating in other matches
like when i know
when we play draw after draw
and i can just i i know that i'm better
i can
sense during the game that i understand
it better than them but i cannot you
know i cannot get over the hump
so
you are
the best chess player in the world
and you not playing the world
championship really
makes the world championship not seem
important or i mean there's an argument
to be made for that
um is there anything you would like to
see if you had a change about the world
championship that would make it more fun
for you and better for the game of chess
period for everybody involved so i think
12 games or now 14 games that there is
for the world championship is a fairly
fairly low sample size if you want to
determine who the best player is or at
least the best player in that particular
matchup you need more more games and i
think
to some extent
if you're going to have a world champion
and call them the best players you best
player you got to make sure that the
format
increases the chance of finding
finding the best players so i think
having more games
and if you're going to have a lot more
games than you need to
then you need to decrease the time
control a bit
which
in turn i think is also
a good thing because
in very long time controls with
deep preparation you can sort of mask a
lot of your deficiencies as
as as a chess player
with because you have a lot of time to
to think and to defend and also
yeah you have deep preparation um
so i think those would be
for me to play um those would be
the the main the main the main things
more
more games and less time so you want to
see more games
and uh rules that emphasize pure chess
yeah but already
less time emphasize
emphasizes pure pure chess because
um
defensive
techniques are much harder to execute
with a little time what do you think is
there a sweet spot in terms of are we
talking about blitz is it how many
places a bit too fast um
to their credit this was suggested by by
feed as well
for a start to have two games per day
and let's say you have
45 minutes a game plus
15 or or 30 seconds per move that means
that each sessions will probably be
about
or a little less than two hours yeah
that would be would be a start also
what's
what we're playing in the tournament
that i'm playing here in
in in miami which is um four games a day
uh with uh 15 minutes plus 10 seconds
per move
those were would be um more interesting
than than the one
there is now and i i understand that
there are a lot of traditions people
don't want to change the world
championship that's that's all fine i
just think that um
the world championship
should do a better job of trying to
reflect who who's the best overall chess
player
so would you would you say like
if it's faster games you'd probably be
able to get a sample size of like
over 20 games 20 30 40 do you think
there's a number that's good over a long
period of time well i would prefer as
many as possible it's like a hundred
um yeah but let's say you play 12 days
two games a day you know that's 24. i
feel like that's already quite a bit
better you play like one black game one
white game
each day endurance wise that's okay yeah
i think that's fine like you will have
three days as well so i don't think that
will be will be a problem
um and also you have to prepare two sets
of openings for each day which makes it
more difficult for the teams preparing
yeah which i think is also good
let me ask you a fun question
if uh hikaru nakamura
was one of the two people
what i guess
i apologize yeah he could have he could
have finished second yeah so he lost the
last round of the candidates yeah and
you uh put maybe you can explain to me
internet speak opium is something you
tweeted
yeah
but if he if he got second
would you uh would you would you
just despite him still still play the
world championship that's internet
question and when the internet asks
samus the bide the dude abides
yeah uh sure thank you internet
so after the last match uh i did an
interview
uh right after where i talked about the
fact that i was unlikely to play the
next one
i'd spoken privately to both
family friends and
of course also my chess team that this
was likely going to be the last
the last match
um
what happened was that
right before the world championship
match there was this young player
already furuzia he had a dramatic rise
he rose to second in the world rankings
he was 18 then he's 19 now he qualified
for the candidates and it felt like
there was like
at least a half realistic possibility
that
he could be
the challenger for the next world
championship
uh and that sort of lit a fire under me
um do you like that yeah i like that i
like that a lot i love the idea of of
playing him in the next world
championship and
originally i just i was sure that i
wanted to announce right after the
tournament uh the match that this was it
i'm done i'm not playing the next one
but this lit a fire under me so that
made me think
you know
this actually motivates me and i just
wanted to get it out there for several
reasons
to create more hype about the candidates
to like sort of motivate myself a little
bit maybe motivate him
also obviously i wanted to give people
and people a heads up for the candidates
that
you might be playing for more than
more than first place like normally the
candidates is it's first place or best
it's like the world championship um
yeah and and then
so nakamura was one of many people who
just didn't believe me
which is fair
because i've talked before about not
not necessarily wanting
to to defend again
but i never like talked as concretely or
was as serious as this time so he simply
didn't believe me
and he was very vocal about that
and he said nobody believed me no no no
no players which may or may have not
have been true
and then yeah he lost he lost the last
game and he didn't didn't qualify
but to answer the question
no i'd already at that point decided
that i wouldn't wouldn't play
i would have liked it less
if he had
if he had not lost the last round but
the decision was but the decision was
already um was already made
does it uh does it break your heart a
little bit
that
you're walking away from it in all the
ways that you mentioned that it's just
not fun there's a bunch of ways that it
doesn't seem to bring out the best kind
of chess
it doesn't bring out the best out of you
and the particular opponents involved
does it just break your heart a little
bit like
you're walking away from something or
maybe the entire chess community is
walking away from
a kind of a historic event
that was so important in the 20th
century at least
so i won the championship in 2013. i
said no to
the candidates in 2011
i didn't particularly like the format i
also wasn't
i was just not in the mood i didn't want
the pressure
that
was connected with the world
championship and i was perfectly content
at the time to play the tournaments that
i did play um
also to to be ranked number one in the
world i was comfortable with the fact
that i knew that i was
i was the best and i didn't need a title
to
to show others um and
what happened later is
i suddenly decided to play um in 2013 i
liked they changed the format i liked it
better
um i just decided
you know it could be interesting let's
try and get this
um there really wasn't more than
more than that to it it wasn't like
fulfill fulfilling
lifelong dream or anything i just
thought you know let's let's play um
because it's just a cool tournament yeah
it's a cool school tournament it's a
good challenge you know
why not it's it's
something that's could be a motivation
it motivated me to get in the in the
best shape of my life that had been till
then so it was a good thing uh and
2013 match brought me a lot of a lot of
joy as well so i'm very very happy that
i that i did that but i never had any
thoughts that i'm gonna like keep the
title for for a long time immediately
after the match in 2013 i i mean also
before the match i'd spoken against
the fact that champion is seeded into
the final which i thought was unfair
after the match i
made a proposal that we have a different
system where the champion doesn't have
these privileges and
people's reaction both players and chess
community was general uh generally like
okay we're good we don't we don't want
that you keep your privileges
i was like okay whatever so you want to
fight for it every time
yeah
i want that
uh i have to ask just in case you have
an opinion uh if you can maybe from a
fantasy chess perspective uh analyze
uh ding vs nepo who wins
the current the two people that would
play
if you're not playing
generally i would consider that ding has
a slightly
better overall chest strength um what
are the strengths and weaknesses of each
if you can kind of
summarize it um
so
nepo he's
even better at calculating short lines
than i am
but he can sometimes like a little bit
of a little bit of depth uh like his in
short lines he's an absolute calculation
monster he's extremely uh he's extremely
quick but he can sometimes like a bit of
depth also recently
um he's improved his openings quite a
bit so now he
um he has a lot of a lot of good ideas
and he's very very
solid um ding is not quite as well
prepared but he has
an excellent understanding of
dynamics and imbalances in in chess i
would uh i would say what do you mean by
imbalances um imbalances like bishop
bishops against knights and material
imbalance you can take advantage of
those
yes i would say he's very very good at
that and understanding the you know the
dynamic factors as we call them like
material versus time
uh especially i think nepal got the
better of him and the candidates so
what's your sense why ding has an edge
in the in the championship i feel like
individual past results hasn't
necessarily been
a great indicator of world championship
results uh i feel like over overall
stress strength is more
more important i mean t