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

[00:00:08] and Jay Yow. What if you are the number two player in the world in whatever sport or activity, whatever it is you love doing, you're number two, there's number one and you're number two. Let's say hundreds of millions of people play your sport or game or activity.

[00:00:26] And out of all those hundreds of millions, you're the second best in the world. And then suddenly you bit by bit drop, you go down to the top 10. Now you're no longer in the top. You go below the top 20. And so you figure, okay, it's over.

[00:00:42] I got a little too old. Something happened. New people arrived. I'm no longer in the top 20. My career as the best or potentially the best is over. And this is what happened to Hikaru Nakamura.

[00:00:56] He was the number two player in the world in chess in, I think it was 2015. And Magnus Carlsen was number first and Hikaru couldn't quite break through to number one. And then bit by bit after this, you know, almost 20 year career, he starts to drop.

[00:01:13] He falls below the top 20. And he says, you know what? I'm going to start, you know, the COVID, the pandemic happened. He started streaming. He started making YouTube videos, but mostly every day he was playing chess online and

[00:01:28] streaming it, meaning he was doing it live and he would talk about chess and answer questions. And he suddenly built up an audience in the millions, like tons of people, millions of people follow this guy and they love him as an entertainer and as a chess player.

[00:01:41] And it's so amazing to have such a quality chess player do this live streaming every single day. And he explains how to be great at streaming. But an interesting thing happened is that a few years after he started doing this, he

[00:01:55] started playing in tournaments again for the first time in years. And he bit by bit started climbing up until last week I was in Norway. He was playing in Norway chess along with the number one player in the world, Magnus

[00:02:09] Carlsen and several others who were top in the world. And Carl for the first time since 2015 became number two in the world again. And one thing I've always wondered watching his career these past few years is did he become, did he become strong again?

[00:02:27] Because as he would put it, he no longer cared. He no longer had the sole stress of, can I be the best in the world of chess? He had, he had diversified the successful outcomes in his life.

[00:02:39] It could either be chess or it could be streaming or it could be investing, or it could be, you know, other business ventures he's pursuing. We talk about all of this, how he became a top-notch streamer, how he became number two in the world.

[00:02:51] And then again, number two in the world, is it really related to this feeling of I don't care? Well, this was a dream come true discussion for me. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

[00:03:01] If you do, please share with your friends, subscribe, show it to all your chess playing buddies and we don't get into the weeds about chess. So this was valuable for anybody who just wants to succeed in life. So here's Hikaru Nakamura.

[00:03:21] This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher show. So I just wanted to start really with a question in kind of in the weeds, but your game in Norway

[00:03:42] chess against Fabiano Caruana, by the way, you were both vying for number two and number three in the world, number one and number two in America. But he unleashed this novelty, like a move that's never been played.

[00:03:54] And I was sitting in the audience and I kept wondering, like, why doesn't, isn't Hikaru just winning here? Like, why don't you just win a rough right there or an exchange right there? And you didn't. And for the life of me, I could not figure it out.

[00:04:06] I didn't have any computer around me or anything. And I was just trying to figure it out. How did he even find a novelty like that? And then why did you just assume, okay, I'm not going to go into this mess? Yeah.

[00:04:19] So that would have been, I believe the, uh, the, the sixth round of Norway chess where I played Fabiano Caruana, my compatriot from the United States. And this was a critical game where we were blitzing out our moves, making all these moves very quickly.

[00:04:31] And then at a key point, Fabiano played a move that looks like a blender over the board. And when that happens, when both players are moving very quickly and someone doesn't stop and slow down, it actually becomes very mental where you'd figure out whether someone has

[00:04:43] prepared or whether they've made a mistake because should he have faked it a little bit? Like instead of moving so quickly or did he want to put fear in you? Yeah. It's, it's very tough to judge, but the, the time control playing, we have a timer for

[00:04:55] the whole game. There's no increment meaning you get no added time. So if you get low on time, you run out of time, you will lose the game. And in general, if you waste a couple of minutes just sitting there thinking more often than

[00:05:06] not, it doesn't really help you. It doesn't give you an advantage. And usually I would say that the top players can sense it when you're trying to bluff them. So usually you just go as fast as you can because you assume that you're going to need

[00:05:17] that time later on in the game versus trying to bluff them out, especially when you're talking three, four minutes in a game that goes about or not game, sorry, but when you have about two hours for the whole game, you're probably gonna have like four or five, five

[00:05:27] decisions where you spend 10, 15 minutes maybe, and already you're, you're using a lot of your time. So you don't really try to bluff that often. And Fabian, in this case, he moved very quickly.

[00:05:37] And when this happens, one of the things that you never, or one of the truths about chess is that the computer programs are better than humans. So if I go and play against a computer program like Stockfish, which is the best in the world,

[00:05:49] I will lose every single game no matter what I do. Could you draw a game? Probably not. Now, 100 games. And if you're just trying to draw, I would say if I'm lucky, I can draw one, but I don't

[00:05:58] think that I can draw even a single game because when you're playing the computer program, there are a lot of things going to it. First of all, we're humans, so we're emotional.

[00:06:06] And when you go in and you've heard me just say this, where I say I'll lose every game, when you go in knowing that you're that much worse than the computer program, you already are that much worse. But then psychologically, you even know it too.

[00:06:16] And computer programs don't have this issue at all. They just simply play the best. They don't care. They literally don't care. Yes. As you often say. And I'm going to ask you about that later, but that's interesting. So yeah.

[00:06:26] And so then, so, so when you're playing a game and somebody is, somebody who's moving very quickly, you feel like you're playing against a computer program. And that's what you don't want. So when we got to this critical moment, I was actually doing quite well in the tournament

[00:06:38] and with so many rounds yet to be played, I figured it made more sense to be safe and play something where the game would trend towards a draw rather than try to be crazy and go for an all out where I would win or lose.

[00:06:49] If that were the last round of the tournament, I might've made a different decision. But at that moment, it felt like the right decision. And also as far as computers go, chess has changed a lot over the years.

[00:06:59] Computer programs have become very strong, but also there's a difference between the computer program that you use on your laptop versus say having a desktop or one of these computers that has a bunch of cores that's sitting at your house or for example, in the cloud.

[00:07:11] Either way, like it's very, very different. And a lot of these deep ideas you won't be able to find with the weaker computers. You really do need, I mean, supercomputer is the wrong word for techies out there because

[00:07:21] like it's not the right word, but still you need a strong computer with many cores. Well, I mean, I even, I looked at it later on the computer, cause again, being in the audience directly watching, you're not allowed to have even your phone on. There's no commentary.

[00:07:33] There's it's, it's actually an interesting experience because I never do it. We just try to put myself actually in the minds of the players as opposed to sitting there with commentary going, computer going.

[00:07:43] But later I looked at it on the computer and the computer didn't like it, his move. But of course he explained on one of the streams that bigger computers liked it like later

[00:07:54] on, like you had to have the computer on for a while, even with a stronger computer. So that's why I was wondering, like, how did he even know to pick that position to go deeper

[00:08:03] and beyond a computer would probably told him it's not good until he sat there overnight with it. Yeah. I think, I mean, saying overnight is an exaggeration. The old days, this was true.

[00:08:12] So when I, when I look at myself, one of the things that I've, I don't necessarily want to call myself self a pioneer, but I'm one of the first top players who actually started working with someone who basically works a lot of computer programs that they've written

[00:08:24] articles and all these different things. And they're not necessarily the strongest chess player out there. Now, we go back in time, a lot of chess players in the old days, you will work with the absolute best players who are around you because computers didn't exist.

[00:08:37] But even in the early days of computers, it still was believed that humans like having grandmasters or other very strong players around you was more important than anything else. But I actually started working with someone who's, I would say their expertise is essentially

[00:08:49] in understanding computer programs and how, how you can use them to be better at chess. And so some of these ideas about leaving computer online or not online, leaving computer on overnight, actually, I saw them very early on, like in 2009 or 2010.

[00:09:03] But nowadays pretty much everybody, everybody does this, but also the time it takes to compute this is why you want to be using computers with more processing power is basically because it doesn't even take you overnight.

[00:09:13] It might take you take one hour, it might take 30 minutes, but the more processing power you have, the quicker you're going to get to the solution. So if you have a strong enough computer, um, and there, there is a, I should say a Russian

[00:09:24] player specifically who was using one of these state computers, I think at Lomonosov University with something like a million cores. And this is something that would cost well into the millions of dollars for, for any top chess player to have access to.

[00:09:34] Fortunately for this Russian player, they do have access or they have had access. And if you have a computer with that much power, it's going to come to that solution much quicker, maybe a couple of minutes versus half hour versus an hour versus, you know, a whole day.

[00:09:45] So it does, it has changed a lot, but knowing where to look, I think that's up to the people who you're working with, the team you have around you and their ability to kind of sense where, where these things could exist.

[00:09:54] I wonder if software could be written that looks for situations where the computer is unhappy even searching 30 moves deep, but then they find that the evaluation changes drastically from moves 30 to 31 deep.

[00:10:08] Yeah, well now I think, I mean, you're now we are starting to get into the weeds of a different topic, which is, I think that one of the things that's so fascinating, or you could say annoying, actually, if you're playing chess professionally, is that all these computer

[00:10:20] programs there, as I understand it, of course, I'm not an expert in computer science, but they are essentially creating their own systems or values for like pieces or center, like pawns in the center of the pawn structure, you know, whether a piece on the edge, whether

[00:10:32] it's in the center, wherever it is. My understanding is that these computer programs are now creating these algorithms on their own without human oversight. They create it. And so I think there's probably some way that you could do that.

[00:10:44] But ultimately, I mean, the reason I don't think this happens is because chess is a game or a sport, which it's not as mainstream. And because it's not super mainstream, there isn't necessarily money in it. And so the motivations I think aren't there for a lot of people.

[00:10:57] And this isn't the only area of chess where I think there could be big improvements, but because it's not like mainstream the way that a lot of sports are. I mean, it's not something that I think is explored that much.

[00:11:06] Well, I want to get back to something you were mentioning earlier about, you know, and this is chess is a sport and your dedication to chess. And by the way, for anyone listening, you did a really great podcast with Lex Friedman

[00:11:18] about, you know, your growth in chess, your history in chess. And people should listen to that. I want to talk to you about a variety of things. But you mentioned that and I've noticed this as well. Essentially, you hit your peak in rating, I believe was in 2017.

[00:11:32] You got to 28-12 in rating. 2015. But who's counting? Yeah. 2012. And then you were mentioning from 2016 to basically early 2020, I think you went from like 2814 to 2736, something like that. And then you kind of, then the pandemic happened, you started streaming, you became

[00:11:52] excellent in the streaming with streamer, which again, we'll talk about the skills required to that. But one thing that I noticed in everybody, like let's say in the chess world notice is that you went back to being like a great, great chess player, even though from all

[00:12:07] outward appearances, you were just on streaming all day. And so everybody wonders and I know everybody wonders because people asked me about this. And but do you think that the diversification of your interests and passions and successes somehow relieved the pressure or what was the story then? Yeah.

[00:12:26] So I mean, so as far as chess goes, there are a couple of things. Chess is very different depending where you grow up in the world. Obviously, you have many different, many different forms of governments and the systems as a whole are quite different.

[00:12:38] But I would say for myself, because I grew up in the US, it's unfortunately not a country where I think chess is valued very highly. And what I mean by that is that I didn't really have a lot of support.

[00:12:47] So from the time I started out pretty much until I was an adult, most of the money or the support that I had was from my parents. It was not from say the chess federation or like a local state government or anything of that sort.

[00:12:57] It was essentially my parents supporting me. And what I think that does is it, you sort of, I think it's one of those things where, you know, I feel like a lot of kids, they, they sort of hate their parents from like the age of like 13 to 18.

[00:13:10] And suddenly once you're out in the real world, you actually respect your parents a lot more. Do you realize all the things they did for you so that you could be successful and everything else?

[00:13:17] And so for myself, you know, once, once I was like 18, 19, I just start trying to make a living from chess. And I think once you do something like chess where it's pure fun and you don't have to

[00:13:28] worry about anything and then suddenly the real world hits you where you have to make a living, you have to try and survive. Your whole perspective shifts. And for me, as I was improving there, there are a couple of stages. The first stage is you're playing casually.

[00:13:40] Once you get to grandmaster, you start having aspirations of maybe playing professionally. By the way, you were the youngest grandmaster in the world when you became grandmaster. American, not world, but, but still, but, but, but so like their stage, once you get

[00:13:50] to grandmaster, you start to aspire maybe to something more, but beyond that, in order to actually make a living. And when I mean a living, I'm just going to say like a hundred thousand dollars versus say making 30,000 by 30,000.

[00:13:59] I mean, it's scraping by, I don't mean let's like guaranteed is scraping by to make that money. I mean, of course we're talking, you know, good 15 years ago now versus the modern day, but you're talking about like 30,000 versus a hundred thousand.

[00:14:09] It's like you can be a grandmaster, but you have to get to this 2700 rating level, which is effectively about the top 15 to 20 in the world to make a good living. There are all these different stages. And once you get there, you have to maintain it.

[00:14:20] So it's not like you get there and then you're set for life. If you have a bad series of tournaments, you could fall right back down and your income could basically be decreased by 50 to 60%.

[00:14:27] So a lot of what was in my mind, um, once, once I, once I made it past this 2700 level and I got to about the top 20 of the world is like trying to stay at that level.

[00:14:37] And when you, what I mean by that is like, you don't take as many risks. You try to, you try to win a game here or there. You try to draw a game here.

[00:14:43] I mean, the risk, the risks that you take are much smaller in general, but what that also does is it takes away from your pure ability to enjoy the game because you're not actually making the optimal decisions at the end of the day.

[00:14:54] I mean, when we talk about optimization and making certain decisions, like this is why if chess were bigger, I think you would see a lot of data analytics about like, you know, when you should take risks, how you should play certain games, which doesn't exist currently.

[00:15:05] But obviously I digress. So it's like, once you break in, then you get there. And if you're able to stabilize in that, in that level of the top 20 of the world, then the next goal is to try and get to the world championship match, where if you

[00:15:15] get there, you can maybe earn a million dollars or more, um, if you win the match. So there are all these little stages, but what I would say is that, you know, once

[00:15:22] you break into this top level, top 20, you get to travel a lot, a lot of look to a lot of places like London, Paris, fancy terms after a couple of years, it gets very boring. And then you're really looking at what's the next stage.

[00:15:32] And the next stage is to get to what's called the candidates tournament, which features the top eight players in the world roughly. And the winner of that tournament plays the world champion in a match and you're

[00:15:40] guaranteed effectively a million dollars, which is a huge jump versus trying to make like, like 100, 150, $200,000 is a huge difference difference. And it can definitely change your life. So for me, I think I felt a lot of this pressure all the way through, but I think

[00:15:54] in 2016, one of the big things that changed is I did qualify for the candidates tournament and I qualified for this tournament and I did very poorly there. Now, I would say one of the reasons I did poorly is that I simply felt too much

[00:16:05] pressure because the jump or the differential between being a solid top 10 player and then playing a world championship, it's just miles apart. And if you get there, of course you're going to get fame. You're going to do very well.

[00:16:15] You're probably a sponsor's life is going to change in a way that you really can't imagine happening in chess. There's no other way for that to happen. So I played the tournament. I did very poorly, but besides doing very poorly in the tournament from all the

[00:16:27] pressure and these delusions of grandeur was that I realized that the turn ultimately to some degree is about luck. And what I mean by that is that I don't feel like the best player always wins that tournament. Usually there's little luck.

[00:16:37] And what I would say is I'll compare it to tennis, for example, because the French open recently happened and I know that Zivert have won the match against Ndal in the first round, but I would say it's akin to say playing the French open and

[00:16:47] somebody has to play Ndal in the first round or you have to play Ndal in the fourth round versus playing him in the finals. Like things like this can happen where the pairings of who you play in such a long tournament, because it's 14 rounds.

[00:16:58] If you play someone who's doing poorly early in the tournament versus playing with them at the very end, there's a huge difference. Someone actually is probably going to get that lucky pairing where they're playing someone who's doing poorly towards the end of the event.

[00:17:07] So for me, once I played that Candice turn, I realized there's also a component of luck built into it. It really soured me because then I'm thinking about it and it's like, okay, if I play this Candice tournament, even getting there is very hard, but winning the

[00:17:19] tournament is on some level luck. And besides that, if I do actually win that, I'm going to play Magnus Carlsen, who's the best player in the world and most likely I'm going to lose.

[00:17:28] And so after this event, I would say that my mindset became very negative and I started really trying hard simply to maintain my level, which took away from the joy of chess. And what does it mean when your mindset became negative?

[00:17:38] Like that almost sounds like a little technical, like what would happen to you? Like what would you think about? So what I would think about is stay in the top 10 of the world. And what that means is that if you play, let's just say you play an individual

[00:17:51] tournament, you might play nine games against nine different opponents. And it might mean that in like seven of the games, I try to play very boring games and make the draw so that I don't gain or lose a lot of ranking points.

[00:18:01] And then one or two games, I try to go crazy, get that win. And those extra few ranking points maybe put me in the top five in the world or something like this. But it's, that's not really how you should be approaching the game.

[00:18:11] That's not the mindset you should have. But, but again, everybody is different. And depending where you grew up in the world, it can be different. But what I'm saying here about worrying about my livelihood and all these things

[00:18:20] is something that does not apply to say Magnus Carlsen who grew up in Norway, which has, I mean, we don't need to get into systems, but I would say like things like healthcare, for example, or government support, these are not

[00:18:29] things that you have to worry about in certain places in the world and the way that you do in the U S. So I'm assuming you grew up like in, in or around New York city, right? I grew up in Westchester County. So very high cost of living.

[00:18:38] And it's hard to live in New York. Like everybody in New York is worried basically. And so you kind of grew up in an environment where it's kill or be killed. It's eat or be eaten. And, and it's, and plus there's a big New York cultural chess, cultural

[00:18:52] also to, to be fair, also with chess, like there is no, I mean, it's a career that I would say is relatively very short, even though people think of it as being mental, it's very hard to maintain your level pass about the age of 40.

[00:19:04] So you're looking at a relatively short career and then afterwards there are no benefits. There's no like pension plan. There are none of there. There are none of these things. They don't exist. And you don't become an ESPN commentator, at least exactly.

[00:19:14] So, so like, you're really looking at a very short career. And that's why I would say that after I played this candidates tournament, I thought that it was all that I realized there was some luck to even get to the

[00:19:23] match is became a situation where all I care about is like winning a game here or there, keeping my level where it's at. And then, then you don't enjoy the game. You start to hate the game. It becomes, it becomes this job.

[00:19:32] And also like people, a lot of people think traveling is fun. And I think the first couple of years when I broke and it was a lot of fun, but when you're going to the same place over and over and over again,

[00:19:40] that also doesn't help because it's the same people. It's the same places. And for me, I think that's, that's what really led to this downturns that I, it was all about trying really hard, not,

[00:19:49] not to lose ranking points or ranking spots in the world as opposed to trying to actually play good chess. And when you care more about that than actually the enjoyment and trying to do your best, trying to perform, then I think you're definitely going to,

[00:20:01] you're going to experience a failure. And let's break that down a little bit. When you started going professional and then it just, it seems like it just took you a few years and suddenly you were number two in the world with Magnus Carlsen being number one.

[00:20:14] So the difference between number one, number two, at least in terms of career, as you're pointing out is huge. Like there's a big difference between the kind of income you can make when you're Magnus Carlsen, as opposed to, you know,

[00:20:25] a lot of people were thinking and are still thinking you could be number one. And, but I feel like you almost don't want to think that. And maybe you did think that at one point.

[00:20:35] And I mean, I think the thing is like, I like to, I like to think, you know, for me, I would love one day to actually be able to talk to like some of these guys in tennis. Cause I'd like the same situation where like,

[00:20:46] I obviously I'm a competitor. I want to be the best in the world, but I also know that I live in a time where you have someone who's just so unique. It'd be like, I've said this on my stream, I think,

[00:20:55] but it's like Andy Roddick. I think if not for Roger Federer, he probably would have won four or five grand slams at least. I mean, probably not in the, in the double digits, but he would have won more grand slams.

[00:21:03] But there was this guy Roger Federer who unfortunately was like now of course there's an Adol and Djokovic, but like literally like the greatest player ever. And you're unfortunate to be in the same, same time as someone like that.

[00:21:13] And so, so for me, I mean, early on, I would say like the, the early 2010s around, I had some of these, these aspirations, but Magnus of course, just, he started winning every tournament. He of course beat me. He became the world champion.

[00:21:25] And at some point you want to believe you can compete against someone like this, but you also know that in reality it's very, very difficult. It's a very, it's definitely an uphill struggle. So, so you also have to deal with reality.

[00:21:36] So like, that's the other problem is I think if I had that component where I thought that I could be the absolute best in the world, maybe my career could have been different.

[00:21:43] But after a couple of years it was very clear there was this one guy who's just better than everyone else. And that also hurts the motivation. And do you think a lot of people in the top 20 and again, we're talking,

[00:21:52] let's say in the world, there's 600 million people who play chess right now of those 600 million, you're number two. There's Magnus Carlsen and then Hikaru. And do you think a lot of the people in the top 20 have kind of become

[00:22:07] dejected with Magnus there because it just, it's like this wall they keep hitting? Yeah, absolutely. I think there are definitely some of the players from the older generation now to be clear, chess is changing. There are kids who are becoming very strong who are now the top 10,

[00:22:20] but definitely when you look at the players, I would say there, there are some American players, there's a Russian player. It's this wall. Like your goal ultimately, I think, and no one's going to admit this because we're all competitors,

[00:22:30] but your goal is just to get to the world championship. That's the goal. And then you expect to lose to Magnus, which I mean, to be fair, I think when you expect to lose something to someone or you automatically say they're better than you more often than not,

[00:22:40] you're going to lose some because it's in your head as well. Chess is very psychological. Yeah. Like let's say two people have equal skill and you have this mindset that, Oh, you know, this guy's better than me. What's how, what,

[00:22:52] what's the percentage mindset plays a role in an individual game? Huge role. I mean, actually, I don't know if I've said this, but you know, a lot of tournaments I would say between like 27 and 2019 Magnus was playing in the same events I was.

[00:23:03] And my goal was just to make a draw against them and try to be other people in the tournament. My goal was to make a draw. It was not trying to beat him or take risks, any of these things.

[00:23:10] It was to make a draw and then try to beat the other players in the tournament. I think a lot of players are like this in general. And, and you do, unfortunately, I mean, it's hard to explain cause it's not, it's not like a sport,

[00:23:20] but since I played tennis and it's what I follow the most, it's just one of those things where Magnus in the critical moments, he finds a way to get it done. He finds a way to win the critical games always. And that's what great champions do.

[00:23:30] And when you see that more and more and more over like a decade or decade or decade or decade and a half, it gets in your mind. And you just, you think this person's unbeatable. You really, you really do start to believe that.

[00:23:44] Take a quick break. If you liked this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at Alcatraz, gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

[00:24:07] If Magnus didn't exist, you might be the Roger Federer of chess. You know what I mean? Like I look at your games and I say that, you know, you get it done. You particularly like when I watch you stream,

[00:24:19] I don't know how you save yourself out of some of these positions against like some of the best players in history. You're, you're getting it done. Yeah. So, I mean, that, that's where like,

[00:24:28] we can talk about sort of the sort of where I branched out. So, you know, I would say like around 2019 things started going really poorly because I fell from about number seven or eight in the world all the way down to number 20.

[00:24:39] And I was basically in this danger zone where I might not get invitations to top level tournaments and my income could essentially dry up overnight. Now it wouldn't disappear completely, but it would go down significantly.

[00:24:49] I would say 50% or more. And that's kind of when at the end of 2019, I made this very conscious decision that I was going to take a long break from chess. Normally there are certain periods, certain months when you always play tournaments.

[00:24:59] So between like 2010 and 2019, I always played a tournament in January. And I decided at the end of 2019, I was going to take about a six month break and come back in April of 2020 to play the United States chess championship.

[00:25:09] And I was just going to get this break, refresh, reset myself completely, and then start, start going back into it. Did you play at all during this break or? No. So, so what happened is I took this break and I was actually,

[00:25:20] I streamed a little bit and I would say December and January, I was doing some live streaming in 2019 already. And then in February, I made this decision to go to Hawaii to take a two week vacation.

[00:25:29] As soon as I was going to come back from that vacation was when I was going to get serious, start studying chess every day and get ready for the U S championship in April.

[00:25:36] And I went to Hawaii and I think it might've been the first night or the second night that I was there. And I think it was like, I was waiting. I woke up really early cause I wanted to go hiking.

[00:25:44] That's another one of my great passions. And I looked at my phone. I think I looked at the, the, like the Yahoo finance app or one of those apps and I saw markets down like three or 4%. And of course that's because the, the,

[00:25:54] I think there was a case in Italy or something of COVID and that really started the shift. And so I got out of Hawaii just before lockdowns began. I went back to Florida where I live and, and I was stuck at home. So what to do?

[00:26:05] Now you don't know if the U S championship is going to happen. What am I supposed to do? So I was very lucky because I had already started streaming in 2019. So I was able to jump right into streaming with nothing else to do. And that,

[00:26:15] that made, that made a world of difference, but I guess that's probably a separate topic. So, so what I would say getting back to the chess is because of what happened with the pandemic,

[00:26:22] because sort of my whole revenue stream changed and sort of the way that I went about my life change as a whole. I came back to chess in 2022. I did not play with any of these fears.

[00:26:33] So you can say it's a good thing or a bad thing with something like chess that, you know, the financial situation is the way it is where you only have maybe 10 to 15 players in the world who make a living. For me,

[00:26:42] I was able to find another Avenue to make a living. And because of that, when you play chess terms without any of these fears, I think I basically freed my mind to use a matrix term where I basically freed my mind where when I played,

[00:26:53] played terms from then to now the only goal that I set for myself is to be competitive. As long as I'm not losing every single game, that's my only goal. And, and I also say getting back to the point that I made about Magnus,

[00:27:03] how I would play for a draw. I don't even think that way when I play Magnus anymore, I just go and I try to enjoy playing against them. I don't worry about winning the game or losing the game.

[00:27:11] I just want to show that I can compete with these players. And so it's a complete mind shift. And I think if not for that, I don't know where I'd be right now in chess,

[00:27:18] but because I've been able to just play the game purely for the love and the enjoyment of it and trying to, trying to have the best time that I can and perform the best that I can really

[00:27:25] it's just, I'm playing better now almost than I ever, ever was. I know it's really, I don't know maybe of another instance where someone went from being number two in the world to dropping out of the top 20 and falling in rating as you did.

[00:27:39] And then you went into a completely different career, the streaming. And again, it really seems like, because you, like you said, you've freed your mind from the anxieties of chess and money. You have, you diversified your income streams very well. You it's sort of freed your play somehow.

[00:27:55] Can you think of another chess player where in history that maybe had a bounce back like that? Um, from, from there all the way to the top, I can't actually think about it. Especially cause like I'm getting older. I'm not, if I,

[00:28:06] if I did this when I was between like 20 and 25, that's one thing. But you know, when the pandemic hit in 2021, I was already 33, 34. So I'm already towards, towards that 40, that 40 Mark, which is a, which of course is closer retirement.

[00:28:19] So no, I can't leave anyone who did it. I also think honestly though, one of, one of the reasons I think Magnus dominates as much as he does, because I think a lot of players of the older generation,

[00:28:27] they do have this mindset. Maybe it's not, maybe it's not the fears, but it's about making sure they maintain their world ranking as opposed to trying to win tournaments and play their absolute best shots.

[00:28:36] Cause ultimately you have to pay the bills and you have to make a living. So I think a lot of top players from my generation, they struggle with this because they're not actually playing chess for the right reason.

[00:28:45] Yeah. I mean, there was one interview I saw with Magnus yesterday where he was going through his calculations while he was trying to decide what to do with in his last game. And he was looking at your game and he'd made the calculation.

[00:28:56] Okay. No matter what, Oh no, this was, this was the calculations he made after losing, I guess the third game to Prague. Okay. If he does this, this, this for the rest of the tournament, he'll maintain his number one status. So like,

[00:29:08] these are the things he's thinking. It was very important for him, that number one status in the world, like he's kept it for so long. He wants to still keep it. And for you, what I see is,

[00:29:18] of course you want to win, but then you have a secondary thing, which is, like you say, you want to be competitive. Then you have a third thing, which is you want it to be entertaining.

[00:29:29] Yes. I mean, I think that at the end of the day, I mean, a lot of people sort of, it's very hard to understand sort of the separation. A lot of people assume that my streaming career, which of course I do stream,

[00:29:40] chess is sort of connected to my playing career. There's somehow they're symbiotic. I would say they aren't really at this point. You know, even if I were to do very poorly, a lot of fans who watch them online, they still are going to watch my live streams.

[00:29:51] Even if I fall to number 20 in the world now for me, if I fall to number 20 in the world, I probably just won't play professional chess anymore because I won't be competitive and I'm not competitive. I'm not, I'm not,

[00:30:00] I'm obviously not going to enjoy losing every game. So yeah, I think for Magnus being number one matter a lot for me, something like being number one in the world was not a realistic goal. I would say after maybe 2010 or 2011 and when something like that isn't a

[00:30:13] realistic goal, it's not something that ever factors in. But I would also say the thing with Magnus and this comes back to like great champions is that even if you might think that would add a lot of pressure on him,

[00:30:22] he makes the right decisions and the right things happen in all these critical moments. You look at the world championship in 2018, if he lost even a single game in that match, he would not have been the number one player in the world. But the thing,

[00:30:32] but you know, champions, they, they, they have that way of getting it done when it ultimately matters. And you know, as far as myself, obviously it's not on the same level, but you are right though, that in recent years when I do compete, I actually have found this 10,

[00:30:44] I do have this tendency to be a big clutch performer and win games when I need to as well. So yeah, it's amazing. And, and do you think that's because like, like when I used to day trade, so for many years I was a day trader.

[00:30:57] And then if I had a bad day day trading, I would feel really horrible. But as long as you have other interests, you could diversify and like let's say I would go online and play chess as an example. Yeah. And I'm not playing at any kind of level,

[00:31:10] but it was just a way to get my mind off of day trading or losing the money with something I enjoy doing. And I'm wondering if a little bit you got into streaming and because you're so

[00:31:21] excited and proud of how you're doing there and you're obviously making good money there that allows you to take chances or risks in chess that maybe you wouldn't have done before. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.

[00:31:34] I think having that stability where I'm not dependent on my income from the results off of chess tournaments changed everything. Is that or not the case? I don't think I would be number two in the world right now. I really don't.

[00:31:45] I think there was a good chance that I, I wouldn't be playing chess professionally. If you, if you look at where I was in 2019, my rating was down. I was in a very bad place mentally. If not for the pandemic and sort of that,

[00:31:55] that whole shift in everything in my life, I don't think I would even be playing chess. I really don't think I would. Well, so yeah, streaming definitely has helped me a lot in terms of like in terms of being able

[00:32:05] to just enjoy chess for what it is instead of it being this job. And when you say you were in a bad place mentally, were you like, I mean, I hate to answer this, but were you crying or were you?

[00:32:14] Yeah. So like, let me, let me, let me, let me give you an example. I think there's a, there's a Steve, one of my favorite videos that I watch from time to time periodically, Steve Jobs, Stanford speech, which I think many people are familiar with.

[00:32:26] And he says something like, he says, it's something like you have to enjoy the work you do. You have to love it or something for work and lovers. I forget the exact quote, but I would say that I did not love chess when I was playing chess.

[00:32:36] I was saying, Oh man, I had to go waste five hours preparing for this chess game that I'm going to play the next day. I'm going to go play. Probably it's going to be a draw. Probably it's not even going to be exciting.

[00:32:44] We're not going to create any new ideas in the game. And what I mean by that is that chess has a lot of theories. So many games, first 20 moves, you play something and generally it can be very boring.

[00:32:52] And there are a lot of draws at the top level. Nobody wins the game. It's just a tie. So basically the mind says, okay, I have to go waste five hours preparing for this game of chess.

[00:32:59] Probably it's going to be very boring and we're going to draw the game. Okay. I'm going to maybe finish in fourth or fifth place in a tournament. Okay, great. I traveled to the next tournament, do this on and on for the whole year.

[00:33:07] And in 2019 actually this was the case because I traveled for something like 280 days in a year playing these chess competitions. And it's just the mindset when, when you're, when you're sort of very negative and you're expecting bad things to happen,

[00:33:18] I found that bad things do actually happen more often than not. And I'd also say that as I've gotten older, like, you know, there's certain things like manifestation and things of this nature that I, when I was younger, I thought were complete garbage, complete nonsense.

[00:33:29] And now I actually on some level kind of, kind of believe in those things. But it's just when you expect bad things to happen when you're not enjoying it, you're like, Oh, I have to go waste time doing this. It's going to be, you know,

[00:33:39] I'm going to do okay. But Magnus is going to win every tournament, these sorts of things. Like it's not productive. And in general, it's just, it's this, this loop of negativity and that does not help. And there's also this fear, right? Because you're, let's say you're,

[00:33:51] you're 33 and you devoted your entire life to just getting good at chess. Like you said, you were traveling 280 days in that year for, for chess and to think that this might not be what you continue doing.

[00:34:01] Like, did you think I'm going off a cliff here? What am I going to do? Yeah. I mean, it was obviously very scary for me at that time because I am thinking about it. And if I don't get these invitations, my income goes, income goes down. I mean,

[00:34:13] I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know. And like, what are you going to do? What's your choice? Are you going to be an accountant? Like what's going to be, what are your choices? Yeah. I mean, that's,

[00:34:20] that's one of the very tough things about chess is at a young age, you, you have to make that decision whether you're going to approach it professionally or whether you're going to go into another field. And so, yeah,

[00:34:29] I mean, I think what I would, what I would have done, I mean, maybe I would have tried to do something like streaming anyway, but it's very scary because you have no safety net and it was definitely on my

[00:34:37] mind in 2019 specifically, I didn't know what I was going to do. And it's, it's very scary at that age with no safety net. I mean, potentially no career as a chess player. I mean, there are other things you can do in chess,

[00:34:47] but obviously it's not like teaching chess you can do, but it's not not a lot of fun for most people. And also my stepfather teaches. So it's something I'm very familiar with and not something I ever want to do.

[00:34:57] So yeah, you just, you don't know what to do. So you're, you're, you're, you feel like desperate on, on some level. And I think when you have this desperation and this great fear, it does impact your play as well. And so there's a lot of streamers out there.

[00:35:09] And I think back in like 2020 there was a lot of streamers who weren't necessarily good chess players. You had Agadmonar, King Crusher, you know, all these guys. And to look at them, it was actually very inspirational that chess was creating all these

[00:35:22] opportunities, even if you weren't, you know, Magnus or Hikaru and among the best, you could still make a good living. And, and just like a sportscaster doesn't have to be a great football player. They could be a sportscaster instead and make millions of dollars.

[00:35:37] But suddenly chess was creating these opportunities. And then you start, I think you've kind of changed the game a little bit with streaming because you were a great player who was now streaming. But again, a lot of good players stream.

[00:35:49] They don't also always have the skills of streaming and maybe like, how did you develop? You have to be a good entertainer. You have millions of people watch you. Right. So again, I think, I think what I would say to that is again,

[00:36:01] to use this Steve, Steve jobs there's this quote, I remember quite well, which is, you know, you can only connect the dots looking backwards, not looking forward. And for me in a way, when I look back,

[00:36:10] it makes perfect sense how this happened because when I was very young, I actually played a lot of chess on the internet chess club when I was young. It was like late nineties, early 2000s. By the way, you know, I helped start ICC back in 1992.

[00:36:22] I wrote some of the code for that. Very nice. So, so, so like I would play there. And one of the things that I did sometimes would actually type in moves or type type sort of commentary while I was playing,

[00:36:33] I was doing this when I was like 11, 12, 13 years old. And it's a different form of communication versus say live stream where you're, where you're actually talking out loud versus typing. But I already had some of this stuff from my, from my younger days where I was doing this.

[00:36:46] So it was actually not so difficult for me to transition into it or I started live streaming, but definitely at the, at the start, I was very awkward. I think one thing, and this is one thing that I've definitely tried very hard,

[00:36:57] I think to change about chess or I hope people can appreciate is that a lot of people think of chess chess players as being these massive geniuses who are super smart and everything else. And I do think there is, you know, the stereotype exists for a reason.

[00:37:08] So I think if you go back maybe a hundred, 200 years ago, a lot of the top chess players were actually geniuses. Many of them were like engineers. They were like pianists or economists or all these different things or math

[00:37:19] professors. I mean, one of the world champions was actually a math professor. That was his main job. So, so, so for me, like, I've really tried very hard to sort of convey that chess players aren't geniuses. And I think the thing is with chess players, we,

[00:37:31] because chess players get treated a certain way within the chess world where people think they're geniuses or treated with so much respect, it's very hard to kind of open up and share with people who don't necessarily

[00:37:42] treat you that way. Or you're in a situation where it's completely foreign. You're just talking to random people. So I think that's one of the biggest difficulties for the top players is, you know, finding a way to communicate with people who are not completely in awe of them

[00:37:54] because in the chess world, people are completely in awe of the top players. That's just the, just how it goes. And to your point, I think culturally like in the world, I mean chess, which let's say it's, I don't know how, how old,

[00:38:04] but let's say it's 1500 years old. It was a game of Kings, right? Was it wasn't like the serfs or peasants played chess. It was called the Royal game. The Kings played chess. And then there is an association of chess with being superior in strategy,

[00:38:20] being like a military kind of thing. Like it's usually used as a metaphor for military in almost every single TV show when they try to show that the characters are smart or strategic or even sneaky,

[00:38:31] they have them playing chess at some point in the, in the show. So yeah, there's this, there's this cultural value to being a good chess player. Yeah, absolutely. And I think also, you know, one thing for,

[00:38:41] for most of my life, I always wondered why chess wasn't bigger. Now I'm, I'm very fortunate that I actually saw some really memorable events. I mean, I mean, for me, my favorite, probably favorite chess experience ever was in 1995 there was a world

[00:38:53] championship between Garry Kasparov and Vishwanathan Anand that was held at the World Trade Center. I was very lucky. I actually got to go to that match on one of the, one of the days they played there. But even besides seeing that, you know,

[00:39:03] I'm someone who's like, for example, I'll watch CNBC or something like this and I feel like, I mean, I don't know how frequent it is, but it feels like probably once an hour, you'll see some ad where there's someone in park playing chess.

[00:39:12] Like it'd be insurance. It could be any number of things with strategy, but you see chess is everywhere in culture. I think from a very young age, I always wondered why chess wasn't bigger. Like why, why is it,

[00:39:22] why do I see it everywhere? But it's not that big of a deal. And I think also like, you know, even if it's subconscious, I think when I went into creating content, just be clear. I mean, there was a slight difference between live streaming and say making YouTube

[00:39:33] videos, just because live streaming you're, you're live in person videos, you can edit and do all these different things. But I think when I went into doing all the content creation, I saw a path to try and do something that could make chess bigger and much more

[00:39:46] accessible. And I mean, I was right in there. There's a lot, I mean, when it comes back to strategy, I think one thing that chess players are very bad at, I mean, not trying to make, not trying to speak poorly about like my colleagues or anything,

[00:39:56] but I think the notion of, I think the thing with chess is if you can take those lessons and transition them, I mean, assume you're not a top player, but if you can take those lessons and transition them to other areas of life or

[00:40:09] other areas of business, I think that that's the biggest, I mean, that's the biggest thing chess can give you is the ability to do that. Whether you can apply that as always a tough, tough question because in chess you come with a strategy,

[00:40:19] you come up with thinking ahead, but can you actually think ahead when it matters? I think for me, when I look at the live streaming specifically in 2020, there was a lot of planning that went into many different things. And I would say one thing actually,

[00:40:30] and this comes back to playing chess is very early on. I had a tough decision when I was making YouTube videos and I started doing some of these recaps of my games where after I play,

[00:40:38] I do these 15 minute videos of whether I wanted to dumb down my content. Now, if you look at chess, the smart, smart move is of course, to reach the biggest audience. I mean, it's in business too. You know,

[00:40:47] you're looking where is the biggest group of consumers and in chess, that group is players who are basically beginner. I'm not gonna use ratings, but basically beginner level there, there's a big pocket. I'd say probably I'm going to guess like 85% of players are people who just

[00:41:01] started the game or played for a couple of months. That is the biggest market by far. But could they, are they, is that a market that's passionate about viewing chess online? I mean, I think they want to watch it,

[00:41:11] but the thing is if I do stuff that's not stuff that they don't understand because I'm talking to high level chess concepts, some amount of them are never going to watch my content no matter what I do, no matter who I am.

[00:41:21] But I made the decision actually very early on to not, not cater to this, to try and keep the level high because I always did think that I would want to play, play top level chess. And this comes back to another area of chess too,

[00:41:32] but generally chess is a game where I would say the simplest way of putting it is you learn a thousand rules and then you learn how to break every single rule as you get better and better at the game as you progress through the levels.

[00:41:41] And with chess, if you start doing things at a very basic level, and a lot of people who teach us have this issue, you start thinking about the game in a much more simplistic way.

[00:41:50] And so instead of, instead of sort of seeing the 1000 rules and how to break them, you see the 1000 rules and you're trying to follow them to a T because that's what you're trying to convey to your viewers or you're trying to convey to your

[00:41:59] students if you're teaching chess. So for me very early on, I made a conscious decision that I was not going to dumb it down because I was always hoping that I'd be able to plan top level tournaments.

[00:42:24] This is just one example of like strategy where maybe it was right, maybe it was wrong. That's interesting because let's say everybody's out there making educational videos like, Oh, have an open file, grab it or blah, blah, blah.

[00:42:35] And you were saying it seems like even like in your earlier videos, you were like doing, you know, one minute chess, which people advise, obviously teachers advise not to play. You were, you were doing, you know, disrespect runs where you were just, you know,

[00:42:48] giving up a queen and then crushing people. So you weren't playing by the rules even of, you know, the top streamers out there who were trying to be educational, like, Oh, here's a classic game. Here's what Cabo Blanca did.

[00:42:59] And this point you were just kind of going in there and, and you had a different vision of how entertaining chess could be. Yeah. I mean, I think certainly, I mean like I, I obviously could try to be different, but, but definitely well,

[00:43:13] different relative term, of course. But yeah, I decided very early on that I was going to try to stay true to my roots of being this top level player. And I mean, I would also say that there is nobody else doing it too. So, you know,

[00:43:25] if you want to talk about having a mode or having some advantage, like in a way that does give me a bit of an advantage because there's no one else doing it. I'm the only, only, only game of talent.

[00:43:33] But I think that no one else doing it is because it's hard. Like, like I think other people try. No, I mean, I would, I would say actually, I don't think any of the other top top players really have tried.

[00:43:44] You've had maybe one or two who have, I think that the big, the biggest thing is that with chess players, I think, I think they have this mentality that the world, and I think this also comes from actually what I was saying earlier about how when you play,

[00:43:57] when you play tournaments and you start getting into this as work, it's grinding and do this little things here and there. It's more about maintaining what you have. It's not about taking risks. I think a lot of top players, they sort of view,

[00:44:07] you have this old world mentality where you're supposed to do things in chess a certain way, especially as it relates to training for games, getting ready for tournaments, playing competitions, where you're basically, you're supposed to prepare before the term spend X amount of hours every single

[00:44:20] day, looking at chess before the event, you play the event, same thing after the event, same thing where you're doing this day after day after day. And you're not supposed to be doing these things that are like improper or whimsical or however you want to put it.

[00:44:31] And are you afraid like, are people afraid they'll others will their peers will look down on them? They might look down. They also think it's going to hurt their chest. I think it's actually going to be a D it's going to detract from what they're

[00:44:43] doing in chess versus being added, added value. And so it's like one of these things where it's like, okay, you take three hours string or something. Okay. What am I doing? It's going to hurt my chest and I'm not making a lot of money. Why bother?

[00:44:53] What am I doing now to be fair? I mean, obviously I was in the right place at the right time with the pandemic, but no, none of these top players during the pandemic actually try to do it. You know, when the pandemic happened in March of 2020,

[00:45:04] I don't think any other player who's in the top 50 in the world did live streaming probably until I would say the middle of 2021, none of them even tried, even though they were all at home and they had the, they had the ability.

[00:45:15] I think it's just because this is trying something new or doing something that they thought might perhaps hurt their chest. They didn't want to take that risk. They didn't want to take that risk. And I was lucky enough that I was in a position where,

[00:45:27] where I could take the risks and I, I mean, maybe not could, but I was doing so poorly in terms that there was nothing to lose from taking that risk. I guess you could say,

[00:45:33] when did you first start to feel like, Oh, this streaming thing is getting bigger. I might be good at it. And you did have skills at it. Like a lot of, I think a lot of top players, when I see them play, you know, chess online,

[00:45:45] they just sort of play and they don't talk and they make tiny comments here and there. Like, you know, there used to be the banter blitz stuff and it was almost very uncomfortable to watch some of that. And, but you had, you,

[00:45:56] you were engaging the audience and you, you had formats that you would play like, you know, kind of the speed run style or, or, you know, today I'm going to sacrifice my queen or I'm just going to play King to eat too

[00:46:06] on the second move, you know, the, the bond cloud opening. And you made it fun as a great player. Yeah. So I think when I, when I look back, when it started to become very real for me was probably, was around April or may of 2020. And,

[00:46:21] and what happened in that during that period of time is that they're the big streamers on Twitch at the time they started getting into chess. And one of the ways that you can grow the base or get people really interested is having this crossover between different communities.

[00:46:36] So if you have the chess community, there's certain amount of people in it, but there are a lot of people who are not in the chess community who maybe they'll get an interest in it. Let's just say you have, you know, a million people,

[00:46:44] if even 10% of those people get interested in chess and start start consuming content for some amount of time, let's say six to 12 months. That's already huge versus not having them find that spark to get into chess at all.

[00:46:54] And it was in April of 2020 when I did some collaborations with the biggest streamer on the platform at the time, his name is XQC. Then it really started to change because prior to that, I would say I was averaging maybe a few thousand years.

[00:47:06] It was actually already quite a big size. It was already probably three, 4,000, I think on average prior to that. But once I did that collaboration, it exploded to North of 10,000 concurrent viewers that I had every single day. That's when I started to realize that it was for real.

[00:47:21] And I combined that with the event that happened shortly thereafter. It was called Pogchamps, which had big streamers from across different communities who competed in the chess tournament, which was in June of 2020. When those two events happened and then the pandemic was not ending at that

[00:47:36] time, that's when I actually started to realize that this probably was going to be my job. And also, I mean, to be fair, at this time because it was because there were no sports or anything else going on,

[00:47:47] there were a lot of sponsorship opportunities that I never had during my chess career either. So like the income was already, already shooting up as well. So this is, I would say it was this period between April and June that I started to realize

[00:47:58] it was going to be very serious. And then I would say by the end of 2020, I kind of, I already knew that that I was never going back to playing 10 to 12 chess tournaments a year and doing that as my main job.

[00:48:09] And what skills do you think you were learning at this time to become a better streamer? And I always, I always do use the word entertainment because I think you have, you can't just be a great chess player. You can't just be a great anything.

[00:48:20] You have to be able to communicate that to the world and through some entertaining means. And you did develop skills. Yeah, I think the, I mean, it's, it's silly to say this,

[00:48:30] but I think the most important thing that I learned along the way is to not be so serious about myself. I think from the, from the time I was very young, I would say probably from the time I was 10 or 11,

[00:48:42] the way that I got really good at chess was sort of having a meat against the world attitude, sort of the, you know, like I enjoyed the hate. I enjoyed people not liking, I enjoy just wanting to like prove people wrong,

[00:48:50] shove it in your face, all this sort of stuff. And probably growing up in New York didn't didn't hurt with that, having that attitude. But, but I, but I would say that I always had that, you know,

[00:48:58] like me against the world attitude being super serious all the time. And I think what I learned to kind of just like not be that serious, to kind of relax and not, not, not be so angry. That helped me a lot.

[00:49:08] And that's occurred a long process even before stream. But I think for streaming specifically learning to sort of not, not, not hold things personally. You know, I think even now sometimes I can get annoyed by comments on the internet,

[00:49:18] but in general it's just like not, not being so serious, not, not being so tense about everything and just trying to share your personality, what you've done. Because, you know, I, I, I think this happened the other day and I saw a levy actually Gotham chess.

[00:49:30] He made a tweet about how Barcelona is his new favorite city. And you know, when you grow up with a certain perspective of the world, like, let's just say traveling, for example, for me, when I, when I was 10 years old,

[00:49:40] I went to Barcelona because my brother played a youth tournament. I was there. I think I played, I went to Barcelona. I was 11, 12, 13. And it's very easy when you grew up with a certain perspective of thinking certain things are normal when they actually are not normal.

[00:49:53] And that's the second thing is that, that I, that I also learned that that what's normal to me is actually not normal for most people. And it's very fascinating to hear about traveling around the world or, or, you know, meeting different people, all these different things.

[00:50:06] And it also comes back to another point, which, like when I was on Twitch, sometimes I'd watch people do these IRL streams where they go out, they walk around like Tokyo or they go to some city. And to me, I'm just like,

[00:50:14] what is this nonsense? It's there's nothing special to this. But of course, I've been out there in the world. I've traveled a lot. So to me it's not special or exciting, but for a lot of people who don't have these opportunities in life,

[00:50:24] it really is. So it's really learning how to convey those stories, convey everything that I've done in a way that I think people who, who haven't had the chance to experience them will, will, will enjoy hearing about. And there are a lot of these stories,

[00:50:35] a lot of these stories. Yeah, because think about it. You've been like the top 20 or the, let's say the top 50 players. How many of them have you known since you were 12 years old? Yeah, exactly. Most of them. I mean, that's an odd thing. Yeah.

[00:50:48] It's like I was doing some interview recently and I was thinking to myself, like in a way outside of my direct family, like somebody like Magnus, even though he's like, he's a major competitor of someone that on some level,

[00:50:58] like I don't like him or things like this. Of course I respect him, but he's like, in a way when I quit, he's like, he's like one of the few people that I'm actually going to have shared most of

[00:51:07] my life experiences with him, Fabiano and a few others more than anyone else. And so it's like, we're like enemies, but we're also friends and all these other things. You ever call each other and just like, Hey, how's it going?

[00:51:18] I mean, not now, but I mean, I think especially as I would say, especially as we get older and the end is closer than the beginning, I think you sort of, the bygones become bygones and it's all about the respect.

[00:51:28] So maybe not now, but I wouldn't be shocked in a few years if that's the case. And, and the streaming. Okay. So, so it's kicking off, you're getting sponsors, you're realizing this is a business. How has it become a business? Like how many employees do you, do you,

[00:51:40] do you hire to run this business for you and, and how have you grown and expanded it? Yeah. So at the very start, I mean, it was basically myself, one moderator that I had and then a few other unpaid employees. And that grew very quickly.

[00:51:55] I think that live streaming is not particularly difficult from a standpoint of the staff that you need to maintain it. But when you start creating, trying to create content, unless you have someone who can do all the different things, for example,

[00:52:08] editing thumbnails, you know, the, the tags, the titles, all these different things. And there are people who are geniuses at this, but you need to have more people. So at the very start, it was actually is really just three people.

[00:52:18] I had one moderator that I paid and I won editor slash thumbnail artists. He did both who was doing all my videos throughout 2020. But one of the things is, and this is, this speaks to how difficult it is as a,

[00:52:30] like an online content creator influence or however you want to coin the term is that in order to be successful, you're very beholden to the algorithms. And probably the golden rule I would say with any form of content creation is

[00:52:41] that you're very consistent and that means doing it basically every day. So in 2020, when you're writing these, these new highs every day, whether it's in live sharing, the viewership numbers, ad revenue sponsors, or creating YouTube content where the numbers are so,

[00:52:55] so out of this world high that you, you just, you, you almost can't believe it. Very easy to run on the adrenaline. But once you see the downtick, which I think started, started after Queens Gambit, I would say like March, April, 2021, it's people burned out.

[00:53:09] So I ended up having to hire actually multiple thumbnail artists. I have quite a few people making the thumbnails. I have, I would say three to four editors as well. So all in all my team is probably, it's about, I would say I pay 10 people.

[00:53:21] And what about people to pursue sponsorships and business development and stuff like that? So, I mean, we live in a very different world now than we did at the time. In 2020, I would say 2020 through 2022, there were a lot of sponsorship opportunities for many mainstream companies.

[00:53:36] So I actually had representatives, I was at United Talent Agency. And then it was the other one WME William Morris Endeavor. In recent times, I'm not actually with an agency. I think it's, as I look at the landscape now, I don't want to, I mean, luckily I,

[00:53:50] I will say I'm glad that like, I don't like run a company or something, which is like publicly traded. Cause I don't have it in me to sort of like make up things or try to sound always sound super rowdy when I, when I'm not.

[00:54:01] But the sponsorship opportunities are very few and far between. I think that live streaming is still very big, but it's not, but it's not confined. I would say to like one platform, the way that it, that used to be. And so there just aren't the same opportunities.

[00:54:13] And for that reason, I'm mostly, I'm just on my own these days. I have a couple of people who help with emails, but I don't have an agency or anything along those lines. So what do you think is the next evolution in terms of like staying in either

[00:54:23] content creation or streaming? Like what's going, what's going to happen? Or what do you see? And in chess streaming, chess content creation. I mean chess content creation. I think it's, it's very stable right now. You have certain channels are doing very well. You, you have love you,

[00:54:37] of course, Gotham chess. You have myself, where we're by far and away the two biggest. I think that what needs to happen is you need more of the top players getting into. One of the exciting things currently is that a lot of the top players are

[00:54:49] juniors. There are many kids who are coming up through the ranks or starting to break through. So they're not as dogmatic. They're not stuck in the old ways as much. And even, you know, as an another example of something that's changed,

[00:54:59] I was talking about right and wrong. Like you do things a certain way. When I was growing up, almost none of the top chess players played chess online. They just didn't compete online. I think you imagine like I was saying this,

[00:55:08] like can you imagine like Petrosian or Swiss Swiss law being like a Twitch streamer? Like it's crazy. That style of player and that's earlier in the nineties, but right. And maybe even Kasparov, I mean, even an odd, I mean, those guys, they played very sporadically,

[00:55:22] but now what you have is like everybody plays online, which is very good for the game because it gives these kids in a lot of these countries, poor countries a chance to compete against the best players in the world.

[00:55:31] And the whole view of online chess is actually very serious. It's legitimate. It's worth, it's worth spending time to go online and play blitz because there are competitive tournaments. You've magnus online, you've me online. And so that has shifted completely. And that's one, one way to shift it.

[00:55:43] And so like all the kids now who are breaking in the top 10 in the world, these kids have grown up where that is a new normal. They do actually play a lot of chess online. So I'm, I'm somewhat optimistic that because there's already this,

[00:55:54] the shift where playing online is normal, that even seeing someone like me making this content will be perceived as being more, more normal as well. And these kids will actually take up that mantle and they'll, they'll get into it.

[00:56:05] I think that's the big question is whether these kids, whether they choose to pursue this or whether they start doing what everyone else has done in the past. And I don't know the answer to that,

[00:56:14] but I think if they start doing it, the future could be very, very bright. And you know, there's always the danger like you had in 2020 though, where, okay, you're hitting or 2019 you're hitting this cliff in potential income of chess. So you go into streaming at some point,

[00:56:29] whether it's because interest slows or there's too much competition, perhaps there becomes that cliff even in streamer content creation. And I've seen, and I've heard that you've been diversifying your income further, like you've been getting more into it and you talk about this on your stream,

[00:56:43] you were getting more into investing and whether it's stocks or real estate, I know you do some, some real estate stuff. Like what other things do you, are you doing now? Yeah. So there's a lot, a lot of stuff that I do. I mean,

[00:56:53] I obviously own a lot of properties in real estate, a lot of rentals. Why is that obvious? I didn't, I didn't know that. Oh, did I say it's all, oh, I meant obvious because I assume you listen to my stream. Sorry.

[00:57:02] I do listen to your stream. I just didn't know to what extent you've owned a lot of properties. Yeah. I mean, I would say actually that, that was one of the, one of the smart things or one of the, one of the things, and I mean, maybe I'm,

[00:57:12] maybe I'm unique in this way, but this is also very true of chess in general. Is there a lot of people, whether they're in the chess world or like, and by that I mean like player players or organizers or sponsors or people who

[00:57:23] just play as kids and then moved on. And there are a lot of people I know from my childhood who have gone and be very successful in other areas. And I actually try very hard to keep in contact with a lot of these people because

[00:57:33] you never know when there will be opportunities outside of chess. So I think I can say his name. You actually probably know AJ, I'm guessing you've heard the name, but, but one of the people that, I think I'm based with friends with him, but we never met.

[00:57:44] Yeah. Well he, he, he challenged Peter to a, to like a game for a million dollars or something. One of those, those marketing gimmicks. But you know, one of my good friends in Florida, AJ Sigmund, he's actually been in real estate for a long time.

[00:57:54] And I think it was in 2017 or 2018 that he approached me, you know, about trying to buy some properties you know, basically renting them out. The usual, get a mortgage, rent them out and everything. And kind of that, that coincided with the rise in my income in 2018, 2019, and then 2020.

[00:58:12] So we actually acquired a lot of properties, which we currently own on floor in Georgia. Although one of them is a bit of an issue right now because it's a section eight and there are these sorts of things which are always a hassle, but that's one

[00:58:22] thing. But then also, of course I'm not, of course I say, of course, because I think of myself with all the things I've said on my stream, but from a very less than good by the way, like, like take someone like me,

[00:58:31] I watch your stream, listen to it, but I think I haven't listened to every single thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in my mind, I'm thinking that I've said these things probably a hundred times on my streams. I would think, yeah, of course it's obvious. Right.

[00:58:42] But it's not to the listener. The other thing, and this is much more longer terms of court and that's it. Of course. Stop. Now I'm starting to talk like a streamer again. So from a very young age,

[00:58:52] I've had an interest in investing. I think the start is it's two things. It's the perspective of the childhood and what I remember of my childhood in the early days, very specifically when I spent the first about five, six years of my life in the Mojave desert,

[00:59:07] about two hours North of Los Angeles. And let's just say lower, lower middle class, I would say lower, lower middle class and a lot of the memories that I have are the memories I

[00:59:15] remember as a kid are from that time period more than actually then sort of a more affluent period of my life in white Plains outside the city. So like I've internalized a lot of that from, from a very young age, those sort of struggles, you know? And,

[00:59:28] and then I think it was when I was about 15 or 16, my mom actually, she bought me this book on investing. One of our neighbors in the building, we lived in white Plains. He'd written a book. I actually found it recently.

[00:59:37] I don't remember what the title is right off. It was about investing. It was mostly about like mutual funds, things like this that got me quite interested in not in the stock market specifically, but in trying to create longterm wealth. And then around 17 or 18, I,

[00:59:50] my favorite book that I, that I read was, it was the Bogle book, Bogle on mutual funds. So it's just this red book. I remember reading it many times that have Jeremy Siegel's book stocks for the long run. So I read a lot of books about it.

[01:00:00] And I also had a little bit of money at the time. So I started very early on investing in mutual funds. Eventually I shifted over to ETFs. They weren't really that popular so much of a thing in the mid two thousands, but I slowly shifted over there.

[01:00:12] And the main reason that I got into the market is because I didn't think chess was something I was going to be doing forever. And I really did. I wanted to be able to support myself and have passive income down the road.

[01:00:23] So that's something I've been doing on and off since the mid two thousands. These days it's pretty boring. It's mostly most, mostly index funds or companies that pay big good dividends. Um, I still do gamble like in GameStop every so often.

[01:00:36] It's hard not to view view the market as a game, I think. Right. But, but one thing there's, there's another good friend of mine who I know who also also does a lot in business. And he said this and he's right.

[01:00:48] One of, I think the big advantages to playing chess as it relates to say the stock market or life in general actually is that in the, in a single game of chess, you're making so many decisions, so many calculations.

[01:00:59] Do I play this move? Do I play that move? And in life, very rarely do you make that many decisions? Very, very rarely. I mean, what are, what are the big decisions you make in life? I mean, probably whether to get married, whether to kids,

[01:01:09] whether to buy a house or maybe buy a nice car. Those are really, I think where to go to college. Probably. Those are probably the only five things in life I can think of that are major decisions. So in life, generally you're not,

[01:01:19] you're not having to make a lot of decisions. You're not thinking about it. I think many people are averse to making decisions. I mean, you look at a lot of companies, you don't have individuals making them. It's like a panel, it's a board. I mean,

[01:01:29] it's a group decision as opposed to individuals making decisions. That's a good point. So, so for me, that's one of the great things that I like about the market is that like I'm, I'm trying to calculate, but I'm making these decisions and making decisions

[01:01:40] comes very naturally to me cause I'm already doing that in chess. So it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to make great decisions. You obviously can make mistakes. Most people do, but just, I really enjoy, enjoy the process of trying to analyze and come to conclusions and make,

[01:01:53] make the right decision. I'm wondering if there's an analogy too in terms of analyzing risk. Like let's say you're playing a chess game and again, it's, it's, I'm not going to try to put myself in your mind during a game, but um,

[01:02:06] let's say you're trying to make a decision in chess. There's a lot of good possibilities like, Oh, if I move this, make this move, maybe I can attack the King. But then, okay, you could have that idea in a half a second.

[01:02:15] And then the rest of your thinking is what are the risks? How do I, how do you remove risk from that position? And just like in the market or in business in general, Oh,

[01:02:23] this would be a great idea. It's, it's easy to come up with a great idea, but then the rest of the time is removing risk from that idea. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Like to go back to trust for a second,

[01:02:33] that's definitely true. There's definitely games where you try to control it, where it's like, you essentially want to make sure that you have the tie, but if your opponent makes one wrong move, you have a chance to win the game, but there's no chance of a loss.

[01:02:43] You want to have like basically a 66% chance of getting the optimal outcome or 33% chance again, the absolute outcome and 30% of 33% of an okay one. All right. Sorry. 66% game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two results, two results instead of three results. So yeah, it's exactly 66% draw 33% win, but 0% chance of loss.

[01:03:02] So definitely in chess for myself, there are, there are situations where I try to mitigate the risk. And I think that the best players in the world at the, at the quicker forms of chess,

[01:03:11] like blitz chess where you play games in five minutes for the whole game are maximized myself because we are able to actually incorporate that into those games as well. Not just in the slow games where you have a ton of time to think about it. So,

[01:03:21] and then back to the market, of course, I mean, a lot of it is analyzing and thinking about the outcomes. I think in many cases you don't people don't generally, I mean, I'm talking about like the everyday person.

[01:03:32] You aren't in situations where you think about these sorts of things. It's just not something that's in your life. That's why I think for chess, it's a great thing to take up because the, the ability to analyze,

[01:03:40] even if it's not gonna make some huge difference in your life overall, I think it can be beneficial. And you know, with, with real estate, I agree with you by the way, that real estate is potentially a good investment if you don't live in the real

[01:03:52] estate. So I think I, and I, by the way, I own a home, so I'm giving it like, I'm giving advice against what I've actually ended up doing in the past few years. Like for awhile, I would never own a home. I hated the idea.

[01:04:04] I lost money on every home I owned and I didn't even like renting. I would just live in Airbnb for a long time and just live very minimally. But it's very hard to make money. I think if you're thinking about it in terms

[01:04:14] of like, Oh, I want to live in this home and then make money on it. It's better to say, I'm going to try to get a good deal in a good place. Maybe not where I will live, but I'll wear a lot of other people.

[01:04:21] It gives you much more opportunity to make a good investment if you don't have to live in the investment. You know, one thing that I would say is when I think about, when I think about just the general general general public is, is that I feel that people,

[01:04:35] they look at the stock market as a way of getting rich. And I sort of blame the media for that. I think when I, when I was much younger, I remember this very clearly now, of course it's, it's magnified,

[01:04:44] but you see all these articles about how this person makes a million dollars a year to retire, how this person made 250,000 or like, I think when I was younger, was it, I remember I got this, I asked this guy Bernie Schaefer, the CDs, these options things.

[01:04:55] You're probably very familiar with that. And it's like, it's all about get rich. And I feel like for someone who doesn't, I mean, nowadays indexing is much more common. A lot of, a lot of people are,

[01:05:05] the information is much better in terms of what people should do towards passive investing. But I feel like that a lot of people look at as get rich. And I feel like most people, when they do try to get into the market, if you get,

[01:05:16] if you go and you invest, you're probably going to lose money unless you're indexing. A lot of people try to hit it rich, you know, buy options that are far out of the money. The average investor doesn't beat the market. Exactly.

[01:05:25] And I feel like with real estate for someone who just buys their house and they're going to live in it for, you know, 20 years, unless they're, unless they have access to access to information or the, or they're, they're curious and they, they, they research deeper.

[01:05:38] It's probably gonna be better than, than trying to invest in the market. I think for most people, but I think for just your average Joe, they're going to be better off buying a house. They live in for 30 years and having that equity in the house versus investing

[01:05:49] in the market. Yeah, I think that's true because I think, I think people have to be very careful investing. Like there's a lot, let's say 95% of the information out there, including what's on CNBC or the wall street journal, it's just bad information. Like you just don't know. Okay.

[01:06:02] And Biddy is the biggest AI company in the world and AI is a trend that's going to keep going, but we really have no insight onto how NBD is going to perform next to his peers next year. So it's hard. No, there's no way to predict.

[01:06:16] Yeah. I mean, there are many things like I would even use like the roaring kitty thing, like as, as another example, like I don't even know if I believe it's true because if I were in that situation, like when the stock was 60 plus after hours,

[01:06:26] of course he should be shorting against the box selling, selling stock against this 120,000 calls. Like even, even that, I'm sorry, I'm using a modern example, but it's just an example of like any sane person would be doing that. I mean, I'm not,

[01:06:39] I'm not even like in finance and that kind of way. And I would be doing that of course, just to lock, lock in, you know, the lock in the 400% or whatever it is. So yeah, I feel like that's a thing. And also like my wife, I remember she,

[01:06:50] she's someone who asked me about the marks a few years ago when we were dating initially. And she of course used the Robin Hood app. And I was absolutely appalled that like maybe the first time that,

[01:06:59] that I, that I saw her phone, I saw the app. Like there were like, literally like there were like animations and graphics when she would like buy a sign. I'm like, wait, what is this? Yeah. They gamified it.

[01:07:08] I was, I was actually shocked by that because that's of course going the wrong direction. I mean, the way that you, you make wealth is by long-term investing. I mean, you hold stocks for a long time and, and you know,

[01:07:16] the market does go up over the long term. And so, so, so it's interesting. So you're doing this stuff with real estate. Obviously you're, you're building the streaming. Obviously you've come back strong on the chess. How do you actually,

[01:07:28] how do you like all the other chess players are studying, like you say, three, four, 10 hours a day. How do you keep up with the chess? I mean, you're playing a lot of the day, so maybe that helps, but I don't know.

[01:07:40] Well, there are many things. I think for a short period of time after, after the pandemic, my results were really good solely because I had been playing online every day against the top players in the world. I think many people would be surprised to hear this,

[01:07:52] but professional chess players can be very lazy. And I think that for the most part during the pandemic from about March, I would say September, all the other top players, they were just sitting at home in their underwear, just like watching Netflix or doing stuff,

[01:08:03] but not actually studying chess. Whereas I was playing as top players online and that actually helped me sharpen my game quite a bit. So there, I think was a period when I came back where I was just better than everybody,

[01:08:12] everybody else simply because I was actually sharper, even though it was online, these were competitive games. Were you analyzing your blitz games at all? Or I guess. I think it was more of the alpha zero approach is just,

[01:08:21] you play over and over and over again. You use, I mean, of course, I'm playing against other players, not, not against myself, but you just play over and over and over again. And I think that that really,

[01:08:30] you do benefit off of that. It's not something that I think you can quantify. I mean, as an example, when you start playing chess, the easiest way to improve is just keep playing games against other players over and over again, because you subconsciously start connecting the dots.

[01:08:41] You start seeing these patterns, the pattern recognition forms, even if you're not trying to do it, it's just one of those things that subconsciously occurs. So, so that I think gave me a big edge at the start. I think the, you know,

[01:08:50] there are a couple of different things. I made this joke to you about how chess is very psychological or mental, and it definitely is. And I think for myself, one of the things that gives me a big advantage over a lot of my fellow

[01:09:01] competitors is that when I do these live streams, I'm actually actually explaining my thought process in a very high level way because I chose not to simplify it. And these players, they might not all admit it,

[01:09:12] but at some point or another during the pandemic, I know like Magnus Fabiano, Wesley, all these top guys, they watch my stream. And you can analyze games with a player, but when you actually see someone day after day or I shouldn't say day after day,

[01:09:23] but game after game, hour after hour explaining is very high level concepts. It actually makes you more impressed by them than talking to them individually and analyzing a one-off game that you played against them. So I can see hundreds of games.

[01:09:34] And then actually I think changed the perception of me as a player because then they actually start to respect me more than they used to. So maybe you're saying you built up this persona that now you're intimidating to a lot of the players.

[01:09:45] That's part of it. Yeah. I'm giving the many factors. I think that's a big part of it though, is that like they probably didn't realize just how good I am now. That's not to say that like if I watch one of them do it,

[01:09:54] if they were to try and do it, I might not be like, wow, he's so good. Like he's seeing all these great ideas. It could, it could cut the other way too. But I think that's one of the things is that they they've seen this.

[01:10:03] They realize how good I am in a way that they didn't before. Secondarily, I think also it's very hard to rationalize the fact that I don't study chess every day. I don't do things the proper way. I'm still very successful.

[01:10:15] So it's like if I'm not doing this proper way, then, then I think in their mind, there's also this, this confusion about, wait, is he studying chess at all? What's going on? Like, is he studying?

[01:10:22] He's not saying, what do I play? Should I play this opening or not opening? I mean, I think it becomes very tricky to figure out. And then the third component as well is that the style of chess that I play now is very different.

[01:10:33] And when you play against people for many, many years over decades, you get very familiar with the style, the sort of choices they make. And the simplest thing I would say is that it's almost like I scramble my brain.

[01:10:43] So the decision-making process that I take now is not the same process I had in 2019, for example, or even 2015. It's completely different because you're supposed to play a certain way to minimize the risk at times. You're not supposed to play aggressive openings and critical moments.

[01:10:57] You're supposed to get the desired result, usually a tie or have a chance to win. But I take, I take risks in certain moments when it seems completely illogical. Point in case would be this candidates tournament, the one where you play the world championship.

[01:11:09] And I needed to qualify for that candidates tournament. So I was playing the last round of this, this open event in, in the Isle of Man and common thought or the way someone would think that I would approach the game is

[01:11:19] that if I tie this game, I get the draw. I'm going to qualify for the candidates qualify for the candidates has to be the ultimate goal because that gets you the world championship gets back to cycle. I was talking about with when you're breaking through about, you know,

[01:11:29] point a point B points point C. And so getting to the candidates that has to be the ultimate goal. That should be the only thing that matters. So if you only need the tie to get there, what are you supposed to do?

[01:11:37] You're supposed to play the most solid opening and not take any risk. And then in the game, I didn't do that. And my opponent was actually very confused. He was surprised by it. Now, what opening did you play? How did you play the Sicilian?

[01:11:47] I played the clash of cop variation of the Sicilian, but my opponent did not expect that because the common thought or the way that you approach it is it's like, why would you do that? You only need this result to get there.

[01:11:56] But for me, it's also like, I want to enjoy it at the same time. It's not. And also I want to be very unpredictable too. Like the unpredictability factor matters a lot as well. I think the streaming gives you.

[01:12:21] The unpredictability card, because your worst case scenario is okay. I didn't make it to the candidates. That's because I'm a streamer, but this is great content. And so I'm going to use it this way. And then lo and behold, you win because you have the unpredictability. Right. Right.

[01:12:37] But, but I would say like, but it's all those things combined. It's always like, but the unpredictability, like I said, there's a certain approach in a certain way that you think about there. Everybody thinks the same way when everybody has the same thinking and

[01:12:48] the way you're thinking about it is different. You can surprise people much more and you can actually do very well. But I would also say the other thing is that the way that I study chess is much better, it's much smarter than it, than it used to be.

[01:12:58] And I think that also comes back to having more confidence. Like I don't, I would say when I was younger and I would play against Magnus, I would literally review every opening on their son. I'd be so afraid. I'd be honest.

[01:13:08] I'd say I'd be so afraid of Magnus that I'd be looking at like five different openings systems or six or seven versus looking at the two that he's probably going to play. Now, of course you have to look at.

[01:13:16] When you're looking, trying to look at seven different things and you're burning out, you're, you're spending all this energy before a game, trying to get ready. The odds are going to say that he's most likely going to play one or two. He's not going to play.

[01:13:25] He's not going to play this like seventh option out here. But if you're so afraid of the player, you're so worried or lacking confidence that you need to do that. It's just, it's not, it's not smart.

[01:13:34] You're wasting time looking at things that are not, that are not going to happen. And so I've gotten a lot better at that too. It's just sort of being practical and trusting myself in a lot of situations.

[01:13:43] Like when you play Magnus now, like let's say in this Norway chess tournament, you go in there with a Nimzo. Did you think specifically what variations he would respond with? Or I did. I mean, I had a feeling he'd probably play something very close

[01:13:56] to what he did play in the game. I think actually I've gotten very good at predicting. I think I'm able to understand how players approach the game. But, but I think that if you look at a couple of opening systems and then you have some general idea elsewhere.

[01:14:07] So I would say it's like, if there are five openings, you have, you have something for three of the openings and the last two, you just, you know, a couple of the moves or lines you're going to do and that's it.

[01:14:15] And you don't really look very closely at it, but in the old days, it's more like spending an hour on all five of these or spending say like hour and a half on these three and then just looking for five minutes of the other two.

[01:14:24] And how good do you think is your memory now? Like, you know, you, you play thousands of games online, but you still seem to, I see when you're online and you say, oh, I've, I had this game against Kamsky and the 2009, you know, whatever.

[01:14:38] And he played this, this, this, but now I'm going to try this. And it seems like your memory is still holding up. Like, do you feel like with age, there's any decline or. I think my long-term memory is better than my short-term memory.

[01:14:50] I think that, that like a lot of things from the past, I remember better than like things that I just, just learned, learn in the moment for sure. But it, but it changes. I don't think that, that it's necessarily worse or better.

[01:15:00] I don't think it's something that ultimately changes my memory. I don't think it's something that ultimately changes, changes that much for the, for the game, whether it's long, long-term or short-term, but definitely my long-term is better. I would also say though, as I get older, I'm definitely slower.

[01:15:13] Like one of the big shifts is when I was younger, I really liked blitz chess the most. And now I think I actually like classical chess the most because I like thinking more than I ever used to.

[01:15:21] But you're still clearly like, I mean, your blitz rating at times has exceeded Magnus's at least on chess.com. I mean, you've been a number one on chess.com quite a bit. And so, so it's not like your blitz is suffering, but I'm wondering if like these

[01:15:32] young kids who are, you know, it's interesting by the way, the top 20 is made up almost entirely of people in their thirties, like yourself, Magnus, Jan and, and others or kids in their late teens or at the most age 20, like Olly Reyes is now 20.

[01:15:48] And what happened to the people in the twenties? And there's nobody in their twenties. Yeah. I mean, I think it's probably just a generation gap for whatever reason. They're they're just, they're the people who. Yeah. I actually don't know. I think it could just be a generation.

[01:16:04] Like I feel in chess, normally there's a gap of about, I feel like the world championship champions usually it's 13 year gap between them or around there or something along those lines. I feel like if I'm not mistaken, I think about Kramnik to Magnus specifically or Karpov to Kasparov.

[01:16:18] So I think, I think there's, there's like a 12, 13 year gap in general. And I think it might just be a lost generation really, if you were to ask me, but I don't, but I do think going forward, more and more kids, I think chess players

[01:16:32] are going to be getting better younger and younger ages. I think a lot of the things that we thought were impossible in chess five years ago, like a grand master, maybe 10 or 11 years old is going to happen in the near future. And I wonder about that.

[01:16:43] Like they always say, and I know this is a spurious statistic, but they always say, oh, it takes 10,000 hours to master something. And obviously every year you have more and more experience with the chess. And yet there's these 18 year old, you know, like Prague 18 years old here in

[01:16:58] this tournament who beat Magnus. Where is he getting his information from? Like, how does he have as much knowledge and depth in the game as someone who still studies it every day? Who's the number one in the world or number two in the world?

[01:17:11] Yeah, I think that comes down to this. Actually, I think a large part of it is, is related specifically to the chess boom that occurred during COVID times. And what I, what I mean by that is information is basically power in the

[01:17:23] game of chess and more specifically the opening phase of the game. I would say that if you can get through the first 20 moves, the big advantage between the absolute top players and say someone who's number 50 or number 100 in the world is the opening phase.

[01:17:35] If someone who's one of the world can get through the first 20 moves of the game, and they're not at some big disadvantage, it's very unlikely. They're going to lose to Magnus very unlikely now that they could lose him.

[01:17:44] They could lose to me, but I would say that if they get through the 20 moves, they're going to lose maybe 10% of the time. If that does a one out of 10. So the big advantage is the opening phase.

[01:17:52] And because of the pandemic, what happened is a lot of people in chess saw these, these financial opportunities to try and make more money. And so there's a site called Chessable, which started basically promoting chess courses and a lot of strong grandmasters.

[01:18:05] I mean, people who were like top 100 in the world, people were like top 10, even in the world started making these courses and putting all this information out there. And what that does is in the past, you would have to hire these people, pay them

[01:18:17] and they would give you some of their secret, the secret sauce, some of the work that they would, they would do. But now you can basically pay 50 bucks and get all this information for free. And it's not just like one top player.

[01:18:26] There are many top players doing this. And even if you try to hide some of that information, like one line here, one line there isn't actually the absolute best variation and you're going to play something else if you have it in your games, it's still so much information.

[01:18:37] These players can, can go through it and consume it and really just remember it better than, than past generations. I mean, kids these days, they grow up with computers and that has made a world of difference.

[01:18:47] It's just the, the amount of information out there from, from openings to like playing blitz online to all these courses, everything, it's just, it's just so much better for the kids today. And I think they can just do it hour after hour.

[01:18:57] They grew up with iPads and phones these days. So they're, they're just much better at processing the information and in a much shorter time, of course, because they're also much younger. Yeah. You know, and this is going to get a little bit more into the.

[01:19:08] Actually, before I get totally into the weeds of chess, just for a second, in the, in the candidates, this recent candidates, you know, Gukesh one, 17 year old, the youngest person to ever win the candidates is going to challenge the world champion Ding Loren.

[01:19:20] I saw it in an interview right after the candidates, obviously you were emotional. Even, you know, let's say tear it up a little bit. And then you were trying to explain in the interview why you tear it up. But I think it was pretty clear. You were disappointed.

[01:19:34] You didn't win the candidates. No, that's not the reason. Oh, unfortunately. No, I mean, part of it is it's actually not about me directly. What I would say is that for me, I'm very realistic about the future.

[01:19:46] And in that event, like my parents were there, my brother actually came for one day and like, I don't want to sound like morbid or anything, but you know, there's there's a saying that, you know, when you're dying or something like your life

[01:19:56] flashes in front of your eyes, something along these lines, I've heard this quote quite a few times and it's sort of just seeing the whole progression from the start to where I am today and sort of.

[01:20:05] Sort of realizing how great it's been, but how much I could have accomplished. And actually like the hardest part of the candidates was not about me. It's that I had all these, these members who actually wanted me to win it more than I did.

[01:20:15] So like that actually was the pressure for me then, then the pressure that I put on myself for that event. But certainly, I mean, it was a disappointment considering how close I

[01:20:23] was, but I also would say that it doesn't, it wasn't that big of a shock to me because when I go back to 2016, I already knew there was a bit of a luck component

[01:20:32] there and you could make the argument that in this past event, like there were a couple of critical matchups at the end that were in, in the player's favor, the one who won now mind you, he deserved to win.

[01:20:41] Like I'm not saying he didn't deserve to win, but if Fabiano or myself or Netbo or some of the other players had gotten that same pairing, there's a very good chance we could have won. So yeah, I mean, it was definitely a little bit disappointed, but on the

[01:20:50] other hand, it's like I've always said, and maybe it's just a mindset thing. You know, I felt like I've been playing with house money and I also felt that it really comes full circle. So when I compare the candidates tournament that I played in 2020, just now

[01:21:03] in 2024 versus 2016 specifically, 2016, I had the same start. I drew a game early and then I lost. And once I lost, I came early. I felt very much like there was this pressure. I have to win the next game. I have to take these risks.

[01:21:14] I must win a game like as opposed to being patient and waiting for the opportunities to present themselves. And in the one that I just played in 2024, when I, when I tied a game early

[01:21:22] and then lost, I actually, I had a couple more ties and then I started winning some games towards the middle and towards the latter half of the event. And that is something that if I look at my chess for prior streaming, I never

[01:21:32] could have done that in the candidates. Never. So I was also very proud of the performance, but disappointment, I would say, I mean, mildly disappointed, but it's, it was never like a massive disappointment simply because I never had a chance to win the game.

[01:21:45] I never had that moment in a game where I can say, if I play this move. I win the tournament. But was there a sense that, uh, this might be the last time, but actually

[01:21:53] just to a side note, I can't say that about this term, which is why I'm actually more disappointed with this event than that event, because there was a game here against all the reservoirs. I think in the eighth round, I believe was, I had the game one.

[01:22:04] If I played one move, I would have won that game. And so there's much more disappointment with this event than that one. By the way, I was, I was in the audience that, that for that game.

[01:22:12] And so again, I didn't have access to computer or, or commentary or anything. And it did look like you had, you know, after Bishop C4, it looked like you had two choices, C6 and Rook D8. And I was really curious, how did you decide between the two?

[01:22:25] The way that I decided between the two is I thought that if I won C6, the pawn structure would become fixed in the center. And I thought that after Rook D8, I'd be able to play B6 and go after the pawns on D4 and C5.

[01:22:34] That's, that's what I thought. I thought the Rook on D5, the pawns on D4 and C5 were weaker. If I go C6, there's only the one open E file and I can't really open up the Queen side.

[01:22:42] And then I don't, I don't know, but like if C6, Queen E1, you did Rook D8, he did Queen E1 and penetrated. C6, Queen E1, what do you do to kind of stop him from...

[01:22:50] I just take the pawn on H5 and play Rook E8 to take the E file. Uh huh. All right. So... Yeah, but, but I mean, again, that's kind of beside the point, but the thing is I

[01:22:58] had the chance, like that game, if I'd play that move, I probably, I mean, I would say probably like 80% certainty that I win that game. So like, I actually am much more upset about that because I had the

[01:23:07] chance to win whereas in the Candice, I never had the chance to actually win. And then back to your other point about other it's the end. I mean, obviously I think these days I think about a lot more than I ever used to.

[01:23:18] It's not so much that I'm not competitive. It's more that like, you know, I want to live life. I don't, I think a lot of people see whether it's content creation or playing

[01:23:26] chess is like a lot of fun and it is fun, but there's also a lot to it that is, is pretty negative having to deal with the trolls on the internet day in and day out, having to make content every single day.

[01:23:35] Like it does, there, there is a lot of wear and tear and it's very easy to burn out. So yes, definitely. I think when, when you asked me about being emotional or thinking about the last time definitely could be. Absolutely. And so, yeah.

[01:23:45] So what would be like, even if you get burnt out on like the content creation stuff or the, or the chess world in general, like what would be next? Cause you're still very young. Yeah, I don't know.

[01:23:53] I mean, I've, I've, I have some thoughts about possibilities, do something with AI something, something maybe start a company, do something chess related in AI. That's one of the thoughts that I've had. Primarily I would say also because some of the, some of the, some of the content

[01:24:06] I do now, for example, like on one of my channels, I, it's all AI generated thumbnails, for example. I don't actually have a, have someone doing that. It's just on one of my backup channels, but that's made me start to think about

[01:24:17] the possibilities of what could, could be possible down the road. You know, you sort of like testing the waters to see what excites you. Yeah. I would, I would say something along those lines. I mean, I certainly think that I want to do something with chess going forward.

[01:24:28] Even, even if I stopped playing or I stopped making content, I mean, I think, I think I have a pretty good idea of when, when that time is going to come for me. But, but yeah, there, there are other things that I, that I have an interest in.

[01:24:38] I mean, probably. I don't know, something related finance, maybe down the road, who knows possibly, but I mean, even, even that there, there's stresses there too. So a lot of stresses in there, but there's a lot of, you know what I've noticed is

[01:24:49] that in every, every subculture that's interesting and exciting, and I would say the chess subculture is one, the finance world to some extent to some, you know, some areas of the finance world, but there's always going to be like really

[01:25:00] bad people and, and they're the ones who are going to be in your face, the more successful you get. So you have to kind of figure out how to, how to balance that. Yeah. I mean, that's, it's very difficult dealing with that.

[01:25:10] And that, that also, I mean, I think that that's one thing that was streaming specifically, I learned, I learned very early on in, in order to be successful is that you can't take things personally. You really do have to just let it roll off your back.

[01:25:21] And it's very hard as a chess player. I mean, for most of my life, I've been incapable of that, but you just, you have to sort of just let it, let it go at some point. It's very hard. Like as a writer, I've often written controversial stuff.

[01:25:33] That's I don't want to say has gotten me into trouble, but it's gotten me the viral trolls. And unfortunately I learned too late. The best way to respond is to not respond because when you respond, you're lending them your entire audience that you've spent, let's say 20 years

[01:25:47] building, you're just giving it to some troll to piggyback off of. Yeah, actually, I was going to say, I forgot there was a second part of that. Like besides letting it roll off your back. One thing that I learned very early on, this might even be the

[01:25:58] most valuable thing, probably. I mean, it's not most valuable in terms of like being financially successful, but most valuable in terms of being successful just as an online content creator is that when people write really nasty things, one of the best things, or

[01:26:11] the best thing I would say that you can do is actually take the words and turn it into a joke in a way it's like you take the sting out of the world.

[01:26:16] When someone says something and you turn it into a bit of a joke or it becomes funny, that takes all the sting out of what they're trying to do. Right. And it makes some of their followers. You appear likable to them. It also kind of energizes your crew.

[01:26:30] It's tricky though. That's a, that's a hard balance. Like lately I've been taking the tack just to ignore because it's too easy to just fall into the rabbit hole of trolldom if when you were, absolutely.

[01:26:41] I think, I mean, for example, I feel like every day I see some comment on my YouTube videos or I see some comment on X and you see that and it's just like, you know, that if you respond, they've actually succeeded in a way. Right.

[01:26:52] So, cause they watch you all the time and you don't know them, so they know what buttons to press, but you don't know what buttons you can press on them. Yeah. So it's, it's trouble. Yeah. So, so you mentioned earlier about, and I know you're busy.

[01:27:04] I really appreciate the time. I'll, I'll, I just really do want to get in the weeds now that I have the number two world player in the world sitting in front of me. You say, said earlier, you know, first you learn the thousand rules, but then a big

[01:27:14] challenge for the top players is you, you break all the rules. And I have seen this in your games. Like when I'm looking at openings and I see, oh, Hikaru has played this line. I'm I usually, I pay attention.

[01:27:26] So for instance, and I'm really getting in the weeds. So listeners, I apologize. You could tune out if you want the B four Kings, India, Bayonet Kings, India. Okay. For 30 years, people have been playing a five, but you went back to what would

[01:27:38] be kind of a classic line night, eight, which I think is brilliant because you're going for that F5, F4. And everybody has forgotten the reason why that's a bad move or maybe not as good as a five. So I've started playing 98 because of you. Thank you very much.

[01:27:54] My highest rated wins ever from that line. But do you try to, to kind of go back and clean up the old now that we have computers to look at these things? I think that's actually the most exciting thing for me when I, when I look

[01:28:05] at chess these days is that effectively anything is, anything is acceptable. Computers have basically shown you can play almost anything unless it is outright losing the game right away. And that actually makes chess very exciting because then you do start to

[01:28:17] think about all like rules made the wrong way. But you think about all these openings that you just carded in the past because they were just considered bad by what was modern, modern theory at the time. So that, that is, that is very true.

[01:28:27] Like I do that quite frequently or you look at some variation of it's not losing. You play it. I played this thing against Fabiano in the candidates, for example, in the first round, it's something that probably, you know, for the last 40 years, people

[01:28:38] were saying, you don't do this. I remember there was a time I was working with a strong grandmaster. I was like 11 years old and he said, well, why don't you push this pawn to E5? And he said, well, because white plays his Bishop check.

[01:28:46] So for a long time, like it was considered just bad, but now because of computers and the strength you can, you can, you can play that. And it's completely acceptable. And it's not the only instance or many, many instances. So chess is very rich.

[01:28:56] And I think that's where. When we look at the future, it gives me a lot of hope for classical chess for a slow former chess. Because when you have these kids playing the game where they've actually learned that way, that you can play almost anything.

[01:29:07] You can take these risks and still be fine. As long as you know what you're doing versus like the older generation where it's like, try to be super fundamentally sound and play a certain way if the young players keep playing that style, chess is going to continue

[01:29:18] to move forward and it's going to remain a very, very exciting game versus all the players who play some of these boring systems like the Berlin defense. Um, as an example. So with the kids learning this way, playing all these exciting openings

[01:29:27] versus the older generation where we kind of, we, we play these fundamentally sound openings. As long as they keep playing exciting way, these exciting opening strategies, chess, chess, chess is going to remain very exciting for a long time. And yet I look at these Norway chess games though.

[01:29:40] I think, I don't know for sure, but I think the only Sicilian was when Magnus attempted it against Prague and lost and the commentators I was listening to say, don't maybe Magnus is not going to try this risky style anymore against these kids.

[01:29:52] And then a lot of the games were just E4, E5 and Spanish or Italian. And maybe there's some fluctuation in there. Like Magnus changing the move order slightly against Fabio. Fabiano wrote the course on the opening they played yesterday and

[01:30:05] Magnus played a special move order, but it wasn't that huge of a risk. Yeah. I mean, I think that's because the players in this event specifically, some of them were coming off the candidates term where they had done a lot of preparation for the event.

[01:30:17] And as I said, it's easier to be lazy. If you, if you have certain opening strategies that you've looked at a lot recently, why do you want to go and try to learn something new? It's better to be lazy or it's easier to be lazy, I should say.

[01:30:26] And then also, I mean, you have players who didn't have great ambitions. I mean, you had Dean Loren, for example, the current world champion where his aspirations, I think were simply to just perform. He wasn't looking to try and win games or do anything special.

[01:30:38] So I think, I think the field definitely plays a huge role. And I think when you have more and more tournaments with the younger kids who are more, who are hungrier and more ambitious, you're going to see more exciting games.

[01:30:48] And now you've won, you know, an example of risky play. You've won so many exciting games against the world's top players, against world champion players with the Kings Indian, but I don't really see people play Kings Indian anymore in these top level tournaments. Yeah.

[01:31:02] I think the reason people don't play the Kings Indian is because it's a situation where you think about why do you play such an opening? And the reason you play the opening is you're hoping to get winning chances with the black pieces.

[01:31:12] Generally, it's very hard to win games with the black piece at the top level. So because of that, you're looking for something exciting. And the reason I think many people don't play it, including myself,

[01:31:21] is that because of computers, white can play almost any system and get a small advantage and they don't have to go for the systems that are exciting. They can, they can go for this two result situation where they play something

[01:31:30] very boring, where they have good chance to win, but if they mess it up, it's only going to be a draw. Whereas in some of the most exciting lines, white's either going to win the game or lose the game.

[01:31:39] You're looking at two results, but it's a white win or a black win. And I think that's the main reason is because there's just too many ways for white to get a small advantage and not play something that you're really

[01:31:47] hoping for, which is an exciting game of chess in the Kings India. I'm just trying to think of more of this. I just want to squeeze the chess knowledge out of you a little bit. Well, if you were starting to, a lot of your listeners, if you were

[01:32:00] or are just starting chess, how should people learn the rules of them and then learn to break the rules? Like how do you, how do you really make the fastest strides in chess? I think, I think actually the 10,000 hours is definitely applicable on this case.

[01:32:16] I actually did a podcast with Malcolm Malcolm a couple of years ago. And I think, I think that just playing as much as you can, getting a basic opening strategy where you're not going to lose the game and say the first four

[01:32:25] to 10 moves, once you have a basic opening strategy, just play as much as you can. Whether, whether you're a kid or even whether you're an adult, because actually, I mean, that's the other great thing is that you see some of these,

[01:32:33] some adults now who are actually trying this, where they just play for hours and hours and hours, and they get very, very good, very quickly. Now, of course, very good is relative, but you get to, I would say a

[01:32:42] reasonable amateur level without, without too much difficulty if you just play, if you just keep playing, but it's very hard because when you do poorly, it also takes a certain mindset to be able to keep pushing forward rather than just

[01:32:52] stopping after you have a bad day and you lose like 10 games in a row. Yeah. Like how do you, how do you get that bounce back mindset? That I don't know the mindset I can't speak to. But you've had it lately and maybe you didn't have it in 2019.

[01:33:04] I mean, I, I think it's just that because ultimately when I went for myself, when I think about the bigger picture, I just believe that good things are going to happen or I know that everything's going to be okay versus looking at it as

[01:33:16] like, I'm worrying about everything and where things are going to go at the end of the day. Like, do you feel your self-worth is not as tied to your rating? Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't think it has anything to do with the rating.

[01:33:26] It's just the self-worth is tied to the income I make from the chess tournament. Like the, the, the rating matters so much as you get the invitation. If you, if you don't, if you maintain or don't maintain it.

[01:33:35] But I think it's just that ultimately like it's how I do in the tournament is not going to change my life at the end of the day. It's not going to have an adverse or positive, positive effect either way,

[01:33:45] whether I win or I lose because of everything else I've, I've accomplished. You know, I wonder like, so just in, you know, relative terms, like in the nineties, I hit about 2250. I played your brother at the Marshall chess club in the nineties.

[01:34:02] You were, you were there watching the game. And then as soon as the game was over, your brother won. And as soon as the game was over, you were like throwing the pieces all over the board, like, Oh, you could have done this. You could have done this.

[01:34:09] You could have done this. You probably obviously don't remember, but I remember. And then I stopped playing right, right around then. And only recently I've started playing again and it's like an immediate drop of 200 rating points.

[01:34:21] And then I just can't, I feel like I have knowledge, but I don't, I've lost some ability to win or to kill. And I don't know about it because it's an age thing or because I've done a

[01:34:33] lot of other things in my life, but I'm just not sure how to get back that. That killer mentality. Well, I think there are a couple of things. I'm sure that you are lacking the killer mentality, but, but you're lacking

[01:34:44] that and probably being older doesn't help, but I would actually say probably the biggest thing is that chess is just, it's just a very different game now. So it's, it's a lot tougher. I think that the quality of the competition is much better across

[01:34:55] the board at all levels, just because the amount of information out there. So I'd say it's a combination of many things, but I think probably. I mean, it's, it's so tough though. It's so tough because you're at a level where you're, you're pretty good, but

[01:35:06] there, there probably are a lot of really good, you know, if you plan on line, there are probably a lot of really good players that level, um, who are aspiring to get really good. They're trying to get better. Yeah. I'm not sure.

[01:35:17] I honestly like, I don't like to be negative, but I think it's actually game is just different. And it's very, very hard. And I actually see this a lot, like with my wife, for example, where, um, she's a very strong chess player, about 2,300 similar level.

[01:35:28] And then she, she started teaching about like six or seven years ago. And now she's trying to play again competitively, but she runs into all these kids who are super well-prepared for two to three opening systems that she played her whole life. There is just not good enough.

[01:35:39] You have to play many different opening systems and strategies. So I think it's just, it's because the game is different. It's not even necessarily a youth thing. I think it's probably just the game. It's a, it's a much harder game now, much harder at all levels.

[01:35:50] Yeah, I feel that's true. I mean, I've been trying my best and I've been studying, I study it every day and get coached and all, all sorts of things, but yeah, when I actually sit down for a game, I'll even get.

[01:36:01] Winning positions much more than I'll get losing positions out of the opening, but I just can't, their kids are good at defending. They're good at the tactics. They move fast because they'll make any move that is just, you know, they're very good at making pretty good moves. Yeah.

[01:36:15] But the whole game. Yeah. And I have to learn that. Like I'm trying to make the perfect move. Actually, I would say that's one thing, you know, I worked with Gary Kasparov in 2011 and that's one of the biggest differences in modern HS versus like

[01:36:28] when, when Kasparov or Karpov are these great champions of pass or playing is that like the goal was to play the perfect move, you want it to play the perfect move. And again, I think technology has changed things because when you look

[01:36:38] at positions with computers now, there are a lot of positions where you might be a little bit worse. But there is very rare. There's a situation where there's one move that's winning, unless it's a straightforward sequence of like, you know, 10 moves calculation.

[01:36:48] When I think about like Kasparov, for example, he grew up with like, there's one best move. It's not where you have a computer telling you, well, you can play three moves and they're all almost equally good. It's like, there's one move.

[01:36:58] There's a system to the whole thing, to the whole approach. And a lot of people I think who are from the older generation and people who like I'm different because of course I've, I've, you know, I've adapted.

[01:37:08] But I think if you played chess a lot in like the nineties or before computers became really strong, or even into the two thousands, this, this notion of wanting to play the perfect move is very common, even my wife, she's the same way.

[01:37:19] She wants to play the perfect move. No, if there are three good moves, just pick one of the moves. Don't waste 20 minutes on this. So pick one of the three good moves. I mean, the accumulation of good moves is going to be more important than

[01:37:29] trying to play like two perfect moves because the two perfect moves are not going to win you the game. That's a really good point. And I think that also is about patience too. It's just like, you're not going to get rich quick on one stock.

[01:37:40] It's not necessarily the case that every move you have to win the game. Like it's just a con there's a compounding effect to making these pretty good moves. Yes. I agree with that. I mean, like it's fairly abstract, but I'd argue that's why when you see

[01:37:52] Magnus make blunders more often than not, he makes blunders and unless it's one of those, those howlers that loses the game, somehow he's still in the game after the blunder because the accumulation of all the good moves, it kind of, it

[01:38:01] balances out, it balances out versus the blunder. So definitely, I mean, being practical is something that players today are much more cognizant of because you do look with computers and the computer most of the time will just laugh and be like, okay, you can defend this way.

[01:38:14] That way everything is fine. Whereas in the old school approach is, you know, it's not defensible. If you play the best move, you will win the game, but that's just not, not reality. And computers have shown us that, that it's very, very rich and there's

[01:38:25] so many different possibilities. Why did you stop working with Kasparov at the end of 2011? Mainly because our styles didn't really fit that well, I would say. I mean, his approach was perhaps I felt like a little bit dated on the one hand. He was too serious.

[01:38:39] He also took too much credit. He made certain decisions for me as well. And I mean, I'm not going to fault him for that. I mean, I understand who he is, his personality. There were just a lot of little things that just, it didn't really work out the

[01:38:49] way that I was hoping to, because I felt like, you know, Kasparov is too much of a dominant figure and in some ways I was too deferential for obvious reasons to him. So yeah, it just wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't a good match.

[01:39:00] And I also think, you know, when I look at just in general, whether it's chess or or anything I do, like I'm somebody where I really believe that certain people have talents, have talents and you can find ways to go about showcasing those

[01:39:14] talents and they don't have to be the absolute top players. For example, you know, the people, the people that I work with in my, in the, all the content creation, many of them are misfits, you know, some of the, some

[01:39:23] of those people, they, they're on depressants all the time. Like, you know, some of them are smoking weed, like they have issues in their life, but they're extremely good at what they do.

[01:39:31] And I think when I look at chess, the person that I work with mostly on chess, he's only about 2300, he's not the strongest player. I mean, he, he can't play complete games of chess. He'll get winning positions, blunder and lose games just like, just like you will.

[01:39:42] But what I, what he, what I need him for is for him to do the preparation where he can look at the opening strategies, get me to the position, and then I can take over and play. And if he can do that, he's done his job.

[01:39:52] And that is actually the most important thing is ultimately it's on me to make the right decisions. You know, when I, when I'm in the, when I'm in the game, do you feel he's gotten better working with you? I mean, I think he understands me very well.

[01:40:03] I don't think it's something that anybody could do certainly, but he, he, he is a better chess player now than, than he is at the start. I mean, I think the start is maybe like 2000 when he started working with me and now he's probably 2300.

[01:40:13] But, you know, I also would say like, it's like, if you look at business, for example, I think it's like, I think it's Bezos. He said something about like, you know, what is the role of a CEO?

[01:40:20] And I think the role is basically make a couple of very big decisions. And when you put that in the context of chess, the goal, my goal is to make those big decisions in the games.

[01:40:28] Like if I can play 15 moves, they're going to that middle game strategy where there are five, six moves in a row. Those are the critical decisions that are going to determine the outcome. So as long as I can do that, I've done my job.

[01:40:38] And other people can get me to that point. Then they've, they've done their job too. So you don't necessarily need the absolute best chess player in order to be successful. Well, Hikaru, you mentioned your wife earlier. We've got to get you to her.

[01:40:51] Thank you so much for sitting down with me. I really appreciate it. It's been an interview I've been looking forward to for a long time and congratulations again. I think Norway chess was like, it was outstanding, at least as a spectator to

[01:41:03] watch you in action and your success, the results from winning number two, getting back to number two in the world, getting over 2,800 again for the first time. What? Since 2015, 2015. Yeah. Amazing. And. But it's, it's different, you know, like to add one more point to that about

[01:41:17] being 2,800, I remember when I got to 2,800 and 20 in 2015 and it was a big accomplishment, but then there's like, okay, what next? And at the time when I was thinking about it, it's just like, if I draw against people who are low rate, I lose ranking points.

[01:41:29] How am I going to maintain this ranking? It was more about like trying to maintain it. Whereas now when I have this rating, I don't really expect to keep the rating for forever, but I'm, but I'm enjoying it.

[01:41:37] I'm not thinking about, oh, the dread of like, I have to maintain the brain to get the tournaments or like, you know, I have to say number two in the world, I have to be ahead of certain players. I don't have any of those thoughts anymore.

[01:41:44] So I don't have the baggage or the burden that I once did. And so I think that's why in many ways I'm, you know, I'm playing better than I ever did. So it's, I hope the listeners enjoy it and I hope they find it fascinating.

[01:41:54] And I think it's this healthy approach to all of these things, like in particular chess or streaming, the idea of not being attached to one artificial idea, like rating or viewers or whatever actually contributes to success. It allows you to be your own player.

[01:42:10] I keep going on, but one other thing I would say is very, very important. You don't really want to have lunch with your wife. You're just, you want to, I'm just kidding. But what I was just going to say, like, it's very important when it

[01:42:18] comes to, to like live stream. A lot of people have this misconception about, you know, the streamers aren't smart, they don't know what they're doing, but it is really important that, that you, you understand that the viewers who are watching it,

[01:42:31] like they see you for who you are. I'm talking about like live stream, not, not YouTube videos so much. Um, but they see you for who you are. And what I mean by that is that a lot of people who, if you go into it for the

[01:42:40] wrong reasons, you're not going to have success. So I think one of the reasons a lot of people in chess have not been successful with starting recent times is because the reason that they go into it is the

[01:42:48] wrong reason they're going into it, hoping to make a lot of money because they see the success that I've had or others have had along the way. And I think the viewers are actually very smart and they see right through that.

[01:42:56] And so if you go into it with that approach, whereas just doing it because it's something to try out something that is exciting, something you enjoy as more of a passion, then you're not going to be successful.

[01:43:05] And when I started out, of course I had none of these aspirations. I just thought it's something to do with something exciting, maybe share a chest with a slightly broader, broader audience. And then it became something much bigger, but I did not go in with the intention

[01:43:15] of it becoming my main job or how I would make a living. I think you're absolutely right. Like I did stand up comedy for many years and I owned a comedy club in New York, stand up New York on 78th and Broadway.

[01:43:24] And one thing I learned very quickly is that the audience is an X-ray machine. Like they, if you're even the slightest bit nervous, they know it and they destroy you and you always have to be, you always have to have the mindset that this is my

[01:43:38] party and you guys are just invited and I don't give a shit if you want to leave. Yeah, no, it's very true. Because also sometimes when I'm in a very bad mood, the viewership is lower and that's not by accidents because it's just, it's not an enjoyable

[01:43:49] enjoyable atmosphere for them. Yeah. Well again, Hikaru, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And you know, you're welcome back anytime. And when you start a chess AI company, let me know I'll invest in it. So thank you very much. Sure. No problem. All right, sir.

[01:44:03] Thank you.