Muse

What's up, everybody? Welcome to Flagrant's, and a new cheating scandal has rocked the chess world. You guys will learn all about it. A dynasty has been broken. Yes. Well, actually, not really, unfortunately. I might be the only person to cheat at chess and lose, but you guys will figure that out later. But today we are joined by an absolute legend in the chess community, a legend in the YouTube community. This is Levy Rosman who's in the building here. Thank you, guys. We're very excited to have you here.

dude i'm excited to be here i'm still i've been talking about you on the pod for for a little bit

now yeah why'd it take so long you guys do you have the dm i sent you guys no you don't know this lore no 2022 i dm the flagrant pod no during the cheating scandal no no yeah yeah how do we let this happen no no but it's also kind of embarrassing yeah because i got i got

ghosts well did it was it red and then no no no no no no so but that's how i kind of learned that

you can't really uh you can't really dm people on instagram to try to do collabs really uh i've tried since then not just you guys i think people just don't check the the requests page oh that's

the that's the main account page if you hit me directly i would have been in the town not to i

was a little bit like i don't even know who runs our instagram page because i was just like oh i watch you know i'm i've watched ufc for so long and obviously you know i saw like so much of andrew's stuff during covid and after i'm like oh it would have been cool to talk about the scandal but four years later you know it's all good still now yeah super cool to be here and that was really embarrassing for me um i have a really embarrassing story i could share here please um but i don't want to like sidetrack no we're not sidetracking this is why you're here okay yeah you you're kind of in the sphere of like uh the ufc you've been on ariel hawani show yeah yeah i once accidentally followed him for like a whole commute yeah i thought you were saying doesn't ariel live up

in like Connecticut or something? Well, I don't know that.

That's a bit awkward. He was driving behind. No, no, no. So right before, I don't know if he remembers this because it's been a decade, but I do. You know, because you have fan interactions that are all over the place, right? Sometimes they're really excited, nervous. They don't know what to do. They try to small talk you. I'm on the train going downtown right before Floyd Conner. And I'm on the train and I'm going to a chess lesson because that was my career before I was a YouTuber. I say Ariel Hawane. I'm like, I'm going to go say hi. So I kind of walk over. We're on opposite sides of the train. so i'm already getting a little closer crazy guy gets on crazy guy yelling violent everybody moves to the next car now i'm following ariel to the next car i'm very aware that this probably looks weird worst part is we both get off in fight eye because he's probably working there his office is down there yeah worst part is we're walking in the same direction to the same exit because i live

that way best part is nobody's ever felt threatened by you yeah that is true so i don't know if he

noticed and finally i'm like hey and i like talked to him a little bit uh and i i think i i was so nervous i asked him his opinion on the fight and then at some point i'm like if you ever you know want uh recommendations in the area you know we can get in touch on it and i was like why the fuck did i offer so now whenever i have an awkward fan interaction i'm like hey i've been there done that and uh yeah if i saw you or if i saw some ufc fighter i think i will also be pretty nervous

did you did you tell him like hey i'm not following you we're just going in the same i don't remember

at this point. I don't want to know what I said. If he remembers this interaction, I'm going to be really... He thought he was working

with the crazy guy. Yeah, he was like, oh, this is all part of the plan. Bring the crazy guy on the train. Just reliving cringe is just so beautiful.

I was doing some like what's called ADR for this Street Fighter movie. So basically you don't say the line well enough or they need you to say something different. So you go into this booth, right? And I got to like, I think, I don't know if I can show, I don't know if we can show it, but if you want to see like peak fucking cringe so the director kitao sakurai who's amazing he starts videotaping me while i'm doing the adr and the adr have to do is i just have to make like screaming sounds because i'm running against the bad guy and the bad guy's kicking my ass i don't know if we can show it but i'm gonna show you guys and then i'm just gonna go hide somewhere it's so painful it's so painful because i'm not just making the sounds i'm like acting like i'm getting hit in the movie

i mean dude the worst is like seeing footage of yourself like at a party or at the club like do you remember someone pulled it up we were like i don't even remember where we were

it was me like at the club it was at you at madison square garden oh goodness oh no no don't even bring that in yeah and like 50 is just like you know rapid and the whole place go crazy and just try like try to like fit in here's my theory all right i'm just behind 50 cent 50

cents performing on stage in madison square garden what do you do right you can't just stand there so you got to kind of move a little but now you're like well everyone's looking at me move like a So I was like, okay, I'm just going to copy what he does. But then I just look like a backup dancer, literally copying every single move. And then he does a thing that looks so cool when he does it, where he'll be kind of like going side by side. He's going like this. But you can see when I'm doing it. You kind of look like a predator. Dude, I get it. If I had to be on stage behind a room, I'm not sure I would have even gone. I would have been like, no, I'm good. I wanted a camera. I was like, give me that. I just want to film. Oh, man.

brother we're so stoked to have you here like mark has become obsessed with chess yeah because

it's your fault so yes you've got it you'll have to handle some of the divorce with my wife you'll have to oh it's okay yeah is it getting there oh my goodness i mean i should just wake up at 2 a.m she's like what are you doing and i'll just point it over keep playing chess is like that it gets you all consuming i think i think he's getting the bug dude i think i think you can all see the

bug a little bit i mean it is fun it is very fun i don't know it's like it's one of those things it's like how many there's a lot of layers to the onion you know so i'm like oh god if i get obsessed with this like is there enough do i have enough time in my day to be obsessed with another

thing it's endless it fills the gaps it's the water in the jar you know like it just fills in everything else you're just like what do you do when you poop uh i scroll instagram yeah it's like no yeah but imagine you played a little blitz game oh nothing better like two more yeah and then two more that's the problem you get hemorrhoids now we're talking now you're just like destroying some guy in like a third world country just like take that you know what i mean it does have it does have brain benefits it also it depends like what kind of a person you are if you're a bad loser if you're a bad uh student if you're not good at analyzing your own weaknesses but i know you got into paddle so if yeah at me too i played it in spain two years ago and i'm completely obsessed but it's the same thing like if you really enjoy something and you you want to get better at it it it does extend to other parts of life i'm also talking to the people are going to listen to this like it'll show you how to be a good student in anything really the problem with

me is that like i actually really enjoy the learning process so like i take lessons in paddle yeah so now i'm gonna have another thing that i'm taking lessons at and i'm gonna have to tell my wife yeah they're like you're gonna have to look after both of these kids yeah while you're breastfeeding and losing your hair yeah because i have to learn a new opening i need to learn

you can teach your daughter too though that is true and our pal levy just wrote a little book on that you know yeah it wasn't it wasn't the the goal but yeah i mean uh we need to plug the book come on chess for yeah it's chess for babies but um and that's you and your daughter in this case that's there is a bonus link that's like this is kind of for the for the parent that also wants to get into it i mean it's been my thing for you know i was uh i was in college here in new york

i went to brook i went to brook high school yeah i saw that i was like i don't know if they're related i don't know if they're no you just couldn't afford a real room so they put us in

a college i couldn't afford a real college so i went to brook i uh and i was doing like a stats degree and i started teaching chess while in college so i basically got started teaching kids who are five and six years old and if you can convince them chess is important uh when covid started i was like maybe i can make youtube videos maybe people will watch tuesday i wonder i can't believe people find this interesting it's just as boring i hit up mark i think this is a few

days ago i'm watching videos of you call games that are like famous games that have like happened throughout history we're talking about not games that are like recent history this could be fucking in the 1800s yeah like and people have documented every move of these games and then you're doing like the play-by-play and i text mark i'm just like i don't know how but i am mesmerized watching him explain what happened in these chess matches i i don't get it it doesn't make any sense i know there are people watching right now who don't care about chess they're like there's no way that's possible just go to his the go to his youtube page and watch this match it's what was it what was it it is the it's called controversial most notorious chess player of all time two weeks ago you posted this, right? Is that the one? Yeah, I was disappointed. It didn't do very well. Yeah, fucking 300,000 views. It was all like a bomb and complete failure. Printing money. But yeah, so I don't know why it's so interesting. And like, there's a lot I want to talk about. I want to talk about the Bud Plug controversy. I want to talk about like Rise of Chess. I'm sure, you know, Mark has a million things he wants to talk about as well. But so I watched this Chessmates documentary on Netflix that I'm sure everybody, where there's this Hans Niemann character who somehow miraculously, you know, rises to the top of the chess world, beats Magnus. Magnus then said Magnus Carlsen is the, you know, number one ever, I think. Yeah, basically. And then Magnus basically alleges, without saying anything, that he's cheating. Yeah. What do you think was happening? I think... Are you allowed to say, or is there, like, political shit you're not allowed to say? No, no, I mean, I can share. I've shared it in videos, too.

I think basically the synopsis, that documentary is fantastic if you didn't follow it at the time. It's a good synopsis, but there's definitely details left out. I have a theory it took them four years to publish it because it came out in 2022. They needed a crescendo. They needed kind of like the grand moment. And in Paris, which is kind of where it ends, two years later in 2024, Magnus and Hans play for the first time sort of since the scandal. I remember I was nervous. I was there. I was interviewing both of them. I have a famous interview with Hans where it just goes completely off the rails, which was not in the documentary. Well, what happens? He just basically, you know, he goes into a spiel. It's called Explosive Hans Niemann Interview. He goes into a whole thing about how I'm a chess.com puppet. Chess.com controls the narrative. He tried to come at me. And then it was a, yeah, it was a whole thing. And he ended up losing. He ended up losing to Magnus. Badly or? Pretty badly, but like convincingly. But I think they waited so long because they wanted him to win. Because ultimately, if the guy who's accused of cheating wins and... It validates everything. Yeah, it validates a lot of things. He's had his opportunities to beat Hans since, to beat Magnus since this interview. He's never actually beaten him. Like, they played in the World Blitz Championship, Speed Chess. Hans won one of the first four games. It's a best of four.

This is recently?

Yeah, it was 2024. So Hans took the lead. One and a half, half. He won a game. I'm like, oh my God, he's going to beat Magnus in the quarterfinal. Magnus two games back to back wins and then he like slams the king on the board and I'm like this is fucking this is awesome like this is chess needs this shit

that's a thing that I hope people will kind of understand is there I think when you see just an Instagram clip and you see like some guy like crying he's like an Indian guy crying or like there was the Asian guy who gets beaten by the Indian kid yeah do you remember that that sounds like that sounds like this was a big one this was like I forget exactly good cash I think yeah Yeah, good catch.

Ding Laren is like, yeah, in tears. Yes.

Yeah, anyway, so like you see the moment, you're like, God, why is there so much passion behind it? I'm telling you, you either watch this documentary, you watch some of his videos, and it just changes everything. It turns into like Formula One or some shit. I don't know how else it is.

Yeah, I love it, and I think what makes it great for me is that I'm not faking. Like, ultimately, I love the sport. I love following all the tournaments, even the tournaments nobody's really watching, just because I'm curious to see, you know, what openings are being played, what players are on the rise, and I love it, and I just present it. I don't scream as much like on the street when I order, you know, coffee. But as far as this scandal, I think the summary is this. Hans has always been a really brash, like, kid. He reminded me of me just to a whole nother level. And then, you know, he's always like, he's kind of this, you know, a little bit arrogant, a little bit in your face, like very, very aggressively extroverted, very smart. And I think there were rumors already before he beat Magnus, like this dude cheated online.

But he did.

Yes, because chess.com published that. it wasn't public then so have other people like you know but but they're not as they don't have the same personality as Hans Hans is very unapologetic so you almost get the sense like he doesn't take any you know like he doesn't believe that he did anything wrong and I actually asked him in this interview like you know you could have just been like hey man uh I cheated I'm really sorry you know I've never cheated over the board one famous example Chael Sonnen right like he did he's like proud of it he's just like what do you mean if you ain't cheating you ain't trying yeah i think people still to this they don't trust hans they will never trust hans we're sitting here right and hans is playing now one-on-one matches against people because he can't play on chess.com no he can but he doesn't get invited to tournaments because if you're going to invite people to a tournament and you're like a really strong player like i don't want him there i don't trust him right and then they're going to listen to that and so he's playing these one-on-one matches because i don't think people will ever fully trust him just because of the way he is combined with the fact that like yeah he cheated when he was a teenager yeah but he doesn't seem like he's like sorry for it languages but does he have the level yeah it seems like right now he he's probably like a top 15 20 player in the world oh he got there and in speech chess probably top

10 top and that's the thing that i actually really like about hans i know he's controversial in the chess world but as a casual chess fan he brings an energy to the game you need a villain that makes me want like it's kind of like mcgregor-esque or it's like or floyd-esque like he's talking shit yeah arrogant he's like he's just putting this energy into the game that i'm sure if i was a competitor and i played 30 years yeah like from the soviet union and i played like a super strict game yeah and i'm playing against this kid i'd be a little annoyed but as a fan i'm like oh this is awesome i mean like i mean you watch wrestling at all like wwe a little

bit but not nowhere near as much as ufc so like the heel character is almost notoriously defined by the heel because he cheats oh okay right and the worse the heel is the more beloved the baby

faces you know need the heel to have a baby face like i like magnus more seeing him beat hans yeah in that tournament because i'm like oh wow like even with everything against magnus he still prevails

even against like all the allegations and the drama he still achieved it like in wwe the heel is the money maker and it's not the money maker because like they make all the money but without the heel you don't have the baby face that we're all rooting for and that is the expression that we want to see right it's like we want to see the david versus goliath we want to see the guy who cannot possibly beat him and uh so there is this version where i'm like you got to kind of keep him

involved yeah yeah yeah and also i think it's important to be delicate with like the cheating stuff because that is like the gravest sin. In chess, yeah. It is like if comedy is like joke stealing, chess is like, you cannot cheat. It is like, it is your whole credibility.

Quick update. I'm gonna be out in LA shooting a movie this summer, but we added some stand-up shows. So pull on up. The Ontario Improv will be there the 26th and 27th. And then the Brea Improv will be there July 17th and July 18th. And then we're gonna be at the Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada Great Outdoors Fest August 8th, so you can go grab tickets to any of those shows if tickets are still available, theandrewschultz.com Alright, Mark, what do you got?

Oh, I have great news, I'm going all over at the end of the year, I'm going to Plano, Texas, Chandler, Arizona Pasadena, California, San Diego, California and then I'm also going to a couple other spots that are going to be coming up at the end of the year, like Detroit, Michigan, and Salt Lake City, Utah and I can't wait to see you guys all there. Mark Yagnon, live.com. Alex.

Guys, my monthly comedy show is back. Canceled Comedy is on June 24th. We have a killer lineup. Get your tickets at canceledcomedyx.com. And then my tennis series, theallloveclub.com. The tennis is on July 25th. I'll see you guys there. The first one was fantastic. Second one's going to be even better.

Watch all 104 matches of the FIFA World Cup live in 4K for just $19.99 a month with three days free. Build your own multi-view, choose up to three streams, and follow player spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights, and instant replays. The FIFA World Cup, streaming live on Fox 1, offers a subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions.

You guys know what the most viewed live chess match of all time is? No. it's uh it's an indonesian podcaster named corbusier corbusier yeah and um it's it's the dewa keep us chess match long story short 2021 march i play a game online on my stream i'm like my opponent's cheating i just report my opponent and they get banned for cheating at some point that account won 27 games in a row and like just wouldn't happen it's just a cheater that night a guy makes a post from indonesia he's indonesian says you know my father played a big streamer and the streamer got mad he lost to my father mass reported my father and you know now my dad is banned and my dad is a local tournament champion here's all the proof he won some chess trophies um i was canceled by a country i learned in march 2021 indonesia do you know how many people live in indonesia like 250 million it's like the fourth biggest country on the planet cnn indonesia picked this up. Nobody fact-checked anything. For all we know, the young son could have cheated on the dad's account. We don't know. Long story short, Corbusier invites the dad and the son to the podcast and what they do is they organize this match between the father and Irene Sukander who is an international chess master, one of the best players in Indonesia and they had a prize fund of like $20,000. Oh. This chess match was watched by 1.3 million people live on YouTube.

So it became this massive sporting event in Indonesia.

Yeah, and she won 3-0

thing because he was he was like a yeah he was okay at chess he was okay at chess but not enough

to beat me or her and it's still not clear like who actually cheated I you know but but this is where it sort of stopped but that was the that was a crazy month because like I was receiving thousands of dms a day telling me that like I'm gonna I'm gonna get murdered and like it was sure they all apologize to you that did not happen but but now they're like there is a positive resolution to the whole thing I do have a lot of chess fans from Indonesia like hey man sorry like This is kind of how it is here. We want to stand up for what's right. And if you just read the headline, it's terrible. I reported a 50-year-old man with my fan base and got a man. But whatever that account was, if it was the son, he probably cheated. He did cheat. So controversy sells. 1.3 million live.

Does it negatively impact your score when you lose to somebody significantly worse than you?

Yeah. I mean, there's the ELO, the rating changes every game. Got it. So if you're 500 and I'm 1,500 and I lose to you, mine might go down like 15 points. But the good thing, I can win it back. It's not a fatal blow. It's very different than if you lose a championship fight and the person pops.

like that's you know that's very different chess you can run it back very fast yeah yeah there's

a thing like uh in paddle where in order to like play in the certain division you need to be like over a five yeah sure so what happens is once people get over a five they just stop playing matches where the scores are tallied yeah because they're like i can't risk going down and i can't play in this division anymore but does that happen at all with chess yeah but like more on a human

level in the sense that oh my god i'm so close to a thousand that's a big benchmark for people i to get there. Yeah, I think everybody, you can get to 1,000. You have to change a couple things, fine-tune and study a little bit more. But once you get to 990, you're shitting your pants. My wife was on the grind recently. She got to 992. And then she lost like 100 points. And this is normal. 100 points? Yeah, well, because over time, you lose, you get tilted, you want to play a little bit more. I was stuck at 2850, my peak, for like five years.

I hope that you were just playing as like other people against her when she got to 992. No, no, no, no, no, no. I can't let this chick get to 1,000. I'll tell you at the end of it.

I also, we had the opposite where she'd be like, you know, we're like sometimes sitting. She's like, is my position good? I'm like, I'm very fair. I'm like, I can't tell you. Because if you were playing someone and like on the other side, someone's cheating, I'm like, I would be furious. But yes, certainly there's this. I was stuck at 2,800 for five years. And when I broke to 2,900 the first time, I like, I almost threw a party for myself. And then since then I climbed to 3,000. And you know what I think? I think there was rating inflation.

What does that mean?

I think just like the way it works, there's a weird period of time where the average rating sort of floats up. For example, if Hikaru and Magnus go from 3,300 to 3,400 and then they start losing games, it's like trickle-down economics.

Obvious, those points got to go somewhere.

Then they go to the 32, the 31, the 3,000. Suddenly everyone's kind of going up. ELO is a whole fascinating thing. It's like mathematical formulas and everything. um elo around the world is different for example a 1500 in india is not a 1500 from america who's better the 1500 from india just more people playing yeah way better another example before the chess boom six years ago a 1200 on chess.com was awful now a 400 can defeat a 1200 from five years ago because there's so much knowledge the average elo is going lower like all the people are good oh wow but they're all you know for your games might be chaotic but they also might be completely you just play a game like i didn't do anything wrong and i fucking lost right what the fuck yeah i was cheating and i lost yeah like yeah so elo is another fascinating thing it's it's not like tennis i wish it was it's just a culmination of like a calendar year but yeah it's not quite

like that i'm curious people use all sorts of metaphors to describe chess and you were even mentioning some before like on business or whatever what is it about chess that is so addictive and what metaphor could you use to explain it to people that maybe have never played

or played a little when they were a kid yeah it's very easy for me uh also being a like a person who did some boxing did some judo and like followed it for basically half my life uh it compares directly to a one-on-one fight even the preparation for an opponent is exactly the same their playing style how they start the game their strengths and weaknesses you know like at what point are they going to get tired it's very similar to that what do you mean at what point are they gonna get tired well for example uh i i don't want to get two two topics so let me let me just answer this first um it probably like that is probably the the best comparison uh that i could draw it's to to individual sport um and it it's it hooks people because it's uniquely the one activity that makes you feel incredibly intelligent and incredibly stupid at the same time there is nothing like it you feel so proud when you win a chess game and then you feel unbelievably dumb when you play rook takes pawn you know like like you just you're like what nothing can bring that out of you it's it's a mental warfare it's it's like four hours of a physical sport but in your head and we know we got demons up here and and like they really come out it exposes all of your kind of worst habits um what was your question i like the mental aspect sorry so the mental fatigue

you can you can track or you'll know when somebody will start to get tired yeah easily easily you can

sort of you know analyze like hey this person in the third and fourth hour of the game is like less accurate they they manage their time worse they leave themselves less time so when you're preparing

for an opponent that you know not just a random game that happens on chess.com but like this is somebody that you know that you're going up to you're looking at like openings that they'll commonly use how many different openings will for example someone of your level have four or five consistently like with white and black oh so it's not like 10 000 different no it's tight you so you play wow it is kind of like boxing where it's like this guy's a counterpuncher this guy big swings yeah and then you have four or five that you're comfortable playing through but there's thousands of permutations Thank you.

So other people might have a four or five that have nothing to do with yours.

Yeah, I study their over-the-board games, you know, the games they've played live. If I'm lucky, I uncover their secret online account that has no name. But there's, you know, there's ways that if you're smart, you can sort of find it. Now what people do is they play on chess.com with like a fake flag, a fake profile picture. I have an account like that. Everybody has. You got a ghost account? Yeah, because you need to train. You need to play your real openings so you can simulate it in a game, like sparring in the gym. Yeah, yeah. But you can't have people knowing that that's what you're practicing, right? Oh, wow. So that's what you do. You do three or four openings. You check your opponent's games. Most of us are working behind the scenes. Like for the next tournament, I'm going to go and I'm going to play a new thing that my opponent won't expect.

So you're developing a new opening that you're comfortable with.

Yes, yep. That I played in online games. That you never saw that I played in online games. Got it.

So you're trying to track what that might be for your opponent. Yes. And knowing what their opening is, like what type of advantage percentage-wise would you have?

So first of all, you get them down on time early. So they're deep in the tank. That's interesting. They're trying to like, then if you get really lucky. I don't like this time thing, by the way. Yeah, but we got to.

I know you have to do it for the sport, right? But like, if you're looking at its purest form, it's not who makes the decision the fastest. It's just who makes the right decision. But can you say the same thing about fighting?

Like you're in a boxing match and it's like, well, it should just be whoever beats the shit out of the other guy the most. But it's like, well, you have time.

Well, I would say it's like the inverse in boxing, right? Because it's like if you really want to know who the best, most skilled boxer was, you would have less time per round. Because you don't want exhaustion to be calculated into the skill of the sport. You know what I'm saying? Because once you get tired by the end of the round, you can't throw as many punches, you can't dunk as much. If you just want to know who is the best at throwing punches, who hit the hardest, et cetera. But I guess it is part of having a gas tank is part of it. so i guess you could calculate that as like decision speed it's like how joe rogan is uh

he advocates for uh one round or uh i don't know if he advocates for one round or if he advocates for just an open space like no cage oh yeah i've heard i think the 25 minute round of fighting i

the champs would probably be different if they had i think khabib maybe even said that too which is like why or maybe nate diaz was like why don't we just have no rounds it's just it's just one round

And it becomes a different sport in a way.

Yeah, and then it's like, yeah, yeah, I guess that's a good point. Okay, sorry, I debited you.

No, you have a good point. This only changed like 30-ish years ago. In 1984, there's a famous match, Kasparov, who's the go. He's like the Michael Jordan of chess. And then Karpov, the Soviet champion, young Kasparov taking on Karpov. Back then, the rules were basically unlimited. You had to beat a guy six times to become the world champion. Draws didn't count. So you weren't playing to a point total. You had to beat him six times. Karpov gets out to a 5-1 lead with a bunch of draws. So they've played like 20 games, but he's won five. So the Soviet. Yeah, they're both Soviet. They're both Soviet. Oh, okay. Kasparov, at the time now, he's obviously much more Western, probably lives in New York, very anti-Russian regime. We don't have to get into all that. But Kasparov starts locking down and winning games. So like 10 draws, he wins a game. Ten draws, he wins another game. Over how much time? Three months. So Kasparov gets back into the match over the course of like two months of play. He's down 1-5.

Yeah.

Gets back to? Like 5-4, 5-3. And the Soviets are like, hey, you guys are both ill. We can't finish this match anymore. You're both going to, you know. And he's like, what? This is corruption. You know, like, what are you talking about? I want to play. I want to play. And then they postpone the match. They end up playing a match in 1985 and Kasparov wins it. But back then they would play to a point total. They removed the fact that you had to win six games or you could theoretically play forever. That's why the clock is there. That's why they play to a point. Okay, you need this.

So we need the clock. We need some sort of restraint. So who ends up winning the match or whatever you would call it?

So 1985, Kasparov beats Karpov. 1987, Kasparov beats Karpov. 1990, Kasparov beats Karpov. So they played four world championship matches. Kasparov won every world championship match by one game. it's like the closest rivalry ever that was not close it's fascinating wow yeah by not close you

mean because bar have always won he was the but it was like 51 to 49 in terms of ability 50.3 to

49.7 yeah wow sorry go mark just is that the most intense rivalry you would say by far because nobody rivals magnus like we haven't had that type of close rivalry ever because you know tennis has like a big three it always has a big two big three chess has a big one it's like basically the way it's always been and why is that it's inexplicable uh nobody quite knows why magnus is so good it could be a mix of like photographic memory so he remembers

And also, he just has a better intuition. You drop him in any chess position, give him 1,000 chess positions, he'll find the best move in 1,000-position sample size better than anybody in the world. Could he have made it out of that position that I stupidly put myself in? If you were, if you were, oh, uh, no, that was probably like, I could probably beat Magnus consistently up a rook, but if he started the game against me down like a Bishop, which is a substantial disadvantage with a clock, I think he would, he would beat you on the clock or would he beat you a mix of both? Cause I would be also afraid of him. I would change my play. You would play a more delegate game. Yeah. I'd be more afraid of, yeah.

How much does that play into it? How much is, you know, you would always hear this with like Mike Tyson and fighting where like certain guys lost the fight before they even got in the ring. you saw with michael jordan fourth quarter you know he comes back in the game and then guys would get a little spooked yeah do you get the yips with your decision making in chess 100 me

me especially it's my it's something that i've realized also since like late 20s 30s and i'm not used to playing and competing with such a spotlight like my whole life i just kind of go to tournaments nobody really knows who i am and now everybody knows who you are they're watching your game there's all this pressure yeah yeah and also you know i i go home from a tournament game hikaru who's the number two player in the world already covered it that's right so the number two in the world by the way yeah he's like covering my game and like here's a good you know good moment bad moment and then you know that's yeah it's way more pressure than i thought and for opponents of magnus especially guys in their late 20s 30s 40s like his generation yeah totally like definitely afraid of them fold yeah they they break at some point and how does

that manifest on the board like for someone who knows nothing about chess like what what is a what is a decision that they're making are they are they more defensive are they more

yeah it's two things um so you'll get into a long long game against magnus fourth hour fifth hour there's the board is simplified but he's known as an end game god what does that mean that just means when half the pieces have been traded and there's no structure nothing you can memorize anymore that's his time he somehow knows where the pieces go better than you and so you're looking at something five moves down he's looking at the same thing you're like damn i feel like i feel like he has something there he's gonna get my pawn he's gonna get his knight to like this square and no what's amazing is like i won't go for that i'm gonna do something else because i feel like in that type of position he'll get me but the computer is like there's nothing there just go there just

go to this like position that doesn't look so if you could take the emotion out of it you'd actually

probably play better against him yeah everybody everybody would having said that we're like living in the midst of his worst tournament ever in like 10 years the norway tournament yeah he's playing in norway and he's lost four games which hasn't happened in in 11 years and he's losing to you know the next generation and it's gonna happen i mean father time is undefeated at some point he will lose more than he wins or he will lose more than he's ever lost but that hasn't really happened yet he's won the World Championship like 20 times.

Can he pull himself back up in this tournament? He won't win it. He won't win it because it's a points.

Yeah, it's just the point thing. It'll be the first tournament, 23 or 24 tournaments over the course of three years that he hasn't won.

Yeah, so here's his Cal sheet rating right now for this tournament versus Wesley So.

Now, this is the match. This is just for the next match. This is a specific match. This is the next match. So they have him at 64%. He's still a favorite. I mean, he's like, it's the worst tournament he's played in 10 years. He's still a two-to-one favorite. Yeah.

But I was talking to someone that kind of gave me some perspective on this, specifically with classical chess, that when you're the best for that long, the will and maybe the motivation to get in and study five different openings and get into your opponent's burner account to learn how they play, that will kind of goes away a little bit. Whereas if you're a young guy, when you're playing Magnus, that is the only game you're thinking about. But for Magnus, that's just another game. and so you have this sort of motivation disincentive that happens i think when you are the best for that long and i wonder if that's what's happening to magnus now

100 and he's a he's a father right everybody wants to get him involved in the in the next

chess project yeah he's probably got business decisions so he's not applying himself in the same way and also i imagine given the given the amount of content that he has on the internet like i imagine every game that he plays publicly is scrutinized right so it's like you i imagine you could probably memorize most of his openings the ones that he uses classically you're starting to recognize patterns at the end game as you said like i imagine if there's some young kid who's been studying one person it's the best person so he's probably the most like known player in terms

of his tendencies right yes and yet having said all of that it's still the story that he's underperforming as opposed to he's getting outplayed right oh that's interesting they're

framing it as he's playing poorly instead of these young guys are playing great yes and that's but that's still kind of Thank you.

true really it hasn't because it's one tournament and so we are so used to oh he lost a couple of games in the middle of a tournament his his odds of winning this tournament are now like 10 20

he just like roars back and wins the tournament is is there like a thing that happens i've noticed this with stand-up i've i've noticed even a little bit like with paddle where are you in rooms with like incredibly like successful people titans of business and because you're better than them at something that they really value do they have like a very different social dynamic with you with like a bill gates or somebody who likes chess like does he act like a little like fan

boy around you or something like that i've never met him um i have a very different and fascinating dynamic with with successful people uh than than a magnus would have okay um his dynamic is oh my god you're such a genius like that's what you know and so he gets invited to he was just like he it was the most random thing it was a clip of him and um eileen goo at the science i don't know what it's called it's like a science development conference and they introduced an award for some sort of research yeah and i was like okay like that's cool that's the stuff that he gets invited to tech conferences you know ai uh a lot of the tech folks they they sort of want to be adjacent i get a lot of uh i kind of get a lot of like hey i didn't know how much chess could be fascinating i'm sort of i'm really into it i played it when i was younger and now i'm back into it in my 30s 40s 50s and my kids play yeah so the cool thing with with chess content is i never thought it would be like this but it's one of the few things every generation of a household does together it's interesting kids are not gonna you know the kids are gonna watch like the mr b stuff and the parents are gonna watch cnn i don't know like fox they're not gonna and chess is not is not the same way but i've seen people i've i finished the collab with um with magnus uh once and i got into a taxi in france going to charles de gaulle and we're driving and then the guy just goes brother like yes he's like was that guy magnus carlson and i'm just like what yeah i'm like you play chess he's like no no i'm from tunisia we i don't play so much chess but that guy is a genius and i was like all right like hell yeah you know so i yeah that's kind of like

the the magnus effect is there ever animosity within the chess world where you will be around these other grandmasters or these grandmasters that are you know the top five but you are more well-known in many ways wealthier yeah better paid is there ever animosity from the chess world

they're like oh why does levy get this not me i don't so i think there's a lot of there's a lot of behind closed doors talking about a person and and i kind of hear it i sort of hear the the the murmurs and and the rumors and um the answer to your question the short answer is yes absolutely and not just me there's you know content creators who are women and they they they get it much worse and you know the sisters yeah the sisters yeah they get a whole different side of things another one yeah these these players don't like the fact that they have achieved the absolute top at this intellectual pursuit you know this this mental cerebral type of thing and here i am like breaking it down for people and people care a lot more about you know my content i'm top 3 000 in the world top 2 000 in the world like why am i more famous why am i more popular the only chess players in the world that really don't have these concerns are the ones that have achieved massive success. And that's the Magnus, the Hikaru, and some players who are, let's say, from India or Uzbekistan, where there's really good state sponsorship. So these players are superstars in India because they're world champ, they're top five, top ten in the world, and it's cultural. It's not really the culture to be like...

Usually it's a reflection of someone's success and their financial standing.

Yeah, and chess is... kind of comes from i will say it's probably similar stuff in comedy it's slightly different um chess is and i've thought about this a lot it's the only activity in the world where the top athletes uh hate the top creators like if imagine in basketball if steph curry hated the professor it's just like yeah what and i but it has to do with money it has to do with chess

hasn't grown the way it should i'm sure there's nba players are like why is stephen a smith

making okay yeah or something like that right he's on tv criticizing them which is a little

different yes of course they don't like that but do they not recognize like how the ecosystem works and how there's probably much bigger prize money for these chess matches now because of what you

guys are doing yes and no so you would think but chess hasn't monetized itself competitively anywhere near to the degree that a content creator has that's the tricky thing i have the channel I wrote a book. It's a bestseller. Like I have my educational platform. I'm smart about the way I do it beyond just. being like the chess guy yeah okay i'm an entrepreneur like i have multiple businesses i manage like 10 15 people talk your shit yeah but that's like that that's what i'm always thinking like what's the next big project what's i'll continue to make chess accessible but i but i want to do big cool things i want to do productions you know i want to do a limited series like on on a netflix and these guys just want to play chess they don't have big social media followings and chess historically hasn't had the structure that any of these other sports have Our FIFA equivalent, don't even get me started, it's just nowhere near the same thing. And chess has relied on eccentric billionaires to fund tournaments. Billionaire comes in and is like, I want to hang out with Magnus. I'm going to throw 20 million at this thing. Let's get all the players here. It dies after like a year or two years. And so that's chess. It's weird, man. Competitively, the sport hasn't grown anywhere near it should.

But does that paradigm make you want even more to get that GM title? you know the fact that you have this you know your top you know 2000 but you're like man if i could just be the biggest you know content creator and a gm no one can say anything yes

and no uh it's brutal like i said i mean i'm studying for three four hours i show up some 11 year old kid is already like better than me no way yeah nose openings i mean i got the international master title at 22 and now it's getting broken at 10 10 year olds are wow like already the average nine-year-old today would be the world champion a hundred years ago right the game has improved that much yes because it's all it's like knowledge you just know so many

openings you don't even have to think anymore more accessed information you can play more games much

more quickly yeah imagine a nine-year-old kids already played like 10 000 speed games on chess.com yeah i'm playing i'm playing kids on chess.com i'm losing i go to their like i find their name i'm like born in 2016 crazy crazy what the fuck so a kasparov would get mauled today not mauled but he would lose shockingly more than he his aura was off the fucking charts his aura was very different than magnus's aura but his aura was a michael jordan aura like he'll

kill you like he'll blow you off the board for him to get reps you know what i mean like it makes total you're a 22 year old kid in india in 1910 it's like you have to just play people around you

who in your village is even good enough to give you some pressure now you're connected oh wow

that's interesting yeah india got their first grandmaster anand in like 1980s 1990s now they have like 100 the whole country plays chess yeah um but they had like no grandmasters before on even though they invented chess basically yeah they did yeah yeah so i wasn't there but so yeah where where where does it come from it comes from india and there was different forms of the game like the queen used to only be able to move two at a time like a hop just like little moves like that um chaturanga i think these i don't want to say the wrong thing and then look like an idiot we'll have to cut it out but that's where it evolved from and i think the modern day chess comes from like spain 1500 1600s they changed a few rules and but it hasn't gotten an update in like 200 years so we just keep at it and it's kind of cool it doesn't need any like new characters new pieces anything like that i actually use cash app i actually use it it is the

easiest way to move money around you're kidding yourself if you don't agree or you possibly don't have it just yet and that's why we're telling you about it you know how your debit card is just there right cash app card actually gives you stuff for using it and if you could put any discount on it based on where you actually spend your money what would it be for me it's probably paddle that's it i'd find a way to get a discount on paddle anyway let me just tell you what's actually going on here okay if you weren't up to speed already cash app is way more than just a safe way to send and receive money with the cash app card you unlock a ton of perks without all the hidden fees you enjoy benefits like exclusive early access to nationwide concert pre-sales sabrina carpenter to name uh someone who's there recent examples plus discounts on everyday purchases and pop their brands you're probably already spending money on so add your card to your digital wallet to make your money move easier cash app also adds security to your money by declining suspicious card transactions and sending you a notification to make sure the payment is really you if your card is ever lost or stolen you can lock it with just one tap right in the app spend with confidence with the cash app card today okay new cash app customers can earn ten dollars if they use the code cash app 10 in their profile at sign up and send five dollars to a friend within 14 days terms apply we're all trying to feel healthy right drinking more water getting the steps in taking our vitamins but here's what most people miss you gotta look out for your liver right you're drinking every single day probably okay drinking every single day it's

decimate that liver of yours and the liver affects everything your energy digestion skin even your metabolism it's time we show it some love how you're gonna take care of your liver right here dose dose is gonna take care for you that's where dose comes in it's clinically backed liver supplement but not a pill it's a two ounce daily shot that tastes like fresh orange juice zero sugar zero junk zero calories your liver handles 500 plus functions a day it's your body's filter and when it's overworked you feel sluggish tired and off dose helps cleanse your liver support daily function and can reduce midday crashes boost metabolism improve your digestion plus it's backed by two double blind placebo controlled studies showing real results ready to give your liver the support it deserves head to dose d-o-s-e daily.co slash flagrant or enter flagrant to get 35 off your first subscription your body does so much for you let's do something for it that's d-o-s-e-d-a-i-l-y dot c-o slash flagrant for 35 off your first month subscription now let's

get back to the show when you finally find your thing you want the whole world to know about that thing so you use a thing called canva to make it an even bigger and better thing whether you want to create flyers for that thing make presentations for that thing or design merch for that thing you can do anything so people can see your thing feel your thing love your thing the next thing

you know it's a thing canva the thing that makes anything a thing would you trade everything you've

built so far to become a gm well no i wouldn't even trade it to i think the only thing i could trade it for just on like scale is um is to be like the world champion like magnus is a bigger star than me for sure just purely on like name but no it blows my mind i mean coming here to film i i took a walk today to starbucks i saw one person on the on the street because it was so early and they're like are you gotham chess and i'm like that's like that blows my mind like i was not born to be a celebrity but i have like i'm like i got five billion views on youtube yeah what even is that number you know every short you post is millions of views which is but people people love chess and and i i can collab with a big streamer like the past month i did a lot of collabs with jinxie yeah and um you know you see the the amount of like top of funnel people new people watching chess every day yeah hundreds of thousands and they just they just love it they watch a historical video video about ai a video about two idiots playing chess yeah and they just they just get hooked i feel like everybody thinks it's their little secret it's true i bet you've been in places what is that people don't talk athletes play it every day we discover an athlete musician designer like entrepreneur plays it but they don't want to talk about it jim norton was

on the pod last week and he was telling me about like he would come back from the road and he'd be at the comedy cellar and then patrice o'neill who you know patrice is the greatest ever and he goes him and patrice would just play chess until three in the morning and then he said it and it was just like first of all the second i find out you play chess i wonder if there's like a this is a stigma most people have like i assume you're smart i don't know why like i would always think that jim and patrice were smart but i was like oh these guys instead of just like making fun of each other until three in the morning i'm sure they were also doing that but like they're just sitting across a chessboard and i don't know there was just something about to me it's like what a what a peculiar thing that they'd be doing. I've never seen anybody bust out a chess board at the cellar.

No, I've been doing it lately. You have? I love it.

Me and Casey Shorten, I've been playing. You guys will be shocked. In Stockholm, this has happened two or three times recently, so it's top of mind, but I'll be on the street. My wife and I were walking from Eataly. Guy stops me. Two steps behind him is another guy. They both know who I am. They're kind of awkward. And I'm like, you guys should link up, play some chess. I mean, they both play chess. They were, I like to put people in strange situations like that. And they were both clearly like not extroverted enough to do that. People are walking on the street every day. They're at the comedy cellar. They're anywhere. They all play chess.

Yeah.

Why is it everybody's little secret? That I don't know. I think people are also intimidated by this, not these guys, but like, you know, people who mostly play online, they're a little bit afraid of doing it over the board. Oh, doing it in real life, over the board.

But you'd be shocked though. I played a game with Nick Sonnenberg. He's a chess kickboxing champion. He won gold for the United States. Let's go, Nick. Chess boxer. We went to college together. Yeah, yeah. I was playing with him at a restaurant. And the amount of people that just came around just like watch. Yep. I love it. There was like a little kid that was having dinner with his parents. He walked over and was like, can I play? And it just became a thing. It's just like such a fun social lubricator. Just everyone comes around.

Wendy, last year or two years ago, was like, hey, anybody want to play chess in Washington Square Park?

Just tweet it. That's right. Tweet it before he was like the ultra superstar.

that he is now, but he just went to Washington Square. I was like, I'm like, it's raining. I doubt it. Is this even real?

What's the best street game in New York City?

Like for chess or Washington Square Park? Better than Union Square? Yeah, so they're different. Union Square, you pay to play.

Washington, you can pay to play too. You can, but

they bet more on the games. Like five to win.

Okay. Yeah.

If you win, you get the most. Sometimes they'll yell at you and be like, get the hell out of here. yeah um but yeah washington square park a lot of these content creators over the last few years will just go set up shop like they one guy in particular i think his name is johnny he's in like everybody's uh videos yeah and a lot of them you know they've they've some of them like were their ex-convicts some of them are like they were in rehab and they found chess while in jail or

found yes while in rehab chess and prisons huge program huge massive okay so when when you're playing against these guys which i imagine you've played a bunch is there something different about

their game yeah and how so it's like scrappy they don't play anything in the beginning of the game that's correct tell me tell yeah no it's just like it's like they'll throw a different language to it almost yeah and i have to kind of cut you know i'm experienced enough that again i compare it to martial arts it's like a really scrappy person like like a drunken master did you watch yeah yeah exactly augustus yes the boxer yeah and how rico fought usick yeah rico was unorthodox like he was kind of like and it was really successful and he was robbed i'm just gonna

say it now uh but uh you know shout out rico man that was that was really i was like yeah

but it was that's the style is that you know it's really really unorthodox and you have to use what you know to uh to sort of carve it up it's crazy people were like this was a mask era what makes it what makes it unorthodox it's basically it's similar to the trickiness of explaining computer moves okay so the moves that a lot of these guys play are not the best moves but they're very confrontational they're very combative like they tie your pieces up so your pieces are kind of like grappling and it's hard to know what the best move is because the pawns are looking at each other the bishops are looking at each other the knight like which permutation

of move do you play i can figure it out like if you play basketball against someone that's not that good but maybe they're super like aggressive yeah exactly like you're doing a move because they're supposed to go and then you cut back yeah because they don't know like they won't cut back just shoulder check you so then you're just going back into them like that happens in soccer like you'll do move and they don't know the move so they don't bite and so then you'll cut back into them and lose the ball you're being you're worse and i'm playing worse because of that it's like

uh you play paddle with guys who like come from different racket sport disciplines and like they have immense skill yeah so they can hit shots but they aren't the shots they're supposed to hit so you're out of position right so like i'm in the position for the shot you should be hitting and you have me out of position so i'm scrambling for to get back in position but you're hitting this other shot that exists in squash or tennis or something like that and it's somehow effective yeah oh that's really interesting there's a cultural difference like if you play like a

brazilian guy versus like a soviet guy or you know yeah it's it's really yeah so um you said something really good we weren't rolling but i can i quote you please you were like uh chess is one of the few things that can make me racist i think they should oh they got a lot of bits about that yeah they should they should hide the flag on chess.com exactly like you're playing chess.com

it's 2 a.m you're getting beat by a bangladeshi dude and all of a sudden you're like what's the slur for them he said that it was him camera on him it's cause I lost

wait till he gives you his Bobby Fisher take

yeah yeah yeah no you're making it's a good point give your Bobby Fisher take and then we can cut it out

I saw that tweet it was an anti-Semitic tweet but it was very funny it was like just the first line it says Bobby Fisher the greatest pattern recognizer in history second line also hated Jews

it's a rough time to be jewish you know i'm letting you know like it's uh yeah no it's but you were saying the different cultures and yeah yeah there's a hundred percent uh difference um especially at at like club level amateur level just like people who download the app and just like get playing um so people who are soviet like russia you know even kazakhstan like some of the more Central Asian countries. They play very sound. What does that mean? They don't take big risk. They won't open their king. They're going to castle in the beginning because that's what you're supposed to do. Very professional Soviet school of chess. They'll trade the queens. They will trade the queens. Yeah, because no queen, no danger. Less danger. Filipino, Indonesian, ballistic. Completely uncontrolled game. Everything you just watched on a YouTube video out the fucking window, you're going to get really mad because you're like, they're not doing the thing that i'm supposed to do they're throwing all the side pawns forward and the computer is like white is better

but you're not a computer you're like what the fuck is going on so you get your bishop trapped like by pawns you know your bishop gets walled yeah yeah and you're gonna lose bishop you're like god damn it i just lost the bishop like why am i and you're losing like 20 moves they just go after they leave the king in the middle they just bring the queen out bring the bishop out like and it's it's bad if you know how to defend it but that style like that there's really like southeast asia or like philippines like i don't know if that qualifies them my geography is not that great but close enough yes they they're relentless india very unpredictable because you have so many cultures you have so many people you have so many parts of that so you get a lot of that you get a lot of like really aggressive but then you also get very proper like they they know their openings very well they study so they'll you know the first five ten moves they play super super well um and and on and on you know uh and uh some some people will uh will trash talk like when my when i had to talk shit i had students playing on chess.com back in the day we were practicing an opening guy writes in like some foreign language we translated it's like make a move you fucking bitch it's like an eight-year-old girl goes to google translate and it's like dad chat off chat disabled bro but that's you got like a 50 year old man on the other side of the planet playing an eight-year-old girl that's chess you know how would you characterize the american game is there one singular way to describe how we play yeah we're well if you look at the top rating lists of the united states it's 90 chinese and indian god which is just it's a mix of like this is the right thing to do for college and there's a blueprint of previous asian american girls becoming champions and then going to harvard oh does it help you get into i think so yeah i think so like historically the best women who end up applying to college in america they don't pursue chess professionally they become multiple time u.s women's champion

and then they go to harvard it's like being like a rower or something like a lot of any of my friends who have like kids that are trying to get into the ivy so they'll pick these kind of like obscure like white people sports and like it's just a catalyst to get into the ivy like you're not going to become a professional squash player but like you can kind of get in in that way and and chess works like that but there's a chess team at the school or do they

look at it as like a reflection of IQ. No, no, no. They just, they probably want like cool people in Harvard ultimately. And then these talented players know they can't make more than like 100k, 200k a year in chess. So they go to finance. Okay. That makes sense. Whereas the men oftentimes will follow chess professionally and try to get like top 10, top 20, top 30 in the world, which opens up the topic of men's and women's chess, because it's arguably the one sport in the world you absolutely 100% do not need to split them up that's what i never understood like

that and driving yeah yeah yeah just let them drive yeah yeah yeah so so explain that why do

they split them up and even that you could argue like the torque on the neck i don't know like the

way they're good with their necks yeah damn if anything they have an advantage you know they've been doing what they're supposed to so chess it took an hour to make him uncomfortable

that normally goes way faster he was just fascinated by the chess you know i uh chess world is not ready for for schultz jokes like we're sort of uh we're gonna get we're getting there we're developing our thick skin yeah uh no i mean i look i um in chess you have two things number one you have all women's categories so women play women but why is that well that's what number one number two you have um you have something even more weird women's titles so grandmaster is 2,500. For women, it's what? 2,300. It's called women's grandmaster, WGM. So you're a women's grandmaster? Yes, and an international master. I'm not a women's grandmaster because I'm not eligible. We haven't progressed that far. At any point in time,

if you want to be a grandmaster, a women's grandmaster. Oh, you're above grandmaster. Exactly. You're international master. Yes. So what are you in women?

I've exceeded the threat. That's why it doesn't make any sense. You can't even get higher than

what you are if you were a woman the women can get the open titles are you an open yes international

master is an open title anybody can get it better than that grandmaster what's the best well world champion but grandmaster is the highest time there's super grandmasters not is there a woman that can beat you on the planet yeah plenty i don't know what no no no there's a lot there's a lot um the queen of chess what's that the judah polgar yes yeah so the polgar sisters uh were the exception to the rule there's queen of chess also on netflix she never played in women's events she only played the open she got to as high as number seven in the world which is extremely impressive i believe that is absolutely something you can replicate but it is very hard to do that we know

that she wasn't cheating yeah we know yeah but there's more places to hide the buzzer geez too. We're on the screen here. We're on the screen here. no she was not cheating and she said that and you know no disrespect no disrespect at all uh no i think it starts really young and you have a you have a daughter yes and you're gonna see this when i don't know how old she is but you're gonna see this at four and five years old already you have to decide like do i put the girl in code do i put a dance like where are the friends at

this i've heard like at three if you want them to be like a supreme athlete in a specific discipline

you got to get them started and it's hard in chess because it's stem adjacent and already a lot of girls that age are just not they're not put there either through culture or socially like their friends are not there they're doing dance they're doing more of the traditional girl you don't think it's any iq thing no i already from that age it's like 20 to 1 boy to girl it's just density it's

like the reason why there's so many grandmasters in india right now it's like you have 2 billion people and if you're going to have 400 million playing chess you'll have a higher number and

yeah the whole women's sports thing is like the number one ranked woman in the world is 2560 and the number one ranked man is magnus who is 2850 like 2560 would be top 400 or top 300 in the open category right so a lot of people sit at home go well no woman's going up there like obviously they're not as smart but if you could be the best in the world and make a solid career

because of course i mean it makes sense financially for them but maybe there's another point where it's like as you expressed earlier if you're not playing against the best you can't become the best and the game is elevated because you can play so many better people so maybe it would be more advantageous for there to not be a women's league so that they would play against the men i think so

it's just really hard to envision how on earth you would even start doing that because if you just abolished it what happens to the current players you know i think it's something that needs to be phased out over five to ten years but i'm a dude like it doesn't even you know it's It's got to be something the women want. Do they play a little different? Women's games are actually a lot more combative. There's a lot less safety and then draws. Yeah. What do you mean by that?

I can see them being more combative. That's all I think. Just never admit they made the wrong move. I can see a lot.

Good thing in chess you don't even have to argue. It's all proven. It's not subjective. They'll find a way.

They'll find a way to argue.

when can you discover that your child is prodigious at chess like as early as three and four really yeah because you're gonna see how well they even pick up you know if they're picking up the pieces like fairy tale pieces and sort of floating them around that's one thing but but at some point like a switch will flip and if they have a little bit of competitiveness in them of anything they will like chess then you will discover if your kid is a crier uh because you have to let your kid win to be happy yes you know it's like a very delicate act i've known kids that are really bright really smart you know in all the different subjects they go to a chess tournament and again this unique feeling of like insecurity and failing and they lose and they quit chess they don't even want lessons anymore they just like don't want anything to do with chess well it just breaks

them do you find um like the archetype or maybe the stereotype for the chess player is like you know kind of spectrumy social ability maybe isn't totally there is that a gross stereotype that's wrong like you are incredibly social like your eq is off the charts like i think it's one of the reasons why your content flourishes right like you're really just good at talking and passionate about the game are you an anomaly or an outlier or is this like just a bad uh representation of

chess players no i think okay certainly i'm i'm an anomaly in the sense of like uh being good enough at the game from an understanding perspective and being probably is like a one on the one to ten autism spectrum yeah seriously yeah uh i think a lot of the strongest players in the world particularly on the men's side are somewhat yes in very different ways then there's people who have like asperger's and they're like there's a famous uh grandmaster from the czech republic whose name is david navara extremely nice guy very open with uh with with his struggles with autism and like how he sort of like lives his life now i think he's 30 years old he can speak like 12 languages obviously oh yeah um you know he can he's master at like a bunch of different things. Very nice guy. But yeah, I think chess players, both at the top and amateur people who are more on the spectrum are more drawn to the game. And even if you're not autistic per se, the chess players are on average a little bit stranger, but I think it sort of falls into the category of like magic, the gathering, you know, more gamey type, like, you know, things and women. That's a fascinating question because we, we still kind of like, don't know if there's as much autism

Or if it's very good at masks, right?

It doesn't feel like it hits him that much. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, they got a few of them. There's a few of them that got it, you know? Maybe. But, yeah, I guess it doesn't feel...

Because Judith Polgar is by far the most normal top player I've, like, ever. Yeah, she's so nice.

Icaro seems, like, very sociable. Like, it doesn't seem super... Yes, yes.

Magnus got a little bit. Yeah, and even he... I think I've talked to him about this before, and I don't think he's ever gotten a test. He's definitely, let's say, when you compare it to Higaru, maybe a little bit more, but still very... He might just be Scandinavian. Yes. There's a version of that. Yeah, there's a version of that. Right, like the meme of, like, are you German or autistic? And I have met plenty of Germans, and I mean, in many ways, I love it, because they're just like, no, no, no, this is a very bad idea, no, no, you will not do this.

Are there other types of, like, abilities that might be seen in the modern world as, like, a disability, but actually as an advantage in chess? like are there any players that were blind but because of that they're able to like see the

board in a different way or there's never been a a blind or i'm not even sure deaf like really really successful player it doesn't somehow increase anything from from the sensory standpoint um but i mean i have played some unfortunately really weird people in my time and the thing is that you're exposed to this as a kid like i what like what's i was playing a tournament in the new yorker hotel you know as a kid and i'm just walking i would my mom would drop me off i would It'd be like 11, 12 in New York by myself, normal. And then I'd be walking through the tournament, and I have a very famous, I remember the guy's name. I'm not going to say his full name, but he was just standing, and I'm walking by. He's like, hey, nice to meet you. I just wiped my ass. Like, it sounds like I'm just making this up. Like, this actually happened. And I was like, well, I don't know what to do with this information, so I'm going to go. We used to play at the Marshall Chess Club with this one guy who was a war veteran. and that comes with its own set of complications and he had a thing he just decided at one point that everybody around him was gay and wanted to have sex with him. Oh, that's schizophrenia and he would insult you at the board, you'd be 8 years old and he would just be, and these people end up getting banned from the marshal, we used to have a Russian guy that used to hiss when he would blunder pieces and he would just be like like fucking Voldemort you know, summoning snakes on you and you're a kid, you're like, what's going on you know but you learn to kind of toughen up early and you kind of learn to deal with the social

outcasts and do you think there's anything about the game that causes these eccentric sort of uh characteristics to come out it's probably just all mental right i think it's

it's it's something you can a lot of people with adhd benefit from chess as well because you can lock in on it focus yeah but i'm sure it it it must trigger some stuff and you know if you have any self-hatred or demons and and you're already a very angry and do you think chess

contributed to bobby fisher's like later sort of uh you know psychological issues it must have

right like if the guy worked at the u.s postal office his whole life i who knows what if that would have ended up being his life anyway i think many people fall into obsessions over their years it happens to me i'll listen to my neighbors make noise and then i just like can't unlisten to it for other people that's like whatever whatever their obsession is like they end up hyper fixating and then they go a little crazy.

Who are the other eccentric characters in the history of chess that have kind of come out? There's the one dude that's bald. He's got the hair in the back. He died fairly, like 55 or something. I forget his name. Was it Tal?

Oh, yeah. This guy.

Yeah, I think so.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, yeah. But Tal is like a legend. The thing about Tal, chess players used to be way more fascinating. So there's this guy right now. I will answer this. This is a guy, Dubov, Russian Grandmaster. He's famous because he always wears Balenciaga sweaters and he can do one-arm pull-ups. He's a Jack Calisthenics like Russian grandmaster. And he, you know, he has famously just been on podcasts being like, yeah, I don't really try in tournaments anymore because I'm playing these kids that like have no life. Like I'm straight up playing kids that have no social life, no girlfriend. Like, whereas, you know, when he was young, he'd social, drink, party, stay up till three in the morning, go and play his games. These kids are like try hard, spelling bee type of kids. That's sort of the point that he's making. And Tal back in the day was, you know, composer. Like he wrote music, he could speak, he would give speeches, you know, about anything, self-help, you know, politics, anything. He was like a very fascinating artistic guy. He couldn't make himself tea, but like somebody could do that. And this guy was in a hospital, you know, with failing organs, left the hospital, went to play a chess tournament and beat Kasparov. Wow. Before Kasparov was Kasparov. But like imagine, you know, and then he died. He died like the same year. Wow. So this is the kind of lore, Alekine, the most notorious guy, you know, that video I made. That story about Alekine. Fantastic video, by the way. Alekine is insane, dude. Like, I didn't even know half the shit about that video. So I knew a little bit. He was a world champion. He was the first ever Russian-born world champion. Russians.

ran chess from the 1950s but he was born in 1897 or something and became the world champion then he left the he left the soviet union he didn't agree with the whole you know there was like a revolution he left got you know went to france and then uh was a multiple time world champion on the run from the soviet union and then when world war ii broke out he kind of aligned himself with the nazis so that he could play chess because they ran europe for five years and then articles were published you gotta love chess bro dude articles were published with his name like imagine andrew schultz it's like yeah you know all these other chess masters they play a jewish style of chess like articles with his name and to this day like there's a big debate was that actually what he wrote or did they just put his name on it oh wow so the war ends he can't play chess anymore he's banned he can only play on the iberian peninsula and then he dies and people debate how he died they don't know if he died because somebody you know uh poisoned him somebody got to him they don't know which person from where it got to him or did he choke on a piece of me because that's how he died because he took too big of a bite of steak they thought he was a spy yeah chess players used to be like way more interesting man you know tell us more this is

fascinating yeah this is like you're telling the bobby fisher versus the whole soviet union like this is a game that was like 1973 maybe yes can you give us a little bobby fisher lore

yeah bobby fisher first of all he's born and raised in new york like i i taught a kid born on the same street as Fisher.

Yeah.

You know, somewhere in Brooklyn, grew up playing chess in the parks here. And he, really, he rose to prominence in the 60s because he was one man from America taking on the Soviet mafia of chess. So they had-

So this is like Cold War derivative?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right around the same era. There were several American grandmasters, but he was by far the best. Okay. And, you know, they wanted Soviet world champions. You had to break into that space. They sort of ran it. He did break into it and dominated. So Magnus right now is 30 points higher than the next person by rating. Bobby was 100.

So he was like something that nobody had seen in the chess community in modern history?

Yeah, up to that point. And he understood commercial viability. He refused to play the world championship for $5,000. So his world championship in 1972, I think the prize fund was a quarter million,

which was 50 times higher than it had ever been holy this is 72 quarter million bucks yeah and so

we're talking about millions today yeah and he it was in iceland he was playing spaski it was in reykjavik i think like the day before the event he was like i'm not going so to his detriment he was also a little a little crazy he was like they're gonna plant things in my room there's soviets i don't trust them you know i i how can one man take on this entire country yeah behemoth you know and he ended up going and then there's the story they've made movies about this uh and and i made a video about it and he loses the first game uh to a insanely uncharacteristic mistake like elementary level mistake do you remember the move yeah he like took a pawn with his bishop in the corner and his bishop got trapped if you imagine how a bishop moves yeah it goes diagonal and if you just close it it can't come out yep came over just like totally malfunction mentally started saying the cameras are making too much noise there the cameras are giving signals to my opponent uh whole thing threatened to leave iceland and not continue the match

returned won the match so he comes back yeah wins the next one like wins like six games in a row

like just blows him yeah yeah blows him out and wins the world championship in 1972 there's youtube clips of him on talk shows with with some of the you know the the talk show hosts of the

70s he's with johnny carson he has johnny carson he has like you know there's like tile solving puzzle things where you have to like make a picture and then you scramble it okay yeah and he's like i can solve this in three seconds and he just and he just solves it he just practiced that all day just solving these like little pocket puzzles is that more or less yeah the story yeah

and there's tons of clips of him going on talk shows and then uh he never he he never played another world championship match ever again ever again 1975 karpov from the soviet union carpa fisher would have been the biggest match the john jones in ganu of chess wow and it never happened because fisher i don't exactly remember the timeline after 1972 but every world champion who was a star ultimately when they won the title would have demands they would want certain conditions they would want to change the prize fund they would want this and that and the way chess has always worked is we don't even know where the next world championship is or how much money is committed to it. We're sitting here in the middle of 2026. The world championship is in five months this year. You have no clue what's going to happen. No, there's bidding going on for it. Our international federation is much better now than it was when Fischer was playing and much better than it has been in many years. But it's still a disorganized mess. Yes. Like it's. it's very tricky for them to, it's no FIFA. Like FIFA, I think there's a saying, I think actually Magnus said this. He's like, you can be corrupt or incompetent, but you cannot be both. And so I, I, I, you know, I think that quote is out there somewhere, but this is the major issue is like every world championship cycle chess has ever had. And by the way, why is it a cycle? Why, why don't we just have like a tennis system where at the end of every year you have a world number one, but I digress. We very much have a, a fight system where you don't know who the next challenger is. It's kind of like, you know, who's going to win? Unlike fight sports where it's sort of like the number one contender or maybe like the biggest draw or whoever agrees to the contractual stipulations. We run a tournament, but we run it once every two years. It's called the candidates. And the winner who emerges from this Hunger Games competition challenges for the world championship. Got it. But it's funny because in chess, you could have a guy as the world champion. For two years, he can play terribly, but he's still the world champion.

Because he hasn't lost that title.

And in two years, if he defends the fucking title just in one match, head to head, he's still the world champion, even if he's like down to number 50 in the world on the world rankings.

There's a version of there's a version where I like that. OK, because like it allows you to take chances and potentially like expand your game throughout the year against elite competition. And then when it really matters, you shut it down. I completely agree with you. whereas you might have to play safe because you're holding onto the belt and i think sometimes what happens in fight sports as you know you're a big fight sport fan is like sometimes you see champions go i don't want to lose this and they're not taking the same risks and sometimes fights get a little bit more boring yeah four champions boring is whatever but like i there's a version where i like it for excitement purposes but a reign of dominance is also pretty awesome yeah like you just kind of want to see your champ never lose has there ever been a massive cheating

scandal that was confirmed like something where it was you know so like almost like uh like a barry bond style where it's like steroids the greatest guy and then they realize like oh it

actually was all a fugues uh yeah not unfortunately not i don't think for a a world championship uh but there have been yeah there have been several uh they're the most famous one historically is mechanical turk in like the 17 1800s it's like a robot that plays chess just a dude just

underneath which actually is impressive to me dude trying to play chess underneath a board

which makes me think like the whole thing was kind of but maybe he like saw the board maybe that's yeah and then he could kind of move pegs or something which is kind of the inverse now

right we're like now you have like humans using machines whereas back then you had humans using

being machines and also it's a bit humiliating to cheat now solo so there's been several but like the solo act is you know you literally go to the toilet and there's a phone so there's a famous picture of a of a grandmaster from latvia i think a couple of years ago who literally just like had a phone in a toilet stall he's sitting looking at his phone i mean this is like ridiculous a couple of years ago uh grandmaster by the name of shevchenko put taped a phone in a toilet stall and wrote a note that said in spanish because the tournament was in spain don't remove this phone the guest will get it at the end of the day which is like groundbreaking cheating technique there have been more sophisticated ones where and again you wonder what drives a person to cheat as like a young 20 year old who's kind of trying to break into the top it's obviously money like he's not he's he's obviously struggling i have too much empathy for these things i'd be like oh get him out get him out ban him i'm like i don't think people cheat like for fun i mean he's probably struggling or whatever mental or financial and then there was a famous case at the olympiad where there was a system of three people a guy watching the game texting a guy standing around the boards and then the guy was relaying to the person playing depending on where he was in the room like what piece to move because a grandmaster doesn't have to know the move a grandmaster just has to be told bishop and he'll be like oh shit that's right you have to be told the move right

and you won't even know why like an amateur won't know that's what i was always wondering it's like how could you effectively communicate where to place the piece but at a certain level you just You just need to let them know which piece to move, and they'll do the calculation themselves.

And evaluation, yeah. If I'm ever confused about if something is winning or not winning or whatever, it's too dangerous, and you just tell me the best move is with the bishop, I'm like, oh, I know the move. We got to bring our boy in from chess.com.

Can we get him back in? Go grab him. Yeah, go grab him. And also bring Max in here. Maybe Max can sit on the couch because we have – so I went to school with the kid who played young Bobby Fischer. That's crazy. And searching for Bobby Fischer. I remember this when I thought we went to PS6 together. We went to Wagner Middle School together, but he surprised me today. He came here.

I played chess at both those schools, PS6, PS9. I used to take kids before COVID because I ran a program. I was in the chess.

club by the way a ps6 dude i'm just saying that's where he learned to blunder his work what a dumb move now if i didn't do that i don't know what where we are in the episode like maybe you'll see we play a game but um if i didn't do that move would the play have been consistent

where you would have believed it no in about five moves that would have been like something's going on it was just too pristine i started thinking okay you played in school you're probably like 1200 1300 i've been lied to about your chess level well i try to set you up so before we

before we played, I was like, hey, listen, I don't want to look like I'm a complete amateur. I've been playing since I was a kid, and I would say I'm a good chess player. Hey, Danny. Hey, my boy. Good night. You know what's tough about because I got my bio age, and I'm younger than I am? I know exactly what you're about to say. Yeah, you're kind of like, I'm good. Yeah, you're killing it. You're great. I'm doing great. I'm not going to stop drinking. God forbid I stop drinking, I age up. He was only younger by a couple of years it wasn't really that i was younger by a lot i think i was 34 yeah i think you're having a revisionist history right now am i yeah i think it was like probably like 38 39 like only a couple of years yeah i think i was 34 i do remember i was the healthiest and the youngest so if you don't have any kids you're not even married i haven't changed a thing i just kept doing what i've been yeah but you're not a fully grown adult yeah yeah once you pay for a wedding and all of a sudden it goes up yeah yeah exactly what are you at right now i'm still at 23 and i feel great but i did change some things what did you change i talked to the ai in the app and it said i got one i'm eating less sugar because my resting glucose was high that's true that's true donuts don't bring that up can we edit that out miles we were together all weekends and what did i do you ate mad sugar no i did not i did not you were eating trace leches like no tomorrow he was going crazy i had a trace you're gonna fuck up this is ordered out trace leches they came in a can he like ordered it from a restaurant and it sat there for three hours and he still crushed the whole thing that's the best one i would yeah the nice thing about a trace leches is that it could be soggy yeah like it doesn't get worse it gets better yeah yeah i mean i wouldn't know because i don't really do that kind of stuff but i'm feeling better and i started taking psyllium husk that's a new thing i'm on oh yeah it's it's a it's like a fiber thing that helps with my lipids and my heart.

Yeah.

I got to lower my LDL according to function. Why are you dressed like, guys, fuck you on top? I don't know. We're not doing that. That has nothing to do with my health. Can we keep this professional? Can we talk about our bio-wages? I just realized. I don't know why. I hadn't picked up on this. What do you mean? You got fucking hoochie daddy shorts on. What are you talking about? This is, yeah. No, see, this is what happens. Y'all get jealous of my bio-wage because I look so young. I look like a fast-ass young man Nah, you're looking crazy, man. No, I feel good, and I look better. That's what it is. And also, I can get you guys awesome stuff. Tell me about Joe Husk or whatever. Like an RFK over here. I just don't understand this outfit. CoQ10, I'm also taking that. I take magnesium to sleep. Okay. Taking vitamin B. And then are these impacting your life in a positive way? I sometimes get nauseous if I do it on an empty stomach. So that's one thing that I've been trying to deal with. But I feel better. I mean, it can't be good for you if you can't eat it without food in your system already, right? No, I mean, you got to get a little something in there. Not Trace Leches, but you do like a little couple eggs in the morning, you know? Yeah, shout out eggs, man. But you haven't switched anything up. Eggs are the shit, man. Eggs are fire. Eggs are so fire. Yeah. That probably is why I'm so young. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I'll do multiple eggs in the morning. Yep. High cholesterol. Eggs do? You believe in cholesterol? Not if you boil it. You have it. No, but I think that's... That's genetic, I think. You're fucking 25 with high cholesterol. You're actually right about that. High compared to what? Cholesterol, you need it for your brain. That's one of the predictions of Alzheimer's, dude. No, you're right about it, not the LDL, the bad one. No. You're right about this. See, that's what I'm saying. One of my smartest friends said this. He's like, cholesterol is bullshit. Thank you. Say that to all the people who died of fucking heart attacks. You guys are fucking... No, but that's not from cholesterol. They can't hear us, bro. They're dead. Oh, yeah, it's not from cholesterol. No, it's not. Yes, high cholesterol builds the fucking plaques, and then it... No. No. No. Take your health advice from Andrew Schultz. I'm 34. How old are you? I was 20. Yeah, why are we going to take your advice, bro? You're 20 years old. I was like 24, 23. Yeah, he doesn't know anything. I was 23, yeah. You're 23, yeah. Why are we going to listen to you? You don't know shit. We are healthy, man. I know. I'm hung over as shit, but I'm healthy. It's a healthy pod right here. Yeah. Look, we should drink more. If you want to check your health the way that we do, function is really just what gave me the confidence I was living a great life before. And we got 160 plus lab tests a year. $365 a dollar a day, basically. And you're just going one time and you get all the data. Exactly. You're just going one time. You're not doing 160 plus tests. They're going to do all those tests. Anyway, the point is, you don't have to guess about your health. If your girl is nagging you about what you're eating and drinking and how many nicotine pouches you do, you just let her know that you're eight years younger than you're supposed to be.

Exactly. You know what I mean? What do you want me to be, 20? How young do you want me to be? Yeah, it's starting to get weird. Exactly. So what you're going to do is go to FunctionHealth.com slash flagrant. Use the code flagrant25 for a $25 credit. All right? Blue Chew did it, bro. They did it. They did it. They upgraded. They got Blue Chew gold. That bonus come in 15 minutes or less. I can tell you all the info about it. It doesn't really matter to you. What matters to you is that your heart in 15 minutes or less. All the other stuff, we're talking about like 30 minutes. A lot can happen in 30 minutes. A lot can happen You don't even know if you're getting laid 30 minutes before you're getting laid So now you're taking this pill You don't even know what's going to happen But 15 minutes before you get laid You know 100% you're getting laid So they did it They knocked it out of the park So that's what you're going to do all summer You're very welcome You buy two months of Bluetooth gold You get the third for free With the promo code flagrant That promo code is flagrant And you're also going to receive An additional 10% off Free overnight shipping On your first order Visit Bluetooth.com for more details and important safety information. We thank BlueTube for sponsoring the pod in the bedroom.

And we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the matchday spread. He's reaching for the Buffalo Wing. Perfect. Hang on, what's this? Oh, he's going for a can of Pepsi too. Incredible. What a finish. Sensational combination. Look at the delight on his face. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. match days deserve pepsi food deserves pepsi grab a pack of pepsi zero sugar for today's match

it's poetry in motion danny from chess.com back in the building we don't know where we are in the episode i know that we would already helped me cheat and somehow we fucked it up together

together yeah the most epic f up of all time no but it was good it was good thing um so we were

talking about like again like the cheating scandals and how you've had to kind of deal with that at chess.com as it's exploded and people have computers near them and is it all

algorithmically or is it like tattletailing we have we have an algorithm a data a data approach to what we do yeah and we've been doing that and relying on that for a very long time yeah um as the stakes have gone up and we're faced with scandals and all kinds of crazy shit and we've seen the you know the attention economy blow up where people are making millions of dollars as creators or otherwise we've invested a lot in other things so we now have like the software where we observe people in real time our own proprietary thing that can sync up like what's going on in someone's room with the data and so we do we do all kinds of things now to try to protect the millions and millions of dollars so that's but it's mostly data but that's the thing

that's interesting you brought this up is like once there's a financial incentive in something people will find a way to get the edge right like and you saw with sports but even more than

financial if you have the whole nation like riding on oh you're right that's that's i'm almost wondering if there's ever been a case where you know there's like let's say magnus is playing like the champion from like a gulf country that has a bunch of oil money could they pay someone in magnus's team to be like hey here's two hundred thousand dollars here's a million dollars what

opening do you think well now you're talking collusion which has existed in chess for a long time i mean levy's been taking us down a lot of the different rabbit holes of like fisher versus the ussr and like there's been wait tell us the collusion so there's been cheating in chess in the form of like pay someone to lose pay someone to draw predetermine on the result there's also

been do you have specific times in history where this yeah i mean tell us yeah when i was eight

years old yeah i'm not even joking uh when i was like we'll we'll get into the more serious ones when I was a kid not exactly the same I was playing my friend we were at a local tournament we both had two points I was like you want to just like play as fast as we can and see like who wins and we'll just like split the prize money and he was like okay because I was a very convincing like eight year old kid and I ended up winning and we like split it and then he went home and told his mom wow so his mom called my dad and was like yo your son's a fucking entrepreneur yeah a good friend you spent the money

so what's funny is like And we'll come back to that with the Soviet Union thing because the truth is you could argue there's like levels to the offense because those are just two kids messing around. One of them was an entrepreneur, future business leader. But the Fisher thing is because he was literally America versus the world.

Every one of the top players at the time was a Russian or a state of the Soviet Union. And Fischer would be in this situation where if one of the Russians beat each other and they got ahead, if he even gets a single draw, now he's a half a point behind. Everyone else starts losing to the guy who won so that Fischer can't catch him in the standing. So they would lose on purpose to maintain dominance to make sure that their boy won. And they were under pressure from the Soviets to do so. And so part of the thing is like it became it became interesting that they had to start devising formats. Part of the reason for match play is that the best way to determine a one on one kind of mono we mono thing is to kind of eliminate the idea that somebody could throw a game because in chess, it's almost impossible to detect someone losing on purpose. engines now just because it's it's hard they're so good at controlling it it'd be like someone shaving points in basketball but because there's like nobody else even involved in the team where they were like people would start to go that was a weird way to handle that possession dude didn't swing the ball didn't run the fucking offense whatever in chess you can throw a game and no one can really say that you did it on purpose it's very very difficult to do um but by the way we don't talk about this one a lot even levy and i don't we talk about everything but we also have an algorithm that detects sandbagging we have we have an algorithm that detects whether someone is playing below their dna not just above their dna so we've invested in this but for a long time it

was just not a thing you could control yeah which that is an insulting update to get i've had friends that are like they'll get a notice on chess.com like hey we detect that you're sandbagging yeah

they're like dude i just suck so there are reasons because we've started investing in like prize events and it's not just money anymore for my magnus it's money for streamers and creators There's reasons to cheat of all kinds, and so we've had to invest in that too. But back to the funny thing about the culture of chess, though, is that even though what those two eight-year-old kids did was wrong, and Levi just confessed to cheating on flagrant, the culture of the game has been starved for money. The other way to look at that is two Soviet grandmasters who weren't at the top, weren't being treated like kings. They're starving. They have families to feed. They show up and it's like, dude, if you beat me, the other guy who's already half a point ahead of you is going to win. But if but if I beat you, like I'll make sure I'm at least tying that guy because I have his score. So we'll split the prize money for sure. And so a lot of it was like a broken sport, no commercial viability, guys who are starving. And so I'm I sound like I'm a cheating apologist, but I really understand the mechanism. Yeah, I understand the mechanism, and I don't think it's totally fair to put everything in the same box when the truth is the game has been sort of out of whack for a very long time in terms of the amount of money coming in versus the amount of money being distributed to players across the world.

Is it still as representative of patriotism today? It really is. Do you have these country rivalries that exist on the app or is it now there's just so many players and now there's other things that the countries are competing on?

I think it's both. I think Levy touched on the fact that there's – okay, well, people revere chess for whatever reason. Billionaires still just – they just want to fuck with Magnus. They just want to hang out with him. That's what I was asking him about. And so you have this weird culture of not just I touched on the billionaire thing to get to the government thing, which is a lot of the money that is flowing in to the young Indian contingent and the young Uzbekistan. There's a number of top players who are young Uzbeks who are on the rise. A lot of that money is coming in from government funding because they want to be associated as the country with the most intellectually elite competitors on the planet. And so I think there is something to the national pride. And then on chess.com, I mean, you guys were joking about how you play someone with a flag and suddenly you find yourself like you hate everybody from, you know, from whatever. Right. And like, so there is, I think there's a lot that can happen. And we actually we actually don't like that our platform sometimes, you know, can be involved in geo geopolitical, whatever. But the truth is, like, I think people revere the idea of being good at chess because of the association they have of whatever being smart.

Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, beating a guy from Ukraine in the middle of a war, you feel bad. you know what i mean it's like ah man i should just give them this one i actually feel like

but you can't when i when i play the ukrainians i'm like they're going to be tough like they're going to be resilient i'll play yeah and i mean aren't you like don't you guys have something

else to be doing right now make some drones or something sometimes there's downtime in war

playing a four-hour game of chess like how that happened i mean the the best so there was a grandmaster who played for many years for uh for labia uh but he's actually ukrainian igor kovalenko and uh he straight up went to war like he's a 2700 very good player like perennial top 40 in the world uh he straight up like went into the barracks he like had a helmet on he was like he was with the gun like he was with the soldiers it's nuts i mean over the last few years yeah there have been like reports of you know a famous chess coach or a famous chess player just straight up dying in the water. Yeah, it's crazy. It really is crazy. I was shocked China didn't have more of a chess kind of revolution because they held on to both. They still have the women's world champion. She's the best player in the world. And then they had Ding, who won the world championship against Nepo in 2023. And at some point, they had both the men's and women's gold medals as a team. So they swept. I was like, here comes the, you know, they have Chinese chess, but like they're gonna you know they're gonna dominate look at them no because go takes up some of the i do think it is partly because of that no it's like the white and black tile like territorial game oh it's a okay okay okay it's another like board strategy game but it's super

popular in china got it got it yeah but chess became a state-sponsored sport in china not not dissimilar from the soviet union when it was funding chess and so china went from like zero chess culture to two decades of having dozens of grandmasters in the top 50 in the world. Ding Li Ren became world champion. Hoi Fon has been the best women's player in the world since Judah Polgar. And she went to Oxford. And she went to Oxford. And so what's interesting is China really invested. They established or achieved their goal to some degree, and it hasn't sustained in a way. Whereas India, it's like it's the birthplace of chess, had nothing but now it's like we're gonna it's gonna be india's world and the rest of the chess players are living in it for the for a very long time can a country have a competitive chess program

if it's not state-sponsored it's a good question i mean i don't i don't know does america sponsor

in any way you know what is so to work backwards what do you want one or two prodigies from a country or you want like a like dominance like a dynasty i wouldn't even say dominant dynasty i

would just say like a a significant population of elite players so they don't have to be one or two but like you would have a few hundred people that are competitive from that country yeah yeah uh

it's definitely possible but it's definitely limited to like united states you'll get maximum five from all of south america africa chess is really not that big at all there and like the same goes for maybe the Caribbean. Australia, no. That part of the world, no. It's got to be really Europe, Central Asia. What you're touching on, and it goes back to what Levy was saying

earlier, is that the chess world is broken financially because the amount of money flowing in is not representative of the commercial viability of the product. Meaning-

You guys are making it all.

We have a subscription business. We have a business that's built on people who want to get better right so we actually invest heavily in chess as a media ip and build a content network ecosystem with creators and partnerships and we invest in professionals because they all provide reasons for mark to want to get better at chess and then he's inspired by magnus and he watched a levy video he's like fuck i'm going premium on chess.com so we invest in like essentially a loss leader for the idea that we believe chess you know we do believe chess is good for people better than most games and that mission is fueled by the investment we make in the professionals but it loses money what i'm getting to is like it's like having a store on fifth avenue it's like having a store on fifth avenue right but the brand gets the brand of chess most people find their way to chess.com even though even though there are a lot of other places and so the reason you kind of need a government program to your point is that you have to be investing fake money and fake money can either be philanthropic or it could be corrupt, but it's not representative of the commercial viability of the game. And so whether it comes from the old USSR or Gazprom or Kaspersky or some benevolent billionaire, it's still not representative of the fact that not enough people are watching the game. The players are not investing in themselves enough. The biggest stars on the planet are not the best players in the game, which is great. But then the players resent the biggest stars on the planet, of course, because he's making more money than them or the botez sisters are making more money than them yeah and so i think we're at the beginning of what i hope is like in 20 years people look back and go like ah that was that was a short period of time before we had some major breakthroughs and chess was inevitably going to get on espn and these things because the content creators helped lead the way that's my hope but here's

the here's the thing i wonder right because like poker had this huge come up like i remember this movie rounders do you remember that like ed norton matt damon movie when we were kids do you remember that movie yeah you guys are older than me so i've never seen rounders 30 30 oh you're young it was it probably just missed you by like five years or something like that but like before rounders after rounders come out the like the poker tour and hold them just like absolutely explodes and now it's not as popular as it was but like there was a moment where it was just like all over espn and you hear these like characters chris moneymaker yeah brunson or

whatever and who's a man i don't want to cut you off i thought i thought i thought poker also blew up on tv when they started showing the cards well so so the way that they shot it was good and then they kind of like

like, golfified it is what I would say, where it's like, you don't need to follow every shot. You need to follow the important shots. So if, like, you have 200 people playing and you're just focusing on that one hand where the river card comes out and the guy who's not supposed to win wins, now it just seems like this explosive, exciting thing. There's a version of, like, what I see you when you're calling these games. You're taking the most interesting games and you're speeding them up. It's cut down. Cut down one move after another. But in order for commercial viability for the players you need audience and they either need to fill up stadiums or you need it to be streaming on something so how do you make it interesting to be streamed is is a tricky one

and that's kind of what we're working on now and and levy's point about the pocket cam is only really relevant to chess because what that did is it gave the viewer more knowledge than phil ivy it gave the viewer more knowledge than phil helmuth and what that does is it puts you on the edge of your seat because you're like fuck he's got jacks but he doesn't know that she caught the third eight on the river like and he's going in right and so now you don't turn away that with chess and we have been unable to do that with chess to some degree we've been trying i've invested in i've called it like to the team i'm like we need to make chess with no sound where you can look at it and like you're in a bar and you see who's winning and you have instant context like you can with a sports game so we've we've tried to invest in how to graphically tell the story how to bring that to life how to do our pocket cam of chess which is we've done this evaluation bar where at least you can look at a game and go, ah, white's better, black's better, because I quickly get this context of who's winning. So we're working on that. But then the last point to your, I think the most important point is stories. Like people have to give a shit emotionally.

Well, they'll do that with you guys building up the characters. I think that that exists right there. But also like there's almost like a GPSification of the game where it's like once you get deep into a game, there's only a couple moves that make sense. And those moves make sense to like different percentages. right like yeah i had that huge blunder obviously so like doing that would take your if we're looking at like gps as a metaphor for it like that would take you way out of your way for victory but there is a version where it's like moving your rook here gives you an 80 advantage on that evaluation metric or whatever you were saying yeah maybe no i i i was gonna make a point about

the previous point but um make it make it yeah and i and i will we're living in fascinating times in sports where we are seeing the athletes now have come from money and been descendants of players with nba classic yeah nba tennis i google a player i've never heard of in tennis father is a hedge fund manager billionaire yeah all of them or played and won like two grand right yeah or like both parents were athletes yeah yeah and there are some sports where this is not quite the case you still see a lot of rags to riches stories in in fighting but you also see it in soccer a little bit more. And baseball and hockey also, it's regional, it's climate, it's when you're born. And it is something you have to start young and you have to buy the equipment. Chess barrier to entry is like zero. I mean, it's very, very little. And so we see parts all over the world where you can have massively strong young contingent of players with a budget of $100 for thousands of kids, just get these chess sets. And resources now are much more available than ever for improving. And if state sponsorship thrown into the mix messes a lot of things up, because you have kids from India and Uzbekistan who might be becoming like millionaires at 19 and 20, tons of resources, and every top player in the country is plugged into making them better. And so there's this big rise. Whereas in the United States, you got, for example, Abhimanyu Mishra, Indian American kid. He became the youngest grandmaster ever at 12. I mean, they really tried to break that record. That's the thing in chess. None of these youngest ever records are accidents. The parents take them out of school like you got to try to break the record. Yeah, it's your life. He doesn't have a single major commercial sponsor in the United States. Why not? Maybe like you don't know. I don't know if it's a mix of they haven't been offered or it has to be either it hasn't been offered enough or they're tough to work with.

Why didn't chess.com get involved with them? So now you're hitting on the next point, which is the problem with the lack of commercial viability is the only profitable, even though we're a big company, we're very profitable. The only profitable company capable of sponsoring has no reason to do it because everyone's on our site. There's no reason. There's no marketing. It's kind of philanthropic at that point. And so we do have a few sponsorships. Some of them are more philanthropic. We invest in a lot of afterschool programs. We do all kinds of work and we have a scholastic site and we do the things that grow the game and give back. But on an individual sponsor letter level i don't really need chess.com's logo on your shoulder right like not in the same way right and so it's it's tricky like i've always been i've been telling the players and levy's heard me give this speech many times so forgive me levy but i'm like guys like i don't want to see chess.com on your arm i want to see fucking delta and american competing and amex and visa competing over here let me be your You partner, if you can invest in yourself five fucking seconds, I will go a mile towards you, meaning give a little bit of effort on social media, and we will invest in your team. We have the staff. We know how to do this stuff. We have helped build and support creators. This is our game, and it's very frustrating because, I mean, I'll just give you even more. We're debuting a film at Tribeca this week, which is a show called Grandmasters, which is our drive to survive for chess. We've been filming this documentary for two years, at the time of this recording, anyway. This is around Tribeca, so sorry for that. At the time of this recording, we are premiering a film at Tribeca. It's a three-episode miniseries, Drive to Survive. It was so difficult to get very few of the players to cooperate with this, even though they just don't understand that Drive to Survive didn't add crooked numbers to F1. It added zeros onto the industry in value, right? And they're very short-sighted also because not only are they short-sighted maybe because they're uncomfortable on media. They don't have as much experience with it. But also, back to the point about it being commercially out of whack, what is their reason? Many of the top players are actually getting very good high six and low seven-figure salaries for doing nothing. Because the amount of money going into the game from fake money, from benevolent billionaires, and governments that are out of whack makes the young Indian guys like, I hear you, chess.com, and Danny, you gave a good speech about how you want Delta and Amex, but I don't really need this, and I'm just going to keep playing chess. so we're always back to the square one of like how do i trick these guys into doing something

good for them yeah how do i trick these guys i have a creative agency yeah you sign certain

players to and then you just outsource all that yeah we need like a ca just for chess yeah yeah

or just like a marketing agency then you go like hey listen if you guys want to do it and you know they're going to build out all your socials and find things that are authentic to you yeah

like they would they would maybe but it's even hard when you show them the value i'm not going to name any players but i've had like one-on-one conversations like hey you sure you don't want to put this microphone on and talk for like 10 minutes and they're like no i respect it there's a purity to it yeah yeah but or like a sub stack or like some type of way they could just get their

ideas out like if they're uncomfortable talking no but i think edu's right that we you know we need we need the marketing agency to do the work for them yeah you just need to outsource what about

a world cup like i know that there's obviously international turnouts but like is there a version where it's like hey with the best five americans best five indians best five yeah we have we have the olympia it's every two years um even that it's hard to chess doesn't market itself well enough for that to be an event that people look forward to every year chess also has this like unique thing where even though it's a sport you play it and you follow it and it's part of your life and you play with your kids like it's it's tailor-made for like watching and knowing when everything is happening nobody watches or knows when anything is happening what is what is

the impetus for watching like we have to i think the thing about the world cup or the olympics is so interesting is that we'll watch sports that we don't care about simply because there's patriotism attached to it right so we'll watch curling and we really love america america's going up against canada and curling with chess you actually have an investment in the sport people love the sport now they know the characters maybe we just have to find a way where it's digestible on a tv you've done it i think we're on track and i think i mean you know well what is

the best way like what is the most digestible with cut downs actually yeah so well here's the

thing like uh the way it works now is i would imagine if if you take an entire pool of people that are going to you know watch the world championship which is our big thing or whatever uh my recap is going to drop for the first day and that's when 90 of the audience that didn't watch live is going to go oh fuck it's good i didn't even know this was happening yeah now they're going to tune in every single day live and also maybe more generally to catch the post why not live i just found out french open was going on some week or two ago it's on the tv every morning after i you know watch like you know whatever first take or like some sports highlights or or anything it's just there i mean i'm gonna tune in and i'm watching on mute that's the thing i'm gonna watch it on mute on the smart tv in the in the middle of the room i'll be like oh j aliassim is like playing sinner is playing djokovic is playing oh i see the score i can watch chess is like i don't know what the hell is going on because with it off no one's explaining anything the board is this big the player is this big yeah you got a room for the commentators and then like how long is this going to take you know is this going to take two hours three hours what's the

clock situation they get more time like but what is the most interesting part of the game like obviously it's not watching the guy's heads thinking that's not fun to watch yeah what is the most what i found was the most interesting part is like when you were doing these breakdowns it's it's alakine that alakine versus babaloo or something what was the guy's name boogaloo buff boogaloo buff yeah but it was specifically you doing this thing about like him sacrificing his queen and the way that you were speaking about it is he would get the pawns the other side he would get queen again he'd sacrifice it again and every time he'd like slowly bully him into this position and to me it felt like watching a crazy hand with of holdem yeah but the benefit is that he already

has the story exactly yeah and and yeah he's doing it having known the game yes

To your point, Popper really started to break through with the pocket cam and then back to the cut-down theory. They reverse-engineered the hands to focus on because they know who won, and they're telling a story of who makes it to the final table. We are preparing to do this. It's what we're trying to do with the Strive to Survive thing, the thing that we're premiering. So we are, I believe, on the precipice of finally figuring this out. And so in some ways, because I couldn't get the players to cooperate or we couldn't coordinate on what the best live broadcast was, I was like, I have this bickering, dysfunctional family. let me just bring the cameras in and make it a reality tv show right because instead of trying to fix the problem let's just so a lot of this show is super dramatic it's a lot it's like behind the scenes it's raw and it's arguments about this problem and it's because it was like well if you can't fix them join them right join the dysfunction so but i think the cut down and then i'll bring this up only because i know earlier you were saying you hated the clock the second most exciting thing about live chess is when people are under time pressure because when someone's making moves and you see so levy does a great job with the cut downs you know the story you find the highlights you focus on the sacrifice you tell you tell a great tale in live chess honestly the two most exciting elements are the two things off the board which is when someone is low on time and they're freaking out and now the eval bar so it's equal magnus makes a move because he was he was about to lose on time makes a move and the eval bar drops like oh shit he blundered is gukesh gonna see it is he gonna lose gukesh moves because he's only got two seconds eval bar goes up like fuck he missed it like yeah that that drama has really changed live chess and has helped us a lot so i think when people start seeing that on tv i'm hopeful that is going to be like people like man this is more exciting than we thought along with hopefully some of the cut down approach that

what's the quickest game you can play the quickest in theory is you can play like 30 seconds per player but that's online one minute per player how fast does that game go it's very fast a minute my my favorite is bullet on the computer i i you know you just boot up a game in like a minute and i've gotten to 3100 on chess.com in that and like 3000 in speed chess four hours of a game i can't

like i can't do it anymore one minute one minute per player one minute per player so you have one minute for all the total moves you're going to make in the entire game so you are predicting what that person is going to do if they don't do the thing that you predict they're going to do

you still have to make you have to adapt like media is there a way like forgive me I haven't seen all the major broadcasts, but is there a way to get an over-the-table and then AI or just a visual representation of all the possible moves?

That's what I was thinking with the GPS. I like that. I like that. It's like a chessboard. I don't know if you've seen that.

The funny thing we did, we were probably early, it was like five years ago at our Pro Chess League championship we held in San Francisco. Eye-tracking technology was like breaking through. And we hooked up the players with an eye tracker so that you could get like a heat map of where they're focused. You could see what they're trying to calculate. And we leaned into it as best we could. But the truth is the tech was kind of clunky at the time. And nothing feels weirder than like leaning into a storyline where you find out, oh, shit, the tracker was broken. And then like, you know, now you're like, ah, fuck, I'm not going to lean on this tail. But I do think the combination of like AI, like heart rate, dude's nervous, eye tracking, there are ways that I think the future is probably bright. Because what are we trying to do? We're trying to bring what's in a dude's head out.

Yeah.

and that's many ways why chess was built for for people like levy in the digital age because one of the things about the online presentation of the game yeah is now levy can say the thing he could never say in front of a person because it would be distracting them or rude so he's just like talking shit he's having fun he's singing a song he's making he's making jokes and so chess in some ways was like was kind of born for the streaming revolution because of all the things about it that you want to know that you haven't been able to know these guys can now open up and

talk so anyway yeah i just think it's an interesting like if i'm watching it live and assuming there's a clock and so there's now we're you know condensed on time if it's like okay here's the possible options he could play knowing the way he plays and then all of a sudden you see all the lights light up and you see the board light up and you say if you know his queen can go here here here and then showing the optimal moves that the queen can make versus the suboptimal and then having the commentator talk through all the possible moves oh i think he will just go pawn and it's like football it's right it's like that line of scrimmage right tony romo's there it's

like okay it's third and three you know they got you're probably gonna run the ball they're probably gonna run this sweet play and then you see them do it and everybody goes holy shit tony romo is

yeah yeah no you're right though half the content is them debating what they're gonna do not what they actually do it's them like trying to think and that's interesting for the casual like me

like i that's what i liked about how you were explaining that moment like i needed you to present to me why it was so interesting because i don't know how did you just scream the rook how do you put this into 30 seconds uh this i this i'm not sure i might be able to figure it out here when when you make it so when you're doing oh good you did you get it here just when you do a 30 second game are you getting to the end of the game are you getting to a checkmate or is it often you just run out of time

online both you can make enough moves theoretically because when you pre-move online you set a move to play automatically like could you just whoop my ass real quick

when we both do 30 seconds but i'll actually try to win okay yeah try to just get your pieces out

as fast as you can all right ready yeah you gotta hold on i'm gonna pause set it and i just go yeah you gotta make a move first and then post bug oh jesus i didn't even lose a second Okay Levy matches Pulls the bishop out Love the commentary Now Levy pulls out his knight This is interesting He's defending that pawn Schultz going for a four move checkmate Because he thinks I'm brain dead

No but I also have other things That I could do here you know

Don't lose one time though That would be Then I could be like I'd be Andrew Shultz in seven seconds What a YouTube video title You know what I'm saying Okay Alright levy opens the center and he's got tricks on putting pressure there right in the center this

is interesting position oh man he's good man he's good when i'm not playing with anybody that's helpful and he's good he's good he's good see a lot of people think it has to do with how smart

you are now that doesn't a lot of good chess players are morons that's true um okay is that right i had to right yeah that was actually that was really good uh you got 50 seconds though 50

seconds oh shit okay uh i'm gonna start getting some pieces moving yeah i gotta start getting

some pieces moving right another fun thing would be me and danny playing 30 second chess against each other that would be that will show you like that that would be the pace oh maybe we have to do that we can immediately after this because you're gonna just think and end up losing on time

I don't know why I did that what a fucking dumb move that was no you're

still good okay Jesus oh yeah that's tough you're thinking you're in check right there 91 I'm in check yeah check yeah you only have one legal move he

Fortier Rogue. I have one legal move. I can't go here. Oh, yeah.

Check. Yeah, you have one legal move. Oh, that's actually stopping what I wanted to do, which is annoying.

And I can't castle. No. Yeah, there you go.

But you're going to end up losing on time, yeah. But it's actually crazy because Danny and I looked at each other and we thought you we're going to go here and just keep running and I have this really sick checkmate and then it's over because your queen is cutting these squares and the knight is oh my god alright let me play yeah yeah yeah he's addicted I love it this is going to be good the thing is you know even us like

this is so much fun I have the speed the speed game really kind of opens the shop

and that's because you're not wrong that like the best chess is the best chess is not speed chess

it's not because you're I want you to sit there you want to play one minute

or three second I feel like one minute one minute do a minute do a minute okay that's at least it's not just gonna be physical speed chess is really because you're gonna end up just like smashing into like each other's hands and knocking over pieces and you really shouldn't knock over pieces in a tournament and then press the clock it's like bad etiquette it's rude but if you're playing online the speed is like unbelievable is there such a thing as a disrespectful move like it's illegal but all you've done is disrespectful yeah when I get tilted yeah when I get tilted online I play this I play the diamond opening I go boop boop boop boop you're gonna write that yeah four turns Why? Because I want to beat somebody four moves down. Like, basically, my opponent's going to get, like, four optimal moves, and I have this, and I'm still going to win because fuck you. And is that the best setup?

Yeah. You want something like that?

That's a great opening. If you can.

Controlling the center is the best.

Okay. Let's not. I don't want to give that to Danny. All right. This is going to be fun. I feel like Danny beats me in most exhibition bullet games we haven't played in a while, though. Danny, white move opens up in the middle.

Oh, Kiro Khan. This is unbelievable. Yeah, but this is Levy's. This is Levy's favorite stuff. And he captures a knight there. God! It's almost too fast.

I don't remember what I'm supposed to say. Oh, shit.

Levy's lost the line. What do we got? There we go. No, this is going to be just a big old psycho chess game

where we're leaning over the board. Oh, my goodness looking to

trade rooks it seems like

yeah

Levy doesn't go for it

Levy wants more

yep there we go fucking flying all over the board here I'm gonna come back oh Danny Danny's starting the old man starting to unwind this is this is the russian technique end game here we go oh my can i just trade you and win the king upon a knee we're gonna find out oh my god all right both kings are dead centers of war

so online i like when we agreed to the draw because we were you know sportsman we got sportsmanship i had 15 he had 12 seconds so he would he would just moved and tried i would and then and then at some point because there's a progress rule in chess you can't just like shuffle around for 50 turns if at 50 turns nobody pushed the pawn or captured anything

it's an auto draw and that's how you define progress yes so at some point i would have

tried to like you know go for this but the idea is that if he takes i take this pawn and then you have a yeah yeah but then like if he's here then this is just stupid i'm gonna like

end up losing how many of these calculations are happening a lot of it is it's like it's like

pattern recognition just because we played something very similar even if not exact before

so we're relying on on intuition right this is what levy goes oh i think i forgot what i was supposed to do actually uh i there was a really sick moment where i i saw a really crazy pattern danny could have played so when he went here and i took danny you can play c5 oh because because this is a it's like i have no legal moves so what do i like this would be a draw it would be stalemate right normally i have no but i have to push these pawns so he's gonna lose so i'm gonna end up giving him this and then i'm gonna end up giving him and then here if he takes me on passant like because he can take me diagonally he does this and now i have a legal move and now i'm gonna lose because my king's just trapped so when i was like holy shit that might actually happen i uh yeah but like i saw that i saw that in half a second and maybe i had a c5 you could have played

can be five yes yes i have a way out but i was like oh my god what did i just do

is this a different skill set this quick game like are there certain people who are built for

this game yeah i think the so the gap of the best players is still close meaning like someone who's like 1200 can't beat magnus even if they're a very good bullet player right you still have to be a top player yeah but there are people who are better at the faster time controls um and um yeah me i'm and and a lot of them like they they either play it more or you know they're just better on their feet the magnus likes to say that the faster time controls challenge more of the sporting elements which is like your nerves like your your you know how you deal with being surprised you know being surprised right emotions and things so i think that um the longer the time control obviously the higher quality the moves some people say to lower the time control especially if the chess is still good like more of the sporting elements come out interesting yeah

okay i also would have played the game much better on my phone i'm like so much more used to playing at the speed on my phone here i'm like i don't know what like i can't process what's happening

but on my phone i'm like oh easy i pre-move and things like that yeah yeah oh wow so here we go ready set oh shit what am i go ahead oh dan and i have played this uh plenty i'm i am mouse slipping which is where you not gonna happen not gonna happen okay all right okay there's a nice little tempo there with the night little double tempo you're right okay now this is gonna get really funky what in the world are we doing here oh my god danny how are you not just like lost i don't know immediately like what is this i should have already lost this game but i'm barely holding on now you're surviving let's go here what look at this position there is no chance protects the night wow oh my goodness oh wow i blundered

it's funny and bullet i'm like barely touch moving the piece oh wow

oh my god danny what what is this you're falling apart wow

oh queen

i can't move oh my god he got himself in trouble in the opening 987 was cool though i hit him with a really nice like when he brought his queen in it was very scary for my king but i had to think for like three seconds if i take this pawn our queens see each other and then my rook guards my queen and then my knight can take with check and then like so i have to think for and then this is almost too fast yeah oh yeah like for

mainstream for the like and again i'm your most casual consumer so like think of me as like the casual chess consumer i'm blown away watching it but i still need that i need that like posthumous reflection on the game i need you to show me like what move changed this and how'd you do it like Again, I'm just thinking of this, like, how do you get a casual to watch it? The speed is scintillating. Like, I can see watching this at a restaurant why people would run over and just be like, what the fuck? How are they thinking this fast? How are they calculating these things?

But even the end game of a 10-minute game can get to this level of speed, right? No, you're right, though. Indeed, this is almost too far.

How much time do we have? Can we increase to two minutes? Not to, like, keep throwing you at each other. I just want to find, like, the time where you guys have enough time to think, and then we get to kind of consume.

This sounds like the marketing agency. I'm all about this. Yeah, this is great. I thought you had stuff to do. I don't know when. I got nowhere else to go.

Charlamagne's on the way here. So once he comes here, I got to go to the other room. Do you need to switch any cams or anything like that? No, I brought my own. Just put them in there. And you put them in there so we're ready to go? All right. Well, guys, this has been Gotham Chess, Chess.com. Levy and Danny and the Billy. Thank you guys so much for being here. We've got one more game. We're doing it right now. Let's do it. Let's set it up. You prefer to be black side?

No, I just set it up because we were just kind of not thinking.

Is there a preference? Is there, like, an advantage to one another?

White is typically, white is better than black, like, 56% of the time. But it's close to equal, but white usually wins just a little more than black because you get the first move. Got it. So you can kind of set the tempo. And so white often is setting the tempo, choosing the structure, choosing the opening, and so. That's also how I play. like what i tried like with white i try to get what i want immediately fast yeah yeah okay all right so now we're two minutes we got we got a little bit of time to think here we go all right the schultz focus group of how to get chest televised right here i'm loving it all right he's got he's playing b3 this is like uh it's like non-standard you know yeah this is weird to develop your bishop and not your other pieces but danny's got very sophisticated like style of chess that he plays and it's it's actually kind of annoying like i was i was raised by old russians so i've got like a old school way that i play and correct me you can play quickly out of the opening because these lines are fairly memorized but once you get into the middle end game it yeah it starts to get you gotta calculate starts to get a little messy at that point um the further the game goes the more the more original the the moves are interesting yeah even here we could spend a little time on these decisions but i don't know how much time yeah because it's it's a tricky it's a tricky amount of okay so we're both in weird positions now that we don't know i'm just targeting his two pawns he knows that and so he has to play

something like this is where we need defending the road you need a you need a layman like me yeah that knows almost nothing so i can be the audience and then you need somebody that knows

everything i can i can commentate as i play and then you need a light up screen to show his queen can go here or here that's what i was saying the gps like showing lines yeah like the chess up board that i have when you put your finger on the on the piece the whole thing lights up like a lightsaber yeah and then you need to know like um bet 365 official betting partner does no one have a sponsored glove there's no it's crazy in chess there's no sponsor like primary watch sponsor which is um which is by far there should be like needed primary glasses sponsor like absurd you know i won't even name the brand levy wears because i know it don't you know yeah but it's uh but yeah i mean a fingerless glove with the logo on it like an over the hand

thing you can see every move it seems so obvious okay so i'm going to be asking you questions as you're doing it what can you and you're not going to divulge too much right no i mean i can like

i'm like expand you know i'm expanding on this side of the board you know danny's attacking my rook i slide it up he's you know he's doing this so he activates his rook and gets it on this side i'm up a lot on time so i have to make a decision like am i gonna go for like a crazy attack am i gonna just you know suffocate his Thank you.

pieces oh yeah i forgot that you were up a lot on time too you said that i think he almost hung his rook that would have been sick unfortunately not ideal for me i'm just trying to distract him sorry

so that's a defensive move yeah i'm trying to like go over here defense's pawn

i'll try like make some progress oh my god that's pretty annoying

oh what is happening my knight is my knight is wandering

in the desert it's not good yeah his knight is way back here it's it's just over completely undefended he's he's just busted yeah i'm gonna queen yeah okay it's hard to like

i can't commentate and yeah and i resign because i'm losing my rook to the new queen yeah and i'm

just down a rook but basically the way i would have commentated is that like i'm up a pawn so that's like better so i have to convert that now plus you know the whole time danny was down about 10 seconds which is huge huge so now the game is you know and and when you're live commentating with the headphones and the lights like you know i i try to be like very basic of what's going on the hardest challenge i commentated chess boxing you know ludwig the youtuber he did chess boxing like four years ago and the board broke so the 2d board broke so i had to commentate a 3d view to a live arena of what's going on and i would try to be like hey everybody like you see this pawn like that pawns you know is blocking a couple things oh like he moved the pawn like now i can do this and people are you don't fully get it but you get just enough that like your intensity also translates yeah that's the most important you need emotion you need to understand like oh he only has

10 seconds to react but you also need a layman yeah you do you need someone to explain it to like you're good at naturally understanding that like communicate to some who doesn't know but like yeah it's like you need somebody like me who's almost unaware so that the casual can come in and have it be explained and the person who's like kind of mid-level knows all of it but it's nice for a refresher like when i'm watching football like i know they're going to be running on two and second and two yeah yeah but it's nice to be like what are the options yeah of that

running play you know and then even being able to draw on the board like circle pieces and that's

one of the reasons why again i think that the digital screen has really helped bring that to life you see it but you're you're right i think you really need a layman even just to represent

what most the audience would want to ask yeah say and and like and be excited about it like there is kind of an interesting thing where you could get different people to kind of step into that position they have to be aware enough of how the pieces move like they probably need to know more than i know but they need to know little enough about strategy where you get to explain to them and you're not explaining it to someone who knows this shit already yeah because that becomes kind of redundant like you explaining to danny and these things it's like yeah we all know this kind of stuff all right guys just some quick context for this game i'm playing levy from gotham chess he is blindfolded and um i'm absolutely doing this all by myself i'm not getting any help from danny the guy who uh owns chess.com and who's also a absolutely phenomenal chess player again he is not helping me at all i do not have an earpiece in where he is you know telling me the moves this is this is just me i don't believe him okay intros let's let's get There we go, there we go, that's extra. Okay. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Flagrants. And right now we are sitting here with a blindfolded, kidnapped levy from Gotham Chess. And he has challenged me to a game of chess. Now, he is not the first professional athlete that has challenged me to, you know, something, assuming that I wouldn't be able to deliver on an absolutely immense task. and the last person that did it lost in historic fashion. I just want to point that out.

Thank you for calling me an athlete, by the way. This is a sport, dude. It is, but if you saw my stomach, you would not think it is a sport. I'm the embodiment of I can't do, so I teach.

Ah, fair, fair, fair, fair, fair. Well, for my victory, you're going to be one of the greatest athletes that's ever played chess. Thank you, thank you. Okay, so let's make this happen. I guess I'm white, so I will start. Yeah, we got to shake hands. Yes, yes.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Okay. Now we have to unpause his clock, so we have to hit the middle button, and we have to make sure his time starts running. All right. I will unpause the clock. Okay, so now my turn. Yep. White to move. He's scared. Okay. Andrew, please. Big move. Pawn to E4. Big move. Have you seen this opening before? Yeah, so far so good. Okay. I'm going to go D5. Scandinavian

oh man he's full of Scandinavian H5 your queen's gonna to come all the way up to h5 okay um all right schultz i think we got him yeah schultz is thinking about this one okay queen to h5 yeah he's trying to he's trying to win in four moves that's crazy pawn takes pawn pawn takes pawn okay pawn takes pawn black pawn to e4 e4 Did you press the clock? Okay, that's... Flagrant insiders are... That's cheating, that's cheating.

White bishop to c4, the white bishop on f1 up to c4. Okay.

Okay, he plays white bishop to c4. Clock? Damn, my sensory is... How do you... uh this is it was a good valiant effort i like it what does that mean i mean i see the threat i don't i see it up here okay let's go pawn to g6 attacking his queen whoa pawn to g6 attacking queen and what's your chest level like 450 500 500 yes okay schultz is eerily quiet on its own pod. Yeah, Shulz plays queen to E2. Classy. All right, knight F6. Let's develop. Oh, boy. Knight to F6.

Okay, now you're going to bring your knight out to C3. You're making a right knight on B1. Mark's got 500. I'm a little bit... Okay. let's go

Schultz plays knight to c3 that's a good move um queen d4 like right next to his bishop queen to d4 yeah right next to that dark square oh wow he knows the squares that's crazy now you're gonna put a pawn to b3 pawn on b2 up to b3 I have been trained at this in the mines since I was five. I guess that helps. Yeah, I used to not see sunlight. Schultz plays pawn to b3. b. b as in boy 3. Got it. Let's go... You know, you want to play the best move or the most aggressive one to get him scared? All right, let's go most aggressive. Bishop, g4. Bishop to G4.

Oh, wow. Oh, Levy. Your pawn on F2 is going to go up to F3, blocking the bishop's attack to the queen.

Oh, Levy, what are you doing? So it's plays pawn to F3. All right, pawn takes pawn.

Knight takes pawn. Your knight on G1 is going to F2.

Pawn takes pawn, so that's your E pawn. It's the only pawn that can take another one. Okay, pawn takes pawn. Schultz plays knight to f3, taking the pawn. Got it. I'll take the knight with my bishop. Okay, Levy. We've got to press my clock. I'll press. I'm going to lose on time. No, no, no. Takes knight. Yeah, it took his knight. And Schultz takes back with the queen. You got some... I'm impressed with Levy. I'm impressed with Levy. I've been waiting for you to do something stupid, and it's not happening. All right, knight c6, the other knight out to c6. Knight to c6. Yes, yes. How much time do I have left? You're at eight minutes. Schultz has seven points. c1 to b as in point two. You guys have a prediction market sponsor yet? Like, can we just, you can bet on this game now. Schultz plays bishop to b2. Schultz is annoying. me i was i wanted to win a lot faster uh let's go let's let's uh play bishop g7 bishop g7 yeah what the fuck it's most of chess it's just sitting there going what the fuck is long which means you put your king on e1 to c1 and then for the audience at home a door opened and i heard footsteps so the producers in the room i might i might be strangled soon i have really no idea i've been wearing the blindfold since i woke up this morning and got thrown in a car so

So Schultz is at seven minutes. It slings very well. I don't want to give you a hint, but I have some ideas. Give me something. I mean, you can castle.

That's what I was thinking.

I don't think a castle is a wrong move here. Castle which way? You move the king on E1 to C1, two squares. Yeah, I think the wrong castle. The one goes over. Now, Schultz, he long castles. Did he do it correctly? Yeah. No, I'm serious. I'm not trying to, like, shoot king on c1, rook on d1. King on c1, rook is on d1. Okay. I'm going to castle as well short side. So, this left. So, castle short side. Yeah, king to g8, rook to f8. All right, Andrew, I'm officially nervous. No. No, I'm officially nervous. Well, we're both there. okay levy castled short side so now you're going to play the knight on c3 up to d5 the knight on c3 is going to go to d as in dog five which is a discovered attack on the queen the bishop on b2 attacks the queen after you do that

this might be

Schultz plays knight to d5

the dumbest thing or

knight to d5 correct d as in dog holy shit has man played chess before? that's what I'm saying that's what I said

I have played I wouldn't say are you cheating?

no he's just out of bracket i've played i check your ass for legal reasons that is a joke that has been debunked and proven to be not serious wow all right um i kind of want to go for for glory here but i also want to play it safe all right i think i think i'm gonna have to play it safe i'm gonna go queen c5 queen c5 like diagonally back one side to the right one square queen c5 yeah pawn to d4 damn pawn up two squares to d4 i'm i'm impressed he played a lot as a kid i mean new yorkers just kind of know how to play chess which is smarter than everybody i thought maybe like fatherhood busy schedule we gotta get rid of this timer dude yeah the time is gonna kill you that's the only chance i have of winning at this point frankly yeah schultz here at five minutes what do you got i don't know yeah ponta d4 ponta d is in talk yesterday and i won in like seven moves this is i mean you could i mean i don't want to give too many hints no no more hints oh what are you crazy i need hints but that queen needs a little pressure i think yeah take his hint that wasn't a good hint take it has he lost some time yet no he's down two minutes like he has two minutes left he's at 429 okay to d4 pawn on d2 up to d4 attacking the queen can i schultz plays pawn to d4 i think that's good enough it's not he had better but thank you uh his finger's still on the piece though so i can take it back no no he pressed the clock right did i throw it queen d6 d queen like in front of his knight queen d6 yeah so now rook on h1 over to e1 the far rook move it to the center okay he plays rook e1 which one h1 to e1 man all right knight takes knight knight takes knight okay bishop takes knight knight b4 knight b4 bishop takes pawn on b7 your bishop on d5 takes the pawn on b7 attacking the rook

you see it yeah i said i don't know schultz oh man schultz plays rook to e7

He took my pawn. Correct. That wasn't the move. Queen takes rook. He played the wrong move.

He played the wrong move, but I said bishop takes rook. Just a fucking retarded move. Just an absolutely retarded move. Why did you do that? I don't know. I thought I saw something the second I did it. I was like, what the fuck was I thinking?

You want to take it back? No. Okay. Sorry, we're going to keep playing. Play bishop takes b7. bishop on d5 takes pawn on b7 all right schultz plays bishop b7 all right let's play um rook the one that's under attack to b8 rook a b8 targeting his bishop rook to b8 yeah i was gonna say the game was like really stressing me out but that rook move surprised me salz plays pawn to a3 so you just like gave me a rook and you're just back to playing like

all the best moves like that's what we're doing i just played the dumbest fucking move i could

imagine i he's under a thousand you're gonna blunder sometimes you know i i know but he's like okay let's play um pawn to c5 i was playing really well you were i was a little shaky in the beginning but then i felt like i you were playing pawn to c5 you were playing really well that knight jump into the middle was really impressive yeah it was a ballsy move it wasn't i think it was just the best move like he just straight up i was like what there's no way you play that move he takes knight with uh the pawn yeah yeah i'll take the his light squared bishop with my uh rook

light squared bishop the pawn on c5 with the b pawn b as in boy take the pawn on c5

nice takes the pawn at c5 with with the uh b b4 pound all right let's play uh pawn to a5

pawn to c6 move the pawn up one and attack the rook on to c6 Schultz plays pawn to c6

let's go rook to that's my move b8 slide it back one square to b8 yeah okay it's not over i thought it was over

it's only gonna get harder for me to see the board

because everything becomes non-standard the pattern is remembering where every piece is is not easy you sort of forget he's doing this blindfold yeah i didn't forget i have not forgotten how many of these could you do at the same time at the same time timed not probably three but like if i if it was quiet and i could just focus probably five or six wow but it would need to be quiet i can't probably like talk and okay i'm going uh king to b1 king to b1 all right pawn to a4 pawn to a4

pawn to d as in dog 5 pawn on d4 pawn to d5

pawn to d5 bishop takes bishop king takes bishop king takes bishop bishop takes bishop king takes bishop King takes bishop. I'll play queen e5 check. No. Queen e5 check. See, like, you don't quite remember. Like, am I just losing the queen in one move? Like, because all the shit is around it, but...

king to c1 king to c isn't king to charlie one schultz plays king to c1 yeah

how much time do we have don't worry about that you have three minutes for 40 seconds okay um Schultz is like a minute, some change. All right, let's go pawn to A3. Pawn, just push it. three pushing the pawn okay like queen to g3 queen to g3 try to offer a queen trade queen slide over one square to g3

let's just do a little trade no no no i don't want to Give me a little trade. Give me a little trade here. That's a fair trade, isn't it?

It is, it is. Let's go queen, B2 check.

Queen to B2 check. Queen, you play king to D2.

King to D2, yeah. Yeah. No trades.

rook b4 that's the far rook on the on b yeah b8 to b4 to b4

all right let's go going pawn to c7

Rook d4 check Rook d4 check

Queen to d3 You gotta block with your queen and give up the queen

Queen to d3 Rook takes Rook takes queen

King takes rook Six rook. I'm sorry, yeah. How much time?

You got plenty of time.

I got 19 seconds. Queen back to e5.

Queen to... To the center, e5.

To e5.

Yeah. Queen to e5. Yeah.

We're going to pawn a c4. Schultz plays pawn c4. This is a fucking mess. Queen takes c7, diagonally back, two squares.

Queen takes c7. Yep. And I'm going to put your time. Rook on d1 to a1.

Okay, going rook to a1, okay?

Rook to a1. Queen c5, up two squares. Queen c5. Andrew, just let me win. Jesus. What happened? oh you ran out of time yeah well should we should we just play it out no i i mean it'll probably take a few moves i'm gonna play with my rook he has um king d3 h2 g2 d5 c4 b3 rook a1 right and i have you know every piece on the board yes i will tell you actually what was what was by far the hardest so what i completely blanked is that my pawn is going down because early in the game your your pawn structure was like this from the from the beginning and you went here here and then this went here so i was like wait do you have an a pawn or not because i couldn't remember like what had happened so i was actually freaking out a little bit because i didn't want to like take a ghost pawn and what are the rules on that like are you allowed to ask if there's a piece somewhere really you really shouldn't so like you're supposed to shake his hand oh yes yes i was i was actually there was a moment i was replaying the whole game in my head Which I can still do. It's not that hard. But I was like, wait a minute. Is there a pawn there or not? And I just wanted to play it safe. What a fucking dumb move that I made. I don't know why you did that. You just forgot I could take the rook. Yeah, I don't know why you did that. Was that like you wanted me to look good and win? No. No? Like, damn, he's really struggling. First of all, I didn't think you were struggling. At some point, I couldn't. Well, here's the thing. You played so well in the beginning. i thought my beginning was a little weak and then i had a couple moves that were decent yeah the night jump was good i'll probably end up analyzing this like the game but you could have when you jumped in with the night and i retreated you could have started like capturing pieces in front of my

king and so you thought i was too defensive early on or i mean i straight up asked if you were

cheating i was like is this a bit like it's something like like i i because you know i went to university of florida and i played some kid and in the middle of the game i'm after outplaying him he starts like completely out playing me yeah and then i win and after he came up to me he's like yeah you know my friend was sitting in the audience he i had a vibrating stick in my shoe and he was telling me and then it broke oh and then that's why so these kids like straight up

built a cheating device and put it in his i mean how would a vibrating like thing tell you you just like morse code it

Really? Yeah, you could probably do a system. Two beeps is a pawn.

Can I tell you something that's so embarrassing? I was cheating and you still won. For real? We have a little special help. Should we have him come in? Yeah, bring the help in. Should we bring the help in? Should we bring the help in? Bring the help in! It's almost more embarrassing now. Unbelievable.

oh my god what dude i i'm so sorry but i'm sorry but not sorry because you fucking won anyway oh

my god so he said what was the move so i was right so so it's actually really interesting because like sometimes you would be commentating on the moves and he would be telling me the next move and i just couldn't hear him so i'd just kind of be like sitting there hoping that he would say it again oh and then so so there was one where he goes i think you said you said bishop takes b7 and for some reason i thought rook i don't know i was confused and that's why you said putting pressure on the rook oh no you said putting pressure on the queen no no no no that on that move you said you said attacking the rook because i said you said b7 attacking the rook and then you heard i just heard rook and i played it and the second i put it there like even i don't no shit about you i was like this is an aggressive move oh man you caught it so we've been bamboozled

and absolutely deceived well levy so i'm sitting there and so lucy comes in yeah because she doesn't know this was happening so she sits next to me and i'm like all right like and she's like oh my god it's gonna be hilarious you're gonna kill him so i purposely played a slow opening to start because i wanted you off the scent so queen h5 all this stuff right then we're just playing best engine moves yeah knight d5 i was like what the fuck he's playing perfect chess and then but you were playing all the best engine moves like lucy's right there i'm like levy's playing like fucking stockfish he's playing every best move d4 was stockfish after queen c5 queen c5 no so i was just trying to play like the second best because i was confident we were gonna win yeah so at bishop takes b7 is when i obviously led andrew astray by saying attack the rook he heard move the rook and then shit went crazy well you lost your rook right like Yeah, so obviously after the night B4, I think you were about to get in big trouble because bishop takes B7, I'm going to play A3, and your position's going to start to crumble.

It's so funny because I did it, and then you go, do you want to take that back? Yeah, I was like, what? It was almost like you're playing so well.

Untangling your headphones, finding the right remote, saying goodbye to your favorite shirt that hasn't fit in 10 years. Why are simple things sometimes so complicated? Thankfully, with Auto Owners, insurance doesn't have to be one of them. Auto Owners works with independent agents who live in your community and answer when you call, so you can worry about more important things, like finding a new favorite shirt. That's simple human sense.

Ask Behrman Insurance Agency in Navarre if Auto Owners make sense for you.

This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+.