Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Magnus Carlsen is Unmatched, Anal Bead Cheating, & Which Ethnicity is Best at Chess

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Yerrr good morning y'all - we have the absolute NYC Legend in the building Levy Rozman aka GothamChess. We're talking: - Flagrant ghosting Levy - The Hans Niemann cheating scandal - Best street game in New York - Different style from different cultures - The greats: Mikhail Tal, Alexander Alekhine & Bobby Fischer And we play a few games - PEACE! Timestamps: 0:00 Levy got ghosted by us :( 1:38 Sharing embarrassing stories 5:29 Obsessed with chess + Learning process 7:44 Teaching kids 9:24 Hans Niemann v Magnus Carlsen + Heel 16:53 Most viewed Chess match + ELO grind 22:13 Why is chess so special? Kasparov v Karpov 29:19 Magnus Carlsen = Big 1 + the Yips 34:53 Industry people, Resentment + Not monetizing properly 40:22 Becoming a GM 41:59 Chess origins 45:50 Getting recognized, Collabs + Little secret 49:05 Best NYC street game + Scrappy chess 52:03 Different cultural styles 56:37 Men v Women + More combative 1:01:24 Child prodigies + Spectrum 1:05:20 Weird, weird players 1:07:22 Mikhail Tal + Alexander Alekhine 1:10:17 Bobby Fischer 1:13:32 FIDE needs to improve 1:15:54 Cheating scandals 1:19:40 We are young inside 1:25:35 Chess.com dealing with cheaters + Collusion 1:31:22 Patriotism, Ukraine & China 1:35:53 Loss leader, No barrier + Commercial partnerships 1:45:33 Olympiad + Figuring out broadcast 1:53:38 Rozman v Schulz 1:57:22 Rozman v Rensch 2:01:46 Rozman v Rensch 2 2:05:25 Rozman v Rensch 3 2:11:22 Rozman Blindfold game v Schulz This episode is sponsored by Kalshi. This episode is sponsored by Sesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to Flagrins 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 think of that out of it. But today we are joined by an absolute legend in the chess community.

A legend in the YouTube community. This is Levy Rosman. Hey, yeah. Bram, bram, bram. We're very excited to have you here. Dude, I'm stoked. I'm stuck. I've been talking about you on the pod for a little bit now. Why did it take so?

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. How did we let this happen? No, no. But it's also kind of embarrassing, yeah, because I got ghost. Well, did it, was it red and then no, no, no, no, no. No, no. So, but that's how I kind of learned that you can't really, you can't really DM people on

Instagram to try to do collabs really. I've tried since then, not just you guys. I think people just don't check the request page. Oh, that's the main account page. If you hit me directly, I would have been in the tent. It's gone crazy. Not to, not too. 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've watched UFC for so long. And obviously, you know, I saw like so much of Andrews 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 cool. Yeah. It's super cool to be here.

And that was really. embarrassing for me. I have a really embarrassing story I could share here. Please. But I don't want to like sidetrack. No, we're not sidetracking. This is why you're you're kind of in the sphere of like the UFC. You've been on Ariel Hawani's show? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I once accidentally followed him for like a whole commute. Yeah. Doesn't Arrow live up in like Connecticut or something? Well, I don't, I don't know that. That's a very awkward. He was driving behind. No, no. So right before, I don't know if he remembers this because he'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 Connor. 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 see Ariel Hawaii. 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 Fidei,

because he's probably working there and I live there. His office is down there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 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 talk to him a little bit, and I think 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 a recommendations in the area, you know, we can get in touch on it. And I was like, why the fuck did I offer it? So now, whenever I have an awkward fan interaction, I'm like, hey, I've been there, done that.

And, 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 direction. 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, this is all part of the plan. You bring the crazy guy on the train. Just reliving cringe is just so beautiful. It's unreal. I was doing some, like, what's called, for this street fighter movie. So basically like, 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 a 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, Kitow, 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 going to show you guys, and then I'm just going to go hide somewhere. It's so painful. It's so painful. Because I'm not just making the sounds. I'm like acting like 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. Yeah, and like 50 is just like, you know, Raffin and the whole place go crazy and just try to like fit in. Here's my theory, all right? I'm just behind 50 cents. 50 cents performing on stage in Madison Square Garden. What do you do, right?

You can't just stand there, so you've got to kind of move a little. But now you're like, well, everyone's looking at me move like a dumb ass. 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 don't, I get it. If I had to be on stage behind a, 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.

Oh, brother, we're so stoked to have you here. like Mark has become obsessed with chess. Yeah. Because it's your fault. Sorry. You've got it. You'll have to handle some of the divorce of my wife. You'll have to like, hey.

Is it getting there? Oh my goodness. I mean, she'll 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 he's getting the bug, dude. I think you can, she'll 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? The beauty is endless. It fills the gaps. It's the water in the jar. Yeah. Like, it just fills in everything else.

You're just like, what do you do when you poop? I scroll, I scroll, yeah. But imagine you played a little blitz game. Oh, nothing better. Like two more. Yeah. And then two more. That's the problem.

Maybe you get hemorrhoids. That's, now we're talking. Now you're just, like, destroying some. guy in like a third world country just like you 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 student if you're not good at analyzing your own weaknesses yeah 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 it's the same thing like if you really enjoy something and you you want to get better at 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, yeah. So now I'm going to have another thing that I'm taking lessons at and I'm going to have to tell my wife.

They're like, you're going to 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 a new. You can teach your daughter too, though. That is true. And our pal Levy just wrote a little book on that. Ah. Yeah, we don't know. It wasn't, it wasn't the goal, but yeah, I mean...

No, I need to plug the book. Come on. Yeah, it's chess for babies, but... And that's you and your daughter in this case. There is a bonus link that's like, this is kind of for the parent that also wants to get into it. I mean, it's been my thing for, you know, I was in college here in New York. I went to Baruch. I went to Brook High School. Yeah, I saw that.

And 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 the college. I couldn't afford a real college, so I went to Baruch. And I was doing like a... dad's degree, and I started teaching chess while in college. So I basically got started teaching kids who were five and six years old, and if you can

convince them chess is important 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. Because chess is boring. I literally, 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. And people have documented every move of these games. And then you're doing like the play by play. And I text Mark and I'm just like, I don't know how, but I am mesmerized watching him explain what happened in these chess matches.

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 YouTube page and watch this match. It's what was it? What was it? It is the, it's called the most controversial.

The most notorious chess play. 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 in a match.

Bomb and complete failure. Printing money. But yeah, so I don't know why it's so interesting. And like, there's a lot of want to talk about. I want to talk about the Budplug controversy. I want to talk about like rise in 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 and I'm sure everybody,

where there's this Hans Neiman character. who somehow miraculously, you know, rises to the top of the chess world, beats Magnus. Magnus then said Magnus Carlson is the, you know, number one ever, I think, 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, you know, 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. What happens?

He just basically, you know, he goes into a spiel. It's called Explosive Hans Neiman 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 it was a, yeah, it was a whole thing. And he ended up losing. He ended up losing to Magnus.

Badly? Pretty badly. But like convincingly. But I think they waited. long because they wanted him to win. Because ultimately, if the guy who's accused of cheating wins and... It validates him. 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, speech 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. I'm like, this is, this is awesome. Like this is, this chess needs this shit.

That, 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 every, every, yeah. But this was a big one. This was like, I forget exactly. Go cash, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dingleran 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 selling, 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 is that. 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 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 other 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 atchus.com published that. It wasn't public then. So have other people. 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, I cheated. I'm really sorry. You know, I've never cheated over the board. One famous example, Chale Sondon, 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 day, 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, 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,

you're like, I don't want him there. I don't trust him. 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, but he doesn't seem like he's like, sorry for it.

But does he have? But does he have the level? Yeah, it seems like right now he's probably like a top 15, 20 player in the world. Oh. He got there. And in speech, that's probably top 10. 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, yeah. Or Floyd-esque. Like, he's talking shit. He's arrogant. He's just putting this energy into the game that I'm sure if I was a competitor and I've played 30 years. Like from the Soviet Union and I play 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, you watch wrestling at all, like WW. A little bit, but not nowhere near as much as the UFC. So like the heel character is almost notoriously defined by the heel because he cheats. Oh, okay. Right?

And the worst, the heel is the more beloved the baby faces, you know? So you need the heel to have a baby face. Like, I like Magnus Moore seeing him beat Hans. Yeah. in that tournament because I'm like, oh, wow. Even with everything against Magnus, he still prevailed. Even against all the allegations and the drama, he still achieved it. Like in WWE, the heel is the moneymaker.

And it's not the moneymaker 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 v. Goliath. We want to see the guy who can not possibly beat him. And 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, like, chess is, like, you cannot cheat. It is, like, it is your whole credibility. Quick update. I'm going to be out in L.A. 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 going to be at the Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Great Outdoors Fest, August 8th. So you can go grab tickets, any of those shows, if tickets are still available. Theandrewshoulds.com. All right, 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 saw 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 canceled comedyx.com. And then my tennis series, the all loveclub.com. The tennis is on July 25th. I'll see you guys there. The first one was fantastic. The second one's going to be even better. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do?

Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend, or try a bunch of new hobbies. Would you feel free to upgrade and listen ad-free? Don't worry, we get it. Every $20 ticket could win you $3,000 a month for life and supports life-saving cancer research at the Princess Margaret. Feel free to buy your payday for life ticket today. Raffle number 155-214. Please play responsibly. You guys know what the most viewed live chess match of all time is?

No. It's an Indonesian podcaster named Corbusier. Corbusier. Yeah. And it's the Dewee Kippus 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 I count won 27 games in a row. And just wouldn't happen. It's just a cheater. That night, a guy makes a post from Indonesia'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 now my dad is banned. And my dad is a local tournament champion.

Here's all the proof. He won some chess trophies. 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 chessmaster, one of the best players in Indonesia, and they had a price fund of like $20,000. Oh. This chess match was watched by 1.3 million people live on YouTube.

So it became his massive sporting event in Indonesia. And she won 3-0 because 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, you know. 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 going to get murdered.

And, like, I'm sure they all apologize to you. That did not happen. But now, 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. Like, we want to stay. 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 band. But whatever that account was, if it was the son, he probably cheated. And he did cheat, you know? So controversy sells 1.3 million life. 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, you know, When I lose to you, my might go down like 15 points. But the good thing, like, I can win it back. It's not a fatal blow. It's very different than, you know, if you lose a championship fight and the person pops.

Like, that's, you know, that's very different. In chess, you can run it back very fast. Yeah. Yeah, there's a thing like 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 are tallied? Because they're like, I can't risk going down and then 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 need to get there. Yeah. I think everybody, you could like, you can get to a thousand. You have to change a couple things, fine to and like 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. A hundred points. Yeah, you know, 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, you're like, I can't let this chick get into a thousand. I'll never be 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 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. Elo around the world is different. For example, a 1,500 in India is not a 1,500 from America.

Who's better? The 1,500 from India. Just more people playing? Yeah, way better. Another example. Before the chess boom six years ago, a 1,200 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 your games might be chaotic but they also might be completely

you just play a game you're like I didn't do anything wrong and I fucking lost right what the fuck yeah I was cheating and I lost yeah so EO is another fascinating thing

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, oh, 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, also being a, like, a person who did some boxing, did some judo, and, like, followed it for basically half my life, it compares directly to a one-on-one fight. Even the preparation for an opponent is exactly the same. They're 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 going to get tired? Well, for example, I don't want to get two topics. So let me just answer this first. It probably, like that is probably the best comparison that I could draw. It's to individual sport. And 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 you feel unbelievably dumb when you play Rook Takes Pond. You know, like, you're like nothing can bring that out of you. It's a mental warfare. It's like four hours of a physical sport but in your head and we know, we got demons up here and

like they really come out. It exposes all of your kind of worst habits. What was your question? The mental aspect, sorry, so the mental fatigue. You can track or you'll know when somebody will start to get tired? Yeah, easily. Easily. You can sort of analyze like, hey, this person in the third and fourth hour of the game is

less accurate. 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. So you play, wow, it is kind of like boxing, where it's like this guy's a counterpuncher, this guy, big swings. And then you have four or five that you're comfortable playing through,

but there's thousands of permutations, 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 ways that if you're smart, you can sort of, you can sort of find it. Now what people do is they play on Chessla.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? 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. 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? 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 a- 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? 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 duck 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, he advocates for one round. or 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. The champs would probably be different

if they had an opportunity. I think Habib maybe even said that too, which is like, or maybe Nate Diaz. Why don't we just have no rounds? It's just one round. And it becomes a different sport at West. Yeah, and then it's like, yeah, yeah, I guess that's a good point. Okay, sorry, I deferred to do.

No, no, you have a good point. This only changed like 30-ish years ago. So in 1984, there's a famous match, Kasparov, who's the go. He's like the Michael Jordan of chess. And then, you know, 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. Karpo 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, you know, Western, probably lives in New York, very, 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. 10 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 one-five. 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 postponed 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 remove 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, you know, play to a point. Okay, you need this. So we need the clock. We need some sort of restraint on. So who ends up winning the, the, the, the match or whatever you would call.

So, 1985, Kasparov beats Karpov. 1987, Kasparov beats Karpov. 1990 Kasparv 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.

By not close, you mean Kasparv always won. But it was like 51% to 49% in terms of ability. 50.3 to 49.7. Yeah. Wow. Sorry, go Mark. 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. Nobody quite knows why Magnus is so good.

It could be a mix of, like, photographic memory. So he remembers patterns and positions in games from decades ago. And also he just has a better intuition. You drop him in any chess position, give him a thousand chess positions. He'll find the best move in a thousand 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, oh, 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.

Would he beat you on the clock? would he beat you? A mix of both. Because I would be also afraid of him. I would change my place. You would play a little delicate game. Yeah, I'd be more afraid of, yeah. How much is that playing 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 it 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, I'm not. I'm

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 games. There's all this pressure. Yeah. And also, you know, 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. He's great, 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, like his generation, yeah, totally.

Like, definitely afraid of him. fold? Yeah, they break at some point. And how does that manifest on the board? Like, for someone who knows nothing about chess, like, what is a, what is a decision that they're making? Are they more defensive? Are they more?

Yeah, it's two things. So, you'll get into a long, long game against Magnus, fourth hour, fifth hour. The board is simplified, but he's known as an endgame 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 he has something there. He's going to get my pawn. He's going to get his knight to like this square.

Oh, no. What's amazing is like, I won't go for that. I'm going to 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 very. 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 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 11 years, and he's losing to, you know, the next generation. And it's going to happen.

I mean, Father's 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 Sheard rating right now for this tournament. Versus Wesley So. Now, this is the match. This is the next match. It's the specific match.

This is the next match. So they haven't been at 64%. He's still a favorite. I mean, he'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.

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 father. Everybody wants to get him involved 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 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, your social. you're starting to recognize patterns at the end game, as you said. I imagine if there's some young kid who's been studying one person that's the best person. So he's probably the most 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. Oh, that's interesting. They're framing it as he's playing poorly instead of these young guys are playing great. Yes, but that's,

still kind of 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 odds of winning this tournament are now like 10, 20%, he just roars back and wins the tournament. Is there like a thing that

happens? I've noticed this with stand-up, 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 fanboy around you or something like that? I've never met him. I have a very different and fascinating dynamic with successful people than a Magnus would have. Okay. 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 was the most random thing it was a clip of him and ilene 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 yeah tech conferences you know AI A lot of the tech folks, they sort of want to be adjacent. I get a lot of, 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. So the cool thing 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 going to, you know, the kids are going to watch, like, the Mr. B stuff, and the parents are going to watch CNN.

I don't know, like, Fox. They're not going to, and chess is not the same way. But I've seen people, I finished the collab with Magnus once, and I got into a taxi in France going to Charles de Gaul, and we're driving. And then the guy just turned around and 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, no, I'm from Tunisia. 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, yeah, that's kind of like 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. Well, yeah, better paid. Is there ever animosity from the chess world? They're like, oh, why does Levy get this and not me?

I don't. So I think there's a lot of behind closed doors talking about a person. And I kind of hear it. I sort of hear the murmurs and the rumors and the rumors. The answer to your question, the short answer is yes, absolutely. And not just me, there's content creators who are women and they get it much worse than, you know. The sisters. Yeah, the sisters. Yeah, they get a whole different side of things.

Yeah, these players don't like the fact that they have achieved the absolute top at this intellectual pursuit, you know, 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 like massive success. And that's, you know, 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 super. stars in India because they're world champ, their top five, top ten of the world, and it's cultural. It's not really the culture to be like, I... Usually it's a reflection of like someone's success and their financial standing. Yeah, and yeah, chess is... That's where the resentment kind of comes from. I will say it's probably similar stuff in comedy. It's slightly different. Chess is, and I've thought about this a lot, it's the only activity in the world where the top athletes hate the top creators. Like, imagine in basketball, if Steph Curry hated the professor.

It's just like, like, what? 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 that like, why is Stephen A. Smith making a lot of familiar or something like that. Well, 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. I have my educational platform. I'm smart about the way I do it beyond just being like the chess guy. Okay, I'm an entrepreneur. I have multiple businesses. I manage like 10, 15 people.

Talk your shit. Yeah. Talk your shit, bro. But that's like, that's what I'm always thinking like what's the next big project. I'll continue to make chess accessible. But I want to do big cool things. I want to do productions. I want to do a limited series like 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, it's 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, yeah, that's chess. It's weird, man. Competitively, the sport hasn't grown anywhere near it should. Right. 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. 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. those openings. I mean, I got the international master title at 22, and now it's getting broken at 10. 10-year-olds are, like, all right? The average 9-year-old today would be the world champion 100 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 access to information. You can play more games much more quickly. Yeah, imagine a 9-year-old kids already played like 10,000 speed games on Chell's dot com. Yeah. I'm playing kids on Shells.com, I'm losing. I go to their, like, I find their name. I'm like, born in 2006. Crazy. Crazy. What the fuck? So 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 Jordanara. Like he'll kill you. The thing it took for him to get reps. You know what I mean? 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 to a 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. But they had like no grandmasters before Anand, even though they invented chess, basically. They did. Yeah. So I wasn't there, but.

So yeah, 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. 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, 1500s, they changes a few rules. 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

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. 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 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 took a walk today to Starbucks.

I saw one person on the street because it was so early. And they're like, are you Gotham Chess? And I'm like, that's why like, that blows my mind. I was not born to be a celebrity, but I have like, I'm like, I've got five billion views on YouTube. What even is that number? Every shore you post is millions of views. Which is, but people love chess. And I can collab with a big streamer.

Like the past month, I did a lot of collabs with jinxie. Yeah. And, you know, you see the amount of like top of funnel people, new people watching chess every day. Yeah. Hundreds of thousands. And they just love it. They watch a historical video, video about AI, a video about two idiots playing chess. chess. And 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 seller 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 Patricia are smart, but I was like,

ooh, 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 peculiar thing that they'd be doing. I've never seen anybody bust out of chessboard at the seller. No, I've been doing it lately. You have? I love it. Me and Casey's from a even of implant. You really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys will be shocked. Like, I, I, 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 Italy. 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, like, 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. Yes. People are walking on the street every day. They're at the comedy seller. They're anywhere. They all play chess. Yeah.

But 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 in real life. Over the board. But you'd be shocked, though. I played a game with Nick Zonnenberg.

He's a chess kickboxing champion. Sure. We won gold for the United States. Let's go, Nick. Chess boxer. But I was playing, 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 that walked over. It was like, can I play? And like, it just became a thing. It's just like such a fun social like 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 tweeted. That's right. Tweeted it. Before he was like the ultra superstar that he is now. But he just went to Washington. I was like, I'm like, I'm like, it's raining. I doubt is this even real?

What's the best street game in New York City? Like four 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. But yeah, Washington Square Park, a lot of these content creators over the last few years will just go set up shop. One guy in particular, I think his name is Johnny.

He's in, like, everybody's... Vidias? Yeah, and a lot of them, you know, they've... Some of them, like, were... They're ex-convict. Some of them were, like, they were in rehab. And they found chess while in jail, or found chess while in rehab?

Chess in prisons, huge program. Huge. Massive. Okay, so when you're playing against these guys, 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 me. Yeah, no, it's just like they'll throw their... There's a different language to it almost. Yeah, and I have to kind of, you know, I'm experienced enough that, again, I compare it to martial arts. It's like a really scrappy person. Like a drunken master.

Did you watch... Yeah, yeah, exactly. Annula Augustus, that's a boxer, yeah. And how Rico fought Usoc. Yeah, Rico was unorthodox. Like, she was kind of like... And it was really successful. And he was Rob. I'm just going to say it now.

But, you know... Shout out Rico, man. That was really tough to see. 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 sort of carve it up. It's crazy. People were like, this was a mask era.

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 night, 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. But 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 a move and they don't know the move,

so they don't bite. And so then you'll cut back in. to them and lose the ball. You're worse and I'm playing worse because of that. It's like you play paddle with guys who come from different racquet sports disciplines and like they have immense skill so they can hit

shots but they aren't the shots they're supposed to hit. So you're out a 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 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. You notice a cultural difference? Like, if you play, like, a Brazilian guy versus, like, a Soviet guy or, you know, a Russian guy. Yeah, yeah, it's really, yeah. So, you said something really good. We weren't rolling, but can I quote you? Please.

You were like, chess is one of the few things that can make me racist. I think they should. They've got a lot of bets about that. Yeah, they should hide the flag on chess.com. Yeah, exactly. Like, you're playing chess. com is 2 a.m. You're getting beat by Bangladesh, you do.

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 because I lost. Wait until he gives you his Bobby Fisher Tink. 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 this in a tweet. It was an anti-Semitic tweet, but it's very funny. It was like, just the first line that says, Bobby Fisher, the greatest pattern recognizableer in history. Second line.

Also hated Jews. It's a rough time to be Jewish. I'm letting you know. Like, it's, yeah, no, it's... But you were saying the different cultures and how they play. There's 100% difference. Especially at, like, club level, amateur level, just like people who download the app and just, like, get playing.

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? Like, they don't take big risk. They won't open their king. You know, 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, like, no queen for, no danger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Filipino, Indonesian ballistic. Like, 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, your bishop gets walled. Yeah, yeah. And you're going to lose bishop.

You're like, God damn it, I just lost the bishop. Like, why am I? And you lose in like 20 moves. They just go out. They leave the king in the middle. They just bring the queen out, bring the bishop out. And 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. My geography is not that great. But close enough. Yes, they're relentless. India, very unpredictable because you have so many cultures, you have so many people, you have so many parts of it. So you get a lot of that, you get a lot of really aggressive, but then you also get very proper. They know their openings very well. They study.

So they'll, you know, the first five, ten moves, they play super, super well. And on and on, you know. And some people will trash talk. Like when I had students talk shit. I had students playing on Chelseacom back in the day. We were practicing an opening. Guy writes in like some foreign language, we translated it. 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 like weird 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 which is It's 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 the Ivy's? Yeah, 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 ivies, they'll pick these kind of like obscure like white people sports. And like it's just a catalyst to get into the iv. Like you're not going to become a professional squash player, but like you can kind of get in in that way. And chess works like that. But there's a chess team at the school or do they look at 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 a hundred. 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 in driving. Yeah. Yeah. Just let them drive. Yeah, yeah. 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 trying.

Yeah, but they're good with their necks. Yeah. Damn. If anything, they have an advantage, you know? Yeah, no. They've been doing what they're supposed to. So, chess has... It took an hour and make them uncomfortable.

It makes you pretty good. That normally goes way faster. He was just fascinated by the chess, you know? Chess World is not ready for Schultz jokes. Like, we're sort of... We're getting there. We're developing our thick skin. No, I mean, look, 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, you have something even more weird, women's titles. So Grandmaster is 2,500. For women, it's what? 2300.

It's called Women's Grandmaster. 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, The women's grandmaster. Oh, you're above Grandmaster.

Exactly. You're international master. 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. What's better than that? Grandmaster. What's the best? Well, world champion, but Grandmaster's the highest title. Isn't there a super grandmasters? Is there a woman that can beat you on the planet? Yeah, plenty.

I don't know There's a lot There's a lot The Queen of Chess was that Judy Polgar Yes so the Polgar sisters 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 Do we know that she wasn't cheating?

Yeah, we know But there's more places to hide the buzzer. Okay, geez, too. We're on the street here. We're on the street here. No, she was not cheating. Andrew Schultz said that. No joke.

No disrespect. No disrespect at all. No, I think it starts really young. And you have a daughter. Yes. And you're going to see this when, I don't know how old she is, but you're going to 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? 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. So you don't think it's any IQ thing. You know, already from that age, it's like 20 to one 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 two billion people. And if you're going to have 400 million people.

playing chess, you'll have a higher number. And the whole women's sports thing is like the number one ranked woman in the world is 2,560. And the number one ranked man is Magnus, who is 2850. Like 2560

would be top 400 or top 300 in the open category. So a lot of people sit at home and 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? I think it's something that needs to be phased out over five to 10 years. but I'm a dude. Like, it doesn't even, you know, it's got to be something in the women one.

Do they play a little different? Women's games are actually a lot more combative. There's a lot less safety and then draws and, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you mean by that? No, I could see it being, what do you mean? I can see it being more combative. That's all I just never admit they made the wrong move.

Like, I can see a lot. Good thing in chess, you don't even have to argue. It's like, all proven, you know, it's not subjective. They'll find a way. They'll find a way to argue. Fatherhood is going well. When can you discover that your child is prodigious at chess? Like as early as three and four.

Really? Yeah, because you're going to 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 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. Because do 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. It just breaks them.

Do you find 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? 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 representation of chess players? No, I think... Okay, certainly I'm an anomaly in the sense of, like, being

good enough at the game from an understanding perspective and being probably is like a one on the one to ten autism spectrum. Seriously. I think a lot of the strongest players in the world, particularly on the

men's side, are somewhat on the spectrum. Yes. In very different ways than there's people who have like Asperger's and there's a famous grandmaster from the Czech Republic whose name is David Navarra, extremely nice guys. very open with his struggles with autism and how he sort of lives his life now.

I think he's 30 years old. He can speak like 12 languages, obviously. You know, he can 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, 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 still kind of like don't know if there's as much autism or if it's very good at masks.

It doesn't feel like it hits them 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. But yeah, I guess it doesn't feel. Because Judith Polgar is by far the most normal top place.

I've, like, ever. Yeah, she's so nice. Hikaru seems like very sociable. Like, it doesn't seem super. Yes. Yes. Magnus got a little bit. Yeah, and even he, like, I think I've talked to him about this before, and I don't think he, I don't think he's ever gotten a test. He's definitely like, let's say, when you compare to Hikaru, maybe a little bit more, but still

very. He might just be Scandinavian. Yes. There's a version of that. Yeah. Right, like the meme of like, are you German or autistic? Yeah. And I have met plenty of Germans.

And I mean, in many ways, I love it because there's a version of. just like, no, no, no, this is a very bad idea? No, no, no, no, you will not do this. Yeah. Are there other types of, like, abilities that might be seen in the modern world as, like, a disability, but actually is 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 blind or, I'm not even sure, deaf, like, really, really successful player. It doesn't somehow increase anything from the sensory standpoint. 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 was playing a tournament in the New Yorker hotel, you know, as a kid, and I'm just walking. My mom would drop me off. I would 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, you know, he was just standing and, like, you know, I'm walking by. He's like, hey, nice to meet you. I just wipe 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, like, I'm, you know, I'm going to go. We used to play at the Marshall Chess Club with this one guy who was a war veteran. Yeah. 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, you know, he would insult you at the board.

You'd be eight years old. And he would just be, you know, and these people end up getting banned from the marshal. We used to have a Russian guy that used to hiss when he would, you know, blunder pieces. And he would just be like, like, like, fush, 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. Do you think there's anything about the game that causes these eccentric sort of characteristics to come out? It's probably just all mental, right? I think it's something you can, a lot of people with ADHD benefit from chess as well, because you can lock in on it. Supreme focus.

Yeah, but I'm sure it must trigger some stuff. And, you know, if you have any self-hate, or demons and you're already very angry. Do you think Chess contributed to Bobby Fisher's later sort of, you know, psychological issues? It must have, right? Like if the guy worked at the U.S. Postal Office his whole life, who knows 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 a one dude that's bald. He got like the hair in the back. He died like fairly, like 55 or something.

I forget his name. Was it Tal? Oh, yeah. This guy. Yeah, I think so. Oh, yeah, yeah, 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 Calesthetics like Russian Grandmaster. And he has famously just been on podcast being like, yeah, I don't really try in tournaments anymore

because I'm playing these kids that have no life. Like I'm straight up playing kids that have no social life, no girlfriend. Whereas, you know, when he was young, he'd social, drink, party, stay up until 3 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

composer 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. Alokine, the most notorious guy, you know, that video I made.

A story about Al-Qaeda. Fantastic video, by the way. Al-A-Kine 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 Soviet Union. He didn't agree with the whole, you know, there was like a Russian revolution. He left, got, you know, went to France. And then 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 got to 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? 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, 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 meat? Because that's how he died. Because he took too big of a bite of steak. They thought he was a spy in one part of this? Yeah, chess players used to be like way more interesting, man.

Oh, tell us more. This is fascinating. Yeah, this is like... He's telling the Bobby Fisher versus the whole Soviet Union. Like this is a game that was like 1973 maybe Can you give us a little Bobby Fisher lore? Yeah, Bobby Fisher

First of all he's born and raised in New York I taught a kid born on the same street as Fisher Yeah 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, right around the same era. There was several American grandmasters, but he was by far the best. Okay. And, you know, they wanted Soviet world champions. Like, 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, 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. So we're talking about millions today. Yeah. And he, it was in Iceland. He was playing Spaski. It was in Reykivik. I think like the day before the event, he was like, I'm not going. So to his detriment, he was also a little crazy. He was

like, they're going to plant things in my room. There's Soviets. I don't trust them. You know, how can one man take on this entire country? Yeah, behemoth, you know, and he ended up going. And then the story they've made movies about this. And I made a video about it. And he loses the first game to an 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, goes diagonal. And if you just close it, it can't come out. Yep, game over. Just like totally malfunctioned mentally, started saying the cameras are making too much noise.

The cameras are giving signals to my opponent. Whole thing. Threatened to leave Iceland and not continue the match. Returned, won the match. So he comes back, wins the next one. Like wins like six games in a row. Just blows him out. Yeah, yeah, blows him out. And wins the World Championship in 1972.

There's YouTube clips of him on talk shows with some of the, you know, the talk show hosts of the 70s. He's with Johnny Carson. He has, you know, there's, like, tile solving puzzle things where you have to, like, make a picture, and then you scramble it. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And he's like, I can solve this in three seconds. And he just, and he just solves it. You just practice that all day, just solving these, like, little pocket puzzles. Is that more or less the story? Yeah. Yeah. And there's tons of clips of him going on talk shows, and then he never, he never played another World Championship match. Ever again. Ever again. 1975, Karpov from the Soviet Union.

Karpov 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.

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 Fisher was playing and much better than it has been in many years, but it's still a disorganized mess. Yes. Like, it's very tricky for them to, it's no FIFA. 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 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 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 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. 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 down to number 50 in the world on the world rankings. There's a version of, there's a version where I like that.

Okay. 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. Four champions, boring is whatever.

But like, 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,

like almost like a Barry Bond style where it's like the greatest guy and then they realized like oh it actually was all a fugase yeah not unfortunately not I don't think for a world championship but there have been yeah there have been several

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? Where like now you have like humans using machines to cheat, 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 grandmaster from Latvia, I think, a couple of years ago who literally just like had a phone in a toilet stall. sitting looking at his phone. I mean, this is like ridiculous. A couple of years ago, Grandmaster, by the name of Schofchenko, 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 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 me. 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.

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 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 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 dot com can we get him back in yeah go grab him yeah go grab them 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 fisher that's crazy and searching for bobby fisher i remember this this one i thought we went to ps6 together we got to went to wagner middle school together but he surprised me today i played i played chess at both those schools ps6 ps9 i used to

kids like before COVID because I ran a program like I was in the chess club by the way at PS6 dude I'm just saying that's where he learned to blunderers work I'm just saying what a dumb move now if I didn't do that I don't know where we are in the episode like maybe you'll see we play a game but

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 1,200 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. Like, I've been playing since I was a kid and, like, I would say I'm a good chess player. Yeah. Hey, Danny. Hey, my boy. You know what's tough about like, 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. Yeah. I'm doing great. I'm not going to stop drinking. God for a bad. I stopped 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 have 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. Yeah, but you don't have any kids. You're not even married. I haven't changed the thing. I just kept doing what I've been with you're not a fully grown adult. Yeah, yeah. Once you pay for a wedding, no a sudden they go 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. God, that's a cat. He's eating donuts.

Don't bring that up. Can we edit that out miles? We were together all weekends. And what did I did? You ate mad sugar. No, I did not. You were eating trace leachis like no tomorrow. He was going on crazy. He was going to fuck up. This is ordered out Trace Lakeys. 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 Lace is that it could be soggy. Yeah. Like, it doesn't get worse. It gets better. 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 cillium husk. That's a new thing I'm on. Oh, yeah. It's, like, a fiber thing that helps with my, like, lipids in my heart. Yeah. I got to lower my heart.

LDL according to function. Why are you dressed like guys? Fuck you on top. No, we're not doing that. That's nothing you 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 are you mean? Hoochie daddy shorts? No, what you're talking about. No, see, this is what happens. Y'all get jealous of my bio wage. Because I look so young. You look like a fast-ass young man.

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 off and stuff. Tell me about Joe Husk or whatever. What is your Husk? I just don't understand this outfit. Co-Q-10. 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 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've got to get a little. little something in there. Not Trace Laches, 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, you're, you're, eggs are the shit, man. Eggs are fire.

Eggs are so far. 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. You have it. No, bad. You have high cholesterol. That's genetic, I don't even. You're fucking 25 with high cholesterol. No, you're actually right about that. High compared to what?

Calestral. You need it for your brain. That's one of the predictions of all Not the LDL, the bad one. No, you're right about this. See what I'm saying. One of my smartest friends said this. He's like, cholesterol's bullshit. Thank you.

Say that to all the people who died of fucking heart attack. You guys are fucking... Now, but that's not from cholesterol. They're dead. Oh, yeah, it's not from cholesterol. No, it's not. It's high cholesterol builds the fucking plaques and then it... No. No. Take your health advice from Andrew Shult. I'm 34.

Yeah. 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 his shit, but I'm healthy. It's a healthy pot right, yeah. Yeah. Look, we should drink more.

If you want to, if you want to, if you want to check your health the way that we do, function is, function is really just what gave me the confidence I was living. a great life. Yeah, all right. Before. And, you know, we got 160 plus lab tests a year. 365 bucks, a dollar a day, basically. And you're just going one time and you get all the

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that you're eight years younger than you're supposed to Exactly. You know what do you want me to be 20? How young 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 it called Flagrant $1.25 for a $25 credit.

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We don't know where we are in the episode. I know that we would already help 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.

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 an algorithm, a data approach to what we do. And we've been doing that and relying on that for a very long time. As the stakes have gone up and were faced with scandals and all kinds the 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? And you saw it with sports.

Even more than financial, if you have the whole nation riding on this. Oh, you're right. That's awesome true. I'm almost wondering if there's ever been a case where there's, like, let's say Magnus is playing like a champion from like a Gulf country that has much oil money. Could they pay someone in Magnus's team to be like,

hey, here's $200,000, here's a million dollars. What opening do you think you play? 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 stories. 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 they're happening? Tell us. Yeah, when I was eight years old. I'm not even joking. When I was like, we'll get into the more serious ones. Yeah, 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 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, you know. Entrepreneur. Yeah.

A good friend. You put 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 was an entrepreneur future business leader but the 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 fisher 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 Fisher can't catch him in the standing. So they would lose on purpose 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-emono thing is to kind of eliminate the idea that somebody could throw a game. Because in chess, it's almost impossible to detect someone's losing on purpose. Why is that?

Why is that? Just because 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 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.

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 detect sandbagging. 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 is an insulting update to get. I've had friends that I've got a notice on chess.com like, hey, we detect that you're sandbagging. 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 Levy just confessed to cheating on Flagrin. The culture of the game has been starved for money that 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 be being, me, the other guy who's already half a point ahead of you is going to win. 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, you know, we understand the mechanism. Yeah, I understand the mechanism. And it's, it's, 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. Still. Like, billionaires still just, they just want to fuck with Magnus. They just want to hang out with them. That's what I was asking about it about. And so you had 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, you know, 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, being 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 when I can't, but you can't. When I play the Ukrainians, I'm like, they're going to be tough. Like, they're going to be resilient. I 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 like that. Well, sometimes there's downtime in war. Playing a four hour game of chess. Like, you know what happened in it? I mean, the best. So there was a grand mass. who played for many years for for lavia but he's actually Ukrainian Igor Kovolenko and he straight up went to war wow he's a 2,700 very good player like perennial top 40 in the world 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 in holy shit yeah it's it's 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 going to, you know,

they're going to dominate. Look at them. No. Is it because Go takes up some of the talentful? 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. It's another like board strategy game, but it's super popular in China. Got it. Got it. Similar to chess? But chess became a state sponsored sport in China, 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, you know,

dozens of grandmasters in the top 50 in the world. Dingley Run became world champion. Hoie Fawn has been the best woman's player in the world since Judah Polgar. And she went to Oxford. And she went to Oxford. And so it was interesting. China really invested, they established or achieved their goal to some degree, and it hasn't sustained in a way worse. India, it's like, it's the birthplace of chess, had nothing, but now it's like,

it's going to be India's world and the rest of the chess players are living in it 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 know. Does America sponsor it in any way? You mean, so to work backwards, do you want one or two prodigies from a country or you want like a dominance, like a dynasty? I wouldn't even say dominance and dynasty. I would just say like a significant population of elite players. So they don't have to be the one or two, but like you would have a few hundred people that are competitive from that country. Yeah, yeah.

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, like that part of the world, no. It's got to be like really Europe, you know, Central Asia. What you're touching on 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, 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 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,

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 Kerski or some benevolent billionaire 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 Boat's 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. So 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? You guys are older than me. You've never seen Rounders? 30. Oh, you're young.

You've never seen Rounders? 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 Holdham 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. Doyle Brunson or whatever. And who's a master. I don't want to cut you up.

I thought I thought poker also blew up on TV when they started showing the cards. Well, so the way that they shot it. was good. And then they kind of like gulfified 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 a tricky one? And that's kind of what we're working on now. And Levi'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 got the third eight on the river. And he's going in, right? And so now you don't turn away. How do that with

chess? And we have been unable to do that with chess to some degree. We've been trying. I've invested in it. I've called it 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 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 best. 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 makes sense. And those moves make sense to like different percentages, right? 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 it's not. I was going to make a point about the previous point, but. Make it, make it. Yeah, 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.

This is NBA classic. Yeah, NBA tennis. I Google a player I've never heard of in tennis. Father is a hedge fund manager, billionaire, all of them. Or played and won like two grandsons. Right, yeah, more 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 fighting, but you also see it in like soccer a little bit more. And baseball and hockey also, it's regional, it's class. 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 like $100 for like 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 in Uzbekistan who might be becoming like millionaires in 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 know, you got, for example, Abimanyu Mishra, Indian American kid. He became the youngest grandmaster ever at 12. They, 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've 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 after school 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 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 tricky. Like I've always been telling the players and Levy's heard me give the speech many times. So forgive me, Levy. But I'm like, guys, like, I don't. 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 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. Like, this is our game

and it's very frustrating because I mean, I'll 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 and value, right? And they're very short-sighted also because not only the short-sighted, maybe because they're uncomfortable or 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 Amix. 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 treat these guys? Why not have a creative agency that you sign certain players to? And then you just outsource all that. Yeah, we need like a CAA just for chess. 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. I feel 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, are 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. Or like a substack or like some type of way they could just get their ideas out. Like if they're uncomfortable talking. Yeah, look, but I think Andrew's right that we, you know, we need the marketing agency to do the work for them to show them. Yeah, you just need an outsource. What about a World Cup? Like, I know that there's obviously international turnouts, but like, it's, Is there a version where it's like, hey, the best five Americans, best five Indians, best five

best. Yeah. We have the Olympia. It's every two years. 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 it with your kids.

Like, it's tailor made for like watching and knowing when everything is happening. Nobody watches or knows when anything is happening. What is the impetus for? watching. 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 version of TV? I think we're milled with cutdowns, actually. Yeah, so well, here's the thing. The way it works now is I would imagine if you take an entire pool of people that are going to watch the World Championship, which is our big thing or whatever,

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, I didn't even know this was happening. 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 going to tune in and I'm watching on mute. That's the thing. I'm going to watch it on mute on the smart TV in the middle of the room. I'll be like, oh, Ogea Aliassim is like playing, Sinner is playing, Jokovic is playing, oh, I see the score, I can watch. Chest 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? 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. What is the most – what I found was the most interesting part is like when you were doing these breakdowns, it's Alokine. That Alokine versus Babaloo or something. What was the guy's name? Bogalubov.

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 at the other side. He would get queened 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 of Holdham. But the benefit is that he already has the story. Exactly.

And he's doing it, having known the game. Yes, to your point, Oprah really started to break through with the pocket cam and then back to the countdown 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 this drive-to-surve 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 had 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 like behind the scenes. It's raw and its arguments about this problem. And it was like, well, if you can't fix them, join them, right? Join the dysfunction.

So, but I think the cutdown, 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 at the cutdowns, you know the story, you find the highlights, you focus on the sacrifice, 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 about to lose on time makes a move and the Eval bar drops like oh shit he blundered

is Gou Keshe going to see it is he going to lose Gou Keshe moves because he's only got two seconds Eval bar goes up like fuck he missed it like 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 total. My favorite is bullet on the computer. You know, you just boot up a game in like a minute. And I've gotten to 3,100 on chess. And like 3,000 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 a move. You have to adapt, like, yeah. Is there a way like, forgive me, I haven't seen, you know, all like the major broadcast, but is there a way to get an over the table and then, like, 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. I like that. So, like, funny thing we did, we were probably early this, like, five years ago at our pro chess league championship we held in San Francisco, So 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 weird 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, 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. And that's many ways why chess was built for people like Levy in the digital age, because one of the things about the online presentation of the game 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 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 ponies. Then it's like football. It's like that line of scrimmage right there.

Tony Romo's there. It's like, okay, it's third and three. You know, they got, you're probably going to run the ball. They're probably going to run this sweet play. And then you see them do it. And everybody goes, holy shit, Tony Romo is. Yeah. No, you're right. Half the content is them debating what they're going to do, not what they actually do.

It's then like trying to think of them. And that's interesting for the casual like me. Like, 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 scream the rook every time? Even though I'm moving the rook. How do you put this into 30 seconds?

This I'm not sure. I might be able to figure it out. When you make it, when you're doing, oh good, did you get it? Did you get it? 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 whip my ass real quick when we both do 30 seconds, but I'll actually try to win? Okay.

Yeah. Trying to just get your pieces out as fast you can. All right. Yeah, you got to, hold on. I'm going to pause. Set it. And I just go? Yeah, you got to make a move first.

And then post clock. Oh, Jesus. I didn't even lose a second. Okay. Levy matches. Pulls the bishop out. Love the commentary. Now, Levy pulls out of his knight.

This is interesting. He's defending that pawn. Schultz going for a four-move checkmate because he thinks I'm brain down. No, but I also have other things that I could do here, you know? I'll lose one time, though. That would be, then I could be like, I'd be Andrew Shilson's salmon. What a YouTube video title, you know what I'm saying? Okay.

All right. Levy opens the center and he's got tricks on putting pressure there right in the center. This is interesting positioning from Shultz. 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 not. That doesn't.

A lot of good chess players are morons. That's true. Okay. Is that all right? I had to, right? Yeah, yeah. That was actually... That was really good.

You got 50 seconds, though. 50 seconds. Oh, shit. Okay. But up, blah, blah, blah. I would just start getting some pieces moving. Yeah, I got to start getting some pieces moving, right? Another fun thing would be me and Danny playing

30 seconds just against each other 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 going to just think it end up losing on time that's what I don't know why did that what a fucking dumb move that was no you're still good

okay Jesus oh yeah that's tough you're in check right there 91 I'm in check yeah check yeah you only have one legal move he'd forks your rope I have one legal move right I can't go here

Yeah, you have one legal life. Oh, that's actually stopping what I wanted to do, which is annoying. And I can't castle. No. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, okay. 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 were going to go here, just keep running. And I had this really sick checkmate. And then it's over. Because your queen is cutting these squares on the night. is, that one would be hard. All right. All right. Let me play. Yeah, yeah. He's addicted. I love it. This is going to be good.

The thing is, you know, even us, like, I, uh, I have a speed, the speed game really kind of open. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's, because you're not wrong that, like, the best chess is, the best chess is not, because you're, I want you to sit there and think of one minute or three second, I feel like one minute. One minute, do a minute. Do a minute. Okay, okay. That's at least we, it's not just going to be physical speed chess is really, because you're going to end up just like, like smashing into each other's hands and knocking over pieces.

You really shouldn't knock over pieces in a tournament and then press the clock. It's like bad etiquette. But if you're playing online, the speed is 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 online, I play this, I play the diamond opening. I go, boop, boop, boop, boop.

You're right 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 And is that the best setup? You want something like that? That's a great opening. If you can, controlling the center is the best.

Okay, let's... That's not... I don't want to give that today. All right, this is going to be... I feel like Danny beats me in most exhibition... A bullet game we haven't played in a while, though. This is... White Tmov opens up in the middle.

A little Carol Con... This is unbelievable. Yeah, but this is Levy's. This is Levy's favorite stuff. And he captures a night there. God. It's almost too fast. Okay.

I don't remember what I'm supposed to have. 10 seconds. Levy's lost the line. What are we got? Here we go. Okay. No, this is going to be just a big old, a big old psycho.

Csco chess game. We're leaning over the board. Oh, my goodness. Looking at 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 going to come back. Oh, Danny. Danny starting the old man. Starting to unwind. This is the Russian technique end game. Here we go. Oh, my. Can I just trade you and win the king upon a new?

We're going to find out. Oh, my God. All right. Both kings are dead center of war. Draw! Draw! That's a great game. Oh, God.

That was a great game. So, so tell me, tell me, tell me. So online, like, when we agreed to the draw, because we were, you know, sportsmen, we got sportsmanship. I had 15, he had 12 seconds. So he would have just moved and tried to clap. 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. Yeah. 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 run. Yeah, but then like if he's here, then this is just stupid. I'm going to like end up losing. How many of these calculations are happening?

A lot of it is like pattern recognition just because we played something very similar, even if not exact before. So we're relying on intuition, right? This is what Levy goes, oh, I think I forgot what I was supposed to do. Actually, there was a really sick moment where I saw a really crazy pattern Danny could have played. So when he went here and I took, Danny, you can play C5. Oh, and amazing. 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 going to lose. So I'm going to end up giving him this. And then I'm going to end up giving him.

And then here, if he takes me on person, like, because he can take me diagonally, he does this. And now I have a legal move. And now I'm going to lose. Because my king's just trapped. So when I was like, holy shit, that might actually happen. I, yeah. But like, I saw that.

I saw that in half a second. And maybe I had a solution. You could have played King B5. Yes. Yes. I have a way out. But I was like, oh my God, what did I just do? Again, again, again, again.

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 1,200 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.

And a lot of them, like 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, you know, how you deal with being surprised, you know, being surprised, right? Emotions and things. So I think that the longer the time control, obviously, the higher quality of the moves, some people say the lower the time control, especially if the chess is still good, like more of the sporting elements come out. Interesting. 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.

You can also pre-move and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. So here we go. Ready set. Oh, shit. Go ahead. Oh, Dan, and I have played this plenty. I am now slipping, which is where you. Not going to happen.

Not going to happen. Okay. right okay there's a nice little tempo there with the night little double tempo you're right okay now this is going to 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 now you're surviving let's go here what look at this position

there is no fucking chance protects the night wow Oh my goodness. I blundered. It's funny, and bullet, I'm like barely touch moving the piece. Oh, wow. Oh, my God, Danny.

What is this? You're falling apart. Wow. Queen? Wow. I can't move, I'll get that. Oh, my God. He got himself in trouble in the opening.

Ninth eight seven was cool, though. Yeah, yeah. I hit him with a really, 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 queen sees each other, and then my root guards my queen, and then my knight can take with check. And then like, so I had to think for, and then. This is almost too fast.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like for mainstream. 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 do you do it? 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 like, what the fuck? How are they thinking this fast? How they calculate these things? But even the end game of a 10 minute game can get to this level of speed, right? No, 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. 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 it's like the yeah that's all right I'm all about this yeah I thought I thought you had stuff to do I don't know when I got nowhere else to go

I got no one 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 him in there and you put him in there so we're ready to go all right well uh guys this has been uh gotham chess chess jess dot com let me and Danny the billy thank you guys so much for being here we're We've got one more game. We're doing it right now. 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? 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 with white, I try to get what I want. Immediately. Fast, yeah. Yeah. Okay, all right. So now we're at two minutes.

We got a little bit of time to think. Here we go. All right. The Schultz focus group of how to get chess televised right here. I'm loving it. All right, he's got, he's playing B3. This is like, 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 actually kind of annoying. I was raised by old Russians, so I've got like the old school way that I play. Correct me, you can play quickly out of the opening because these lines are fairly memorized. But once you get into the middle and game, yeah, it starts to get... You've got to calculate. Starts to get a little messy at that point. The further the game goes, the more original the...

The moves are. The moves are. Yeah. Even here, we could spend... a little time on these decisions, but I don't know how much time is that. Yeah, because 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 has to play something like... So this is where we need... Defending the road. You need a layman like me that knows almost nothing so I can

be the audience and then you need somebody that knows everything. I can commentate as I play. Then you need a light up screen to show his queen can go here or here. That's what I was having a GPS, like the different lines. Like the chess up board that I have, when you put your finger on the piece, the whole thing lights up. Yeah, yeah, 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, which is by far the craziest. There should be, like, need it. It's absurd. It's absurd. 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 you 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 i can i'm like i'm expanding on this side of the board you know danny's attacking my rook i slide it up 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 going to go for like a crazy attack? Am I going to just, you know, suffocate his pieces?

I forgot that you were up a lot on time. You said that. See, he almost harmed his rook. That would have been sick. Oh, unfortunately. Not ideal for me. Jones is trying to distract him. Sorry.

So that's a defensive move. Yeah, I'm trying to, like, go over here. Defense is pawn. Try, like, make some progress. Oh, my God, that's pretty annoying. What is happening? My night is wandering. Put some in check.

Wandering in the desert. It's not good. Yeah, his night is way back here. It's just over. Completely undefended. He's just busted. Yeah. I'm going to queen.

Oh, wow. It's hard to, like, I can't commentate. 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 upon 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. And when you're live commentating with the headphones and the lights, like, you know, I try to be like very basic of what's going on. The hardest challenge I commentated chess boxing. You know Ludwig, the YouTuber? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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, everybody, like you see this pond, like that pawns you know, was blocking a couple of things. Oh, like he moved the pawn. Like, now I can do this. And people are just, you don't fully get it.

But you get just enough that like this. But 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 who 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 second and two. But it's nice to be like, what are the options of that running play? And then even being able to draw on the board and like circle pieces.

And that's one of the reasons why, again, I think the digital screen has really helped bring that to life. You see it. But you're right. I think you really need a layman. even just to represent what most the audience would want to ask and say. 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.

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. 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 I'm absolutely doing this all by myself.

I'm not getting any help from Danny, the guy who owns Chess.com, and who's also an absolutely phenomenal chess player. Again, he is not helping me at all. I do not have an earpiece in where he is telling me the moves. This is just me. I don't believe him. Okay, okay. Intros.

Let's get on. 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. 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. Fair, fair, fair, fair. Well, for my victory, you're going to be one of the greatest athletes that ever played chess. Thank you. Okay, so let's make this happen.

I guess I'm white, so I will start. Yeah, we got to shake out. Yes, 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.

Pond 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 going to come all the way up to H5. Okay. All right, Shultz. I think we got him. Shultz is thinking about this one. Okay, queen to H5. Yeah, he's trying to win in four moves.

That's crazy. Pond takes pawn. Pond takes pawn. Okay, pawn takes pawn. Black Pond to E4. Did you press the clock? I'm okay That's flagrant insiders are

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 know I This is a good Valiant effort I like it What does that be 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. Pond to G6 attacking queen. And what's your chest level? Like 450, 500. 500?

Yeah, something like that. Schultz is eerily quiet on its own pod. Yeah. Shultz plays queen to E2. Classy. All right, Knight F6. Let's develop. Oh, boy.

Knight to F6. F. Six. Okay, now you're going to bring your knight out to C3. I'm not going to be one. So, 500, I'm a little bit... Okay. Let's go.

Shultz plays Knight 2C3. That's a good move. Queen D4, like right next to his bishop. Queen to D4. Yeah, right next to Dark Square. Yeah. Oh, wow.

He knows of squares. That's crazy. Now you're going to play pawn to B3. Pond 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. Shills plays pawn to B3. B.

B as in Boi 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 2 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. So it's plays pawn to F3. All right, takes pawn. Pike takes pawn. Your knight on G1.

Pawn takes pawn, so that's your E-Pon. That's the only pawn that can take another one. Okay. Pond takes pawn. Shultz plays knight to F3, taking the pawn. Got it. I'll take the knight with my bishop. We've got to press my clock.

I'm going to lose on time. Takes night. Yeah, it took his night. And Shultz takes back with the queen. You got some... I'm impressed at Levy. I'm going to do something stupid, and it's not happening. All right, Knight C6, the other night out to C6.

Night 2C6. Yes, yes. How much time do I have left? You're at eight minutes. Schultz has something important. C1 to B isn't quite two. You guys have a prediction market sponsor yet? Like, can we just, you can get out on this game now?

Shultz plays Bishop 2 B2. Schultz is annoying me. I wanted to win a lot faster. Let's go. Let's play Bishop G7 Bishop G7 Yeah

What the fuck is Most of chess It's just sitting there going What the fuck is? 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

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 the car, so... So Schultz is at seven minutes. It's... It's slinged 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's a wrong move here. Castle, which way? You move the King on E1 to C1. Two squares.

Yeah. I think the long 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, King on C1, rook on D1. The king's on C1, Rook on D1. Okay. I'm going to castle as well, Shortside.

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. Now you're going to plead my clock is present.

on C3 up to D5 The knight on C3 is going to go to D as a dog 5 Which is a discovered attack on the queen The bishop on B2 attacks the queen after you do that This might be Shultz plays knight to D5

The dumbest thing? Night to D5 Correct D is in dog Holy shit Has been 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. Can I check your ass? For legal reasons, that is a joke. That has been debunked and proven to be not serious. Wow.

All right. I kind of want to go for glory here, but I also want to play it safe. All right. I think I'm going to have to play it safe. I'm going to go Queen C5. Queen C5, like diagonally back one side to the right, one square. Queen C5. Yeah.

Pond to D4. Damn. I'm pulling up two squares to D4. I'm impressed. He played a lot as a kid. I mean, New Yorkers just kind of know how to play chess. We're smarter than everybody. I thought maybe like fatherhood, busy schedule.

We've got to get rid of this timer, dude. Yeah, the time is going to kill you. The only chance I have of winning at this point, frankly. Yeah, Schultz here, five minutes. What do you got? I don't know. Yeah, pawned to D4. Pondid D is in talk for.

I remember these 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 more hints. Oh, fuck him. 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 on time yet? No. He's down two minutes.

Like, he has two minutes left. He's at 429, though. Okay. To D4. Pauna D2, up to D4. attacking the queen can I Shultz plays pawn to D4

I think that's good enough it's not he had better but thank you his finger's still on the piece though so I can take it back no he pressed the clock already did I throw Queen D6

D6 in front of his knight Queen D6 yeah so now a rug on age 1 over to E1 the far rook and the corner move it to the center here at 620 or g h1 to e1 okay he plays rook e1 which one h1 e1 man all right knight takes night night night takes night okay bishop takes night

night b4 night b4 bishop takes pawn on b7 your bishop on d5 takes the pawn on b7 attacking the rook You see it? Yeah. I say, I don't know if Schultz sees it. Schultz plays Rook to E7. He took my palm? Correct. That wasn't the move.

Queen takes rook? He played the wrong move. He played the wrong move. He played the wrong move. I said, Bishop, think. 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? That was. want to take it back no okay oh sorry we're gonna keep playing play bishop takes b7 bishop on d5 takes pawn on b7 all right Schultz plays bishop b7 yeah let's play um the one that's under attack to b8 rick a b8 targeting his bishop rook to b8 yeah i was gonna say the the game was like really stressing me out but that rook move surprise me soles 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. He's under a thousand. You're going to blunder sometimes, you know? I know. But he's like, okay, let's play pawn to C5.

I was playing really well too. 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 night jump into the.

the middle was really impressive. Yeah, it was a ballsy move. I think it was just the best move. Like, he just straight-out, I was like, what? There's no way you play that move. He takes night with the pawn? Yeah. Yeah, I'll take the, his light squared bishop with my rook. Light-squared bishop.

Take the pawn on C-5 with the B-Pond. B as in boy. Take the pawn on C-5. Nice. Takes the pawn at C-5. With? With the B-B-B-4-down. All right, let's play pawn to A-5. Pond eight

Six move the bottom Wanted to attack the rook Pond to C6 Shultz plays Pond to C6 Let's go Rook To

Buh That's my move B8 Slide it back One square To B8 Yeah Okay

It's not over I thought it was 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 blindfoldness. 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 it was quiet and I could just focus

probably five or six. Wow. But he would need to be quiet. I can't probably like talk. Okay, I'm going. King to B1. King. to B1.

All right, pawn to A4. Pond to A4. Pawn to D is a dog five. Pond on T4 or up to T5. Pond to D5. Bishop takes Bishop. King takes Bishop. King takes Bishop.

Cross the board. Bishop takes Bishop. King takes Bishop. King takes Bishop. King takes Bishop. I'll play Queen E5 check Queen

E5 check See like you don't quite remember I'm just losing the queen in one move Like because all this shit is around it But King to C one King to C is in there King to Charlie won

Shultz plays King to C1 Yeah How much time do we have? Don't worry about that time You have three minutes For 40 seconds Okay Um

Shultz is like a minute Some change All right, let's go pawn to A3. Just push it. A3. Pond. Like queen to G3. Queen to G3.

Try to offer a queen trade. Queen slide over one square to G3. She'll play as queen to G3. Just do a little trade. No, no, I don't want to. A little trade. 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, and you play King to D2. Yeah. Yeah. No trades.

B4. That's the far rook on B8 to B4. To B4. All right, let's go. On Ponda C7. Excellent. Rook D4 check. Rook.

Two squares to the left. You got to block with your queen and give up the queen. Queen to D3. Queen to D3. Rook takes. Rook takes queen. King takes rook. How much time?

You got plenty of time. I got 19 seconds. Clean back to E5. Queen to the center. E5. E5. Yeah. Queen to E5.

you. We're going to pawn a C4. Shills 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. And we're going to Rook on D1 to A1. Okay, going Rook to A1. Okay. Mm-hmm. Rook to A1. Queen C-5, up two squares. Queen C-5.

Andrew, just let me win. Jesus. What happened? Oh, you ran out of time? Well, should we just play it out? No, I mean, it'll probably take a few moves. I'm going to play with my rook. He has King D3, H2G2, D5, C4, B3, Rook A1, right?

And I have... You know every piece on the board? Yes, I will tell you, actually, what was by far the hardest. So what I completely blanked is that my pawn is going down because early in the game, your pawn structure was like this 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 what had happened. So I was actually freaking out a little bit, because I didn't want to like take a ghost pawn and look... But what are the rules on that? Like, are you allowed to ask if there's a piece somewhere?

Really, you really shouldn't. Awesome. You're supposed to shake his hand. Oh, yes. I was actually... Holy moly. There was a moment I was replaying the whole game in my head, which I can still do. Like, it's not that hard. But, like, I was like, wait a minute, is there a pun there or not? And I just wanted to play it safe.

What a fucking dumb move that I made. That was, I don't know why you did. That was, 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. Like, damn, he's really struggling. Like, maybe I, 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. So you thought I was too defensive early on? I mean, I straight up asked if you were cheating. I was like, is this a bit? Like, it's something like, like I, because you know, I went to University of Florida and I played some kid. And in the middle of the game, after outplaying him, he starts like completely outplaying me.

And then I win. And after he came up to me, he's like, yeah, you know, my friend was sitting in the audience. I had a vibrating stick in my shoe. And he was telling me moves. 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 side.

I mean, how would a vibrating, like, thing tell you? You'd just, like, morse-coated. 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?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a little special help. Should we have them 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.

Oh, we go. Oh, my God. What? Bro. I'm so sorry, but not sorry because you fucking won anyway. Oh, my God. So he said, what was the movie? So I was right.

You were right. You were right. You were right. You're right. So it's actually really interesting because 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.

Oh, shit. So there was one where he goes, I think you said, you said bishop. She takes B7. And for some reason I thought rook, I don't know. I was confused. And that's why I made that. Putting pressure on the rook. Oh, no.

You said putting pressure on the queen. No, no, no. On that move, you said attacking the rook. Because I said, this shit takes B7 attacking the Rook. And then you heard it played Rook takes Z7. I don't know. I just heard Rook and I played it. And the second I put it there, like, even I don't know shit about Chess, I was like, this is a aggressive move.

Oh, man. You clocked it. So we've been bamboozled and absolutely deceived. Well, Levy, so I'm sitting there. And so Lucy comes in. Because she doesn't know this was happening. So she sits next to me and I'm like, all right. And she's like, oh, my God, it's going to be hilarious.

You're going to kill him. So I purposely played a slow opening to start. Because I wanted you off the cent. 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 week

because I was confident we were going to 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, you said, yeah, every takes it. So obviously after night before,

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? I was like, well. It was almost like, you're like, you're playing so well.