Camp Gagnon - GothamChess on Aliens, Serial Killers & Playing a Ghost

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Levy Rozman (  @GothamChess  ) joins us today to uncover the darkest, weirdest, and most unhinged stories from the history of chess. In this episode, we dive into psychological warfare on the board, matches against literal ghosts, an axe murder over a game in Antarctica, and the bizarre international chess president who claimed he was abducted by aliens. From secret hypnotists and yogic battles to prison rivalries, notorious killers, the mechanical Turk facing Napoleon, and Aleister Crowley’s occult obsession with the game, we explore how a simple 64-square board has pushed minds to the absolute edge. Welcome to Camp! 🏕️ Shoutout to our sponsors: MOD, GLD and Mars Men -Visit https://MOD.com for a free consultation, plus 10% off your first order and free shipping with promo code GAGNON. -Visit https://mengotomars.com and get 50% Off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, and 3 Free Gifts with Code 'CAMP' at Checkout. -New Customers get 40% OFF With Promo-Code: "CAMP" When They Visit: https://GLD.com Want the even WILDER theories? SIGN UP TO THE PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/CampGagnon 👕🧢 Shop CAMP Merch: https://camp-rd.com/collections/ufo 🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets: https://markgagnonlive.com 🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.com Timestamps: 00:00 - Gotham Chess 04:30 - The Morphy Number 09:26 - Elon Musk Beef 13:12 - Mechanical Turk vs Napoleon Bonaparte 20:19 - Aleister Crowley’s Chess Obsession 30:13 - Victor Korchnoi Hypnotized 34:26 - Chess Trash Talk 39:27 - Yogis Hired to Battle Hypnotist 42:30 - Match With a Ghost 54:53 - Grandmaster Murderer 1:11:03 - Antarctic Chess Axe Murder 1:13:02 - Dark Chess Stories 1:17:21 - Chess President Alien Abduction 1:24:08 - Chess Against God 1:26:08 - The Chessboard Killer 1:39:03 - Chess In Prison 1:40:46 - Check Out Gotham Chess #chess #alien Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chess may look like a pretty straightforward game. 64 squares, 32 pieces, and two people trying to outthink each other, but underneath the board, things get pretty weird. Because the history of chess is filled with geniuses and conmen and dictators and occultists and some of the craziest stories I've ever heard. Napoleon once played a chess playing machine that secretly had a man hiding inside of it. Alistair Crowley was obsessed with becoming a great chess player before turning to the occult. A Cold War Championship involved accusations of hypnosis, coded messages hidden in yogurt,

and spiritual gurus brought in to block psychic attacks. And one legendary Grandmaster allegedly spent eight years playing a chess match against a man who had been dead for decades. Oh, and according to the former president of the International Chess Federation, chess came from aliens. Yeah. Today, I have Gotham Chess himself, also known as Levy Rosman, and he joins me as we descend into the bizarre, mysterious and sometimes completely unhinged history of chess. This episode is absolutely fascinating. Some of the lore here is pretty dark and I even have Levy analyze some of the most infamous games in all of chess history. I think you're going to really enjoy it. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Levy Rosman, how are you? I'm good. I'm so excited that you're here. If

anyone doesn't know, which I'm sure many people watching this do know, you are Gotham chess. You are the reason I'm obsessed with chess. I didn't know that, but you are truly the reason. I think I mentioned this to you, maybe even when you came on Flagrant. I got into it because I've always loved chess. I always thought it was a cool game, but I just never like committed myself to learning when I was a kid. And then my buddy Miles bought me like a Bobby Fisher chess set. Kind of learned like the general rules of the game.

And then my pal David who's sitting right here got super obsessed with chess probably like, what, four or five years ago? And then got me onto it. And he was like, dude, I just need you to go to YouTube, type in Gotham chess and watch everything. Everything. Everything. It's a lot. It's no small task. One a day for counting shorts like two or three a day. And I'm making my way. I'm probably 5% of the way in. And I have not improved really that much. But that's on me. I think. That's not. You improved. You're not bad. Okay. All right. I've, we were, Schultz and I were using additional help and we still couldn't beat you blindfolded. So not a great start. But that was his fault. Yeah. Yeah, it was his fault. He blundered a rook for no reason. I don't really even understand what happened. But I am so excited to have you here. because I don't know if you know about the campsite. This is where we deep dive on the craziest most controversial and fascinating mysteries of all time. Okay?

That is what this show is. I'm so passionate and fascinated by the realm of the unknown. And so I love to deep dive into mysteries and all sorts of stuff, conspiracies, esoteric, what's going on in the world? And I've found an intersection with chess. There are so many crazy stories and lore built into the chess world, and I have a list of them from, games using like clairvoyance to talk to dead grandmasters to serial killers to I mean like crazy

prisoners that are you know ranked super highly there's so many things in the chess world and there's so many eccentric characters I'm going to break down the most fascinating ones okay I actually found an iceberg a chess iceberg I don't know if you're familiar with an iceberg as far as like a meme lore uh yeah like there's like the tip and then there's you could you pull up the chess iceberg that essentially. This is a chess iceberg that I found on Reddit. And it came from a, a specific person, Infinite Trouble, 1890. This was posted three years ago. And it said it took him or her five to 10 hours to make. I lost count and basically tried to compile all the most fascinating chess lore into one image. And I kind of use this as a basis to break down some of these stories. And so you start

at the top and you're like, oh, Gotham Chess is up there. You got Chess.com. And you're You got impasseant. And then as you go down, it gets to become more niche and more strange and more bizarre. So then you get to the blindfold game. Keep going down a little bit. Up top is like very standard. Then you get to the bottom. You get Kasparov versus deep blue and, you know, morphy number and, you know, all sorts of crazy stuff.

Claude Bloodgood and all sorts of wild things. Uh-huh. So I picked the my favorite ones from this hierarchy. Okay. I go through with you today. Okay. The one that I want to start with that I think is fascinating is the morphine number. Have you heard of this?

I don't think so. What is... I'm so glad. Well, you know, Paul Morphy. Yes. One of the greatest chess players of all time. Yes. I don't really know a ton about his games or why he was so prolific, but I just know he was

kind of like this icon of the chess world. Yeah, American icon, opera game. That's like the one that everybody remembers. And that's the one that sports themes try to recreate when they run ads. Oh, really? Yeah, this is a recent phenomenon on the last one or two years. Is somebody in the marketing is like, let's do chess. and then they like have the athlete or whatever play the game.

And I've been reacting to these and so many of them have mistakes. It's unbelievable. Really? Yeah, but they use the opera game. Yeah. And I think Paul Morphy was the guy that said, like, a sign that you're a good chess player is the sign of a gentleman. And the sign of a really good chess player is a sign of a wasted life. Yes.

Yeah. And that's true. It's very, it kind of tracks, right? Yeah. There are a lot of these like grandmasters that like kind of like pass away like destitute like in a basement somewhere like drinking just like, like, obsessed with it. So why I didn't become one, you know? Same.

Also, that's why I didn't become a grandmaster either. You know what I mean? I like my life too much. But there's a thing called a morphine number. It's basically the chain of games to get back to Paul Morphy. Oh, yes, okay. So this is basically like, you know, degrees to like Kevin Bacon. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And I found your Morphi number. It's probably like, it's probably like three? Five. Five. But maybe it's less. You tell me, this is the chain that I found. And it seems like a lot of the big chess players they have about five.

I'm kind of insulted, though. What keeps us is so low. But maybe that was so long ago. I don't even know if I know that one. That's me in Indonesia. Oh, that's right. That's not supernatural or conspiratorial. It doesn't really fit the spot, but still.

No, but it is a bit of a mystery. But we'll get to that one in a second. So Morphy plays a guy named James Mortimer. Mortimer plays someone named Saveli Tarkatower. Tartikauer. Tartikauer. Tardikauer plays Smislov. Yeah.

Smith's Love then plays Pia Krameling. Aha, yeah. And then I play Pia. And then you play Pia. Five, that is the distance between you and Paul Morphy. Do you have it open in front of you? Which one? The list?

Yeah, the Morphy, like, calculator. No, I mean, I don't even know if there is a calculator. This is just me going through, like, Reddit slash AI is trying to figure it out. Oh. Why? Who do you want to know about? Well, I've played, I've played, somebody named, maybe we can ask,

I played Arthur Bisgeier. Okay. I think spelled B-I-S-G-U-I-E-R, like very legendary old American Grandmaster, which I think could shorten my morphine number. When did you play him? When I was a kid. Oh, really?

So it wasn't in the databases. Oh, so it might even be less. I think it might be like four. Or with him, if he played somebody old enough, he could have maybe played no probably not directly with Morphy so it has to be we probably have to go through Mortimer yeah

did you win I don't remember probably not but he was already older so like beating him when he was 80 is you know you can't like if Magnus for some reason that's playing tournaments when he's 80 in 50 years no one's gonna be like I beat Magnus like he can't even see the board anymore it's crazy to me that there's such a drop off

when it comes to professional chess that's almost like sports it's like yeah it's almost exactly like when you get into like your 30s late 30s it's like yeah, you're past your time. You know, you're, like, you get, you get washed up, almost like how you would in, like, the NBA.

Yeah, I think in chess specifically, it must be also motivation related. Like, the money's not as good as it is in some professional sports. Also, I guess you just had a, when you have a kid, probably sleep way worse than you have. I agree. As a, you know, bachelor, 30-year-old superstar. Got to blame the kids. I fully am in alignment. I would be a grandmaster if it wasn't for this freaking kid.

At minimum 700. At least, right? Yeah. And we're fighting for every little point here. For anyone who doesn't know, Elo is basically like a ranking system. Yes. If anyone is not familiar with the chess world.

And 500 is where I'm at. Yeah. Which is quite bad. P is a crazy candidate, like, to transition to the kind of old school of chess because she played so many legends, Smith-Lov. I just put this in, by the way. Arthur Biskauer.

Biscayor, yeah. Biscayor puts you at four. A must, right, yeah. Because he's older, he's American, so he probably. Yeah. Morphy played Mortimer and then Tartikower and then Biscayr. Played Tarnikauer. Yeah, I think so.

That's sick. And then, yeah, back to you. Probably lost to him, but yeah, it's got to be four. That would make sense. Hey, real quick, most people who watch this channel aren't subscribed. And when you subscribe, you help the channel grow and you stay in the loop with every new drop. Religion camp, history camp, and camp Gagnon. Now, let's get back to it.

Now, I want to ask you about some current chess drama that happened with Elon. Yeah, it's not really drama, but yeah. What is that all about? Elon's going back and forth with, like, the chess.com social media team. Yeah. Basically saying the chess is whack. Essentially.

Right. He's like, it's a solved game. This is boring. I mean, we can pull up the official, like actual tweets. But,

yeah. Like, what was your take on what he was saying? Well, what I learned from being on flagrant and it's to a lesser degree than Elon himself, like some people just bring out very strong emotions in people due to either their,

you know, overall financial status or things they say or do. Yes. Which the bigger profile you get, the more things you say and do. Yes. And like, yeah, people jumped on this. This was the big one where he said, like, the actual number of moves that are not hardly stupid in chess as tiny.

The truth is, like, that statement may or may not be true. But all of this stuff when you speak really, really just like categorically about chess, you know, you just like say a statement. And like, that's why the game's not interesting. thing. I don't think that applies. I mean, I suppose when like arguably a top, like, how famous is Elon Musk? Is he like top three, top five most famous people on the planet? Got to be, right? Like, you know, he says something like that. It's going to generate some discussion. I just look at the fact that chess is AI proof. So it's been AI proof for 30 years.

Nobody cares that the computer's better. Right. We all like to play it. It's one of the only things where watching terrible chess does better on social media than watching good chess because it's really relatable. Yeah. Yeah, this was a beef. I mean, I don't know if we were going to scroll through the whole thing, but, you know, it was... I mean, I don't know if we even need to, but I think it's an interesting point that, yeah, chess is, the computers are better, AIs are better, but we love it because it's human. Yeah. So we like the irrationality. And his whole point was he compared it to Politopia. I don't know what that is, but he was like, there's no respawn, There's no this, there's no that.

The running theory that I was seeing from the biggest haters of Elon Musk is like, he's probably just unsatisfied with his rating. Yeah. Like, I mean, I don't know if that's true. I don't know how much chess he's playing on Chesletcom or if he's playing at all. Yeah, maybe he just genuinely doesn't think it's that interesting of a game. Maybe. But sounds like my boy lost one game.

Or a couple. Maybe a couple. Like, it is an interesting thing that you can have someone that is so professionally successful. has so much money. It's very intelligent. I don't think any of disputes that Elon is very, very smart and very brilliant. But if you lose to like an eight-year-old kid, you're like, this game's stupid. Yeah, there's no world in which somebody like Musk or frankly like anybody who is, you know,

I don't know if he has PhDs. I'm just going to say just somebody who is a PhD and whatever is working in space or working in tech, like to such a level as a multiple-time CEO is going to feel good about themselves if they're nine. 100 on Chess.com. Yeah. Like there's something just fundamentally different about when you play chess. It makes you feel really, really stupid when you lose. Yes.

And so I don't know if this is Cope or he just genuinely believes it, but yeah, this is our latest thing. And I mean, Jesus, this generated like 50 to, I don't know, 60 million impressions just on my social media. Yeah. Like the short went viral. Everyone's debating in it. And then like I said, he causes a strong reaction in people and it was good, you know.

Crazy, right? We just need really the top three tough. The next thing, Obama's got to tweet about chess, you know? Yes. It's got to be like... Actually, this game is fascinating. It's a great game. I mean, it's brought just by aliens, according to some people.

Yes? We'll get to that in a second. But he's not the first person that's of a high esteem to play chess. And there's actually famous games between Napoleon Bonaparte. Yep. And what they call the mechanical Turk. Yeah. What can you tell me about the mechanical Turk?

The first instance of cheating in chess. is the mechanical Turk. What do you mean cheating? They built a contraption that made people think it was a machine that was playing moves. And inside of it, allegedly, was just the chess player sitting in a thing underneath. Yeah. I don't know how the hell they did like ventilation and stuff. I can't imagine.

The build of it is fascinating. Yeah. Have you seen like the inside of like the recreations? Yeah. It's crazy. I don't know how like they didn't suffocate. And they transported it on boats, right? Or trains or whatever they had back.

in the day. I don't know when the first train was built, but winning by suffocation would be, I would feel really I would feel guilty about that. You know what I mean? Playing the Turk and all of a sudden eight minutes goes by and not one move and you're like, wait a second, this is. Right. Like, how did they have a board down there? Right. I mean, I guess it was just someone looking like this and you can see the pegs and but yeah, supposedly it was just the person. The way I understand the mechanics is like there was an arm that came out and like he was

able to control like a lever that literally controlled the arm of this robot. And then above him was the board. And then you could see the magnets. As you put down like a magnetic piece, like a magnet would basically pull up. And then you could see where the pieces were being moved. And then you could move the pieces on the board. And infamously, Napoleon Bonaparte played against it. One of the games, but this is probably apocryphal because it's hard to really know, like, what's real.

One of the games that I heard, Napoleon starts playing. And he starts doing illegal moves. This is literally Napoleon Bonaparte. Like one of the most ferocious generals of all of, like history arguably and starts playing illegal moves and the mechanical turk aka the chess master underneath starts like moving the pieces back like hey you can't do that and then napoleon does another move and that's illegal and he goes you can't do that he does another move that's illegal the turk just takes the piece off the board and then napoleon tries another one and allegedly according to the story

the mechanical turk and the operator underneath swipes all the pieces off the board and says f this i'm done Wow. And basically, and Napoleon apparently was so amused by this that he played a more legit game. And that's the game that we have notation for. Oh, so the result of that wasn't Napoleon getting mad. It was, uh, he was trolling. Yeah, he was trolling because he was like,

okay, so this is like a robot using like a spirit or something or a computer that's able to like beat people all the time. So he's like, let's test it. And he starts like basically messing with it. Uh-huh. And then it makes it frustrated enough that he's like, oh, this is fun. Wow, that's sick. He didn't like freak out or anything.

No. Did he issue a royal decree in France that chess has no spawn point? No. I don't think even that came up. I think he was like, oh, this is pretty lit. Yeah. As a matter of fact, these games, a lot of them were being played in Paris. Yeah.

Because it was owned at one point. I think it was built by like a German guy and then ends up getting bought by a French guy. And then he adds a recorder into it. And the recorder says, it check. Or like, wow. Like it literally says check. in French. I guess this specific game was played in Vienna.

I got to visit this palace. Yeah. Schoenbrun... I don't know. Skonbrun Palace. I don't know why I said Scottish, but... Yeah, might be... I were going to the Schoenbrun Palace.

The Schoenbrun! But also, apparently the last game it played in Paris was against Ben Franklin. Wow. French American diplomat, or like the American diplomat to France. What's his morphine number? It's probably close. Straight of one. If you go by the Mechanical Turk, I wonder if it's...

like right there right but it's a it's a wild game can we click through this just to get your your take on the game a little bit I probably covered I can't remember I might have yeah okay is Napoleon white who's playing white if we just scroll up real quick yeah can you scroll up on Napoleon's white so he tried to he tried to scholars made it that's pretty cool yeah it it didn't fall for it wow okay is this really Napoleon or is this like an advisor like I the The story, the legend is that it's Napoleon. The legend. Again, a lot of the stuff is difficult to assess.

So my understanding is like when they were playing the game, they were actually separated because they were afraid of having Napoleon like too close to this like machine. So like they were kind of separated and someone was going back and forth and moving the pieces. That's sick. Okay, knight jump in. Yep. Move the queen. Brought his knights.

Queen jump. Oof. What are you seeing? No, you can't take the knight. Okay. So keep clicking through. Oh. Yeah, you can't take the night.

Because there's, okay, queen's hanging. He took the queen with Czech. On the side, yep. Take the pawn. Take the pawn with the queen. Queen F3. Napoleon's in trouble. Yeah, he's cooked.

It's mate. Almost. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's fancy. Mate. Damn. Wow.

So Napoleon got cooked by a Turkish robot. I think it was just called a Turk. I don't think it. Also, wasn't it like the Ottoman Empire then? I don't, my history. timelines a little messed up. I really do wonder who was inside that thing because it played ruthless. I mean, it played easily above master level nowadays. There's a lot of theories about who was in it. So it changed a lot, obviously, depending on location. But they say when it came to America,

I can actually find the actual person that they think that it was. Let me find it here. They say that the different chess masters who were thought to have operated it were Johann Alguer. Okay. Boncourt, Aaron Alexandre, William Lewis, Jacques Morey, and then infamously William Schlumberger. Right. Have you heard of these people? Fuck, no. No.

Apparently one of them beat Napoleon, which is pretty impressive. That's sick. What ends up happening to this is it gets like passed around trade shows and then ends up going to a museum in America. There's a fire that breaks out. No. The fire burns it down. The child of the guy who basically like inherits. that like put it on loan in this museum runs to the museum to try to go retrieve it and according to him and this is just legend he stands outside the museum hearing the fire raging and rippling through this whole museum and apparently the last words that he hears are a check a check and here's the robot allegedly saying check as it's burning in the flames and melting wow as legend goes crazy but apparently was also rebuilt and then it was using like the original chess board i mean i'm yeah i was

I was gonna say, I feel like one of those channels now that does science builds. You know, I built this, I built that, should build the... Yeah. How about that? It's a 20 million view video right there. Easily. But it also was expensive. I think the guy that rebuilt it back in like the 80s spent roughly like $300,000 rebuilding it.

Come on. That's like... Get a couple sponsors. You can make it work. Yeah. Brought to you by, you know, whatever that is and, you know, a couple more products. And yeah, easy. Have you heard of Alistair Crowley?

No. I thought that was like a character in some like anime or Crowley. That just sounds like... Well, he's been used infamously throughout like pop culture and like rock. So he's featured on the cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band by the Beatles. Okay. Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne has a song about him. He's a famous occultist from the 1900s.

Uh-huh. He was dubbed the most wicked man in the world. Okay. We've done a bunch of episodes on him. You guys should check him out. But he's just an infamous. is a cultist that was basically like using magic and like sex magic and founded his own like abbey the abbey of thelima like in italy somewhere he was kicked out by musilini because someone

ended up dying i think from drinking like cats blood during like a sacred magic ritual it just sounds like the stuff they do like in the in the u.s wasn't there like kool-aid thing and right like similar yeah that one was uh jones town yeah that was like a cult this guy is running like a magical Hogwarts where people are doing rituals and stuff to like get knowledge from entities. So he's a practitioner of this. Right, but like in theory he's running. They're not actually doing it. It's just a bunch of people

just hanging out. Well, that's for the viewer to decide. He talked to a demon at one point. They like helped him write a book. This has to be the name of a Hogwarts professor. Alistair Crowley. It's crazy. I really like the name Alistair actually. It sounds like a magical name. It is a nice name. Alistair is a nice name. Yeah, I like it. At one point, if my knowledge is correct here, he was contracted by Winston Churchill to be a spy. Okay.

For the British against the Nazis. Yeah, okay. As like a practicing, like, magician. Like, he was going to do fucking card tricks to get in with the Nazis? Like, I don't. And, like, believed that, like, he was in touch with, like, the entities of the universe and, like, was getting knowledge. But before any of that, he was committed to becoming one of the greatest chess players of all time. Yeah, that tracks.

You've met a couple Crowley's in your life? Yeah, yeah, we all got one inside. That's what we... All right. He was obsessed with chess. By 17, he was writing a chess column under a fake name

and was like trying to run like chess clubs. In 1897, he was board one captain of the Cambridge chess team against Oxford. He also became the club president. And by 1897, he walked into a massive tournament in Berlin, and in his words, he had a mystical out-of-body experience. The Grand Master suddenly looked shabby and pathetic to him, and his reaction was, quote, there by for the grace of God goes Alastair Crowley, he vowed to quit serious chess on the spot.

And then says, I'm dedicating my life now to magic. But he didn't quit. Because his diary show him playing for decades. In 1931, he apparently is beating the master Jacques Misei in a casual game, and he's still playing at the Hastings Chess Club. in 1946 a year before he died. There's one surviving game that's a draw against English chess master Joseph Blackburn from 1894

where he apparently misses a win. Wait, 1894 is the one game? That's the one game that we have like notation for when he was like early on playing as a kid. But the rest of his game... He claims that he played 40 years later. Yeah, I know. And he doesn't have the notation.

He's just like, oh, I beat this guy, whoop this guy. Like, he's just like writing his journal like, dude, I'm the best. Meanwhile, like, talking to entities being like, dude, I'm connected with, like, the occult universe. This is why I love chess. Yeah, like. Because there are these characters that exist in the world of chess that are drawn to the game. If we really simplify that story, it's he walked into a tournament of grandmasters and went,

I could beat everybody and just left. Yeah. Like, he just, I don't want to do it. I don't want to. And on top of that, I'm going to beat everyone in like the greater game of life, which is talking to entities and getting forbidden knowledge. It's like having a girlfriend at another state. Like, that's what you don't know her.

Yeah, we met on a cruise. No, but actually there's a lot of these legends in British chess. Yeah, but I never heard of this guy. So wild. Now, apparently he says that playing blindfold chess growing up actually helped him use astral projection and create astral temples for his chess or for his magic rituals. So he starts getting involved with this thing called the Order of the Golden Dawn.

This is like an occult order. And it had its own four-player occult chess. built from John D's Anokian magic, and apparently was using, like, chess plus, like, fortune-telling and trying to, like, use entities to play chess. Crazy. I... What, um...

So what did he, like... How did his life end? What... He died, like, kind of, like, a poor drunk in a basement. You know what I mean? Okay. No, but he... So, okay, he was...

He was not a happy end. for him. But he died in 1946? That's correct. And there was the stuff that you said that he might have been contracted to do the stuff with the Nazis. So like with the English against the Nazis. Yeah. And then he died within a few years. Yeah. He was like, it was a he was a drunkard and was just kind of like all over the place. But yeah, there's, okay, this is like, maybe this is a, this is an urban legend. Let me just clarify here. But, uh, World War I historian, Richard B. Spence argues that he worked with British intelligence in America using his pro-German propaganda activities as a cover.

He says this is a historical argument, not proof of his recruitment by Churchill. He offered his services to British naval intelligence, but by our full accounts report that the offer was declined. He also tried to claim credit for V for victory that was associated with Churchill, but again, remains unproven. Carly may have worked with you. It was like crazy. I just find it fascinating.

One of the most famous occultists of all time was like, dude, chess is like my shit. Wow. myocry, yeah, degeneration, heart muscle, chronic bronchitis. Yeah, that'll happen. Yeah. But despite all, like, the magic stuff, he kind of has a, you know, he has, like, sort of a chest kind of affect.

I feel like if he just stuck with chest, like, he would have probably died the same way, just like in a basement, obsessed, you know what I mean, drinking, playing all day. I don't think he would have made it to 72. Probably, like, 10, 10 years, like, younger. Yeah, it's unclear. right like all all this type of stuff uh the folks that try to i mean do magic uh you kind of wonder like

they're living they obviously have a calling of some sort right they're like living their life in a way where they're this this is like their higher calling and they they must be pretty charismatic if they build a following yeah so i i just i mean he felt like he was following his passion i guess hey guys we're going to take a break really quick because i want to give a quick shout out to one of our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Mod. Mod prescribes a once or twice daily modafinil drink that can keep you energized focused and alert throughout the entire day, and here's how it works. Energy drinks with caffeine temporarily block adenosine. This is the chemical that makes you feel tired, and it builds up, and when the caffeine wears off, you get that

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code Gagnon Gagnan Gn-G-N-G-N-O-N-A-Mod.com. See their website for important safety information, and we thank Mod for sponsoring the pod. Now, let's get back to it. He's not the only person to play using, I guess, like, mystical elements. There's a famous game that I had told you about before. Corknoy versus a ghost. Yeah, that I never knew about. Never.

I knew so much about Corses-N-I-I-N-I- never knew about that. I don't really know about C-C-N-O-W. What can you tell me about him generally? So there were a few players in history who were born in, I always mix this up, like I'm used to saying Soviet Union, Russia, I don't remember what it was in 1917. Like that was when Alekin, but I don't think he liked his name pronounced like a Russian. And Alikine is the American pronunciation. But he defected in like 1917, Kortchinoi was kind of the second coming. of that he he wanted to leave the Soviet Union so he actually left to Switzerland but he was like

one of the best players from from Soviet Union and he played against Carphov multiple times and Carphoff was like the golden child of Soviet chess in the 1970s he was supposed to play Fisher it was supposed to be Fisher who wanted in 72 against Carp of the new Soviet star but we know Fisher kind of fell off the map a little bit after that and quit chess and So on. She said he wouldn't play him and then Karpov won the title without playing. It was like vacant. It was like stripped from, yeah.

So really, Fisher's the lineal champ. Nobody ever actually took it off of him. Yeah. Their game, by the way, is fascinating. Yes, their whole match in 1978 is crazy. Like, maybe we talk about that for a second before I tell you about the playing the dead. Yeah, just so people know, like, Kuchner is very, um, very fierce, you know, bad loser, like, you know, in the sense that he was, he was a very fiery guy. Yeah.

Yeah. And that picture of him with the mirrored glasses is like iconic. Yeah. Because of this game in 78. Yeah. So 1978, Cold War. Yeah. Chess World Championship is basically a proxy war.

USA versus USSR. Yes. Both sides are trying to put their best and brightest, specifically the Soviets to be like, hey, we are the best and brightest of the world. Look at what our government can produce. And so Karpov is the Soviet Union's golden boy. and he becomes the, you know, kind of the world best because of this vacancy with Bobby Fisher. Yeah, and Kourgnau is older than him, I think.

Yeah, he's 47. Yeah. Karpov was 27. Yeah. And he's the world number two, defected from the USSR and is now a traitor. So they go to play this game. And correct me if there's anything in here that is wrong or if you need to add any details. But Karpov's team brought a Soviet, again, Karpov is the Soviet.

He's the actual, like, guy from the USSR. Correct. They bring a Soviet psychologist, Dr. Vladimir Zucar, who sat in the front row and stared at Kortchanoi for hours during the whole game, just like unbroken eye contact, just like staring into his soul. So much so that Kortinoi believed that he was being hypnotized. Correct. He was like, this guy's doing like mind tricks on me to get inside my head.

And so he shows up for like the next games with these glasses. Yeah. That are mirrored to basically block off like the hypnotic trance that this guy was trying to put him in. And it became like this iconic. moment in chess where these two guys are going back and forth. Game two, Carpov gets served blueberry yogurt. Correct. Quartznoi is like, whoa, why is he getting yogurt in the middle of the game? Because the idea is like maybe the yogurt or the flavor or the way that it's served to him or the time is a signal or a coded message to indicate what move he should play next. Yeah.

How would that work if you were to cheat using yogurt in a game? Like you and I are playing each other. We're in a position. It's my move. Well, obviously. Obviously, I would have worked something out ahead of time, right? Like, different flavors of yogurt. By the way, blueberry yogurt sounds really good. And, you know, I feel like back in the day, they didn't have, like, GMO. So I wonder, like, was it just, like, grounded up blueberries? Natural.

Must have been really tasty. Yeah. No, it's very easy. Like, plain yogurt, you know, white is better. Blueberry yogurt. Black has an advantage. Whatever, right? Like, nowadays, you're not going to see it.

That was probably the one and only time in history anybody was served yogurt in a game. So, you know, you got to wonder. Well, apparently they made a fix because he was like, look, I need yogurt during the game. That's what I do. Correct. And so they were like, okay, fine. Only one type of yogurt at a specific time served by a specific waiter. Yeah, there you go.

And they made a concession for him. There was a bunch of things. Like, first of all, this match was held in Manila, I think, in the Philippines. In Bejua. Baguio. Baguio. Bagu, I think Bagu, in Philippines. Yeah, that was pretty random.

There was all sorts of weird stuff. later on, Cortchnois said, okay, it wasn't the timing of the yogurt. It might be that there's stimulants in the yogurt. Like there's, like, meth in there, or, like, there's steroids or something that's, like, giving him a brain advantage in the middle of the game. And, yeah, and the thing is, Corchnoe didn't represent the USA, but he, you know, I think, yeah, he didn't play without a flag. Or rather, he played without a flag as representation.

And he got pretty close. I think he got twice he played Carpo. I think they also played in 1975. And maybe in 1981. And like, this was a long rivalry. Yeah. And Carpov was always just a little bit better than him. They went back and forth.

Karpov was like, hey, we need to investigate his chair. Yeah, yeah, his chair. Apparently, Corchnoe had a custom chair. Yeah, he had a custom chair. They do an x-ray on it, and there's nothing, and it's just like foam and metal. And then at one point, there's a, also, not to cut you off, there's a really famous clip on YouTube. I mean, we can pull it up. I don't know if we want to do that.

Yeah, yeah. It's literally like what Kortchonoy says about Karpov, like his breakdown of Karpov. And he's like, he's just like you know Carpav is like a fish he's not complicated like he doesn't really think too much

he doesn't concern himself with openings or like middle games he's just like a good pupil like he's just like kind of like sunning him like he's like a little kid that's taught well yeah yeah uh calling him a fish is hilarious

we had a we had a chess trash talk actually like the past week it has nothing to do with anything but yeah it's funny he's just like yeah like he's just like not creative at all. He just like learned the technique and you know, he just plays it a certain way and his games aren't flashy, but he just wins, yeah. I love that. Wait, what was the trash talk this week? Was it good? It was pretty good. It was, so there's this, there's this kid, Dennis Lozovic, a Belarusian kid who, you know, the last three, four years, he's just like grinding these

online tournaments. He doesn't get a lot of invitations because he's Belarusian. And anytime he he shows up, he wins. Really? He's really good. Yeah. And so this year he had to a really big breakthrough. In February, he beat Hikaru for the third place match in the speech chess championship. And then he just beat him in the Eastports World Cup for the first and second place spot, like he, to earn a spot in the final. So he beat Hikaru twice. And he did some like Russian, you know, it wasn't even really a podcast. It was this fellow Belarusian kid who has a YouTube channel. And they went on and they just like talked for two hours. And the guy asked him like, so how did you feel when you beat Hikaru? And Dennis was like, verbatim was just like,

I knew I would be Tikaru. Like, he doesn't know how to play chess at all. He doesn't know how to play chess at all. And then, you know, but again, it's like two friends like shooting the shit. And then he was kind of like, no, I mean, you know, he was obviously like tongue and cheek, but he kind of was like, well, he has all these different flaws in his game that I was confident I would exploit. And then like, I just see that quote posted on like Reddit, right? And then I'm like, did you really say that?

And I tune in and like in Russian. I'm like, oh, yeah, he said it. But, you know, he doesn't really. believe Hikara doesn't know how to play chess. He's just kind of, but I was like, I can't believe this dude who's so soft-spoken just kind of like said that in friendly conversation. Then he said some other

stuff like he, there's an American player who hasn't gotten sponsorship and, you know, Dennis basically said like, oh, you're not impressive. Like, you're this rating at this age. Like you're not useful to anybody in the modern world. Like something like that. Damn. Just kind of like, and he said another thing and this pissed off.

Like this really brought him from like hilarious trash talking kids like over the edge. He was criticizing the fact that it wasn't really criticism, but he was kind of saying, like, he was in a training group, and men and women were separated in the training group because, you know, the men were higher rated.

And so the two of them were like, oh, thank God, like women don't understand anything. And I was like, no, dude, come on. Like, just keep it to the Hikaru thing. Like, keep it to the other stuff. Yeah, when the trash talk gets too, like, and you're like, oh, come on. Yeah, and so, no, but he said all of that.

And, well, the lesson there for this young man was that even though your live stream might not have that many viewers and it might be in your own language, anybody can go watch it afterward. And it will reach the people you're talking about. Yeah, and people don't, they didn't take well to everything.

And then he was asked about it. He kind of walked it back a little bit, but yeah, it might have been Dennis' first time getting hit with the reality of the internet. Yeah. Stuff finds people, dude. You can do a reel that's like, gets 100 views.

And if you're talking about someone specifically, it doesn't really matter how famous they are. There's, like, a decently high chance that we'll find them. Yeah. Like, have you ever found yourself just, like, scrolling on YouTube shorts or Instagram, you see something about you? And it has, like, this algorithm's like,

hey, you're going to want to see this. Yeah. It just gets to you. Yeah. Luckily, most of them are positive. But, you know, yeah, I'll just be scrolling. And I'll see, I don't know, I think even this morning. Oh, this morning it was a random TikTok.

of me, it was one of my earliest videos, and I'm sitting there in a colored shirt, and I'm like, today we're gonna be talking about, it was like the one video I had in a colored shirt, but I looked so young and innocent, and somebody was like, is this the pilot episode? And the comments were so funny, like, ah, you know, now if I make a blunder, he fucking yells at me

and calls me a moron, like, and then, yeah. So, yeah. My favorite, like, modern, like, chest thing, it's not really, like, trash talk, but it's just like a funny little moment. The Ali Reza Handshake, This is so funny to me. Yeah.

I saw a comment that said they pre-moved each other's handshakes. Yeah, yeah. COVID days. It's so funny. Here, roll it. This one's legendary. So in the bottom here, for any of those not watching, it's this first table right here. So he comes over.

It's COVID. Fist bump, handshake, fist bump, handshake, fist bump, handshake. Oh, handshake. The fact. One, two, three, four, five, six, like six switches. The fact that they're both high-level chess players, I do believe they pre-moved. They pre-moved the handshake.

Yeah, they both were anticipating. It was like a little anime fight thing. Fun fact, I think the guy he's shaking hands with might be the world champ in like two months. That's Sondarov. That's the Uzbek kid. Wow. So that kid, yeah, at the time he was like 14 or something. Yeah.

So he's playing for the world championship now. I want to see his handshake now. I want to see how he did. He's Uzbekistan is. He leveled up the handshake. That's so funny. So back to this game in 78. There's another detail that's so.

funny is that so basically Cortinoy is sitting there getting hypnotized by the psychologist he's got mirrored glasses yeah he's terrified that his brain is getting taken over by this guy so to counter it court you know brought in two American members of the Ananda marga sect yeah which is basically like a very specific like Hindu sect of yeah like it's a very

specific like religious sect within Hinduism that I don't think even most Hindus like really It's like a very niche group. And they, he basically brings them in as like yogis to teach him meditation to block out the bad hypnotic energy and vibes. The problem is that the two guys that he got from the specific sect had just been convicted of attempted murder for stabbing an Indian diplomat in Manila and were out on bail. So they were-I didn't know that.

They were banned from the hall. So Cortanoi's own chief assistant, Raymond Keen, later called them, tricksters. And that's why they weren't allowed to, like, actually be in the hall during the game because they were, like, on trial, at least. I shouldn't say convict. I don't know the exact details, but they were under investigation for a murder. And that's why they couldn't get brought in. I didn't know that. Really? Wow. That's the story. I wonder somebody, 1978 could have a whole thing made about it, like a whole 30 for 30 or whatever, you know, whatever they do now. Because that's the same year that Bobby, like, bounces.

No, he bounced a few years earlier, but yeah, it's the most insane world championship match ever, obviously, in case it's not clear. I didn't know that. How the hell do you even, like, there was no Indeed back then. Like, there was no, hey, I need two yogis to come to the world championship. No IG story. Yeah.

Like, this must have just been him, like, talking to his boy. Like, dude, this guy's getting in my brain. And he's like, I have just a guy for you. Okay. I have two guys that are not only spiritual masters, they will defend you. How old is Raymond Keen? Is he still alive? I have no idea.

We can look this up. Because if he's still alive, he's got to write... The book? Yeah, he's got to write like the tell-all. That's... Oh, it looks like he is still alive. It's like 78 years old. He was born 48, so he's 78 years old.

Yeah. This is always dangerous in chess. Like, is he still alive? And he's completely alive and... Hanging with his grandkids, playing games. Having a great time. Telling them about 1978. Sorry, Raymond.

I can't wait to read your book. It's going to be great. Yeah, is an English chess grandmaster. This guy. has been around some stuff, man. Like he, look at this. He retired from play at 38, dude, 40 years ago. Wow.

Yeah, and now he... He's a prominent chess organizer. And it served as the correspondent for the times. We need the book, man. Yeah. I doubt there was NDAs back in the day. Well, I wonder if he was working, because he was working with Cortanoid this time during the games.

Like, he was like his chief of staff, I guess. I don't know exactly what his title was. His chief assistant. Yeah. And I'm assuming he was around. when Corknoy played a ghost. Yeah, we got to get into that. I don't know what the hell that was.

This is why Corsesnoy is my favorite player without really knowing anything else about him other than these two stories. So in 1985, there's a Swiss, what they call a Paris psychologist. And this is like a psychologist that's interested in like, sort of the supernatural world. So he talked Corschnoi into playing a full game against a dead grandmaster.

Naturally. So the way it would work is that he finds a medium like someone that can talk to the dead, and then ask him who he wants to play against. So basically they all work together. This guy's name is Wolfgang Eisenbess. And he asked Kortchinoi which dead legend he wanted to play against. And he's not on trial for murder.

This guy, to my knowledge, has no involvement with violent crime. But that is just what's available on the internet. Cortgoy said, I would like to play Capablanca, Keras, or a guy named Geza Marcozzi. Maroxi, yeah. Moroxy. That's what I said. And according to the organizer, only Maroxi answered.

Okay. So now they get this medium, this guy, Robert Rollins, and he used automatic writing. Basically, he said that the spirit of Maroxi was coming through him and he was writing down the notation of what to do. Now, according to the story, again, this is not a, like a strict laboratory setting. This is a legend, as they say. Right. Robert Rollins doesn't know anything about chess. Has to get taught how to do notation, like what it means.

So he's a complete novice. And each reply for each move took approximately 10 days. What the fuck? And then the game was played over eight years. So are you able to pull up the game on chess games? What the fuck? Because I need to get your take on this guy playing against Markozy. How do you present?

I also pronounce it wrong. I say Maroxi, but it's like Maroshi or something. It's Hungarian. Okay, as long as we're both wrong. Yeah, that's all that matters. You're more wrong. I think you're more wrong. Margozy, like, I don't...

Maroxi. And they play over years, and eventually the game ends in 1993. Now, this guy, Maroxy, what is fascinating is that he dies in, like, I think, like, the 30s or something. Yeah. But they're playing this game starting in 1985. Until 1995. Until 1995. 93. And so they play in that one. Yeah, 93. 93, right? And so

Maroxi is a monster. 1904, 1907 is arguably the best chess player on Earth. Correct, yeah. And he's like playing and like training for like world championships. And they have a game. And if we can pull up the game, you can see ultimately what happens. So there's a lot of people that have weighed in on this and suggested that like, I just, I just want you to see the game. Because I'm so fascinated by your take is. Are you able to pull it up? If you want me, I can send it to you. I gotta make some video about this if I have permission. I never heard about this in my life. It's not my story.

You gotta, yeah, I mean, you gotta talk to Maroxi through a medium to get his permission. Can you imagine like 20, when will I die? Let me get like 50 more years. Can you imagine like 2085 if YouTube is still a thing just like, I played a game against Gotham, Chess is Ghost, bitches? Yeah, I'm gonna make that video. You're gonna be alive like in a test tube or like? I'll be alive.

I'm gonna live a long time. Okay. And I'm gonna make the video how I crush God. Chatham Chess from beyond the grave. And you're not going to have anything to say about it. You can't even, you can't even defend yourself. This is crazy, man. I'd be like, yeah, he blunders his queen in the first five moves.

Oh, this is so bad. Yeah, it was insane. So you could see you have a Gazamaraxy slash Robert Rollins. I like that they put like the slash. Like, yeah, you know, it's a slash. And versus Victor Corsfling. So this is how it opens. Let's click through some of the moves here.

Yeah, E46, D4, D5, yep. Yep. I think this is an opening Kourchnoy invented with Black, if I'm not mistaken. Because back in the day, you could just play an opening and nobody had played it before. Right. So it would get named after you. Yeah, this is, yes, it's a very sharp game. Yep.

Now we go to end game. And because Black is up a pawn, he's just, I mean, it's math, right? At some point, you'll win. You need some technique. A little pawn race. I mean, this is a fascinating game. and now the pawn's gonna... And then at this point,

Maroxi resigns. Yeah. And that's the game. Eight years later. Yeah. You just watched eight years of chess. Yeah, in like 10 seconds. And it ends with Quartzroy winning by resignation

against a dead Grandmaster. Which is kind of nuts because resigning here, just if anybody, I mean, do you have a screen on the podcast? Yeah, yeah, people are seeing this. So resigning here is actually kind of nuts, Because if you think about it, white can just run their pawn all the way up the board. Like, Black can't stop it. The way that Black actually wins this position is giving up their first pawn, like the C-Pon,

and then has to, like, demonstrate technique. This game will be won by one square. Black is going to queen the pawn, and White will be one square from queening. So it's a close resignation. Yeah, like, if this went on, they would have gone on another two years probably. There's still some fucking technique to demonstrate here, you know what I mean? But we're talking about two grandmasters playing each other. We're talking about it.

So what are the theories? Are the theories that it was like a Turk situation? Like the other guy was just... So, the theory for it is that there is apparently a neuropsychiatrist named Vernon Knapp who analyzed the game and said that Maroxi played a grandmaster level and that the ghost of this guy also allegedly dictated a 38-page life story about Maroxy

that supporters say got 79 of 81 checkable facts correct. So before even really playing the game, they were like, how do we know we're actually talking to the spirit of Maroxi. Right. And they were asking questions that only he would know and things like that. Things that weren't verifiable on the internet or like the early internet at this point, things that weren't verifiable through books, like only like the family or direct close friends

would know. And apparently it got a bunch of these checkable facts right. And again, they say like, yeah, this is a grandmaster level play. Bobby Fisher supposedly said it was also extremely high level, but again, that came secondhand because he watched the notation. And there's a whole like basically like break. on what they call Sci Encyclopedia, which documents these kinds of like supernatural stories. And they say that according to this parapsychologist that was doing it, it was extremely

high levels of accuracy about personal life that he knew about personal knowledge. And they say, like, yeah, this is a legitimate game against a ghost. Now, the argument against is that no independent person watched the sessions. Right. So 10 days between moves is plenty of time. for someone to call a friend, call an actual Grandmaster, call a really competent player, look through books, and then develop moves and then use the correct moves to then counter. One critic pointed out that there was a master level mind involved the whole time, which is Courtschnoe himself.

I was just about to say that's another possibility, right? So people are saying that's a closed loop. Is it possible like Corchnoe is basically organizing a game against himself through this medium, making it look like he played a ghost? Who knows? It is strange that the medium, the guy that actually did this whole thing, he's not able to talk about it because he died three weeks after the game ended. Wow, he was old or I guess?

I don't know. I don't even know how he passed away. And that's the story. Now, I saw a random comment on Reddit that I don't know if this is accurate, but they said that the open, so there's a few things here. They said that Maroxi apparently told the medium that he was rusty, that he hadn't really been playing. But apparently... Because he's dead.

Yeah, he's dead. No, no, chess tournaments in the afterlife, I see. No, you're in heaven. You don't even be playing chess. You know what I mean? So, apparently he's like rusty. He's, like, not really on his game. He's also older.

And also the game had progressed so much. Oh, yeah. From, like, the 30s to the 80s. Yeah. And apparently he played an opening that didn't exist at the time when he passed away. Yeah, very possible. Yeah. It was like a...

I don't have it in front of me, but it was like a French opening. Yeah, French existed, but the, yeah, that's sharp variation. Yeah. The way that he played the line apparently didn't exist. Yeah, yeah. Like now, I mean, even now in 2026, stuff that they played in the World Championship in 2000 wouldn't work. Right.

Yeah. So people are like, okay, so there's a Graham Master that died that then plays a game 50 years later from the afterlife, but plays an opening that didn't exist while he was alive, and then still loses. Mm-hmm. And everyone's like, well, how does that make sense? So this is the argument against that somehow it was corroborated

to be some type of, like, hoax internally, either through the medium, through the organizer, this like Swiss parapsychologist or by course, myself, or all of the above. I have a very, I have a very, like, literal brain to the point that when I was in second grade, I had, like, extremely high math level. But my reading comprehension skills, I have a very famous story where, you know, one of those passages you read and then you were asked questions. The test was called the Terra Nova.

And they were like, how did the frog feel on like this line of the story? And you're supposed to read it and you're supposed to, you know, extrapolate based on the text. how it felt, and I put green, the frog felt green. It's like, obviously, I'm like seven. Like, you can't, like, I don't, you know. So I'm very literal. So when I hear something, I think three conclusions. Number one, they're, like, it's actually supernatural, right?

People actually can talk to the dead. Number two, Coach Nooy played it against themselves, which is hilarious. Like, that's so funny. And number three, there's just like a person out there that hoaxed the whole thing, right? Like, that was just the grandmaster coming in to help this Robert guy make the moves. Yeah. All those situations are fascinating to me. Fascinating.

And would it be out of the character of Courtenoy to be down to play a game like this and like maybe kind of set up? Fake the whole thing. That's so. He's such an eccentric guy. Yeah, he's eccentric, but I very much like a fighter for justice. So you'd kind of be like, why would he do that? You know, like maybe not. Maybe not.

Interesting. Maybe not. But reading people's like impossible. You have no idea, right? So mind blowing. What's up guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell. you something. I had one of those days recently where I woke up super tired. I drank coffee and then

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I'm fascinated by these types of stories. There's one about this guy named Claude Bloodgood. Yeah, yeah, this one's sick. This one is wild. So he's a chess organizer in Virginia in the 50s. And he's pretty good. He's organizing games. He's even the State Federation's rating statistician.

So he's running the numbers giving the ratings for all the people of the state of Virginia and rated himself at this point, like the 50s, a 1956. So he's like, I'm pretty good. And then he goes to prison or gets, I guess, arrested for burglary and forgery. Okay. And this is like in 1969. And then he gets out of prison. Nine days later, kills his own mother.

Damn. Dump their body somewhere. Wow. They find him. They confirmed that he's the one that did it. Apparently he did it because after his father died, he believed that he was owed a massive inheritance. Uh-huh. And this is part of the reason why he was doing the forgery and the burglary,

because he was like, my dad passed away. I'm entitled to a bunch of money. My mom's not giving it to me. Okay. So I'm going to like forge checks in her name. Yeah. Gets arrested. Comes out and is like,

you know what? I'm taking my mom out. Apparently he was like telling people like while he was in prison for a short stint. Like when I get out of here, I'm taking my mom out because she owes me money. She stole from me. Gets out of prison. Kills his own mother.

To my understanding, that's the story. Right. Goes to prison. His death sentence is commuted because like the state of Virginia, I think like takes away death sentences or says the like the, way that they were doing it at the time is like unconstitutional. So now we get a life sentence. While he's in prison, he becomes the number two ranked player in the country. I thought it was even

number one, but maybe. Maybe he got as high as that. Yeah. But to my understanding, he goes to prison and then becomes like the best. The way that he does it is he goes to prison again as a pretty competent chess player and starts teaching people how to play chess. Yep. And gets guys onto the game and And then plays in like this closed pool, then also starts playing games via mail. Yeah. So people are mailing him in like their moves and he's mailing them back moves. And he's playing games over long periods of times, hundreds, thousands of games over this entire life sentence. And he's a, yeah, there he is.

He's a pretty ghoulish looking guy, if I do say so myself, with all due respect. He's a pretty scary, if I do say. Second highest, yeah, Komsky was one. Yeah. And basically, he's teaching these inmates how to play. And so they're unrated and inexperienced. So he starts obtaining USCF memberships for them. Yeah.

Which the USCF is like the US Chess Federation. And that's like the how you organize like your chess ranking basically. For over the board tournaments. Yeah. So some accused Blood Good with his intimate knowledge of the rating system to rig the ratings. The accusation was that he arranged for new prisoners to play rated games against other prisoners who would deliberately lose, thus giving the new inmate an inflated rating. It's further alleged that they then played rated games.

against the new highly rated prisoner and each time he would win and then gain more and more rating points. This continued for several years that by 1997, his rating rose to 2,759, making the 59-year-old Bloodgood the second highest rated player in the nation behind only Komsky. Komsky. Yeah. Crazy. Pretty crazy. There's a lot of stuff to unpack here. I will summarize this pretty quickly. So by saying, yeah, this ELO system for over-the-board chess, right now on chess.com, if anybody listening to this just plays,

you get instant feedback, plus nine, minus nine, whatever. Manipulating your rating is pretty crazy because parents in the US Chess Federation have been doing this for like a decade. So if their kid is like on pace to become, you know, the number one ranked player for their age, what they would do is that they would go to a four-game tournament on a weekend where you're supposed to play four games.

The kid would win one game, and they'd be like, oh, after this tournament, my kids are going to be 22-01 and they leave the tournament. Wow. Which is nuts. Like imagine dropping out of a tennis tournament halfway.

You won one game. Yeah. They should calculate it only if you finish the tournament. Right. They calculate just like one game and parents have been doing this forever. To the point that like people will rigged

chess tournaments like just for the sole purpose of gaining rating. There have been schools and districts like in coaches that rigged an entire group of kids as a rating and then brought them to the national championship. Wow. Did they get dusted? Do they feel like if their rating is really? rigged, like they're going to get crushed. Yeah, or they get in trouble or like they deliberately keep their rating low and then they'll

win a subsection. So a section of only under 2000. I see. But people will be rated in 1980. So in chess for a long time, there was something called sandbagging. So you would go to these money tournaments where first place is 10 grand. And you're playing people who have been above the rating of the category for years. But right before the tournament, they just dropped their rating.

Interesting. And yeah, the last thing. It's almost like a weight class. Yeah. Except it's illegal. But if you touch your weight way, way down, then you can fight smaller people, even though you're physically bigger.

Yes, I guess the only drawback there is you might kill yourself weight cutting, whereas in chess, like, your rating dropping doesn't mean anything. This happened during COVID. People were playing these online tournaments, and they were getting them rated because they were called hybrid tournaments.

So you and I could just, like, meet here. We'd have a Fide Arbiter, and we would play against two Serbians on the other side of the planet, and we would win, and they would count for a regular rating, which doesn't make any sense. Like, how do you enforce anti-cheating?

Like, how do you, how can you play somebody in L.A. versus somebody in Serbia? That's a nine-hour time difference. Yeah. That's fascinating. Yeah. No, this has been going on for a long time. The Bloodgood case was difficult because his rating was so high,

he technically was eligible to get invited to the U.S. chess championship. Yep. So he himself denied the accusations. You know, he's like, look, I'm an upstanding citizen. I've never done anything wrong. And now you guys are coming here to say. spit my face and accuse me of cheating. He's like, I would never do that.

And so he's doing all these competitions. At one point, he even goes to a competition with another inmate. This guy, Louis Kaplanier, Kaplanier. And they received like a furlough from prison to go play in a chess tournament. The two of them go out. The guard that's with them is kind of just like an old kind of schlubby guy. And he's like got him. And he's like, all right, so you guys are going to go play a tournament?

They're like, yeah, yeah. So he's like standing there watching him. They overpower him and escape. Yeah. They break out of prison and then get recaptured a few days later. Okay. Yeah. I feel like back then you could escape from prison and be all right.

There's not that many cameras. Yeah. Just go hide in like a bush somewhere, right? Just wait it out, change your name. Yeah. If you move a town over, everyone's like, oh, I guess that guy's gone. Yeah, wow. I didn't realize.

He lived the rest of his life in prison. Yep. Is that in prison? So as his rating would go up, he wrote to the USCF to warn them that its system was prone to close pool rating inflation. but nothing was done until his rating got so high. And then by virtue of his rating, he should have been invited to this very prestigious tournament

only for the top 16 players in the country. This caused an investigation. They didn't know what to do. They're like, technically this guy's the best, but he's in prison. Should we let him play? Should we try to find a way to let him do it? And they said that he was not able to play

because of this closed pool of rating inflation thing. And they changed their rating system because of him in many, amongst other reasons. But he's one of the main reasons. and then he tried to get out of prison by doing all sorts of things. He was like, I was born in Germany and then he was like I was born in Mexico.

So extradite me to those countries. He also claimed to have been a Nazi spy during World War II. So he was just in prison, just like saying stuff. And then he tried to convince a bunch of interviewers that he was like completely innocent and then he ended up dying of lung cancer in 2001. But he did invent an opening to my understanding.

It's called the Norfolk Gambit. And I have it here. Norfolk, Virginia. Yes, which is where he was originally from. He's from Germany. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. Norfolk, Mexico. Yeah, exactly.

He's actually German the whole time, and it was a Nazi spy. Yeah, of course, Norfolk, yeah? I know it very well, yeah. It's better than I is Norfolk. So I just think Christos the Norfolk Gambit. I'm so curious what you think of this. I didn't even know that he invented an opening. Maybe I did.

There's a lot of weird chess players. I love them. The weirder, the better. That's like the thing that I'm so drawn to. Like, I'm into characters. I like people that are like interesting. So this is allegedly how it goes. Again, I don't know enough about chess to understand what's going on here,

but if we can click through, we can see some of the moves. Oh, okay. B three, yeah. On the bottom right, there's an arrow. You might be able to click through. Or if you just click on the chess board and then right click again on your keyboard. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Oh, go back. We missed the point of the gambit. So the, so if we go back, go back, go back, go back, go back here. So wait, night forward. So that queen D4 move. You have to click that, that second note, not that one. You got to go back. And then with your mouse, you have to click Queen D4 on the, yeah, you got to put it on that square where it's highlighted. That one. Yep. Yep. So you see how it's attacking the rook in the knight? So this is a trap because go forward. Like you can right click. So you give up your bishop. The queen takes the bishop. And now you trap the queen.

Yeah. And so you try to run away with the queen. Keep going. And then you get hit with this move. And then you block. And then the knight drops back. And now the queen is trapped. Or, okay, they have to play that move and lose their queen.

Wow. So I guess he allegedly, it would kind of, It kind of makes sense that his opening is deeply rooted in deviance and deception and theatricality and deception. So you feel like this is like a bit of a like kind of a hustler move? It's total bullshit. But I think I've actually seen Magnus catch somebody with this in like Blitz. The story that I read is that Magnus played Anand and did this opening. Oh yeah, maybe.

Yeah, in a speed game. I think so. I think so. Yeah, in a speed game. Yeah, for sure. And it's easy to like, yeah, it's easy. Well, I don't think Anand fell for the trap. Probably not.

I don't know what the outcome of that game was. I doubt it. But the fact that, again, if we're taking the story literally, there is a convicted murderer that goes to prison, becomes the American number two, develops a gambit that then the greatest chess player of all time then uses. Yeah, for memes against legend. It's a pretty good story.

It's nuts. And this wasn't even that long ago. You know, for me, like ancient history is even like mid-20s. the century, right? Because, like, I'm, I know stuff happened, but, you know, you, it's so far away. But, like, this was in 2000. This, this whole thing. Like, Komsky is playing chess to this day. Yeah. You know, he was the American champion, like, four-time champion. I don't know. He was fending off his title against a... Yeah, as dude's looking out, like, who the f fias called blood good? Like, what is going on? Also, the fact that he's a murderer. Yeah. And his name is

blood good. I know. I can't, you can't even script that. It's like two on the nose. Yeah. But this is a phenomenon that they call nominative determinism. This is what I was telling you about before. This is this like, it's a, if you can pull up a definition, it's basically a thing that sociologists have identified where your name can in many cases indicate your outcome in profession. Right. So, for example, they did a massive data set in like 2005

where they looked at all the dentists in America and they found a higher proliferation of dentists named Dennis. Dennis, obviously being the root word of, dent of like dental. Uh-huh. And that there's like apparently a high frequency of cardiologists with the last name heart, pump, or pain. A bunch of dermatologists with the names Boyle or Hickey.

There's plastic surgeons with the names Carver, Mole, and Price that appear with high frequency. Wow. Kind of crazy. I'm not thinking about this for myself. I love marketing. My name. Oh, I was thinking your last name.

Yeah. Okay. I was. No, because I was. My last name's gag now. What are we trying to imply with that? No, no, I was thinking it's a last name. You think my last name is like, oh, I gag, or I have no gag reflex maybe.

I didn't say that. I just, every example we used was a last name. Just interesting you bring that up, that my last name. Well, let the record show. I thought for the longest time my last name meant victory. Oh, because Gagnet. Gagne. I thought your last name was pronounced Gagnon, no?

It is pronounced Gagnon. Yeah. But I've lived my whole life being like, Gagnon means victory. Like, if you buy a lottery ticket. And like you win a lottery ticket in Montreal or Quebec, the machine, the O'Bidenon would be like, Gagne, Gagne, like, Gagnon. I think it'll straight up say Gagnon. So I was like, dude, my last name is like the conjugated version of victory and like winner.

Like, that's awesome. There's a legendary hockey player, Simon Gagne, right? A bunch, yeah. But then I looked it up further. Apparently, Gignon might actually just mean farmer. Ah. That broke my heart. I was like, what?

Like, if you look it up on Google, it's like, yeah, it's a farmer. So have you done this for my name? Precisely right. Oh boy. So levy, I mean, obviously I think it's like tied to like the tribes of Levi, like one of the founders of the 12 tribes. My, my, uh, great grandfather was named Lev. So I think my mom like Americanized my name and made it. My, my first name is a last name. It's not a real name. It's like people have the last name Levy. Yeah, it's a good point. But my name's not a real thing. Right. You levy taxes. That's what you. Yeah. Okay. Maybe we can connect something with that. Okay. I do pay them. I pay them. You pay a lot of

On time. I get refunds and shit, all right? So leave me alone. Yeah, Daniel. Young pig. That's, oh, wait, that's yours, not mine. Why are you laughing? That's a good, that's a good connection. I like them. I'm the young pig, dude. Guard dog, I like that. Fierce or aggressive, man. I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't mess with you. What about Rosman? Let's do, let's do Rosman. Let's see what that is. I recently discovered, so on my side of the family, I am the last male Rosman. Like, my older relative didn't have kids. Wow. So, but there are other Rosemans in Slavat. Oh. Don't know how that happened. One of them is a chess player.

Really? Yeah. Like, her name is Monica Rosman. She's related to you? I don't think so. I mean, technically. Probably. I doubt there's that many Rosmans, but...

Okay, so yeah, Levy is a Hebrew name Levi, meaning joined, attached, joining. Oh. Okay. Now, Rosman, this is interesting. One document in origin means horseman. Dude, we should work together. Yeah, farmer horse. We'd have a sick farm.

Exactly. Now, think about this. So, Rosman. Hmm. with the company called Chesley. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. It's my company. Oh, it's your company. Could you look up Chesley? This is like the work of a mentalist, you know, but there's a really good reason for the logo of this company. Yeah, the logo of the company is so fascinating. It is really, it's fascinating. So the logo of, go to images real quick. The logo of the company is, what is, what is

that there? That looks like a horse. Yeah, it is. Yeah, look at that. Nominative determinism or something like that. No further questions. You kind of got me. In my defense, chess.com took the pawn as a logo and Chesa Bull took the rook as a logo. Wow.

So I was like, well, do we do knight, king, queen? But for some reason, you could have chose so many different pieces, but for some reason, I'm horseman. You pick the horse because you're a levy the horse. Yeah. I mean, unreal, right? Come on, guys. This guy, I mean, no one clapped. All right. Whatever. See, if we were on flagrant, Andrew would say, and he's called horse for other reasons. Yes. And then that's, you know. Hung like a. Anyway, I mean, pretty, I mean, that's a, you can just take that's free. You can just use that whenever you want. That is, that is pretty sweet. We have a couple more legends, okay? We're going to rip a couple more. Yeah, let's go.

This one is at the very bottom of the iceberg that was created by this gentleman on Reddit. Warwoman, again, we don't know. This is the Antarctic chess ice ice ice. Ax murder. Have you heard of this? No. So at Vostock, this is urban legend. Again, this is not verified. You can't really, there's not a ton on this.

But it's in the chess lore. Vostok Station is a Soviet, now Russian research base in the middle of Antarctica. Yeah. It recorded the lowest natural temperature ever measured on Earth at negative 128.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Months of darkness. A handful of people know where to go stuck on a base. Yeah.

A bunch of Russians on a base. What are they going to do? Yeah, they're going to play chess. They're going to play chess. 1959, a scientist at Vostok supposedly lost a game of chess and was so enraged that he snapped and murdered the person he was playing against with an axe. After this, as the legend goes, the Soviets banned chess at their Antarctic station. Now, there are no names, no records, or details, and a lot of them get changed in this story.

But that is the legend as to why chess is banned at the Soviet base in Antarctica. If you think about it, the chance that this got out and made news is like, there was like, how many people there, three, four, and one died and one killed him. But you would probably mention it if you were the guy that was like, yeah, I was up next. Yeah, what do you even do? Like, if there's four of you and one guy killed another guy playing chess, what do you even like, what do you do now? Finish the game? Well, yeah, like, you just, how does that, there's no HR. Yeah, I don't know what the fallout of that is being like, hey, dude, I think you kind of want.

went far on that one. I wonder if they went through the game. I wonder if they were like, yeah, you actually need a, you can't castle at this point. How do you even, how do they even contact back home? Some radio three days later. That's pretty, I mean, this is like a canon chess experience wanting to attack someone with an axe after a game you play.

That's the thing. The story is so unbelievable because there's not enough data or information to actually verify it, but the experience is the most believable thing in the entire planet. That was assaulted after a chess game. What happened? Growing up, I played at the Susan Polgar Chess Club in Queens, and I had a friend there named James Schau, hope he's doing well.

And yeah, it was just like teasing him after a game and just like this, he picked up a knight and he threw it like point blank straight at my head. No. And he hit me. And you still have the scar to this day. I don't know if this is the scar from there, but I might have just been born with this. But yeah, he hit me straight in the face. He hit you with what? The knight?

A horse. There you go. Guys, I mean, it's like, it's the, see? That's, now you're getting into the can. have spirit. Yeah, it's all connected, dude. That kind of makes sense now. Now, in fairness, the Soviet explorers did hold a five-month chess championship in Antarctica in

1978. So if there was a total ban, that kind of goes in the face of that. Growing up, I played a guy in the Marshall Chess Club here in New York City. His name was Yefram Zatz, Z-A-T-S. And he was like in his 80s when I was a teenager. So I hope he's still alive. He hasn't played that much chess recently. He learned to play chess in the Arkansas.

Arctic Circle. He was stationed in the military base in the Arctic Circle and he learned to play chess there and became like a 2000 level player at 80 years old. He would be 98 now. That's crazy. So when I was playing him, he was like in his 80s. And he was a 2000 plus rate of player. Was he pretty good? Yeah, he was good. Beating you? He might have beat me. He was he was slow. So like when the game got low on time, he might have like struggled because you know you got to be a little fast moving the pieces. But I remember when he would surrender like after a game, he would just like silent. just go, like he wouldn't say anything. Yeah. Wow. And he would call his wife between games. It was very cute. That's kind of nice. I guess he hasn't played since 20, 23, 20, I mean, maybe he passed away, but.

Yeah, that flat line doesn't look good. No. It doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. No. But a good life, you know, a long time. Yeah. Had to hang out in the Arctic Circle. He's probably got some stories from over there.

You got to ask him. Because apparently in 2018, this is a real story at the Bellinghausen station, which I'm presuming is like another Antarctic, like, research facility. An engineer stabbed a colleague and was charged with attempted murder. Not anything to do with chess. Oh. It was over book spoilers. I guess you get bored there, huh?

You just like, it's like, it's prison, right? It's kind of prison where you have to research and get paid for it. Yeah, you probably get a little cabin fever. Right? I mean, that's kind of wild. Like, someone spoils a book. I mean, I get it. Yeah.

You're at the end of Harry Potter. And some guys like... Oh yeah, easily, easily. Yeah, you know. Even now sometimes I say something on a stream and someone's like spoilers. And like, if you haven't watched Harry Potter or read Harry Potter, it's kind of your fault.

Right? Yeah. Hey, guys, we're going to take a break really quick because I want to tell you about GLD. Yeah, GLD sent me this chain. The chain that I'm wearing right now, if you've ever seen an episode of this show for the past like probably nine months,

I'm wearing this exact chain. And sometimes brands will send you stuff and they'll be like, yeah, try out her thing. And every now and again, you're like, all right, whatever. This one is actually amazing. What impressed me is how substantial it feels in your hand. Like it actually has a real weight. Like the clasp feels extremely well made. It feels

like really durable and it looks even better in person. It's comfortable to wear and it kind of elevates every single outfit that I'm putting on without having to overthink it. Their pieces are sweatproof, waterproof and made to be durable and guaranteed for life. I literally wear this every single day. I never take it off. And what's amazing is that GLD has something for every style and price point from an 18 karat gold plated piece to a solid gold piece with natural diamonds. And they have collaborations with like the NFL, NBA, WMBA, MLB, literally anything you can imagine, there's something there for you. I mean, obviously as a Catholic, I had to bust out the crucifix, but they have crosses that are for Protestants even. They got everything you can imagine. So if you want to elevate any

outfit, GLD is for you. And for a limited time only, new customers are getting an insane deal. You're going to go to gldd.com and use the code camp, and you're going to get 40% off. Yeah, 40% off with the code camp at gldd.com. You can get the exact same crucifix that I'm wearing right Now, maybe we put that in description so people can see exactly the one that I'm wearing. And after you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about GLD. Make sure you tell them that Mark and Christos from the campsite sent you. Now, let's get back to the show. Okay.

Now, it wouldn't be an episode of camp without talking about aliens. Right? I think I know where we're going. I think you exactly know where it was gone. There's a guy, and you're going to have to help me with his name. Kirstan Ilumjinov. Kyrsan Ilumjinov. Yeah, that was good.

Thank you. Yeah. At 31, he becomes the president of, of a Russian Republic. Kalmakia, right? That's correct. Yeah. And his first decree made chess mandatory in schools.

I agree with that. So far, he's on a great streak. I'm fully on board with everything he's been saying. And then from 1995 to 2018, he ran Fide. Yep. Can you explain what Fide is? The internet, it's, it's FIFA just a little, a little less prestigious.

It's the international governing body of chess, yes. And they run basically global chess. World Championship. Like, yeah. So he's, you know, he ends up beating Kasparov in an election at one point. Yeah, Kasparov quit competitive chess. He was the goat for a long time, maybe still to this day. Tries to run against Kersania.

I also didn't know the flying penis thing was him. Oh, yeah, yeah, there was like a clip of a flying, like, dick at a talk. He's doing a speech. Yeah. And on a drone comes a flying penis. Yeah. And, like, one of the guys, like, swats it out of the way and, like, just completely disrespect. Like, insane disrespect against Caspar, but also hilarious.

Uh-huh. Like, two things are going to be true. And, but anyway, this guy, Kersan. Yep. He is doing his thing, but in 1997, or he claims this later on, but he says that in September of 1997, he was abducted by beings in yellow spacesuits that took him from his Moscow apartment to their spaceship. And he repeated this on Russian national TV pinning the day to September 18th.

He says that he spoke telepathically and three people in the apartment were apparently witnesses. So he's in like a guarded apartment because he's a state official. Correct. And according to his guards, they couldn't find him for a period of hours. They didn't know where he was. Everyone was kind of panicked. And then he sort of reappears in his apartment. Now when he reappears, he says that he had interactions with these entities that told him things about chess.

So they basically says that chess came from space. Okay. The theory is that like, again, I think the story kind of changed. So I, Kersana, if you're watching this, I'm sorry if I get any of this wrong. But my understanding is that, like, he says that aliens basically gave us chess. And his reasoning was, like, the rules are the same everywhere you go. We don't really know, like, where it came from. Like, we have, like, general ideas, but, like, the game is so perfect and so precise.

And the elements of the sport are just, like, immaculate. that it must be divine, like the what it does to people's brains, like it elevates consciousness and spread around the world so quickly. And he claims that it came from aliens. Were like Indians offended when Kersan said the game was invented by aliens? I'm sure. Because they claim it. I'm sure they weren't stoked on it. And the same way Egyptians are pissed when people are like, dude, the aliens built it.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm sure it's not. They're like, hey, this is like one of our big, you know, contributions to the world. You know what I mean? Amongst many things, we made chess. And he's like, no, there's no way you could have made it.

It's perfect. How did that get perceived? I don't even. It's crazy Kersan was Fide President until 2018. Mm-hmm. That's just like, it's less than 10 years ago. I think he's running again. In July of 2026, he announced that he was running for Fidei-President again,

and the Russian Chess Federation is backing him. But his name wasn't on the final ballot. Yeah, yeah, I saw something similar. Maybe he'll run in the next cycle. I mean, do you have a better theory as to why chess spread around the world so quickly? In the last five years or since... Since the dawn of time. It's a great question.

No. Well, you know Sultan Khan. He was on the thing. He was on the iceberg. But yeah, he... He's a fascinating story. Yeah, he was from, I think, modern-day Pakistan. He learned chess.

I don't even know from where. And pretty late in life. Yeah, like in his 20s. He just, like, arrived in Europe. I don't think he could, like, communicate in any way with the people there. I don't think he spoke any English. I don't know if by the end of his life he had learned. But, yeah, he was like a grand.

master level player. Yeah. He just was... I think he became like the first South Asian grandmaster to my understanding. Yeah, I don't know exactly what it is because I think technically the first Grandmaster from South Asia is Nyazmur Shed, who I actually played and beat in a tournament. No way. Yeah, I might be Nyazmursh, we can look this up.

N-I-A-Z, M-U-R-S-H-E-D. I played him at a tournament and then he beat me, I think, but he was one of my earliest grandmaster wins. I think he might have been my first Grandmaster win in a tournament. Wow. But he, I believe, is the first South Asian. Grandmaster or second. I mean, how'd that feel? It was probably, it's probably nice to beat it. That was one of the best tournaments I ever played, yeah. In 2016.

Nyazmer Shed at Bangladesh. Yep. Wow. I wonder, I've read something about Sultan, Sultan Khan, that he had achieved something. He was the first of something. I mean, he was, I don't think they gave out Grandmaster titles back then. They started giving them out in the 1950s. Oh, really? So he's not a Grandmaster. Oh, interesting. Yeah, elite level of international chess. He won British Championship, yeah. Yeah. Wow. But they didn't have GMs.

They didn't have a GM title. They say he was the first South Asian and more broadly the first Asian player to reach the very top tier of international chess. Yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. And I don't think Pakistan has had like a very strong player since. We need to run it back. We need to create the Sultan Khan school in the middle of Karachi.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why it's like that. But there are just some places that chess is just not that big. Pakistan is huge. Yeah. You know, a lot of like very big countries. And there's so many great players that come out of India. You would think.

It's like, all right next to each other, similar people. Don't start this. Don't start this. Don't start this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We're about to be back on the iceberg. Yeah. So can you pull with the iceberg back up?

Yeah, I played him in a non-broadcasted game. So I'm kind of like that. I'm kind of like Crowley. Yeah. Oh, no, I totally fucking beat him. I fucking sack. No, I did beat him. It was in.

With the help of aliens and demons that were helping. It's in our record. on US chess for sure. But yeah, 2016 Philly, I think we played. But it wasn't like a broadcasted game. Wow. Yeah. Now, I have one more story that I want to share with you.

But if there's anything on here, specifically in the lower levels that you know about that you want to weigh in on, I would love to know if there's anything that jumps out at you. No, I think you're going to tell me about Pichn. Yes. I think we can go there.

I mean, there's some of the USSR losers would not have a great time, apparently. if they lost. The creepy crawly formation. Do you know what that one? That's just like a chess opening. Some of this stuff is like kind of nonsense. It's just, you know, yeah, creepy crawley is like some,

some chess opening. Oh, Stynets beat God. Have you heard that one? No. Have you heard of this guy, Steinitz? Yeah, of course. First World Champion. All right, my bad.

Sorry. Yeah, first world. I don't really know. He's the Ogee. But apparently he had a claim. I don't know where this is from or who claimed it, but like. I have to beat God. I found out that chess and

religious books are in the same category in the New York Times best sellers list. Really? Yeah. Advice how to miscellaneous. So I gotta take on like atomic habits, let them theory, and like God. Because you have a book right here. Correct. So we were joking. Like I got it, yeah.

So I think we're on good track. But when I found that out, I was like, that's ridiculous. But no, I don't know anything about the Stein. But you're going head to head with God. I might be if it's coming out on the same week. Yeah. Like the Bible? I don't think the Bible's dropping.

Pretty sure that's already out, but. I mean, you would think they would come up with like another edition. You know what I mean? If I'm the Bible publisher, I'd be like, new updated with a new forward. Like the school textbooks every year. Exactly.

McGraw-Hill, they figured it out. Where are the people at the Bible company doing? I don't know. Now, apparently he made a claim at one point that he played God. All right. So this comes from like chess notes or chess history.com. But he basically said, like, yeah, I had this vision and played God. Now, there's a bunch of these stories.

And again, there's contradicting versions. It is like an urban legend. But according to one story, he claimed to be giving God odds of pawn and move. I don't even really know what that means. That means you start with an extra pawn. And yeah, and then God goes first, which I guess, okay, that just means God is white. Okay. Yeah, I guess.

The white pieces. Yes, the white pieces. Correct. Yeah. Now, the psychology of the chess player. is a book written in the 50s. One story says that he claimed to be in electrical communication with God

and that he could give, again, pawn and move to God. No mediums, just direct contact. That's what he says. Now, we'll end with maybe the most morbid but craziest story of all. Oh, yeah, this is... Did you look into this when I sent it to?

A little bit. Had no idea that this ever happened, which is great. It's wild. So, we're going to Moscow. Okay, this is like... Half of today was in mind. That's what makes, again, chess, like, so interesting

because the Russians are such a fascinating people. Yeah. And the fact that the game is so concentrated in this place gives it so much great lore. Yeah. USSR, like, so much Russian, like great art and poetry, like a little bit of alcohol mixed in. Yeah.

Antarctic circles, aliens. The Russians got it all. So this is like late 90s, 2000s. There is this place called Bitsevsky Park. It is near Moscow, near like a, you know, like a poor Moscow suburb. And it became like kind of a park where people just kind of go congregate and, you know, they had chess tables there where people would go like hustle chess. So in 2001, men start disappearing.

So a lot of them were like kind of like homeless sort of like, kind of like vagrant, kind of like wandering guys that kind of like disappears and like, oh, has anyone seen Steve? And everyone's like, no, we haven't seen Steve. So between May and July, 10 men vanish after being seen alone in or around the wooded area. And these disappearances continue for years. And then in November 2005, a retired police officer disappears during a walk and then is found dead in the woods from severe blunt force trauma. Now, at this point, people look at this and they go, something's going on. Right.

These guys are not going missing. There's a serial killer that's around this neighborhood. So now the neighborhood believes that there's a killer in the park. They start calling it the Bitsevsky Park Maniac. And he becomes one of like the most feared kind of like urban legends in the area and people stop going to the park. But there's one person that continues to go to the park. His name's Alexander Puchiskin. And he loves going to the park because that's where he plays chess.

Now, according to what we can know about his early life, this guy was bullied relentlessly in his younger years. He had like a learning disability. Some say that he experienced like head trauma playing on like a park as a kid and like fell off a swing. Then the swing hit him in the head and he got like frontal lobe damage. So as a result, he's going to school

and he's not really doing that well. And he's getting transferred around to different schools and just having a hard time, getting bullied by kids relentlessly. Yep. And his grandfather teaches him out to play chess. And apparently this unlocks something in his mind. He just is fascinated with chess.

He's apparently really proficient. And to everyone's amusement, they're like, wow, this young kid Alexander, who everyone bullied, is actually a chess genius. And so he starts climbing the ranks. He's playing local tournaments. He's playing people in the park. And he's really, really good at chess. And he gives him a sense of purpose. And then he starts going to the park as like a young kid and playing against older guys in the park. And they kind of take them under their wing. They're like, hey, you're one of us now. You're a park chess player. You come out, you drink. And we all play chess. And that's like his community. And so for him abandoning this park

is like a big moral dilemma. He's like, look, I don't care who's out there. I don't care what's going on. I want to play. And he keeps on doing it. And this is like really important to him. So he's playing in the park. He's doing his thing. And he ends up going to the park with a co-worker that he knows from the grocery store that he's working with, this woman named Larissa. This is in April of 2006. And they are talking. They go into the park. She's like, are you sure we should go to the park? It seems pretty dangerous. And he's like, I've been going to this park since I was like six years old. It's fine. Okay. Like if there's something there will run. Like it's a park. Yeah. So they go to the park and they kind of start walking down.

one of the trails and they get deep into the park and the woman starts kind of getting nervous like they look up in the sky the sky's getting dark and gloomy the sun is starting to set and she's like should we go back and he's like let's just finish the cigarette you know we'll go back in a second and they start chatting and they're continuing just kind of like going like a date basically and she stops at one point because they stopped getting off the trail now they're just kind of like in the woods like where this giant park is and they're alone and she looks at him and goes you're the killer. And he goes, yeah. And she goes, are you going to kill me? He goes. Yeah. And then pulls out a weapon and kills her. Throws her body like into like a bog and infamously like

his calling cards, he would take like these bottles of vodka and like leave them on the body as almost like an omen. Like a, like that was like his signature. And then he goes back and continues to kill other people. At that point, he's now killed her and he kills another woman. This woman, right before they go to the park, again, the same sort of MO tells someone in her family, like, hey, I'm going to the park with Alexander. And they go, okay, they find her dead. They investigate Alexander. And he basically confesses to everything. Tells them everything that happened. He goes, yeah, I did it. And I've killed this many people and basically just like opens up the whole book and is like really sadistic with the way he's explaining everything. He's like, this is who I am. I did everything.

I killed these people. This is how I did it. He apparently would take people like the early on and throw them into a well. And when he would throw them into the well, like the well would basically like take them out into like an underwater like channel and their bodies would just be gone forever. So like he was just getting away with it for years. The craziest part is that early on he takes one of these people, throws them in the well and they survived. They climbed out of the well, went to the local police station and they were like, hey, this guy Alexander that I went from playing chess in the park tried to kill me, threw me in a well. I escaped. They take him to the hospital.

The police come by, take a statement, and the police go, hey, just drop it. And the police basically don't investigate and let him continue killing dozens of people after the fact. This happened with two people that survived. So they go and investigate him and they discover who he is.

They go through his apartment, and they find a notebook containing all of the notes of all the people that he allegedly killed. And they find a 64 square chessboard where he's filling in the names on the chess board of all of his victims. And his thought initially was,

oh, I'm going to kill as many people as I can to fill the chess board. And, like, he had this perverse, like, relationship with chess and murder and just, like, he said later on, like, throughout the trial, he's like, I have to kill. Killing is, like, the thing that gives me life and makes me feel like God.

And was just a true sadistic serial killer that was also obsessed with chess and was, like, mixing chess and like his God complex perversion with being a serial killer. Ends of getting sentenced and lives life in a Russian prison in the middle of what like basically is like the Arctic. They call it like, I think it's called the Snow Owl is what the name of the place is. Well, sounds, yeah, sounds like a counterstrike map.

Yeah, literally. And is one of the most absurd. He's one of like the most feared like criminals because he had no remorse. Yeah. At one point they attribute like 40 murders to him. And he goes, no, no, no, it's actually closer to like 60. It's actually like, because he wanted to like get credit for more of them because he's like so twisted. And yeah, he ends up getting convicted in 2007 of 49 murders, three attempted murders, and asked the Russian court to try to bring his death toll up.

And while he was in court, he was housed in a glass cage for his own protection. And as of today, he's still alive spending days in solitary confinement in the Arctic penal colony known as the polar owl. Wow. Crazy. Well, I guess we, I don't know if we would know if he died. I don't think they would like broadcast stuff. I don't know if that message would really get out. But apparently he had to spend like the first like 20 years in solitary confinement.

Yeah. In a polar penal colony in the Arctic Circle. I wonder if they've ever made like a criminal minds or something about somebody like this. Because yeah, this is normal. I mean, I don't follow this subject closely because I feel too much empathy for the victim. in cases like this. Like I almost don't want to hear about it. Yes, of course.

I'm like, oh my God, this is so brutal. And I spared you some of the more morbid details. No, no, I know. I know. I'm not saying in this case specifically. But like, yeah, I'm just like, this is, that's completely nuts. There is a documentary called the chessboard killer that, like, goes through the whole case. But if you get an image of them, you can see kind of who this guy was.

And, yeah, just like sadistic. He would just go to the park and play chess and then also was a serial killer at the same time. Those people usually, like, look normal. Right? Like they seem like kind of like normal kind of, you know, park chess guys. And he looks generally pretty normal. This is the place where he's at polar owl. And yeah, he lives alone after conflicts with cellmates. The fact that he's a polar owl. Can we get a picture of what polar owl looks like? He developed a relationship through letters. Yeah, that's usually what happens. A woman named Natalia told an interviewer that he proposed in 2012 after the correspondence. Whoa. That is wild. Okay, that's a polar owl. I mean, they're pretty cool. I mean, they're a good name for a... So yeah, that's what he looks like. That was him, like, on trial inside, like, a glass cage.

He looks like seven different Russian grandmasters. Like, he just looks like a guy named Sasha. Yeah, right? Like, I got, like, three Sasha's in my family, dude. One of my best friends is named Sasha. Like, yeah, it's nuts, you know? Great. This dude's just, yeah.

Wild, right? It's just, like, the most insane story. It's just out here. Apparently, it goes, there's like even like other crazier lore where like he was with a friend when he was like 15 and him and the friend were talking and he was like, I would like to kill someone. And his friend was like, yeah, sounds cool, let's do it. So they go out to the woods.

I mean, it's like Russia, right? It's like minus 30 every day. It's dark. There's a forest. And they were like, let's just give it a try. I think a lot of stories like that come out of Russia, just like either serial crimes or serial. I remember there was a book growing up that I read huge mistake.

My mom was a big. mystery and crime writer and now she's like a science writer. Oh, really? Yeah, she went to journalism school. But back in the day, yeah, she would write thriller stuff. And I picked up one of her books back in the day called Child 44, which was about a Russian serial killer. Chiquotilla? Maybe it was based on that. Yeah. Have you you familiar with him? Yeah, I think that's actually what it's based on. But anyway, yeah, like it's called Child 44. I should not have read that book. Yeah. Like as a young kid, like, I don't know how old I was, but it's like, you know, you read goosebumps. You read fucking,

somebody stole a lamp. And like, we got to get the Scooby Squad. Yeah, he wants Scooby Doo. You don't read the fucking guy killing a dozen people or two dozen or three dozen. Especially because Chigatillo was so sadistic. Like, not that there's any serial killer that's like really a nice guy,

but like he would kill kids. And like, you're now a kid reading it being like, why do my mom write this book? I shouldn't write that. But yeah, like, yeah, no, that stuff, especially if you have like a strong imagination. Yeah, so since, since like my early, years, I'm not a big fan of horror movies.

I just don't want to like... Dude, I'm the same way, especially since having a kid. Oh, yeah, yeah. I can't do any crime stuff involving any type of adolescence. But then even if it's like a serial killer that killed just like dudes, like just grown men. Yeah, yeah. But then that guy, the serial killer that had a kid. Yeah.

Then I feel bad again because I'm like, oh, man, now this kid goes his whole life losing... I get way too caught up. I know. But, yeah, he was one of the most bizarre kind of strange killers, I don't ever. He never heard of. But he goes out with his friend and his friend is like, they're kind of walking through like the same wood in Betevsky Park. And he, his friend is like, I'm going to go in. I'm not seeing anyone. There's no lone people out here that we can get. Like, I'm just going to go in. And Alexander goes, okay. And as his friend is walking away, he kills his friend. I was going to say, yeah, that seemed like a, yeah. Crazy. And to be clear, there are no openings named after him, right?

I hope not. I hope not, dude. I mean, I didn't imagine. Yeah. I would just, I would not play it ever. Even if it's like the right line for someone, like, as like a defensive opening, I'm not playing the Russian Cyril Keller, you know, Bevetsky Park. Yeah, the Bevetsky Park Gambit, you know, no, I, uh, there are some,

cases like that, I think, where I had a case. I mean, I have like just weird anecdotes of stories, but I once played at a chess tournament where one of the people who was winning it was had a name and his name was the exact same name of a murderer. I don't remember his name, but I remember like, like, his name was like Ted Bundy or something. Yeah, like they had the exact same name. It might have been the guy, right? I don't know. Maybe he was like out of jail. What? Yeah. So, wild. Yeah. So that has happened. So, so that has happened. I mean, you played a lot of weirdos growing up, you know, you had to... Would you ever play, like, uh, like if someone did like a charity tournament at a prison?

So actually, I was going to comment on that, chess in prison is a huge program. It's probably a really good thing. Yeah, like, I think I love chess again for many reasons that we talked about, but like, I love that it teaches like discipline. It teaches like controlling your emotions. Like someone does something. You can just like react emotion like, oh, I'm going to get your queen. Like, it teaches like a lot of like forethought and like kind of future planning.

So I think it would be good for people that have like impulse control. or like, you know, even just like, something to do, you know? It's big, it's really big. No, no, no, no, nothing. I can tell you definitely nothing has been named after him. But going to play in a prison would be pretty crazy. Yeah, yeah.

I guess it depends on the type of prison. Probably. But I had this experience where I went to a prison with a friend of mine. He was doing like a charity kind of show there. Yeah. And I'm like talking all these guys that are in there for life. Yeah. And they're telling me these stories.

And I was like, well, these are pretty. crazy stories like the reason why they're in there da-da-da-da and then I looked them up afterwards the stories that they told me was like not even 5% of it I talked to a guy that was like a full-on like murder of his whole family and we were just like talking in the yard

and he was like yeah you know I got in here because yeah I made some mistakes da-da-da-da left it at that looked up his name later killed his wife killed his kids escaped tried to go to Mexico and then the feeling you get after talking to someone like this you're like holy Because, like, I was shocked at how normally it was. Yeah.

Just like a regular guy. And you're like, what? So, next time you're at a chess tournament, watch her back. Yeah, I don't go to those much anymore, you know. No, it's good. And there's a lot of these crazy stories. I love the lore. Anything that we missed or anything you want to tell the people before we wrap up?

No, this was fun. I'm glad I learned something today that's, like, actually, like, the Crowley guy. a little bit like yeah right he played some chess yeah whatever but like the playing god and the medium and all these different uh yeah and and this guy this the Russian guy crazy this was fun yeah well thank you so much for doing it I am truly a massive fan I'm extremely grateful to you you took the time to you know be with me today and and lend your chess knowledge and uh I don't think you need any more promo as you have such a massive channel but if anyone wants to check out Gotham chess they can absolutely go check it out plenty of people don't know me that's good

Well, if you're interested in chess and you're trying to get into it, I highly recommend the slow runs. Those are good? That's like, or like chess steps. Low ELO is good. Yeah, guess the ELO is great. Guess the ELO is great. It's awesome.

So truly, thank you so much for inspiring me to play chess and inspiring so many people to play chess. You're absolutely the man. You can check out your book, How to Win at Chess Next Level and Chess for Babies. Chess for Babies. There's a lot of stuff. We'll find that on Amazon or wherever. Amazing. Yeah.

Love you. God bless you, brother. Let's talk soon. Thank you.