Digital Social Hour - How Chess Engines Are Ruining Players' Skills | Nemo Zhou DSH #701

Episode Date: September 7, 2024

🤔 Are chess engines really ruining players' skills? Dive into this thought-provoking episode of the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly as we unravel the impact of technology on the ancient game of chess. ♟️ Join our special guest, a chess prodigy turned poker player, who shares her incredible journey from battling on chessboards across the globe to dominating poker tables. 🌍✨   Discover how modern chess players, armed with engines and resources, are reshaping the chess landscape, and what this means for the future of the game. 🤯 Is it making players better or stunting their growth? Tune in now for an insider look into the chess world and its evolving dynamics. 🕵️‍♂️   Don't miss out on this conversation packed with valuable insights! 💡 Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 Join the conversation and let us know your thoughts in the comments! 💬   CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:25 - Nemo's Poker Journey 01:15 - Nemo's Chess Background 03:54 - Becoming a Grandmaster at 16 05:10 - Current World Chess Champion 06:24 - Talking During Chess Matches 07:36 - Hans Neiman Controversy 09:58 - The Queen's Gambit Impact 10:32 - Chess Resurgence 12:32 - Haunting Chess Games 15:17 - Chess Skill Development Today 17:58 - Experiences with Cheating 19:41 - Best Chess Players by Country 21:29 - Chess Memorization Techniques 23:10 - Grandmasters' Strategic Thinking 24:10 - Key Winning Moves in Chess 25:00 - Draws in Chess: Reasons for Dislike 26:00 - Gotham Chess Influence 31:20 - Natural Talent in Chess 32:54 - Importance of Coaching 34:44 - Transitioning from Chess to Poker 38:04 - Nemo's Future Plans 38:20 - Chess Boxing Discussion   APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]   GUEST: Nemo Zhou https://www.instagram.com/akanemsko https://www.twitch.tv/akanemsko   SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly   LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I only play five minutes on Chess App, and I've been banned twice. Nice. They don't like you talking, man. No, no, chess is, you know, fresh talk and all that stuff. I wish was more accepted in chess, but obviously chess comes from, you know, a millennia of not being able to really talk in games, just you just you sit there straight face like. All right, guys, we got Nemo here today.

I'm about to get some some chess lessons. Apparently. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. You're here for poker, though, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I'm here for poker. We're actually going to be at the same table later tonight at the Celebrity Poker Tour. You're gonna have to go easy on me. I don't know if I'm the one to go easy on you with because I think there's Wolfgang. I don't know if I'm the one to go easy on you with

because I think there's Wolfgang. I don't know if you know Wolfgang, poker player. And there's another poker player. We, for some reason, have the table of poker players. Yeah, and you won it last time, right? I won it the time before. First time. Yeah, the first time.

So you've been playing poker for a little bit? I have. I've been playing since 2021 since I was legal, I guess. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Legal. Yeah, I guess it's different in every country because you've been all over.

You grew up in Finland and Canada, right? Yeah, you did your research. I did. It's important to me. So you started in Finland? I started, well, I was born in China. That's where both my parents are from. And then my very first like excursion out of china i guess

was france when i was about three four years old and then we moved to finland when i was four and then canada when i was like 10 okay and you were playing chess at three i was playing chess at three that is insane i don't remember shit from three really no i a lot of people tell me this and i have absurdly good memories from being three years old. You might be a genius. Have you tested your IQ? No, mostly because I think there's a very, like, whether or not I am a genius doesn't matter that much to me.

You know, like, what is that going to change? Your ego won't appreciate it? No, not really. It's like, what am I going to do with that? Yeah, that's true, though. I mean, you get the score, and then it's like, what's next? Just bragging rights, I guess. I don't really plan on doing Mensa or anything like that.

I definitely would say I'm very smart in some ways and then not quite so smart in other ways. Well, you went all in on chess, so it makes sense to not be good at other things when you're locked in your whole life right you're probably spending 40 hours a week for years yeah definitely um there's this well i don't know about saying but a lot of people assume that chess players can be a little bit socially awkward and growing up i was definitely that socially awkward kid obviously i've had a lot of time to work on him um now but yeah i would definitely say when you are so like all in on something it can be kind of hard to get out of it absolutely yeah i was socially awkward too i was a pc gamer nerd you know what that's trending right now though now and pc gaming trending i know it's crazy the stuff we got made fun of and bullied for

growing up is now cool yeah now there's so many chess players that are like getting millions of views for sure and also like it's just a popular game these days like you don't get bullied for it at school anymore now kids ask you like oh do you play chess for real and the way you do it's cool because you're streaming it's more casual it's not as intense as it used to be when you were playing professionally right yeah for sure i would not have gotten back into chess after i quit back in 2017 if it wasn't for streaming. Was the pressure just too much for you? Like, was it too intense? It honestly was more like my parents mostly wanted me to play chess so that I could get into a really good university. And once I had like, you know, my university applications rejected by the Ivy Leagues and Oxford and stuff. I was like,

okay, well, since I'm just going to go to University of Toronto, I don't really need to do this chess thing anymore. So I was like, I'm going to just go focus on school. Got it. But you became a grandmaster, right? Yeah, I became a woman grandmaster when I was 16. Holy crap. That must be one of the youngest ever. Um, surprisingly, it's not. What? Okay, I might be one of the younger,

but definitely not one of the youngest, if that makes sense. Like, it's on the young side relatively, but not quite young enough to be considered like, oh, you have the chance to become the next women's world champion. Got it, got it. Like, there are kids becoming grandmasters at like 12, and I only got my women's grandmaster at 16. So, you know, there's like a little bit of a gap there. Of course, it's still like a really cool title.

And I was the first Canadian to get the women's grandmaster title. Yeah, as well as the youngest. But now there's a few in Canada. Yeah, I see that Indian kid. He's like 12 and he's beating Magnus. Oh my gosh, yes. The next world chess championship challenger yeah 17 really yeah 17 from India what's his name Gukesh Gukesh okay

I'm thinking of someone else I thought he was like 12 oh there's also a 12 year old that probably beat Magnus recently like there's yeah it's just kids are too good at chess. They're coming for Magnus. He's been at the top for a while now, but these teenagers, man. Well, it's pretty easy to not lose to them if you don't play. So Magnus is not actually currently the world chess champion, even though he is undoubtedly the world's best chess player. He just has decided that he doesn't want to play the world championship cycle. So the current world chess champion is actually chinese and he also is not a huge fan of playing chess he's like oh crap well i guess i won you know this so now i have to play but yeah he's been

um sort of just chilling yeah well classical is just so taxing on the body right eight hours a day yeah just i would say taxing just taxing you know like i i think i did the math for some of the top level players that playing these tournaments and they're getting paid like 125 okay obviously this is like me doing the math like looking at the prize fund and stuff i don't know how much they win they get from sponsorships or you know all the other stuff but it feels like it's almost not worth it in 2024 when time is so valuable and you can do a lot right day whereas with classical chess you're still spending you know three hours of preparation six hours of the game three hours

of analysis after and it's just like at some point you just kind of have to evaluate what do you want from your life right yeah i didn't even think about the prep and analysis part of it but so they're really doing three hours of analysis after each game well i don't know if three and hours is more too much or too little but i would say when i was playing classical chess when i was playing these tournaments super competitively um it would definitely be at least like three four hours of preparation per opponent wow yeah and then obviously the game can last anywhere between usually like i would say right around three and a half hours is maybe average dang but like your games hardly are ever lower

like less than three hours yeah and they can go above five hours my attention span cannot handle that exactly that was that was what i said too i was like yeah no i only play five minutes i respect that on chess app and i've been banned twice nice because i talk too much shit let's go pc gamer coming in they don't like you talking man no no chess is uh you know trash talk and all that stuff, I wish was more accepted in chess. Yeah. But obviously chess comes from, you know, a millennia of not being able to really talk during games.

Just you sit there straight face, like kind of. Yeah. That's why I like Hans though, because he'll talk a little stuff after the game and it spices it up. I honestly think that, you know, Hans is not the greatest role model for chess players out there,

nor is he a great example of a human being. But that being said, I think that with the rise of like chess influencers or chess personalities, however you want to call it, it's becoming a lot more accepted to talk during games at least in casual environments obviously you still can't speak to basically anyone it's against the rules in classical chess tournaments oh really yeah i didn't know that yeah that's a long game it is a

long game you're literally not allowed to um if you if you talk to anybody especially like you know a coach or something like that right it can be seen as cheating and you really don't want to be accused of cheating and just like that's career it ends it yeah because he's banned from like every tournament now well Hans isn't quite banned but I would definitely say his reputation not that it was ever you know sparkly clean but um definitely he hasn't helped his own case. Yeah, won't deny that. Have you ever played against him? I have.

We actually used to be really good friends growing up. Oh, nice. Well, he's a little younger than me, but I used to basically babysit him. What? Yeah, yeah. I played World Youths and stuff. He would hang out with me and my friends and all that. And we actually played in like uh twitch rivals fall

guys tournament one time okay yeah like we used to be friends we used to play league and stuff like i don't know what happened so he's gone down the dark path he really has he's gone down the full dark path did you see signs of that when he was younger or did it kind of be was it random i i did he's never been very uh he's always been extremely extremely like out there. He's not afraid to talk shit. He's not afraid to like say what's on his mind. He's not, he's, he was always a little bit annoying growing up. But, you know, I did not expect him to get to this point. Right. But yeah. this point but but yeah that's crazy well you're you're on a new page now you're doing streaming you're not even doing those tournaments right yeah and i feel like it's more lucrative i think well i think it can be really lucrative to stream those tournaments so funnily enough i think it's

come full circle we're currently in a really interesting phase in chess where i would say after the queen's gambit boom yeah right people just like chess and now two years after the people that like chess mostly just like chess and there's a lot less of like the casual kind of scene right um especially as I don't know twitch is kind of it's an own it's it's in a different phase now. There's a lot less big variety streamers playing chess. So if you're in chess, you're kind of all in on chess, which is kind of interesting in that way, where classical chess tournaments are making a really huge comeback.

They're super popular. People love watching these longer games. And that being said, as I can tell from sort of talking to you, you might not feel that way. You still like playing your five minute games and you might not follow these classical chess tournaments all that much. Um, but the people that really follow chess really follow those classical tournaments.

I feel that. Yeah. There's definitely like a cult following, right? Yeah. It's, it's definitely a cult following, but I would still say the average person that watches chess does not watch classical chess. Like it's too slow for me. Yeah, exactly mean with tiktok ruining my attention span yeah i can only watch like five or ten minutes like tilted tuesdays i could watch yeah i like watching those i'll see hikaru and

eric hansen play those yeah and it's entertaining i don't know how they talk during it it's so insane title tuesday is definitely the one of the highlights of the week. Oh, is it title? It's title. Everybody thinks it's tilted because of the like, it's basically tilted Tuesday. I'm such a normie the fact that I said that. Honestly, it's tilted Tuesday from now on. Let's do it. How much do you win if you win that tilted Tuesdays?

I think it's like $1,500 US. Oh, that's not even that much. No, it's not. Because you're playing for two hours. Yeah, it's really not. There's not much. Yeah, there's not even that much. No, it's not. Because you're playing for two hours. Yeah, it's really not. There's not much money in chess, really. Yeah, because it needs bigger sponsors to fund it. Yeah, biggest sponsors. I think also a large part of it is just the format of it.

It's still kind of very top-heavy top heavy which makes sense a lot of sports are like that but i also think at the end of the day chess just sort of chess can move in a direction where it's faster and there's people that are trying to do so but all of the world's most serious tournaments are still full-on classical chess and i just don't feel like that is completely necessary like you can have one or two a year maybe yeah and then the other ones can be rapid like we don't need to go all the way to blitz but just rapid and then more people might tune in i would love that any chess games that you lost that still haunt you that you still think about oh my gosh so many like every game i lose oh so you're really hard on yourself i am but there's also some specific games that if i had won it

would have made a big impact maybe on my life oh yeah um but that being said it's like i don't know chess is a very unforgiving game if you lose you lose because of yourself um and actually instead of my loss i have a friend fab, Fabiano Caruana. Yeah. He's been, you know, top in the world for a very long time, world championship challenger, all that. He actually drew a game very recently that if he had won, he would have gone to the tie breaks with Gukesh, the 17-year-old I told you about. And then if he had won that, he would have had a chance to play the World Chess Championships. And if he played the World Chess Championships, he probably would have won. Wow. So that's like a draw that I'm sure is going to haunt him

for a really long time. And I see these kind of things, and I'm just like, damn, I'm like, you know, imagine playing chess for a whole month, and you draw this final game, and you miss out on your chance. That's just so unfortunate. So heartbreaking. One wrong move, right, can cause that effect. Yeah. Just just crazy it could be one pawn move even right exactly when you're at that level

literally one pawn move can make or break the game for sure it's crazy yeah i don't know the pressure is just too high for me to ever get into something like that yeah i mean i think the pressure is um if you if you're competitive i would say the pressure is definitely like just something on the back of your mind and you're just focused on the moment. But yeah, chess can be very high pressure. Yeah, you see how many calories chess burns? Oh, insane, insane. It's like in the thousands.

Yeah, it's crazy. I didn't even know that till recently, but the fact that, yeah, it makes sense. A lot of chess players are skinny. There's a lot of chess players are skinny. There are also some less skinny chess players, but that might be because of other reasons. I would definitely say that with chess,

the amount, I don't really know all the science behind it, but I feel like it burns different calories, you know, like your brain calories versus, I don't really know how it all works though. Yeah. Did you fast before your games or were you eating a full meal? I was usually eating a full meal,

but I'd be really cautious to not eat too close to my game because then your body starts digesting and you don't want to feel like tired or lethargic during your game. But when I was like playing my chess tournaments growing up, I would always have a set schedule of like breakfast in the morning, you know, training, all that, lunch pretty early and then a little training after. And then by the time I get a

little tired, I would take a nap and then maybe like an hour, half an hour before my round, I'd wake up and then go to my round. But there was always like the set schedule. Yeah. Do you think it's easier to be better at chess now? Cause there's so many information online and people teaching it. Yeah, absolutely. There is no better time to be a chess player. This is peak. That's why we have all of these 12-year-olds becoming grandmasters and beating Magnus Carlsen.

These kids have the resources that the previous generation didn't have. Even I didn't really have these resources. Chess engines really only became a thing during my lifetime. So the access these kids have is crazy. And the access that anybody now has is crazy. You can just go online, look up any opening you want to learn, and there's going to be a grandmaster course on it. And 10 years ago, you had to probably pay either a lot

or you had to hire a private coach. Or yeah, it's completely different. Yeah. even on the chess app after your game it shows you all your wrong moves you can learn instantly absolutely and you we we didn't have summary features like this right before you had to how would you even know if you made a wrong move back then well before you would have to load it into the engine so you would probably have to copy paste your game into a different software. There weren't really like these cloud engines in the past. And I think cloud engines have really changed the way that the average person approaches chess. And it's not always the healthiest, in fact.

Because before I used to have to take my game go into the computer like put it through and like move by move I would have to input it or ask a coach and the way that it's very different when you do something like that is that you have to think about where you made the mistake you have to be conscious about it right these days people just click through a game and it says double question mark and they're like okay I made a mistake here but there's not that much thought process going into why you made that move how you made that move how did you arrive at making this bad move like there's so many questions that people stop asking themselves when it's when the answer is just given to them right like they can immediately see that this is the better line whereas before you had to sit there and be like

okay well if this is a bad move i wonder why this is a bad move or if you showed it to the coach the coach would have to go through it and be like okay so in this position you should have done this or that and there's that human element that's so important because let's be real we're not going to play like engines or the average person right like an engine yeah the engines just beat everyone these days right yeah exactly and i And we can't play like we don't have that capacity, at least not yet. So I would actually say like it's really cool and I'm sure it helps the majority of people. But at the same time, it kind of takes away from the potential of people improving. Right. Have you ever played against someone that you found out was cheating? Yeah, all the time on chess.com.

Oh, it's common? Yeah, it tells you. It refunds your rating when you play chess.com oh it's common yeah that it tells you it refunds your rating oh wow play against cheaters and you can just see how much rating you got back and stuff so it's really common like that wow it's pretty common i didn't know that yeah which is why i think it's almost pointless to ever ask or ever think about if someone's cheating yeah you could probably tell too yeah i can tell a lot of the time. But sometimes people, I don't know, there are people that are better at it than others at cheating. And I would have never guessed. And then I get the rating back.

I'm like, oh, I did not know that the person was cheating. I didn't even feel like they were cheating, honestly. They probably mess up like a couple moves just to offset it or something. Whatever it is, I don't really question it. I don't really think about it because it's almost like what's the point? It's going to happen anyways. There's no point in thinking about that. Absolutely. It's probably more rare over the board, right? Yes. Well, it's supposedly harder to cheat over the board. However, that being said, it feels like we're currently in this

slight paranoia phase where a lot of super grandmasters are a little cautious. and there's also been reports of high level cheating in tournaments and obviously the hans versus magnus thing was huge and up to this day it's still like did hans cheat did hans not cheat yeah we never got a clear answer which i'm upset about you know honestly the tournament arbiters said that hans didn't cheat so I will take their word on it. Obviously, Hans cheated multiple times online. So he's not helping his own case at all.

So once again, that's one of those cases where it almost doesn't matter what the official ruling is because— The reputation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I feel that. In your opinion, which country has the best chess players right now? India for men's and China for women's. Wow, so not U.S. Not the U.S.

The U.S. has been really dominant for a really long time. Players like Fabiano Caruana, So Wesley, Karu Nakamura, really, really strong American chess players, obviously. But it feels like there's no American chess player that's like up and rising, if that makes sense. Like these players have been in the scene for so long. They've been so good for so long. Fabi is still like world number two, obviously. But from India, you're seeing all of these like 18, 17, 16, 15, 14 year olds. And it's like, when you are younger, you have so much time and energy

and you don't have to worry about life and taxes. And then you see the American players and Hikaru is now married. Fabi is 30s, mid-30s now. I'm sure, you know, you can't just play chess forever. Yeah, they're aging out. Is it true you kind of lose a step almost in your 30s i mean i think with chess it's not quite like other sports you

can keep going for a really long time um vishy anand from india is a very clear example of this he's i don't want to get his age wrong i respect him like to the max probably 50s now okay and he's still one of the top players in the world and plays consistently. That's impressive. Very impressive. But that being said, for the most part, yeah, you kind of phase out around 40s.

It's sort of whether it's your brain doesn't work as fast, you start having a family, having kids, and you just get a lot. Whatever it is, is yeah most of the time it's commonly acknowledged that the younger you are the better you are at chess interesting how much of chess would you say is just memorization memorizing all the lines and everything so memorization in chess works in a few different ways you can sort of look at um openings and memorize the moves but i would say for the most part,

I would hope, at least because this is how it works for me with Super Grandmasters and Grandmasters and all the top level players in the world, you actually kind of remember patterns. Excuse me. Rather than exact moves. And I think that's really important because remembering patterns is so much better

than just being like, okay, these are the first 20 moves I have to play. So I would say almost all of chess in that way is kind of memorization because you're just looking at positions you've seen before or doing like pattern recognition association. Whether you would call that directly memorization is up for, like that's not something that I really have a strong opinion on. Got it.

But yeah, a lot of memories. Yeah, because you've probably seen everything at this point, so you can recognize what's about to happen. Yeah, like I've never seen, it's very rare I see two positions exactly the same after the opening. Like in the opening, sure, I've probably seen the position a million times. But post-opening, it's very rare i see exactly the same position twice right because

there's so many different positions in chess however just because that the pawn is pushed two squares more or this knight is here versus this knight being there doesn't change the overall of the game necessarily that much so for that i can associate it to a past position that i've played perhaps yeah and sort of go off of that position and develop a plan off of that so I wouldn't really call that memorization but it's a lot of pattern recognition interesting and is it true grandmasters can think up to like 20 moves ahead of their current position yeah absolutely that's crazy yeah 20 okay well I don't know about quite literally 20 moves I like to think of each move as like for example if you play e4 yeah and I go E5, this is two moves technically.

Because you made a move, I made a move. So, like, up to ten moves. Got it, got it. Yeah. That makes sense. Which is still impressive. Right, of course. It is.

It's super impressive. And you're studying your opponents, so you kind of know what they're going to do almost, right? Yeah, especially in openings. For the first part of the game, usually you've looked through all of your opponents' games and come up with, like, this is what my opponent's going going to do so this is going to be my response to that once you get into the middle game it's a lot of pattern it's a lot of planning so you probably looked through um the opening and this is what the engine says is going to be the best type of middle game for everybody to play so then that's what you do uh but yeah other than that yeah quite a lot of just thinking

about what your opponent might want to do rather than like having pre-planned it out absolutely and where would you say most games are won is it in the beginning the middle or the end so for grandmasters i would definitely say a lot of the games are won by the end you kind of try to start building advantage once you get out of the middle once you once you're in the middle game you're trying to like figure out this is where i can push for a win this is where maybe i'm a little worse i'm going to defend for now yeah and then once you get to the get into the end game if the position is not clearly a draw magnus carlson's really good at pushing drawn positions for a win but for the most part if you're not exactly winning by the end game then you're kind of like

just trying to figure out is my opponent going to make a mistake? Is my opponent not going to make a mistake? And the answer is no. My opponent's not going to make a mistake. Game kind of goes towards a draw. But if they have like weaknesses, if they are down a pawn, if they have a bad bishop,

something like that, you push for a win. Got it. And grandmasters are so good now. A lot of them are drawing, right? The draws happen the most draws are the most frequent result in chess yes because everybody is sort of like super close and level when you get to the really top but that being said there's a lot of decisive results and top competition okay in

classical or yeah oh yeah in classical too especially in classical there's a lot of no sorry especially in classical there's a lot of draws in faster time controls, a lot more decisive results. Interesting, yeah. Because people always complain about draws, but they're so good. The game quality can still be really good despite it being a draw. I feel like the draw hatred is almost uncalled for. Sure, there's some really boring draws out there. We always see those in tournaments.

Everyone's like, like oh today's games were boring um but i think draws can be really exciting as well just because the game ended in a draw doesn't mean there wasn't a battle thought and gotham chess makes it exciting man oh yeah levy makes everything exciting i mean that's his that that's why he's gotham chess he's crushed it with that people that don't even know chess watch him yeah exactly like he makes chess interesting he makes chess fun absolutely have He makes Chess fun. Absolutely. Have you ever played against him?

I have a couple of times. Who won? He's won consistently. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I've like maybe sneaked one or two games in here and there over the years. But like he has a very high win rate against me. What was his peak rating? Did he ever become a Grandmaster? No, he is an International Master.

I think he's... So to become an international master, that means he has to have hit 2400 at some point. I don't know exactly his peak rating. He's currently in the 2300s for FIDE rating. And actually, I believe he's about to return to classical chess. Oh, yeah? That's pretty exciting for everybody.

Oh, that is exciting. Yeah, but he's good at chess, but he is not – he wouldn't even be in top world 200, 300. Oh, my gosh. Maybe even 400, yeah. Because he's taking so much time off? No, just he never hit world top 300.

And it's not like a slight against him or anything. It's just there's a lot of grandmasters in the world. I think there's way more grandmasters in the world than people realize. Yeah, I didn't realize. Yeah, like you only hear about the top grandmasters that you see play every tournament, like Hikaru and Magnus Carlsen. Yeah. You know, like Indians would know Vidit and Gukesh and Prague.

But no, there's a lot of other grandmasters, and they're not nearly as good as those grandmasters. It's like a whole spectrum other Grandmasters, and they're not nearly as good as those Grandmasters. It's like a whole spectrum of Grandmasters. You have Grandmasters who... There's Grandmasters around my rating. Like, they used to play. They're a little older now. They don't really care that much.

They just play for fun. But they're still a Grandmaster because you get the title. Once you get the title, you get it forever. And once again, no slight against them, but there's definitely grandmasters out there that are lower rated than me. There are grandmasters that are higher rated than me, obviously,

most of them are. There's grandmasters like lower rated than Levy. Levy, I would say, is one of the stronger international masters, but he hasn't gone in his grandmaster norms,

hasn't gone in the grandmaster rating. And there are grandmasters that are just like right around average. They would never have the chance to play in the World Chess Championships, but they're still grandmasters and there are grandmasters that are just like right around average they would uh never have the chance to play in the world chess championships but they're still grandmasters and they're still very good and you know they're still one of the very few grandmasters in the world right but then you hit like the super grandmasters and the super grandmasters are

the ones you see in media those are the ones that you see um you know pop off on socials and whatnot yeah those are like uh the better than hans you know so hans is socials and whatnot. Yeah. Those are like the better than Hans, you know. So Hans is a grandmaster? Yeah, I believe so. He's a grandmaster. He's pretty good, obviously. He's American. He seems to think that he is going to be the next, you know, generational talent.

I don't want to disagree with him but it's pretty difficult to be that when you're already in your 20s if that makes sense like the current world candidates winner is 17 right right so it's almost unfortunate with how young chess has kind of moved um that at 20 he's still insanely good would crush me you anybody definitely like in this in a city in in las vegas you would crush anybody in las vegas any day okay i i don't know maybe there's some secret grandmaster living maybe magnus has a side house here yeah who knows um but my point is right like really good but not quite good enough and it's crazy chess is crazy that way yeah so to become a gm you need a 2400 you need 2500 or 25 fide rating um three grandmaster norms and you get those grandmaster norms by performing above 2600 fide in tournaments

where that is eligible so for example you have to have you have to play against a certain number of title players they have to be from different countries this is to avoid like you know collusion rigging whatever yeah um it has to be fide approved so you can't just do this in your home got it like you have to go get approval you can win them in open tournaments closed tournaments that doesn't really matter um but yeah there's like specific sets of rules. Has anyone ever done it on a side quest? Like chess wasn't their main thing? I would definitely say a lot of people probably have. Really? Yeah. I actually ran into a Polish, I don't know if he's a grandmaster or international master, but I ran into a Polish chess player once. I don't remember his name, unfortunately, but he heard my mom and I speaking Mandarin at the airport.

We were on our way to a tournament in Reykjavik called the Icelandic Open. Really big tournament, really popular for players of all levels. And he spoke fluent Mandarin to us. And we were, like, shocked. Like, this guy is speaking Mandarin. His pronunciation was great. He knew my name because he read about me in Chinese like media. So he could read Chinese media.

Turns out he had done his master's degree in China in Mandarin. Wow. In computer science. That's impressive. Right. That's what I'm saying. And he just so happened to be flying to this tournament to go for his grandmaster norm. His final one.

I hope he got it. I don't know if he did but anyways my point is yeah like there's a lot of people out there who are really really good and are doing you know this for not necessarily as a side quest but not also not necessarily as their main thing right what role does natural talent play because some people play chess their whole lives they never become a grandmaster and then some people would get it in their teenage years oh i would say natural talent is probably about 50 of it so it's a good amount i think it's a good amount i think it's higher than um i mean i think it's right around there for sports right like if you look at me you saw my height coming in yeah for context sean is really really really tall yeah i was shocked the first time i saw him at the last celebrity poker i was like wait sean is tall

sean would have a much higher chance of being able to enter the nba than i would right like i am five six maybe five like five six five seven is pushing it and there's no there's no not even like forget natural talent for basketball i don't even have the genetics right yeah like that's kind of my point is that in chess it's sort of the same way like you don't really think that people i don't like to think that anybody is smarter or dumber when they're born or anything like that but i do think that everybody has a higher natural propensity to something in their life. For example, somebody really, really good at chess might be really, really terrible at music. And that's just life. That's just how it goes sometimes. Yeah, for sure. And I think

environment when you're a young age, because you played at three, I think your brain, 90% of it forms the first seven years. So I think that gave you a huge edge too absolutely i would that that's why the majority of chess players if they become chess players um started before the age of nine i would say yeah yeah so if you coach someone right now what what rating do you think you could get them in a year depends on how much they're willing to work on them uh work themselves okay because coaching is really important but i would also say a lot of chess has to come from studying looking through openings yourself there's only so much a coach can do got it yeah yeah because i'm a 1200 i don't know any openings to be honest i just winged it honestly i like to tell people that you don't need to know openings to get good at

chess i think it's so much more important to not make mistakes like it almost doesn't matter what opening you're playing i'm currently playing an opening that is absolutely terrible basically i just do this with my pawns it's called i call it the ruffles because it's shaped like the ruffles chip it's one of my favorite chips um it's a terrible opening you're basically minus 1.5 that's a lot it's a lot coming out of the opening but i've gone into about 1700 over the last three days with it um and it goes to kind of show that openings don't necessarily matter that much as long as you don't make mistakes and you catch your opponent's mistakes so what this means is that i'm not blundering my pawns i'm not blundering my knights bishops rooks or queens i'm not blundering my knights, bishops, rooks, or queens. I'm not blundering checkmate. I'm not losing any of those.

Anytime my opponent gives me a free pawn, I take it. Anytime my opponent gives me a free piece, I take it. And just by following that alone, I climb to 1700. Obviously, there's strategy and stuff, but you can look it for yourself. This opening is terrible. My pieces are dead.

So you can see that I'm giving myself such a handicap, but I'm still able to get to like some level. I don't know. 1,700 might be the peak. I haven't gone past it yet. That's impressive. Yeah.

Anyways, my point is like openings, I don't think matter that too much. That's good advice. Obviously it helps. Don't play this. But like, yeah, as long as you don't make mistakes, it's much more important. Are you transitioning into poker?

Trying to. I would say expanding is more accurate. I think chess is always going to have that special place in my life. But as far as competitive sort of edge goes, I have zero competitive edge in chess just because I've been out of it for so long. I don't even know what the next tournament I could possibly try to win would be. Like I can probably try to win some open tournaments, but then it's kind of like,

all right, so I won this open tournament. What's next? I kind of like to, I used to like playing chess with like winning nationals and then playing in worlds. That was always my trajectory. But then once I turned 17, 18, it was like, well, now that I've played in the World Cup,

I'm getting, I'm busted the first round because my opponent's so much better than me. Right. So like if I want to move to the next step of the World Cup, going to the top 32 women in the world instead of just the top 64, it's like eight hours of work every day for the next six years. I'm just like, OK, yeah, you know what? If I if I put that into poker, you never know. I can win the main event in six years. You'd be nasty. Yeah. You already won the celebrity game last time, so I could see it. A lot of chess players are good at poker, I noticed.

The Botas sisters and Magnus has been getting into it. Magnus is insanely good at poker. Yeah. For somebody who like- Just started. Yeah. He is one of those people that's once in a generation, like talented. Yeah. He's just talented. people that's once in a generation, like, talented.

Yeah. He's just talented. There is a lot of similarities, though, right? Like, reading people, strategy. So it makes sense why chess players are good at poker. Absolutely. Also, another really big reason why chess players are just motivated to play poker is because there's very little money in chess.

So if you become a marginally winning poker player, you're making way more than you would be playing chess tournaments. Right. Cause you were top 64 in the world and you probably weren't making millions. No, no. I made $1,000. Oh, that's it? Yeah. I won Canadian women's championships and I made a thousand dollars. Oh, I thought you were making six figures at least. No, no, no, no. Okay. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Being Canadian women's champion gets you a thousand bucks. And you dedicated 15 years to get that. Yeah, exactly. That's nuts. You can kind of tell.

It's not quite worth it. Yeah, so you were just doing it because you love chess. You weren't even thinking about money. I honestly didn't even do it because I love chess. I loved chess until I was maybe 10, 11. And then after that, it was very clear that, well, while I was good. Take advantage of it. Yeah, take advantage of it, get into a good school,

all that stuff. At least that's what my parents planned out for me. Didn't quite work out that way. Yeah. But yeah, it just was like, chess is an interesting game. It's like worth it

because everybody respects it and it looks really good on your university application. Right. But if you're trying to make a living out of it, it is so difficult. Yeah. If you're not streaming, yeah, it's almost impossible. Yeah, if you're trying to make a living out of it, it is so difficult. If you're not streaming, it's almost impossible. If you're not a content creator, if you're not coaching,

it's practically impossible. I was making $60 Canadian an hour teaching little kids when I was in college to pay for college. That was good. It was really good. I have friends making $70,000 a year just doing basically full-time coaching.

And it's not like bad or anything like that. But it's probably not quite what you want to do after you've dedicated like six hours a day for 15 years of your life. Like imagine if you did that with a university degree or something. You could probably get much further. Yeah, I know. The ROI just isn't there for you. Yeah, exactly. It's like all these things to put into perspective.

Absolutely. Well, what do you got like all these things to put into perspective. Absolutely. Well, what do you got going on next? Upcoming next, poker. A lot of poker tournaments. I'm excited for WSOP. Oh, you're entering the main? Yeah. Okay.

Hopefully, there's going to be... I'll definitely be playing the ladies main. Nice. We'll see about all the other events. But a lot of that, a lot of chess content, and hopefully creating some more fun ip and yeah any chess boxing in the plans oh i was supposed to fight last december oh you were fortunately yeah they managed to get a kickboxing license in vegas which i would have loved to participate in either way

yeah um but unfortunately majority of participants are like boxing. Kickboxing sounds intense. I love kickboxing. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Chess kickboxing. I would watch it. Yeah, chess kickboxing would be crazy.

Chess MMA. That would be insane. Chess MMA. But hopefully, there's chess boxing this year. All right. I'll stay tuned for that. Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for watching, guys. See you next time.