Odd Lots - One Of The Top Chess Players Talks Computers & Options Trading

Episode Date: April 28, 2017

On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we talk to Hikaru Nakamura, one of the best chess players in the world. Currently ranking in the top seven, Nakamura achieved grandmaster status at a younger age than Bobby Fischer did. These days in addition to chess, Nakamura actively trades options, and on this episode he talks about the similarities and differences between the two pursuits. We also talked about poker, what it takes to be a pro chess player, and how computers and artificial intelligence are changing everything.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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CIT offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for small and middle market businesses. Learn more at CIT.com. Put knowledge to work. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal. And I'm Tracy Alloway. So, Tracy, before we got on here, you were joking. that today's episode, if we wanted, we could probably go for three hours, or at least I could.

Yeah, I was joking about that, and I'm laughing right now because I think I can sense your excitement from thousands and thousands of miles away from New York. Yeah, I'm not going to deny that I'm extremely excited about today's episode, and if we didn't have time constraints, we could probably go a long time. But I really think our guest today is right in the sweet spot of some of the biggest themes that we've covered on this podcast in all the time that we've done it. Wait, so who is it and why do you think that? So we're just going to completely dispense with all the preamble and jump straight into the guest and just get right into it. Well, I have a major preamble that I want to give before we get to the guest, but why don't

you say who it is? Because I know that you want to talk about him. Okay, I'm very excited. Our guest today is maybe the first sort of legit celebrity that we've had on the Odd Lots podcast. His name is Hikaru Nakamura. He is one of the top chess players in the entire world. Right now, he's rated around number seven. I believe he was a prodigy. He earned his, he became a grandmaster at age 10, if Wikipedia is correct. Oh, he's giving me a face.

I don't know if that's completely accurate, but very young. And in addition to being a chess phenom, he also does other stuff like trading options and at times play poker competitively. So he's just a completely sweet spot Oddlots guest here. All right. And obviously we've had a lot of episodes about trading and investing. We've also had episodes in the past about chess and poker. So I can see how you would be very, very enthusiastic about this one. Here is my major preamble for you, Joe.

I know absolutely nothing about chess. In fact, I find chess extremely frustrating because whenever I play with my husband, he doesn't let me win, ever. In fact, he uses that. What's that thing where you win in like two moves? That's so cringe. So cringe. The scholars mate?

Well, whatever it is. He's done it to me several times now, and I fall for it every single time. So everyone is just going to have to bear with me, very, very basic questions about chess. But I actually read on Hikaru's Wikipedia page as well that he has an uncommon enthusiasm for chess and is known for being far more approachable than other players of his ability. So I'm sure he's going to humor me, right? Well, I think that sounds like an ideal guest.

So I say we should just get started. Hikaru, welcome to the show. That's good to be here, Joe. So you were making a face. I said something about when you achieved grand master. status. When did you become a grandmaster? And I think it said you got there faster than Bobby Fisher did. Is that right? Yeah. So when you referred to being 10 years old, that's when I became the youngest master. Oh. That's a slightly lower ranking. But at the time at least, they had, they kept that record in the Guinness Book of World Records.

So when I was very young, like I was trying to get to that level. And so that was important. But I became a grandmaster when I was 15 years old. I was about a month and a half younger than Bobby Fisher. So that made me the the youngest American Grandmaster in the world at the time. I guess that's impressive. When did you, so, you know, it's always sort of an interesting question with sort of young prodigies, phenoms. What was the moment early on where someone or you recognized that you were on a different level than other people who are learning at the same time? Well, I think it's not so much that I was on a different level. There are a lot of talented young kids who play chess. And I think it was just that I had this will and this motivation within me to just keep trying to win every game all the time. And when you start performing, even at like

11 or 12 years old, by being strong grandmasters, it certainly shows that you have talent. And it's a matter of taking that talent and just keep keeping up and keep going forward with it. And basically, I would say from the time I was about 15, I had to be a lot of. I had. a certain inclination that I might become a professional chess player, but it wasn't until I was probably 19 or 20 that that actually came to fruition because I've had a lot of many other interests in my life. So there have been many other things that I've been doing with my time as well. Was chess something that you were naturally attracted to at a young age? And if so, what did you like about it? Well, I think when you think about chess, you hear a lot of stories about these

kids who are just great from the time that they first start playing. It's just, They're just amazing, and they just win every game to start. Whereas for me, that certainly wasn't the case. When I started out playing, my first tournament, for example, I played four games, and I lost every single one. And the first year that I played chess, I did not have many great results. And my parents actually stopped me from playing for about six months. And it was only when I came back that something clicked, and I just happened to start winning games. And then from there, it just kept going forward.

Certainly, it's not something that I had a natural talent for. And actually, with most things, I don't seem to have a natural talent, which in a way, I think is a good thing because I think the harder you have to work for something, the better you become at it. And when you hit the wall, you kind of, you keep trying and you find a way to persevere. Whereas there have been a lot of other kids who are much better than I was when they were young. But it's just, it was a straightforward path. And so they just became really good, really quickly. and then at a certain point they hit the wall and they didn't know how to how to go from there because they just couldn't improve.

And I basically had to learn how to improve from the very start. So I think it's, for me at least, it's been very useful that I don't have a natural talent for a lot of things. Talk about that a little bit more breaking through because I think that's something a lot of people experience in all kinds of endeavors where maybe they hit a wall for their talent or they can't figure out how to take it to the next level. What was it? I mean, anyone could say you have to work hard and concentrate, but even that often doesn't do it for a lot of people. So that process of figuring out your problem, solving it, and actually being able to make material gains in your improvement. What did that entail? I mean, obviously working hard is a big part of it. But I think in

general, it's just believing, believing in yourself, believing in the process, no matter what. I think there were many times when I stopped improving. And one good example was when I was about 17 years old, I'd become a really strong grandmaster. I was top 100 in the world. But I was stuck around 50th in the world. And for a period of time, I went to college. I quit chess for about seven to eight months. And just by being away from it, when I came back, of course, I started working hard again.

But I just learned how to enjoy it. And I think it's important that. besides the hard work that you have to enjoy it, you have to really be into it and be passionate about it because otherwise, otherwise you're just not going to go anywhere. And I think for me, it was just learning how to enjoy it again and kind of like remembering what the whole point of it was in the first place, which is, you know, it's a game, but you want to have fun, you want to do it well, but just enjoying, enjoying everything about it. How did you actually turn professional and how does the business of being a professional chess player actually work? Like how are you rewarded for playing games? Are there sponsorships? How do you make money? So, yeah, so chess, it's one of those fields where it's very much a meritocracy. So it's all based on your results. And going professional, it's not like a major sport, for example, where a team drafts you or something along those lines.

basically you just decide on your own to just devote your life to playing chess. And there are people in the world who consider themselves professional chess players who are not even Grand Master's. So there are a lot of different ways of defining a professional. But I would say that probably the top 25, 30 players in the world make a very good living playing it, in large part because the major events with big sponsors are invitational only. so you have maybe the top 10, top 15 players in the world in some order who are invited. And therefore, outside of that, it's very hard.

Usually you go from tournament to tournament, country to country, just trying to earn a living. And it's very difficult, which is why there are a lot of people who I think when they're younger, like in their early 20s, they try to play chess professionally, but at some point, if they don't break into that top 25, top 30 in the world, they eventually quit. And as far as the rankings go, every game, you gain points or you lose. lose points based on what your Elo ranking is and whether the opponent you're playing is lower ranked or higher ranked than you. So let's seg here a little bit because in the intro we talked about how chess isn't

your only pursuit. It's not your only passion. You're also into trading and options trading. In fact, you tweet. I think you actually tweet a lot. I've seen more tweets I think about various options trades that you do than chess. at least as far as I've noticed. Where did that come from? I've always had an interest in finance since I was very young. When I was about 14 or 15, my mom bought me a couple of books. It was just

about general investing. And I happened to read them, and I found it quite interesting, quite fascinating how the markets work, you know, investing in companies, trying to make money over the long term. And so I kind of started with a very small account. And it remained that way for a long time. Primarily, I was just trading in equities. But about a year and a half ago, I started getting into options. Originally, it was because I started looking into writing calls against stock that I had purchased. And from there, I started looking at more option strategies.

And a few people I know I'm very fortunate in that regard have been options traders professionally. And so they've helped me along the way to kind of figure out how. how to learn strategies and go from there. This might be a slightly random question, but is there any direct relation between what you do when it comes to chess and the way you trade options? I think one of the main things is not just options, but markets in general, is that chess players tend to be very analytical.

And I think that when you're looking at the markets, whether it's options, whether it's equities, no matter what the time frame, you have to be analytical. You have to look at it from a perspective of, you know, planning ahead, trying to figure out what can go right, what can go wrong, what are, what are the various scenarios, especially with options, you know, if you're, if you're doing, you know, say like a spread, for example, or if you're doing like, you know, ratios or just straight, you know, calls or puts, trying to figure out, you know, based on certain events, what happens, you know,

what's the breaking point, assuming it, you know, you don't, it doesn't go, you know, straight up or straight down and going from there. So in general, it's just being very analytical and thinking ahead. That's the biggest correlation. There are, in fact, a lot of people I know growing up who actually have ended up in finance as well, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Now, a lot of people would say that there's a fundamental difference between any sort of trading activity and chess. And of course, the sort of big gap is the role of chance and the role of psychology playing a much more outsized role in markets. And so you can calculate something perfectly in chess and then you can execute it. And if it's a, if you calculated correctly,

there's nothing your opponent can do. Whereas all kinds of things can happen in markets, you could have the perfect strategy and then something could come out of nowhere or there could be a bubble or some sort of panic that totally destroys the calculations. You know, there's this element that doesn't exist on the chess board. How hard is it to shift thinking from one realm to another? For me, it's not that hard. And actually, it brings up something else that I'm kind of curious about, which is I've actually thought that trading is a little bit closer to poker in some ways from that standpoint. And I'm a little bit curious to kind of try it out because originally I played some poker. And then I eventually got into trading.

So it's kind of like because I was a strong chess player, I couldn't handle the chance element in poker, whereas I seem to handle the chance and the risk management much better in trading. So I'm kind of curious to say, like, go from this and then play some poker again soon and see if it changes, because that is a very big difference. That is the biggest difference is that in chess, if you play well, I mean, I would say probably 95% of the time, something good will happen. You might not win the games your opponent plays very well, but you aren't going to lose if you make, say, 40 good moves in a row. And so, therefore, that is a big difference. But for me, I find that I don't have that much difficulty switching and making, just straightforward decisions. For me, it seems much more logical, actually, with trading than it does with chess in a way.

Yeah, so I have to say poker is probably the analogy that we hear the most when it comes to trading. And you said you played a little bit of poker in the past. Did you find it more difficult than chess? Or can you kind of walk us through what your performance was like on that front? Yeah, I found poker quite difficult. And it's for the exact reason that you would think that trading should be difficult compared to chess, which is that, um,

I felt like I was making a lot of the right decisions more often than not, but the results were not right. I would end up, you know, I mean, the best example is when I played the World Series of poker, the main event in 2011. And in that event, I played tight, I played normal, normal solid poker. And then at the end of the second day, and probably like the last 20 minutes, I ended up with this hand where I had kings and the other guy had a pair of eights. And on the flop, there was an eight, and I busted out that way, despite, you. really not doing anything, anything wrong at all. And that's just one example. But I think that at the time I found it very hard because, again, compared to chess, there is that luck. You can make all the right decisions, but then somehow you lose. So you're out of the tournament or you, you know, you bust in the

cash game. And it's like, it's a very strange feeling from that standpoint. But for me, I don't know what the difference is, but I have found with trading, it's much easier for me than than it was with poker. But, of course, I haven't played poker seriously in a few years, so maybe it would be an interesting experiment to go back to playing some poker now just to see if because I have this experience with trading, whether it's a little bit different. Let's take a break now for a word from our sponsor. But first, we want to take a moment to let you know about something new from Bloomberg.

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And we're back with Hikaru Nakamura, one of the top chess players in the entire world, therefore obviously, also one of the top players in the U.S. We're also talking about his experience having played poker, his experience in options trading. Hikaru, the obvious sort of follow-up is that all of these areas, whether it's poker, trading, chess, the nature of active participation has changed dramatically due to the use of computers artificial technology. The top, there was probably a point where no one imagined that the top chess computers could compete with the top humans. Now that question has been changed.

Obviously, computers have completely changed the way markets trade or, you know, change the balance of how humans interact with it. Computers are getting better and better all the time at a poker as well. Let's talk about this a little bit. In chess, how have computers, in your view, changed the game? How have they changed your preparation? How do you see them having influenced it? Basically, I think the main thing that's changed with computers is that at this point in time, because they've become so strong, you just automatically assume that they're right. So, for example, if you put a certain chess position and you have one of the computer engines analyzing it, you just trust the evaluation what it says, you know, whites, whites better, white's winning,

or the position is completely even, you trust it without, without a second thought, whereas in the early days, say in the 90s, for example, computers could come up with evaluations that were wrong, and a human would still be right. A human would understand the position better, whereas now that's not the case. It's just flat out. The computer's right, you're wrong. You trust what it says, period, end of story. And so because of that, one of the, one of the, the main things that that has changed is there are a lot of positions which in the past you would have thought one side the way they're playing is very unusual it's dubious it's not quite correct it's not correct play and because of computers if you see a position now where there's some strange

moves the computer says it's completely fine and you just you believe that it's not it's not like before whereas if i played some position against a casparov for example he would just you know he would just go uh that's not good you don't know what you're doing you're a complete potser whereas now because of the computer, he couldn't really say that because the computer just it understands chess so much better. And basically the main thing is that now almost any position in the game of chess, if you find the right moves, it's probably okay. Unless you're just completely losing, there always are going to be defensive resources. So Joe and I have talked about this a number of times now, but in markets, you know, the rise of machines as well as passive investing has, I think

it's fair to say given way to a sense or maybe an existential crisis for fund managers. Like there's just a sense that you can never beat the market or the machines now. So when it comes to chess and computers, does the rise of computers just make playing chess less fun? Like knowing that a computer is all powerful and always has the right decision, does that make the game less enjoyable for you? it does at times I think another big thing that's happened in chess is you have these huge databases with millions

and millions of games as well so it's not just the computer analysis it's also the fact that you have databases which means that probably the first like 10 to 15 moves of every single game both sides are going to know exactly what they're doing which means that it's getting deeper and deeper where you reach a new position

where it's just the human is just you know like I'm playing against someone else it's become deeper and deeper in the game that makes it quite a bit less fun at times because because it's just like you don't play at the start. You're just repeating whatever the computer says and then somewhere in the early middle game, somewhere around like the 20th move 15th to 20th move in the game,

you're starting to play the game. Whereas in the past it might have been like the fifth move or the 10th move. So it just keeps getting deeper and deeper. And that does take quite a bit of the fun out of it because it makes it a lot harder to win. But at the same time, it's also a challenge and it's fun to try and out-prepure your opponents, to try and just outsmart them and beat them. So it cuts both ways. So just to clarify, what

you're saying is you'll play games with someone, and the first 15 moves or more will be identical to numerous games that have been played in the past. Probably to thousands of games. And only deeper than that will one of you have played a new move that hadn't been played before? Exactly. So in theory, you know, as a trader, in theory, you shouldn't be able to make money trading. I mean, there's this whole school of thought, essentially efficient markets, that someone trying to do active stock selection or active, any sort of active trading shouldn't really be doable, that no one has any more information or insight or anything. And that if you do make money over a period of time, that it might be luck, something like that. And with computers being able to research and analyze probabilities so aggressively, in theory, it should be even harder than it has been in the past to exploit inefficiencies.

Why is that an endeavor that you think you can make money in? Well, I mean, to be fair, I do a mix. So it's not just, I'm not 100% trading. I also do passive investing. But in the trading component, why do you feel like it's an area that is worth your time and worth trying to beat the system? I mean, I enjoy a challenge, I mean, to be frank, I enjoy a challenge. And it's quite difficult.

It takes a lot of time, a lot of work. And even then, you still aren't always going to be right. I mean, I wasn't right this morning on Caterpillar, for example. But in general, you know, I think I really enjoy the process. So maybe over the long run, it's not going to pan out. but I enjoy the process and I've been successful in the past year. Wait, what was your caterpillar trade? Oh, I was, for some reason, I was expecting them to go down.

I did a put spread on them. I was expecting because of the commodity prices for them to not report. And the stock, for what it's worth, is up about 6.5% in a well. I know. I'm letting our viewers know. I know you probably are feeling the pain of that trade today. I just wanted to. You know, but another thing also, you know, like there's another trade, for example, which I'm not doing well on, which is Tesla.

But I think one thing that I also enjoy is because I'm just a, you know, a retail investor, is that through traveling around a lot, I get to have a different perspective on certain things. You know, it's like everyone says Tesla is overvalued right now, and I think it is. But for example, I was in Italy last week, and I was in southern Italy, no less. And I was really surprised to see that on the weekend downtown, there was some sort of exhibition. It was for electric cars. And I think that when you see things like that, it also changes the perspective a little bit. You don't have the standard view like I would if I'm just here.

When I actually get out and I see certain things like that or, unfortunately, things like in retail where you go to malls and you see nobody there. I mean, I think I also find that to be one of the advantages. as well of just being being who I am traveling around a lot. I get a lot of different perspectives, and I think that does help me with trading. Tracy and I were in a Hong Kong a little over a year ago, and I remember being pretty stunned by how many Teslas were on the road. So I know what you mean in terms of getting out and feeling like you have a new piece of information that you didn't have before. Yeah, I mean, because I think it's like I've traveled around the U.S. a lot, but I mean, if you go to somewhere in the middle of the country, I mean, one place where I've spent a fair amount of time would be St. Louis,

I mean, you don't see Teslas. I don't think I've seen a single Tesla when I've been out there. If I've seen Teslas, you know, I'll see them in New York or San Francisco or Florida, but never in the middle of the country, despite traveling around a lot. So it's, I think it's quite nice to have that extra perspective, that extra viewpoint for making possible trades. Yeah, I think research and data is clearly of growing importance for trading and investing. And Joe and I, we've talked about this on the show before as well, but this, I think, idea that we have new sources of proprietary data now. Like, you know, you have hedge funds that have access to satellite data that shows which factories in China are manufacturing a lot. And that kind of throws up some questions about data inequality in the market. I'm just wondering, when it comes to

chess, you mentioned the idea that, you know, you have these big databases that show all the moves in thousands and thousands of various games of chess. Do certain people have better databases or better computational power when it comes to that? In terms of databases, no. In terms of computational power, certainly there is a difference because some people will spend some extra money and go out and buy supercomputers or just have clusters of various computers altogether. And I think when I say that, I would say not all the top players have that. So there are are some computational advantages if you, you know, spend the money. Obviously, this whole debate about humans versus computers or computers augmenting the ability of humans has much broader macro

implications for the economy. This is an endless source of debate about whether humans will have any jobs to do or whether there will be a few people with jobs programming computers and the rest of us will be unemployed and living on a drip of Soylent and a basic income check or something like that. I'm curious, you know, whether through the chess experience, because I think in chess there's two things, there's man versus computer chess, but also chess or computers, as you've said, aiding your play, whether you have some perspective on where you see sort of the future of work and the future of human ingenuity. Well, the first thing that I'm going to say is actually on chest still. One of the really weird things is that when humans play against humans, most games

end in a draw. It's something like 65, 70% of games end in a draw. But when you have computer programs playing against each other, there are a lot less draws. Most of the games are decisive, which should not make any sense whatsoever because you figure the computers, again, what is the difference between one computer and another computer? And I'm not a computer guy, so I can't really explain it. But it's kind of amazing when you think about it, that like when two computers, should be the same, same computational power and ability. They play one computer wins, which I think bodes very well for the future of chess in general.

But as far as the world, I don't know. It's hard to say because I actually was down in Florida recently, and there's this IT company which builds various platforms through AI and using bit-chain technology. And certainly jobs are going to disappear with AI, going forward, but at the same time, you also need people to train and build these platforms and everything. And like when I was in Florida, there were a lot of kids coming straight out of college who were doing this. So I think jobs are certainly going to disappear. I don't know if it's

the end of the world, but I mean, I think going forward there will probably have to be some sort of a shift in terms of job skills and all that because certain jobs like I think being a mechanic, for example, are just going to simply vanish over the next 10 to 15 years. It's really odd that games played between computers are more decisive than games played between humans. But on some level, I guess if you're a chess spectator, that would be more desirable, right? Like, would you ever get a situation where we all go to chess tournaments and we just watch one robot play another robot?

I don't know, maybe. If that happens, I'm not going to be playing chess. I better just to do something else all the time. But yeah, I think, you know, that's actually a big, big problem with chess, for example, is because the database has become so good, and the players have also just become so good through learning from the computers, the margin of difference is so small that most games do end and draws, and for spectators, that's not exciting at all. So there have to be some changes in chess.

And I think it's a, if you look at it, that's, you know, a microcosm of the bigger picture as well. Do you ever worry that like, so there's one point when people thought that computers would never be able to compete with humans, there was obviously this view that there was something in chess or there was something in poker or any of these other games that required an intuitive creative element that could never be programmed into the computer. And then, of course, computers don't have any creativity or intuition, but they do have raw calculation power. And it turns out that that's enough to make them really good at chess. Do you ever worry there's like something unromantic about it in the sense that it turns out that sort of intuition and creativity and these sort of skills that we think of as innately human maybe aren't worth very much?

Yeah, I think it's a little bit depressing. You know, for me actually, like Kasparo lost a deep blue. It was already, I think probably 20 years ago now. I think that was 96, wasn't it? It was. Yeah. I remember being there. And like at that point, like we had started to accept the computers or better.

And like for me, it was it was so bizarre. actually speaking of another game was Go where it's more difficult than chess you can't compute it and then then like you had this computer just destroy this world champion and it was just like this whole weird flashback to what happened like 20 years ago

so I think in a way it's sad but if we can still learn from computers and become better at various skills then I don't think it's all all for not I have one question, which is, if you are a human, what's your number one tip for someone with a very basic knowledge of chess who is very tired of constantly losing? Just pick up a book or go online and find some quick tactics, like some tactics in the first five moves of the game, some basic tactical sequences. Just tricks. Play for tricks. All right. I have two final questions. The first one is very quick.

closely related to Tracy's. I have a 13-month-old daughter, and I want her to be the next Hikaru Nakamura, of course. What's the, how would you, you know, I'm not just looking for technical tricks, but I want to turn her into a great chess player one day, if she wants to be. What's the best way to start training her? Well, nowadays, it's so easy. I mean, just going online and on any of the various chess sites, just studying tactile sequences, or just looking at various games.

I mean, there's so much information out there that it's not hard to get started by any means. As I said before, there are a few different chess sites like chess.com. I think is probably the main one where you can just go get a free account and look at games or do some tactics. And that's the easiest way to get started. All right. I'll sit her in front of the computer today and this show her. Logger in with a chess.com account. Buy your one-year-old a book.

Yeah. I was going to say, though, that's another thing. is like when I became grandmaster at 15, that was a big deal. That was quite young at the time. But nowadays, there are kids who are becoming grandmasters at 12 or 13. So it just keeps getting younger and younger. And again, who knows where that's going to lead as well. I'd have one other question.

So I used to be, I'm not very good at chess, but I used to play a lot when I was in college. And that was, I graduated in 2002. So you were probably like early teens at that point. And my friends and I who played, we were aware of you. So it was very exciting because we knew about this young guy, Hikaro Nakamura, who's becoming one of the best in the world. And yesterday I texted a friend and I said, oh, we have Nakamura on the podcast. He was really excited.

But he wants to know, do you have a prediction for the 2018 chess Olympiad? Because I know the U.S. won in 2016, which is pretty extraordinary. That was in Baku and Azerbaijan. How is it looking for 2018? We should be the favorites. It's, I mean, the one thing I will say is it felt way too easy winning this last time in Azerbaijan. So there's some kind of, there's this weird feeling that somehow if we do win, it's not going to be as easy as it was. So I think we're probably the favorites, but it's us or Russia, I would say, one of the two.

Sort of the classic countries in the game. Exactly. All right. Hikaru Nakamura, thank you so much. It's been a great pleasure to chat with you, and thanks for coming on the Odd Lots podcast. No problem. So, Tracy, I'm not going to lie. I really enjoyed that. I totally lived up to the hype.

As I said at the end, I've been following Hikaru's, I've been aware of Hikaru's career for like 15 years now. And so it's pretty thrilling to get to chat with him. You know, I'm just reading the Wikipedia entry again. And it says that he is sometimes nicknamed the H-bomb because of his explosive style of playing. Do you know what that means? I imagine it's aggressively, aggressively tactical and stuff. But he's still here real quickly. Hikarro, what does that nickname come from?

Yeah, it's just being a very aggressive player trying to win every game at all costs from when I was a bit younger. Well, I'm glad we got to get an answer to that. No, and I really sort of appreciated the perspective. I mean, you know, we sort of talk about this eternal sort of epic battle of humans. versus computers and robots, and we sort of act like there's this zero-sum element and one is going to win out. But I like this idea that, yeah, there is that, but then there's also this way in which computers make humans way better at doing human tasks, like being able to play a much

more advanced game of chess or being able to learn chess at a much earlier age. And now there are all these young grandmasters. So kind of gave me an optimistic, kind of optimistic on that. Really? I don't know. So, I mean, I just kind of see, like chess in some respects is kind of at the forefront of the man versus machine argument, right? And like, yes, yes, people can use computers to augment their own performance, but ultimately when humans are pitted against computers, the computers are the ones that win out. And I mean, just going back to my experience, I get really frustrated with the game because I never, ever win. And so I wonder if you're a human constantly competing against a machine, if eventually you just give up. You know, you should really buy a booker. I'm sure that you could find some local grandmasters to teach you probably. You know, actually try to improve at the game.

Yes. Okay. I will try. Maybe. And I will say one other thing. As frustrating as it might be to lose every game, there's nothing more boring than winning every game. So you're actually, I think you're getting on the, you're on the right side of the equation. Is that how the computers feel, you think?

They're like, oh, my God, I've just won another game. They probably are. On that note, this has been another episode of the Oddlots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthall. You can follow me on Twitter at the stalwart. And I'm Tracy Alloway. I'm on Twitter at Tracy Allowway. And you can follow Hikaru on Twitter at GM Hikaru,

where you can see all of his, latest, I don't know about all of them, but his chess exploits and many of his options trades, including a recent trade on Yom China that apparently worked out pretty well. So thanks for listening. Put knowledge to work and grow your business with CIT. From transportation to health care to manufacturing, CIT offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for small and middle market businesses. Learn more at CIT.com.

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