Magnus Carlsen
Appearances
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
By the way you play? Yeah, I think it's playing strength, playing style. Because I tried to switch up my openings on different accounts to not make it obvious that it's me. And I have a style where I switch that up a lot, so it makes it a bit easier. But I think you could just tell by the playing style. That is crazy. These days, I play with my own name. I don't really care about that anymore.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I started sitting in on them a bit and I started liking it. I really, really wanted to beat my sister as well at generally everything. And yeah, from there on it really just became my thing and it's been my main hobby and eventually work as well since.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I think quite a few do. I mean, I don't know people's day-to-day activities.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Not that much. The people that I've worked with, they certainly study chess a lot. But others, I'm not quite sure. The thing is that chess has always still been a bit of a hobby for me. Once it starts to feel like work, then... It's harder for me. I had a chess coach when I was little. I went to have sessions once a week, which I loved. And then he started giving me homework.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
But I would still spend a lot of time reading books, playing online, the things that I still do, but I would do them for fun. And that was the difference between me and the other kids, is that they would go to chess practice, they would maybe even do their homework, but they weren't living and breathing sort of the game in the way that I was. I think about it all the time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I'm thinking about the game while I'm sitting on this chair. I'm still analyzing a game that I played today. It never goes completely out of my mind. And I think a lot of very good chess players do that, but casual chess players, no, of course.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I think so. I think this is definitely the way that works for me. Maybe for others. I think for anybody. Like, if you want to be great at something, you have to be obsessed with it. And, yeah, it has to come from within. Like, nobody can... Yeah, maybe in certain sports you can get...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
you can get that good purely by very very targeted practice and a lot of a lot of hours but um yeah i i think um for me it's just the way that it's just the way that it um that it works and um i do like process the even though like i don't necessarily study like i don't don't deliberately practice all the time, I still process the information.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So it's still, whatever the method is, it certainly works.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
a variety of factors. I think there's no doubt that I'm incredibly naturally gifted at the game. Otherwise, I wouldn't have come this far. My dad is incredibly good with numbers. He started playing chess quite late, but became...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
but became decent like my mother was quite smart and my sisters are very intelligent too so like it's clear that you know there are some good genes and I just you know I happened to find also an environment early on where I lived near Oslo which had
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Probably the best chess environment there was in Norway at the very least where I had access to coaches and I had access to a little training group of other ambitious kids.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, the funny thing is she's not competitive at all. So she hated the fact that I wanted to play, especially when I realized that I could beat her. And she liked chess, but she stopped for a while and only started when I had become good enough that... There wasn't a competition. So it turned out like my dad was right after all. I just needed that extra push.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And after that, you know, I think the most important thing that I've done is that I haven't really listened to people who want me to do things like a certain way, because that's the way things have always been done, especially with the Soviet chess school that was the dominant one for me. for so many years. So I've always sort of gone my own way, tried to have as much fun.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Everything has to be about enjoyment. And yeah, I cannot tell you why, but I just understand the game better than the others. I don't calculate necessarily as far as the other, but my intuition, like for short lines,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Oh, I think he started playing about 14, 15, something like that. In chess, that's very... But he never, like, took it seriously enough that he wanted to... Like, he pursued it, but... As a hobby. As a hobby, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I think the reaction in the chess community, at least with certain people, was more along the lines of how could such a lousy player have such a good son at chess with my dad. And the fact is as well that –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
There are practically no, there are many couples of, you know, like both mother and father are grandmasters in chess, but I don't think any of them have had sons or daughters that are grandmasters. So whereas you see anywhere like in the NBA or the NHL or in football or wherever, like it happens all the time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So I cannot say exactly why that is, but it does suggest that, you know, it's not a given at least with genetics that your children are going to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
It really does because the entry is not so easy, right? You don't just get it immediately and you don't necessarily get enjoyment out of it immediately as you start to play. So you have to spend time on it. And then I think when you're trying to do something hard, then it becomes much more rewarding and it's easier for that to become an obsession when you start to get that reward.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I think for any field that's trying to achieve something with publicity, there's always going to be a little bit of a negative with what exactly we're connected with, right? Because this is Everybody knows chess and cheating. But overall, I think it's been massively positive. Hopefully, the Netflix thing coming up in a year, even though... Can you explain it to people?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Grandmaster at 12, was it? 13. So actually, the record is 12. But most kids these days, honestly, they start so early. I was at a tournament in India a few months ago, and there's this guy who's like a 1600 rated player, and he's three years old. And I'm seeing... I'm seeing the games, they're actually decent.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, it's a Netflix untold documentary. So basically, it's a series of...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
sports documentaries and they're doing that it's not something that I like wanted to necessarily be part of but I do recognize the fact that these things raise the profile of the game and you see now like everywhere people like Chaz is showing up in people's algorithms on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram everywhere so it's just like much more in the zeitgeist than it used to be
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I like to play a game of chess on my phone or my iPad whenever I have some time, especially if I know that I have 15 minutes or whatever. And then if something comes up, like my wife tells me I have to be somewhere, I have to do something, it's like, can you just finish the game? No, I kind of resigned the game. What are you talking about?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, especially if I'm playing somebody who is a little bit of a rival, it's like, yeah, no, that's not going to happen. No chance. Because every time I lose games, it's a little bit of a story in the chess world, so I prefer to happen as seldom as possible.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I think I've played 12, but the world record is something like 50. That's crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah. For me, that's... As long as the people I'm playing are kind of decent at chess, that actually kind of makes it easier because it's easier to store the games when I recognize the patterns and so on. When people start making weird moves, I kind of really recognize... So here you are. Oh, so this is another one, actually. This is a blindfold timed...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
There are fewer games, but what's difficult about these is that the moves do not come to me in a sequence. The presenter will tell me on board two, E takes D5, and then all of a sudden on board one, E6, and then on board two again, and so on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And now there's this one kid from Argentina, they call him the Messi of chess, who's going to become a grandmaster soon. I think he's only 10. So they're really, really playing early these days. But it's good to see, though, because information is so easily accessible these days, it takes a lot shorter time to get good at something.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Exactly. That's kind of the normal way of playing a simul. I think the last time that I played a proper blindfold simul was at an event in Vienna back in, I think, 2015. And then I had some very nice but spicy Chinese food before the game. I sat down and my stomach was acting up. I couldn't think. So I played for 10 minutes. I realized that I cannot do this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I ran away for 15 minutes and then I came back. I finished the game. But ever since that, it feels like I've done it. And now it just seems incredibly hard to do again.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Not really, because if my mind is on, then it's really not that hard, I feel. So, no. The preparation that I do is right there. I see my opponents, so I assign a certain face to a certain seat, a certain number, and so on. So that's just about what I do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, yeah. Face, like number one, it's that position. Right. Yeah, and so on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No, I just see the chessboard in my head. You just see a completely 3D chessboard in your head? Yeah. And then when I'm playing a simul, I just really think about one at a time, and I kind of store the others away.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, so the difficult part of it where things sometimes go wrong is that So generally, I remember all the games that I've played, but I don't remember every move. I remember in broad strokes what happened. And this is what can happen in these blindfold games as well sometimes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I can remember everything that's going on, but maybe there's a pawn on the side that I cannot remember if it moved one square or not. That's the thing that can be difficult sometimes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
and i i do we used to have these blindfold like professional tournaments actually um that used to be like both fun but also totally exhausting um and then we would play on on a computer so we'd have like a blank like a blank chess board where we would just click from one square to And then whenever your opponent moved, their move would pop up on the screen.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And also the software will tell you if you're making an illegal move. So I've had people lose track. And then you see them just clicking frenetically, trying to figure out what the position was. Like, there was one guy whom I played, like, he thought his rook was on a certain file, and if it was on that file, he would be able to save a draw.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So I think he tried every single rook move on that file, hoping that the rook was there. But, like, obviously I knew that it wasn't. But, yeah. Overall, I feel like... Honestly, blindfold chess is a bit of a party trick in the sense that for the very top players, it's not that hard. But obviously, for non-serious chess players, it seems incredibly...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
incredibly hard, but I'm sure that, for instance, solving Ruby's cube is really, really easy for those who know how to do it quickly, right? But it still looks incredibly impressive for outsiders.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No, no, no, no. I'm talking out of my ass. I think the world record is only like three seconds or something. It's something absolutely insane.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No, not that much. My parents sort of brainwashed me when I was young into thinking that computer games are no fun. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, yeah, I have, but it's still... I can see you Call of Duty fucking people up with headphones on. The thing is, I actually got a PlayStation recently, but my wife is playing GTA and all of these FPS games, and I'm playing some chill FIFA or something. But the thing about that is that I didn't really spend that much time on those things when I was little, which I think was a good thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I was doing some sports and I was doing a lot of chess. Not so much school, but I kind of found time for everything else. And I think... I think it was an important part of my chess education as well that I think some of the kids today are missing, that I actually learned chess on a physical board.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So it actually started in one of my friend's streamer channel. Like one random guy said... Made a comment about anal beads. And he was like, yeah, maybe. And then I think it became... It started taking the rounds in Reddit, and then Elon saw it, tweeted about it, and then obviously it blew up. I actually spoke to... I think it was Marc Andreessen who said, like... That would be one way to do it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I was able to practice from a fairly young age playing online, but I wasn't allowed to use the computer for more than... a couple of hours a week, right? So I had to spend them really well playing chess. Otherwise, I would just sit there with my board, with my books, and try and figure things out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I'm glad you say that. That is what chess has, though, that it is very respected among the general population, and it does have that different standing from a lot of other games. I'm not here to shit on video games, for sure. I know, like you do, that there are studies that show that it can be helpful, I think, with anything.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
If you're obsessed over something, the only thing you will become good at is that particular thing, like I have with chess. I just think for me specifically... For me specifically, it was probably a good thing that that made me just sit and focus on chess rather than do all sorts of other things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I remember when I first moved out, I was technically a chess professional, but I didn't have a lot of time to... I had a lot of time to kill when I was home. And I got myself a PlayStation, played a ton of FIFA back then, and there was a GameStop near me that they made a lot of money on me just buying new controllers all the time because I would throw them into the wall. But...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I have that same personality that I become assessed with things and then I – same. I just have to quit cold turkey. That's the only way that works.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Well, I can tell you that I always thought, well, I wouldn't say that, but I always thought that I would get into golf later in life. And then I decided more or less a year ago that I was going to start. And now I am obsessed and it's all I want to do. I can 100% relate. But my wife knows that I'm so happy when I come back from golf that it's better if I get to do it quite often.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
But I really, really, really don't believe that that has happened. I think it has no connection to reality, but it just became a thing of its own.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
That's horrible. It's dark. Yeah. And all of a sudden, these kills that you have in a video game, you think of it in the same way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I'm also trying to think, like, could you get surgeons to be drone operators? Probably doesn't work that way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, we're very lucky that it has this unique position. Whether that's deserved, I don't know, but there's just something about the fact that it's a very, very simple game, but it's still so infinitely... difficult. The thing now though is that we're trying to actually make it a bit more difficult for a classical form of chess because now computers are so strong, preparation has gone so far that
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
The thought of sitting down at the board and just thinking on your own from the very get-go, it's not there anymore. Anybody who's really good at chess, anybody can learn the best openings very quickly. Even if you go 10, 20 years ago, you could play... You could play, for instance, in the Chess Olympiad, which is the biggest team nation tournament in the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And you could play against the best player from, let's say, Colombia. And, you know... you would know that they have certain skills, but they might not have the same set of openings, right? Now, all of these, like, there are kids everywhere, and they just, like, they know their stuff so well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So now we're, like, testing out new formats, one that we call freestyle, which is basically there are 960 possible starting positions if you shuffle the pieces on the first rank. And basically, like, you start out... You just draw the position 10 minutes before the game, no preparation whatsoever. And you basically start with, like, in gaming, a new map every single game. So that's sort of for...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, I mean, he's not admitted to nearly the extent of his cheating. But if you sort of take what Chess.com say, then yeah, he cheated a bunch online in... in a certain period of time, partly in tournaments, but mostly in casual games, as he set himself to sort of get himself up to standings and play the best players in the world. But he is a very good player.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
For the traditionalists, that's not the same game. There are some people who don't like it. But for the professionals, it's a chance to use their skills. Because otherwise, chess is moving. It's becoming faster. Chess used to be an art, science, everything. With the way things are now, it's just very fast and it's all games, sports and so on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I feel like with thinking from the very first move, you're bringing some of the other factors back as well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, and you see there are such different approaches as well, even with the kids. I had a training camp a few years ago with a kid called Alireza Firoucha. He plays for France now, but he's from Iran originally. I think he was about 14 then. My chess coach had recommended that we... that would bring him in because he said that this is the most talented kid out there. So we have this camper.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Typically, everybody has their laptop, and there's a chessboard in the middle where you sort of look at your own thing and then some things together on the board, and you throw out ideas, mostly for openings, but also sometimes other little exercises and so on. And this kid, he would have his laptop where he would,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
where he would analyze a certain position and then he would play games for money on that same site at the same time so that he could buy cloud engine times because the very best engines, they're stronger if they're in the cloud than from your own than from your own laptop generally. So he would buy time for that by playing games, like one minute games on that server.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
He would play five minute games on another server and he would analyze with us on the board. And he was still following everything. He had no problems whatsoever just being there. So it's just... Yeah, that's one way of doing it. He basically became one of the best players in the world by just constantly playing chess all the time and mostly really quick games.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And then you have the current classical world champion from India, Gukesh. He doesn't play... casual games at all. He just studies his ass off all the time. And he's also not good at rabid chess, he's not good at blitz, he's not good at other forms. But he has made all his studies about classical chess. He didn't even own chess software on his computer before he was 13. Wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And he was a grandmaster. Wow. At that time. But it's interesting to see that there are such different ways to develop even these days.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, because you could also see that in these guys' playing style. The guy who has been playing constantly all the time from when he was little, he has fantastic instincts, especially with little time. He just knows where the pieces go. And he's the only one of the kids who has that kind of feeling. The Indian guy, on the other hand...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
from the way he studies he's like during games like he's meticulous he calculates like he sees every position as a problem he has to solve more than oh what does my intuition tell me oh I'll do I'll do this it's like for him it's more
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
well this is possible this is possible let me like try and see this all the way all the way through so it's just yeah it's just very very different and they call it like the tortoise and the hare sometimes and then in certain situations the tortoise will win and other situations the hare will win Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
What it used to be in chess was you'd have two hours for 40 moves, then you would have an hour for the next 20 moves, and then half an hour for the rest of the game, so a maximum of seven hours. And that form is still being played. And then you have faster forms of chess, which is blitz chess, which is usually five or three minutes, and rapid chess, which is somewhere from 10 to 30 minutes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No, I actually went there in 2010, but I think some people recognized me back then as well. I think it's a bit of a myth, though, how good they are. They're like, okay, but they're not like... Your level. No, they're not Grandmaster level. There was one guy, though, I don't remember what was... what's the name of, like it's up by, you know, Columbia University.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
There's a park up there where they're playing chess as well. There I played against a guy who played like a very strange opening as well. Like he put like just a couple of pawns, one square forward, and then he started developing his pieces very slowly. So at first I thought this guy has no idea what he's doing. Then it turned out like he actually had a system. So after like 10, 15 moves,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I was in a lot of trouble. And then the game became super concrete and tactical and I won. But it struck me that this guy had... I think he just played in the park all his life. So he had developed a certain system that was actually kind of effective if you don't know what you're doing against it. So that was kind of interesting.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
He was fairly old, so I'm sure he'd played chess his whole life without ever learning any kind of opening theory or something like that. He just had, yeah, he was doing his own thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Oh, yeah, for sure. It's happened several times. There was, like, my dad used to play a ton of chess at home. Like, he used to have a home office. And then certain times he'd appear to be focused in his work. But I knew, like, a certain look in his eye which told me that he was actually playing chess. So I would go over and watch. He was like, I don't know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
go away and then at some point where I was already a lot better than him he played a certain opening as white and I told him like what is this opening like where did you learn this and he said well you taught me the very same opening but with the black pieces so I thought I was going to play it as white like with one tempo more right because you're playing you're moving first I was like
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I'm one of the best players in the world, and I never thought of that. So I actually took up that line, and I used it with success against some of the best players in the world. Wow. So I don't know if that variation has a name. I've seen some other players play it afterwards as well, but I just call it the Henry Carlson variation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Your dad must be pretty proud of that. He is very proud. It's funny though that my dad and my sisters, two of my sisters, they played a bit of competitive chess as well. I think at some point in time they wanted to learn a couple of openings so I taught them a couple of openings and I think all of them just never played anything.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, I mean, that would have been the smoking gun, I suppose. I think there was a combination of things, though, based on the chess level that I thought that he had and that I'd seen from his game, both playing against him, analyzing a little with him and looking at his other games. There were a lot of stories back then
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Anything else basically so they they certainly didn't have the same kind of passion to To study, but I'm glad I was able to to push them into to some some decent lines How do you decide what opening to choose?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, it's sometimes I Honestly, sometimes I don't know what to do. So I just randomize because I think... At a certain time, you might think that against this opponent, you should play a little bit more of an aggressive opening. But then maybe I feel good about my tournament standing, so I don't want to mess that up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So it's easy to go for a safer approach when the optimal approach would be a bit more aggressive. And then if you randomize it, then you will occasionally go for the... for the more aggressive approach. So that's what I sometimes do. It's just I randomize it, and then I just sort of accept the outcome. And it makes me more unpredictable. It makes me harder to prepare against as well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So that's what I sometimes do. It's not going to be out there, but it's going to be between two or three options that I think are roughly equivalent. They're just stylistically different.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
It's hard to say. Probably with white, I have five or six options that I can go to, but only two or three that I feel really good about. And I think similarly with black.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No, I just have an app on my phone. Oh, really? I just roll the dice.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Wow. Wow. And I think, honestly, a lot of people could benefit from that because you agonize over these things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
minute decisions like you spend a lot of mental energy before a certain game agonizing over what opening you're going to play and if you know that you you're going to make a decent choice but you leave all the agonizing to to like there's nothing because it's left to chance it makes it makes it a lot a lot easier
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, like if I'm playing an early afternoon game, for instance, like starting at 1, I try to eat like one big meal before that, which is generally like a big omelette with some kind of salad. But you eat pretty clean before a big meal. Yeah, I usually do. Sometimes after games, I will eat something, even some desserts and so on. But before the games, I try and keep it fairly clean.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I actually learned that when I was... When I was little, sometimes my parents, they were generally quite strict about sweets and so on. But sometimes I would eat sweets during tournament. Then my blood sugar would drop like crazy and I would start making mistakes. And so that's something that I learned quite quickly that I shouldn't do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No. I think it's a little bit about the way that I was raised. I'd never take medicine unless I kind of have to. I don't really take supplements or anything like that. So I probably... I probably should. It's not a bad idea. My wife is half American. She's completely different. She takes five kinds of vitamins every single day. She's very meticulous about it. But yeah, I don't know. I've never...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
What's the new thing that people are doing, like keratin or something like that? Ketamine? No, no, no, not ketamine. No, no, no, it's not ketamine. Creatine? Creatine. Creatine.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
The thing is also there's a Netflix documentary coming in a few months where I'm telling my side of the story. So I kind of go too deep into everything. But what I can say was that there were a lot of factors involved. That made me very, very suspicious. And I think ever since then, he has become better. But there's still something off, both then and now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Well, I mean, I woke up today and, like, I think my watch said it was that my sleep was, like, I got 15, like, I slept for five hours, but I got 15 minutes of REM sleep. Like, it was really, really bad. So that's what I could have, I could have used that because I was playing a chess tournament earlier today. So I could have used that, but...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No, but it is the thing, though. On certain days, I sort of just accept that my brain is not going to work as good. And it's frustrating, especially if you've got a big game and you know that you're starting down to zero because your brain is not working the way it's supposed to be.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Honestly, chess is one of the worst things to do sleep-deprived because I think creativity usually is enhanced when you're not feeling well, when you're sleep-deprived, but that's generally not what you need in chess. You need to minimize mistakes. You need precision. And all of my intuition, all of that, is just so much worse when I'm not feeling on top of my game. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I just try to play a simpler game where it's not as complicated, really. And when you're feeling good, then you go for it? No, honestly, when I feel good, I don't think about these things. It's just a state of flow where I know how much risk to take.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Honestly, when I'm at my best, I'm just like pure laser focused. And I'm just calm and not thinking about anything other than... Just in the moment. Just in the moment, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, I mean, I had a game in the last Classical World Championship I played in 2021 where the first five games were drawn. Honestly, I could have probably been down at that point as well. Sixth game was a super, super long game, almost eight hours. And I think for the last hour and a half, two hours, I was pretty short on time. But... And I remember, like, I was just so focused and so calm.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And afterwards, I was just like, yeah, I could have kept going forever. Like, I was just there. And it was exactly what I needed. I ended up grinding out a win. And in those classical games, like, once you get a lead, like, that is so big because it's so hard to win, actually win games at that level of preparation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
um so that was that was really big but yeah that's i've only i i've only had i feel like a few days where i feel like i'm just like completely in the moment usually it's a bit more messy than that but like when it happens it's just um yeah the best feeling that's amazing and it's only been a few days where you've been fully in the moment i'm rarely happy after i play I'm happier now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Honestly, my standards for myself are a little bit lower, have gone down a little bit the older I've gotten. Because I sort of accept that my brain is not as fast as it used to be. So I'm going to have occasional letdowns. So my top level is, I think, as good as it's ever been, or at least very, very close to. But the average level is just too hard when your brain is not that fast anymore.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
But generally, I'm always thinking, well, yeah, I could have always done something better. You always miss some things, but I always feel like there are avoidable mistakes that I'm still making.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, I think so. It just makes everything a bit easier. Also, honestly, the randomizing opening choices has made things easier as well. Everything just to lower the pressure a bit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, I'm definitely in the latter camp. I've talked to people who have suggested mental coaches plenty of times, both in the past and more recently as well. I've just always been worried that... somebody's going to mess something up in my head. Paralysis by analysis. Yeah, that's really what it is for me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So I feel... At some point, I'm just more or less content with the way things are, that most days that I'm playing, I'm going to be fairly good. On some days, I'm going to be at my very best. Other days, I'm going to be very far from my best. And it's sort of... Yeah, it's sort of the way it is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Again, I'm not ruling out the factor that chess players are becoming more and more paranoid because we do have chess engines that basically have perfect chess, right? Anybody with their phone can, as I think Elon tweeted to Gary once, like my iPhone can beat you at chess, which is... Which is the truth. And this means that anybody having access to information, it's incredibly dangerous.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I'm definitely much more open to doing things to prevent me from having those very worst days because those are the ones that really hurt you, especially now that we're playing a lot of faster tournaments where there are knockouts where basically if you have one bad day, you're out and it doesn't matter anymore.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, I mean, doing everything sort of right before the game definitely helps, like getting good sleep, like reading a book instead of being on some sort of device before I go to sleep. Then just focusing as little as possible on chess before the game, definitely.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, I just want to have two or three ideas of what I'm going to play and not... I just don't want to use mental energy that I could have used on the game before. So I think one of my better tournaments that I played, I used to play every year at this seaside resort in the Netherlands. And it's in the middle of winter, so it's not very resort-like. It's just...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
rainy and windy and there's basically nothing there except those big tournaments that's been there for 80 years and it's for three weeks every January so for me there's not a lot to do so what I would do like every day is I'd I'd wake up I'd go for a walk and then I would watch like 30 to 45 minutes of NBA highlights from the day before. Look at chess for 15 minutes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Whatever my coach has sent me of preparation that we discussed the day before. Eat and then go play. And that worked really, really well. It's just keeping it as simple as possible, honestly.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
yeah a lot of people like they do they will spend three four hours preparing on a game on that very day uh and it like it can be beneficial like if your opponent goes into specifically the lines that you prepared and and so on but overall i think um Having a fresh mind is so important.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And I'm also like, even if I haven't had the perfect preparation, I'm really good at just blocking everything out, forgetting everything that's happened and just focusing there and then. But it's still not as good, of course, as just being in a good state of mind.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
But I really love it, so... Why take time off? Yeah, why take... No, no, no. I'm fine with taking breaks from tournaments and so on. But having at least several days in a row without looking at a chess game or... I mean, I don't have to play every day, but not having a, yeah, not looking at anything, like not reading some chess stuff or like, yeah, I mean, it's my favorite hobby.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So I don't, yeah, I don't see why I would want to do that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, I do have those moments where I just take a breath and think about how lucky that I am. And there are just moments where I just sort of, I wouldn't say rediscover my love for the game, but where I just think like, I'm obsessed with this game and I'm completely fine with that. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And I think top-level chess has been a lot based on trust. And whenever you have outsiders whom there are these stories about, everybody gets a bit jittery. There's like... people who either like they burst onto the scene then they establish themselves and people know that they're legit and so on it's not a problem with him specifically um I don't know it was um
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No, I think, again, it's different for different people, but I don't know. I don't feel like it takes away energy. It just gives me joy and energy when I do that. Like, I will just, on a certain day, I will just log into chess.com and observe random people play, and that is something I can do and be very happy about it. Yeah, it's just the way I am.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I've thought about it many times. What am I actually doing with my life that's useful to other people? It always comes back to that every time that I hear that people are inspired by what I do. Maybe it helped them through a difficult time to watch my games and to get in to rediscover or find the love for the game. That's really nice and Again, in the process, I'm just doing what I love, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And that's really what people want to see from me. It's just competing and doing well at chess. So that's also what I'm giving as often as possible, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I think my favorite probably player of all time is sort of the young Kasparov before he became world champion. The thing is like, what I find fascinating about that is that he played with a style that was so unique and so dynamic that that I know that I could never replicate it. It's just not the way that I play. So that's something I admire a lot.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Usually, whatever I'm into, be it soccer or golf or basketball or whatever, I admire what people do, not necessarily it's about the people themselves. So that's the way it has been for me in chess as well, that I try to learn from people's games and what they do and when I talk to them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And I've been very fortunate about that, being able to study with Gary back in the day and Anand, who was the world champion before me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
because it's only then when you study you talk to them you understand how good they really are and how much they understand for instance with Anna I had a training session in 2008 where we had both played a tournament where I'd done reasonably well and he had sort of towards the end he had mailed it in but he was preparing for the classical world championship and
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So I think I had two days off and he was living outside Madrid. And so I went to Madrid for a couple of days because the other tournament was in the north of Spain. Then I went to his house. And as soon as the training camp started, it's like something just switched with him. And he was... He was just so focused. We played a bunch of training games.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And from being this guy who seemed completely disinterested in this other tournament, all of a sudden, like, he was crushing me. Like, he had a massive plus score in our games, and it felt like everything we analyzed, he was just... He just had a much deeper understanding of the game. It seemed that he was faster tactically and everything. And it made me appreciate how good he actually was.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, I think it's more of the latter. It was just a reality check for me, because I thought at that point that I was ranked, I think, third in the world. I had very briefly been ranked number one already at that point.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
for a week and I thought before that I thought I was maybe one of the best two three players in the world and it made me realize that I wasn't and that maybe I was able to have better results than my actual level because of because of youth, energy, and optimism, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
It's just he doesn't seem to be playing or didn't at that point seem to be playing with a particular style. It seemed that he either played kind of eh or he just more or less played any position very well in certain games. Like he could just switch from tactical to positional play very easily. And... It didn't smell good to me. It still doesn't. But to some extent, he had his lawsuit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And that made me just, yeah, it just made me realize that I have a lot to learn and that I should be patient and not expect everything to sort of come that fast. Because at that point, I'd had a year of more or less constant rise. I was, yeah, just winning everything.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
winning tournaments every time I would lose a game I was just believe that I could strive back immediately and I and I like my realize now that I was just I was delusional I thought I was a lot better than than what I was and that was probably why I was having a So such good results. Because you're so confident. Because I was so confident.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
But having a little bit of a reality check, I think, helped me later to actually understand the game a bit better. But I've still taken away that I think in chess, the optimal state when you're playing a game is somewhere between optimistic and delusionally optimistic. Yeah. Because if you're realistic, you're just never going to be opportunistic enough to sort of exploit your opponent's mistakes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, exactly. And very soon after that, I started working with Garry Kasparov as well, and that made me realize that I know even less.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Back then, it was really like... My style has become a bit more dynamic over time, but back then, I really, really lacked understanding of more dynamic positions in chess. You can have more static or more dynamic pawn structures if there are a lot of...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
possible pawn breaks for both sides and both kings are under attack then it's sort of more dynamic and tactical or it could be more about gaining some minutes positional advantages and that's sort of what I was excelling at the latter and working with him it just improved sort of the more dynamic part of my game A lot. And that helped me very much short term.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
think my dad my dad is an avid chess player so i think he uh thought that i might have some talent so he thought he taught me pretty early at around five years old but at that time i wasn't that interested i was mostly into legos and i was into maths and like sports stats and i had my little flag book with all
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And also it's helped me later because it improved my understanding of the game. My main strength is still more in the more static structures. But... That work made me so much more versatile and I still definitely profit from that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
A couple of things. The main benefits that I have from my chess coach is opening work. That's the low-hanging fruit. That's That's really what you can get the most out of from game to game. A couple of other things. My coach is also an old friend of mine. He's Danish, so we can communicate in the same language. And he's also just as obsessed with golf as I am.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
as i am so that every every time like we have like a chess training camp there's always also a lot of uh a lot of golf being played so um um yeah those are a few things but chess wise it's it's mainly about the the the opening work and so it's essentially he's obviously very good at chess as well but it's essentially bouncing things off of each other and going over positions
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, and then he's very good at using chess engines to get slightly different results than maybe others do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Not really. When it comes to analyzing other games, it's more useful for me to look at what the engine is saying. Because the engines are just smarter than you. Yeah, they are. And I'm good enough that I can interpret what the engine is saying to understand why a certain thing a certain thing happens.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So it's still interesting to analyze together as humans, but we always want to double-check what we're saying with the engines.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, so the thing about... I don't know if you talked to Gary, but he has this whole thing with Deep Blue. I'm not sure if Deep Blue was actually...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
better than than gary but um it yeah it started it started the the downfall of us of us humans when it when it comes to chess and it's now been a long time where we just accepted that our computer overlords are are just a lot better and there are serious benefits um for for improving players for for kids like the engines help people improve a lot faster so that's That's a great thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Additionally, people watching chess games. One problem is that you cannot easily tell. It's not like one guy is being punched and the other guy is punching. It takes some skill to see what's going on. But with the help of the engines, you could actually have... a real-time score all the time because it tells you who is winning and who is not. So it becomes a lot easier to follow as well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
We've all kind of moved a little bit on. I think I don't trust him. A lot of other top players still don't trust him. He certainly doesn't... doesn't trust me or chess.com or Hikaru or whomever he felt wronged by.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Because honestly, like most people, when they consume sports, they're mostly interested about who is going to win and who is going to lose. So now at least you can have that factor in chess that you can see that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And it's very interesting for me to read what people were writing about computer chess 30, not 30, but like 50, 60 years ago and so on, when there was an actual discussion whether computers could ever beat a grandmaster at chess. And now it's very much settled, of course. Well, they have that same discussion about Go, right? Well, Go is much more complicated than chess.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I don't know what has happened since AlphaGo. If the best masters are still a little bit better or where the state is at. I think Go is better than everybody.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, I mean, I did watch the movie AlphaGo. How long ago was that? That's like five, no, maybe like six, seven years ago. See, in AI time, that's like Stone Ages, which is so crazy. And I think like a year or two later, there was AlphaZero in chess. So chess engines, they were always kind of built by humans and instructed by humans.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Then AlphaZero came along, which is a neural network that just learned chess on its own. And it became... more or less as good or maybe slightly, slightly worse than the best traditional chess engines. What's interesting is that the neural networks played chess a lot more like humans.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
They were much less concerned about material factors, they were more about positional play and long-term thinking and so on, because it was not based on brute force in the way that traditional engines would.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
You would see funny like they have computer tournaments as well with the best engine in the world and you would you will still see like Leela zero that's sort of the clone of alpha zero because they discontinued that Alpha zero project after a while It will make like elementary tactical blunders almost That's crazy
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Because, I don't know, it doesn't have... It just thinks about chess differently than traditional engines, but it will also do things that just confounds the very best chess engines in the world still. So that's very interesting to see, and all the best...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Coaches and players now, when you work with chess computers, you always have both a neural net and a traditional chess engine running, as well as some others who are now hybrid, who have a little bit of both. It's just fascinating that it would make blunders. Yeah, well, I don't know if it's something about its search. I really don't know. But it would also make some fascinating decisions like...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
When you promote a pawn, you usually promote to a queen because that's almost always the best, unless you sometimes want to promote a knight specifically to give a check or sometimes to avoid stalemate, but that's less frequent. But then what Lila and AlphaZero would sometimes do is that they would promote to a different piece.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Because if it's a piece that's anyway going to be captured, just to give your opponent like a slight chance of making a mistake by making another move, which is something like a human would never ever do. But it's really funny. A little bit of a parallel to what's going on in Go, I think, with this gamesmanship that is going on with the new neural nets. That's crazy that it would just trick you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, it would try and trick you. It probably wouldn't trick a human because a human would be like, That's weird. Okay, I'll just take it, whatever. But another engine... Oh, okay. Well, I have another alternative that seems equivalent, more or less. Maybe I'll go for that. Wow. It's very strange.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
There are a few. There's one that was originally developed by a Norwegian called Stockfish that's still considered the best. So I think the best now is Stockfish, like Stockfish Hybrid. That's part neural and part traditional engine.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
like what what do people do so if you're sitting there you have no phone your pockets are empty like what could you be doing that could possibly be aiding you well first of all like an invisible air piece um that people use for exams and so on like so but he would have to have a partner uh yeah uh he would yeah yeah um that would not have been detected by the security system that they um they used at that tournament
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, most people use remote engines like some kind of cloud service to have as much computing power as possible.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Deep Blue wasn't like a stack of computers, right? But I'm sure it's still less powerful than the computer on your phone is today, right? Yeah. I know. It's just shocking. No, no. I have no chance against my phone. That's so crazy. There was actually one time where I played a corporate simul, and there was this guy who said, I built a chess program in my university class.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Can I let that play against you again instead of myself? And I was like, yeah, sure, why not? And I actually beat it fairly handily because I played some kind of anti-computer chess where I just... close up the position as much as possible and just let it have as few possibilities as possible to out-calculate me so that it's a purely strategical game.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
That doesn't work against very good engines, but it can work against weaker ones. But no, humans, like, we don't have any... There was a grandmaster who played a match... recently against Leela, which is like the best neural network engine now. They were playing classical chess and he started with a knight more. And they played a 10-game match and he won five and a half to four and a half.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
wow which is crazy like it's a nightmare like that's it should not be possible for any like if god was playing chess that shouldn't be you shouldn't be able to beat a grandmaster in any game like that so the grandmaster was still able to win i but yeah for me I rarely play against engines at all because they just make me feel so stupid and useless.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I think about it more as a tool than anything else. And often when you play against them... The moves that they make, they are not necessarily relevant as to what a human would do in that situation. Because we just think differently. Do you ever try to think like the computer? Yeah, well, specifically the neural nets have improved our understanding of the game immensely.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And the Avazero paper came out very late 2018. And actually, I played a World Championship match late 2018 as well against an American, Fabiano Caruana. That was the best match I think that I've ever played. We played 12 draws, actually, and then I won in a tiebreak. But the games were super high quality. And he was very evenly matched.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And then he was actually using Lila, the AlphaZero clone, which we didn't have access to. We didn't even know that was a thing. But the thing is, after AlphaZero came out in late 2018, there was a period, half a year maybe, early 2019, where you could very clearly see which players had been using these neural networks or knew how to use them and which players didn't. And my coach,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
he got into it very quickly and we got an advantage of basically everybody but that guy who had been using it during the match. And it just made us understand the game a lot better. There were, as I said, like a couple of things about long-term King safety, pushing pawns on the side of the board was maybe the biggest takeaway that often,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
you would push pawns and not as an attacking tool, which used to be the way that you would push a pawn, like trying to break open your king. What you would do is that you would have a little hook on the side of the board that you could use 20 or 30 moves later... to make the opponent's king less safe then.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
They amped up the security after the whole thing happened. Did they check your ears? Yeah, they started checking our ears. And then, you know, we had a live tournament in Paris last year where I played him, where there was proper security, where all of these things would be picked up. And he didn't play to nearly the same level there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And this is something that humans didn't really do, and I still see some people allowing these pawn advances, and I wonder if they didn't learn their lesson from 2019. But it was very clear to see at a certain time before everybody sort of caught up with the new information.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And that's also when I had maybe my best stretch of chess ever because I just understood these new things better than others. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, it does, but at the same time, you know that these are usually things that humans cannot replicate. And to be fair, the kids these days, a lot of them play a more concrete brand of chess that is more similar to engines than... than we have seen in the past. Because they've had so much exposure to it. Yeah. Like they're less dogmatic, more concrete in their thinking.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
But then I know that there are usually other things that are lacking. So I could sort of steer the game there as well. So, I don't know. I haven't found it particularly useful, but maybe I'm just, yeah, I don't want to. Is it partly because you just don't want to lose? Yeah, of course. And it's also because, as you said, chess is a very lonely game.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
When you lose, it's because you're worse than your opponent. And imagine losing to somebody who you know is completely stupid, which traditional chess computers aren't. They're stupid. They just have much more computing power than you do. So losing over and over again to something that's so stupid... That's not a good feeling.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Well, first of all, it's infinitely faster. So there will be certain possibilities that I will rule out because of my intuition, but it is able to calculate in a very short time that it's possible. It will never make... blunders, like simple tactical mistakes. The neural networks sometimes do, but traditional engines don't. And like I can...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I can keep, like, most of the moves that I make will be the same as they do, but they just, like, they don't make any real blunders at all. Like, they may make slight positional mistakes, but honestly, most of the time that I think an engine makes a positional mistake is because I don't understand it well enough.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And it might look like one, but it's long-term mistakes. Yeah, it's just that my understanding is not good enough. And that is useful. That does help me learn.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So I think, well, I'm not an expert in all of that, but that's what I've heard from people, that that's the most obvious thing that someone could have done, and it wouldn't be really that hard to pull off, considering the kind of security we have at chess tournaments. This tournament had a little bit of security. A lot of them open tournaments. People are wandering in and out of the playing hall.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Because one of them is constantly calculating based on sort of what... what humans have taught them is, like, the value of... Like, the value... What is the value of a pawn? What's the value of a knight? And what is the value of, um... You know, a far-advanced pawn and all of this. Like, it calculates based on that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
A neural network just... You teach... You just show it the rules of chess and, you know, play against yourself a lot of times and get better. And... It just has a different approach. What it does is just based on the games that it's played against itself. It will have completely different ideas at times.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
imagine like in 2019 because of these neural networks every opening that had been played for hundreds of years had to be rechecked by coaches because there could be a difference in evaluation because there is this new neural network that just thinks in a completely different way
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of it was based on it just emphasizes different factors than traditional engines do. And that ultimately just leads to different results, really. It was extremely fascinating for a while, but now it's just led to really more parity in the world of chess because everybody just has access to that information.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
It used to be a thing back in the time that some people would really be ahead of others, not only in 2019, but also other times like they had more computing power, better cloud engines, like they had started to use different engines. And so on. But now you could prepare for a world championship, honestly, in two weeks.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And you'd be completely with just a regular laptop that's connected to a cloud. It's very different and so much easier today.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So we actually did this back in the day. We actually started an app called Play Magnus where you could play against myself at different ages. And the... The style, it was based on... The guy who built Stockfish built this engine as well. So it was based on an old version of that, but it would have my openings and try to emulate my style at certain ages.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Obviously, it wasn't perfect, but it was a start. I think it's still difficult to build a very good clone because essentially... At least with traditional engines, it's not possible. Maybe with AI, you can get there, but I still think we fundamentally think differently about chess.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No, so the thing about it is that you would... Also, what you would have to calibrate is that it would make occasional, like, tactical blunders, right? Right. And which engines... Yeah. Right, they wouldn't want to. And so what we would do... What would happen in the Play Minus app is that it would make...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
There are people in the playing hall, like spectators, with their smartphones on and taking pictures or whatever, going in and out. They could make signals. It's hard. It's a big problem in chess, for sure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Occasional blunders, but those would be like a little bit too outrageous because it's like really hard to emulate the kinds of mistakes a human would make by the engines. So I think that would probably still be like the most difficult part, like the main issue in order to make such a thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No, I think my peak level is close to the best because chess level or proficiency at anything, it's about making use of the knowledge and making it into skill, right? And I definitely have more knowledge now than I've ever had. But I think probably the best combination I had of knowledge and energy that translated the best into skill was probably in 2019, like first half of the year when I was 28.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And when I was... More like a young Kasparov than I'd ever been before. Very dynamic. Well, what is the difference between you and 2019 and you today? A few things. First, I couldn't play the same openings as I played then because they have been worked out to a point where they're basically, yeah, they're just too analyzed and unplayable. So that's one thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Apart from that, I think I could do, like, my average level would probably be a little bit lower because I'm a little bit older and my brain is not quite as fast. But I could do, I think, most of those things. What I don't think I could do is, like, the other sort of best version of me, which was 2013, 2014.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
When I was in the best shape of my life and I was just a relentless beast at the board, grinding down my opponents in very long endgames, never giving them any respite whatsoever. Like, purely skill-wise, that was far from the best version. Sorry, knowledge-wise, that was far from the best version of me. But I was just...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, it's just like the average level of my game definitely was higher than because I barely played really bad games at all because I was always sort of on. I had so much willpower and energy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, it did, but then... Because you're only 34. It's not like you're an old man. No, no, no. That's true, but I just feel it with these kids. Their brains are just so much faster than mine. I mean, I've felt it for years as well that... No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not old, but I can I can I can never be at that level of pure like computing power.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, well, back in the days when you couldn't get information that quickly, it took people a lot longer to develop. And then it was considered that the best age was like late 30s, early 40s. Obviously, the drop-off is not nearly as steep as it would be in physical sports. That goes without saying. But I think the peak years are pretty much the same for most people, like mid-20s to early 30s.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I think I could still... I could still be very, very close to my peak if I focused fully on all the things that I can control all of those things you don't do that?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I don't understand if you're so obsessed with chess that seems to have a primary factor it's a good thing I feel like I do I generally do the right things when I'm at tournaments but then in between I don't know I want to enjoy life as well Um, so, um, and like, I'm generally obsessed with, with, with chess, but I'm not always obsessed with competing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Like certain times, there will be certain days, certain tournaments where I... I know that I'm not going to be at my best and I can feel it and then I'm not able to take it as seriously. I feel like I cannot... I'm not a Michael Jordan type who has to go all out in every...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
in in every game i used to but now i don't i i don't think i have that um that in me because my main motivation for playing chess is that i love to play um i don't have concrete goals of what i wanted what i wanted to do um things i want to achieve does that sort of relaxed attitude that you have does that drive other people crazy that you're still able to beat them
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, and also the thing is I was known for being fit and all of these things, but now I think there are a lot of other players who take these things a lot more seriously than I do. I think the reason why I got that reputation is that I really like doing a lot of... I did a lot of sports from when I was little, and I've always kind of done them for...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So I think that was why you don't see a lot of chess players playing soccer or tennis or whatever. Not that I'm great at any of those things, but I was usually better than a lot of other chess players. Yeah, I guess I do have... I don't know what reputation I have for the others. I don't really care.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Honestly, that's... Me being late is down to a couple of things. First, I hate waiting. But also, I'm terrible at planning. So that's why I keep showing up late.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
My planning is always based on everything going perfectly and making a time plan based on that. And if something goes a little bit wrong, then I'm going to be late. And something usually goes wrong or often enough that it becomes... It becomes a thing. Like as you talked about in chess, there's this video that a lot of people have talked about where I come... There's a Blitz game, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And that's three minutes and I come like two and a half minutes late because I've been... I've been skiing in the mountains and there was an accident on the road that delayed me like half an hour. Most people would have planned for that, had a little bit of buffer, but I was like, eh, that was probably going to be fine.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Suddenly there's an accident and I'm going to be late and I'm just running into the playing hall in my sweatpants and not even realizing that the game has started. I just...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Thought I was so late that I should be and I saw that everybody was there and then randomly turned out Half a minute left when when I got to the go to the board So that's kind of more how to play the game Did you did you like have a different approach because you knew you only had 30 seconds? No, the thing is, like, there you have a two-second increment per move.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So I'm not going to lose on time automatically. I just had to play a little bit faster. But it was okay. But as I said, like, I don't do those things to intimidate my opponents. I'm just bad at playing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
no honestly that was um like the world championships in chess like they were being held in the weirdest places so this was in in almaty kazakhstan which um this is like really uh during winter at least pretty polluted not very nice city and then just half an hour out of the city you have basically the ops
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
you have beautiful mountains that goes up to three and a half thousand meters where it's just fantastic and you can get from the city it's like an hour and you're at the top of the mountain and having a beautiful ski vacation And I just was so miserable being down in the city that I thought, for this day, if I'm going to perform at all today, I need some fresh air. I need to get out of here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And so that's why I took the risk. And it was definitely not to play mind games. Because I... Bobby Fischer said about chess that I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves. I believe in a little bit of both, but I'm more in his school that I think I'm going to make better moves and I don't need all those other things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, it's just a sort of technological version of ways people have cheated before. There was a scandal back in 2010 where the captain of the French team was helping one of the French players by cheating. He was basically just standing in certain spots around the table to tell him where to move. Oh, wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, that specific thing has happened for sure. I'm not sure if it's been a conscious choice by my opponents. I'm sure I've been guilty of it as well. That's true. I don't know, really. I... I think the only thing is not to bring that up again, but I think when I think that my opponent might be cheating, that's the only time that I'm really off.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
no it's the the thing is that we think harsher penalties would discourage oh yeah for sure especially for for online because there's been this thinking that cheating over the board and over online is like very different but the thing is like once people um once people are cheating online then having these meteoric rises over the board as well it makes you think That's a bit strange.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So yeah, there definitely needs to be harsher penalties. One thing that chess.com used to do is that they would let people sort of confess privately and then get their account back. But now they're moving to more naming and shaming sort of thing and banning people for longer, which I think is... Yeah, it's a lot better. But a lot of it is about incentives as well, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Like if you think that you can get away with cheating and there are monetary incentives to cheat, people are going to cheat. It's as simple as that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No, that's true. But the thing is, there's so little you need in chess. And the engines are so powerful. If I started cheating, you would never know. The thing is, I would get a move here and there. That's all I need. Or maybe, imagine I'm playing a tournament. I just find a system where I get somebody to signal me when there's a critical moment.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
If there's a moment where a certain move is much better than the others. That's really all I would need to go from being the best to being practically... unbeatable right so it really is a scary situation and there have been these cases of so many cases of people who are acting suspiciously and who are making suspicious having suspicious results based on the data but
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
If you're not cheating in a dumb way, there rarely is going to be a smoking gun. Without that smoking gun, it's really hard to catch people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
So that has been done in World Championships, for instance. We've basically been playing in a glass box where you cannot see the audience and you cannot hear anything. So it's a glass-proof box. I kind of, that's like, you kind of don't want that. You want there to be like, I really like having chess more like an e-sports setting where people can be as loud as they want.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
all the countries in the world their flags and their inhabitants and area and everything and I sort of that's what I did generally just taking in all the stats that I could also with sports reading the sports section every day and I didn't find chess that fun A couple of years later, my older sister, who's a year and a half older than me, she did a lot of chess with my dad.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
It's just, you have players sit down like boxers with headsets and- But don't headsets open up the possibility of cheating? But then like the headsets would be all provided by the organizers. Right. So some sort of sound.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And you'd have to have like both – we have had that in tournaments that you have to have white noise and some kind of sound from like Spotify or if you want to listen to classical music or whatever. You can do that? Yeah, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, I mean, honestly, playing Blitzchess, listening to music usually helps me because doing tasks that are more intuition-based, then that helps with the flow. With larger games...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
um you probably don't want that disturbance but i've definitely played some of my best blitz chess just um yeah listening listening to music what are you sitting there bopping um um yeah i think some wild norwegian music rammstein or something That's actually German, but they have some good songs. No, I think my best chess has probably been Norwegian rap.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yeah, it's also funny that one of his teammates from that tournament worked with me for a long time. And he told me, like, this guy was, like, going out every night, not taking the tournament seriously at all. But, yeah, he had a good reason. Like, he knew he was going to win.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Uh, there's a guy called, uh, Mr. Pimp Lotion and Oral B. Mr. Pimp Lotion. And Oral B. They're kind of... It's, like, a little bit ironic, but they're, like, doing, like, American, like, West Coast rap in Norwegian.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
This is a bit of a different one. But I... I actually did a song with those guys. What a great name, Mr. Pimp Lotion.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Yours is at the end? No, basically there's... Yeah, the thing about, what happened was that they did a show and they have this thing called Spinoor, which is like a moisturizer mostly used for animals. But like this, Mr. Pimplotion, like he's obsessed with that one. And somebody apparently stole that from backstage at their concert.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
And so they didn't know who it was, but they eventually found out and they made a song about it. And so they had a bunch of people, like, sending their verses.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
there actually was a there actually was a popular song like about 20 years ago that referenced specifically that in Norwegian that there was nothing to rap about because nothing bad ever happens that's what he's saying in English don't make me pull out the gun it's best that someone speak out who stole this bean off who stole my lotion yeah
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
basically there's a bunch of verses like people accusing each other and then I randomly come in at the very end and solve the mystery was it you? it wasn't me I was not at that particular show but yeah I think the best online chess that I've ever played was probably listening to their music Do you mix it up? Do you ever listen to Led Zeppelin? No, I listen to a lot of older stuff as well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I have no idea what's on the chart these days in general. I find out through Tony. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
That sometimes happens to me as well. Maybe like once a year or something. Otherwise, it's... I remember I asked my sister probably like 10 years ago. I saw her playlist and I was like, do you have anything from before 2000? And she was like, yeah, of course. Britney Spears, Baby One More Time, 1999.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I don't know, but it's within a few months for sure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No. I actually played an open tournament in Denmark about 20 years ago where there was a guy who was playing Grandmaster in the first round. Like, this is not a very good player. And he came drunk to the table and just literally pulled out his phone and opened a chess program. But, of course, he was immediately... So that wasn't, of course, nearly as nefarious. That's just a moron.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I don't know, I think you can be dumb and be fairly good at chess. I think some intelligence certainly helps, but after all, a lot of chess is about learning patterns, right? And basically anybody can...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
can do that so like applying them at a higher level learning how to evaluate and so on that sort of is what sets the the really the best players apart from from merely good players, but I feel like anybody could come become quite decent at at the game. But I do love the fact that, you know, there are no coincidences, like, there are no outside factors.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
Well, if you don't talk, other than cheating, of course. But it's just, yeah, you're either outsmarting your opponent or you're getting outsmarted.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
I'm known in the chess world for being a little bit lazy, I think. The thing is that I... Can I pause you there? Yeah, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
No, the thing is, like, I've never been the kind of person who wakes up in the morning, works six, seven hours, and tests, like, a normal job. And then... Because a lot of them study computers and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Like, I think about the game all the time. Like, I play online. I... I look at games, I read something. Do you ever play anonymously? I used to do that all the time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2275 - Magnus Carlsen
What a bloodbath that must be. But I think I got humbled one time by this Russian grandmaster who asked, somebody else asked me if a certain account on a certain website was me. And I was like, yeah, I don't know. Like, I don't know who that is. And this guy went like, yes, that is you. And he listed up like five other accounts that I thought nobody knew about. Oh, wow. How did he know?