Lex Fridman Podcast
#327 – GothamChess: Hans Niemann, Magnus Carlsen, Cheating Scandal & Chess Bots
07 Oct 2022
Levy Rozman, also known as GothamChess, is a professional chess player, streamer, and educator. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Notion: https://notion.com - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex to get 1 month of fish oil - ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod to get 3 months free - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off EPISODE LINKS: GothamChess's YouTube: https://youtube.com/gothamchess GothamChess's Twitch: https://twitch.tv/gothamchess GothamChess's Twitter: https://twitter.com/GothamChess GothamChess's Instagram: https://instagram.com/gothamchess GothamChess's Website: https://gotham-chess.com PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (06:14) - Elo rating (07:18) - Chess.com vs lichess.org (18:09) - Teaching chess (22:37) - Magnus Carlsen (37:52) - Greatest chess player of all time (42:35) - Hans Niemann cheating scandal (44:04) - Pin of Shame (58:12) - Bullying (1:00:04) - Indonesia incident (1:11:39) - Retiring from chess (1:18:16) - Death (1:21:58) - Streamers (1:35:34) - Hans Niemann cheating scandal continued (2:13:16) - Magnus Carlsen's statement (2:24:37) - Podcasts (2:27:04) - Parasocial interaction (2:30:53) - How to cheat in chess (2:40:39) - Reddit questions (2:47:03) - Chess boxing (2:55:49) - Chess bots (3:01:31) - AlphaZero (3:07:18) - Did Hans Niemann cheat? (3:14:34) - Chess openings (3:19:14) - Magnus Carlsen's poker game (3:21:56) - Chess advice (3:28:17) - Depression
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
The following is a conversation with Levi Rosman, also known as Gotham Chess. He's a professional chess player and educator. I highly recommend you check out his YouTube channel called Gotham Chess. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.
We got Notion for team collaboration, Athletic Greens for daily multivitamins, ExpressVPN for internet security, and Insight Tracker for biomonitoring. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, on to the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make them interesting, but if you must skip, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too.
This show is brought to you by Notion. a note-taking and team collaboration tool. I think it's most popularly known for the note-taking capabilities. All the cool kids go to the productivity forums and subreddits and Stack Exchange. Notion comes up time and time again as like the stellar, the top tool to use for note-taking. I use it for note-taking on the individual basis.
But the thing that you may not know that Notion is also incredibly good at is the collaboration aspect of it. And not just any kind of collaboration, but collaboration for any kind of task. So we could even for startups, for businesses, for, I don't know, homework assignments, all of it. They provide a kind of full-on operating system for running every aspect of a company or a team.
You can learn more and get started for free at notion.com. This show is also brought to you by Athletic Greens and its AG1 drink, which is an all-in-one-day drink to support daily health and peak performance. Where was it? Somebody sent me on Reddit in a daze.
I remember seeing a kind of meme saying like, this is like the Lex Friedman podcast in a nutshell, or maybe the Lex Friedman experience in a nutshell. I don't know. The point is there was some kind of crappy robot that has in a flood of greens container and is doing the shaking and the mixing and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.
I mean, yes, but probably I would do a better job engineering the system and probably would not use it for that particular task. Like why introduce a machine into a task that's deeply human, my friends. So, yes, somehow, if this was the true luxury experience, you probably want to add a little bit of love into the whole thing. Which, chemically and nutritionally speaking, is already built in.
That's why I love Athletic Greens. Not just because it's green and delicious, but because it's really good for you. Provides you with a nutritional basis for your mental and physical excellence. So you can be a beautiful version of you that you already are. They'll give you one month's supply of fish oil when you sign up at athleticgreens.com. This show is also brought to you by ExpressVPN.
I use them and I have used them for many, many years to protect my privacy on the internet. ISPs collect your data. Even if you're using Chrome and Cognito to go to the shady websites that you go to. And I'm not judging.
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Chapter 2: How does Notion enhance team collaboration?
I'm not judging. I'm giving you all the respect and props you deserve, sir or madam, for all of the darkest, the shadiest places you go on the internet. But you should protect yourself when you do that. And a good VPN is a must. That's like the first and the most powerful layer of protection. ExpressVPN is my favorite. It's the one I've always used, so it's the one I really want to recommend.
You can do all kinds of other stuff. It doesn't matter. What matters is it works fast. It works on any device, including, yes, on Linux, Android, anything, anything. You can go to expressvpn.com to get an extra three months free. This show is also brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track biological data.
They have a bunch of plans, most of which includes blood tests that give you information based on which machine learning algorithms will give you advice after analyzing your blood data, DNA data, fitness tracker data, all that kind of stuff. They'll give you advice based on what's going on inside you on what you should do with your life.
maybe sort of diet and lifestyle changes, not like career changes, although that'd be pretty cool, where your DNA data could tell you, hey, maybe that career that you wanted as a chocolatier, is that the right way to say chocolatier? Like a person who makes chocolate, right? I'm not even going to check. I can look it up online, but I'm just going to go with it.
And then you can clip this out to embarrass me, as the internet seems to do with all the stupid things I say. I say so many stupid things, and they accumulate over time. And all I can do is just laugh at myself and appreciate you, sir or madam, for laughing along with me.
Anyway, InsideTracker is incredible because the best health advice, medical advice, all kinds of advice I think should be grounded based on the data that comes from you. Get special savings for a limited time when you go to InsideTracker.com slash Lex. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Levi Rosman.
You're known for being able to guess people's ELO rating. So what do you think? Just by looking at my face deep into my eyes, what's my ELO rating? Here, I'll help you. I'll do E4 for the listener. I actually read that Stockfish prefers E4. Does it really? I actually didn't know that. Because it maximizes the number of tactical options. That makes sense.
The right answer is 3,400, which is, I believe, stockfish. You guessed people's ELO chest rating. What's that take? How hard is it to do that? And how would you actually do that? What are telltale signs or red flags about a person at different ratings? Is there something you look for?
Yeah, I think you can separate it something like... The very first, the zero to about eight, 900. For simplicity's sake, I'm gonna use the chess.com rating system because Lee Chess is slightly different. It tends to go two, 300 points higher than chess.com, sometimes even four, 500 points higher, but then it catches up. They catch up around 22, 2300, I would say. What's chess.com?
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Chapter 3: What does Athletic Greens offer for daily health?
We'll get to that.
Yes, we will get to that. It's epic. It's actually scary how many people think that's a real thing, by the way, which is the danger of the internet. But yeah, we will get into that.
I tend to believe that people believing a thing that's hilarious... at scale, will make that thing a reality. I'm with Ilan on this. I think people manifest the meme. The meme becomes real. But that's in all walks of life. I think there is something about humor sort of being...
What I was going to say is I feel like humor becomes a lubricant for the trajectory of human civilization, and I don't know why the word lubricant went into my head. Beads? I understand, but it's very Freudian. Anyway, so zero to 900, if you're a 1300 player, you were saying?
If you're not good at endgames, you don't understand how to convert positions that have seven or eight pieces left on the board. You don't know when you're supposed to activate your king. You don't know how a bishop outplays a knight with just several pawns on the board. Those are all very important things because it's not just about... knowing the theoretical end games.
Like some positions in chess are literally solved. If I showed you a position, I asked what's the evaluation and how do you win it? There's a technique. You're supposed to know that technique. And the coaches on chess.com can help or no?
Yeah.
So these lesson libraries, it's not like a live lesson. It's prerecorded. training position, walk you through it, and then there's a dynamic factor as well where you can practice. You can practice the theoretical and you can practice a practical game where there's no set format to do something. It's just based on your previous experience.
Basically, Lee Chess is, their entire thing is, it's an open source game website that tries to be as free as possible and operates totally on donations. They don't have any advertisements. They don't have, which is weird because normally in big competitive settings, it's all capitalistic. You have one big entity and another big entity and they're both for profit.
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Chapter 4: What does Hans Niemann say about his journey to becoming an International Master?
But then something interesting happened. My life mission was accomplished. I never wanted or thought I could be a grandmaster. I wanted to be an international master. And the adrenaline dump of hitting the IM title, I just stopped working completely. I just completely stopped working. I couldn't. And the second I started falling, I couldn't stop. And I spent the rest of the summer just tanking.
And I said, ah, fuck this. I made my IM. I'm going to fuck off someplace and whatever. I'll be IM. It doesn't matter. But when I play games online, I mean, I destroy grandmasters all the time. Like dynamically, dynamics in chess are just complex positions with all sorts of calculation, attacking, defending, like very forcing lines. I think it's my best strength.
I think I'm easily grandmaster level.
So you have the capacity to be grandmaster?
100%.
If the work was put in.
If the work was put in and I was not doing my current career, if I just trained full time, I think I could do it.
Do you have a desire to be grandmaster? Did you have a desire? You said, I didn't really want, like the main goal was international master, which by the way is a really interesting, just I've talked to Olympic athletes, the crash after the gold medal is fascinating. Yeah, I didn't get gold, but for me, that was my goal. That was your goal. I mean, it doesn't matter. It's the goal.
It takes a very, very special person to, to not be destroyed by the gold and continue the dominance. It's to continue growing, to continue. I mean, it's hard to, that's why they talk about, it's hard to be a champion and defend your championships or whatever the goal is, to achieve the goal and stick to like, yeah.
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Chapter 5: How does Hans Niemann's perspective on cheating evolve during the discussion?
Like in this conversation, I imagine this is the last thing both you and I do. Just, we're going to die after this. So you meditate on that. But then you also have to, I think what hits people really hard is the realization that life moves on. not only does it just end for you, but most people will be like, they'll, you know, in your case, they'll tweet. It's like, oh, he's so great.
There'll be so much outpouring. There'll be outpouring of love and so on for a day, and then it moves on. And the, you know, the new trees grow, new bridges are built. And then eventually human civilization ends or moves over to Mars and so on. And you'll be forgotten completely. But that for most people will come right away. Like you get a cancer diagnosis or something like that.
And it's like, doesn't anyone else know that I'm going to die. Does anyone else care? Like, nobody gives a shit. I mean, they do. I mean, there's love there, but not in a dramatic way that you would somehow deep inside hope for, that the world would stop because your life is... is facing this catastrophic event.
But I think ultimately you could channel that realization into appreciation of the current moment. It's just the people you love and sharing love with them as intensely as possible, experiencing every moment as intensely as possible because eventually there'll be a last moment and after that there'll be no more moments.
That's sort of what I do. Yeah, I tried to channel all of that into, sorry. I don't use these fancy microphones in my own. You look uncomfortable.
It's not your fault. It's not your fault, Levi. With this microphone? No, with this line of conversation.
Oh.
I'm playing therapist.
I don't know if I'm uncomfortable. I just, I don't know if I have a lot to say. Sometimes I just listen. Yeah. Like sometimes I'm intimidated. You say a lot of good things and I'm like, shit, what am I going to say like at the end of it? On this subject especially, I'm like, that's sort of what I- There's nothing.
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Chapter 6: What insights are shared about the psychological impact of cheating in chess?
And I told you before that I wanted to use it, but it requires an external dashboard of some sort, and I'm way too lazy to learn how to do it. And my microphone doesn't sound that bad for YouTube and for Twitch, but this is a long-term problem. I still have to figure out how to stream stuff. I haven't figured that out. You want to go down into the world of Twitch? No, I don't.
Okay, I don't. You just want to learn how to do it, just in case. No, for... No, not Twitch. Do you know what we have over there? So first of all, yes, it's like... I feel like the Hobbit going into like mortar. Yeah, Twitch is a very intense world. But there is useful cases when you should have your microphone work with like the different, the processing chain work in real time.
So you can do like interviews. And also I try to play a video game once a month. So I've done that like three times already. So stream that kind of stuff for like an hour. Like play Skyrim. I love playing Skyrim. I actually love the idea. I haven't done that yet, but apparently in Skyrim you can turn off the monsters and you can just walk around.
So I love the idea of just walking around Skyrim for a couple hours. Because it's beautiful nature. I see. Do you know anything about those?
I know little about Skyrim.
So it's kind of like chat, no. Yeah, it's just beautiful worlds. So there's games that are able to create this sense of, you know, the way you feel when you go hiking, a sense of nature. Yeah. It's not that they're ultra-realistic, but they capture some majestic aspect of nature. I think some of it is also music, something peaceful. It's like old-timey, medieval type of music.
And just the trees, like the wind. And then in the distance, there's the mountains. And you can like... You have a sense of history that the nature gives you. You have a sense of space. You're like this tiny little creature and there's this big world all around you. That's like an art for a video game to create that. It's not just about the monsters in front of you.
It's about this world and this feeling of a world. So I can just walk around and enjoy it.
I get asked this question a lot. Why don't I stream more video games? Yes. And... I didn't know that such video games, first of all, existed. I thought it was mostly just various sci-fi-ish characters and shooting and objective. I've played Overwatch on stream.
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Chapter 7: What is parasocial interaction and how does it affect audiences?
Yeah, I think it's. Year or so. Yeah. Parasocial interaction, PSI, refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performance in the mass media, particularly on television and on online platforms.
Viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities as friends, despite having no or limited interaction with, oh shit, that's a term for a thing of, been referring to. Interesting. The term was coined by Donald Horton and Richard Wall in 1956.
Wow. When there was like very limited media, huh?
Wow.
I guess TV and radio and stuff.
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Chapter 8: What are the downsides of parasocial relationships?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Parasocial interaction and exposure that gamers' interest in the persona become a parasocial relationship after repeated exposure to the media. Yeah, okay, what's the downside, bro? What's, okay.
Oh, well, I can tell you the downside. The downside is people thinking they're in relationships with streamers and stalking them. That's... Oh, the stalking part.
But the relationship is like... I mean, okay, you mean like actual relationship. Like... Like waking up and saying, how are you doing? Like in your head to them. Yeah, no, but that might be an extension.
More like, yeah, getting mad they don't respond to you in anytime you're in the stream or that convincing yourself the other person wants you and you need to go to them. So you need to find where they are. Like this has happened. Some of the biggest female streamers have reported that that they get stalked and harassed for months. And that's born out of this.
This on a very small scale is you come into a stream every so often and give an update about your academic career. That's not so bad. I was gonna mention, I've streamed on Twitch for years and I watched people have kids Like people will come in over the course of months and say, hey, man, you know, I just finished, I just took the bar exam. Yo, man, like I'm having my first kid. And that's crazy.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
But if they do it in a healthy way, that's one thing.
There's always going to be downsides, but most of it is beautiful, man. Yes. I have very, I have, I guess, parasocial relationships of people that take it a little too far. But it's all love.
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