Lex Fridman Podcast
#330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness
17 Oct 2022
Hikaru Nakamura is a chess super grandmaster and is currently the #1 ranked blitz chess player in the world. He is also one of the top chess streamers on Twitch and YouTube. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Mizzen+Main: https://mizzenandmain.com and use code LEX to get $35 off - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off - NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour - SimpliSafe: https://simplisafe.com/lex EPISODE LINKS: Hikaru's Twitch: https://twitch.tv/gmhikaru Hikaru's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/GMHikaru Hikaru's Twitter: https://twitter.com/GMHikaru Hikaru's Instagram: https://instagram.com/gmhikaru Hikaru's Website: https://hikarunakamura.com Macauley Peterson's video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tGXvcQP6VPo 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 (06:59) - A private game vs Magnus Carlsen (14:47) - Chess openings (30:59) - Mental preparation (39:40) - Chess tactics (50:03) - Solving chess (55:43) - Aggression and ego (1:00:28) - Hans Niemann cheating scandal (1:10:21) - How to cheat in chess (1:24:44) - Greatest chess player of all time (1:35:00) - Hikaru's immortal game (1:47:26) - Paul Morphy (1:49:10) - World Chess Championship (1:51:59) - Magnus Carlsen (1:55:33) - Sergey Karjakin (1:58:00) - Beauty of chess (2:04:55) - Day in the life (2:19:34) - Streaming (2:34:13) - Taking risks (2:39:42) - Depression (2:44:31) - Advice for young people (2:51:51) - Love
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
The following is a conversation with Hikaru Nakamura, a chess super grandmaster. He's one of the greatest chess players in the world, including currently being ranked world number one in blitz chess. He's also one of the most popular chess streamers on Twitch and YouTube, which you should definitely check out. His channel's name on both is GM Hikaru.
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've got Mizzen and Main for style, Insight Tracker for biomonitoring, NetSuite for business management software, and SimpliSafe for home security. Choose wisely, my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle.
I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too.
Chapter 2: How do chess openings impact game strategy?
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of mental preparation in chess?
I wonder. That's something actually I learned about when they were designing test dummies for crashing cars, to test the safety of cars, that you should be doing all kinds of different dummies to represent different shapes and sizes and so on. age groups of the population. Anyway, at least for my body, I don't know about all the other bodies out there, but for my body, Mizodermain fits perfect.
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I've actually had a bunch of conversations about biology recently, and it's humbling and inspiring to think of the hierarchy of computation that is happening inside the human body. Just from the basic cell. Oh, and the parts of the cell. Just looking at RNA alone, RNA and DNA. From the information to the information processing and the computation that happens there.
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It manages financials, human resources, inventory, e-commerce, and many business-related details, all of which I am completely behind on personally because I am in charge of it in my life and totally mismanaging. Or rather not mismanaging, but procrastinating. Like perhaps some of us, maybe a lot of us are doing everything from the finances on the tax organization side.
Everything is always done last minute. And then just managing things in my life. People I work with, so I guess that's human resources. And just managing all the small and the big details. If you can use good tools for that kind of thing, you should. If you can hire help for that kind of thing, you should. But it's so tricky.
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Chapter 4: What are the key elements of a private game against Magnus Carlsen?
And I think every top player has that issue.
Is there a way to overcome that? Because you have to.
I don't know if I'll necessarily do better against Magnus going forward, but I felt that when I started playing against him more than just a game here or there in classical chess during the pandemic, I played him in these online tournaments seemed like every month. I came very close. I beat him in one event. I think I lost in two others and then the tour final.
But when I was playing against him more and more, he didn't feel superhuman. It felt like as I'm playing more and more and learning about his style that I was doing better. So I think for me,
the weird thing is that i just wasn't playing against him that many games but when i start playing against like 20 30 games during the course of a year i actually started feeling more confident because i feel like i can compete whereas when i was only playing him like three or four times in classical chess in the previous couple of years It was I wasn't doing great.
And then you don't have you don't have those glimpses of you don't have those moments where you feel like you're going to be able to win against them. But when you start playing 2030 games, and you get these opportunities, even if you don't convert, you feel like you have the chances when you play three or four games, and there, you might lose one draw three, you never have those opportunities.
And so you feel very negative about what's going on.
When you were able to beat him, or not necessarily win the game, but win positionally something, what was the reason? Like, technically speaking, the matchup between the two of you, what, like, where were the holes that you were able to find?
mean the the answer i think is actually quite simple i think it's all psychological actually more than anything else um because i didn't it didn't i didn't feel like i was doing anything differently but i was also not making the mistakes that i was making before um so i think it was more psychological than on your part versus his part it's it's very weird because when you when you think about chess it's a mental game um
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Chapter 5: How do blunders differ between Blitz and Classical chess?
So when I'm making less blunders with limited time on the clock, my opponents actually make a lot more blunders. That's why I think it's much more pronounced in Blitz than it is in Classical Chess because in Blitz, when you're down to like 10 seconds in the game, both players have 10 seconds, my intuition is just better than theirs.
I mean, Magda's maybe not so clear, but like if you look at other players, say Fabiano Caruana, a very strong player, when he gets down to 10 seconds or in these... these situations, he almost always makes a blunder. Almost always. So I'm just more precise. I make less blunders. And really, the effect is much more dramatic in Blitz.
Chapter 6: What role does intuition play in chess decisions?
What do you think that intuition is? Sorry for the kind of almost philosophical question. What is that? Is that calculation? Or is it some kind of weird memory recall? What is that? Like being able to do that short line prediction.
I think that's just playing so many games online, and there's some kind of subconscious feel that I have. Because when you're that low on time, you can't calculate. It's just, you have to look, you just have to figure out what's the move you want to play is, no calculation, and just go with it.
And I think just playing so many games probably, I mean, I'm guessing I've played over 300,000 games online, and I think just playing all those games, it's a feel.
Chapter 7: What is Hikaru's perspective on the beauty of chess?
There's no tangible way that I can't put that really into words. It's just a feel.
What do you, and we should say that you're, I think, currently the number one ranked Blitz player in the world. You have been for a while. You're unquestionably one of the greatest. So classical, rapid, and Blitz, you're one of the best people for many years in the world. Okay. But you're currently number one in Blitz.
So I'd love to kind of, for you to dig into the secret to your success in Blitz. Is it... as you're saying that intuition, being able to, when the time is short, to not make blunders and then to make a close to optimal move.
Chapter 8: What advice does Hikaru give to young chess players?
I think it's generally that I'm able to keep the games going no matter what, until we're low on time. I'm always able to do that. Like if we play a game with three minutes, like there, there are games that I will just win, win very quickly, but a lot of games between top players, players have to think you have to use time. And in those final critical stages, I just don't blunder.
I just don't blunder really at the end of the day. That's, that's really the only difference because everybody's very, very strong, but but it's sort of like who is the better like brain, who has a better like CPU or for lack of a better way of putting it, it's like who makes a split second decisions the best. And I do think that I'm extremely good at that in a way that almost nobody else is.
That really is the only difference is that the split second decisions, because you can get a worse position, but again, if you keep the game going, players have to use the time when you get down to those final 10, 15 seconds, I almost always end up winning in those situations.
What are you visualizing? Like in those, when you're doing the fast, fast calculations, what is it?
It's basically you look at a move and you see, like when it's like five seconds or 10 seconds, you play a move and you just make sure that it's not a blunder. You just look, make sure it's not a blunder and you just go with it. And the first part though is the feel. So it's like, I see this move and it looks right. I don't know why it's right.
I can't put that into words, but it looks like the right move. And then I look very, for like a split second, see as long as it's not some kind of blunder and you just play that move.
Is there a bit of a tunnel vision? Are you able to understand the positions of all the other pieces on the board, or are you just focusing on a very specific interaction?
It's just feel. It's really just feel. It's like this move feels right, and so I play it. When you're at that stage of the game, it's like as long as it's not a blunder, and it's just that feel. There is no way for me to put that in.
And that feel empirically does result in low probability of blunder for you. It's like you don't blunder.
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