0:00

Hello, everyone, and welcome

0:02

back to Perpetual

0:04

Chess.

0:05

The

0:08

World Championship 2023

0:11

is almost here and we've got a jam-packed

0:14

double episode preview for you. First

0:17

we will have Grandmaster Daniel I'm

0:20

a fan of his Power Play Chess YouTube

0:22

channel. He's been on the show before. He's

0:24

a guy broadcast top

0:26

chess events for decades, many

0:29

World Championship tons

0:31

history, so I always like getting his perspective.

0:34

So he joins me

0:35

to provide a sort of big

0:39

picture perspective on the match between

0:41

Ding Loren and Jan Napomnichi. First

0:44

up, then with Daniel, we also discussed defense.

0:47

He's out with new course on chessable, discussing

0:50

anti-Sicilians. We

0:52

discussed some of the prior world championships he's

0:55

attended, and then we do some chess improvement

0:58

So we've got a lot for you this just

1:00

a reminder, there's always timestamps if more

1:03

interested in one particular aspect

1:05

the show. Second up the pod,

1:08

we have USCF national master

1:10

and statistician, Matt Jensen.

1:13

Matt always does great analytics

1:16

for chess.com for big chess events.

1:18

So I thought it would be fun to him in and get analytics

1:21

based preview for the Ding

1:24

and Nepo match. also

1:26

talk about chess ratings Matt his

1:29

chess educational site chessgoals.com has

1:32

kept track of different chess readings across

1:34

different sites, helped that

1:36

like if you ask someone their rating they

1:39

give you their lee chess and you're trying to figure out how

1:41

does it how does it compare to chess.com? translate

1:44

across the rating spectrum. Matt had some good

1:46

insights on how ratings are changing

1:49

and things you should know about We also

1:51

about chess improvement with Matt.

1:54

fun double episode discussing this upcoming

1:56

match. we go any further,

1:58

I wanted our...

5:55

Without

6:00

further ado, let's get you to the first interview

6:03

with Daniel King, followed by Matt

6:05

Jensen, Talking Chest Data, and

6:08

more. Here we go. We

6:10

are here with a guest who is always a favorite

6:12

of mine. He is a popular broadcaster author,

6:15

chessable author, most recently of King's

6:17

Anti-Cecilians for Black. He was just

6:19

telling me he's been up late in the night

6:22

finishing up the recording in German

6:24

for it, in addition to English

6:26

video. So German listeners, you've

6:29

got choices. He's also a popular

6:31

YouTube presenter of the always

6:33

excellent Power Play chess YouTube channel.

6:36

Excellent game recaps there. And,

6:40

and he always seems to come around the show when there's

6:42

big chess events happening. So it wasn't by

6:44

design this time. this time. But Daniel

6:46

and I have been in touch for a while. And as

6:48

we were getting ready to court, I was thinking, Oh, it's time

6:51

to talk about the world championship. So in

6:53

addition to discussing what else is new with him,

6:55

the general chess landscape and his

6:57

chessable course, we will be previewing

6:59

the world championship. But without further ado,

7:02

let's welcome Grandmaster Daniel King back to the show.

7:04

Welcome back, Daniel. Thank you very much. Very,

7:06

very nice to be here. And yeah, nice to

7:09

see you, Ben. How are you?

7:10

You okay? Everything's Yeah,

7:12

everything's good. I'm well, I think both you and

7:14

I

7:15

have at least from a comment

7:18

you made in the email, maybe we're not quite

7:20

as excited for this World Championship match

7:22

as prior ones. But as I was

7:24

saying to you, uh, in the process

7:26

of preparing for this interview,

7:29

I started to get more excited. And I think

7:31

a lot of people may sort of end up with

7:33

that mindset where it

7:35

doesn't have the buildup that seeing Magnus

7:38

in action, that seeing the legacy of

7:41

a many year champion defend his

7:43

throne would, but at the same time, it's

7:45

a compelling matchup.

7:46

What are your first thoughts about the match, Daniel?

7:49

Well, it's the number

7:51

two and three players in the world for

7:53

a start. So that's a pretty

7:55

good reason why we

7:58

should be watching this match actually. If

8:02

Magnus is really turning

8:05

away from classical chess, which,

8:08

well, his actions seem to be showing

8:12

that,

8:13

then these

8:16

two could be the, you know,

8:18

well, they are the number two, three in the world. So, you

8:21

know, they're the best classical

8:23

players in the world at the moment. moment. Well,

8:26

but that's the same for any world champion. So

8:28

I'm really hoping

8:30

that within the

8:33

first few games, we get a nice

8:35

decisive game and

8:37

then we will have a very interesting

8:39

match on our hands.

8:42

Because I think, you know, both players

8:45

have a real spark about them actually.

8:48

And if hopefully that spark

8:51

can ignite in the first few games,

8:54

and we could have something very interesting.

8:57

Yeah, I hadn't even realized

9:00

because other than number one, the

9:02

top 10 shifts around so much

9:04

that I also hadn't realized it was the live number

9:06

two and the live number three until

9:08

I was looking at 2700chess.com yesterday. And

9:12

that definitely adds to the intrigue. Another

9:14

thing is the stylistic differences.

9:17

I feel like,

9:18

again, from an on-the-board perspective, It's

9:22

a real clash of styles. And we

9:25

were saying that about Nepo against Magnus

9:27

as well, but this time, obviously, they're

9:29

less than 10 reading points apart. So it's

9:32

a clash of styles, but an even match

9:34

as well.

9:35

Well, you said clash of styles. I'm intrigued

9:37

by that actually, because I've got my

9:40

view on what their styles are. Tell me what you

9:42

think their styles are. Okay,

9:45

well, it's changed a little bit because Nepo,

9:47

of course, unveiled his more solid

9:49

repertoire against Magnus, historically

9:53

with him being like a Grunfeld and an Eidorf

9:55

player and a fierce tactician and of of course

9:58

being known for.

9:59

being a bit impatient at times, I

10:02

think of Nepo

10:04

as a bit of like a swashbuckler and

10:07

Ding, of course, tactically gifted

10:09

as well as all 2,700 plus

10:11

players are, but I think of him more

10:14

as like a classical player,

10:16

you know, versatile classical

10:18

player, so not necessarily only

10:21

positional, but certainly

10:24

historically, I think of him as a bit

10:26

more well rounded than Nepo. How does

10:28

that land?

10:30

That sounds pretty good. I

10:33

mean, I was going to say that I think both

10:36

players have rather changed in recent years, actually,

10:38

because I see Dean

10:41

playing sometimes very, very technically,

10:44

you know, sort of grinding out positions

10:46

from his cataract, for

10:48

example.

10:51

But, you know, I can think of him in

10:53

the past winning absolutely

10:56

glorious tactical battles

10:59

and having such a sharp instinct

11:02

for attack. So, you

11:05

know, I think I first saw him

11:07

in Beal in 2013, where in fact both

11:09

Nepo and Ding

11:12

were playing that year, and

11:15

I was commentating in

11:17

Beal. So,

11:20

you know, I got to know them a little bit.

11:23

And at that time, Ding played,

11:25

you know, the most extraordinary

11:29

sort of tactical melees on

11:31

the board. You know, he was playing the

11:33

King's Indian a lot. I mean, I know, you know,

11:35

things have changed a bit. And, you

11:37

know, clearly, he's become more technical. But

11:40

boy, does he have a sharp instinct for attack. And,

11:44

as you say, you know, his calculation is superb.

11:47

So it could be

11:49

very interesting.

11:50

And as you say, nepro

11:52

can be a

11:54

little bit impetuous sometimes, which

11:57

makes things interesting. you know, I'm looking at.

12:00

some of his games over the last couple of years,

12:03

admittedly only kind of rapid and blitz,

12:06

he likes to play the King's Gambit.

12:08

Right, he wrote a chess book course about it.

12:10

He did, yeah. But,

12:12

you know, he practices what he preaches. Now

12:15

we don't see him in classical games, but I think it gives

12:17

an idea of, as

12:20

you say, how swashbuckling he is and

12:22

how he sometimes is prepared to

12:26

actually risk a great deal and

12:28

does it very naturally.

12:30

So, you know, that could be really interesting.

12:33

Yeah, it will be. And it'll be interesting

12:35

to see what happens with the openings.

12:38

Ding, of course, never has, I mean, hardly

12:40

ever plays E4. Nepo,

12:43

very hard to predict with the white pieces. With

12:45

the black pieces, he's historically been a bit more

12:47

predictable, but again, he switched from sort

12:50

of his historical aggressive

12:52

repertoire to something strictly more classical.

12:55

Do you have any sense, any predictions

12:57

about which direction Napo would take

13:00

it in this upcoming match? Well,

13:03

let

13:05

me get my crystal ball out and have a look.

13:09

I

13:12

think in

13:15

this kind of situation, I think

13:17

he's going to go solid. I

13:22

mean, what I was going to say about, we haven't

13:24

talked about who we think the favorite is, but I

13:27

mean, I think Nepo is the favorite, basically.

13:29

And I think, and one

13:31

of the reasons for that is because I think he's

13:34

learned from his match against Magnus. You

13:36

know, I don't think anything can

13:38

prepare you for a world championship match. You

13:41

know, you think back to

13:43

Kasparov and Karpov's first match,

13:46

where, you know, Gary was blown

13:48

out of the water really. Okay.

13:50

He, you know, under normal circumstances,

13:53

you know, he was five nil down. He should

13:55

have lost that match, but okay. Well,

13:59

we know how to do it.

13:59

happened is a big history, but

14:02

he has,

14:05

you know, was both said afterwards,

14:07

you know, he had 48 lessons from

14:09

Karpov. And after that first

14:11

match, Kasparov learned so much

14:14

about what, you know, match play

14:16

is. And I

14:19

think

14:20

Nepo will have learned so much

14:22

from his match against Magnus because

14:25

you know Magnus of course

14:27

incredibly experienced in match play

14:30

now as well

14:32

um so

14:33

you know I think

14:36

you know Nepo was completely outplayed

14:39

but yeah he's he's learned a lot from that match

14:41

basically I'm sure he'll put into

14:43

practice so you know it's about

14:46

playing solidly and seizing your moment

14:48

basically.

14:50

Yeah, I mean, of course he was completely outplayed,

14:52

but only after he lost his first game, the

14:55

first five games. Yeah.

14:58

Go ahead. Sorry, sorry

15:00

to interrupt. No,

15:02

yeah. And then it was like, you know,

15:04

skittles. Yeah. But but

15:06

actually, I think that shows you that

15:10

there was a certain brittleness there, obviously.

15:13

But he would have learned from that too. You

15:16

know, okay, you have,

15:19

I mean, that game six was absolutely

15:22

extraordinary. But it was one

15:24

game. It was only one game.

15:28

Well, I was mentioning to you before recording,

15:31

Friend of the Pod, Yakobagard, often helps

15:33

out US Chess with World Championship coverage.

15:36

And he mentioned

15:38

on Twitter, he's less excited about this match

15:41

than some others. But

15:43

as Jacob talked about leading up to the last

15:46

World Championship match, Nepo did have a history

15:48

of getting out to fast starts or

15:51

solid starts in that case, and then

15:53

sort of slowing

15:55

down. Now, of course, so that happened

15:58

to

15:59

the extreme.

17:59

tournaments. So

18:03

I find Nepo has

18:05

been more consistent in

18:09

the in the few classical games

18:12

that they've played and again that

18:14

for me that's another reason why

18:18

he should be the favorite here. And another

18:20

thing about Ding is I look at their

18:23

physique. Now,

18:24

okay, Nepo is not, is

18:27

not in the in the Magnus mold. Nevertheless,

18:30

you feel that, you know, he can

18:33

go 14 rounds, whereas

18:36

with ding ding looks like a sticker celery.

18:39

You know, I

18:42

think it's going to be a real shock for ding, unless,

18:45

you know, he comes out and he, he's

18:48

basically

18:49

been bodybuilding for the

18:52

last few months,

18:54

then I think he's actually going to struggle.

18:58

Yeah, I feel like there are a lot

19:01

more questions surrounding Ding despite

19:03

the one the one question that I just raised

19:05

about Nepo. I mean, he has gained so much

19:07

experience. And I recently interviewed

19:09

Grandmaster Christian Carrillo. And as

19:11

we as we discussed, I mean, Nepo,

19:14

it's a reasonable assumption that he'll

19:17

have a solid team behind him. And

19:20

with Ding, we just don't know. He may, but

19:23

we don't know. I think that's another really good point,

19:25

actually. You know,

19:28

with the

19:31

Russian team, I mean, they have so much

19:33

accumulated experience over, well,

19:36

really over decades.

19:38

Whereas the Chinese, it's a,

19:41

yeah, as you say, it's

19:44

very much an unknown. and Chinese

19:46

players don't have experience of

19:49

these long matches. You know, I think

19:51

this is a very different kind of chess.

19:54

So it's going to be fascinating. You

19:56

know, Ding might come up with a very

19:59

different way of playing. You know, I

20:01

would love it if we had a match where,

20:05

for example, Ding had learned a stack of

20:07

new openings and kind of switched

20:10

between every few games.

20:13

You know, there are different ways of playing

20:15

matches. You know, if we go back

20:17

to, you know, Reykjavik 72,

20:20

where Bobby decided to

20:23

switch between different openings, you know, they

20:25

played Zecilian, the

20:27

Pits, the Allikins. You

20:30

know, all the English. Yeah. Yeah.

20:32

And obviously with white sprung the English. Yeah.

20:35

And that seems to have gone out of fashion, actually.

20:39

However, you know, I think that could be a very

20:41

interesting tactic because, you know, suddenly

20:43

all the seconds panic when a new opening comes

20:46

on the board. It was interesting, you know, I was

20:48

listening to your interview

20:50

with John Spillman when

20:51

he was talking about New York 95.

20:54

And he mentioned exactly that and that they they

20:57

push the open Spanish. Right. Just

21:02

one more time and they got it wrong. They

21:04

got it

21:05

badly wrong. Misjudged it.

21:08

Yeah. And I do. That's that's one of

21:10

the great interests. That is one of the

21:12

great legacies of these classical World

21:14

Championships. So of course, it's come

21:17

up on the pod. We don't know how many

21:19

more of these will have in this format. But

21:23

just thinking about

21:25

sort of the dynamics of the opening play

21:27

and how different how

21:29

each competitor would react to a setback. It

21:32

does get me excited. Now, Daniel,

21:34

I do want to address one big topic

21:36

that I feel shouldn't be ignored with this

21:38

match. Again, raised by

21:41

Grandmaster Agard in our brief exchange

21:43

yesterday, but obviously he's not the first.

21:47

Obviously, Nepo is Russian.

21:49

He's

21:51

been a little unclear about

21:54

where he stands on the Ukrainian,

21:56

or I should say the Russian invasion

21:59

of Ukraine. But

22:01

of course, historically, he's been quite close

22:04

to the Russian government. Do

22:07

you have an opinion on if he should even

22:09

be allowed to play? Obviously someone like Peter

22:11

Heinn Nielsen would say

22:13

he shouldn't.

22:16

Well, I mean, I think he's

22:18

going to be playing under the FIDE flag.

22:21

Right, but is that enough?

22:23

Yeah, absolutely. No, it's a good question.

22:28

I mean, there's no doubt if he wins,

22:31

then, you know, a

22:33

great deal will be made of it in Moscow. Right.

22:36

But I thought he signed wasn't he one of the signatures

22:39

of this letter last year, actually

22:41

denouncing

22:44

the war denouncing is maybe strong,

22:48

but criticizing the war. Yeah,

22:50

I believe he was.

22:52

So, you

22:55

know, as an individual in

22:59

a state like that, it must be

23:01

incredibly difficult for him.

23:02

There's

23:05

an argument to

23:07

boycott the match completely.

23:10

You know, Kazakhstan

23:13

and Russia have very, very close relations.

23:16

And well,

23:20

we know who's in charge of Fide.

23:22

Yeah. So, yeah,

23:24

of course it concerns me

23:26

because I'm sure that

23:29

the Russians will make everything of... if

23:34

Nepo is successful. So,

23:37

yeah, it's very worrying. Yeah.

23:39

I have to say. But

23:42

I think we

23:45

shouldn't brush it under the carpet but

23:49

I just think politics is a part

23:51

of sport generally,

23:52

everywhere. Let's look

23:55

at the last football

23:57

World Cup in Qatar Well, and

23:59

the wonderful

23:59

that in Russia. Dvorkovich

24:02

was basically the

24:04

chair of the organizing committee.

24:06

You can't separate

24:08

sport and politics

24:12

and that's really tricky. And

24:15

there's an argument for boycotting

24:17

completely. I

24:19

mean, I'm not sure

24:22

exactly where I stand on this, to be honest. It's

24:25

very hard. We

24:31

have to walk a bit as Fide president,

24:36

but we all live in this chess

24:38

world, which is

24:43

run by Fide. So

24:46

what do we do? I don't know.

24:48

Do I

24:50

start playing checkers? Seriously,

24:54

I mean, I think it's really tricky. Yeah,

24:56

there are good people within feed

24:58

a but unfortunately, you

25:01

know, I wish the

25:05

the present incumbents weren't running feed

25:07

a you know, it's obviously

25:10

decisions are compromised

25:13

to. Yeah, it's

25:15

not sure you know, I'm going to be covering the match on

25:17

my on my YouTube channel.

25:21

I don't know if I just close

25:24

one eye and pretend the match

25:26

isn't going on. I'm not

25:28

sure. I've

25:33

struggled with the same thing in the build up for

25:35

the podcast. Historically, I'm

25:37

doing bonus podcasts, talking to people

25:40

at the venue. I've

25:43

sort of reluctantly decided to do the

25:46

same thing because as

25:48

you say at the end of the day it's

25:50

two people playing chess and and that's what we

25:53

love, but I'm very sympathetic

25:55

to people who decide

25:57

to ignore it entirely. And,

26:01

and yeah, but as we say, Napo also he's

26:03

he's he's in a difficult situation.

26:06

And it's a tough philosophical

26:08

question, whether a Russian

26:10

player who

26:12

we have reason to believe maybe opposed

26:15

to the war, whether

26:17

they should be

26:19

outlawed from international chess, whether they're

26:22

representing Russia or not. not. I

26:24

think reasonable people can have opinions

26:27

on both sides.

26:30

Probably

26:30

not the hot take people are looking for.

26:32

No, probably not. Yeah,

26:36

I'm fenced sitting as well. But you know,

26:38

I sense that there are so many people

26:43

doing exactly the same. And,

26:46

you know, having their cake and eating it as well.

26:51

It's really tough. I don't know.

26:54

We haven't even spoken about Chinese politics

26:56

yet. Right, that's true. By the way.

26:59

Yeah. I

27:02

don't even want to talk about my government either. Right,

27:05

yeah. I mean, yeah, no government

27:07

is perfect, so that's for sure. Listen,

27:11

I'm not sure. I'm going to be following the

27:13

match. match. But

27:16

I

27:17

think we have to have understanding for

27:19

individuals who are put

27:22

in an almost impossible situation,

27:25

because whatever they do, I think

27:28

they could be compromised.

27:31

Yeah, one way or the

27:33

other. Yeah, exactly.

27:36

Okay, well, let's bring it back to the chest.

27:38

We have a question from Alex

27:41

Marler, Patreon transporter the pod

27:43

thanks for supporting the pod Alex

27:45

and he asks he says what are your thoughts

27:47

on eliminating opening preparation from world

27:50

championship match by doing random selection

27:52

of opening right when the players sit down to

27:54

play there are many ways to randomly

27:57

make the selection without choosing a position

27:59

that is uneven.

27:59

equal. So this

28:02

is something that's been discussed, of course,

28:04

in correspondence quite

28:07

frequently, but it's a big leap

28:09

in classical. What do you think, Tano? Yeah,

28:12

I find that one a bit too artificial, actually.

28:16

Because

28:19

I think for me, the opening

28:21

choice in these matches is actually really

28:24

interesting.

28:25

And how players

28:27

use openings?

28:32

You know, I mentioned,

28:34

you know, this idea of

28:36

somebody

28:37

preparing extremely well and switching between

28:40

openings. You know, this is, I

28:42

think this is a very interesting tactic. And frankly,

28:44

I'm surprised it hasn't been used more

28:47

in recent matches. I know it's risky, but

28:50

actually, you

28:51

know, I think

28:52

it could be very interesting to spring

28:54

that one. So I don't like

28:56

that idea. As far as other

28:59

ideas for sort of

29:02

introducing more jeopardy, I

29:05

mean,

29:08

maybe slightly faster time controls.

29:10

Yeah.

29:11

I mean, at least we've got away

29:13

from the increment. At least I assume we

29:16

have. I haven't checked

29:18

the time control actually. That's...

29:20

I have the time control here. I guess

29:22

it's 40 and 2 and 20 and 1.

29:27

Yep.

29:28

Good.

29:29

Doing the way... Increment beginning at move 61.

29:31

Yeah, that seems reasonable. Yeah.

29:35

And I think that makes a big difference actually.

29:38

Yeah, that was

29:40

a big... I really enjoyed that aspect

29:43

of the Nepo-Carlson match, obviously harking

29:45

back to game six. I mean, the

29:47

idea of them just having, you know,

29:50

minutes to make, you know, more than 10 moves

29:52

was really heightened the tension.

29:55

Well, that's proper old chess. Exactly.

29:58

Yeah. To me that

29:59

That seems just

30:01

like normal. That's

30:03

what I grew up on. That's what I, when

30:05

I was a professional player, that was just absolutely

30:08

standard. I didn't play with an increment. So

30:11

those scenes where you, yeah,

30:13

as you say, you have someone

30:16

squeezing the maximum from a position

30:19

and thinking, can I take that piece? Can

30:22

I get away with it? And then having to make 10 moves

30:24

in a minute.

30:25

That's normal. The great

30:28

thing is nowadays, you know, we have digital

30:30

clocks, so you can see exactly how

30:32

many seconds you have, so people can really

30:34

go down to the wire.

30:36

So I mean, maybe, I don't

30:37

know, I

30:41

know everyone wants to change it. Every

30:44

world championship match we have this cry

30:46

on, this is really boring. You

30:49

can just imagine

30:51

spectators

30:53

who've sort of grown up watching bullet

30:56

brawls.

30:58

You know,

31:00

looking at one game for hours,

31:02

just completely perplexed.

31:05

This is a complete clash of cultures.

31:08

I would like to stick with

31:10

classical chess as we are, and particularly

31:13

for the World Championship match.

31:15

But I realize, you know,

31:17

I'm basically an analogue dinosaur

31:20

in a digital age. So let's

31:23

see. I still feel that

31:25

there is real scope to

31:27

have an incredibly exciting match. I

31:30

enjoyed the last world

31:32

championship match. I thought that was really intriguing.

31:34

The fact that Nepo collapsed at

31:36

a certain point, well, it was incredibly tense.

31:39

And I thought

31:42

it was a good match. There you go. Very

31:45

quickly. Strangely.

31:49

Yeah. I'm, I'm, I agree

31:51

with what Fabiano has said recently. I

31:53

mean, it

31:54

really comes down to the players. If

31:57

they do it, I'll watch. I get

31:59

invested in.

31:59

history. There

32:02

are aspects of it I love,

32:04

but rules

32:06

do change in sports over time. So,

32:09

as you say, speeding things

32:11

up, continuing to speed things

32:13

up at the margin to me is

32:16

it's relatively

32:19

pain-free, although LaVonna Ronien

32:22

was recently on the C-Squared podcast,

32:24

and he just made the point

32:26

that he was saying, Fabiano, I know you don't

32:28

agree with me, but I still love

32:30

classical chess and he said he has this romantic

32:33

idea when you sit down to play a game of

32:35

classical chess that you can play a perfect

32:37

game and that

32:39

it's harder to do that obviously in

32:43

the faster the time control. Yeah, I

32:45

mean just thinking just in the

32:47

big picture but

32:50

you know what will happen because obviously you know we're

32:53

saying look Magnus he's the number

32:55

one in the world. No dispute.

32:58

So what will happen? So we'll get either

33:00

Ding or Nepo, we'll be crowned world

33:03

champion.

33:04

And then we will have this

33:06

kind of interregnum

33:08

where

33:10

we wait for

33:13

Magnus to return and

33:15

challenge or you know maybe there'll be another

33:18

one or two world championship matches where

33:20

again we have we crown a world

33:23

champion who isn't the best in the world but

33:26

at some point

33:27

either Magnus will decide okay

33:29

I really don't want to

33:33

play another world championship match again or

33:35

he'll return and

33:37

you know and then things will resolve

33:39

again you know we've kind of been through this before

33:42

in in you know the late 90s

33:45

and early 2000s where you know

33:47

I would describe that as an and Interregnum as well.

33:49

We had the FIDE World Championships.

33:52

We had Kasparov

33:56

playing obviously in 95 in 95 and then.

34:00

the

34:00

match in 2000.

34:02

But, you know, for five years, it wasn't

34:04

clear whether there was going to be a world championship

34:07

with Kasparov. And so

34:09

we had these Fide world champions

34:12

who were obviously very strong.

34:15

But,

34:16

well, there were Avignon popes, basically.

34:19

If that means something,

34:21

you know, it was an interregnum.

34:26

a regnum. We were waiting

34:28

for the big one. And I think

34:30

that's probably what's going to happen again.

34:33

At some point Magnus will decide, okay,

34:35

I want to have another crack at it.

34:37

Yeah, I mean, or

34:41

he's already said he'd

34:43

retire from classical chess by the

34:45

age of 40. So

34:48

there's a finite amount of time

34:50

where he will likely,

34:53

first of all, he might not even be playing, But also

34:55

like, you know, right now, no one

34:57

is near catching him, but sooner or later, one of these

34:59

young bucks is gonna make

35:01

a leap. And so it could be that

35:03

he's not the number one at some point and,

35:06

and it resolves of its own accord. Of

35:09

course, to me, the the dream storyline is

35:11

like some young ascender and

35:14

Magnus play, but we're multiple

35:16

steps away from that. I don't think he's gonna,

35:19

I don't think he's gonna come back out to play the

35:21

winner of this match.

35:23

Personally, No, probably not, but

35:28

I just wonder how far off we are

35:30

from,

35:31

you know, one of the kids coming through and challenging.

35:34

I'm not sure where that far off. Anyone

35:38

in particular you would...

35:40

Well, I don't know, you know, depends

35:42

what day of the week it is and whether it's Prag or

35:46

Eric Geisey or... and that's really exciting.

35:49

So I think it could be five

35:51

years, could be five years, and

35:53

then we'll be on the cusp

35:56

of, you

35:59

know, Magnus.

35:59

deciding, okay, this is my last shot

36:02

because he'll

36:04

be getting to the cutoff when it where he's 40.

36:08

And one of the kids will be getting that

36:10

good. So yeah, I think I think

36:12

we're

36:13

going to have this time time of

36:15

an interregnum basically.

36:18

It'll be interesting. I'm, you know, I'm not so sure.

36:20

I'm, I'm worried just about the continued

36:22

freezing out if Magnus doesn't come back.

36:26

But we'll see. It'll be I

36:28

mean, it'll be interesting see how it plays out either

36:30

way. Certainly, if you think about how much chess has

36:32

changed in the five years proceeding today,

36:35

in 2023, there's a world of possibilities five years from

36:37

now. Definitely.

36:43

Yeah, it's really, really hard to predict

36:46

what's going on. I'll tell you, yeah,

36:48

I

36:48

just, I've got to tell

36:50

you about being an analog dinosaur.

36:53

I'm a football fan, and

36:55

I go to

36:58

my local club here

37:01

regularly and there

37:03

are some teenage

37:05

kids in the same row, you know, we always

37:08

sit in the same places and

37:11

you know one of them's on his phone at half time

37:13

and he's playing on chess.com

37:16

and

37:19

one of the guys next to me kind

37:21

of gives him a nudge and says, you

37:24

know that guy there he's

37:26

a chess grandmaster you

37:29

know that that's how i'm known i'm

37:33

the chess grandmaster that turns up to football

37:35

matches and this

37:37

like 15 year old kind

37:40

of looks up from his phone and

37:42

goes what's a grandmaster

37:47

so that's how far we've come you know

37:49

Anyway, he's playing against

37:51

some bot on chess.com and

37:56

this is just a different

37:58

world.

37:59

that we now live in totally

38:02

different. And that's

38:04

how I know I'm a dinosaur. Yeah,

38:07

well, speaking of you being dinosaur, one of the reasons

38:10

I was glad to have you on the pod is

38:12

what you mentioned living through the 1990s,

38:14

the disputed world championship period.

38:17

Of course, as you mentioned, this one,

38:19

there might be, you know, some

38:22

people might feel like an era of illegitimacy,

38:25

or just the fact that we know it's not the best

38:27

player who will be the champion. There's no dispute

38:30

though about like rivaling

38:32

factions of world championships. But

38:34

does your feeling of this

38:37

match, how does it compare to those days

38:39

when Kasparov had his separate faction

38:41

as you say playing Anand

38:44

in 95 and then Kramnik in 2000, not to mention the confusion

38:47

proceeding 1995. How does

38:50

that period compare to you, Daniel?

38:54

Well, at least with Kasparov, we basically

38:57

knew he was the strongest player in the world

39:01

until it got to 2000 when

39:04

players like Anand,

39:07

I mean obviously Kramnik beat him in 2000, but

39:10

players like Anand were already saying, well,

39:15

this was privately. And

39:18

was saying,

39:20

you know, we've got his number now.

39:21

Oh, interesting. We're as basically

39:24

we're as good as him. You

39:26

know, this this was going on behind the scenes.

39:28

Did he tell you that?

39:31

Um,

39:34

oh, dear. You're

39:36

just that's just kind of my that's kind

39:39

of my memory. Okay.

39:41

I might have got that wrong. But

39:43

I remember in the late 90s, being that

39:47

there was a rapid

39:49

play event in Germany which

39:51

Vichy won

39:52

and Kasparov didn't

39:55

win and

39:55

he was very upset

39:57

but you know, Vichy...

39:59

I seem to remember Vichy

40:01

saying then, oh yeah,

40:03

well, you know,

40:05

I think we've got his number. I mean, obviously that

40:07

was rapid play, but

40:09

it was clear that they,

40:11

you know, that generation of

40:13

Anand and Kramnik

40:16

weren't in awe of Kasparov

40:19

anymore,

40:20

which they had been before.

40:23

So listen, I can't give you a direct quote,

40:25

but I do remember, and I think it was in 1998 or 99

40:30

in

40:31

Germany,

40:34

in Frankfurt.

40:38

So, you know,

40:39

that was different then, but yeah, I mean,

40:43

but Kasparov was, you know, it's still the man

40:45

to beat. So this

40:47

is gonna be a little bit different, but there

40:49

are other sports where, you

40:51

know, there are new world champions every however

40:54

many years

40:56

or sometimes even annually where,

40:58

okay, he's the world champion this year, okay,

41:00

then we move on. It somehow isn't the big

41:02

deal. I think the problem is with the

41:04

chess world that world champions have always

41:07

been like Roman emperors. They

41:09

seem to be all powerful and all

41:12

knowing, but actually, maybe that's

41:14

just false. I mean, I think they

41:16

are with Magnus. He's

41:20

clearly number one, but there

41:22

are gonna be other times where you

41:25

know, a world champion is just primus

41:28

interparis, basically.

41:30

You know, I think

41:33

it maybe it's unusual that there's one

41:35

chess player that is so much

41:38

stronger than the rest. I

41:41

think it's very unusual, actually. Yeah,

41:44

yeah, I agree. And

41:46

I'm sure that contributed to Magnus's stepping

41:49

down. Yeah, probably. I

41:51

know this

41:53

is kind of old ground, but I have a

41:55

lot of sympathy with

41:59

Magnus, Magnus's position because

42:03

World Championship match should not be every two years.

42:06

It just,

42:07

it would eat into your soul, preparing

42:11

for these matches. You know,

42:13

your every waking thought, practically,

42:15

you know, be hanging over your head. Two

42:17

years is too often.

42:20

You know, if you want to make it really special, well,

42:22

it used to be every three years. I've been

42:24

every three years. And then

42:26

it's not so much of a,

42:28

you know, isn't eating to

42:30

your life basically quite as much.

42:33

Yeah. I have a lot of sympathy with

42:36

Magnus in that respect. I do as

42:38

well. And Daniel, on

42:40

the topic of sympathy with Magnus, I know that

42:43

the Hans Niemann Magnus story is kind of old

42:46

news, but I think you and I kind

42:48

of shared some viewpoints. You

42:50

had done a few YouTube videos about it. As

42:53

you look back on the whole scandal, which of course

42:56

is just simmering now. I don't feel like it's gone,

42:58

but Hans Nieman's been pretty quiet.

43:01

I mean, there's addendums in the lawsuit

43:03

here and there. He is playing

43:05

in a charge on masters coming up. I'm excited

43:07

to actually set aside all the

43:09

nonsense and see what he does over

43:12

the board. But do

43:14

you have, like, how do you reflect on that,

43:16

all the crazy stuff that's happened in

43:18

the past year regarding that scandal?

43:21

Yeah, it's funny, it's kind of,

43:24

does feel like really old news, but it,

43:28

it's once again, it's

43:30

the chess world that events

43:33

in the chess world

43:35

are actually almost taking the lead of

43:37

what's happening in society. You

43:39

know, we see that so often, whether it's, you

43:42

know, politics, economics,

43:45

you know, the rise of China

43:47

and India in world chess, and

43:50

that's economically obviously turning

43:53

into absolute superpowers.

43:58

But

43:58

with this story... Okay,

44:01

I've got to tell you about this. This is crazy. So

44:06

every couple of months we have a window cleaner that comes

44:08

around to the house.

44:09

Nice guy. You know, we always

44:12

share a cup of tea and have a chat. And,

44:14

you know, again, he knows me as the chess player.

44:17

Right. And so,

44:19

you know, the last time he came around,

44:21

he goes, Ah,

44:24

what's happening with all this, this

44:27

cheating, you know, what, give me the inside story. inside

44:29

story, what's going on here? How

44:31

is it possible to cheat?" And of course he'd heard all

44:35

these

44:36

outlandish stories.

44:41

So I said, well, you really need an accomplice

44:44

and a little tiny earpiece and they can get the moves online,

44:46

in live, and

44:48

then

44:49

try and transmit

44:51

something

44:56

back to the player who's

44:59

just listening and you know they can follow

45:01

moves of computer you know that's that's sort of how you

45:03

did it and he went ah

45:06

I got it

45:07

yeah yeah I did the same in the university

45:09

exam

45:10

okay

45:13

so first of all I'm going hang on this

45:15

is the window clean this is the guy that cleans the cleans

45:17

the windows on the house so first one

45:20

going hang on he's got a

45:21

he's got a degree. So why

45:24

is he cleaning windows? These kind of things flash

45:26

through my mind. And I'm thinking,

45:31

hang on, he's

45:34

kind of openly admitting to cheating. So I

45:36

said, okay, tell me about this

45:38

one. This

45:41

is getting a bit strange. He said,

45:43

yeah, you know, there was a particular paper

45:47

that I failed like three times.

45:49

I mean I don't exactly know what

45:51

he was studying. He said yeah this was something something to do

45:54

with aviation and aviation

45:56

physics. And I just couldn't get it. Oh,

45:59

it's an absolute.

45:59

pain. So he said, what I did was

46:02

I got my brother. And

46:03

he

46:05

said, I did exactly this. He said, I

46:08

had an earpiece. My

46:10

brother was outside in the car park with

46:14

a textbook. And

46:19

so I said, you know, how did you communicate exam?

46:21

He said, well, it's OK. I had two phones. I

46:23

handed one phone into the examiner, so I

46:25

kept my other phone. And

46:29

he would read out the list of

46:31

there were like 10 topics.

46:34

And if he got to he'd sort of read topic

46:36

number 123. When

46:38

it got to topic number three, I just

46:41

like he said I would cough

46:43

into my microphone. So then

46:45

he'd just start reading about topic number

46:47

three and the, you know, the various theories

46:51

and equations. and it was quite mathematical.

46:53

And he said, basically it worked like

46:55

a dream.

46:57

And he passed the paper.

46:59

Wow. So this

47:01

is really scary.

47:03

So basically, you

47:05

know, every university

47:07

should be thinking about this. And,

47:10

you know, and I mean, thinking about chat GPT

47:13

as well, you know, writing papers,

47:16

well,

47:17

but even for live exams,

47:19

you know, You know, this is,

47:22

this guy

47:23

could do it incredibly easily. And,

47:26

you

47:27

know, universities, they need to

47:29

switch on very quickly.

47:33

Yeah. Yeah. So that's

47:35

just kind of one reflection of

47:38

the whole

47:40

Carlson-Neman thing.

47:43

I still, you know, go back to

47:46

basics, which is that no

47:48

clear evidence was produced by Magnus.

47:53

There was a lot of mud thrown around and

47:55

I think it's really unfortunate,

47:58

basically. Yeah.

48:00

Yeah, I feel the same way. And it seems like

48:02

we'll never know more than that. Probably

48:06

not. I mean,

48:08

I think, I mean, who knows what's

48:10

going on. What's the latest, you

48:14

probably know better than me about the

48:16

chances of success of this lawsuit.

48:19

Yeah, I don't feel like there've been that many updates.

48:21

I think you mentioned you, you listened to my

48:24

interview with David Franklin. I still sort of

48:26

think back of that as sort my

48:29

tent pole, his

48:31

being a constitutional law professor, and

48:34

he and the other legal experts I heard

48:37

didn't think highly of Hans's

48:39

chances of winning the lawsuit. So that's sort

48:41

of all I have to go on. I've seen

48:44

mild derision from the little amendments

48:46

that Hans has filed

48:50

in recent days. So So I'm

48:52

more curious,

48:54

say the suit ultimately gets dismissed.

48:57

Hans continues to perform reasonably well.

49:00

Like, will he ever be able to play chess.com

49:02

events? You know, will he ever

49:05

get invites to tournaments? I

49:07

think those are the biggest unresolved

49:09

questions to me, although I could,

49:12

you know, maybe he'll surprise and

49:15

make some money in the lawsuit, although that still

49:17

wouldn't really change those questions, I guess. No,

49:19

not really. I mean, you know, he's

49:22

obviously,

49:24

Nieman, Hans Nieman obviously

49:26

loves chess and wants to be part of that

49:28

world. Whether

49:30

he's got the temperament to succeed is

49:33

actually another matter. Yeah.

49:35

I don't know.

49:36

Yeah, I don't either. But again,

49:38

it'll be interesting. I mean, he hasn't

49:40

played for a while and I don't know how much of that

49:43

is due to lack of opportunity,

49:46

but I hope to see him

49:48

playing more if nothing else. All

49:51

right, well, Daniel, we gotta discuss your chessable course.

49:54

I was telling you, I got a sneak

49:56

peek at it And I was excited

49:58

as we discussed last time.

49:59

This is sort of in tandem with your Kalashnikov

50:02

course. You presented

50:06

some anti-Sassilian weapons, and I was excited

50:08

to see what you have against the Rosalimo, but

50:10

Daniel, I know you don't play as actively,

50:13

so what was it like for you, first of all,

50:15

to sort of dust off all these

50:17

lines that you used to play? What did you discover in

50:20

digging around?

50:22

Well, actually, I really enjoyed that, going

50:25

back and

50:27

researching these lines that

50:30

I've been playing for decades.

50:33

You

50:33

know, I've played the Sicilian,

50:35

let's say my entire serious

50:38

chess career from when I was about 12

50:40

years old.

50:44

I've never played E4, E5 with

50:46

black, never. Wow. I

50:49

mean, I played other stuff,

50:51

but basically when I was about 12 years old,

50:53

I was playing, well,

50:54

in those days, it was called the Leuventhal,

50:57

Kalashnikov basically.

51:01

And from there I went to the Sveshnikov

51:03

and then from the Sveshnikov to the Naidov

51:06

and I've played the classical and the Khan

51:08

and the dragon and a few other things, but

51:10

basically

51:11

Kalashnikov, Sveshnikov, Naidov,

51:14

those are my

51:15

the big three.

51:20

So, you know, these anti-sucilian

51:23

lines, I've

51:26

always played with black.

51:29

And I know a lot of people are kind of disappointed

51:32

when they get some anti-sucilian

51:34

on the board, the allopin or stuff. To

51:36

me, for me, it's like you've won the psychological

51:39

battle because

51:40

they're like, they're too scared

51:42

to actually go into your favorite open

51:44

Sicilian. You know, we've

51:47

got them on the back foot already.

51:50

And, I

51:52

mean, for example, the Rosalimo, I

51:54

mean, I've played this

51:56

with White a great deal as well. and

51:59

with black.

51:59

So that feels...

52:02

I'm

52:03

kind of swimming in that one

52:05

and really enjoy it. You know, enjoy

52:08

swimming in the Rosalino. The

52:10

Rosalino. I mean, what I found was that

52:12

checking up on a lot of this stuff,

52:17

really, you know, obviously using

52:19

serious computers these days,

52:22

that it's mainly just kind of refining things

52:24

actually. I mean, I'm glad to say that

52:26

my experience of these lines

52:30

was still valid and

52:34

the recipes that

52:36

I was using for

52:39

years, they're okay. I

52:42

mean, obviously they need tweaking and

52:44

you discover interesting stuff, but

52:46

actually they're fine. And,

52:49

you know, for example, against the Rosalimo three night

52:51

f6, which I always

52:54

played with black because I mean,

52:59

this whole line with g6, and

53:02

then you know, white casting and playing c3

53:04

and d4. I mean, that was one of one

53:06

of my main weapons as white. And

53:09

I

53:10

never felt comfortable playing with as

53:13

black actually,

53:14

which is why, you know,

53:16

I played three-night F6 which basically

53:18

cuts across White's plans.

53:21

And I like this a

53:23

lot, you know, that's

53:25

always worked very well for me, basically.

53:29

And completely sound, you

53:31

know, Black gets out pieces. It's good.

53:34

Yeah, I mentioned to you that I went straight

53:37

to the move trainer and started learning that one as well,

53:39

because I've had the same experience. I've

53:41

played G6, various permutations

53:44

against the main lines, but for

53:46

one thing, I feel like it's gotten

53:49

a bit concrete. I mean, the Rosalimo,

53:51

I used to feel at least at my level,

53:53

like when someone plays it, it

53:56

might be a signal that they're less theoretical but

55:59

night hops back anyway.

56:03

So I think they can be rather

56:05

good fun.

56:07

So I think it's just fashion. It

56:09

really is. It's nothing more.

56:12

Everyone follows everyone else. Yeah, I

56:14

believe it. I'll tell you, sorry,

56:17

I was just sorry to continue

56:20

on the thought of what did you discover

56:22

about

56:24

looking at these lines afresh. I'm

56:26

telling you the move that really

56:30

surprised me is against

56:33

the Grand Prix attack.

56:35

Now

56:37

the main way that one handles this

56:39

is pretty well known.

56:41

But there's a certain

56:44

moment where black can play

56:46

knight h6

56:48

and this is against bishop b5 and you you

56:50

go knight d4. So this is pretty well

56:52

known. The three bishop b5 line?

56:54

No, not the three bishop b5. No, just

56:56

the Grand Prix attack with f4

56:59

and knight f3. Ah, okay. With white plays

57:01

bishop b5 and black plays knight d4. Now,

57:03

theoretically, these lines were fine for black

57:05

anyway. But with knight h6,

57:08

this really puts

57:10

so much pressure on white. And this

57:13

I hadn't appreciated before, because, as

57:15

I said, this wasn't one of the sort of theoretically

57:18

dangerous lines for black,

57:20

you know, it's always been thought to be okay. There's

57:23

a difference between okay and thinking, hang

57:25

on, after night age six, do you know what?

57:29

White has got to be really careful

57:31

here.

57:32

White can get it wrong so easily

57:35

and you just get blown

57:36

off the board. Wow. It's

57:39

very interesting. And that this night age

57:41

six move crops up in,

57:44

you know, three of four of these key

57:46

variations actually, it's curious. It's

57:49

just about rapid development and very

57:51

often that knight spins into the game,

57:54

sometimes via g4 but sometimes

57:56

via f5 as well. It's really interesting

57:59

and that's you know that's a bit

58:01

of

58:02

my research thinking, okay,

58:05

what looks dangerous here and,

58:07

you know, confirming with, with

58:10

a computer as well.

58:12

And what about, uh,

58:15

I feel similarly, I didn't check it out as

58:17

much, but you, you offer a French

58:19

set up against the Alapans, the Sosouyan.

58:22

That's another one where I feel like theoretically

58:25

it's fine, but you don't see

58:27

it as much at least as far as I know. So

58:31

is that one that you've always played as well? Yeah,

58:33

yeah. So

58:36

basically against E4, C5, C3, the Alipin.

58:40

Yeah, E6 turned

58:42

into my main weapon.

58:44

And I had real success with it because

58:46

you often get these isolated

58:49

Queens pawn positions. And I love playing

58:51

with an isolated Queens pawn because

58:53

it gives you the chance to take the initiative.

58:56

You've got black and you can get the initiative.

58:59

Yes. And you do

59:01

so from a sound basis. That's why, you know,

59:04

I like playing those positions.

59:06

So,

59:10

but it's curious, when I look to the stats,

59:13

I think

59:14

two E6 is played like 10% of

59:16

the time

59:19

with d5 and nf6 being

59:21

the main moves.

59:23

And d5 and nf6 of course are completely

59:26

respectable. But boy,

59:29

there is a lot of theory to know, and

59:30

quite concrete

59:32

theory. And I

59:35

just don't feel it challenges

59:37

white enough. Whereas

59:39

with e6, I think white has

59:41

to...

59:46

How can I put it? I was going to say work hard

59:48

to get an advantage. that's I

59:53

think white can easily fall into a

59:55

position where

59:58

they're having to cope. with very

1:00:01

active play by black,

1:00:03

because white does the kind of standard thing of

1:00:05

blockading the pawn on d4

1:00:07

and then, oh yeah, everything's fine

1:00:10

of blockading the pawn on d4. Actually

1:00:13

those are very difficult positions for white to handle.

1:00:16

I

1:00:18

might have to check that one out too. I'm

1:00:21

not suffering as much against the Alepin when I

1:00:23

play here, two knight f6, but

1:00:26

I'm tempted nonetheless. I don't think it's

1:00:28

not the most dangerous. Nevertheless,

1:00:30

it's still a bit of a pain. Yeah. And

1:00:34

E6, in my experience,

1:00:37

it always seemed to throw my opponents. Yeah.

1:00:40

What? Yeah. They, they, they

1:00:43

got reasonable positions, but

1:00:46

they never played it really precisely.

1:00:49

Cause it was just seen as kind of, oh yeah, that's, that's

1:00:51

okay for white.

1:00:54

Yeah. I played the elephant as a kid. haven't

1:00:56

touched it in 25 years, but that

1:00:58

was my recollection of E6. You're almost

1:01:00

just like, the game starts on move three,

1:01:03

you know, and if you're

1:01:05

white, and that's your perspective, that's not

1:01:07

like a dream scenario.

1:01:09

Yeah, whereas actually to,

1:01:12

to try to get an advantage against

1:01:14

it,

1:01:15

then real precision

1:01:17

is needed. I mean, I still think it's absolutely fine

1:01:20

for black anyway, but

1:01:23

even to test black, you

1:01:25

have to play very precisely basically.

1:01:28

So yeah, I've actually, I've had a lot of fun going

1:01:31

through these lines. And,

1:01:36

you know, I've had really nice

1:01:38

feedback already that people

1:01:40

have been trying this stuff and,

1:01:43

you know, they say, yeah, you know, it works really

1:01:45

well. You know, I've

1:01:47

been

1:01:48

feeding a lot of these lines to my

1:01:51

students over the years as well. So,

1:01:54

you

1:01:55

know, it's like I'm getting kind of vicarious

1:01:57

pleasure out of seeing.

1:03:59

player, then, you know, actually, it

1:04:02

would be pretty natural for you.

1:04:05

Yeah. But yes, fashion coke,

1:04:07

that's, that's a whole wonderful

1:04:09

universe in itself. It is. Yeah,

1:04:11

it's a lot of a lot of maintenance, a lot of upkeep,

1:04:13

but that's true. There is a little

1:04:15

maintenance, actually. Yeah, fun.

1:04:18

Yeah, exactly. Well, Daniel,

1:04:20

this has been great. Before, before we let you

1:04:22

go, I just I always want to hear

1:04:25

a couple stories from you. So number

1:04:27

one, in thinking bringing it back to the World Championship.

1:04:30

I'm curious, what was

1:04:33

your first World Championship that you attended?

1:04:36

Oh, attended. Oh

1:04:39

boy.

1:04:44

1985 in Moscow.

1:04:46

Wow.

1:04:47

What are your memories of it?

1:04:50

Fantastic memories actually. So

1:04:52

it was obviously Karpov and Kasparov

1:04:55

their second match.

1:04:57

So after the aborted match

1:04:59

in 84-85, so this was September

1:05:01

85 and

1:05:03

I played in a tournament

1:05:06

in Latvia, in Soviet

1:05:08

Latvia at that time, in Jormala

1:05:11

where Tal won. So

1:05:14

that was an incredible experience. But

1:05:17

you always had to fly to Moscow.

1:05:20

So you flew from London to Moscow

1:05:22

and

1:05:23

then from Moscow to Latvia and

1:05:25

then back from Latvia to Moscow

1:05:28

and everything had to go through Moscow, it's

1:05:30

all centralized.

1:05:32

So I flew back from Latvia to Moscow

1:05:35

and the world championship match was taking place,

1:05:37

it was September 85

1:05:40

and I was able to attend

1:05:42

you know one of the games. So it's in the Tchaikovsky

1:05:45

concert hall in Moscow,

1:05:47

wonderful auditorium with these

1:05:50

very steep banking of

1:05:52

seats.

1:05:54

And at the back of the stage there's

1:05:57

one table, this enormous stage, and they're

1:05:59

playing at the back. I mean,

1:06:01

it was dramatic setting with those

1:06:03

enormous boards where

1:06:06

they had these kids who were

1:06:09

moving the pieces with these enormous hooks. Yeah,

1:06:11

I remember those. Yeah, like

1:06:14

you open a window, these big windows in a

1:06:16

school.

1:06:20

So I mean, that was an incredible atmosphere because

1:06:22

when an interesting move was played, there was this

1:06:24

real buzz from the crowd.

1:06:27

That was just fantastic. So

1:06:31

I loved that as my first taste

1:06:33

of a World Championship match. That was very exciting.

1:06:36

And then for the next match, the

1:06:39

first half was held in London in 1986.

1:06:43

So that was great fun. And I found myself, you know,

1:06:45

commentating. So

1:06:48

you felt like you were really in the thick of it. So

1:06:52

yeah, those are my first two memories of

1:06:54

basically World Championship matches. Amazing.

1:06:56

world and in what capacity

1:06:59

were you there in 85? Were you as a fan? No,

1:07:02

no, no. I mean, I played in the tournament

1:07:04

in Latvia. I was just traveling

1:07:07

through basically. I had a few

1:07:09

days before my

1:07:12

flight back

1:07:13

to London, I think I managed

1:07:16

to rearrange my my ticket so that I could

1:07:18

visit the match. And, you

1:07:21

know, I knew people in Moscow. It

1:07:24

was Jonathan Tisdall

1:07:27

was the Reuters correspondent.

1:07:30

And David Goodman was

1:07:32

correspondent for, I think,

1:07:35

for PA.

1:07:38

No, not PA, AP. Or

1:07:42

the other way around, I can't remember. Anyway, they were both in

1:07:44

Moscow, So I was able to visit then

1:07:47

and you know, there were kind of my

1:07:49

guides in this very

1:07:52

strange world, which

1:07:54

was pretty amazing. And

1:07:57

yeah, it's incredible to think,

1:07:59

you know.

1:07:59

Of course, I'm still in touch. I'm

1:08:02

not actually, David's in America

1:08:04

actually. I haven't seen him for ages, but

1:08:07

John Tistle,

1:08:09

I'm still in touch with, which is great. Yeah,

1:08:13

and of course he wrote about

1:08:15

those matches. And

1:08:19

any interactions with Mikhail Talin, the tournament

1:08:21

in Latvia? Well, yeah,

1:08:23

we played, so yeah, no,

1:08:25

absolutely. Um,

1:08:29

just,

1:08:30

just had a fantastic game. That's the only

1:08:32

time I played him. Um,

1:08:36

yeah, I'm afraid I came

1:08:38

off worst. It happened. Um,

1:08:42

but it was a really close game.

1:08:43

You know, I played E4. He

1:08:46

played the Sicilian. We played an open Sicilian

1:08:49

and, uh, I was doing

1:08:51

quite well actually,

1:08:53

but good old time trouble. And, you

1:08:56

know, on the 40 he...

1:08:59

Of course I got outplayed in a sense

1:09:01

because...

1:09:03

He just had that way of finding

1:09:05

ways to keep tension

1:09:08

in the game.

1:09:09

So, although from...

1:09:13

Objectively I was better, it was

1:09:15

never clear.

1:09:17

It was always...

1:09:19

He managed to

1:09:20

set problems all the time.

1:09:24

until my flag was hanging, pushed

1:09:27

me into time pressure. And on that

1:09:29

last move of the time control, I made a huge

1:09:31

blunder and we

1:09:33

adjourned. And basically

1:09:36

I had a lost end game. But yeah, so basically

1:09:39

he was just brilliant at

1:09:42

setting problems.

1:09:44

The deep dark forest, yeah. Exactly.

1:09:47

And he basically, I

1:09:49

couldn't solve the problems in time.

1:09:52

And

1:09:53

yeah,

1:09:54

essentially I got outplayed.

1:09:56

But you know, he was really nice afterwards.

1:09:59

just a very nice

1:09:59

guy and

1:10:02

you know had a quick discussion of the game and

1:10:05

but he was he was very relaxed actually

1:10:07

he was

1:10:08

there with his wife

1:10:10

and daughter and

1:10:15

you know Yurmala is near

1:10:18

Rigo it's on the coast there's

1:10:20

there's a nice beach there it's very relaxed

1:10:23

and you know he was

1:10:25

he looked very relaxed actually

1:10:27

you know he was enjoying himself.

1:10:31

Excellent, excellent perspective. All

1:10:34

right, well, Daniel, that's fun

1:10:36

to hear these stories. Anything to add

1:10:38

before we say our goodbyes? One

1:10:41

more thing to mention. I've just got a book coming out,

1:10:43

this one. Oh, excellent. Okay,

1:10:45

How to Win at Chess. That's called for the audio

1:10:48

listeners.

1:10:49

For what audience is it? So

1:10:52

this is really for

1:10:54

beginners.

1:10:56

You know, it's beautifully illustrated, beautifully

1:10:58

designed.

1:10:59

You know, it's full

1:11:02

color. I don't know if you can see that. There's

1:11:07

historical stuff in there, really nice.

1:11:12

I was able to put a bit

1:11:14

of stuff about the history of the game and the culture

1:11:17

of the game. I mean,

1:11:18

beautifully designed.

1:11:20

Yeah,

1:11:24

stuff on the world championship, that

1:11:26

kind of stuff. So that's

1:11:28

just come out, that's published by Pan Macmillan

1:11:31

and he's out

1:11:34

all over the world basically. So congratulations.

1:11:38

So it's basically for kids

1:11:41

and yeah, those

1:11:44

who are just starting up. Yeah, I mean,

1:11:46

in theory, it should be a good time to publish a

1:11:48

book like that. So in theory,

1:11:50

but there you go. It's the it's the analog world

1:11:52

rather than digital world. So funny

1:11:55

thing is

1:11:56

it's the second edition of the book.

1:12:00

the first edition came out in 2000.

1:12:04

So this is only 23 years later. Wow.

1:12:07

The publisher thought, hey, that chess thing.

1:12:10

Yeah, that's a way. In fact,

1:12:12

a lot of people are talking about chess. So they wanted a

1:12:14

second edition. The first edition

1:12:17

went to 27 languages. Oh,

1:12:19

wow. Okay.

1:12:21

Now, I'm not sure this one

1:12:23

is going to do so well, but I'm intrigued

1:12:26

because, you know, it's like

1:12:28

a little it.

1:12:29

I'm just

1:12:30

intrigued to know what's happening in the

1:12:32

traditional publishing world.

1:12:35

Yeah, it'll be interesting. I

1:12:38

mean, there's there's

1:12:41

still plenty of I mean, first of all, obviously,

1:12:44

my listeners are many of them.

1:12:46

There's still many book fans. But

1:12:49

also, there's still plenty of non chess

1:12:51

people who, when when they

1:12:53

want to learn about something, they pick up a book so

1:12:56

Yeah, but it's the kind of thing, you know, if you've

1:12:59

got, I don't know,

1:13:01

you got a niece or a nephew, who's, yeah,

1:13:03

you know, like 10 years old, and

1:13:05

is just getting into the game.

1:13:07

It's the perfect present, basically.

1:13:10

Excellent. Well, you'll have to, Daniel, hopefully

1:13:12

we can, we can speak again someday,

1:13:14

get some more stories and you can

1:13:16

report back on on how the sales

1:13:18

are doing. Yeah, well, this

1:13:21

dinosaur will come back and report

1:13:23

again, basically. And

1:13:26

Daniel, we haven't talked chess improvement

1:13:28

yet in this interview, and I know you'd mentioned

1:13:30

that you have a few new insights

1:13:32

that have occurred to you. So I'm excited to hear

1:13:34

those being that I'm of course writing about this

1:13:36

and always interested in it as well.

1:13:39

Well I don't know, recently I've just been

1:13:42

comparing

1:13:44

chess improvements and chess coaching with

1:13:48

learning a musical instrument. As you can see,

1:13:51

I know people are listening to this, but in the background if

1:13:53

you're looking in the video you can see I've got

1:13:55

a couple of guitars or guitar and a bass. So

1:13:58

you know I...

1:13:59

I don't know if you know, but you know, I've played music.

1:14:02

We discussed your illustrious rock career

1:14:04

in a prior interview. So yeah,

1:14:06

okay. So I've, you

1:14:08

know, there's music in the family. And you

1:14:10

know, I've played music my whole life. And you

1:14:13

know, I'm really just

1:14:15

love it, just love it. And, you

1:14:19

know, there are so many things

1:14:22

that chess and music have in common.

1:14:25

I mean, I'm not just talking about learning, but the

1:14:27

whole structure of games and

1:14:30

structure of pieces of music and harmony

1:14:32

and all these kinds of things.

1:14:35

But it just struck me recently. A

1:14:40

couple of my students,

1:14:42

so they just play online.

1:14:44

And again, this is a new world. Again, I

1:14:47

feel like this dinosaur

1:14:49

where I have students

1:14:52

who just play online. And

1:14:54

this is just a completely different technique, basically.

1:14:59

And

1:15:00

they present me with the games

1:15:02

that they've played this week.

1:15:05

And they're all blitz games.

1:15:08

Because that's what you do online, you know, no one

1:15:10

plays 40 in two hours. This

1:15:14

is crazy. And

1:15:16

actually, I can't

1:15:18

get a sense of where they're at.

1:15:21

Because there'll be a porn

1:15:23

that's blundered, there'll be a piece that's blundered,

1:15:26

there'll be a mate that's overlooked. And

1:15:30

you know, I'm trying to analyze

1:15:32

this game, trying to sort

1:15:34

of find patterns, but those

1:15:36

patterns are completely disturbed

1:15:39

when there are these outright blunders

1:15:42

taking place and the game just kind

1:15:44

of careers on. And

1:15:46

it just made me think

1:15:48

back to my piano lessons when I was

1:15:51

like six years old well

1:15:54

you know I cannot imagine if

1:15:59

my piano teacher had presented

1:16:02

me with a piece of music

1:16:05

and said, okay, do your best, try

1:16:07

and practice that.

1:16:10

And then the next week,

1:16:12

I would play this piece of music and go,

1:16:17

99 miles an hour.

1:16:21

Well, okay, so the next week,

1:16:25

I said, okay, have another go. And I

1:16:27

played it again at 99 miles an hour.

1:16:29

Okay, and

1:16:31

you make all the same mistakes.

1:16:34

Right. So, you

1:16:37

know, the way we learn a piece of music,

1:16:40

so we have the first phrase, da

1:16:43

da da da, ba ba ba. Okay, let's

1:16:46

practice that one again, ba ba ba. So this is the first

1:16:48

few bars, and so on, you break it down.

1:16:51

Now how can you play a good game of

1:16:53

chess

1:16:54

if you're playing blitz the whole time?

1:16:58

It's impossible. So you

1:17:00

know my main thing that I say

1:17:02

to my students at the end of each

1:17:04

session is hey how

1:17:07

about we play a half hour game?

1:17:09

I'd really be interested to see

1:17:12

how you get on when you play you have

1:17:14

half an hour for all your moves.

1:17:17

Maybe even longer.

1:17:20

And then I can really see where you're at.

1:17:22

Yeah. It's incredible.

1:17:25

I find this is just

1:17:28

the standard thing that everyone plays

1:17:30

at 99 miles an hour.

1:17:34

Yeah, now I generally

1:17:36

agree with you, but I do feel like at a

1:17:38

certain level, Blitz can

1:17:40

help your game a lot, especially can help

1:17:43

your openings. Are you thinking

1:17:45

of like a certain level student or do you think everyone

1:17:48

like even say over 2000

1:17:50

should be playing?

1:17:53

No, I'm not saying

1:17:55

for all levels.

1:17:58

I agree with you.

1:17:59

you want to practice some openings, for

1:18:02

example, and just

1:18:04

to get a feel for your,

1:18:07

let's say your match fitness.

1:18:10

There's nothing wrong with blitz. I'm

1:18:12

not gonna go all Bot Vanikian on you.

1:18:15

You know,

1:18:17

wag my finger.

1:18:19

But

1:18:21

I think for at a certain level,

1:18:24

You

1:18:24

know, these are guys that rarely

1:18:26

play

1:18:28

over the board chess.

1:18:30

And one is even, you know, they haven't played

1:18:32

since they were at school or something like that.

1:18:36

And I think

1:18:38

it, for me, it's kind of essential, they

1:18:41

just

1:18:42

to make real progress. You've

1:18:44

got to start slow. Yeah.

1:18:47

it really is so important

1:18:49

and to get the fundamentals right. And

1:18:52

when I'm talking about the fundamentals,

1:18:55

I'm talking about getting your pieces out,

1:18:58

control the center and get castled.

1:19:02

This, again, this is, if

1:19:04

you're talking about one huge error

1:19:08

that I see so many people make,

1:19:11

even up to quite a high standard,

1:19:14

You know, I'm talking even up to kind

1:19:16

of 2000, I would say, it's

1:19:19

that players are grabbing material,

1:19:22

they forget the basics, they

1:19:24

forget to concentrate on getting your

1:19:26

king to safety as quickly as possible because

1:19:28

they get distracted by a pawn or some adventure

1:19:31

with a queen.

1:19:33

Or they move

1:19:35

a piece twice. There's

1:19:39

no kind of

1:19:40

egalitarianism in their army. no

1:19:43

democracy.

1:19:45

You know, they forget you've got to use all

1:19:47

your pieces. You know, these are absolute

1:19:49

fundamentals that players forget

1:19:53

all the time, up to quite a high

1:19:55

level. And

1:19:57

especially when they're playing blitz

1:19:59

at

1:19:59

99 miles an hour

1:20:02

and it is so similar to learning

1:20:04

a musical instrument.

1:20:05

That's

1:20:08

interesting, yeah. I've studied

1:20:10

music here and there but not to the extent that you have, but

1:20:13

I remember

1:20:14

going too fast when I was taking lessons.

1:20:19

Listen, I've had very few

1:20:21

lessons. That was

1:20:23

when I was really, you know, six

1:20:25

years old. And okay,

1:20:28

I had violin lessons for about four years.

1:20:31

But

1:20:33

yeah,

1:20:34

formal stuff. So

1:20:37

you learned on your own?

1:20:40

To some extent, you know, like I said,

1:20:42

there's music in the family. So there's

1:20:45

kind of music order, you know, quite

1:20:49

decent, decent musicians who could

1:20:51

give advice if not formal

1:20:54

lessons. Let's put it like that. Yeah.

1:20:56

And are you still doing your gigs?

1:20:58

Yeah, unfortunately, the pandemic

1:21:01

just kind of got into things. But yeah,

1:21:03

I'm playing gigs

1:21:06

now and again. Not so much sadly.

1:21:08

But just recently, I've

1:21:12

got this beautiful double bass. I love my

1:21:14

double bass. That's downstairs.

1:21:16

That's my favourite instrument.

1:21:18

And recently I started

1:21:20

practising with a little sort of

1:21:24

tango band actually, playing Latin music

1:21:27

and stuff, which is really, really

1:21:29

good fun. We haven't played a gig yet,

1:21:31

it's just kind of a rehearsal band really, and

1:21:33

really, really enjoying

1:21:36

getting back into playing. So it's all, we're

1:21:39

still emerging post pandemic actually.

1:21:41

Yeah,

1:21:42

yeah, it's been a process for sure. Yeah.

1:21:46

All right, well, Daniel, any other chess improvement nuggets

1:21:49

before we say our goodbyes? No, I think

1:21:51

I've said my thing, slow down

1:21:53

everyone, slow down. This dinosaur

1:21:56

can't move too fast. Excellent.

1:21:58

Okay.

1:21:59

Well, listeners, be sure to tune

1:22:02

in to Daniel's Power Play Chess for

1:22:04

coverage of the World Championship and of course

1:22:06

all the other top chess events and

1:22:08

check out his chessable course.

1:22:10

Course is, I should say, as well, but of

1:22:13

course, the most topical

1:22:15

being is an anti-Cecilian course. Daniel,

1:22:17

always fun to talk chess with you. Thanks for joining

1:22:20

us again. Daniel Chasten It's a pleasure, nice to chat. And

1:22:22

we are here with someone I've long been meaning to get on

1:22:24

the pod. He is a statistician, in a

1:22:26

frequent collaborator with chess.com. He gives

1:22:29

great analytic reports on big events

1:22:31

such as candidates or say, for example,

1:22:33

the World Championship. He has a USCF

1:22:35

master and the co-founder of chessgoals.com,

1:22:38

which provides study plans for improvers.

1:22:41

And of course, we're going to mostly discuss the World Championship,

1:22:43

but since we finally have him here, we're also going to talk

1:22:46

some chess books, chess study plans, and

1:22:48

chess ratings. ChessGoals also

1:22:50

has written one of the

1:22:53

definitive guides to sort of comparing

1:22:55

chess ratings across sites, which is a welcome

1:22:57

service. So we'll get into all that stuff as well.

1:22:59

But first, let's welcome National Master Matt Jensen

1:23:01

to the pod. Welcome, Matt.

1:23:03

Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me. That was a great

1:23:05

introduction.

1:23:06

Thanks. Yeah, excited to have you, even if

1:23:08

I'm not 100 percent excited for the World

1:23:10

Championship match. And Matt, I got to take

1:23:13

your temperature, too, because as sort of someone

1:23:15

who tries to have their finger on the pulse of the chess

1:23:17

community, it's something I've been very curious

1:23:19

about, because as I've sort of been ramping

1:23:21

up to cover this event, I felt this mild

1:23:23

malaise and as Daniel King and I discussed

1:23:26

and listeners will have heard there's the geopolitical

1:23:28

backdrop which certainly contributes to it but also

1:23:30

the distinct lack of Magnus, the distinct

1:23:32

lack of the best player. So I'm curious

1:23:35

Matt before we dig into the analytics

1:23:36

just as a chess fan, how are

1:23:38

you feeling about this match? Are you fired up

1:23:41

or meh? Feeling

1:23:43

kind of meh. I have to be honest until the

1:23:45

moment that you emailed me to say hey would you like to

1:23:47

come talk about some stats in the World Championship?

1:23:50

I hadn't really thought too much about it. So

1:23:53

it does feel like a battle for number two at this point.

1:23:56

Yeah, it's, it's just an

1:23:58

unfortunate truth. and I don't mean to be a

1:25:56

So

1:26:01

Matt, I know you've modeled other world

1:26:03

championships, you've modeled candidate cycles, you've done

1:26:05

some work on speed chess championships and stuff

1:26:08

like that. And I'm curious,

1:26:10

what are the inputs to your model?

1:26:13

Is it simply ELO, is it average

1:26:15

ELO? What goes into your,

1:26:17

what have you found to be the best way to try

1:26:20

to assess what's gonna happen in a chess match?

1:26:22

So for the

1:26:24

world championships specifically, what I've done is I've

1:26:26

gone back to all the World Championship

1:26:28

matches back to 1985. So

1:26:31

that was a Kasparov-Karpov match.

1:26:33

And I log the ages of each player,

1:26:35

the

1:26:36

experience level. So how many matches have

1:26:38

they been in for a World Championship?

1:26:40

I look at the current ratings. And

1:26:43

then I kind of have some combinations of

1:26:45

these variables like difference in ratings,

1:26:47

averages, so on.

1:26:49

Then what I like to do is throw

1:26:51

those results into a few models. I use

1:26:53

R and I try to figure out which of the

1:26:56

variables are the most predictive, uh, both

1:26:58

individually and in combination. But

1:27:01

really it's hard to be current

1:27:03

elo, um, when it comes to predicting these

1:27:05

matches, it just does such a good job.

1:27:08

Yeah, that's interesting. And I think that gets to why Magnus

1:27:10

didn't defend his throne. I mean, the, the rating

1:27:12

system for all of our complaints at the club levels,

1:27:15

you know, that we may feel like with

1:27:17

amateurs and with kids rising quickly, it's not as

1:27:19

accurate as it used to be. But at the elite level

1:27:21

where these people are playing all the time, guess

1:27:23

what ratings are very accurate. So that

1:27:26

made Magnus, I think, disinclined. He knows he's

1:27:28

the best player to defend. And

1:27:31

of course, I'm guessing, Matt, that it makes this

1:27:33

one a very close match-up, according

1:27:36

to your model.

1:27:36

Yeah, so I did kind of the same

1:27:39

thing I did for the last World Championship

1:27:41

in my chess.com article.

1:27:43

I created a simulation for each game,

1:27:46

and I ran it 1,000 times. So

1:27:48

essentially, simulating 1,000 World Championship

1:27:50

matches. And the expected

1:27:53

points per game that I had going into the model was 0.505

1:27:55

for NAPOMNIACI and 0.495.

1:27:59

for Dingler and really about as

1:28:02

close as it gets. Um, and then

1:28:04

the player who's the favorite over the course

1:28:06

of a 14 game match has

1:28:08

a little bit higher odds than in any individual

1:28:11

game. So I'm coming up with about 53%

1:28:13

for an Epo and 47% for Dingler and in terms

1:28:15

of winning the whole match,

1:28:18

including tie breaks. That's interesting.

1:28:20

And I sort of feel like I'm hearing

1:28:22

more people predict NEPO to win than

1:28:25

otherwise, although of course us being humans

1:28:27

and not calculators or

1:28:30

spreadsheets, we do factor

1:28:32

and we can't help but factor in stuff like experience

1:28:35

and form and, you

1:28:37

know, maybe

1:28:38

institutional support, government support,

1:28:40

corporate support, and all of those things

1:28:43

also as it happens lean in NEPO's

1:28:45

direction, but it's interesting that from a rating model

1:28:47

perspective as well, it's quite

1:28:50

close. Now Matt, I generally on

1:28:52

these preview pods provide betting

1:28:55

market info as well. I'm a big believer

1:28:58

in the power of markets. You know, when people

1:29:00

are able to have skin in

1:29:02

the game to make a wager based on what

1:29:04

they think, that's a strong incentive to try to

1:29:09

get the correct information. That's

1:29:12

why they have all these beautiful casinos in Las Vegas.

1:29:15

But I haven't been able to find much for this one.

1:29:17

Did you happen to see any betting lines

1:29:19

that were credible? I don't know if this is your forte,

1:29:21

but I'm just curious.

1:29:23

I don't do a lot of betting, but I do like

1:29:25

to look at betting lines. I did some Googling.

1:29:28

I found a couple sites and it seems like

1:29:30

the sites are tending to give 50 to 60%

1:29:33

chance for Jan to win. I saw 1.65 to 1

1:29:35

for Nepo and a minus 125 line for Nepo. So

1:29:40

I think it's right in that range of like 50

1:29:42

to 60% chance for Nepo

1:29:45

to win.

1:29:45

Okay. Yeah. So that's good to know and

1:29:48

not, not a huge surprise. And you never know

1:29:50

what these markets like, it's not like

1:29:52

betting on the Superbowl or something where you have billions

1:29:55

of dollars being wagered and you know that the price

1:29:57

is sort of the balance. They

1:29:59

might not.

1:31:56

So

1:32:00

I think it's probably going to be true in Rapid

1:32:02

and Blitz as well. They're just going to be a little bit closer

1:32:04

than what their ratings say.

1:32:06

OK. And to verify, the

1:32:08

format is, so obviously we have 14 classical

1:32:11

games. And then it goes to four Rapid

1:32:13

games, and then it would go to Blitz after that. Is

1:32:15

that right?

1:32:16

Yeah, four Rapid game playoff, 25 plus 10

1:32:19

time control.

1:32:21

And then there's a two game Blitz tiebreaker

1:32:24

if that's still tied. And then another two game Blitz

1:32:26

tiebreaker that's tied followed

1:32:28

by in the end an Armageddon game. Oh my god

1:32:30

that would be amazing. I might

1:32:32

take back all the bad things I've thought about this world

1:32:34

championship if we get an Armageddon game

1:32:36

at the end. Although

1:32:39

again the true the

1:32:41

true dyed in the wool classical fans are probably

1:32:44

uh shaking their fists at the

1:32:46

screen or the podcast as

1:32:48

they hear me say that because it is not in

1:32:50

the tradition of the

1:32:53

long drawn out classical matches.

1:32:56

Do you have a preference in terms of your

1:32:58

favorite format for a match? Do you like the matches

1:33:00

that just keep adding more classical games?

1:33:03

Yeah, I mean, I like looking back

1:33:05

on those matches, but I think it's unrealistic.

1:33:08

I think 14 games is a good amount.

1:33:11

Anything less. And you're you're introducing

1:33:13

extra variance, something that that

1:33:15

Magnus has certainly voiced in the past. anything

1:33:18

more and it's just getting unrealistic

1:33:21

in terms of the time demands, the venue demands,

1:33:23

I think even from a fan perspective you

1:33:26

might start to lose people. So to me 14 people

1:33:29

is about right. Obviously Matt the

1:33:31

general format of the world championship

1:33:33

is a frequent topic of discussion here

1:33:36

on perpetual chess and I'm

1:33:39

ambivalent. I'm open to the idea

1:33:41

of changing the format but

1:33:44

you know I just interviewed international master Willie Hendricks

1:33:46

who of course is a chess historian, so he

1:33:49

voiced some sadness about sort of the

1:33:51

demise of the classical format, and I I

1:33:53

understand that being a common feeling, but

1:33:55

I guess I would say that my final

1:33:58

line on it is, It really. should be the

1:34:00

top players deciding. You know, the

1:34:04

feed a or chess.com or whoever

1:34:07

it is that is organizing the match really

1:34:10

needs to have a format where the best players want to play.

1:34:13

And there's at least one prominent best player who doesn't

1:34:15

want to play. And I know a lot of people say good

1:34:17

riddance, but that's not really

1:34:19

like I'm more sympathetic to,

1:34:23

to Magnus, a sport is only as good as its stars.

1:34:25

And he obviously is one

1:34:27

of its biggest stars. What do you think? Where Where do you

1:34:29

come down

1:34:29

on this? I think that's a good point.

1:34:32

I think they should really weigh heavily on what the top

1:34:34

players want to do, especially when you have a dominant

1:34:36

champion like Magnus. If you can make some small

1:34:38

tweaks and please Magnus, it might be

1:34:40

worth doing.

1:34:42

I think the current setup though

1:34:44

is actually fairly good. It sort of

1:34:46

has the old school classical

1:34:49

match. Like you said, 14 games. That's

1:34:51

plenty of games to kind of reduce the variance.

1:34:54

But then it also brings in kind of this

1:34:56

newer school of rapid play and blitz play

1:34:58

that people like to watch online

1:35:01

approximately 20% of the time if we have a tied

1:35:03

match. So I think it's a pretty good balance.

1:35:06

Yeah, and again, as I

1:35:08

discussed with Daniel King, when you

1:35:10

do tune out the noise, tune out the

1:35:12

extremely

1:35:14

aggravating geopolitical background,

1:35:17

it's a compelling matchup. It'll be fun to see. Stylistically,

1:35:20

I find it interesting. I'd like to see

1:35:22

what openings are gonna be played. So any

1:35:25

predictions in that regard, Matt, before we move

1:35:27

on beyond the World Championship.

1:35:30

It's really hard to say. I feel like they always throw

1:35:32

us off. Whatever opening we think they're going to play, it's

1:35:34

something completely different. So maybe we'll

1:35:37

see

1:35:38

like a Svesh Nikov from Dingler-Rend or something.

1:35:40

That would be fun. Yeah, that would be

1:35:42

interesting. All right, well, Matt, before

1:35:45

we move on, anything else to add on the World Championship?

1:35:47

Again, because it's such a close matchup and because

1:35:49

rating is the best predictor,

1:35:52

there's really, from an analytical perspective, I love

1:35:54

getting experts like yourself, getting your perspective,

1:35:57

but there's only so much can be said in my

1:35:59

opinion. anything else to add?

1:36:01

OK, I'll add one more portion

1:36:04

about getting hyped up for the match.

1:36:06

This was something that I really wanted to find some data

1:36:09

to make us excited about this match.

1:36:11

I think because the ratings are a little bit lower

1:36:13

than a Carlson match, we're going

1:36:16

to have less draws. So

1:36:18

in the Carlson matches, we've been averaging like 76% in

1:36:21

the games are draws. It's really high.

1:36:24

And also because the players are so close

1:36:26

in rating, I think the match should be close.

1:36:28

So if we get a close match

1:36:30

without as many draws, maybe we'll see a couple

1:36:32

decisive games going back and forth and

1:36:34

actually have one of the more exciting matches that we've

1:36:37

seen in recent times with Magnus

1:36:39

on the sidelines.

1:36:40

That would be fun to see. And again,

1:36:43

this is something I touched on with Daniel King. But the one

1:36:45

thing we haven't seen so much of is Nepo

1:36:47

bounce back. So I want to see Ding

1:36:49

put a W on the board early. And then I want

1:36:52

to see Nepo bounce back. And then let's

1:36:54

just have chaos from there. Let's

1:36:56

do whatever we can to make this

1:36:58

a historical world championship. But we

1:37:00

were just mentioning ratings, Matt, and since I have

1:37:03

you here, I do wanna talk a little about

1:37:06

rating differences across sites. There's

1:37:08

been a lot of talk about rating deflation over the board.

1:37:11

So first let's dig into a Patreon mailbag

1:37:14

question. This one is from Bob

1:37:16

Weisenberg. Thank you for helping support perpetual

1:37:18

chess, Bob. And he

1:37:20

asks if you've seen any evidence of ratings

1:37:22

deflation on chess.com and leechs,

1:37:25

meaning a player of a given skill level would

1:37:27

have a lower rating today than a year ago. He

1:37:30

says, it seems to him that there are

1:37:32

more and more strong players further down the

1:37:34

ratings later than there were a year or two

1:37:36

years ago. So he's

1:37:38

curious if you've seen that in the data that you collect

1:37:40

over at chess goals, Matt.

1:37:43

Yeah, so I went back to 2020 to

1:37:45

try to dig up this data. The

1:37:48

first thing I'll note though is I think it's really hard

1:37:50

to define inflation and deflation.

1:37:53

You

1:37:53

know, if you think of like monetary inflation,

1:37:56

oftentimes you need sort of like a basket of

1:37:58

goods or something where you...

1:37:59

can figure out what is that money good for.

1:38:02

In terms of chess rating,

1:38:05

we can compare different rating systems like

1:38:07

USCF to chess.com to lee chess

1:38:09

and that's what I usually do, but

1:38:11

it would be nice to peg ratings to

1:38:14

some sort of level of skill like average

1:38:16

cent upon loss or maybe a more sophisticated

1:38:18

metric,

1:38:19

but let's just talk about the ratings across

1:38:21

different sites.

1:38:23

So back in July of 2020,

1:38:25

a 1200 player on chess.com

1:38:28

blitz would be about 1275 USF. And

1:38:30

now that 1200 in blitz is 1245 USF.

1:38:35

So we've only seen a 30 point change.

1:38:38

A leeches player

1:38:40

on the other hand at 1450 leeches blitz

1:38:44

is now about 1560 leeches

1:38:46

blitz if we peg it to

1:38:48

the chess.com and USCF equivalent.

1:38:50

So I think there is maybe a little bit

1:38:53

of inflation on leechs, about 100 points

1:38:55

over the last three years or two and a half

1:38:57

years. Chess.com

1:39:00

and USCF seem pretty similar and

1:39:02

Feeday I think falls in line with that

1:39:05

as well.

1:39:05

Okay, and that's inflation you said. Inflation.

1:39:09

Okay, but that's over a three-year span. I think Bob

1:39:11

is referring to more recent history and

1:39:13

as you say that makes it tough to parse. I mean at

1:39:16

some point it's tough to get

1:39:18

enough data quick enough and the other thing is of

1:39:20

Of course, these things are moving targets.

1:39:22

Like if you're comparing something to USCF, as

1:39:25

has come up in my interview with Dr. Mark

1:39:27

Glickman, and listeners

1:39:30

may have heard my interview with IMD Nepolito, anyone

1:39:32

who's very active in tournaments will hear about

1:39:35

certain geographic regions where they feel like,

1:39:38

you know, a 1500 is just way stronger

1:39:40

than they used to be. A 2000,

1:39:42

same story, et cetera. And I

1:39:44

know the United States is one of those places.

1:39:46

That's certainly how I feel as well. So

1:39:49

anyway, I mean, that just makes it all the more hard for

1:39:51

someone like you to model, because if you're comparing

1:39:53

it and it itself is changing, then

1:39:56

it's tough to track, but

1:39:58

I will say it's a Bob's question.

1:39:59

I've certainly seen other people

1:40:02

on Twitter and in other chess circles

1:40:04

say the same thing like hey I used to

1:40:06

be 2300 on lee chess and now I'm 2200 and

1:40:10

I'm playing the same I've

1:40:13

certainly heard some anac data in that regard But

1:40:15

but yeah, unfortunately as with many things

1:40:17

chess Despite Matt's

1:40:19

best efforts. We don't have as much data as we would

1:40:21

like

1:40:22

Yeah, sorry to not give a better answer to that Bob But

1:40:24

I think if you have a group

1:40:27

of players that you know, and

1:40:28

you know their consistent ratings, it might be good

1:40:30

to look them up and see how their ratings are changing.

1:40:33

Because it's really hard to figure out

1:40:35

a large pool of players. Are

1:40:38

they moving up or down? And

1:40:40

are they expected to be stable? Or

1:40:42

are they improving or

1:40:44

decreasing in terms of strength? Right.

1:40:46

Yeah. And of course, we will link to the chess

1:40:48

goals data that you guys provide, so

1:40:51

that anyone interested can check it out themselves.

1:40:53

And Matt, have you had any experience with the

1:40:55

sort of more general topic of inflation

1:40:58

and deflation, especially over the board?

1:41:01

Um, well, I feel like when I

1:41:03

started playing uscf a 1000 rated player Was

1:41:07

much weaker than today's 1000 rated

1:41:09

players i've gone through some of my old score sheets and we

1:41:12

would probably be rated 500 today

1:41:14

Yeah, you know a 1000 from 1992 for example I've

1:41:19

done a little bit of work for chess.com helping

1:41:22

them battle inflation and deflation.

1:41:25

So

1:41:26

chess.com will bring me in just for some kind of general

1:41:28

contracting work

1:41:30

and one of the things we've looked at in the past was

1:41:32

how can we keep

1:41:33

chess.com ratings somewhat close to

1:41:35

USCF ratings just because

1:41:37

we have a lot more data for USCF than Fede

1:41:39

at lower ratings.

1:41:41

So I know chess.com has done some work

1:41:43

in that and

1:41:45

I know USCF has added like

1:41:47

a bonus rating points for players that are improving

1:41:49

really quickly because they had deflation

1:41:51

for a while. So, so I think these websites

1:41:54

and organizations do keep some

1:41:56

tabs on, you

1:41:57

know, is it 1400 truly a 1400 over? time.

1:42:01

Okay, yeah, that's helpful. And chess.com

1:42:03

does do a good job having the rating track

1:42:06

reasonably close, in my opinion. I know leechs

1:42:08

has a different philosophy where they want

1:42:10

the average rating to be 1500. And that's

1:42:12

their priority rather than tracking to

1:42:14

another system. And of course,

1:42:17

chess.com and leechs both use the Glico

1:42:19

rating system. Again, refer

1:42:21

listeners to my interview with Dr. Mark Glickman. It's

1:42:23

a system that he invented, not surprisingly,

1:42:26

since it's It's called Glico. And

1:42:28

basically it's a lot more receptive to recent

1:42:30

data than the historical

1:42:33

ELO system. And

1:42:35

I say the sooner that USCF

1:42:38

and FIDE switch to Glico, the better. I don't know if

1:42:40

you have an opinion on that, Matt.

1:42:42

I think it would be helpful. What hurts

1:42:44

USCF and FIDE is they just don't have as many games

1:42:47

played. So people now are

1:42:49

playing thousands of games online in

1:42:51

the timeframe that maybe they only play 20 games

1:42:53

over the board. It's really hard to keep those ratings

1:42:56

accurate, I think.

1:42:57

Yeah. OK, well, I

1:42:59

appreciate the insights on rating. It's

1:43:02

a developing story, as we say. It comes

1:43:04

up frequently. Many improvers

1:43:06

lamenting the changing landscape.

1:43:09

But we all have to play under the same

1:43:11

set of rules. So at the end of the

1:43:13

day,

1:43:14

it's a relatively level

1:43:17

playing field. Now, let's talk a little chess

1:43:19

improvement while we have you here, Matt,

1:43:21

because you do put together these nice study

1:43:23

plans for chess goals, recommending different

1:43:26

goals, different sort of, uh,

1:43:28

curriculums for different rating ranges.

1:43:31

But first, Matt, what's your top line

1:43:33

advice? Someone's really getting bit by the chess

1:43:35

bug. They come to chess goals. How do you tell them

1:43:37

to spend their chess improvement time?

1:43:39

So there's this group of players that I call speed

1:43:42

runners. And what they do is they

1:43:44

play chess. They play games

1:43:46

about 90% of the time.

1:43:48

And then about 5% of the time they analyze

1:43:51

their games. And

1:43:52

then the other 5% is just various

1:43:54

other chess resources.

1:43:56

I think if you wanted to keep it as simple as possible,

1:43:59

that's what I would recommend.

1:43:59

Wow. Play a ton of games

1:44:02

and then every game go back and analyze

1:44:04

it and just think of one or two takeaways.

1:44:07

Okay, that's interesting. You're not going to get a lot of

1:44:10

objectors to

1:44:12

that advice because everyone loves playing. Usually

1:44:15

it's like people are like, you've got to do the deliberate

1:44:17

practice, you've got to solve the blindfold end

1:44:19

game studies. If you're not

1:44:22

crying, you're not working. So if you say, hey,

1:44:24

just play some games, they're like, okay. But

1:44:27

you know what's funny about that Ben is a lot of students

1:44:29

that I've worked with it through chess goals

1:44:32

Do you have the opposite problem? You

1:44:34

know, I think people who research chess improvement

1:44:36

on the internet

1:44:37

Tend to have a certain mindset for getting

1:44:39

better at chess and that is give

1:44:41

me a huge stack of books Right, and

1:44:43

I'm going to study my way through my issues

1:44:46

and improve that way

1:44:48

and I'll find that they barely play any games

1:44:50

at all So I think having

1:44:52

that balance play at least 50% of the

1:44:54

time is advice that I give players

1:44:56

across the board.

1:44:58

As you get stronger, I think it makes more sense

1:45:00

to use books and other resources more.

1:45:03

But as a beginning player, you want to really play a lot

1:45:05

of games.

1:45:06

Yeah, I agree. And obviously, I've mentioned

1:45:08

many times going to plug my book that's not

1:45:10

out yet relentlessly. But it's been top of mind

1:45:12

for me because I've been writing about this.

1:45:14

And the one thing I would add and sort of echo

1:45:17

my friend, free day master Nate Solon, To

1:45:19

me, it helps if the games feel like they matter to

1:45:21

you. You know, if you're

1:45:24

playing bullet chess, you know, in your bed or

1:45:26

on the toilet, like, uh, forgetting

1:45:28

about it, you know, that might have a

1:45:30

place that might help escape, help you escape

1:45:32

from whatever's bothering you in your relationships

1:45:35

or your professional life or whatever it may be. But

1:45:38

don't expect it to help your chess. Whereas

1:45:40

if you're super focused, you know,

1:45:43

not, you know, phone in the other room, playing

1:45:46

obviously a tournament game or able

1:45:48

to take an online game seriously. I think that's

1:45:50

where the even blitz, as long as

1:45:52

it's something that really matters to you, I think that that

1:45:54

does make a difference in terms

1:45:56

of helping you learn.

1:45:58

I think that's a really good point. Yeah, you want to.

1:45:59

make it so that every game matters. Yeah.

1:46:03

Okay, and we have a related question from your

1:46:05

fellow Minnesotan, who I believe you know, Peter

1:46:07

Newhall. Shout out to Peter, and

1:46:10

thanks for supporting the pod, Peter, as always. And

1:46:12

he asks, he says, having

1:46:15

offered quite a few different study plans for a few

1:46:17

years now and gotten feedback from many people

1:46:19

on them, has your thinking regarding study plans changed?

1:46:22

Do you use one regularly or sort of fall

1:46:24

in and out of one, depending on what's going on with the

1:46:26

rest of your life? And then as an aside,

1:46:29

Peter says,

1:46:29

sorry, I have absolutely zero questions about

1:46:32

the World Championship. It feels more like an exhibition

1:46:34

match to me. And while I'm rooting for Ding,

1:46:36

it feels kind of meaningless. We understand, Peter.

1:46:41

Yeah, so the first question, just

1:46:43

to give a little bit of background on how

1:46:46

I got these study plans,

1:46:48

I ran a survey a few years back.

1:46:50

And we had over 400 chess players. And

1:46:53

they gave survey data in terms of how

1:46:56

many hours they spend on Blitz, Rapid,

1:46:58

Classical, End Games,

1:47:00

so on, just like every aspect of studying.

1:47:03

And I used that to build some statistical models.

1:47:06

And one of the things that came out in

1:47:08

the results was that playing Blitz is

1:47:10

very valuable. And I've gotten a

1:47:12

ton of heat for this recommendation, recommend

1:47:15

that people play a lot of games and play a lot of Blitz.

1:47:18

But it's

1:47:19

very strong in the data. Wow, and

1:47:21

did you check this across the rating spectrum?

1:47:24

Yeah, it's at all levels. I

1:47:26

might need to rewrite part of my book. That's

1:47:29

interesting.

1:47:30

Some of these players, though, are looking to improve

1:47:33

in Blitz. So yeah, that's kind of the qualifier

1:47:35

and it is survey data. So these

1:47:37

people chose to take the survey.

1:47:40

OK, so yeah, maybe I can walk

1:47:42

on that thin read and say that's the

1:47:44

reason why. But that's interesting because what

1:47:47

what my the advice that

1:47:49

I give And my perspective

1:47:52

has been I've long come around that Blitz is

1:47:54

good for your game at a certain level. I think it's basically

1:47:57

unequivocal. if you look at like the

1:47:59

Hakaru's and the

1:47:59

magnuses of the world, not to mention

1:48:02

even mortals who improve at chess. But

1:48:05

I just have felt historically like

1:48:07

people say rated below 1400 maybe

1:48:10

might be developing bad habits by trying to do things

1:48:13

too quickly. But but I'm not

1:48:15

generally a guy who likes to argue with data. Well,

1:48:18

I think we're kind of merging in the middle then,

1:48:20

then, because I've backed off a little

1:48:22

bit on the blitz recommendations

1:48:24

with the qualifier. But if you're someone that gets

1:48:27

really frustrated playing Blitz, you find it's

1:48:29

way too fast,

1:48:30

you're just making horrible blunders every game, I

1:48:33

think you should find a time control that kind of pushes

1:48:35

you as fast as you can play where

1:48:38

you're still getting quality games and some good takeaways

1:48:40

from each game. And then as you improve and play

1:48:43

more Blitz, or maybe it's rapid you begin

1:48:45

with,

1:48:45

you can start to slowly go faster and faster. You

1:48:47

know, so for me, I play quite a

1:48:49

bit of 3 plus 0 Blitz. But

1:48:52

if I have an 800 rated player starting

1:48:54

a chess goal study plan, I don't recommend them

1:48:56

play three plus zero. That's way too fast. Maybe

1:48:59

they start with 10 plus five and

1:49:01

try to get some good takeaways there and then slowly play

1:49:04

faster as they improve. Okay. I

1:49:07

can definitely get on board with that. And

1:49:09

last topic, Matt, I mean, I know that you

1:49:12

have specific book recommendations within your

1:49:14

curriculum. So I'm

1:49:16

curious whether you have favorite chess books,

1:49:18

even favorite chess YouTubers, whatever

1:49:21

it is that you find recommending the most to

1:49:24

for people to help their games beyond when they're

1:49:26

not actually playing chess as of course is your

1:49:29

strongest recommendation.

1:49:30

I think the number

1:49:32

one book that I like to recommend is

1:49:35

actually a series of books. It's the You Soup

1:49:37

OV series. I think if you

1:49:39

don't have a coach and you want something

1:49:41

where you can just self-study, work on your

1:49:43

own, that's

1:49:44

an outstanding series. And there's 10

1:49:46

different books that are kind of organized

1:49:48

by rating level.

1:49:50

probably the best way to go for just an all-encompassing

1:49:53

book.

1:49:54

The other books I like to recommend is I Really

1:49:56

Enjoy Reassess Your Chest. I still

1:49:58

think about about positions.

1:49:59

in terms of imbalances to this day. And

1:50:02

that's how I like to explain positions to students

1:50:04

as well. I

1:50:07

think is a great book. Just,

1:50:09

you can have it for life, beginner all

1:50:11

the way up to master or higher. Yeah, I'm

1:50:13

slightly more ambivalent on reassess your chess, but

1:50:15

I'm a huge fan of So and

1:50:18

the use of of courses, I have to admit, Matt,

1:50:21

they're a glaring hole in my chess

1:50:24

cannon in

1:50:26

terms of books that I've read actually, the aforementioned Peter

1:50:28

Newhall. Peter's waiting to do a

1:50:30

podcast about them with me because he's done them

1:50:33

and he's just waiting for me to get it together to do

1:50:35

my part. But one question I do have is

1:50:38

my understanding of the Yusupov series is

1:50:40

it probably, it starts at a decently

1:50:43

high level. Like is that applicable

1:50:45

advice for everyone or do you need to be a certain level

1:50:47

to start with the 10 book

1:50:49

Yusupov series?

1:50:51

The lowest, the first book in the

1:50:53

series, I think if you're rated about 1000,

1:50:56

you're probably ready for it. Oh really? Okay.

1:50:59

I've heard they're reading guidelines, like a lot of

1:51:01

chessbook reading guidelines are off, but.

1:51:03

Yeah, I've heard reading guidelines

1:51:05

all over the place for those books. What you'll find is some

1:51:07

of the chapters are pretty easy. Other

1:51:10

chapters will be extremely difficult. So

1:51:13

I think as long as you have sort of a patient approach,

1:51:15

you could skip over a chapter if it's just too difficult.

1:51:18

I think 1000, you're probably ready

1:51:20

to try them.

1:51:21

Okay.

1:51:22

Excellent. All right. Well, Matt, I've really

1:51:24

enjoyed getting your perspective. Since this

1:51:27

is a double episode, I'm thinking we'll keep it on

1:51:29

the shorter side, but thank

1:51:31

you for getting me slightly more excited for the World Championship

1:51:34

for the ratings wisdom. We might have to talk

1:51:36

about that again sometime. I especially appreciate that

1:51:38

you did some, you know, independent

1:51:41

research and sort of preparing for this pod.

1:51:43

And of course, always good to get your chess improvement advice.

1:51:46

So of course, listeners can check out Chess Goals.

1:51:48

Anything else to say or plug

1:51:50

before we say our goodbyes, Matt?

1:51:53

Yeah, mainly chessgoals.com. We

1:51:55

have free study plans, some courses, and

1:51:58

the big thing that I I try to do on that site.

1:51:59

is

1:52:00

make chess studying easy. So

1:52:02

just keep you focused and directed on what you want to

1:52:05

study. And thanks for having me on, Ben. This

1:52:07

was awesome. We'll have to do a live

1:52:09

stream of this whole World Championship coming up.

1:52:11

Oh yeah, sounds good to me, yeah. Like

1:52:14

it or not, we're gonna be watching, so. And

1:52:17

let me ask you, Matt, there was one

1:52:19

other question that just occurred to me since

1:52:21

I have enjoyed your Chess.com writeups. Do you

1:52:23

know if you'll be doing one this time around?

1:52:26

For the World Championship? Yeah.

1:52:28

Yep, so I'm actually preparing

1:52:30

that right now. I'll be doing a full prediction

1:52:33

article. So the stuff we've talked about today

1:52:35

is kind of a sneak peek for what's going to be in the article.

1:52:37

Excellent,

1:52:38

yeah, and this interview will be out March

1:52:40

28th and we're recording on March 21st,

1:52:42

so who knows? You may have already read Matt's article by

1:52:44

the time you hear this, but anyway, Matt,

1:52:47

it's been a lot of fun and yeah, it's doing

1:52:49

a world championship stream, although I think it might be at like 3 a.m., but

1:52:52

whatever, I'm in, let's just

1:52:54

do it. Okay, we'll

1:52:56

keep in touch. All right, sounds good. Thanks

1:52:59

for joining us, Matt.

1:53:00

Thank you, Vin.