YouSaid · the spoken record

Hikaru Nakamura

lines on the record: 239
first: 2022-10-17
most recent: 2022-10-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Right, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I think, again, also in terms of chess, I think that it can be, as far as Chess goes, like, or any competition, it can be the greatest thing in the world. It can also be the worst thing in the world when you're in love with a lot of Chess players. For many, it does not help them. It actually makes them play much worse chess because you don't have that energy or that drive in the same kind of way. So it's very mixed for chess. As far as me personally, though, I think, you know, I would say what I've said before, it's better to have loved and lost than have never have loved at all. And I definitely have been through that.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Love is, I mean, I think it can be the greatest thing in the world. I think when things fall apart, I've been through this quite a few times, actually. Some really, real highs, some really, real lows as well. I think love, it can inspire you to do things you never thought were possible. And without it, though, I think life is very empty. I think it's probably the most important thing to have in life in one way or another.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think similar to what gives me the motivation for streaming, it's the fact that at the end of the day, no matter how bad things appear or seem, I mean, we've never been at a better time in human history. People have things much better off now than any other time. So I find it hard to really have pity, or not have pity, but feel really bad. I just use those sorts of things as the way to get over it. It's just knowing how lucky I am.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hate losing, or do I love winning? I think maybe because I've doing so many different things, like losing doesn't have the same effect on me that it once did. So I think now I definitely love winning more. But I think when I was younger, I hated losing much more than I liked winning.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why I love it. That's why I love going hiking. Because obviously you get the exercise, but honestly, it's a reminder of how small we really are.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember reading a, I mean, it's slightly different, but there was this sci-fi book I read many years ago. I think it was rendezvous with Rama, where I think there were people that were just going all over the land, like in this cylinder. And so I think for me, I've just explored. I've just walk, bicycle, maybe plant some trees, things of this nature”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would I want to be for a day? If I had to pick someone, actually, I would probably pick Elon, how many years ago is now when the rockets were blowing up? I'd be very interested to see those processes of how they went through that and they got out on the other side. Because I feel like most of the time when you hear about the startups, like, okay, you look at Amazon. You have the big investment at the start. It doesn't feel like we're those super, super lows. For the Amazons of the world. Maybe not when the three rocks blew up, but maybe when that was it fourth or fifth one actually succeeded. But somewhere in that time frame.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if they're going to attack you or not, but I feel like having one enemy saying the clear objective, I would always prefer that.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's probably my general advice is whatever it is you pursue it. Because even with chess, when I dropped out of college, there was no guarantee that I was going to make it as a professional player. There was no guarantee. But I took that chance and very fortunately for me it worked out.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think, I mean, at some point you have to make those tough decisions, but absolutely. I feel like too many people follow the standard route. It's like you're supposed to go to college, get that degree, be $200,000 in debt, these sorts of things. But then at the end of the day, are you really living? Are you pursuing what you want to pursue? It's just because that's what you're supposed to do. That's what society tells us that the route you're supposed to go. So I think you just have to pursue it. Of course, at a certain point, if you're not making it, you have to make hard decisions. But I think that, you know, in life, the only thing really time and sort of experiences, those are the only things that you really can't put a price on.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They took away his chessbooks. They took everything away and told him he was going to become a lawyer. He could not play chess. So when I look at my upbringing, I feel very lucky that my parents, having had these experiences, they were so supportive of everything I did. And I think that at the end of the day, you have to pursue your passion to whatever end that might be. You might pursue it. You might fail. But I do think you have to pursue it. It's better, what's it? It's better to have tried and failed than to have not tried at all. So I really do believe that's the most important thing is that you do that. And where it takes you, who knows, but the experiences I feel are much more important than the what ifs and possibly missing out on living life.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think the main thing is follow your heart, follow your passion. One thing we didn't touch on this. Both my parents, my mom was a musician. She was very good. I think she was maybe all state in California when she was growing up on the violin. But she still was nowhere near good enough to get into Juilliard or the top music schools and pursue that as a career. And there are a lot of starving musicians who never are able to quite make it. So like when I see my mom and what happened with her passion, the fact she wasn't able to make it, or then my stepfather, who we haven't talked about, my stepfather actually, he's of Sri Lankan descent. He comes from a family of lawyers. His father was a lawyer. His uncle was a lawyer for the International Court of Justice. So it's a family of lawyers. And my stepfather, he went to England to study law. He went to Southampton. I think it was the University of Southampton. And at some point, he was going and playing these tournaments on the weekend and playing at the school club, all these things. And his parents actually, they took away his share.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That actually, no, I don't think that actually does not appeal to me at all. I think another great thing about chess is that within the chess world, I'm very prominent and famous, but I can go out to the supermarket and nobody recognized me. And so I am famous, but I'm not famous at the same time. So I don't actually want to be like that. I don't want to be in a situation where everyone recognizes me or I'm super famous. That's not that to me sounds like a very miserable life. I do not want TMZ chasing me down the street.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depends on what point, really, if when you ask that question, I think if we're talking about the time of college, probably I would have done something in political science, maybe being a lobbyist or something terrible like that, honestly. If I was a little bit younger, there were, you know, I really loved ancient history archaeology and also languages as well. So probably something along those lines. And if we talk like more recently, something in finance. I don't know what exactly, but something in finance.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That wasn't the only reason. The other reason, though Was that towards the end of my first semester, I played a tournament after not studying, actually when I was in college, when I wasn't actually studying for class, I was mainly on poker stars playing poker all night long. So towards the end of that semester, I actually went to play a tournament in Philadelphia because I was going to college nearby. And with very little preparation, I won that tournament against other strong grandmasters. And that kind of made me think, well, okay, if I'm ever going to take a chance, it has to be now. If I stay in college for four years, probably get like, you know, probably, you know, get a major in political science, do something in the political arena. And then I felt like I'm going to probably look back like five, ten years from now and wonder what if? What if like, what if I had played chess? How far could I have gone? And if I had taken those four years, there would have been no opportunity for me to reach my full potential or even see how far I go. So therefore that was also a big, big, big reason.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Role in my decision to go to college. But at the end of the day, as I realized, college kind of was a big disappointment because the strongest or the biggest strength of playing chess is that you mingle with people from all different backgrounds, all different ages. And when I went to college, the whole notion of basically people who were juniors and seniors being more important or more equal than others to do the animal farm line, when you're in that situation, it didn't really jive with my childhood and growing up in the world of chess. And that is one of the biggest reasons that I actually came back to chess because it's like this world of where certain people are more important and things are different. I just could not really relate to that. And that was one of the biggest reasons. It really was.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, absolutely. Chess is very difficult. You're on your own. Like, you can have friends, people you compete against who are friends, but at the end of the day, it's a very singular pursuit. It's just you and your results dictate everything. So there have been many moments throughout my life when I've struggled. I think probably the biggest time when that happened would have been about 2005 into 2006 where I stopped playing chess and I went to college. And that was mainly because I had gotten to a level where I was top 100 in the world, but I stagnated for that year about 25, 2006. And so I decided to go to college primarily because I had stagnated. I didn't feel like I was going anywhere. And then also kind of being on your own, just having a few friends here or there in the chess world, you kind of, you wonder what it's like. And especially because I was homeschooled as well, like that further added to kind of wanting to be around other people. It really played a very big role.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think at the time, I just don't know. I thought it was just something fun to spend my time on. I didn't somehow. I wasn't, I figured that after a six-month break, I would come back and play better chess, kind of. But the far as streaming, I never thought of it as being something that would be a career, something viable. I just thought it's something fun to do. Maybe it gives me fans some access to me. It broadens the platform more people hear about me. And that was about it, really. I did not ever expect it to become what it did.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, you know, it's interesting because when I think about streaming, it's not like it's not a start because I'm not investing money where I can lose everything if it's not successful. But it was also a big risk for me doing that because at the time I was a professional player doing very well when I kind of started in October 2018. I was still top 10 in the world doing very well. 2019 was actually a very bad year for me. I started playing much worse. And towards the end of 2019, I was, I intended to take a six-month break. Last time I played was November 2019 in India. And then I was going to take a break until the US championship in April of 2020. So I did in a sense actually take a risk because I was potentially risking my career by spending this extra time that I had streaming. So it's not like it's not the risk where like financially I can lose everything, but it actually was a bit of a risk now that I think about it in a sense. Because if I lose my career as a player, there's no guarantee that streaming is going to be anything substantial.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It comes to chess, as I said, if you're a pro player, you can do very well, make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. Of course, I'm talking pre tax. But if you do poorly in one year, that income dries up. And there is a chance you'll never get back there. So I feel like for much of my career, that was always on my mind. And maybe that held me back to some degree. I don't know, those sort of thoughts about things like that as opposed to purely being focused only only on the chest, like worrying about the results, worrying about the prizes, things like this. It might have helped me back, but I was always something that was all, it was on my mind.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's really the only thing that I let, you know, not let, but it's one of those things, the only things that kind of ties me down in a way. And I still feel pretty free, though, for the most part, despite owning.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investing as well is that it's kind of like you want to be secure at a certain point. So I've always looked at that, like how do you get to that point at the end of the day? And again, like I said with my experiences, seeing like actually even now my stepfather, he's 72 years old, still teaches chess all the time, probably works harder than I do actually. And so I see things like that. And that really interested me like, how do you get from point A to point B? And that's in large part what led to it. That being said, obviously when you start owning things like properties, houses or condos and whatnot, there are headaches that come along with getting some of these bills in the mail. Or you say HOA about a tenant, not parking their car illegally, $50 that you have to pay in fees, these sorts of things. It is kind of a pain. But I try, I mean, I try to reduce the number of things that can really bother me in life.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I tend to actually try to be a minimalist for the most part when it comes to things like clothes or like owning cars, for example, or watch that. I don't own a lot of these material things. They don't really interest me. But at the end of the day, the one thing is, and this might actually play a role in a lot of the hiccups why I didn't get to maybe being closer to world champion is that one of the things from the time that I was very young is like I didn't grow up from like a wealthy background and like I had a single mother for the first six years of my life she worked as an elementary teacher to support my brother and myself so like I saw a lot of these sort of lows in life early on now even even once she remarried like all the money that my stepfather made was not all of it but a lot of it was directed towards like my mom and I like traveling to tournaments internationally or even in the US so seeing some of these struggles like once I actually made it as a chess player and this this goes back to”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, it's not something that I can consciously internalize, but I think it's something as well that from having watched those courses and seeing that style of oration really helped me a lot as a streamer too.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of, I've heard a lot of announcers, and I think that's also one of those things where you learn from what you see, kind of when you're growing up, there are examples. And so I think that was very, very beneficial. And then a third thing in terms of having some flare is when I was growing up and I was homeschooled probably about 14, 15, there was this great courses. I think they still do some of these great courses. And there was this, I don't remember who the guy was, but he was a professor. And so I watched some of these DVDs of his lectures. And he would always dress up as someone, it was like middle ages. So he would dress up and he was sort of like an orator and he would explain like, you know, what happened in the 131400s in this sort of style. And that's also something that.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First thing would be that when I was young and I was growing up, I played a lot of Blitz on the Internet Chess Club. It was one of the predecessors to chess.com. And there was no cameras or audio or these things. But one thing that people did was you could commit. You would write comments about your games and things of this nature. And so I was actually doing very similar where instead of talking, I was writing and chatting during some of the games that I was playing. So that was something that I was doing that was very, very beneficial without that. I don't think that I would have been able to have the success that I've had streaming. I think it would have taken much longer to get used to it and feel comfortable with it. But I already had that built-in advantage. Additionally, when I was younger up until I think I was 10 or 11, I don't remember exactly. I did not actually have a TV. Well, I had a TV, but I didn't have cable. So I did not watch TV growing up. So I listened to the radio a lot. I listened to a lot of baseball games in New York Yankees specifically. And so I think by listening to those games, like I”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just about streaming, though. There's this quote that, I mean, that I love, which is the Steve Jobs quote, which is you can never connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. And when I look at how I got into streaming, there were all these things that happened along the way.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably like late 50s, mid 50s, late 50s. I mean, he drank too much, so he died young, but. Yeah, like he left the hospital in Moscow and went to play a blitz term. He beat Kasparov.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of, yeah. I think if you look at actually not even just top Grand Masters, but like, or not even World Chance, but top grand masters, he probably had the most interesting life by far. And even as an example of how much he loved Chess and how what a character was, I think when he was dying in like 19, I think it was 1989 or maybe it was 91, when he was dying, he actually left the hospital to go play a blitz tournament in Moscow and he actually beat Gary Kasparov in that Blitz tournament in one of the games.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Historical chess figure. I would say probably Mikkel Towell, he was the former world champion. Now he lived a very, very exciting life, let's put it that. He was somebody who drank. He's from Latvia. He's called the magician from Riga. So he drank a lot. He smoked a lot. A lot of other stuff as well.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's mainly he's just very charismatic. He's very charismatic. He knows the brand that he has, and he doesn't pretend to fake it. He knows what his brand is and he owns it.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To inspire like Fide, the governing bodies and others feel like, wow, these people are having such success. We surely can do something different. We can change things. And somehow it has not happened, which is in a way very, very disheartening to me because I want to see more interest in chess that, you know, you want to see more sponsors, more of the general public getting excited by the game. So it is one of those things that's very, very difficult. Yeah.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Inevitably, what leads these buffs. And the thing that leads to it is at the end of the day, people in the chess world have this natural tendency to want to not work together. You want to hang on to whatever piece of the chess world you have as opposed to thinking about it from the standpoint of what's good for one is good for all. And so it's one of those things that now that I'm in this situation, having seen these booms to bust, I remember when I was younger, I would very oftentimes think like, why is it the chess isn't bigger? Why do we struggle so much to grow the game? And I think, you know, we see the reason. So now when I'm in this position, it's also very tough because I know what's happened. You try to learn from the past, but you still, it still feels very hard to break out from that. It feels very tough. And it's also difficult because another thing that people kind of misunderstand is from time to time, I'll talk about myself. I'll actually talk about levy and incomes or how well we're doing. And the main reason that I talk about this is that I want”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this also goes again try not to be super negative, but this also goes to the chess world as a whole. Like one of the things I've been in this chess world for a very long time, not talking about online, but just like the chess world itself. And I've been very fortunate because I've seen a couple booms and busts. So like in the late, actually it wasn't late 90s. It was in the mid 90s. There was a period of time when Intel and IBM and all these tech companies were very big on chess. There's this PCA Grand Prix World Championship held in New York. There also were, I think there was like the Deep Blue stuff later on in the late 90s with Gary Kasparov. And you had a lot of interest at the time. And then it sort of went up in flames for a couple different reasons. Also in the late 2000s or maybe mid-2000s, there was a group in Seattle that was very big on chess. They hosted the U.S. Championship, all these different things. There have been a lot of booms and busts. Of course, if you go way back, there was the Fisher boom as well.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it's specifically useful to get into it. I think there are a lot of layers. People felt there are things like abuses of power, things of that nature. There were a lot of things that were said. I don't want to be super negative about what happened specifically, but one thing people will note is that prior to what did happen in April of 20, I think that was 2021 now, there were a lot more collaborations. The Chessworld was much more together as a whole. A lot of streamers did things together. After what happened in April, there was a big sort of separation. A lot of streamers went off in their own directions because of what happened. So that is, I mean, that's not the whole story. There's a lot more to it, of course. But I think it's fair to say that.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a lot of things that have been said about Chesapeake, about what she did. At the end of the day, the way that I view it is pretty straightforward. You don't have to agree with what she did, the manner in which she did things, but it pushed the directory and chess on Twitch forward in a way that would not have been possible with anybody else at the time. Chess.com, for example, they were not directly pushing it. So you needed someone who was pushing it. And that, so to me, when I look at the whole boom actually of what happened on Twitch, in many ways, I think she is just as responsible as I was, Levy was, Botez was, and the bras were. All of us were extremely fortunate because you didn't have someone pushing it forward and chess.com was not really that involved at the time, it never would have gotten to where it was. So you can sort of look at it and say, okay, you don't agree with what happened, but you needed someone like that who was going to push, push really hard to get chest to where it is today.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's what I will say. The whole streamers and the whole boom of chess, there are certain people, certain entities that are very, very important to what happened. There are a lot of people in the right place at the right time, myself, Botez, the Chess Bras, Levy as well. We were all kind of in the right place at the right time. But just having the personalities”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually don't fill the lows, and I think the main reason that I don't fill the lows is because at the end of the day, I've been very fortunate, even as a chess player, very, very fortunate, travel the world, meet people. I've lived a great life. So for me to see myself as a streamer doing so well and bringing joy to people, I don't feel like I'm in a position. Maybe this is wrong to say this because mental health is very important. But for myself, I feel like I'm very lucky. I don't really have any right to complain. So I don't really fill those lows in the same way. There are times when there's certain things like Reddit or otherwise that will get on my nerves a little bit, but I'm able to realize that I'm so fortunate. And so I don't generally struggle with the lows that much.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Person, like I have at a couple of events, like just talking to them, hearing their story, just knowing that I can bring them some joy is, again, at the end of the day, it's why are you doing it? That's what it's about. If I can bring people joy, if it's someone working, working in a factory all day, someone in the middle of the country, if I bring them joy through my chest, that means a lot. You know, if it's a kid, for example, if I can inspire them to take up chests in a more serious way, or even honestly, if they just learn from chess certain skills, like critical thinking, and that leads to them becoming like a great scientist or something down the road, that is what I'm ultimately hoping. That's what I hope will come out of it.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean many things, I think being a very strong chess player and having had a following was incredibly important at the start. I think anybody, whether it's chess or whatever field, if you have that following to begin with from your career or whatever activity or video game you do, that's already a big step up if you have that to begin with. So that definitely played a big role. I think more than that though, for me, it's about the fans. It's about hearing from people how they feel. I mean, there are trolls, obviously, but the positive messages you hear when you hear about people who are struggling in life, whether it's, say, I've heard people talk about having cancer. You hear about someone going through a divorce or they're just trying to make it through day to day. When you hear about things like that, I think it really puts it all into perspective about what it all means at the end of the day. And so for me, it really is the fans that they give me that motivation. They are the reason I do it. And when I meet, when I meet some of these fans in person,”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You learn a lot along the way, and I think now having done that, there probably are several other potential careers that I could have if I really wanted to.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know if that's specifically streaming, but I think streaming has taught me a lot about sort of life and also how to run a business, honestly. Like I have read a lot of business books and one of the things with streaming is that when you start out, it's like this very small thing. It's just you, maybe you have a couple of people who help you along the way. But as it becomes bigger or bigger, if there's a boom, you suddenly start having to hire employees. You're basically running this business. Like for me, I've learned a lot about that because there was this book that I read some years back. I think it was by Mary Buffett. It was on Warren Buffett and how he tries to be hands-off when he buys these companies, it's hands-off management stays the same. You don't do anything. And I actually, I try to do things kind of the same way where like I try to be hands off. There are a couple of people around me. I leave a lot of the general day-to-day decisions up to them. And then things that are really important, obviously I'm involved in, but I try to do things like that. So streaming is.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think the thing that I've learned is I'm obviously very good at chess, but that doesn't automatically mean that I'm a genius and everything else. And I feel like that's another thing actually I really, really admire about Magnus is that he is the world champion, is the best player, but he does not automatically believe that that translates to every area of life. I feel like with some other world champions, they think that they're great no matter what they do. And that's not intentionally trying to be like rude. But I do feel like there's certain people who feel like that. Like anything they say is right and they are the authority when in reality, like we are the authorities when it comes to chess. Like we know chess the best. We are the experts, but that doesn't automatically mean we're geniuses and everything else.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I don't think shorting will be banned, but I think it's very dangerous that everybody has access to being able to do things like that.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I actually try not to do that. I almost only take long positions, specifically because I feel like you're act. Betting like on world collapsing, I just feel like morally I don't want to be in that I don't I don't want to have that viewpoint I think you know that sort of is another thing that I've noticed like I've been very lucky I've traveled a lot I've met a lot of famous people and the one thing that I've noticed is like a lot of the people who are the most successful they're the ones who are very optimistic no matter what is happening day to day they remain very optimistic about the future of where things are going so so I try not to enter that situation I think as far as like shorting specifically the real danger to me is that anybody can now invest and I feel like actually some of these apps like Robinhood they go out of their way to try and make it seem like it's this fun game like I've seen people where you place a trade and it like it gives you like like these stickers or these pop-ups like of confetti and it's like wait a sec what's going on here with the whole with the whole game like people are sort of they're going after the wrong thing”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that really sort of, it was very difficult dealing with that, the stress every day looking, seeing those losses. And after that, I kind of decided I would never put myself in such a situation again. And so that's why I don't do shorting. And then separately, I think I post a reply to this comment, but in 2021 as Tesla started going up, I actually started selling puts. And I did quite well off of that. So it's sort of play both sides, never like become hard set with your conviction, like where you refuse like this is just like it has to go down or like it has to go up. Just sure you'd be, you have to be willing to adapt.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when I did those plays, that was small amounts of money, and that was only via puts. That was where I would buy puts or put spreads on it. So it wasn't something where I was straight shorting. I would never actually do that because it's just not worth the risk and I don't want to ever be in a situation where I have to think about those sorts of things. And I think a better example is there was a period in 2016 actually shortly before the candidates when I actually was in oil. I had a long position in oil. And this is when oil completely crashed. It went very, I don't think it went below. It got below 30 even. It went very low and of course the Saudis were not cutting. I think they were they cutting or not cutting production. But anyway, there was a period in 2016 where I had a big long position in one of the 3x oil ETFs and it kept going down day after day after day. And then of course right near the bottom I finally couldn't take it anymore. I took a lot.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“ETNs would actually go up. Every single Wednesday of the month that the minutes came out. So it would follow things like that. Now, of course, I wasn't trading huge, huge volume, but I found a trend there. Of course, it stopped working at a certain point. But those are the sorts of things. They just interest me. Even if it's not something I'm doing to make a living trying to spot those trends, it's always been something that has found me.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's sort of everything. I think, first of all, obviously, I'm interested in investing. I have been for many, many years. I've done investing trading for at least a decade now. So I am very interested on that level. I'm also quite interested as well because when you see the policy that's being dictated, like you look in the last six months specifically, you see the Fed policy around things like interest rates, unemployment, things of this nature. It is something that interests me also because I do invest in real estate aside from the stock market. So therefore, I'm always keeping an eye on these sorts of things and always looking. And as a better example, I'm looking for trends. So if we go back to, I think it was 20, I could have the year wrong, it was 2015 or 2016. There was a pattern that I found that on the Fed minutes that came out, I believe 2, 215, I think it's on the Wednesday of third Wednesday of every month, that gold would actually, the gold ETFs and”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Normal day. Oh, perfectly productive. Okay. So perfectly productive would be along the lines if I wake up at like 7:30 to 8 o'clock Probably I watch either Bloomberg or CNBC for 30 minutes to an hour and then watch the markets for maybe an hour or two, look at certain things that are going on.”
2022-10-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source