YouSaid · the spoken record

Magnus Carlsen

lines on the record: 187
first: 2022-08-27
most recent: 2022-08-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I feel like it's a science. Yeah, I think 20 games would help a lot Yeah. But I know that they've already developed AI bots that are pretty good at recognizing somebody's style. Which is quite fascinating.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would love to have a tournament online where let's say you play 10 of the best players in the world and you don't for each round you don't know who you're playing.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My attack. If it doesn't work, I'm going to lose. But I had so much adrenaline. So that was fine. I thought I was going to win. Then at some point I realized that it's not so clear. And my time was ticking and I was just getting so nervous. I still remember what happened. We played this time trouble face where he had fair little time, but I had even less. And I just remember I cannot remember much of it just that when it was over I was just so relieved because then it was clear the position was probably gonna figure out in a draw. Otherwise, I'm often nervous before games. But when I get there, it's all business. And especially when I'm playing well, I'm never afraid of losing when I play because I trust my instincts, I trust my. My skills.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really depends. I have been at times. I think the most nervous I ever been was. Game 10 of the World Championship in 2018. I thought that was just a thrilling game. I was black. I basically abandoned the Queens side at some point to attack him on the king's side, and I knew that”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so, at least over time. I'm a lot more proud of my streak of being rated number one in the world, which is now since I think the summer of 2011. I'm a lot more proud of that than the World Championships.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said that back a long time ago as well. For me, I don't know if it never happens, so I don't know what would have happened, but I was thinking like the moment that I realized that I'm not the best player in the world, I felt like morally I have to renounce the World Championship title, you know, because it doesn't mean anything. As long as you're not the best player.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's, no, I think that's really lovely. And I would love to see that in other areas as well, that you can, regardless of what happens, you can have good chat about the game. You can just talk about the ideas with people who understand what you understand.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, for sure. I think for every match that's been, you would briefly discuss the game with your opponent after the game, no matter how much you hate each other. And I think that's lovely. And Kasparov, I mean, he was quoted. You hate that guy. And he's like, yeah, sure, but he's the only one who understands me.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't know. This is the thing, though. We really don't know about the long term conflicts. And a lot of people try to do the right thing in this sense, which I don't really blame at all. It's just that It's just that we don't know. And I guess sometimes there are other ways you want to try and help as well.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it still does. So the president of the World Chess Federation, who was just reelected, is a Russian. I like him personally for sure, but he is quite connected to the Kremlin. And it's quite clear that the Kremlin considers it at least semi-important goal to bring the chess crown home to Russia. So it's still definitely a factor. And I mean, I can answer for in the karaoke in case, like, I don't have a strong opinion on whether he should have been banned or not. Obviously, I don't agree with anything that he says. But in principle, I think that you should ban either no Russians or all Russians. I'm generally not particularly... against either, but I don't love banning wrong opinions, even if they are as reprehensible as his have been.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bit closer than people thought. I would look at it in the way that everything went wrong and I still won which probably means that I was pretty big favorite to begin with.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somebody scores and then things change, and this gives people the illusion that the matchup was very close. Which, while actually just means that the nature of the game makes the matches close very often, but it's always much more likely that one of the teams is going to break away than the others. And in other matches as well, even though a lot of people, before the match in 2016 against kariarchin, there were people who thought before the match that I was massively overrated as a favorite and that essentially the match was pretty close, like whatever 60, 40 or some people even stayed like 55, 45. And what I felt was that the match went very, very wrong for me and I still won. And some people saw that as an indication that the prematch probabilities were probably...”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, for championships. Like, they generally win because the other slightly weaker team, they're good enough to defend to make it very, very difficult for the others. But when they actually have to create the chances, then they have no chance. And then it very often ends with a blowout as it did in our match. If I hadn't won game six, it probably would have been very, very close. He might have edged it. There's obviously a bigger chance that I would have edged it. But this is just what happens a lot in chess, but also in football that matches our close and then they”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no. Larger sample size is always good for me. So World Championship is a great parallel to football because it's a low-scoring game. And if the better player or the better team scores, they win most of the time.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel like individual past results hasn't necessarily been a great indicator of world championship results. I feel like overall strength is more More important. I mean, to be fair, I only think Ding has a very small edge. Like, difference is not big at all. But our individual head-to-head record was probably the main reason that a lot of people thought Nepo had a good chance against me as well. It was like four to one in his favor before the match, but that was just another example of why that may not necessarily mean anything. Also in our case, it was a very, very low sample size, I think, about the size of the match in total 14 games. And that generally doesn't mean much”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I would say he's very, very good at that and understanding the, you know, the dynamic factors as we call them like material versus time especially.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Generally, I would consider that Ding has a slightly better overall chest strength, which would So Nepo is even better at calculating short lines than I am, but he can sometimes lack a little bit of depth. Like in short He's extremely quick, but he can sometimes lack a bit of depth. Also recently he's improved his openings quite a bit, so now he has a lot of good ideas and he's very, very solid. Ding is not quite as well prepared, but he has an excellent understanding of dynamics and imbalances in chess. I would say”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a cool tournament. It's a good challenge. You know, why not? It's something that could be a motivation. It motivated me to get in the best shape of my life that had been till then. So it was a good thing. And 2013 match brought me a lot of joy as well. So I'm very, very happy that I did that. But I never had any thoughts that I'm going to keep the title for a long time. Immediately after the match in 2013, I mean, also before the match, I'd spoken against the fact that champion is seated into the final, which I thought was unfair. After the match, I made a proposal that we have a different system where the champion doesn't have these privileges and people's reaction, both players and chess community was generally like, okay, we're good. We don't want that. You keep your privilege. And I was like, okay, whatever.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I won the championship in 2013. I said no to the candidates in 2011. I didn't particularly like the format. I also was just not in a mood. I didn't want the pressure. That was connected with the World Championship, and I was perfectly content at the time to play the tournaments that I did play also to be ranked number one in the world. I was comfortable with the fact that I knew that I was the best and I didn't need a title to be. Show others. And what happened later is I suddenly decided to play. In 2013, I liked, they changed the format. I liked it better. I just decided, you know, it could be interesting. Let's try and get this. There really wasn't more than that to it. It wasn't fulfilling lifelong dream or anything. I just thought, you know, let's play.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then so Nakamura was one of many people who just didn't believe me Which is fair because I've talked before about not necessarily wanting to defend again, but I never talked as concretely or was as serious as this time. So he simply didn't believe me. And he was very vocal about that. And he said, nobody believed me, none other players may or may and not have been true. And then, yeah, he lost the last game and he didn't qualify. But to answer the question, no, already at that point decided that I wouldn't play. I would have liked it less. If he had...”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like that a lot. I love the idea of playing him in the next world championship. And originally, I was sure that I wanted to announce right after the tournament, the match that this was it, I'm done. I'm not playing the next one. But this lit a fire under me, so that made me think, you know. This actually motivates me, and I just wanted to get it out there for several reasons to create more hype about the candidates, to sort of motivate myself a little bit, maybe motivate him. Also, obviously, I wanted to give people a heads up for the candidates that you might be playing for more than... More than first place. Like normally, the candidates is first place or bust. It's like the world championship.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yeah, sure. Thank you, Nat. So, after the last match, I did an interview. Right after where I talked about the fact that I was unlikely to play the next one, I'd spoken privately to both family, friends, and, of course, also my chess team that this was likely going to be the last. The last match. What happened was that right before the World Championship match, there was this young player, Alreasa Ferrosia, he had a dramatic rise. He rose to second in the world rankings. He was 18 then, he's 19 now. He qualified for the candidates. And they felt like there was at least a half realistic possibility. He could be the challenger for the next World Championship. And that sort of lit a fire under me.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's fine. Like, you will have free days as well. So I don't think that will be a problem. And also, you have to prepare two sets of openings for each day, which makes it more difficult for the teams preparing. Think is also good.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but let's say you play 12 days to games a day, you know, that's 24. I feel like that's already quite a bit better. You play like one black game, one white game.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He blessed us a bit too fast to their credit, this was suggested by FIDA as well. First, start to have two games per day, and let's say you have 45 minutes a game plus 15 or 30 seconds per move, that means that each session will probably be about or a little less than two hours Would be a start. Also, what we're playing in the tournament that I'm playing here in Miami, which is four games a day with 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per move. Those were more interesting than the one there is now. And I understand that there are a lot of traditions. People don't want to change the world championship. That's all fine. I just think that the world championship should do a better job of trying to reflect who's the best overall chess player.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but already less time emphasizes pure chess because defensive techniques are much harder to execute with a little time.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're going to have a world champion and call them the best players, best player, you've got to make sure that the format increases the chance of finding the best player. So I think having more games, and if you're going to have a lot more games, then you need to decrease the time control a bit, which in turn, I think, is also a good thing because in very long time controls with deep preparation, you can sort of mask a lot of your deficiencies as a chess player because you have a lot of time to think and to defend. And also, yeah, you have the preparation. So I think those would be for me to play, those would be the main things more games and less time.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think 12 games, or now 14 games, that there is for the World Championship is Fairly low sample size. If you want to determine who the best player is or at least the best player in that particular matchup, you need more games. And I think to some extent”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and that's why it's also been incredibly frustrating in other matches, like when I know, when we play draw after draw. And I can just, I know that I'm better, I can sense during the game that I understand it better than them, but I cannot get over the hum”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, the games themselves were very close. I had a winning position in the first game that I couldn't really get anywhere for a lot of games. And he had a couple games where he could potentially have won. Then in the last game, I was a little bit better. And eventually they were all drawn. But I felt like all the way that this is an interesting match against an opponent who is at this position at this point equal to me. And so losing that would not have been a disaster because in all the other matches I would know that I would have lost against somebody who I know I'm much better than. And that would be a lot harder for me to take.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then every Essentially. There was certainly a stress involved the first time as well, but it was nothing compared to the others. So the only world championship after that that I really enjoyed was the one in 2018 against the American Fabiano Carana. And what that made that different is that I've been kind of slumping for a bit and he'd been on the rise. So our ratings were very, very similar. They were so close that if at any point during the match I'd lost the game. He would have been ranked as number one in world. Like our ratings were so close that for each draw they didn't move. And”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it also has been like, it's been a core part of my identity for a while now that I am world champion. And so there's not an option of losing that.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I mean, the blunder is okay. Like when I sit down at the board, then it's mostly been fine. Because then I'm focused on. Then I'm focused on the game. And I know that I can play the game. It's a time in between knowing that, you know, I feel like losing is not an option because it's the world championship and because in a world championship there are two players. There's a winner and a loser. If I don't win a random tournament that I play, then, you know, I'm usually, it depends on a tournament. I might be disappointed for sure might even be pretty pissed, but ultimately, you know, you go on to the next one. With the World Championship, you don't go on to the next one. It's like it's years.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So for the world championship, it's been fair of losing for sure. Other tournaments, love of winning is great, great factor. And that's why I also get more joy from winning most tournaments than I do for winning the World Championship, because then it's mostly been a relief. I also think I enjoy winning more now than I did before because I feel like I'm a little bit more relaxed now. And I also know that it's, you know, it's not going to last forever. So every little win, I appreciate a lot more now. In terms of fear of losing, that's a huge reason why I'm not going to play the world championship because it really didn't give me a lot of joy. It really was all about avoiding losing.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I basically can't fuck up ever if I want to reach that goal. And so I think reaching 2900 is pretty unlikely. The reason I've set the goal is to have something to play for, to have a motivation to actually try and be at my best when I play. Because otherwise I'm playing to some extent mostly for fun these days in that I love to play. I love to try and win but I don't have like a lot to I don't have a lot to prove or anything but that gives me at least the motivation to try and Try and be at my best all the time, which I think is something to aim for. So at the moment, I'm quite enjoying that process of... Of trying to optimize”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Preparations, everything, but not necessarily like selecting tournaments and so on, but like just optimizing in terms of preparation, like making sure I never have any bad days.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and my rating is obviously carried through thousands of games. Right now, my rating is 28.61, which is decent. I think that pretty much corresponds to the level I have at the moment, which means in order to reach 2900, I would have to either get better at chess, which I think is fairly hard to do, at least considerably better. So what I would need to do is try and optimize even more in terms of”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, you play with a factor of 10, which means that if I were to play against an opponent who's rated the same as me, I would be expected to score 50%, obviously, and that means that I would win five points with a win, lose five points with the draw, and then equal if I draw. If your opponent is 200 points lower rated, you're expected to score 75% and so on.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's cool. I mean, that could be interesting. I think also maybe sometimes it's just clearance, basically. It adds an extra element Of clearance. So I think there are many different variants. I don't think any of them are better than the one that has been played for at least a thousand years, but it's certainly interesting”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, sometimes one of your pieces occupy a square. I mean, let me just set up a position. Let's put it like this, for instance. Like here, I mean, there are a lot of ways to checkmate for white, like this, for instance, or there are several ways. But this would be...”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No castling probably forces you to be a little bit more defensive at the start, or I would guess so, because you cannot suddenly escape with the kings that it's going to make the game a bit slower at the start. But I feel like eventually it's going to... It's going to make games more for sure. Then you have some weirder variants like where the pawns can move both diagonally and forward. And also you have self-capture chests, which is quite interesting, so that ponds can or could.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, there are several. So no castling chest has been promoted by former world champion Vladimir Kramnik. There have been a few tournaments. With that not any that I've participated in, though. I kind of like it. Also, my coach uses non-castling engines quite a bit to analyze regular positions just to get a different perspective.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're actually forced to play symmetrically. Like, you cannot actually try and play in a more sort of interesting manner.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But yeah, symmetry is a good default, and it's a problem that by playing symmetrical armed with good preparation in regular chess, it's just a little bit too easy to dry. I guess if you analyzed a lot in chess 960, then the... Lot of positions would end up being prettyish as well.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's the thing about chess though. So let's say why it opens with E4, which has always been the most played move. There are many ways to meet that, but the most solid ways of playing has always been the symmetrical response With E5, and then there's Turilope, there's the Petroph opening and so on. You just banned symmetry on the first move in chess, you would get more interesting games.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, they are a lot more interesting than the others. In some of them, it appears that if you don't play symmetrically at the start, then you're probably going to be in a pretty bad position.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very, very different. And I mean, understandably, engines have an even greater advantage in 960 than they have in classical chess. No, it's super interesting. And that's why I also, I really wish that we played more classical chess like long games four to seven hours in Fish Random Chess 960 because then you really need that time even on the first moves. What usually happens is that you get 15 minutes before the game, you're getting told the position 15 minutes before the game and then you can think about it a little bit even check the computer but that's all the time you have but then you really need to figure it out and like some of the positions”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's happened in my games as well. Like, I forgot about castling. And I've been attacking a king over here. And then all of a sudden it escapes to the other side. I think Fisher chess is good that the maps will generally be worse than regular chest. Like I think the starting position is as close to ideal for creating a competitive game as possible, but they will still be interesting and diverse enough that you can play very, very interesting games.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can still castle, but that makes it interesting. So you still have it's still castles in the same way. So let's say the king is like here.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that basically just means that the ponds are in the same way and the major pieces are distributed randomly on the last rank. Only that there have to be obviously bishops of opposite color and the king has to be in between the rooks so that you can cancel both ways.”
2022-08-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #315 – Magnus Carlsen: Greatest Chess Player of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source