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This podcast is part

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of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Perpetual Chess.

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We will introduce our guest in a minute, but first I wanted

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to give a shout out to our presenting chess education

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sponsor, Chessable.com. This week,

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I wanted to plug a course by a friend and

0:22

former housemate of our guest,

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Grandmaster Jesse Cry. He's out

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with Dojo's 1E4, including

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his recommendations in an E4 repertoire,

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including a spicy line in the Milner-Berry

0:34

Gambit. So that is definitely something worth

0:36

checking out. And Chessable, of course, has tons of both

0:39

free courses and courses for purchase.

0:41

And you can check out some of my own favorites at

0:44

a link that I will post in the show description

0:46

for our guest this week. I am really excited

0:49

to speak with him. He is a, he was a U.S. prodigy,

0:51

someone whose name I've been hearing in U.S. chess

0:54

circles for decades. He had the

0:56

record of the youngest U.S. national

0:58

master until Hikaru Nakamura

1:01

broke it in 1998. At age 15,

1:03

he became the youngest American IM since

1:05

Bobby Fischer. He did not end up becoming

1:07

a professional chess player. He got a degree

1:10

in political economy and statistics at

1:12

UC Berkeley. Now he works in machine

1:14

learning, but chess is still very much a part of

1:17

his life. And he has a brand new book

1:19

out with Quality Chess called How I Became a

1:21

Chess Grandmaster. I read it. It's an

1:23

absolute joy

1:23

to read. And you learn about

1:26

his life. You learn some chess. You learn some chess

1:28

improvement. And I'm excited to talk about

1:30

all those things with our guest, Grandmaster Vinay Bhat.

1:32

Welcome, Vinay. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having

1:34

me on.

1:35

Oh, sure. Yeah, I'm really excited. I love

1:38

this kind of book. There, there aren't that many

1:40

like it. The one book that,

1:42

and actually this is someone whose record you were

1:44

affiliated with, Stuart Rachel's. I don't know if

1:46

you're familiar with Stuart Rachel's book.

1:49

I know, I know of him, but somebody

1:52

told me afterwards to check

1:54

out how I think it was the best I saw in

1:56

chess. Yes. The best I saw in chess. So

1:58

John Donson

1:59

gave me a. He was like, hey, there's

2:01

not, it doesn't feel like there's many books like this

2:03

out there, but this other reminded him

2:05

of

2:06

Stuart Rachel's book. Yeah.

2:08

And obviously you guys each have unique stories

2:10

to tell and they're both fantastic books. But

2:12

so to me, that's, that's a very high compliment

2:15

because I'm a big fan of that book as well. And

2:17

both, and both of you guys, of course, are of different

2:19

generations. So have different stories to tell

2:22

about so many

2:24

sort of contemporary famous chess players

2:27

and even legends of the game, which we will get

2:29

to. But, but I want to start with

2:31

sort of what became a critical

2:33

moment in your chess development. So you take

2:36

us through your whole development in the book,

2:38

starting as a kid and you were a

2:40

fast riser as a kid, of course, as anyone

2:43

who holds the records that you do would be. But

2:45

around the age of 2,200, you did hit a

2:47

tough spot. You kind of stagnated

2:49

for a couple of years. And you said

2:51

that you didn't even necessarily

2:54

notice so much at the time until you were looking

2:56

back on it. So now that you do look back

2:58

on it, what do you think was, was behind

3:01

that

3:02

kind of inevitable struggle, but struggle nonetheless?

3:05

Yeah, I think it's I think you're right

3:07

to say it's probably inevitable. Like everybody

3:09

hits a plateau at some point. For

3:12

me, I think there are probably a couple of things

3:14

going on. One is that I loved

3:17

playing so much that like it,

3:19

even though I wasn't gaining many like

3:21

any rating points, I also wasn't losing a ton

3:24

either. So I was I was just call it

3:26

plus or minus 10, 20 points over like

3:28

two years. And

3:30

probably that

3:32

like that joy was still there and playing. But

3:34

for me, what what I was doing

3:37

was really I kept

3:39

studying the same things that took me to 2200. So

3:42

I used to study Morphe,

3:44

Kapablanca, Tactics, Puzzles.

3:47

And it's basically those three things just

3:50

like kept doing them. And so one of the

3:52

things I realized later on is that

3:54

like there's there's this like aphorism

3:57

or like, you know, cliche of

3:59

like.

3:59

run with the horses that brought you here. But

4:03

as I was playing better players, they

4:05

were taking advantage of some of my weaknesses. So whether

4:07

it was openings or strategic play, things

4:10

like that. What I realized is

4:12

there were parts of my game that were just really weak

4:15

by comparison. I'd never studied

4:17

them. Guys like Capablanca and Morphe,

4:19

they're great players, but you may not pick

4:21

up everything

4:22

from their games alone. And so

4:26

afterwards, it felt like that was one of the big

4:28

things that I was doing wrong.

4:30

That I felt like, oh no, if I

4:32

just keep looking at more

4:34

Capablanca games, look at the same

4:36

games over and over again, I'll get a little bit more information

4:39

out of them.

4:39

And I'll get closer and closer being able to play like

4:41

him. But

4:43

some variety helps, I think.

4:45

Okay. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it was around that

4:48

time that you started working with Grandmaster Gregory

4:50

Kadanov. Is that right? Yeah, actually. It was

4:52

the end of the two-year period where I started

4:54

working with him. What I realized in writing

4:56

the book was actually like, my parents were much more

4:58

aware of me getting stuck.

5:01

And so when I was

5:03

talking to them about some of this, they

5:05

actually had been debating

5:08

even before the two years were up that like, hey,

5:10

maybe I should change coaches. But

5:13

I don't actually remember

5:15

being in any of those conversations.

5:18

But as soon as I started working with Kadanov,

5:20

I think he quickly diagnosed some

5:23

of those same things. So

5:24

my study, like, there were some things

5:26

I kept from my old study habits, like, you

5:29

know, annotate your own games, look at your own games and

5:31

try and learn from them. But in terms of other

5:34

things, everything else changed, basically.

5:38

We looked at different players' games, not Capablanca.

5:41

We did calculation puzzles. He wanted

5:43

me to change my repertoire, just to experience

5:45

different positions. And

5:48

actually, like with Kadanov,

5:50

the first year, all of a sudden, like I

5:52

gained 100 points, I think. And

5:55

he helped me all the way through the I am title

5:57

and a little bit beyond that. Okay,

5:59

yeah. And I had the privilege to

6:01

interview Grandmaster Kaidanov. And we talked

6:03

in that he was a pioneer in doing

6:06

chess lessons online or on phone

6:08

as he talked about. And there's

6:11

tons of great chess improvement advice in my interview with

6:13

Grandmaster Kaidanov. But I'm curious from

6:15

that perspective, Vinay, so were you doing these lessons by

6:18

phone? By phone. So

6:20

we started in 1997. So

6:23

you can imagine that like pre-cell

6:25

phones were actually on a landline with each other.

6:28

And both of us just had a chess board in front of us. And

6:31

even though like I started playing on ICC

6:34

probably right around then. So like people started

6:36

doing online lessons.

6:38

But for whatever reason, we never

6:40

migrated to ICC. Like,

6:43

you know, all our lessons for probably

6:45

four years, we're all on the phone

6:48

with like a physical board in front of us. And that

6:50

actually like,

6:51

even now I find it sometimes, even

6:54

when I was playing like my last tournaments, maybe

6:56

like last time I played a classical tournament was 2014.

6:59

But even there to prepare, I

7:01

brought a physical board with me. Because

7:04

like, I'm just so used to seeing like

7:06

the actual board and not just like

7:08

a computer screen.

7:10

Yeah, yeah. And

7:13

in your detailing of your relationship with

7:15

Kaidanov, it struck me as sort

7:17

of you guys both sort of had a mature

7:20

approach. And maybe this developed more

7:22

as time went on. But I was struck that even

7:24

though you're a prodigy, I mean, you were the biggest

7:27

name in chess. I, you know, I was older

7:29

than you, like seven, eight years older than you. But I remember,

7:32

you know, always looking at the top for the age group

7:34

and seeing, you know, seeing your name. But

7:37

you guys at some point consciously

7:40

developed a plan

7:40

where you said, Hey, look, you know, I'm not going to study

7:43

chess like, you know, 30 hours a week

7:45

on my own. And you had to sort of structure a plan

7:47

around that. And at what point

7:50

did that sort of enter into the conversation

7:52

with Grandmaster Cardano?

7:54

That was probably a little over

7:56

a year into the like, our

7:58

student-teacher relationship. it didn't

8:01

start immediately. I think

8:04

we were debating, okay, what

8:07

are some of the ways that I should expand

8:09

my repertoire and sort of learn new

8:11

positions, get better in some of

8:13

my weaker areas. And so one of the

8:16

discussion points was around the Sicilian

8:18

versus the French. And

8:20

I think the reality was is that I

8:24

was still pretty focused on school. And

8:26

so I think we made the right call

8:29

or like largely he made the right call, honestly,

8:32

that like the French was gonna be like a

8:34

good opening for me to learn, but also not

8:36

as much theory to remember as

8:39

like mainline Sicilians. But

8:42

yeah, actually I think there's a lot of things that

8:44

I feel like make a lot more sense to

8:47

me now that I'm older. At the

8:49

time it's sort of like, well, he's like, he's

8:51

like great player, great coach, very

8:54

nice guy. And so it was like, okay, like, yeah,

8:57

I'll go with what he's suggesting, but

9:00

in retrospect actually it makes even more sense.

9:03

Yeah, and I'm curious Vinay because

9:06

you clearly have obviously a love

9:08

for chess, but also a love for chess books. You describe

9:10

a lot of the books you read, we'll get your

9:13

recommendations later. But

9:16

so how did it work in terms of like,

9:19

you weren't willing to put in

9:21

tons of time, or at least you could say you were

9:23

prioritizing school, as

9:26

you said, but you were

9:28

reading books. So was the book reading

9:30

more for fun or was it just like not

9:33

enough in terms of obviously, Kadanova someone

9:35

who's worked with many of the top talents.

9:38

So how did that work?

9:40

The book reading was like partly

9:43

for fun. And that's partly how I picked like

9:45

game collections from players who I really

9:47

enjoyed seeing their games. I

9:50

definitely, like, I don't wanna say that I didn't study

9:52

chess. Like I certainly studied chess. It's

9:55

just, I remember like Kadanova

9:58

and I were literally talking about.

9:59

how many AP classes I might take

10:02

in high school,

10:03

like say 10th grade, 11th grade and whatnot.

10:06

And I think that's where it was sort of like,

10:08

oh, like,

10:10

I'm gonna be spending a good amount of time studying

10:13

for like my exams and stuff like that.

10:15

And so therefore, like I may have less time

10:17

elsewhere. And so I

10:19

think one of the things that I

10:22

think he did a really good job of was like crafting

10:25

a training plan for me that was like, aware

10:27

of how much time or effort I could put in. I

10:31

certainly played actually, like I played a bunch of tournaments,

10:33

I read a good number of books.

10:36

But actually, like I imagine, if

10:39

you ask Khadanov about like, was

10:41

I like a super diligent student,

10:43

I think he would say no. Because

10:46

there, he would often assign calculation

10:48

problems to me for homework. And like, I would,

10:50

I would do some of them or I would like, kind

10:53

of make a half attempt at some of them,

10:56

where I think he really wanted me to like

10:58

sit and focus for like 10-15 minutes

11:00

on each problem. And

11:02

sometimes I was like, I

11:04

was really interested in like

11:07

kind of being a sponge for information, and then

11:09

I really enjoyed playing. And so that's why like

11:11

the books and then playing were always part of

11:13

like whatever studying I did, it

11:15

was sometimes harder for me to like, be

11:17

like, Oh, I need to study openings or

11:19

something or I need to do calculation problems.

11:22

That felt more like work. Yeah,

11:25

yeah.

11:25

Yeah, totally understandable. Well, it's nice. You

11:28

mentioned in the book, your parents were supportive

11:30

and didn't push you too hard. And to have sort

11:32

of the parlay of both like parents and a

11:34

coach who are understanding is, you

11:37

know, you can't take that for granted.

11:39

No, for sure. Actually, I feel like there

11:42

are a lot of like really talented junior

11:44

players who I saw coming up. So whether in the US

11:47

or in like world youth tournaments, but sometimes

11:50

it felt like yeah, like I, my

11:52

parents were they wanted me to do well.

11:54

And like if I'm if I was, especially in high

11:56

school, like if sometimes I was playing too many video

11:58

games, my like my parents

11:59

would be like, hey, like,

12:01

maybe you should, like, either do

12:03

some schoolwork or you should study

12:05

some chess or like go play tennis, do something

12:08

else. But it never was.

12:10

They never really

12:12

pushed me too hard for the results or

12:15

got upset about, hey, like, if I wasn't

12:17

performing, it didn't feel like

12:20

I saw them get upset at least.

12:22

So that's nice. And just out of

12:24

curiosity, as a parent, did your parents have,

12:27

like, strict rules around video games?

12:29

Not a ton.

12:32

I think if my grades

12:34

and stuff were suffering too much, then they probably,

12:37

like, that was sort of a, you

12:39

know, like how they would enter the conversation in

12:41

a way. Right. But so long as I was doing

12:44

well, especially at school, which was like the main

12:46

priority for them,

12:47

that was, then it

12:49

was sort of like, okay. So I, yeah, I

12:52

remember senior year, especially, I think I was like

12:55

playing a lot more video games

12:57

and like, but I managed to skate by

12:59

in school. What was your favorite game?

13:02

So there were like, there were a few actually. I

13:04

used to do a lot of like rally

13:07

car racing games. And

13:09

then there was like a baseball game, like High

13:11

Heat 2000. So

13:14

I would like play full like seasons.

13:17

Zelda was like a big one. But

13:20

yeah, I think those were all like,

13:22

that's where I spent a lot of time. Excellent.

13:25

Yeah, slightly later generation

13:27

than my video games. But anyway,

13:30

let's bring it back to openings I

13:32

found interesting in particular, because as you

13:34

say, and as you write about in the book, Grandmaster

13:37

Kadanov was helpful in making designing you a repertoire

13:40

that

13:42

wasn't too labor intensive. But

13:44

you also switched

13:46

repertoires around that time. And I wanted to give

13:48

a shout out to a friend of the pod, Juan

13:51

Miguel Garcia, who just

13:53

in time for our interview, linked me to your interview

13:55

with Sagar Shah over at Chessbase

13:58

India. So we got to check that out.

13:59

And in that you talk about when you switched to

14:02

D4. And he asks what

14:04

your advice is in terms of what

14:07

openings to choose according to your level

14:09

and when a change might be in order.

14:12

It's a good question. So for me, I felt

14:14

like I started

14:16

playing D4 when I was about 2,400 and

14:19

I'd been stuck there for actually a couple of years.

14:22

So second plateau, right? Second big

14:25

plateau, actually. Yeah. I

14:27

think there were three or four plateaus in my

14:30

chess career, it felt like.

14:33

I don't think openings are terribly important

14:35

at the very early stage. You need

14:37

to bring your pieces out, but you're

14:40

not typically going to get a mainline

14:42

position when you're 1,200 or 1,300. There's

14:46

a lot of things around tactics that I think are really important.

14:50

It takes some time also to develop

14:52

a feel for any opening. So Kaidana

14:55

have taught me the French defense and

14:58

before that I'd always been playing double kingpond,

15:00

E45 with either

15:01

openings like the Petrov

15:04

or the Philidor,

15:05

things like that. And

15:07

I'd also been playing the center counter, the Scandinavian

15:09

with E4, D5.

15:12

And when I first learned the French, I was probably

15:15

about 2250-ish,

15:16

maybe approaching 2,300. And

15:21

my first year results there, first six months,

15:23

were actually not that great. I lost a good

15:25

number of games there where I

15:27

didn't understand how to really

15:30

bring out my pieces in some of that. I

15:32

hadn't played those kinds of central, block central

15:35

positions.

15:37

And so I had to give it enough time to let

15:39

it bake, let some of the lessons sink in. And

15:42

actually then at some point, the French made

15:44

a ton of sense to me where I could play it,

15:47

maybe not on autopilot, but I could play

15:49

it for a long time.

15:51

Part of the reason I switched was it

15:54

helps to get experience in different positions.

15:56

Like depending on how you want to learn, you can find

15:59

that. spend a few years on an opening

16:02

in one area. If you notice your rating

16:04

getting stuck somewhere, maybe that's a sign that, hey,

16:06

like, it's time to change it up.

16:08

For me, I found that when I started playing

16:10

D4, part of it was that

16:13

I wasn't, I

16:15

was getting a lot of the same positions

16:18

after E4 that I'd been getting for a while.

16:20

And I just realized I wasn't enjoying playing some

16:22

of those positions anymore. And it took me a little, like,

16:25

like a lot of things, it's like, oh, it's so obvious in retrospect

16:28

of like, well, my mind wasn't in it for

16:30

some of those games.

16:32

But playing D4 meant I just

16:35

got a brand new thing from the get-go.

16:37

And so I started by playing the Trompowski,

16:39

like

16:40

D4, Nf6, Bg5, like not a theory heavy line. And

16:45

even when I became a GM, I

16:48

talk about this a little bit in the book of like, I used to

16:50

pick lines that were popular

16:52

from like the 1950s to the 1980s. Like

16:55

I used to play,

16:57

for a long time, I used to seek out

16:59

old lines that I felt like Grandmasters

17:01

had moved on from,

17:03

but weren't sort of dead equal. And

17:05

I,

17:07

like I did reasonably well in a lot of

17:09

openings against even GMs

17:11

where

17:13

you don't have to play always the main lines. It

17:15

helps sometimes, you can learn about new positions.

17:18

But I would say like short answer

17:21

for sort of,

17:23

for the question would be around sort of like rating

17:25

plateaus, you're feeling like, hey, I'm

17:28

not getting as much joy from playing some of

17:30

these middle game positions. Those are probably good signs

17:33

to try and switch it up. That

17:36

makes sense. And I'm guessing that as you mentioned,

17:38

your first plateau around 2,200, you

17:40

were only 10 to 11 years old. By

17:42

the time you have your 2,400 plateau, was

17:45

it much more a point of frustration

17:47

at that point? Were you more aware of it?

17:49

I was definitely more aware of it. And that's actually

17:51

the first plateau that I really remember.

17:54

Like when I was putting this together,

17:56

that was the one that I was like, oh yeah, I need a... That's...

17:59

That's where some of the meat will be

18:02

of piecing together what I studied,

18:04

what I could have done differently.

18:07

I think also part of the reason I ended up getting

18:09

stuck at 2400 for longer was because I

18:13

was getting frustrated. I

18:15

started by playing a number of tournaments and then I pulled

18:18

back a little bit from chess because

18:20

I was like,

18:22

when you know you're not doing as well or you're

18:24

not doing as well as you feel you can, it's

18:26

easy then to get frustrated. I

18:29

had other interests so I

18:31

stopped playing actually for a couple of years. On top

18:33

of the two-year normal plateau,

18:35

I stopped playing for another two years because I was just

18:38

like,

18:39

this isn't working for whatever reason. That

18:42

was when you were at university? Yep. Yeah.

18:45

My first two years at Cal, basically

18:48

I

18:48

didn't play any tournaments and then

18:51

I tried to play one tournament, the US Junior,

18:53

and it went really poorly. Yeah.

18:56

I mean, it's tough. Obviously,

18:59

that's a high level of competition so it's tough

19:01

to just walk off of campus

19:03

into a cauldron like that. I

19:07

think what I found is that I had lost some of the mental

19:09

stamina to just focus. The

19:11

first game of the tournament I could really focus,

19:14

call it the second game, third game, yes, but

19:17

by the fifth, sixth, all the way to

19:19

the ninth game, my mental focus

19:21

was just not there for various reasons. I

19:24

also wasn't used to just thinking like that for

19:26

three, four hours in a row.

19:28

Yeah. Yeah. There's

19:31

not much else like it. Vinay,

19:34

I'm curious more sort of big picture. This

19:36

has to have been quite

19:38

an interesting process for you to dig

19:41

out those old score books.

19:44

I know you mentioned in the book that you luckily did

19:46

keep very good records and you say your

19:48

memory is, at least for a Grandmaster,

19:51

not amazing. But to go

19:53

through all those games and try to recreate

19:55

the memories and contextualize your whole

19:57

career, how did that whole process?

20:00

feel and I'm curious if there are any like conclusions

20:02

you drew that maybe you wouldn't have expected

20:05

going in.

20:06

Oh good question because I think actually

20:08

well one

20:11

I do think my record-keeping has been

20:13

like I have a lot of my old score books

20:16

it took me a while like I remembered

20:17

playing David Bronstein in a blitz game

20:20

like I actually found the score sheet like

20:22

I have like boxes of chess related stuff

20:26

but also I think for me

20:28

some distance has helped like I don't feel

20:31

like

20:31

I haven't been playing regularly since the

20:34

end of 2010 my last classical

20:36

term it was 2014 I play a rapid or

20:38

blitz tournament here or there

20:40

but I feel like even if I wrote

20:42

if I started writing in say 2013 or 2014 I

20:46

feel like it still would have been a slightly different

20:48

book

20:49

that looking back I

20:51

had a lot of my old notes like

20:55

one of my early teachers

20:58

like while I was stuck at 2200 Mr.

21:00

Polovets really helped me by like

21:02

sort of

21:05

getting me to understand that analyzing

21:07

my own games was like we're gonna

21:09

be really beneficial so that was like one of the main

21:11

chess things I did and all of those were

21:13

handwritten and I know like

21:16

he mentioned Jesse cry for example I know

21:18

Jesse and

21:22

so like I actually have notebooks and Kaidanov

21:25

was very supportive of that so I have notebooks

21:27

even for when I was working with Kaidanov like

21:29

I had chess base on the computer but

21:32

I didn't originally start entering all

21:34

my annotations in there and until I

21:36

call it 1998 1999 but a lot of those notes still

21:42

had some of like how I felt during

21:44

the game or what I was thinking of and so

21:47

that helped form some basis and

21:49

then there were some things where like certain key games

21:52

stand out to me of like key patterns or what

21:54

I felt in certain moments even if

21:57

if you asked me to like replay one of the maybe

21:59

like one of my games from when I was 10, like I certainly

22:02

won't remember in general.

22:03

But when you look at them, does it start to come

22:05

back to you?

22:07

Yeah, I think some of like playing at the

22:09

Colty Club, so like the local chess

22:11

club in Campbell, California, like

22:14

just sort of what that community center

22:16

was like.

22:17

And then like you see some photos and you remember,

22:20

oh, yeah, like this was the environment, too.

22:22

So I think some of it comes back and it's

22:24

like, um, yeah,

22:26

like

22:27

there are some stories in about like playing with sort of

22:29

analog clocks and like, right,

22:32

it's like just sort of the feel of a tournament where

22:34

I

22:35

remember there

22:36

was a world youth in Hungary where

22:38

it was like it was basically over 40

22:41

Celsius, 100 degrees Fahrenheit,

22:43

like in Zagat at the time.

22:46

And so like they were asking people after the first

22:48

round to bring in like

22:50

lots of water because some kids

22:52

actually like basically had heat stroke.

22:55

During like the first round. And

22:58

so like I some of that I

23:00

definitely remember more some of the world youth experiences

23:04

working with some of the coaches, things

23:06

like that. Some of the

23:08

like a blitz session like

23:10

there was actually a world youth tournament where

23:14

I didn't remember actually a lot of the specific games,

23:16

even who I played. But what

23:18

still is in my memory, like very clearly now

23:21

was like there was a rest day in the middle of the tournament

23:23

and I was playing blitz

23:24

for like four or five hours with Mark

23:27

Peragua and Tamar Rajapoff. And

23:30

it was just of us like just trading blitz games.

23:33

And like that's actually what stood out to me from

23:35

like that entire tournament,

23:37

not like anything else from like the actual

23:39

world youth championship. Right. Yeah.

23:42

Well, I mean, I'm sure I'm sure it

23:44

was an amazing experience. And

23:47

hearing you discuss

23:49

writing your annotations to the game reminded

23:51

me that I wanted to ask you about the one page

23:54

opening write ups. Could you tell

23:57

us a little about that?

23:58

Oh, yeah, for sure. So like. You

24:01

mentioned that I don't think of myself

24:03

as having a great memory for a chess player.

24:07

All of us in the chess house used to joke about

24:10

my hallucinations,

24:10

where I either

24:13

would think I knew something and it was

24:15

totally made up, or I just

24:18

totally forgot stuff. But

24:20

for some of my openings, especially the main ones

24:22

I would play, like the French defense,

24:25

for example, I

24:26

actually would have a

24:28

one-page write-up of some key lines and

24:31

positions or themes to keep in mind. And

24:33

usually that was meant to be like I could

24:36

look at that before a game if I was, say,

24:38

playing the black pieces and I knew my opponent

24:40

was going to play E4 or could seriously

24:42

play E4.

24:43

That would be sort

24:46

of a last-minute sort of refresher of, hey,

24:49

here are some key positions and themes,

24:52

and often I would highlight not

24:54

so many variations, but

24:57

positions where I felt like I may not

24:59

actually be able to understand what the

25:01

right plan was just from looking at the

25:03

position, for example.

25:05

Even though I played like the French at that

25:07

point for

25:08

more than a decade, there were still plenty

25:12

of things that I would forget.

25:13

And that was just like a nice little refresher

25:17

for me. I feel like my short-term memory is

25:19

pretty good, but my long-term memory,

25:21

it starts to fall apart.

25:24

Okay. Yeah, first of all, I wanted to tell you that the

25:26

Karpov-Sarawan thing made me LOL. I

25:31

was so convinced, which is why

25:33

Jesse, Josh, David, they all still

25:35

joke about that because

25:38

I was so convinced that I was following this

25:40

Rook and Pond technique from Karpov-Sarawan,

25:42

which was like a game that never, they

25:45

certainly played games, but they never had any

25:47

game that looked like this. It's

25:51

too funny. And on the topic of the opening

25:53

write-ups, was this also done with paper

25:55

and pen? I

25:57

think the French one I did, but eventually

25:59

I like it. I was traveling enough

26:01

that I just actually had sort of a basically

26:04

a Google Doc, a Word doc that had a- And is

26:06

it literally one page? It was meant to

26:08

be one page. Why you describe something a lot? Okay.

26:13

I think so. So for

26:14

the French, for example, I had one page.

26:17

One page was entirely the winner-wor, and

26:20

then one page for everything else, basically,

26:22

in the French.

26:23

Similarly, so the semi-Slav,

26:25

like the Moran lines was like one page. But

26:29

what I would try and do is just like have some key

26:31

prompts for myself, because I would always

26:33

remember some of the basic moves, no matter what.

26:36

But sometimes even like a move number would

26:38

help me remember at the board, it was like, oh yeah, it's supposed

26:40

to be on move 13 that I'm like supposed to be

26:42

playing this move. So like, I

26:44

can't play it right now. There's got to be

26:46

like something else, right? And I think sometimes

26:48

you just need those cues, at least

26:50

I needed those cues

26:52

to be like, oh yeah, like, how

26:54

do I do this? Because there was

26:57

a game against actually,

26:59

I think it was Irena Crush where I

27:01

was convinced I was following a line I

27:04

had played against another, like another

27:06

grandmaster a year before.

27:08

And I, like

27:11

I drew the, I was black, it was

27:13

a semi-Slav, and I drew the game against Irena.

27:16

But I remember thinking afterwards,

27:18

like this wasn't as easy as I remember

27:20

the other game against like this 2600 GM. And

27:23

then I looked at it later and I was like, I had

27:25

actually just not played the same line exactly.

27:29

And so I was the first to deviate, but like

27:31

at the board, I just, I didn't remember.

27:34

Okay, well, trust me, this stuff is all too

27:36

relatable for us mortals. So we

27:38

appreciate you sharing these stories.

27:41

But so we need to take a break to hear from

27:43

our sponsors, and then I want to get some of

27:45

the aforementioned stories. So we'll be right

27:47

back.

27:55

And we are back. And Vinay, again,

27:57

you've met so many people, your friends with so many people from

27:59

the team. the chess world. So if you're up for it, I thought

28:01

what we might do is I could give you

28:03

some names and you could free associate. Oh,

28:06

okay. Okay. All right. So since

28:08

he was just on the podcast, let's start with who

28:11

was then I am when you

28:13

knew him best. Now, GM Sam Shanklin.

28:16

Sam is actually, Sam

28:18

is like a very driven person and

28:21

I started working with him

28:23

pretty early on. So he bounced

28:25

around actually all of our chess house

28:28

kind of, you know,

28:30

teachers, basically. So he started

28:32

working with Andy Lee who I've known for, I don't

28:35

know, 25 years, then David Proust,

28:37

then myself, then Josh Friedel.

28:39

Sam is

28:41

like, he's a very hard worker. He's passionate.

28:44

That was one of the things

28:46

that maybe even though he started

28:47

playing chess a little bit later than most juniors,

28:52

like his energy for the game was,

28:55

was like obvious. And I think actually

28:58

teaching him was actually part of the

29:00

reason that even though I wasn't playing at the

29:02

time,

29:03

I felt like I actually got better just by teaching

29:05

him, even when he was like, call it 1800 to

29:10

2200. I feel like I really got better as a chess

29:12

player. So like, I owe

29:14

a lot of thanks to Sam actually.

29:16

Okay. That makes sense. And let

29:18

me ask you, because that certainly comes across

29:20

in his interviews, his, you know, no

29:22

nonsense, very hardworking and inspiring

29:24

in that sense. But he also says he's

29:27

not talented. And someone like Greg Chihati,

29:29

who of course runs the US chess school has said that

29:31

like the first time Sam came to a US chess school,

29:34

he said, this kid is something special,

29:36

you know. So can you help us square that

29:38

circle? Like how would you evaluate Sam's talent?

29:41

I think there's, I think,

29:43

I feel like Kasparov said this once of like

29:45

the capacity to work is also a talent.

29:48

And so I think

29:50

that's where like Sam, I think

29:52

there's some stuff about like pattern recognition,

29:55

memory, and just like a feel

29:57

sometimes for where the pieces should go that

29:59

he has. But maybe it's not,

30:03

maybe rightly or wrongly, he doesn't feel like it's at the

30:05

same level of when we talk about somebody

30:07

like Ivanchuk or something. But

30:09

I think one of the things that differentiates

30:12

him and all the top guys really have

30:14

to have it is this capacity

30:17

to work. And I feel like Kasparov highlighted

30:19

before that he

30:22

was obviously very talented, but

30:24

he layered on that really high level of dedication.

30:29

And you look at other sports too, I feel

30:31

like somebody like

30:33

Steph Curry, I'm a Warriors fan,

30:37

but Steph is out there shooting

30:39

and practicing training all the time. And

30:44

I think you see that as like, what

30:46

you see on the court in the game is

30:48

often the byproduct of some of that. And

30:51

so I think maybe in sort of the,

30:55

maybe in a very limited sense, maybe Sam

30:57

is trying to describe himself as that, but

31:00

I think he's selling himself short. Cause I do actually think

31:02

the capacity to work is part of like actually

31:05

what talent is. Okay,

31:07

that's a brilliant insight. I appreciate

31:09

that. All right, another Bay area

31:13

star, little younger than you, Daniel

31:15

Neruditsky.

31:16

Oh, okay. Danya is like, man,

31:19

this guy, I

31:21

feel like when I started seeing him, he

31:23

was like this tiny little kid. And

31:27

I think there might even be a photo in the book of like

31:29

us playing in the same US chess league team where

31:31

he's like curled up on a seat.

31:34

But Danya is a lot of fun to be around.

31:37

I haven't seen him in a couple of years now. I think he's in North

31:40

Carolina,

31:41

but

31:43

sometimes when he's around the Bay, like we've grabbed dinner

31:46

with some other friends. I

31:48

worked with him really briefly actually. So

31:50

I was never really a proper trainer

31:52

for him. I was like a sparring partner,

31:54

but I feel like

31:57

he could be actually alive. stronger

32:00

than he is. I feel like he stopped

32:03

playing a lot of tournament chess, but

32:05

he still shows his talent because he's like one

32:08

of the best like blitz and bullet players

32:10

in the world. Yeah. And

32:12

like you can see like the guy loves the game, so

32:15

he's high-level

32:16

talent for sure. Yeah,

32:18

yeah, it definitely comes across in an amazing educator

32:20

to boot. All right, and then you've got of

32:23

course a great Magnus Carlsen story,

32:25

so let's hear that.

32:27

Magnus was, meeting

32:29

Magnus was interesting. I think he's

32:31

probably the most competitive person

32:34

I've ever met like personally.

32:36

When I met him, so like

32:40

giving some context to it, there's

32:43

a businessman entrepreneur here

32:46

named Joe Lonsdale Jr.

32:47

Joe and I went to the same Fremont

32:50

Public Library class when we

32:52

were you know seven or eight years old. It

32:55

was every Friday.

32:56

Joe then became associated

32:58

with Peter Thiel.

33:00

Peter Thiel was also like a 2200 player

33:02

who I actually played it a few times growing up and

33:07

Magnus was visiting the Bay Area to

33:10

go to Facebook, go to a few other companies like

33:12

that

33:13

and so I was invited to this dinner

33:15

and as like almost

33:17

like I wasn't the only other chess player,

33:20

but I was like the only other title player

33:23

and Magnus,

33:25

so like I had seen him before at

33:28

some tournaments but

33:30

I never actually talked to him and so

33:32

when we introduced each other he really

33:35

shocked me by like explaining

33:37

how he knew of me and there

33:40

was a game from I played against this Chinese

33:42

player now a very strong GM

33:45

but at the time I think he was an IM Wang Yue

33:47

and it showed up

33:50

in Yuen chess. It was from a US China match.

33:52

It was like kind of a

33:54

big deal at the time it felt like that match and

33:56

in this game I had gained an advantage.

33:59

I had won an exchange. but then I wasn't

34:01

able to convert the advantage. And

34:03

Magnus was telling me about this, it's like, oh,

34:06

I heard about you then. And I was

34:08

like, dude, that was like 2002 and

34:10

we were talking in 2014. Right.

34:14

And he's explaining some stuff to me about the game.

34:16

I'm like, my God, your memory is both

34:19

insane at this point. But then

34:21

we played some Bug House. We

34:24

played a Blitz game.

34:25

He came across as being both

34:28

friendly, but also extremely competitive.

34:30

And I could see him as like,

34:33

I think for some of the guys who reached

34:35

the top, most of the guys who reached the top,

34:37

whether it's in chess or other sports, you

34:40

have to have some of that special

34:42

drive.

34:43

And he definitely has some of it.

34:46

Our Blitz game was pretty competitive.

34:48

I thought it was one of the better games

34:51

that I had played

34:52

basically at that point. I

34:54

feel like I had a, I clearly

34:57

had a winning end game actually, but I

34:59

managed to blow it in the last 30 seconds

35:02

of the game. But

35:03

at the time I was like, oh my God, I

35:05

missed a chance against the world champion. But

35:08

then I went back to my day job and

35:11

later it felt like, okay, it's not the end of the world.

35:14

Yeah, but still, I mean, but yeah,

35:16

amazing story. And yeah, obviously not the only story

35:18

like that that's been told on the pod, but still

35:20

just never ceases to amaze those

35:23

feats of memory that just

35:25

seem to come by accident to Magnus.

35:28

All right, we're gonna take a bit of a hard left and

35:30

I wanna hear about someone less well known to

35:32

those outside the US, but always seems

35:34

to be good for a chuckle, Grandmaster Edward Guefeld.

35:39

Guefeld, he'd

35:41

come to the Bay Area a couple of times in the

35:43

mid 90s to do some

35:47

lessons and group lessons. So

35:50

I think Eric Schiller

35:52

had arranged a couple sort of like group classes

35:54

like that. I picked up his book, maybe

35:57

my life in chess and like

35:59

Guefeld,

35:59

for those who don't know, is he's an entertaining

36:02

character. He's a very passionate, or he was a

36:04

very passionate person about chess.

36:06

And it comes across in his book, I think, but

36:08

like somehow his style didn't mesh

36:10

with mine. And then

36:12

we played- His style didn't mess with a lot of people. Oh,

36:14

yeah.

36:15

And so we ended up playing at, in

36:18

Las Vegas, it's North American Open, and

36:21

it's 1999. And so like,

36:23

I'm not on board one, but I think we're playing on

36:25

like maybe board three or four. And next to me

36:28

is Alex Ziermielinski, playing somebody else.

36:30

And Guefeld, he

36:33

has the white pieces, I have the black pieces. The

36:36

opening is actually like, it's an interesting opening.

36:38

I start to outplay him in the middle game. And

36:40

at some point he offers me a draw. And

36:44

he hasn't made his move yet. So I tell

36:46

him, hey, like, you've got to make your move first, then

36:48

you offer a draw. And he's already getting

36:50

a little annoyed at me for

36:52

that.

36:53

And then the game starts to slip from, like

36:55

I was already a little bit better. And

36:57

then I like

36:58

added to the advantage. And pretty soon I was

37:00

just winning the game.

37:03

And once he resigned, like

37:05

basically,

37:06

it felt like you could see his blood

37:08

pressure like rising, like a vein

37:11

shows up in his forehead. Like I just lost,

37:13

like, how did I lose this game? So

37:15

he stops the clocks. He's not like,

37:17

doesn't want to shake hands. He

37:20

makes a show of like crumpling up the score

37:22

sheet and throwing it away right

37:24

in front of me on this, like, and the

37:26

stage in Vegas is like it's slightly roped

37:29

off from most spectators. And

37:32

so while he's doing all this, he's muttering

37:34

some stuff to himself. And

37:38

at first I was like, oh, I'm just not hearing

37:40

what the words are. And then I realized

37:42

it probably wasn't in English. And

37:45

so I turned to Yurmo, who's

37:47

like, Yurmo and his opponent are already like,

37:50

they're already distracted by all this. So like, they

37:52

are playing their game, but they're

37:54

not really like in the game at the moment.

37:57

And I asked Yurmo, it's like, hey, so like. Do

38:00

you know what he's saying? And you're

38:04

most like, I think you can guess. You

38:06

don't need me to translate what he's saying right now.

38:10

Which I thought was like, at that point, I thought it was hilarious.

38:13

I think it,

38:14

part of the thing is that like, chess

38:16

players outside, especially the chess community,

38:19

I feel like they have a reputation for being

38:21

very, like

38:23

maybe regimented or very always logical.

38:26

It's almost like it's a game for people

38:28

like Spock who are like emotionless in a

38:30

way.

38:31

But actually like, there's a lot of emotion in

38:33

chess. You see a lot of characters. I

38:36

know like, Guffeld and I, like we maybe never,

38:39

our styles never meshed for sure, but like,

38:42

I thought it was entertaining. And it's

38:44

like, actually, if you're a chess player, you see a lot

38:46

of this in tournaments where like, yeah, people

38:48

get worked up.

38:49

I like how you say your style's never meshed,

38:52

when really it's just like, you know, a hundred

38:54

people have stories of Guffeld going on, like

38:56

epic tilt after. But

38:59

nonetheless, funny stuff. All

39:02

right, here's another one for you Vinay, RZA

39:04

from the Wu Tang Clan.

39:06

Oh, he's one of my, probably

39:08

one of my musical heroes really. So

39:12

actually for a long time, I thought about starting

39:14

every chapter with like a lyric

39:16

or rap lyric of some kind. But

39:19

then I decided like, this may not be,

39:21

the audience for the book may not really appreciate

39:23

the music as much. I would have, but go on.

39:26

Oh nice, okay. You grew up closer to New

39:28

York, so.

39:29

But I think for

39:32

me, like

39:33

music is something that's always been in

39:35

my life. So like

39:36

as a little kid, my parents were always playing music

39:38

at home, not like rap for sure, not

39:40

Wu Tang, but still music is

39:43

something I've been around like my whole life

39:45

and

39:46

call it in the mid,

39:48

I didn't start listening to Wu Tang right

39:50

when they dropped their first album in 93,

39:52

but it was like call it a

39:54

few years later. And they

39:57

basically became my favorite sort of rap

39:59

group.

39:59

artists. And

40:02

I had a chance to meet the RZA

40:04

at a hip hop and chest

40:06

sort of event in the Bay Area.

40:09

So there have actually been multiple

40:12

of them

40:14

for any listeners

40:16

out there who are like underground rap

40:18

aficionados, like hieroglyphics have been

40:20

at some. So more

40:23

of a Bay Area representation. But this one

40:25

with RZA was RZA, Josh

40:27

Waitskin, myself.

40:29

And so we had an

40:31

event in Palo Alto.

40:32

And RZA and both

40:35

his cousin, I think, the genius, JZA

40:37

the genius,

40:38

they're both actually pretty big chess players.

40:40

They're super passionate.

40:42

Actually, they just held there

40:44

in, I believe, Australia or New Zealand

40:46

right now. And they just held the charity

40:48

like chess tournament there. Yeah, I saw

40:50

that as well. Yeah, I just saw that in the news.

40:53

But I think they play super regularly.

40:55

And for me, it was like, it

40:58

was like almost starstruck of like, I'm seeing

41:00

this guy in person who I've like, is

41:02

music I've listened to for at that point

41:04

more than a decade, who

41:07

I really respect is like both a person

41:09

and like an artist.

41:10

And what was funny is he's

41:12

asking me for some chess advice. And

41:15

I am just like, I'm drawing blanks.

41:17

I'm like, Oh, no, what do I say? Then

41:19

you move. It's

41:22

like, yeah,

41:24

and so I ended up telling him, well, like,

41:26

maybe you could play what like I play right now.

41:29

But and then afterwards, so like I was playing

41:31

things like the Kings Indian attack and stuff like that.

41:33

And afterwards, I was like,

41:36

Oh, my God, Vinay, like, why were you telling him all

41:38

these things? Like, those are not the right openings

41:40

for somebody who's I think, at the time, probably

41:43

like 1400 1500 level.

41:45

And I was like, he shouldn't be playing those

41:47

openings. Like, but it was like the

41:49

first thing that came to mind. So, so

41:51

what would you tell him if you could do it all over again?

41:54

I would I would stick to more classical openings,

41:57

for sure. I think he was

41:59

I think when he was describing sometimes how

42:02

he would get stuck in certain positions, he

42:05

was actually playing a lot more closed,

42:07

like center kind of positions,

42:09

where he didn't understand sometimes

42:11

how to maneuver his pieces around afterwards to

42:14

figure out like, what do I do next?

42:15

And so like start by playing E4, Knight F3, like

42:18

play the classical openings, the open games,

42:21

bring your knights and bishops out. It becomes a little bit

42:23

easier then because all your pieces have some squares

42:25

typically.

42:26

But I think that was one of the things in

42:28

like, that was one of the reasons why the King's Union attack

42:31

probably wasn't a good suggestion for him. Cause like,

42:33

yes, like the first seven, eight moves are

42:35

like very easy to play,

42:37

but it's still a pretty strategic opening.

42:39

And it's not, even though attack is in the

42:42

name, you're often not actually attacking.

42:45

Yeah. And you mentioned in your book, and

42:47

this came up earlier, you say openings

42:49

weren't a big priority for you until

42:52

the NM level, until

42:54

the 2200 level. Is

42:56

that something you would dare tell the RZA? Or if he

42:58

asked you for opening advice, so you're just gonna tell him

43:00

some openings. I would probably, I

43:02

would give him some basic moves, but yeah, I don't think

43:05

openings are like that big a deal for,

43:08

I think once you get to call it like 1800

43:10

onwards, the openings

43:12

probably matter a little bit more.

43:14

But I was actually still playing stuff

43:16

like the elephant gambit when I was like 2100. And

43:21

like I did okay with it.

43:23

I do think it's probably a little bit more risky now.

43:26

I feel like

43:27

modern chess information,

43:29

people have more information

43:31

at their fingertips. So some of

43:34

the sideline or sketchy

43:36

openings can get you into more trouble

43:38

now than I feel like maybe they did in sort

43:41

of the 90s. But

43:43

in general, I think like

43:44

when you're 1400, 1500, you're

43:46

often not getting the

43:48

position that, in the Sicilian

43:50

books, they're explaining, they're

43:52

spending like a whole chapter on. You're

43:55

probably actually not getting to that position. So

43:57

it's almost like you need something simpler,

44:00

like you understand how to bring out the pieces.

44:02

And for me, that was, yeah,

44:04

like something my first coach outside of my

44:06

mom told, like taught me the 30 Rules

44:09

of Chess by Ruben Fine. And that had some

44:11

general principles of like,

44:12

okay, how do you want to bring your pieces out? How

44:15

might you formulate a plan, things like that. And

44:17

there's there's a lot of

44:18

versions of this, right? Like Jeremy Silman

44:20

is like super famous in the US and rightly

44:23

so for like,

44:24

his books on reassess your chess, amateur's

44:26

mind, and so on. He presents

44:27

like different ways of

44:30

getting to sometimes the same conclusions of

44:32

how do you how do you start to formulate a plan

44:34

when your opponent plays some

44:38

moves that you don't expect. And I think when you're 1300

44:40

1400, it's often going to be that way.

44:45

Yeah, yeah, good advice. And I did wonder about

44:48

that when you gave that advice, because definitely like the

44:50

landscape has gotten more more competitive.

44:52

Oh, for sure. Yeah, over the years. Okay,

44:55

a couple more people I want to hear your reflections

44:58

on you mentioned, encountering

45:00

a young Wesley so and Carolina

45:03

and being quite impressed with them. I think it was in 2006. Yeah,

45:07

actually, so Wesley,

45:08

I played him at a international

45:10

tournament in San Marino, it's a small republic

45:13

nestled on like the Italian coast. And

45:16

I played actually pretty well in that tournament, I beat

45:18

some 2600 grandmasters. Wesley

45:20

so was I think 2300 at the time, and he beat

45:23

me in our game. And

45:25

afterwards, Mark Pragwa, who I've

45:27

known for like decades,

45:30

he pulls me aside and basically says like,

45:32

Wesley is the most talented chess player I've ever

45:34

seen. And at the time, I was like,

45:37

all right, he's like, he's a kid, he's 2300. He's

45:39

good. But I like I didn't quite

45:44

understand at the time, just from one game, like

45:46

what level of talent he was. But obviously,

45:49

I think like,

45:50

for somebody who hasn't

45:52

had as much formal training sometimes

45:54

as some of the other top players, like he's been

45:56

a fixture in like the 2750 plus

45:59

community for a while.

46:00

But yeah, I think

46:02

I actually

46:04

didn't have much of a chance in that game. He made a

46:06

GM norm. I think that might have been his first GM

46:09

norm, actually. And then

46:11

Fabiano I met in 2006 in Spain, where

46:15

I think he was living with, I

46:17

think they were living in Spain, maybe in Madrid at the

46:20

time. And he was another person

46:22

who,

46:24

Fabio I felt was like working

46:26

harder at chess, maybe with coaches. Wesley

46:28

was working hard maybe with either

46:30

people like Mark Peragua or on his own.

46:33

I felt like Caruana

46:35

was working probably more with formal coaches, but

46:38

similar passion for the game and similar

46:40

talent in a lot of ways.

46:44

I feel

46:46

like I have some skill for sure at chess, but

46:48

these guys are like, wow, okay.

46:51

I sometimes don't,

46:52

even now it's hard sometimes to understand

46:54

how they make some of the associations or how they

46:56

find some of the solutions that they find. Yeah.

46:59

And it's only from hearing it from people

47:02

like you that it really puts in perspective the

47:05

level those guys are at. All right.

47:07

Last but not least on the association front,

47:09

we got to get the scouting report of

47:12

what Jesse Cry, David Proust and Josh

47:15

Friedle, oh, Josh didn't live with you. So what

47:18

the two chess dojo guys, what were they like

47:20

as roommates? Oh, actually, so like,

47:23

I love living with them. I think

47:25

we had a five bedroom house in

47:28

Richmond, California. So just north

47:30

of Berkeley. They

47:32

were a lot of fun to be around, actually, I think like Jesse

47:34

brings a lot of energy all the time. And

47:36

like you can you can see it if you like, if

47:39

you ever interact with them, you watch any chess

47:41

dojo kind of video, I feel like

47:43

you can see the energy he brings.

47:46

David is somebody who I've known since the mid

47:49

90s. Like, I probably

47:51

don't see him as often now that he's got three kids.

47:54

But he lives actually just like

47:56

not too far away from me. So we

47:58

hung out maybe just a couple weeks ago.

47:59

ago, he came over. But

48:03

both those guys are people who I've known

48:05

for a long time and who I think

48:08

the chess house was interesting because we

48:11

had a rotating cast of other people sometimes

48:13

coming through. And some of those

48:16

other people, I felt like either

48:18

they didn't understand

48:20

sometimes how to use the dishwasher

48:23

or how to use the stove, like a gas stove. Or

48:27

we had so many clogged bathrooms

48:29

from guests who were staying in our place. That

48:32

is like, I think Jesse jokes about me wearing

48:35

almost like a hazmat suit to clean up

48:37

one of the messes. Unfortunate.

48:40

But

48:41

yeah, I think

48:43

for me, the chess house was also interesting because

48:46

as much as I love those guys,

48:48

when we first started working together,

48:51

I actually struggled a little bit. We

48:53

all struggled, I think.

48:55

Our styles were probably different. And

48:58

our learning styles were probably a little different.

49:00

And so all of us actually, we

49:02

all moved in together thinking we'd train together,

49:04

we'd all get better.

49:05

And then it was like six months in, a year

49:08

in, all of our ratings had actually just gone down.

49:11

So either we were having too much fun with each

49:13

other,

49:14

just being around like a group of friends, or

49:17

I think some of our training methods probably could have been

49:19

better too. OK. All

49:22

right. Fun stuff. All right, Av and I, we need

49:24

to take another break. And then I want to hear some

49:26

chess book recommendations. So we'll

49:28

be right back. When

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C site for details. And

50:04

we are back and Vinaj, you mentioned a bunch of chess

50:06

books. Obviously, your passion for reading

50:09

generally and chess books in

50:11

particular is evident.

50:14

So I'm curious, well, first of all, because

50:16

you do give some recommendations in the book, but so do

50:18

you keep up with chess literature much? Not

50:21

so much. There's actually, well,

50:24

you were actually on this episode, I think with the chess

50:26

dojo guys about

50:28

maybe the top 10 books. Right.

50:30

Yeah. And so I have not

50:32

bought many chess books over the past

50:34

call it decade. I bought Sam Shanklin's

50:37

books, just because like,

50:39

I want to support Sam. I also like I haven't

50:41

I can't say I've read the second volume, but I haven't.

50:45

And then from your episode,

50:47

actually, there

50:49

were a couple books that maybe

50:53

David recommended and Jesse recommended

50:55

New York 1924, maybe you recommended as

50:57

well, which I had not ever seen

51:00

or like, I never like looked

51:02

at that book. So I actually picked that up. But

51:05

did you look at it?

51:06

Sorry, but did you look at it? That's

51:09

what I looked at some of the games. I can't say I finished

51:11

reading it. But it actually

51:13

like I can see why like it's actually

51:16

really engrossing. I think if I had found it when I was

51:19

like playing more regularly, and

51:20

I actually went through all the games and like

51:23

the actual annotations more closely, I feel

51:25

like, well, one, I think it would

51:27

have been like a really valuable book, actually, but

51:29

also would have been like, it would

51:31

have

51:33

I think I enjoy now more

51:35

hearing more about like the context and the history of

51:37

things.

51:38

And so like, I think that would have also

51:40

like sort of played into that.

51:42

And then I picked up, I found this.

51:44

I'm

51:45

not sure exactly how like somebody gave

51:47

this book up, but Mikhail Tal's best

51:50

games, which I think was maybe on

51:52

a couple of lists. And

51:54

just as always talking about Tal

51:56

Botfinnik, but my life in games is I think

51:59

also made it.

51:59

Yeah, I think we had

52:02

actually studied Tal Botphinik 1960 in

52:04

the chess house, and I feel like that book also made a big

52:06

impression on me.

52:07

But I'd never seen Tal's

52:09

longer autobiography. And

52:14

I stumbled across that. I have flipped through

52:16

more of that, and I felt like that was

52:18

an amazing book.

52:21

Maybe I wish I had come across that earlier

52:23

as well, because I feel like it would have been both

52:26

a good read, but also helped my chess in a lot of

52:28

ways.

52:29

It's still shameful that I've

52:32

not read Tal Botphinik, but I do like my

52:34

life in games and can recommend that. I

52:36

think you can read my new books. Just

52:39

that way to me, that's for sure. On

52:42

a related note, the aforementioned Juan Garcia,

52:44

who had sent in a question for you, also

52:47

enjoyed your interview with Chess Base India, and

52:49

he said to mention the How Not to Play

52:51

chess book that you mentioned, where you forgot

52:53

the author, it's Eugene Snowsko Borowski, and

52:56

he said that the book is recommended by Kasparov

52:58

himself.

52:59

I'm actually not familiar with that one, so

53:01

could you tell us a little bit more about it?

53:04

This is a book that I don't

53:06

remember a ton of details about it, but I feel

53:08

like I came across it at the Mechanics Institute

53:10

Chess Library. The

53:13

Mechanics Institute is an old building in San Francisco,

53:18

and they have both a library, plus

53:21

a long-standing chess room, since call it the

53:23

mid 1800s.

53:26

I got a library card there, probably

53:29

in the mid-late 90s, and I felt

53:31

like I came across a ton of chess books.

53:33

The author's name sounds familiar,

53:36

Zonosko Borowski. I wanna say it was

53:38

probably written in the 1940s, maybe

53:40

early 50s. Wow, okay. And

53:43

I think it, I had been

53:45

told to, initially

53:48

I'd been told to analyze my own games and understand,

53:50

learn from your mistakes, things like that, but

53:53

also this book felt a lot of ways, okay,

53:56

again, it's like you learn from sort of how

53:58

not to do things.

53:59

And like there's

54:01

actually you don't just win

54:03

by losing and so on like sometimes you actually have

54:05

to like Oh, sorry, you don't just learn by

54:07

winning Sometimes you have to lose every

54:09

so often to understand Okay, like

54:12

what do I need to work on next if you just keep

54:14

playing beginners who you're always gonna beat like

54:16

Sure, you you may not get you may

54:19

feel good about the result, but you're not gonna get better

54:21

in a way but yeah, that's a book

54:23

that

54:24

That the title made a big impression on me

54:26

and I feel like I learned a little bit of like why

54:30

How you can learn from like both good and

54:32

bad results

54:34

But I I wouldn't be able to

54:36

say like what some of the chapters were about.

54:38

Okay. Yeah, I mean

54:39

It's been a while and how

54:42

often you know, you do mention so many

54:44

books you mentioned being a fan of Irving Chernov You

54:46

know as many of us are

54:50

How often would you say you were reading when

54:52

you were a kid like how many hours a week were you reading

54:54

test books? Oh How

54:56

many hours I feel like I Would

54:59

guess actually it was like a good number

55:02

of hours a week. So Irving Chernov especially

55:04

there was Kapobanka's best chess endings I

55:08

started with logical chess move by move Kapobanka's

55:10

best chess endings the most instructive

55:13

games of chess ever played

55:14

Those three really stand out to me is ones

55:17

that I like

55:18

I think when David Proust was over here

55:20

a couple weeks ago He was looking at my chess bookshelf

55:22

and he was like

55:23

The most well-worn books on my shelf

55:26

or like

55:27

It's organized kind of like almost

55:29

by year or player And so like the top

55:31

left is morphe and then it like

55:33

the next thing over is like Kapobanka And

55:36

he's like if you look at the spines of these books

55:38

They are almost all like falling apart

55:41

And then you see like more recent books and it's

55:43

like they almost look at their pristine condition

55:45

probably haven't read some of them it's

55:48

like I

55:50

would guess I was spending I

55:54

don't know. Maybe at least like 10

55:56

hours a week

55:57

Maybe more potentially reading

56:01

some of this and I went through those

56:03

books over and over again and then one of the things

56:05

I did with a tactics book, the

56:09

Encyclopedia of Chest Combinations, what

56:11

I used to do and I like I still have this book is

56:14

I did every diagram in there at some

56:17

point and I would mark off in like top left,

56:19

top right,

56:20

bottom right, bottom left.

56:22

I did every problem I think at least four

56:25

times. Wow. Because I would mark off, did

56:27

I get it or did I not get it? And

56:29

so over my beginning years, that

56:31

was what I did. That was my training

56:34

almost religiously. Yeah,

56:37

impressive. And were you just

56:39

reading them without a chest set or were you always setting

56:42

up a set? I was basically always

56:44

setting up a set. So initially actually my mom

56:46

helped me a ton by she would basically

56:49

have the book and read out everything to me,

56:51

including the movie. Wow. I would have the board in front of me and

56:53

I would just make the moves. That's love right there. That's

56:56

beautiful. No, it was

56:58

like for somebody who like

57:00

she knew how to play,

57:02

but she never like seen a tournament, heard of a tournament.

57:05

She definitely got into it as well.

57:07

But yeah, like I can't

57:09

thank my mom enough for like putting in

57:12

all that time with me on chess. And

57:14

eventually even for the combinations when I was doing

57:16

them on my own, I

57:18

think I was often setting up the board.

57:20

It just became like sometimes

57:23

maybe right before a tournament, I would scan

57:25

diagram just visually. But usually I

57:27

would say I was setting him up on a board.

57:31

Okay. And I realized

57:33

I forgot one name in our name association.

57:35

You did discuss this gentleman

57:37

a bit with Sagar Shah, but you met Viswanathan

57:39

Anand.

57:41

Oh yeah, actually. So I've met him a few times.

57:44

I think the first time was 2009. The

57:47

most recent time was maybe 2018

57:50

here in the Bay

57:51

Area. And another guy who's I

57:53

feel like he is

57:55

extremely

57:57

friendly.

57:57

He is a great player. And I think he's a great player.

58:00

He doesn't outwardly show

58:02

the same competitive streak that I felt like Magnus

58:04

does.

58:06

And what I thought was

58:07

also really amusing is when

58:10

we met at Google like a few years ago,

58:12

one of my friends works at Google. And

58:16

so he got me an invite to what was supposed to be like

58:18

an employee only event. And

58:20

so I was like the only non-Googler there.

58:22

And at some point, Anand looks at me and he's like,

58:25

he does like a double take. I

58:28

think he was trying to place me. And at some point he was

58:30

like, hey, there's a grandmaster in the house. And I was like, no,

58:32

no, no. But like, you're the guy that

58:34

he loves here for. Right. Also

58:39

another person who has like an insane

58:42

memory. We started

58:44

talking afterwards. And I had not been playing

58:46

tournament chess for a few years.

58:49

But he remembered that I

58:51

was like mostly known or often known

58:53

for playing the French. And

58:55

he asked me about had I seen

58:57

some of his recent games against Mama Djarb

59:00

and the French Winter were.

59:01

And I

59:02

was like, I may have seen

59:04

them in passing. I

59:08

still read articles on chess 24 a decent amount

59:10

of time. So

59:13

I'll quickly scan what games were there.

59:15

But certainly I didn't have

59:17

the level of detail that he had.

59:21

And so Anand though

59:23

is really probably

59:25

my chess hero in a lot of ways. And

59:28

so meeting him and actually

59:30

like that was

59:31

basically him and RZA are like two heroes

59:34

in the music and chess world. That's

59:36

amazing. You got to meet them both. And

59:39

then you did meet another world champion,

59:42

Spassky, but that was more a formal setting, correct?

59:44

That was like you did a speech.

59:45

There was a lecture at the Mechanics Institute.

59:47

Actually, I've met Karpov, Kasparov

59:50

as well.

59:51

Karpov I met only

59:54

like a shorter time in a World Youth Championship.

59:57

Kasparov I've met when he

59:59

came to. Stanford a couple

1:00:02

times and actually I think the first time

1:00:04

may have been he was still a little

1:00:06

bit bitter about the deep blue loss and

1:00:10

there was like a blitz tournament so I actually

1:00:13

I

1:00:13

still have some stuff signed

1:00:15

by him for example but I don't feel like I talked

1:00:18

to them quite as much. Spassky

1:00:21

came and visited the Mechanics Institute in 2007 I want

1:00:23

to say and he did sort of there's

1:00:28

like a small private kind of thing event

1:00:30

for David Proust, Daniel

1:00:33

Neruditsky, myself, Josh Friedel, a few

1:00:35

other people who are like strong players in

1:00:37

the Bay Area. We had Vince McCambridge and

1:00:39

I am.

1:00:40

A number of people sort of got

1:00:42

together with Spassky. I feel like

1:00:44

he's a guy who has like I feel like a ton of

1:00:46

stories as well. John

1:00:49

Donaldson is like sort of I've John

1:00:51

has a lot of connections. I figured

1:00:54

that's how Spassky ended up at the Mechanics in

1:00:57

a lot of ways but yeah

1:00:59

I think when I was a kid I didn't

1:01:01

fully appreciate like that

1:01:05

the chess players almost like they're people

1:01:07

and they have their own stories too in a way. It's

1:01:09

like

1:01:11

but I think as I've gotten older I like

1:01:13

I appreciate some of that context and that history

1:01:16

more. Yeah yeah amazing.

1:01:18

Yeah like you mentioned in the book you played Bronzine

1:01:20

but he was like just some dude. Yeah

1:01:22

exactly like I was like okay like cool like.

1:01:25

Yeah

1:01:27

of course I would have been equally

1:01:30

as ignorant if not more. Okay

1:01:33

we have one patreon mailbag question

1:01:35

relating to your work in data science

1:01:38

for now so sure

1:01:40

if I can find it. Aha

1:01:42

so this is from Alex Marler thanks for supporting

1:01:45

the pod Alex he says have

1:01:47

you discovered any interesting things about chess

1:01:49

using data science he says he's noticed from his

1:01:51

own games that he has better results when he has the space

1:01:54

advantage as compared to when his opponent has

1:01:56

the space advantage.

1:01:57

Oh that's a great question actually.

1:01:59

And I

1:02:01

feel like I've both discovered some things

1:02:03

and then I've found some really false positives

1:02:07

where it's

1:02:09

almost like I've tortured the data enough

1:02:11

that I found a pattern that wasn't really a pattern.

1:02:13

So at some

1:02:17

point I actually, I

1:02:19

had my games in chess base and then similar

1:02:21

to what the questioner

1:02:24

is asking, I actually classified some

1:02:26

stuff based on the kind of central structure,

1:02:30

whether it's a block pawn, whether it's open pawn, like

1:02:33

an open center,

1:02:34

were there isolated pawns, were

1:02:36

there like

1:02:38

what was going on around the bishops and knights, for example.

1:02:41

And I did notice some patterns of

1:02:44

in my own games of like

1:02:46

how sometimes with central tension, I

1:02:48

would sometimes like liquidate

1:02:50

too early. I sometimes wasn't

1:02:53

comfortable maintaining sort of, call

1:02:55

it like E4, D4 against

1:02:58

E5, D6, for example. Or

1:03:01

sometimes I would, similar structures

1:03:04

where it's like E4, D4 against D5, C5, sometimes

1:03:07

I would liquidate a little quickly.

1:03:09

But there are also some things that

1:03:12

I initially thought and specifically

1:03:14

about like these long pawn chains that

1:03:16

you can sometimes get in the French and Slav kind

1:03:19

of openings where

1:03:20

white has pawns on E5, D4, C3, black

1:03:23

has pawns on E6, D5, C5. Sometimes

1:03:27

there's a pawn on F4 in that mix

1:03:29

too.

1:03:30

And I

1:03:33

found what I thought was a pattern

1:03:36

of like I was losing some more games in

1:03:38

that.

1:03:38

And then I realized actually like,

1:03:41

this is totally a red herring. What's weird

1:03:43

is in that structure, you can exchange pawns on D4

1:03:46

and that's a normal sort of position

1:03:48

where I scored really well. And so it doesn't

1:03:51

mean that all of a sudden when I got those pawn chains, I

1:03:53

just needed to trade on D4 and like my position

1:03:55

was gonna be good. But it rather

1:03:57

had to do with like other

1:03:59

aspects game that like I hadn't encoded

1:04:02

in sort of my big spreadsheet and model. Um,

1:04:05

so I went away from that a little

1:04:07

bit. Another one that actually came up was,

1:04:10

um, I found that I struggled a lot

1:04:12

in like the morning rounds. Uh, a

1:04:14

lot of international tournaments, like it's one game

1:04:16

a day in the afternoon.

1:04:18

Uh, but then the final rounds at like 9AM

1:04:20

in the morning, same in the U S when you play

1:04:22

like double round days. Uh, and

1:04:24

sometimes for a morning game, I noticed I was

1:04:26

like doing badly in a lot of ninth round

1:04:29

games.

1:04:30

Um, and there was a game I lost to,

1:04:32

uh, grandmaster Koulias Ewitsch. Um,

1:04:35

and, uh, after that game, I was like,

1:04:37

like, man, this is like so many tournaments in a row

1:04:40

where I've lost the ninth round game, which is like

1:04:42

a morning round, uh,

1:04:43

and then I, I did actually do something

1:04:46

where I started.

1:04:47

Uh, part of my routine then was like,

1:04:49

I w I was always waking up, uh,

1:04:51

typically before that anyway, but I would

1:04:53

try to get into the habit of doing some chest

1:04:56

puzzles just in the morning to like get

1:04:58

my mind somewhat used to having to work

1:05:00

versus otherwise I would sometimes just

1:05:02

be like reading the news. I would be like checking sports

1:05:05

highlights, other things. And then

1:05:07

I would get into like, Oh yes, now I have to do some

1:05:09

chest work.

1:05:11

That's interesting. And, uh, Vinay,

1:05:14

because you're here and because of the moment

1:05:16

we're in, I have to ask you just more generally

1:05:18

about machine learning. I mean, I, from

1:05:22

the outside looking in, it seems like an incredibly

1:05:24

fascinating time to be working there, like

1:05:26

with all this, uh, a, you know, chat

1:05:29

GPT stuff. And, uh, like it, has

1:05:31

it been an unusually interesting

1:05:33

time for you in recent months? Oh, for

1:05:36

sure. I don't think, um, we're not immune to it.

1:05:38

Both like,

1:05:39

I think it's really amazing technology.

1:05:41

It's also like, I feel like there's a little

1:05:43

bit of a hype cycle about it as well. Um,

1:05:46

but yeah, I think I feel like every

1:05:49

company right now, every data team

1:05:51

is thinking about how can we either leverage

1:05:53

this kind of technology?

1:05:55

Or there are people outside, like

1:05:57

outside the technical teams in your companies

1:05:59

that are.

1:05:59

are going to bring up, like, hey, how can we use chat GPT?

1:06:03

How do we inject it into the experience

1:06:05

in some way? So there's actually

1:06:07

some stuff with

1:06:09

the foundations of chat GPT. Google

1:06:12

released something called BERT. It has

1:06:14

a couple of transformer models, which

1:06:17

we actually implemented in

1:06:19

a, like my team implemented in

1:06:21

a previous job around some

1:06:23

natural language processing. Found

1:06:26

it to be pretty useful. I don't

1:06:28

have as much experience with these large language

1:06:31

models, these LLMs. But

1:06:34

they are still fascinating in a lot of ways. And

1:06:37

I have a group

1:06:39

thread with some other chess players in the Bay Area

1:06:41

where, like, actually, we have not been

1:06:43

talking about chess for a while.

1:06:45

None of them are professional chess players now.

1:06:48

We've only been sharing examples with chat

1:06:50

GPT and LLMs of

1:06:53

how do we either get it to do some strange stuff,

1:06:56

or what are some really amazing behaviors, or

1:06:58

results that we can get from it.

1:07:00

So yeah,

1:07:02

I'm definitely following the news there.

1:07:04

What was the most surprising

1:07:07

thing you saw from all that sharing?

1:07:10

I think I was really

1:07:12

surprised at how, I think,

1:07:14

for me, I don't feel like I'm creative in this way

1:07:17

of people who are doing

1:07:19

this prompt engineering

1:07:20

to get around some of the chat GPT safeguards.

1:07:23

So

1:07:24

I think there was somebody, for example, who

1:07:27

wrote in, basically, that they

1:07:30

have a medical condition where

1:07:33

they gave it kind of like

1:07:35

a fake name. It was something invertitis,

1:07:38

I think, and

1:07:40

where unless you insult the

1:07:42

person, or if you say something

1:07:44

nice to them, they will take as an insult.

1:07:46

So you have to instead insult

1:07:49

them in every response. And they will

1:07:51

interpret that as like, oh, this

1:07:54

chat GPT, this chat bot is being friendly

1:07:56

towards me.

1:07:57

And the conversation that flowed from that was like,

1:07:59

mind-bending because the

1:08:02

AI played along and it

1:08:04

was like wow okay like

1:08:06

this is the creativity

1:08:10

from the LLMs I think is just like

1:08:13

really impressive.

1:08:14

It's not something that I thought we would

1:08:16

be at so soon

1:08:18

but it's also there are all these ways

1:08:20

that to get around whatever safeguards you think

1:08:22

you've implemented that

1:08:23

yeah like

1:08:25

I probably have some concerns as

1:08:28

well for how like it gets used. Yeah

1:08:30

I think we all do and as I mentioned

1:08:33

in a recent pod with Vojczyk Miranda

1:08:35

like in chess it sort of feels

1:08:37

like we've as Vojczyk

1:08:39

said like we've been a bit

1:08:41

out in front of it because we've seen we've

1:08:45

seen its impact on chess sort of ahead

1:08:47

of schedule but do you see anything

1:08:49

in terms of like this new wave that

1:08:51

could impact chess itself?

1:08:56

I think there's probably some stuff as far

1:08:58

as like how we might get

1:09:01

better at learning especially for

1:09:03

like people who are learning chess there might be some

1:09:06

applications. Right now chat GPT

1:09:09

and the LLMs don't seem as strong in

1:09:11

some of the technical like

1:09:12

they're not as accurate

1:09:15

like they're always creative but they're not always accurate.

1:09:19

I feel like chess tournaments have already adapted

1:09:21

in some way like even when I stopped by the Mechanics

1:09:23

Institute

1:09:24

their announcements about

1:09:26

putting your phone in your bag or there

1:09:28

has to be off like if your phone is ever like

1:09:30

if you're seen with your phone and it's on it's basically

1:09:33

like you're in big trouble.

1:09:34

Doesn't matter whether you're like doing

1:09:37

something or not and so

1:09:39

I think chess has gotten ahead of that from like

1:09:41

a

1:09:42

maybe a cheating standpoint a little bit but

1:09:45

from a learning standpoint I do think there's probably

1:09:48

some stuff where

1:09:49

similar to like we learned

1:09:51

I think you and I probably learned a lot from books and

1:09:53

reading like

1:09:54

you read chess live for like a monthly magazine

1:09:57

for example right but

1:09:58

now all of a sudden you have

1:09:59

chessable courses, you have all these things at your fingertips

1:10:02

where like,

1:10:03

I can know that the game played yesterday,

1:10:05

I can try and apply that same opening strategy

1:10:07

today.

1:10:09

And so similarly, I assume that like

1:10:12

chat GPT and some of these tools will eventually

1:10:14

be used to like, hopefully

1:10:16

improve like learning capabilities. Yeah,

1:10:20

it'll be interesting for sure. All

1:10:23

right, we're almost done, but I do wanna just take

1:10:25

one sort of big picture, look at your career, but

1:10:27

first we gotta take one more break and we'll

1:10:29

be right back.

1:10:34

And we are back and Vinay, as we

1:10:36

wrap up, you spoke a little about this

1:10:38

again with Sagar Shah and you wrote in

1:10:40

the book, but I find this moment sort

1:10:43

of fascinating where you, we didn't

1:10:45

mention earlier, but you won what's called the Sanford

1:10:47

fellowship where of course you're given a stipend

1:10:50

and can play chess professionally and you did

1:10:52

this for a couple of years and you actually came

1:10:54

to that. You didn't do

1:10:56

it as early as you could have because you were pursuing

1:10:59

your career outside of chess, but then you

1:11:01

reach a moment where that time is up and you have to

1:11:03

decide, are you going to pursue chess?

1:11:06

Could you take us through that decision?

1:11:08

Cause you did describe it as an emotional

1:11:11

one.

1:11:11

Yeah, I know for sure. I think, so I

1:11:13

got the, I was awarded the Sanford fellowship

1:11:16

in 2008 and the Sanford,

1:11:18

like you said, it's a stipend and

1:11:21

you can get it for up to two years. So

1:11:23

actually my year I shared it with

1:11:25

Irena Crush.

1:11:26

And so the two of us basically were

1:11:29

like professional chess players for sure during

1:11:31

that two year period.

1:11:33

And then in 2010, I was around 25, 50 feet a day.

1:11:38

And I

1:11:40

think I was, I was working hard at chess, but

1:11:42

like I wasn't seeing maybe the gains that

1:11:44

I always expected.

1:11:46

And

1:11:48

I started the Sanford with,

1:11:50

by putting a lot of pressure on myself. I

1:11:52

felt like I'd gotten

1:11:53

a lot better by playing and studying on the

1:11:55

side.

1:11:56

And then all of a sudden now I'm doing this full

1:11:58

time. I assumed actually.

1:11:59

I could basically I would keep the same, you

1:12:02

know rate of change I would keep

1:12:04

improving like I used to improve and

1:12:06

the reality was that like actually I took some steps

1:12:08

backward I took some steps forward

1:12:10

And so on and so like my third

1:12:13

year. I wasn't on the Samford anymore

1:12:15

and

1:12:16

I was

1:12:17

making a living playing chess not

1:12:19

a great living. I was primarily based in Spain

1:12:21

at that point I had an apartment in Barcelona and

1:12:24

I

1:12:27

Had a choice basically of like I

1:12:29

studied Statistics in political

1:12:31

economy like you mentioned in college and

1:12:33

so I'd use my econ background

1:12:36

for my first job in consulting I was I

1:12:38

was an economic consultant. I found that

1:12:40

extremely boring Part of the reason

1:12:42

like I was really attracted by the Samford at that point

1:12:46

And so I was debating. Okay, do I

1:12:48

go and try and use maybe my stats background?

1:12:51

To see if those kinds of jobs are interesting

1:12:53

to me

1:12:54

or do I keep playing chess or do

1:12:56

I start teaching on the side? For example,

1:12:58

so I feel like especially in the US

1:13:00

a lot of players around that 2550 fee day level

1:13:03

We're not

1:13:05

gonna make the US Olympiad team We're

1:13:08

not gonna be one like we're not getting an

1:13:10

automatic invite to the US championship And so

1:13:12

it's harder just to play professionally you often

1:13:14

have to teach on the side

1:13:16

and so I was debating my choices and

1:13:18

like I

1:13:19

Like I really do love chess

1:13:21

So even like when I stopped playing I still

1:13:23

follow stuff and so for me It was a little

1:13:26

emotional to say like no No, I'm

1:13:28

I'm going to try and give the statistics

1:13:30

background a chance

1:13:32

And I ended up applying to a few companies. I

1:13:34

applied as funny I've applied to Facebook

1:13:37

Tesla and then the small marketing

1:13:39

shop in San Francisco And

1:13:42

Facebook said no Tesla never like

1:13:45

I finished all the interviews They never got back to me

1:13:47

and then vinyl though gave me an offer as

1:13:49

a marketing analyst and I started working there

1:13:51

And then I realized oh actually I enjoy a lot

1:13:53

of this like the data problems that I'm working on

1:13:56

it felt like I was

1:13:58

Kind of doing investigation

1:13:59

solving problems on a regular

1:14:02

basis. In some way it was like,

1:14:04

I get a new position on the board all the time and

1:14:06

it's like, I've got to figure out how do I make sense of this?

1:14:09

And so actually

1:14:11

that wasn't a sure thing actually. So like when

1:14:13

I applied to the job,

1:14:15

I wasn't sure if, hey, if I don't

1:14:17

like this in six months or a year, I

1:14:20

may leave and go back to chess, some

1:14:22

combination of coaching and playing.

1:14:24

But I

1:14:25

ended up really enjoying it.

1:14:27

From there, from the marketing analyst job,

1:14:30

I got into data science, I started taking some

1:14:32

graduate coursework in machine learning.

1:14:34

And I've now, I'm

1:14:37

still a chess player at heart, but like I dabble

1:14:39

on the side as opposed to,

1:14:41

it's like my main thing.

1:14:43

Yeah, well, I mean, you picked a good

1:14:45

field to be in and just reading your

1:14:47

book, I was impressed as you say

1:14:49

that you able to take graduate

1:14:51

level courses at Stanford. I mean, I'm sure that

1:14:54

on top of a full-time job, that's gotta be challenging.

1:14:57

I think you

1:14:59

asked about Sam and his like the

1:15:01

talent question. I think I feel

1:15:03

like I worked

1:15:05

in like a passive manner through

1:15:08

high school sometimes, like I would read stuff and

1:15:10

so on. I felt like when I went

1:15:12

to college and then I started working

1:15:14

on chess afterwards, it was more

1:15:16

of like an active learning and active capacity

1:15:18

to work. And I feel like

1:15:21

definitely

1:15:22

I would say those, like those two

1:15:24

years were

1:15:26

like a lot busier for me. I

1:15:28

think I stopped playing the US Chess League, for example,

1:15:30

though for a little bit,

1:15:32

the Pro Chess League now.

1:15:34

But

1:15:36

yeah, I think that like some

1:15:38

of it was, I was really interested in the material

1:15:40

and I was willing to put in the time and I like I'd learned

1:15:42

how to

1:15:44

like

1:15:44

really work where sometimes before I would just like

1:15:47

read the same book over and over again. Right,

1:15:49

interesting. Well, Vinay, this

1:15:52

has been great. I'm just curious, as

1:15:54

we say our goodbyes, like you obviously had

1:15:56

an incredibly accomplished career in chess

1:15:58

and now you're having an incredibly accomplished.

1:15:59

accomplished career out of chess. As

1:16:02

you do take this sort of big picture, look back

1:16:04

at your career, is there anything

1:16:07

you really wish you did differently? Or I

1:16:09

mean, things have obviously worked out pretty well for you.

1:16:11

So do you not think that way?

1:16:13

I think it's like, certainly I

1:16:16

have like chess decisions that

1:16:18

I feel like I could have made differently. It

1:16:21

probably would feel a little weird if I had like absolutely

1:16:23

no regrets. It feels like then I didn't maybe

1:16:26

take some chances. Right.

1:16:27

I think to me actually, I'm

1:16:29

not sure that I ever had like,

1:16:32

I was so talented or so amazing

1:16:34

at chess to be like a Magnus Carlsen kind

1:16:37

of player.

1:16:38

But I do think that like probably

1:16:40

actually

1:16:41

most of my plateaus I feel like

1:16:44

were reasonable and kind of explainable.

1:16:47

It's actually the one at 2200 where I got stuck for

1:16:50

so long studying the same things that

1:16:52

probably feels like, oh, I could have done that

1:16:54

a little bit differently. And maybe I would have been

1:16:56

a little bit stronger at the end of high school. I

1:16:59

don't know that it would have changed like the broad contours of my

1:17:01

life. Like I think I still would have gone to college.

1:17:05

And yeah, like I said, when I

1:17:07

meet people like

1:17:08

Carlsen or Anna, and then like

1:17:11

Wesley So, Fabiana Caruana, right? Like

1:17:14

these are people who I feel like as chess players

1:17:16

are still beyond where

1:17:19

I was at that time. So I don't know that

1:17:21

I would have been at their level anyway.

1:17:23

But yeah, overall, I would say like,

1:17:25

chess has been super valuable to me. And like,

1:17:27

I think one of the amazing things is

1:17:31

I feel like I know, I have or like know

1:17:34

a lot of chess people across the world. And

1:17:36

so it's always like a nice little network to have. Like

1:17:38

it's a common language, even if I haven't seen

1:17:40

somebody for a couple of years,

1:17:43

we can always connect over chess.

1:17:44

Yeah, I mean, first of all, just

1:17:47

the, I feel like you have an outsized number

1:17:49

of stories of like all the world champions you've met,

1:17:51

but also just like little stuff like connecting,

1:17:53

like I've interviewed Koya Savage, who's written a

1:17:55

couple of great books. So like, there's a picture

1:17:57

of you with him and it's like, oh yeah, of course, like.

1:17:59

you know, you're going to know like and Guli, you

1:18:02

know, you know, all these people who are

1:18:04

like, uh, more involved in sort of at

1:18:06

least the online chess world because they

1:18:08

work in chess. Whereas you, you, you

1:18:11

work outside of chess now, but obviously

1:18:13

when you read your book, it's like, you can still

1:18:15

see the level of passion and obviously

1:18:18

knowledge.

1:18:20

Yeah, it's, it's incredible. So the book is

1:18:22

called how I became a chess grandmaster. It's available

1:18:24

on forward chess. Um, and,

1:18:27

uh, quality chess, as always has a free

1:18:29

sample that, uh, listeners and viewers

1:18:31

can check out and definitely it's a very

1:18:33

pleasurable read. So highly recommend the

1:18:36

book of an eye and thanks. Thanks for taking the time

1:18:38

to write it. I know you, I know you're a busy guy.

1:18:40

I don't know. It was actually a really

1:18:43

enjoyable process. So, um, I

1:18:45

know a Yakov at some point was, uh,

1:18:47

he was joking about how slow I was with some edits,

1:18:50

but, um, no, it was, it was, it was

1:18:52

actually really fun project overall.

1:18:54

I like,

1:18:55

and I, I'm, I'm thrilled that he gave it a

1:18:57

shot as well because, uh,

1:18:59

it's not, it's not the kind

1:19:01

of chess book that I remember reading a lot or seeing

1:19:03

a lot of as a kid. Um, so

1:19:06

hopefully, hopefully other people enjoy it too.

1:19:08

Yeah, I think they will. So, uh,

1:19:10

so thanks again, Vinay. And Vinay, before

1:19:12

we go, uh, what is, if anyone wants

1:19:14

to keep up with you or send you a message, what's

1:19:17

the best way to do that?

1:19:19

Um, I'm, I'm active on some of the social

1:19:21

platforms, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,

1:19:23

whatnot. Um, and people can email me

1:19:26

at a vsbotbhat02atgmail.com

1:19:28

as well. Okay.

1:19:31

Excellent. Thanks so much for now.

1:19:34

Thank you.

1:20:00

team on where they can work.

1:20:08

Follow- assistance program