Lex Fridman Podcast #330 – Hikaru Nakamura: Chess, Magnus, Kasparov, and the Psychology of Greatness
Machine transcription by Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (MLX, local, Apache-2.0). May contain recognition errors.

The following is a conversation with Hikaru Nakamura, a chess super grandmaster. He's one of the greatest chess players in the world, including currently being ranked world number one in blitz chess. He's also one of the most popular chess streamers on Twitch and YouTube, which you should definitely check out. His channel's name on both is GM Hikaru. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Mizner Main for style, Inside Tracker for biometrics, NetSuite for business management software, and Simply Safe for home security. Choose wisely, my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too. 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This show is also brought to you by Simply Safe, a home security company designed to be simple and effective. Thirty minutes setup and you can customize it to your needs. It was super easy to set up for me. It's the first layer of physical security in my life. There is many layers of physical security. There is many layers of cybersecurity. There is many layers of psychological security. Although to be honest, the psychological one that because I make myself vulnerable to the world it does not have enough layers. And I am not sure I want those layers. I want to be easily hurt by the opinions of others. I think that means you are open and you are listening. But as long as I can protect the physical and the cyber, the digital security, that's great. Simply Safe is a great general solution for most people. I actually had a conversation and we'll have several conversations with cybersecurity experts on the defense side and on the former hacker side. I think it's such a fascinating. Space of skills because it's routed in mystery and darkness and it's clearly becoming a bigger and bigger and bigger problem as the years and decades go on. Anyway, go to simply safe dot com slash lex to customize your system and claim your free indoor security camera plus twenty percent off with interactive monitoring. This is the Lex Freedom podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Hikaru Nakamura. You and Magnus played a private game forty games of blitz in twenty ten in Moscow at a hotel. This sounds and just feels legendary. Final score was twenty four and a half to fifteen and a half from Magnus. Where did you find out the score? I am actually curious. I don't think it was publicly said or it was very briefly said, but it wasn't ever like mentioned in in a serious way so. I think it's a deep dive based on a few links that started as and at a subreddit which is how all great journeys start. Yeah, so this is kind of a crazy story. This was not pre planned at all. I remember this quite well. I went out to dinner that final night with someone who was actually very high up within the internet chess club at that time. I went out for a nice dinner. I think I had like a couple of drinks maybe it was wine beer I don't know what it was and I think towards the end of the dinner somehow they got word of this and they relayed the information to me that Magnus wanted to play a private match. Now I agreed to play this match probably I should not have and actually has nothing to do with like the state of having been out had a few drinks anything of that nature but the reason that I probably should not have agreed to play this match and why very often times reference it as one of the biggest mistakes in terms of competitive chess that I made is specifically because it gave Magnus a chance to understand my style of chess and at the time I actually had pretty good results against Magnus I think maybe he was up one or two games but there were many games where I had been pressing close to winning against him prior to that match and so when I went and played that match there were a few things that happened first of all Magnus really started to understand my style because we played all sorts of different openings and so I think he understood that at times I wasn't so great in the opening and there were many openings where I would play slightly dubious variations as opposed to the main lines and then secondly from my standpoint the problem that I realized that since we were playing with an increment there are many games where I was close to winning and he would defend end games amazingly well he would defend what are technical technically drawn end games but where I would have like an extra pawn it would be like rook and bishop versus rook and knight say I have four pawns he has three pawns end games of this nature now if you aren't super into chess you might not understand what I am referring to if you are you will but there end games where one side might have extra material and extra pawns say extra two pawns but theoretically it's a draw so can you give an example of the set of pieces we're talking about five six seven pieces like this kind of thing okay like a very basic one would be rook and four pawns against rook and three pawns so that would be nine total pieces on the board four pawns on one side three pawns on the other side but it's all on the same side of the board now this is a technical draw it's been known for probably let's just say seventy years roughly give or take that this is a theoretical draw no matter the position of the pawns it's just all the pawns are on one side of the board so like but like where they are so it's like let's just say there let's just say there are four pawns right here they're just four pawns and black has three pawns so your pawns are on h six g six and f six and there are no other pawns on the board something like this and you both have rooks and it's a draw no matter what the next next like fifty moves of the game are we know that it's a drawn end game with perfect play and so it was things like this where Magnus actually saved I want to say like five or six of these and I remember it quite well because I think the score was very very close up until probably the last like ten games of the match and then at the end he started winning he started winning in spades but there were a lot of situations where he was up like one game or maybe two games in the match and I had some end game like this and I was not able to win the end game and so for me after that match it wasn't even so much that I lost the match or the margin I lost by but it was the fact that I realized how hard it was to beat him even once you got the advantage and I think for Magnus he learned that my weakness was openings I remember because I actually I don't remember the game itself but there was a game we played in Sicilian Nidor and he played this variation with bishop g five on move number six I am sure you can you can insert a graphic later I can show you and I think is a type of opening Sicilian is the opening Nidor is the variation it was played by Bobby Fischer the former world champion Gary Kasparov as well and so we we played all sorts of different openings because of course it's not a serious it's it's a serious match but it's not serious where it's going to count for the ranking so you are trying to fill out where your opponent is strong versus weak and so there was one game I remember very clearly he played the bishop g five variation in the Nidor and I think I played e five or I played knight b d seven in e five which is dubious it's not the best response and that's just one example where I was playing things that are a little bit dubious and I was not playing the absolute main line with twenty moves of theory so I was trying to get outside of theory and I think Magnus learned from that that even though it appeared that I was very well prepared in in these openings I wasn't quite at that level couldn't you have a different interpretation of you going outside of the main line that you are willing to experiment take risks that you are chaotic and that's actually a strength not a weakness especially when you are sitting in a hotel room at late at night this is past midnight playing chess I mean why do you interpret that that's your weakness because Magnus going forward was able to figure out the lines where you have to be super precise you cannot deviate at all and I got punished out the opening in many games so it was like it wasn't about the Nidorf the the opening or the variation specifically but he knew what my repertoire was and we would pick lines where I had to play the absolute best lines in order to equalize or I would be much worse and he was very effective at doing that but nevertheless it's pretty legendary that the two of you you are one of the best chess players in the world throughout the whole period still today that you just sat down in a hotel room and played a ton of chess like what what was that like I mean what's the there is a I think there is a there is a little here there is a little video of it sure I mean this is like epic right how did this video exist by the way I think there was one journalist Macaulay Peterson who is who is able to film parts of it so it was it was in a room it was me Magnus I think Henrik was there I think Macaulay was there and that was it people can go on YouTube and watch it's on chess digital strategies Macaulay Peterson channel for people just listening to this there's a a dimly lit room with the yellow light emerging out of the darkness of the two faces of Hikaru I mean and the deep focus here and what time is this this is must be this is probably like one in the morning this was I believe the day of day after the fine this was the day that the final round occurred and the closing ceremonies were playing afterwards I mean are you able to appreciate the epicness of this many of my favorite memories are actually similar to this another memory that I really have that I recall very fondly was after the US championship it was called the two thousand five US chess championship was held at the end of two thousand four in I believe it was in La Jolla in San Diego I won that event and after that event I was playing blitz probably for like four or five hours in the lobby of the hotel so it's the same kind of situation where you are just playing for the love of the game as opposed to anything else of course nowadays I think both for Magnus and myself just playing a dimly lit room like this would almost certainly not happen there would probably have to be certain stakes involved for for us to play but you know if you go back in time these are the sorts of memories and moments that would happen all the time so is there part of you that doesn't regret that this happened you know I think it comes back to my general philosophy I feel like everything happens for a reason and so because I have that that's one of my core beliefs like I don't really look back on it as mistakes I feel like everything has happened and things have transpired the way they have for a reason if I look at in terms of potentially like world championship aspirations I think certainly it was a big mistake because from a competitive standpoint Magnus figured out what my weaknesses were at the time and he exploited it for many many years in fact I think if you look at the match I played against him in the meltwater tournament at the I think that was in June or no it was later it was like September of twenty twenty we played this epic match it was the finals of the tour and it went all the way to the seventh match Magnus won in Armageddon and in that match my openings were much better I was able to match him in the openings I was not worse out of the opening in most of the games and that made a huge difference but for many years he was able to exploit my openings and I mean that's why the score I mean it's not the only reason but it's one of the reasons the score is so lopsided the way it is is there any of those games that you mentioned seven games that are interesting to look at to analyze ideas and that you remember that are interesting to you I mean the whole it was actually so to set it up and this probably will come into play in terms of world championship format it was seven matches of four games so we played a four game match and after four games Sam up two and a half one and a half I win match number one then then it so it's like you have to win four matches of four games do you remember how you won there were a couple of Berlin games in the sixth sixth match I believe in the seventh match as well where Magnus actually made some mistakes and I won some critical games you are going to have to explain some basics here so Berlin is the type of opening what's that the Ruy Lopez or the Spanish opening it actually existed all the way back in the sixties but it really became popular in two thousand and one I believe it was when Gary Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik played the world championship match Kasparov had been the world champion for a very long time I think it was close I think it was about fifteen fifteen years roughly maybe a little bit more than that and he lost the match because when Gary had the white pieces Kasparov was not able to effectively get an advantage a lot of those games were very quick draws and in chess you want to put pressure on your opponent when you have the white pieces so Kasparov was not able to do anything with the white pieces and Kramnik was able to beat him when the colors were reversed Kramnik won a game in the Groenfeld he won a game in one of the queens game but declined slash Nimzo variations as well and that was the reason Gary Kasparov lost the world championship title was because of this this variation can you teach me the Berlin opening absolutely so the opening starts let me just move this microphone up a little bit starts with e four and then it goes e five knight f three knight c six yeah there should be five and now knight to f six and at which point is this the standard like this is the the Berlin yeah this is the Berlin this is the starting position of the Berlin defense and white has many many options here now it's interesting because I did work with Gary at a certain point and I remember I I had access to his database and he had something like two hundred and twenty files on the Berlin defense because what happened is is Gary somebody who the way that he learned chess it's very much like there are certain openings that are okay there are other openings that are not okay and so this was considered dubious at the time and so Gary basically decided to go into this end game with castles knight takes pawn why is the castling an end game so I'll show you knight takes pawn all these moves are very very forced you got pawn to d four what does it mean they're very forced that means like those are the optimal things that you should be doing exactly these moves are I think they're almost at least for black they're absolutely forced or else you end up in trouble you said knight takes d four knight to d six oh okay so this attacks the bishop on b five got it white takes black takes back with the pawn in front of the queen pawn takes pawn knight to f five and then it goes queen takes queen what king takes queen very aggressive yeah so you get this position where we're in an end game got it you just ruined all the normal conventions I guess right on the other hand for Kramnik it was quite brilliant because Gary what he was known for was opening preparation and getting the advantage he was a very tactical very aggressive player and you are playing an end game right from the start now Gary basically thought that this was better for white and he tried to prove it and he was unable to prove it I think up until maybe it was game game nine or game eleven actually maybe by the order wrongs I think he was white in the even number games basically spent four or five games with the white pieces trying to win this end game and he was not able to win in fact he didn't even come close to proving an advantage so he kept wasting the white pieces in that match and Kramnik basically took advantage when he had the white pieces and Gary the black pieces he was able to win some games in very nice style and that was the difference oh that's kind of brilliant so he had this is a new problem presented in that match and Gary's gut says white is better white is better and so in white I am going to push with this position and I am going to not change anything from match to match I am going to try to find a way that this is better so it's that kind of stubbornness and what do you think about that like what that that's that's the way of chess right that's not a mistake that's that's the way you should do it if your gut says this the position is better you should capitalize right I think that's an old school way of thinking in chess because before computers. Basically, it was up to humans. Your intuition, your calculation process really determined, um whether whether a position is better. And so like if in Gary's time, if openings were dubious, they're dubious. It means somebody is better. But as we've learned with computers now, even small advantages generally that doesn't mean anything, and a position is defendable where you won't lose the game if you play optimal moves, even if the advantage is like half a pawn for example, like zero point five zero. With optimal play, a computer will still prove that that position you you can hold it and not lose the game. And so for Gary, he learned it where like if an opening is not right, you you like he knows it's not correct, he has to prove it. Now finally towards the end of the match, he tried to switch, but it was already way too late and he didn't have time to to win with the white pieces. He did come close in one of the later games, but he spent the whole match trying to prove that this Berlin defense is not playable. So this position the computer would say that black is better. It would say that white's very slightly better because black has moved the king, you are unable to castle the king and it's kind of open in the center of the board. Oh, so wait, so Stockfish or the engine would agree with Gary's intuition. Yes, but at the end of the day, when you go like five moves deeper in any number of the sequences, it's going to go to zero point zero zero, which means draw. Yes, correct, and that's a bad thing because white should be winning. Well, you want to put pressure on your opponent when you have the white pieces in any tournament, any match. Got it. So if the engine says zero zero, that means you are not doing a good job of playing white. Correct, you should be putting pressure. That doesn't mean you are going to win. There are going to be a lot of draws because the game of chess has draw tendencies, but you want to try. Normally the the general approach these days because of computers is you try to put pressure on your opponent when you are white and when you are black you try to be solid make a draw. That's the general approach now. When Gary was actually at his peak, it was quite the opposite. Gary was trying to win games with the black pieces as well by playing openings like the Sicilian Nidor. But with modern technology and I I did a podcast recently where I also spoke about this computers are so good and players can memorize so many lines that nowadays trying to take risks with the black pieces it almost always backfires or if you are very lucky you might make the draw but you never get the winning chances so from a risk reward standpoint you have to play almost perfectly just to make the draw but you're never going to have any winning chances where in the old days generally you might lose the games but you're going to have chances to win as well but now it's very much one sided so a lot of players try to be very solid this is by the way the C squared podcast correct yes yeah that's an amazing podcast so shout out to those guys I'm glad that they started a thing that seems to be a good thing and I hope they keep going with this good thing that was a great interview that I did with you in that podcast I talked about the Sicilian Nidor very aggressive opening the problem is white is the one who has the choices um after after the first five to six moves white has the choices what do you want to do can you show me the that sure so it's for example that would be e four set it up e four c five and now we got knight to f three pawn to d six pawn to d four trade knight to f six knight to f six and now pawn to a six so this is a Nidor um Bobby Fischer really popularized it and has run run up to becoming the world champion Gary played it for probably the last fifteen to twenty years of his career so it's a very solid solid opening defense what is what are then sorry to interrupt what is what's interesting about this so there's a for people listening on the white side there's a couple of knights out and so black has many options black can play for b five here to develop the bishop to b seven because the pawn on a six guards the pawn on b five you can also play other setups like potentially g six and putting the bishop on g seven okay so bringing doing different things and bringing out you can also push the pawn to e five or push the pawn to e six okay so there there are many different setups and it's very very flexible but white is the one who who has the choice here in terms of what to play and there are many moves there is this move that I mentioned before bishop to g five which Magnus played against me there is also bishop to e three bishop to c four and now there are also moves like h three h four rook g one even moves like a three and a four so there are basically are nine or ten moves that white can play here but the move that white plays sort of dictates the direction of the game and you have to be extremely precise if you're black so if white plays something like bishop g five this is very sharp and aggressive but you can also play something like bishop to e three pawn to e five and something like knight to f three here and it goes in a positional direction so the again this is very advanced these are very advanced sort of setups and and what what I'm explaining is not not at a basic level but white is the one who chooses a type of game is it very aggressive very sharp or both sides have chances is it something very positional where if you're black you're probably okay but you have to play the best moves in order to equalize or you can end up worse okay so you're always responding as black in this situation correct so so how different are all those different variations so like with the bishop with the different you said you bring out the bishop to to this position to this position or to that position like how are those fundamentally different variations like I just wonder from a AI computational perspective like a single step yeah well I'll I'll make it even simpler here if you put the knight here it's very positional if you put the knight on this square it's very aggressive because normally white is going to push this pawn from f two to either f three or f four and potentially a pawn to g four later so even here based on where you go it changes whether it's a positional game or it's a very tactical just those little and that those are the choices you're constantly making am I going to be standard and basic and positional or am I going to be aggressive and take right and I can actually give you another example so psychology plays a big role and in the Candidates tournament which I played in June of this past year in Madrid Spain I actually I had the white pieces against Ali Reza Farouzia who is a rising junior originally from Iran representing France and I knew that he wanted very aggressive games because he doesn't normally play the Sicilian Nidor and he chose to play it in this one tournament so I knew that he wanted these very sharp positions where he can lose but he can also win and so when I played him I intentionally played this variation because I knew that he was going to be unhappy he wanted these sharp exciting games and here I am playing something very boring where if he plays it correctly it's going to be a draw but he's not going to be happy and so he actually did something dubious because he wanted to create tension he wanted to create chaos so you knew by being boring you would frustrate him and then he would make mistakes exactly yes so the ultimate troll at the highest level yes of chess yeah you mentioned psychology and taking us back to the Magnus even in 2010 the Magnus games but Reddit said that you've spoken about losing to Magnus being hit on your confidence is is there some true to that so is there some aspect about that 2010 match that's not just about Magnus figuring stuff out but just a hit on confidence like how important is confidence at that level when you're both young and like firing out all cylinders well it's not just a problem with me this is the problem everybody hasn't played against Magnus because what happens is is on a broader level when you play against somebody no matter who you're playing against but when they're somehow able to save positions where they're much worse almost in miraculous ways the way that Magnus has done against everybody he's done it against me done against Erronean many times done it against Cramm just about everybody when when someone's able to save games it really starts to affect you because you don't know what to do and more and more the more and more times that happens it starts adding up and it just affects you in a way that it's very very hard to overcome and I think every top player has that issue where if they've played against Magnus more than like five times they've seen things happen in the game that don't happen against anybody else and then psychologically it becomes harder and harder to overcome it which is why I think a lot of the junior players they don't have this long history and it does affect them as far as myself directly um certainly after that match though it was not the same playing against Magnus because I viewed him completely differently too after all those games where he was saving these these end games I started thinking like this guy is super human but you can't really have those thoughts when you're playing competitively but in the back of your mind it's always there and I think every top player has that issue is there way to overcome that because you have to I don't know if I'll necessarily do better against Magnus going forward but I felt that when I started playing against him more than just a game here there in classical chess during the pandemic I played him in these online tournaments seemed like every month I came very close I beat him in one event I think I lost in two others and then the tour final but when I was playing against him more and more if he didn't feel super human it felt like as I'm playing more and more and learning about his style um that I was doing better so I think for me the weird thing is that I just wasn't playing against him that many games but when I start playing against like 2030 games during the course of a year I actually started feeling more confident because I feel like I can compete whereas when I was only playing him like three or four times in classical chess in the previous couple of years it what I wasn't doing great and then you don't have you don't have those glimpses of you don't have those moments where you feel like you're going to be able to win against them but when you start playing 2030 games and you get these opportunities even if you don't convert you feel like you have the chances when you play three or four games and there you might lose one draw three you never have those opportunities and so you feel very negative about what's going on when you were able to beat him or not necessarily win the game but win positionally something what was the reason like technically speaking the matchup between the two of you what like where where the holes that you were able to find I mean the the answer I think is actually quite simple I think it's all psychological actually more than anything else because I didn't it didn't I didn't feel like I was doing anything differently but I was also not making the mistakes that I was making before so I think it was more psychological than on your part versus his part it's it's very weird because when you when you think about chess it's a mental game um you know but we we we all are capable of beating Magnus all of us but we all have very very bad scores against him and I I think people underestimate how much of a role that plays um and for me when I played him in these online events in 2020 specifically I felt like there there was really nothing to lose which also ties into everything else that happened during the pandemic as well but I just felt like there was nothing to lose and I felt like I was playing very freely unlike unlike before now that's not to say that Magnus isn't a better player that like somehow I expect to beat him but I felt like I wasn't making the same mistakes that I was making in the previous years if we dig into the psychological preparation is there something to your mental preparation that you do that makes you successful like what are the lessons over all these years that you learned what works what doesn't do you drink a bunch of whiskey the night before is there is there is there some small hacks or major ones about how you approach the game it's really hard sort of in a way because I feel like I'm two different people I was one person up until the pandemic as a professional chess player solely where I earned all my income everything was derived from that and from the pandemic on I'm sort of a different person because that is not where where I'm making my income from and so the whole psychological profile that I had before is completely different from now there there's this this joke about the I literally don't care phrase that I've used and in a sense what that means is not that I don't care obviously I'm competitive I want to do well but if I lose a game or I don't do well in a tournament it's not the end of the world in the same kind of way that I felt it was before because that pressure of needing to always perform was very very high um and so I think before before the pandemic what I would try to do more than anything is just not think about the previous game for the most part like say I had a bad game I'd go out for a walk that evening just clear my mind these sorts of things now they aren't really hacks per se but it's trying essentially to have short term memory loss so I literally don't care it's not just a meme it's a it's a philosophy in a sense it's a way of being I mean it's it's basically that yes like I do want to perform well I'm going to give it my all but it's not like if I lose a game it's not the end of the world that should be the title of your autobiography and it should be like I I know you're probably mortal but if you do happen to die that should also be on your tombstone Charles Bukowski has don't try in his tombstone yes which which I think emphasizes a similar concept but slightly different more in the artistic domain which is well a lot of people have different interpretations of that statement but I think it means don't take things too seriously yeah I I mean I I agree with that completely I think that um if you if you look at my career prior to the pandemic I put huge amounts of pressure on myself because I really wanted to be as good as I could be but but it was the way I was earning a living and one thing that's very difficult about chess is that only the top 20 maybe 30 players in the world make a living from the game now you make a very good living no way am I diminishing chess but the problem with it is it's not secure at all so if you don't get invitations to the absolute top tournaments which have prize funds from anywhere from maybe 100 thousand up to potentially half a million dollars if you don't get those invitations it's very very hard to earn a living you can go from earning maybe 200 thousand 300 thousand dollars a year to earning like 50 thousand so it's very very unstable and I think um for myself I really put a lot of pressure on myself in in a way that it affected me and not not not in a good way not in so in part it was also financial pressure so like once you're able to make money elsewhere it it it makes you more free to take risks to play the the pure game of chess yeah it makes yeah exactly it makes it made me it took all that pressure off and I kind of I'm just trying to play as well as I can and I don't really worry like if I lose a game it's not the end all be all and maybe that's just like psychological stuff that I should have tried to sort out before I mean I did at some period of time like do certain things along those lines but um I I just yeah I became became free and I think it it definitely it was not about the chess and that's one of those things it's also very hard because when I look at myself and when I had these periods where it seemed like I played better improved one of these periods um was in 2008 where I basically I dropped out of college I was about 2650 Elo so I was roughly top 100 in the world and for the first probably half part of 2008 I played very little almost not all I went up to Vancouver I was living on my own for the first time and I was not studying that much and then after that period I started playing and I actually improved very quickly and I broke 2700 shortly thereafter so it had nothing to do with chess when you moved to Vancouver and weren't doing much what were you doing exactly oh I was enjoying nature I was going outside hiking mountains like going and kayaking all these things that I was not that I had not done for many years I'm glad I asked because I was imagining something else I was imagining you like in a dark room drinking and playing video games and okay cool that that's good that that that's an interesting break so dropping out of college and then giving taking a break and then giving everything to chess in terms of preparation and so on maybe actually if we can rewind back to the to the beginning you've said about yourself that you're not a naturally talented chess player your brother was but that that's really fascinating because what would you say was the reason you're able to break through and become one of the best chess players in the world having been not a naturally talented chess player yeah I think that this applies to actually chess or any number of sort of basic games actually for that matter is that I'm not naturally talented but if I don't get something I'm I try to figure out why don't I get it what am I doing wrong over and over and over again and I mean there there are many games like this there's this funny game on the phone I'll just use it as an example there's a game called geometry dash um now I'm not like I'm not world class or anything at it it's just a silly silly little game on the phone that you play you just tap and it goes up and down 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