Levy Rozman, also known as GothamChess, is a professional chess player, streamer, and educator. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:09 - Elo rating
2:13 - Chess.com vs lichess.org
13:04 - Teaching chess
17:32 - Magnus Carlsen
32:47 - Greatest chess player of all time
37:30 - Hans Niemann cheating scandal
38:59 - Pin of Shame
53:07 - Bullying
54:59 - Indonesia incident
1:06:34 - Retiring from chess
1:13:11 - Death
1:16:53 - Streamers
1:30:29 - Hans Niemann cheating scandal continued
2:08:11 - Magnus Carlsen's statement
2:19:32 - Podcasts
2:21:59 - Parasocial interaction
2:25:49 - How to cheat in chess
2:35:34 - Reddit questions
2:41:58 - Chess boxing
2:50:44 - Chess bots
2:56:26 - AlphaZero
3:02:13 - Did Hans Niemann cheat?
3:09:29 - Chess openings
3:14:09 - Magnus Carlsen's poker game
3:16:51 - Chess advice
3:23:12 - Depression

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I have anal beads that are communicating with stockfish via Bluetooth.

You can even, if you're cheating quote unquote the right way, you're gonna lose plenty of games.

I think day by day, the evidence is slowly starting to show more and more that he's cheated, like how Magnus said, more than he said and more recently.

The following is a conversation with Levi Rosman, also known as Gotham Chess.

He's a professional chess player and educator.

I highly recommend you check out his YouTube channel called Gotham Chess.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Levy Rosman.

You're known for being able to guess people's ELO rating, so what do you think, just by looking at my face, deep into my eyes, what's my ELO rating?

Here, I'll help you, I'll do E4 for the listener.

I actually read that Stockfish prefers E4.

Because it maximizes the number of tactical options.

The right answer is 3,400, which is, I believe, stockfish.

Like what are telltale signs or red flags about a person at different ratings?

Yeah, I think you can separate it something like the very first, the 0 to about 8900.

For simplicity's sake, I'm gonna use the chess.com rating system because Leech S is slightly different.

It tends to go 2, 300 points higher than Chess.com, sometimes even 4, 500 points higher, but then it catches up.

Can you like- Yeah, so- explain what the difference is and what they are?

Yes, chess.com is, it has obviously the free option where you can play games, you get some sort of puzzles every single day, you get some sort of lessons every single day, but then they have tiered memberships where you can pay annually or per month that you can unlock all the other features.

Yeah, they have unlimited puzzles, but they also have their biggest selling point for sure is like a dedicated game review that it's like very flashy and sophisticated.

And the coach will literally tell you what you did wrong.

Every single moment, the computer evaluated a mistake.

But the most important thing that they have is they offer international masters, grandmasters, the opportunity to make video lesson libraries, which hundreds of hours of anything.

I can even learn some stuff on there probably.

It's actually scary how many people think that's a real thing, by the way, which is the danger of the internet.

I tend to believe that people believing a thing that's hilarious at scale will make that thing a reality.

I think people manifest the meme, the meme becomes real.

I think there is something about humor sort of being, why did I, I was gonna, what I was going to say is I feel like humor becomes a lubricant for the trajectory of human civilization and I don't know why the word lubricant went into my head, which I understand, but it's very Freudian.

Anyway, so 0 to 900, if you're a 1300 player, you were saying.

If you're not good at end games, You don't understand how to convert positions that have 7 or 8 pieces left on the board.

You don't know when you're supposed to activate your king.

You don't know how a Bishop outplays a Knight with just several pawns on the board.

Those are all very important things because it's not just about knowing the theoretical end games.

Like some positions in chess are literally solved.

If I showed you a position, I asked, what's the evaluation and how do you win it?

There's a technique, you're supposed to know that technique.

And the coaches on chess.com can help or no?

Yeah, so these lesson libraries, it's not like a live lesson, it's prerecorded training position, walk you through it.

And then there's a dynamic factor as well where you can practice.

You can practice the theoretical and you can practice a practical game where there's no set format to do something.

It's just based on your previous experience.

Basically, Leach S is, their entire thing is, it's an open source website that tries to be as free as possible and operates totally on donations.

They don't have any advertisements, they don't have, which is weird because Normally in big competitive settings, it's all capitalistic.

You have 1 big entity and another big entity and they're both for profit.

But in this case, the big argument is, well, they offer a lot of things for free.

You can go into Leachess's lessons library and do things for free.

The comparison that I always make is chess.com is basically like having a good personal trainer and having someone to help you at the gym.

Leeches says you have to do all the stuff yourself.

So you can combine YouTube with Lichess, no one's gonna really point you in the right direction.

I also like to say, can I make a controversial joke?

Ardent Lichess supporters are like very angry, you know, only vegetarian or vegan folks because they will tear you apart and try to convert you as much as possible.

Did you just point a large number of haters onto this very podcast?

Is there like several people that were very upset at you right now?

No, that's always the joke that I've made because if people have Chezz.com, and I love all people, but I'm just saying Chezz.com patrons do not try to actively convert folks on Lee Chaz.

Folks on Lee Chaz are like, you know, there's a meme chaz.com.

Started somewhere on Reddit, Anarchy Chaz, kind of a.

Oh, so Lee Chaz is a little bit of an anarchist organization.

Would you go as far as to say they're a terrorist extremist organization?

I thought Lichess has really good analysis.

Somebody, does it have an engine for analysis of like games?

Or is that an open source thing that like?

Okay, and then the rest is the interface around Stockfish that shows.

It's tough, it's the live, So chess has a live server where you and I can play a game against each other.

And if we have the same rating, we have the same criteria.

We'll play a game, but there's also reviewing your own games, there's an opening database.

So you can see what the most popular trends are.

Like I'm sponsored by chess.com and I will openly say that, but you can't have- So you're deeply biased.

But- Can you play games on Lichess Or is it just for analysis?

So they're like legitimately competitors.

Not exactly the same thing, but they have the, they're trying to match for features, but you're saying LeeChess is more chaotic, and then Chess.com is more like

I just know that it's, you have to, no one's gonna hold your hand if you go to LeeChess.

You can play games, you can analyze your games, but you have to discover it yourself.

The whole point of chess.com is to make the journey as simple as possible.

But I also firmly believe you can't have any sort of growth in chess without a chess.com or a chess24.

So chess24 was another live server with some lesson libraries and so on, but they were, I think the process was they were bought by Play Magnus.

He owns some stake in it, I think 9 or 10%.

They owned a bunch of chess companies, including Chess24, but now it seems like they're either merging or basically getting acquired by chess.com.

And then Play Magnus, it's an app also where you can play Magnus at different levels, but there's also the educational stuff.

The for-profit chess companies make the option for grandmasters to make a living to make chess and e-sport.

So you can have both in theory and probably some controversy is good.

Like what's the connection between your videos and streams and so on and chess.com?

Like are they supporting people in that way or no?

My content, they don't necessarily, I just make whatever I want.

If they do something stupid, I will call out their leadership.

It's not like, but I, to have the logo up, like in my YouTube videos.

So anyway, back to, I mean, that was really helpful.

So The thing you mentioned about the end game, if you don't know what the hell you're doing with the end game, what does that mean about your rating?

If you don't know how to finish with just a few pieces on the board.

That's the self-deprecating humor we tuned in for.

Yeah, you can't have, there's a reason Magnus is the best.

It's because 7 hours into a game when everybody's given up, he's still squeezing juice out of the fruit.

So that's not a good source of information if you...

No, within the first 15 moves generally you can tell, because you can tell how well they played the opening, so how well they knew what they were supposed to memorize, what they were supposed to play, and then how they react to piece interactions.

So if they are faced with a move that a more advanced player would deal with very swiftly because there's kind of a natural response, that gives you information.

If they move their king when they're in check, when they didn't have to, that's a massive giveaway.

Some people just think, oh, I'm in check, so I have to move my king.

So it's like how direct the response of your play is to the danger.

So like if you're more moving like multiple pieces at a time, meaning like you're moving like the pieces are like tied together in interesting ways and then okay, okay.

Like what about like, what about the opening?

Because a lot of people can memorize openings, right?

So you could memorize a bunch of stuff, but if you're 900 and I'm 900, my rating is fluctuating all over the place in this podcast, I feel,

I'm gonna play some crap and you can't play the way you memorized, because I have to respond to you in certain ways.

So you will either respond the way you think you're supposed to respond, and that will probably be incorrect, or now you have to figure out how to deal with the fresh position.

Oh, so the 900 will reflect itself in both cases.

I wonder if actually, so, Do you know your current rating or no?

I know both my current ELO, like over the board, now is 2320, my peak was

So you can like, given that you've guessed a lot of Elo ratings, can you kind of emulate that?

Before I was doing YouTube and Twitch, I was teaching kids.

Not only did I have to play at their rating, I also had to play and sometimes even behave and explain things in a way that a kid could understand.

I think that's what contributed to the growth of the channel, frankly.

I kind of understood how beginners thought about the game.

So yeah, you did, you taught people chess, you coached people for many years, I guess in New York.

What did you learn about the way people learn from that?

So like, how did people that were successful at getting good at chess quickly, what were some of the commonalities, some of the patterns that you saw?

I would say it's obsession and also love of the game.

So if you're bored, you don't want to watch a show, you want to boot up chess.com or LeeChess just so I don't get flamed by anyone in the audience.

So you're saying Lee Chess people are the ones that would attack aggressively?

So there's another, I didn't know, I thought Chess24 was part of the chess.com.

Cult or tribe or whatever terms we wanna use.

I'm sure there's even more places to play live.

There always have been more places to play live, but Chess.com, LeechHouse, Dominate, and Well, Chess24 is rough for live interface.

Of course, they have good courses and everything, but.

And some are even good people or whatever that quote goes.

Okay, like obsession, that means the way they look at the board, when they're bored, how quickly do they return to the chess board, that kind of stuff.

Just like how many hours a day they want to spend.

Some kids definitely have a talent, of course there's this eternal debate, talent versus hard work.

I don't necessarily know if it's a talent for chess specifically but it's a talent for I'm sure there's some sort of spatial visualization in your mind, you start picking up what squares are controlled by your pieces and opponent's pieces faster, your memory is much stronger.

So you don't just learn openings like we discussed, you learn literal patterns such as, oh, I remember this from 2 tournaments ago.

I remember this from a game I played just yesterday.

And you just keep playing and playing and playing.

But I think the 1 commonality, I think I've seen in all kids, it's obsession.

And I've seen kids who are brilliant kids.

Like if you give them a page of tactics, puzzles, they solve faster than anybody.

They can't handle that silent face-to-face war with another six-year-old.

They can't even handle, there's also trash talk.

1 sentence by a kid can throw off your prize student.

And I've seen kids just totally disintegrate.

I've seen also my students bully other kids, go on, my student wasn't that strong, but their verbal warfare, which is not allowed, but goes unnoticed.

even verbal warfare, like just going like, like little like facial expressions you would make at the board.

That's pretty creepy, the intensity, not creepy, that's not the right word, but there's an intensity in that silence over the board.

Like you can probably hear stuff like, just like, it's super quiet, it's like a library.

And then there's just a tension that builds.

Yeah, and at the highest level, both sides are involved in a battle that they both foresee 99% of the time.

That's the scary part is that you both see the exact same thing.

It's very rare you play a move and I didn't see it.

I saw the move could be played, but I missed something 3 or 4 moves deeper.

And you play that move and suddenly you're excited and I'm nervous, but all of a sudden you make an inaccuracy and now the tide shifts, right?

We could be on totally different planes throughout the game or we could be on the same plane throughout the game.

Yeah, so your thought is when you see a move that to you seems suboptimal, you start to think, what was that?

Did you miscalculate or did they miscalculate?

Isn't that what Magnus is really good at, is taking people away from, like making suboptimal moves, to take them away from the known openings?

Yeah, he gets part of his really dominant reputation, I think, from not letting people get into ultra-theoretical positions.

He just won this tournament, this online tournament.

And he said he had a young player strategy.

He had an anti, sorry, a anti young player strategy.

It means that by move 7 or 8, you go to the database, no games.

And they have to deal with the strategic complexities of the position, which he just, he gets.

And he might get from just an enormous database within his brain of historical games that have similar structures or just sheer genius.

The younger you are, you can't remember a game played in 1951 in some bar in the Soviet Union, but he does.

Because he read a book once or a magazine once.

he remembers the structure, which it's just, it's not fair.

What do you think makes him, if we can sort of linger on it, what do you think makes him so good?

I think it's the memory, and I think it's, he just seems to get the game better than anybody else.

In sports, you have reaction time, you have strength, you have, but also as he's now evolving, it's stamina.

So there have been games that if you put 2 other

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GothamChess: Hans Niemann, Magnus Carlsen, Cheating Scandal & Chess Bots | Lex Fridman Podcast #327