Botez Sisters: Chess, Streaming, and Fame | Lex Fridman Podcast #319

I mean, I've definitely experienced moments where I didn't want to do anything. But chess.

I also say that's pretty universal. I think if you want to be the best at anything you do or any sport, you have to be that level of obsessed.

The following is a conversation with Alexandra and Andrea Botez. They're sisters, professional chess players, commentators, educators, entertainers and streamers. Their channel is called Botez Live on Twitch and YouTube. I I highly recommend you check it out. A small side note about the currently ongoing controversy in the chess world where the 19 year old Grandmaster Hans Niemann beat Magnus Carlsen at the Sinque Field Cup. After this, Magnus for the first time ever withdrew from the tournament, implying with a tweet that there may have been cheating or at least something shady going on. Folks like the Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura fanned the flames of cheating accusations and the Internet made a bunch of proposals on how the cheating could have been done and it ranged from the ridiculous to the hilarious. Often both. Hans himself came out and said that he has cheated before when he was 12 and 16 on random online games to jack up his rating, but he said that he has never cheated in person over the board. Danny Wrench from Chess.com who I've spoken with may make a statement in response to Hans claims so soon. Folks like Grandmaster Jakob Ugge spoke to his experience training Hans Niemann and has said that his memory and intuition were quite brilliant. So as you see, there's a lot of perspectives on this chess. Bass has a good summary of the saga that I'll link in the description. Also note that this is so quickly moving that new stuff might come out between me recording this and publishing the episode, but I thought I'd mention this anyway since the episode with the Botes sisters is a conversation about chess and was recorded shortly before the controversy, so we didn't talk about it. I'm considering having Hans on this podcast and also Magnus back on the podcast and maybe others like Hikaru or folks from Chess.com's Anti Cheat staff to discuss their really interesting cheating detection algorithms. But I may also just stay out of it. I find chess to be a beautiful game and the chess community full of fascinating, brilliant people and so I'll keep having conversations like these about chess. It's fun. My goal with this podcast and in general as a human being is to increase the amount of love in the world. Sometimes that involves celebrating brilliance and beauty in science, in art, in chess. Sometimes it involves empathetic conversations with controversial figures that seek to Understand, not deride. Sometimes it involves standing against the Internet lynch mob, as the chess based article calls it. To hear the story of a human being who is under attack, even if it means I get attacked in the process as well. This is the Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Alexandra and Andrea Botez. You just got back from Italy. What's the most memorable thing? I was just there recently as well.

It was very chaotic because we went out on a whim and we only had our first hotel book and then we rented a car and drove around all of the cities and went to like five different cities in about a week and a bit. So I think it was just the variety of seeing so many different places when we're used to being at home all the time. And Andrea, is yours your luggage? Yeah.

I would say it was the most stressful vacation we've been in in our life. And it was a valuable learning lesson because now I know how to be prepared for trips. But we lost our bags and I never got them back. And like Alex said, we didn't know where we'd be sleeping every night. And we're just driving through a new city with a giant van in the most narrowest streets with. And getting in many, many fights with Italian men. So it wasn't really vacation.

I saw this motion so many times.

Wasn't it liberating to lose your baggage? Is that like a silver lining?

It was liberating. My entire life, I've always had the issue of overpacking.

And I told her for the trip, Andrea, you're gonna pack light, right? Yeah, Alex, yeah. And then I see her stuffing her overweight, but you did the same.

We both had giant, big extra baggage that we didn't need. And I'm actually very glad we lost it because for Venice, hauling that around on all the boats and through the tiny streets, and there's no Ubers, and now it's the first time where I can travel without checking in a bag, which I've never done before. So now I've learned what it means to pack light because I saw that I could survive off of just my. This sounds very dramatic, but it was really a big learning lesson for me.

The driving must have been crazy because driving in Italy is rough.

The driving was crazy. I did most of it. And it would be really interesting driving through places like Florence or even through the beach areas that were super windy because. Because there are two way streets that should really only be one way so you'd be driving this huge van, and then another car comes on a cliff, and you're just waiting for it to slowly pass. So it took all of my focus and concentration to drive well in Italy, but it was actually really relaxing because the hardest thing about making a lot of videos online is you're always thinking about it, what's coming next. And when we were in Italy, it was so chaotic that I did not think about work for a good week and a bit.

Oh, because you're just.

We were stressed.

I was just trying to keep us alive.

It seemed higher priority, and that was kind of fun.

It was kind of fun.

No planning, nothing.

I wouldn't recommend it or ever do that again, but.

It sounds pretty awesome.

And we even randomly ran into two friends of ours who were in the same city, and we just traveled with them for about half of the trip.

Yeah. So you just took on the chaos.

Exactly. It was an adventure.

Okay. And I see, like, because you were using your hands a lot, you gotten. You picked up some of the. The Italian hand gestures.

I did. We did get yelled at by a lot of Italians. The old Italian grandmas would come to us after breakfast because we'd leave something on the plate, and she'd be like, you could feed an entire village with that. Tell your friends. And we'd be. We'd feel so. Ish. Yeah.

We got cursed out a lot, but it really remind me of where we grew up and helped.

True. Yeah.

Bring back those. We were here Romanian, but it was like an immigrant neighborhood in Canada, so. So, you know, same. If you don't finish your plate, that's disrespectful to the people who made the food.

How's the food in Italy? I feel like the carbs thing is too intense.

Very. Yeah. I think very overrated, in my opinion.

So I'm actually not supposed to eat gluten because I have an allergy, but I was in Italy, and it's, you know, gluten galore. So I was actually eating a lot of it, and it was very interesting because I didn't get sick while I was in Italy, but I do while I'm in the US So somehow the food was actually maybe more okay for me to digest, which I appreciated, but I didn't like it as much as I thought. Did you like the food there?

Yeah, no, I did. I did. I love cars, but it's. It's. It feels like Vegas when. When I go there for the food, it's like if I stay here too long, I'M gonna do things I regret. That's what it feels like with the food.

Right.

Cause I don't know how to moderate. And everybody is pushing very large portions and wild kind of eating things on you. Pasta, pizza, and it's soaked and bread so delicious. So, yeah, I love it, but I regret everything. So it's like I don't want to. I don't want to go to a place where I'm going to regret everything I do for too long of a time.

Yeah.

Surprisingly, the people there, though, are still very fit, and everyone stays in good shape. But that's probably because you're walking around all day and you're much more active than in the.

And they also just know how to moderate food. I. I think I got used to the US Way of eating the US Portion that just. A lot. Never. Always a lot.

Yeah.

And more.

And I feel in the US Food advertisements are also much more in your face, and you're more often reminded of junk food than we were in Italy. So even though we were eating less healthy things, I think we were getting cravings and being pushed towards junk food less often.

All right, I gotta ask you a hard question. So the Romance languages. So I think French is up there as, like, number one.

Number one. In terms of.

I don't know this.

Who's ranking them?

Oh, you guys speak Italian or.

No, not Italian, but we studied French and Spanish in school. And Romanian.

I feel like every country calls their language of Romance language.

No, but it's Romanian, French, Spanish, Spanish, Portuguese. And I think there was one more that was like this dialect, but those are considered the Romance languages.

Okay, so where would you put Italian?

I think we got yelled at so much from Italian that it's not gonna be a love.

Okay, so it wasn't working.

It's on the bottom of the list because people did not use it nicely.

But I always really liked how French sounds. I. I think something about it where maybe Spanish actually sounds nicer to the ears, but French has more character and it feels more. So I like French. What about you?

That was my answer, too.

Oh, sultry. Okay.

Yeah.

I feel like French in France, I feel like I'm always being judged, like they're better than me. That's what French. They are better than us. This is so true. Which is why, you know. Yeah. I long to belong to that. I like the British accent.

The British accent, really?

Yeah.

Actually, one thing we did on our Italian trip is we just picked up British accents for the entire trip for fun, and we forgot we were Doing them to the point where we talked to British people and they'd ask us, why are you talking like that?

I did feel much more elegant and mature. People like, you know, I don't know if they felt the same way about us, but it was more of, you know, the confidence.

You do feel like you're more poised, for sure.

Yeah.

So how'd you guys get into chess? When. When did you first. Let's say, when did you first fall in love with chess?

So we both started playing when we were pretty young, around six years old. That's when our dad taught us. And I enjoyed playing chess because I had good results early on. But a lot of it was being pushed from my dad to play chess. And I only really started loving it when we moved from Canada and we started moving a lot. And chess was the one stable thing that I had. And it was also where all my friends were. So it was kind of that foundational thing for me. And that's when I started studying chess very intensely. And when I started putting in the hours out of my own will and not because I was being pushed by my dad, that's when I started really loving it. And I even wanted to take time off college to just focus on chess.

So training and competing.

Training and competing. Yeah. It was when I was doing it for myself that I started getting my.

Best results and actually enjoying the thing.

And really enjoying it. Yeah. I would spend summer vacation studying for tournaments, and my mom would come and say, you need to make friends. Go leave the house. And I'd be like, no, I need to play chess. And I remember those moments that you.

Rebelled by playing chess.

Yeah, exactly.

How did you get into it?

Yeah. My experience with loving in high school is very opposite from Alex's, but. Right. My sister was playing, and my dad taught me when I was a kid.

Andrea was cool in high school, unlike me.

You are.

I wouldn't say cool. I'd say more balance. And I was interested in other hobbies in my childhood. If I ever really did love chess, there's certainly moments about, like, traveling and being together with my family and spending those moments together. But those are more the social and the experiences. But funny enough, like, I think my happiest moment where I really played the game for my own enjoyment was probably my most recent tournament. Because this was after. Obviously we've been streaming and I'm no longer in high school. But when I was in school, I was always playing for college and for the results, trying to build a resume. So I was too stressed out about the pressure to really enjoy the game. Whereas when I just played my first tournament, so it was like after like a two year break because of the Pandemic. And it was also olive on Twitch. So there was some pressure, but it was the first time that, like, I was really eager to study for the game. Sitting and focusing since we've been streaming and not getting distracted by something else in years, like I said, and the tournament experience, I hit my highest rating and it was my best tournament ever. And I think most of that is because it came from my own enjoyment.

So you didn't enjoy the domination? Cause I think you, like, did really well, right? This is like a couple months ago.

Uh. Oh, yeah, yeah, the tournament. Well, of course, the. I think the results came from enjoying the tournament because I would be in high school, like studying double, triple. The amount of time, like six hours every day compared to this tournament. I didn't even prepare for it. And for three years I wouldn't be able to pass one rating or. Whereas in this one tournament, I passed it by like 70 points without even any preparation. So it was. I think as soon as you stop worrying about the competition is when the games get much better.

What does it mean to pass a rating?

So I was stuck at 1900.

1900 is 100 points off of expert. Yeah. Usually when you reach 2000, you're considered an expert, which is the rating Andrea was going for.

Okay, expert, that's a good technical term. Or this like a.

It's more of a colloquial term where if somebody's around a 2000, you're playing them in a tournament, they won't have the actual title next to their name. But you say, I'm playing an expert.

What about like the, the more official things like master? Does that have to do with rating or something?

Yeah, so national master in the US is when you're 2200.

Okay. And what's International Master?

International Master is based off of a different system, the FIDE system, which is international. To be an international master, it's 2400 and you have to have three international master norms.

Yeah, I think Magnus said he's 28, six something that was.

Yeah.

And then he said, that's pretty decent. Now.

Well, he always talks about.

But see, the thing is, I think what he meant is that's a decent rating because it accurately captures his actual level. So it's. It's not overinflated or underinflated and so on. And so the discussion there was, how do you get to can a human being get to 2900. And then he says, because my current rating is pretty decent at representing my skill level, it's going to be a long road to actually get there. Right. Because it's like, so you have to beat people your same level. That's how the number increases.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And you beat a bunch of people in the tournament. Right. That are higher than your level.

Very lucky. I was playing. I was really nervous because my category was like 200 points above my rating. And of course I was very rusty and I hadn't played a tournament in a while, but it went pretty well.

Do you feel the pressure when you're actually recording it, like the streaming?

It was definitely. So before every round I was vlogging and I was doing meet and greets and doing other things for the.

I saw you do a meet and greet. You didn't know what the hell you're doing. It's great.

Yeah.

Like, where am I? How do I do this?

Yeah, I see.

What do I do?

It was actually really wholesome. The beginning was very silly because I was just not expecting that it was going to be more of a seminar. I thought it was like, oh, you pose and take pictures, but then actually asked really nice, meaningful questions. But unfortunately it's bad for YouTube retention and we cut them all out.

So bad for you. The good long form conversation. So it was like questions, Q and A type of thing.

Exactly. You have to have very Fast paced for YouTube. And that seminar was not fast paced.

Okay, well, not everything in life needs to be on YouTube. Right?

That's true.

There's like two parallel things. Stuff that's fun for YouTube.

Yes. One day we'll post that Q and A on the.

Yeah, when you guys, like when you become like ultra famous, you're currently just.

Regular famous and then slow content. Yes.

And that the YouTube aspect, the creation aspect, does that add to the fun ultimately of chess of like your love of chess?

Oh, for the love of chess in general or just for competing in that one tournament?

No, love of chess in general. I think you said that for competing for that tournament it was adding pressure.

Yeah, but actually I would say like a good pressure. But yeah, this is where I differed to Alex because when I was just competitive and I was younger, I don't think I love chess as much as when I started doing it for content. Because unlike her, who a lot of her friends and social circle, other chess players, I never really traveled and built really solid friendships through chess until I started streaming and meeting other chess streamers and actually playing and talking to people for fun rather than just always being alone in the game and never really meeting other people my age or people with similar interests. So I would say Twitch was the thing that really changed how I approached the game.

I think with some YouTubers, there's a pressure to be almost somebody else. You create a Persona and you're stuck in that Persona. I think I'm too much of a boomer to know what the hell Twitch is anyway. But it feels like when you're actually live streaming, you can't help but be who you really are.

I think it's. Oh, well, I think when you're live streaming, and I've talked to a lot of other streamers about this, you kind of just over exaggerate one side of your personality. And of course, it's kind of like being like, on all the time. Like you're trying to be more entertaining, and sometimes you're being sillier at moments or more. You take what character traits like people know you for. And for me, one is being like ADHD and the younger sibling who's very energetic and causes trouble, even though sometimes.

I'm sure you cause trouble just for the camera.

Yeah, right.

I think. Yeah, I think. And of course, once you're live streaming for, like, four or five hours, there's gonna be moments in the stream where it's more chill. But especially when you're, like, editing that content or you're doing bigger streams that are shorter, you are kind of playing up a side of yourself. Because, of course, there's a lot of parts of me that I don't show to the camera because they're not as entertaining to watch, like, the more serious part.

And also there's things that you are really interested in about what you do. Like, I love competitive chess, where I could sit and really think about it. But I know that that is not going to be as entertaining for stream. I know that's not going to be as entertaining for YouTube. So you kind of have to take what you like, but then really adapt it for whatever the format is. And sometimes that feels inauthentic, but other times it just feels like repackaging what you love for people in a more general audience to enjoy.

Do you feel like it's a trap a little bit as you evolve?

Like, oh, I think social media. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Social media in general is a trap of that. Of that kind.

Well, so we've been trying to switch to learn how to make YouTube videos recently. And so much of learning YouTube school is kind of the beastification of content, where you try to get to the point of the video within, like, the first 10 seconds to not lose people.

You try to get. You mean like Mr.

Beast? Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Where it's so fast paced, there's a reason to wait. There's high stakes, and everything is created to keep people watching the video and keep people on the platform. And in some ways, it is a trap because it's harder to do the kind of content you like because you really have to squeeze it to be like, okay, well, do we have a good thumbnail for this? Do we have a good title for this? And that's something that we're trying to figure out, how to keep true to what we want to do.

Yeah. See, the way I think about it is, yeah, there's a lot of stuff you can create and, yeah, the Mr. Beastification process. But also I think about what are the videos, conversations, or things I will create in this life that will be the best thing I do. And I try not to do things in my life that will prevent me from getting there. I feel like if you're always focusing on doing kind of optimizing the thumbnail in the 10 seconds and so on, you'll never do the thing that truly you're known for and remember remembered for. So finding that balance is tricky.

I get that. But at the same time, this might be my own copium, which I know is a word you know now.

Yeah. I'm slowly learning the full complexity of the term. Yes.

But the other way I think about it is it is a skill to learn how to communicate with large audiences. And first I started streaming chess, which is something I just did and really loved. But now I have to learn how to translate that format. And if that's a stuff skill set we could build, then we could use it to do really important things. And I've seen a lot of YouTubers who have done interviews about how, you know, they didn't love the kind of content they did at at first, but what they're doing right now is really meaningful. So I like to think of it maybe like skill development, because not everybody hits off podcasts where they can talk to super interesting people right off the bat.

Yeah, you can be slow and boring in a podcast. You don't have to worry about the first 10 seconds. I mean, people, like, keep pushing me for. Because. But the first 10 seconds of the videos I do is. Well, I know it's most important for YouTube, but I don't give a damn. I wrote a chrome extension that hides all the views and likes. I don't look at the. The. The click.

I don't look at Twitch views. Andrea does. So we also can relate.

I love numbers too, but that's why I don't look at it. Because you become like, oh, I. You'll start to think that a conversation or a thing you did sucks because it doesn't get views, but that's just not the case. The YouTube algorithm is this monster that figures stuff out. If you let it control your mind, I feel like it's going to destroy you creatively. So you have to find a nice balance.

I have to say, I was laughing a little bit when I was listening to the Magnus episode. In the first 10 minutes, you guys are talking about soccer, football.

Two robots seem human.

Yeah.

I was like, let's have some fun. A conversation about non chess related topics.

Yeah. Talk about sports.

Yeah. It was kind of hilarious. I was surprised that even at his level, I wasn't sure, but I was surprised how much he loves chess. It sounds cliche to say, but like the way he looked at a chessboard, you know those memes, like, I wish somebody looked at me. The way he still. Like the way he glanced down and he reached for the pieces with excitement to show me something. There was. There wasn't. Like, okay, I'll show you. It was like there was still that fire.

That's something that always shocks me about some of super grandmasters. One of my coaches was a person who also. His name's GM Hammer of Norway. He also coached Magnus. He was his second, and he was helping me train for my tournament. And I was kind of putting off doing the homework. And he's like, if you're putting it off, that means you're studying the wrong thing. You should be enjoying even when you're practicing, which when I grew up, I thought to get to the top level, like, practicing has to be hard and unpleasant. And when I was listening to Magnus episode, he was like, I didn't read books very much. Or there was one thing that you said that's like very normal for studying classical chess that he didn't do just because it didn't interest him.

He says, I suck at puzzles.

I don't like puzzles. Yeah.

And he doesn't do what he doesn't enjoy. And that's because it's like purely driven out of passion.

I think the Internet was like, I suck at puzzles too.

Yeah. They like that.

I don't have to study at all. It's just. It's fun and. But I Think the lesson there that's really powerful is he spends most of the day thinking about chess because he wants to.

Yes.

So do whatever. If you're into getting better at chess, do whatever it takes to actually. Just the number of hours you spend a day thinking about chess, maximize that if you're, like, super serious about it.

I actually get very addicted whenever I start studying chess, which is why I don't do it as seriously when I'm focused on content, because I go through these rabbit holes where if I'm focusing on chess, I want to be as good as I possibly can at the game. Otherwise, it's hard for me to enjoy it because it's such a competitive thing. And I remember training for tournaments, and when you're training for tournaments, you even start dreaming about chess, and you can't stop thinking about it. And it's as if you're flipped into this completely different world, which is also what I like best about the game, that it's a completely different living experience.

And then you take some drugs, and now you start to see things on the ceiling. Is there some factual hallucination, like, to the Queen's Gambit, like those scenes?

I think it's.

Is that based on your life story from.

Well, I can't say that on camera. No. Just kidding. Actually, chess players are very careful to not take drugs. They drink a lot. Yeah, they drink so much. It's actually crazy for how good they're able to play chess when they do. But. But when it comes to things like psychedelics or other things, they usually stay away from those because they don't want to mess anything up in their brain.

So this is actually an intervention. I saw that you mentioned somewhere. I think it was the lie detector test where you have a drinking problem.

I think that's actually a meme that we like to joke about on stream, because occasionally we'd have, like, a white claw on stream or something like that. And then people meme about it. It goes back to Andrea's point of amplifying a part of your personality to make yourself a little bit more entertaining.

But he use that as an excuse. From now on, I'm just. This podcast is just amplifying a part of that person. I'm not really like this, but have you played drunk like Magnus has played drunk? He says it helps some of the creativity. Is there any truth to that one?

Dre is under 21, so she's obviously would never do. Would never do that. But I have played while drinking, actually. I enjoy playing chess and drinking More than pre gaming or going out to a club and drinking, which sounds really silly. And I'll usually play against opponents who are also, you know, having some beer. And it does make you feel like you're seeing the game from a fresher perspective where it can sometimes make you feel more confident, liquid confidence. And it does help with creativity. You just feel like you could pull things off, but there's also a limit. It's more like you've had one drink or two drink, but then it goes beyond that and then you just start missing tactics and it's not worth it.

Yeah, I think it only helps players in very short time controls. One time I was challenging this grandmaster on stream and we were playing bullet chess, which is one minute chess, and I was giving him handicaps and I said, okay, you have to take four shots before the next game. And he just got like 10 times stronger and transformed into like the Hulk and destroyed me more than last game. So. But of course if you're playing like a three hour game, it's gonna get old. But I think in short time controls, it's amazing.

It definitely has to be blitz. It has to be where it's more intuition rather than sitting in calculators.

It's probably like negatively affecting your ability to calculate absolutely how much when you guys play, when you look at the chessboard, how much of it is calculation, how much of it is intuition, how much of it is memorized openings.

It really depends between short form chess, so 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 1 minute, and classical chess.

What's your favorite to play?

I love playing blitz now because that's most of what I do. And that's actually how I got into chess streaming. Because I couldn't spend entire weekends or weeks playing tournaments. I would just while I was in college log on and play these long blitz or bullet sessions. And it's very fast. So you don't have time to go calculate as deeply. You basically have to calculate short lines pretty quickly. And a lot of it is pattern recognition and intuition.

That's three minutes.

You said three minutes. Yeah.

Okay, cool. And so for that it's just, is basically intuition.

A lot of it is intuition. Yeah.

See, I saw on streams you actually keep talking while playing chess.

It seems that helps my result. That doesn't help my results.

It doesn't.

Content not the game.

Yeah, exactly.

But you can still do it because I, I, it feels like how can you possibly concentrate while talking?

It's because so much of it is intuition. You're not, while you're talking, you're thinking about that topic, but then you just come to the board and you just understand what you should be doing here. And then sometimes you get in trouble because you're talking and you have now lost half of your time. You have a minute and a half, your opponent has three, and you're kind of at a disadvantage. But that kind of goes to show that that's how blitz chess usually works. Whereas classical is very different.

Which of you is better at chess? I mean, let's do it this way. Can you, Andrea, can you say what is in which way is Alex stronger than you? Which way is she weaker than you? Not physically. In. In terms of the. In terms of chess?

Well, yes, of course she is higher rated, but when we do play, I think her strengths against me, where she really gets me is the end game. She has stronger end game, so she can. And I actually have a stronger opening. But as soon as she's.

I'm supposed to say what is good about you, not you.

Yeah, no, I'm getting there. Well, see, this is what I'm saying, because don't worry, it's related, okay. Because if I can, I can get an advantage in the beginning of the game. But as soon as she starts trading pieces down, like, my confidence drops because I know that the end game is the hardest part of the game and the longest, and that's where she ends up beating me. So her end game is her, I think, really what makes the difference. And she has more.

It sounds like her psychological warfare is better too, because if you're getting nervous, that is.

But it's harder to play against higher rated players. Same how you know, Magnus in former world championship champions have that psychological edge. So I think it's always going to be different for Andrea because she knows statistically she should be winning something like one in four games. But she usually does better than that because she's very distracting and talks a lot.

That does help.

What does it feel like to play a high rated player? What's the experience of that playing somebody like Magnus?

So it depends on how much higher rated than you they are. If it's someone who's like between me and Andrea, let's say it's a 200 point differ. You know, they should win, but at least you still feel like you have a chance. I was playing in Title Tuesday, which is this tournament Chess.com has every Tuesday, and I got really lucky. Beat a gm, Drew an international master, and then I got paired against Hikaru Nakamura and my brain just went blank because the I Just know that I'm so unlikely to win that I couldn't even play the game properly when it's that much of a difference where they should be winning, like, 99% of the time.

But that's, like, psychological. So you're saying that's the biggest experience is, like, actually knowing the numbers and statistically thinking there's no way I can win. But I meant, like, is there a suffocating feeling? Like, positionally, you feel like you're constantly under attack.

You just feel like you're slowly getting outsmarted. And the worst is when you don't even know what you're doing wrong. You come out of that and you're like, I thought I was doing great and I got slowly squeezed. I didn't understand what was going on. And you're just kind of baffled. It's kind of like watching Alphas zero beat up stockfish, and you don't really understand why it's making certain moves or how it thought of the plan. You just see it slowly getting the position better, and that's what it feels like.

I. I would add it's. It's kind of different for me if they're someone who's significantly higher rated, so let's say more than like 300 points or you're playing Magnus. What I notice is I just feel lost straight as soon as I don't know my preparation, because they know so many opening lines that they're going to know the best line to beat you that you haven't studied. So then on move 10, you're like you. He already has a maybe plus 0.5 advantage, which is really small. But for someone with such a significant skill level, you know you already lost at that point and it's like a third of the game.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of Andrea?

Andrea is very good at opening preparation.

As she said.

As she said. She likes bringing that up. I mean, she's very meticulous about it, where she'll really go in and learn her lines. And having that initial starting confidence isn't just helpful for the opening, but it helps develop your plans for the middle game. So I think she's very good at that. I think she's actually pretty good at tactical combinations.

What is tactics?

Tactics is like solving puzzles or basically finding lines that are forced, where, if you find them, you're going to win.

So that's like puzzles within a position.

Yeah, exactly. Whereas strategic chess is making slow moves, and over the process of like, 20 moves, you get a slightly better position based on an understanding of the overall strategy.

So in my extensive research review on Wikipedia, it says your most played opening is the King's Indian defense, in which, quote, black allows white to advance their pawns to the center of the board in the first two moves. I. Is there any truth to this?

So, kings and what is it? Probably is my most played opening. And it's one where even when my coach, who is a grandmaster, taught me, he's like, so, you know, I've been playing the King's Indian for 10 years and I still don't understand it. And it's one of those openings that computers really don't like because you do, or at least Stockfish doesn't like it. Maybe AlphaZero would change their mind. I'd. I forgot to look at what.

Can you show me, by the way, what it is?

Yeah.

Is it. Is it white's opening or black's opening?

Black responds to the d4 queen's pawn push, and you take your Knight out to F6. I'll just put in the, you know, stereotypical classical King's Indian, more so to say.

So we actually have a very famous King's Indian game in the notes that we prepared.

Okay.

So for the record, I asked you guys for one, some games that you find pretty cool and, well, maybe to get a chance to talk about something.

Yeah. So this is the King's Indian. As you can see, white has much more control over the center. White has three pawns in the center, while black has none past the fifth rank. And you just have this pawn on d6. And one of the ideas in chess is if you're not taking the center, then your plan revolves around trying to continually challenge it. But what is really fun about the King's Indian is that black sometimes gets these crazy kingside attacks, while white gets queen side attacks. And even though it's a little bit suspicious for black and the computer could usually break it, it's hard to defend as a human when you're being attacked. But if you don't pull off the attack as black, then you're just going to end up being lost in the end game.

So it's like a very asymmetrical position.

It's very asymmetrical. Although a lot of people now stop playing into the classical King's Indian, even though computers give it a big advantage. And they play these slower lines in the King's Indian, which are less fun to play.

What's slower mean? It takes a longer time to, like, do something interesting with.

They basically don't Let you get as much of a kingside attack because they try opening up the center and then you have no weaknesses, but you're just slowly improving the position of your pieces instead of being able to go for that kingside attack.

So for people just listening, there is a. The white pawns are all on the fourth row in a row together. That feels like a bad position for black. For white.

Oh, you don't like taking the center?

No, I like taking the center. Now you're talking trash already.

Oh, sorry.

But like, there's just like, they're like feel vulnerable. They're in a row together. Like it's like, like a. You know, because they're like, who's going to defend them? I guess the nice defend when the.

Queen defends it, that you're actually talking about a theme that you do see sometimes, which is called hanging pawns. And when you have two pawns right next to each other with no other pawns to defend them.

Yeah.

So it, it is a value valid point. And actually as black, you're trying to break apart these pawns or get them to push and create some holes into the position. But it's a trade off. And that's a lot of what chess openings are about. You get more space, but you'll also end up having to protect your pawns potentially or move them forward to the point where they're overextended.

And plus pawns being vulnerable. It's kind of fun this. It's like there's more stuff in danger. They're not. Because if it's, if it's like this, everything is like trapped. Like you can't do anything.

Everything's blocked. Yeah.

Blocked off. Yeah. But you can't have fun.

Yeah.

One of the opening principles for white is get your pawns in the center. So I'd say like this is actually preferable for white.

Let's go over some opening principles.

There we go. Because this is a very good learning lesson for any crash course beginners in the audience. Okay, so first thing you want to do is control the center. There you go. E4, the more aggressive one.

Isn't that like the basic vanilla move? Somebody told me that's the most popular opening move in chess. Why is that considered aggressive?

So it's E4 and D4. And the king's pawn is known as being for more tactical players, whereas D4 is known for more positional players. So that's why it's considered more aggressive tactical.

More gambits with E4, I think.

So tactical means I'm going to try to attack you.

You're going to try to go for puzzles and rely more on your combination abilities. Whereas if it's something positional, you usually have, like, three to four moves that are all good in the position. Whereas tactics. You need to see this one line so it's more precise.

So this. This one was cool because he can, like, you know, the queen can come out, the bishop can come out.

Yeah. And that's one of the most popular checkmates. And usually what you teach new students to try to cheese their friends because then they feel really excited that they know this new. You bring the bishop and the queen out, and you try to checkmate on F7.

Yeah.

It's the trap. That queen's gambit. Beth Harmon falls for, like, first game versus the janitor. She gets all mad because she gets checkmated very early.

Oh, that's the one she gets checkmated with.

Yeah.

Okay. I love how you guys were actually paying attention to the games carefully, which is pretty cool that they did a good job of evolving her game throughout the show to actually represent an actual growth of a chess player.

Yeah, they really took every detail into consideration, which was cool.

Okay, so what else? I brought stuff.

So then you want to develop your pieces. So in the beginning of the game, you want to take out the bishops and knights first, because you don't want to start with the most valuable piece, like the queen, because then it'll become a vulnerability and it'll get attacked very early on. And the reason you're taking out the these two pieces first is because you want to castle your king. So you can move a knight move or a bishop move, and that's considered developing.

So at this stage, not like even before getting a few pawns out, you.

Usually want to start with getting a pawn because you want to get space in the center. But also when you push pawns, it helps free up some of your pieces. So usually start with one pawn first, and then you could start taking out your minor pieces, which is the bishop and the knight.

I have anxiety about a pawn just floating out there defenseless, but anyway, it's not attacked yet.

See, those are what you call ghost threats. So you're scared of something that hasn't happened yet. So if I were to attack it.

I feel like there's a deeper thing.

Going on here, actually, let's say, yeah.

So you're attacking the pawn in the center here, and it is vulnerable. But as soon as you do that, I can develop my own knight and defend it as well.

Okay. And for people just listening, there's two pawns that just came out to meet each other and a couple of knights.

You love the chess card. The pawns met after midnight.

Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna romanticize the game a bit.

Exactly.

Okay, cool. So, like, there's. If you bring out the bishops with the nice. You're matching that with the other black is going to match it, whatever you're attacking with.

Yep, he's developing.

Defend it.

You could develop your bishop or your knight whenever you'd like.

Oh, no. Now you give him options.

All right. Yeah, There you go.

Now I am attacking the pawn in the center, which is what you were afraid about before. But let's see how you defend it here.

By doing this symmetrical thing, bringing out the knight on the other side.

And actually, your other move was good as well, defending with the pawn, because then you're freeing up space for your bishop. So you're basically trying to develop your pieces as quickly as possible. Put your pawns in the center, and then get your king to safety. And that's usually the basic opening tips that you get.

It is kind of counterintuitive that safety is in the corner of the board for a king. That was always confusing to me.

But, you know, three pawns in front, though, you typically don't push those. Maybe like one. Maybe I'll go one square. But these are. Will be like the wall of defense that keep them safe.

But another way to also think about it is your pieces usually want to point towards the center. If you have a knight closer to the center than closer to the side, it actually has more squares it can go to. So a huge part of it is just wanting to have flexibility for where your pieces go. So more pieces are going to be able to make threats in the center or even open up the position. So since that's where it's most likely to open, you want your king somewhere where the position will stay closed so that you have the pawns to defend.

You know, there is, like, rules like this. But I always wonder because built chess engines. But then you start to wonder, like, why is it that positionally these things are good? Like, you've built up an intuition about it. But I wish. And that's the thing that would be amazing if engines could explain why is this kind of thing better than this kind of thing? You start to build up an intuition. But if I'm just like, know nothing about chess, it feels confusing that cornering your king, like, getting him, like, trapped here, like, it feels like you could get Checkmated easier there if I was just to use, like, dumb intuition, but it seems like that's not the case.

I imagine maybe because alphazero learned by playing games against itself. Right. And I imagine if you have a lot of games and you do build the intuition, because if you were to keep your king in the center, you just see that in those games, you're dealing with threats a lot more often. But, yeah, they're shortcut rules. And this doesn't even mean it's the best way to play chess. As we've seen with Alphazero, kind of changing the rules of the game a little bit. But as a human, to learn it from scratch is a lot more difficult than to start with principles. So that's why beginners usually learn chess this way.

Yeah, because you're playing other humans. And the other humans have also operated onto different principles. And that's why people that come up now that are training with engines are just going to be much better than the people of the past, because they're going to have. They're going to try out weirder ideas that go against the principles of old.

Right.

And they're going to do, like, weird stuff, including sacrifices and stuff like that.

Yeah. And I also think that's why AlphaZero was so shocking, because Stockfish was using an opening database, so it was already based off of knowledge that humans have from playing chess. For years that we just thought is how you're supposed to play. Whereas AlphaZero just learned from playing the game so many times and came up with very novel opening ideas.

Were you impressed by Alphazer? Have you. Have you seen some of the games?

I have seen some of the games. I think impressed, bewildered, and motivated were the three things I experienced.

I think Magnus said he was also impressed that it could easily be mistaken for creativity. That's his trash talk towards the AI.

That was a beautiful sentence. I was listening to the podcast.

I mean, as a human, I agree with him because you don't want to give the machine the power of creativity, but if it looks creative, give it a compliment.

That's fair. I know that you're being nice to the machines in case they are ever looking back through this.

What else is there? What other principles are there for the opening?

You can go a little bit more forward.

Let's say we can finish full development.

Like this, and let's just say you developed all of your pieces.

So that's like a really nice. Like, nobody. Nobody took any pieces, and we're just in a nice positional thing.

Yeah, so it's not actually a very accurate one. So I'm actually. I could put a different one on the board. But usually after you've developed all of your pieces, you want to get your queen out a little bit to connect your rooks. And you also start thinking about certain pawn pushes and getting more space. But another good tip is just, can you improve the position of your pieces? Think about timing. So if you've already moved a piece once and there's a piece that hasn't moved at all, then you want to focus on the piece that hasn't moved at all to be able to have it more likely to jump into the game.

Right. So don't move pieces multiple times.

Exactly.

Like, try to move it to the most optimal position. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. What? So what's the Indian? So I think we kind of went over it. But why? Did you ever say why you like it so much? Because it's weird. Because it's kingside.

I liked it because it's a very fun, aggressive defense where you're just throwing your pieces towards white. And there's so many sacrificing opportunities. And for some reason, tactical games always feel like the most beautiful, the most satisfying. And that's what I liked about the King's Indian. But I also suffered a lot from this, this love. Because I would play things that are not necessarily correct, then my attack wouldn't pan out and I would just struggle the rest of the game, having no play and just trying to defend.

So if you're always attack, Wikipedia also says that you're known for your attacking play.

It's also known for losses, according to Stanford.

Okay, let's not break.

See, Wikipedia doesn't talk traction.

Wikipedia is a lot nicer. I actually played a lot of positional chess in classic because I really like the slow squeeze. But when I transitioned to playing a lot of online chess, it's almost as if I was looking for more instant gratification because it feels so much better to beat someone with an attack. And even if sometimes it doesn't pan out, I was okay with it because you get so many games in. So I think my style in online chess really changed from my classical chess.

What about you, Andrea? Do you have a style? Are you attacking? Are you more like conservative defensive player? Are you chaotic opening wise?

I like to play more positionally. Like, I like to push D4 and just slowly improve my pieces and slowly get an attack. But like Alex said, if you're playing bullet chess or blitz against viewers, you often like Want to play riskier moves that may not be as good and then that's kind of when I would play more aggressive. But I do enjoy tournaments for that reason. Because then like once her 15 moves in which as soon as you're out of your prep, I like sitting and thinking in more Positional. Yeah, positional middle games.

One of the games you found to be pretty cool is the Hikaru Nakamura versus Galfond in 2009. And that one I think includes the King's Indian defense.

Yes.

Why is that an interesting one to you?

I also play the King's Indian as black and and I loved this model game and as Alex was saying, like all these advantages for the King's Indian. But now there's this one line that like every higher rated player just destroys my King's Indian. And you see these beautiful games and you're like ah, yes, I want to play for these ideas. But now no one plays into it anymore and you just get demolished. So this is why I don't play the kings Indian anymore. But not to ruin the fun.

Right. It's a love hate relationship.

Truly the reality.

But that's like the higher level players do or does everybody.

Yeah. If you're studying openings and you know this line as white, you just, you automatically get the upper edge and that's.

Kind of how openings develop. You start having players trying new lines and then you see ones and then everybody adopts it if they think it's the best one. But yeah, so Hikaru is really known for his aggressive style of play.

Is Hikaru black here or what?

Yeah, Hikaru is black here. So he's playing the King's Indian. And as you can see in this position, white already has a lot, a huge center advantage. But what Hikaru is going to start doing even with the next move is bringing all of his pieces towards the white king side. Because his plan is to start pushing his pawns towards the white king and.

Ignore the attack side dream attack with the King's Indian.

So there's a complete asymmetry towards the king side. On the left side of the board is a ton of pieces.

Yeah, exactly.

Wow. He moved the knight like three times in a row.

And that's what you need to do because you have to move the knight in order to make space for your pawn. So again, this is why it's so counterintuitive. And Stockfish doesn't like it. You're putting almost most of your pieces on the back rank and you're pushing your Kingside pawns and you're blocking your own dark squared bishop. So none of it makes sense.

You're mimicking it. That's awesome.

Okay, so yeah, here you see white going for queenside attack, black going for the kingside attack. And you can keep going a little bit. And I'll wait to where he starts with the pretty sacrifices.

It's more fun to analyze games in person than on the computer, I think. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. So here Hikaru is preparing the attack. And what I really like about this game is that he finds these tactics that are not necessarily what a computer would go for, but it's very hard to face as a human. And that's why a lot of people play the king's Indian, because in. In practice, it's hard to defend against. So we can keep moving a little bit forward. Okay. Yep. So white is just continuing the kingside plan.

No, it's the first. Is that like the first piece I think that's taken in the game?

Yep. That's the first trade, so. Exactly. Hikaru had to pause his attack for a little bit to just make sure that white didn't have two dire threats on the queen side.

So cool to see the asymmetry of this thing.

Exactly. That's what's beautiful about the king.

Just one thing to highlight because his rook move here is very bizarre and typically like a computer probably didn't like this, but the idea is a very interesting because this is a major weakness for black, that they're coming to attack. And he's also making room for his bishop to come backwards and challenge. So this is like a human like maneuver that computers.

I think computers would like this though, because you'd have to move it regardless because he takes the pawn here and his rook would be under attack.

Yeah. Well, have you looked at it? When I actually studied this as a line, and this right away isn't the best move cutting computer.

So actually that's a good question. So you guys, when you study games, use your own mind, but do you also use computers to build up your intuition of like looking at a position like this and what would a computer do and then try to understand why it wants to do that.

When I was studying seriously, I would try to use my own mind because you're never going to get the exact same position. So you really need to notice trends. And often computers will give you moves that are only specific to that position because of a certain tactic. But I do use computers to check what I did and make sure I didn't make any obvious blunder that I might have missed.

What does a computer tell you? Just like, what. What is the best move? Or does it give you any kind of explanation of why?

It doesn't tell you why, but it gives you the different valuations of the position. Like, black is down a half pawn here or something like that. But it hints you towards what the right move is. And then it's on you to figure out why. And you could usually figure out why, if not right away, then just by going through a few moves and being like, oh, okay, that makes sense.

I feel like a computer will take you down some weird lines potentially, like, sacrifice. Like, why the hell am I sacrificing this?

Well, we'll get to the pretty sacrifice soon, so we could just keep playing.

The pawns are being pushed forward.

Yeah. And Hikaru is kind of ignoring the queen side attack here. They basically both only reply to each other's plan when they have to.

This is where you convert all the podcast viewers to YouTube.

Yeah.

They have no idea what we're talking about right now.

There is a Zen like experience of just like listening and imagining the board.

Just imagine the pieces on the ceiling.

Yeah, you should. We should be calling them out and then people will be freaking out even more. Am I supposed to keep track of what the position is?

Too many.

How hard is blindfold chess? Have you tried, like, are you able to keep them?

I've played blindfold chest before. For me, it's pretty hard. It's not a muscle that I've trained as much and I'm very visual when it comes to chess. But it is one as a top player that starts becoming very second nature for you.

Actually, this is what I talked to Magnus about this. Maybe I was again influenced by Queen's Gambit. What do you actually visualize when it's in your head? So for Magnus, it was a boring 2D board. Do you have some kind of.

That's every chess player know.

You don't have, like, because, you know, some chess, like, computer games, you can do all kinds of skins and like. Yeah, like fancy stuff. You don't have anything.

Sadly, I don't have like a cool 3D warrior mode on.

It's just a baseboard in my head.

Because you don't.

Yeah. You can't use your brain power for adding colors to it because you already have to keep track of the pieces.

It's one board at a time.

Yes.

Okay.

The current position.

Yeah. I bet every chess. I wonder if there's any who there's.

Certain players who are really good, and they can even play blindfold chess and play multiple games at the same time. So I would be curious how they do it. But usually when you're thinking of one game, that's the only one in your mind.

Yeah. But you have to do this operation where you move one piece. You're doing the branch analysis, and so you still have to somehow visualize the branching process and not forget stuff. Maybe that's like constant memory recall or something. You're always looking at one board at a time, but.

Oh, because you're also looking in the future. Yeah, yeah. Because then you have to backtrack, I guess. You're keeping the position in your memory, so you're remembering where all the pieces are, and then you're playing it out on one board. And then you can come back to the initial one that you started with that you kind of just keep in your brain. And it's also easier to come back to it once you've played a position from it.

I feel like it's that memory recall that gets you to blunder. So I'll, like, see that I'm being attacked by certain things, but then because I get so exhausted thinking about a different thing, I actually forget about an entire branch of things that I was supposed to be worried about.

It happens very often. Yeah. If you spend a bunch of time calculating in a position, let's say, like, when you're really in trouble and you're spending 15, 20 minutes calculating, you'll forget about something that you spotted. Like, oh, if I do these two, three moves, I'll walk into a trap. Because you've looked at so many lines, and then you play it and then you see it and you're like, oh, I, I, I looked at it and I saw it, but I forgot about it. So you're.

It's often called tunneling, where you're just looking so deeply on one thing, you forget about the rest of the board.

And it's the worst when, at least in a beginner level, there's like a, I don't know, a bishop just sitting there, obviously attacking your, like, queen or something. And then you just forget that bishop exists.

Yep.

Because if they just sit there for a few moves and don't move, you just forget their existence. And then it's just. Yeah, that's, that's, that's definitely very embarrassing.

Well, it happens to everyone, so.

Yes. Okay, cool.

Okay, so we see a few trades happening on the queen side where he had to go for those, otherwise he's in trouble. And this is where the game. Oh, sorry.

This is where it gets exciting. Yeah.

So. So knight H4 is really when the sacrifice starts. And here the two important pawns are the ones in front of the king because they're helping with the entire defense. And Hikaru is actually preparing to sacrifice his knight for a pawn just so that he can continue his attack and open up the position. Because if you don't do that here as black and don't get some kind of attack, you are completely lost on the queen side. And also, you've pushed all of your own kingside pawns, so you're going to be in danger. So it's one of those do or die moments.

Oh, okay. So that. That's what makes it all in. Because the king is wide open.

Yeah, yeah. The king is wide open. And you. All of white's pieces are pointed towards the queen side too, where you're also cramped.

So is the attack primarily by black done by the two pawns? And then.

And the knight and the light squared bishop is always extremely important. So you don't want to trade this in the king's Indian because it's very helpful for a lot of attacks, even.

Though it's on the other side of the board. I guess it can go all the way across in the. Like. I'm not sure what it's doing here, but probably threatening.

Like, for example, if it was another move black could have played would be something like Bishop H3, where if you take the bishop, you actually get mated.

On G2 with what?

So let's say you take here, and then you could push the pawn, and then it would be checkmate. So you're kind of using your bishop to sacrifice against white's kingside pawns.

Yeah, I'll be freaking out if their bishop did that.

Exactly.

What are they up to?

Right. And that's the thing. This position looks very scary as white, because all of black spawns are starting to come towards you. And it's one of those things where humans do start to worry in these positions, whereas computers obviously can just calculate the best line and maybe the attack doesn't go through.

So you're saying a computer might say that the white is actually a slight favorite here?

Yeah, essentially.

Okay, so then white makes a little bit of room by moving the rook.

Right.

And the attack begins.

I like the commentary here.

The knight is hugging the king, and.

Actually white can't even take the king here because an H4 and H3 is coming in.

White can't take the knight yeah.

Did I say king? Yes. Thank you. The knight.

White can't take the knight because why.

So if white takes the knight here, then black starts pushing his pawn to H4 with H3 incoming. And the idea of trying to defend against this, this is. It looks very difficult. So why just choose it?

It'd be cool to watch a chess game, to experience watching it without understanding it just for a day. I feel like I could use that to make better content.

True. Okay.

I mean, that's what getting drunk does.

Unfortunately for chess players, it never leaves your brain.

Yeah.

It still doesn't matter how, but this.

Is actually a very cute move because black's queen is under attack, but the king is so cramped that he can't actually take it, or he's going to get checkmated by a pawn, which is a sad way to go. Truly.

Yeah. Those pawns are doing a lot of work here.

That is the king's Indian.

This is the king's Indian player.

That's the attack of the kingside pawns.

Yeah. These pawns are like. Right. So they're the ones that are doing a lot of the threatening. Right.

And they're also opening up the position to bring more of the pieces in. But the pawns kind of help break open the kingside. But they can't checkmate by themselves. So after the pawns come in, that's when you need to start bringing in pieces as well, which you will see Hikaru do here. Okay.

There you go.

He puts more sacrifice.

So this was actually another beautiful sacrifice in the game.

But then puts the king in check with a pawn.

Right. That. And the pawn is going to be given here for free. But the idea is you're giving your own piece because you want to have more space and open up the king, which is what you're always trying to do when you have a kingside. You're trying to remove as many of the king's defenders as you can without giving up too much of.

And then you have a ton of pieces on the king side for black just waiting to.

Exactly.

To do harm. And then.

And notice how every single move, white is getting attacked like they're just never getting a break. Black just keeps throwing all their.

So it's funny that black's queen has been hanging for like, three moves now. And white. White still can't do anything about it.

Yeah. So rook puts the king in check.

Yep.

The king runs.

And then again, we leave the queen hanging, and you develop a piece. The slight squared bishop that's so important. And you're once again threatening checkmate on G2.

And then Bishop's coming to again, the queen hanging.

I mean, the game is just so beautiful. The amount of calculation Hikaru put into.

This position feels like so much is in danger.

Right.

It's so interesting. And then knight takes what? Our pawns.

So now his queen is attacked twice, and he doesn't care. He takes the bishop, and he's still threatening the checkmate on G2.

And then the queen takes the bishop.

Yep.

So now he's. He's defending against G2. And Black just goes and grabs some material back here.

So here, black is already winning.

Well, he ends up winning a knight here because black had to be so much on the defensive.

He's just taking pieces.

Yeah. I mean, at this point, you're up two whole pieces, so you would.

Yeah, exactly.

But then Queen, Queen.

And then you take. And then the rook takes. And there's not as much of an attack on the king anymore. But Hikaru is up a knight here, which is gg.

Yeah. What's the correct way of saying that? Because I played Demis Hassabas. I played him in chess, and then I quickly realized, like, from his facial expressions, that I should have, like, stopped playing. It was like. Like, it's already set.

Yeah. When it's.

And then he's like. Like, this is the good time to, like, give up.

Right.

You're not going to get the checkmate where, like, there's, you know, he could see, like, the checkmate is like five or seven moves away or something. This. And what's the play?

Usually you have to resign if you're in a position, or you should, through chess etiquette, resign when you're in a position where your opponent is definitely going to win out of respect if you're a piece down. And obviously all top grandmasters.