Levy Interviews Fabiano Caruana

I'm here with Grandmaster Fabiano Carana the second highest rated player in the world at 2,83 and the owner of the third highest rating of all time as well at 28513 I think Fabby thank you so much for joining me thanks for having me Webby uh how do we feel we are about let's say one and a half days away from the start of the 2024 candidates so what are the emotions like right now yeah it's it's interesting I mean every time I play there's some different emotions uh every time it does feel different I can't say that I'm feeling huge pressure yet but I know that will come as the tournament progresses and you never know what to expect with this tournament it's uh like any any tournament basically but even more so when there's so much at stake and where basically only one place matters uh there will be a lot of unpredictability and uh nerves will play a huge role for everyone I personally I've watched a lot of your interviews and I also my favorite sport is is fighting and so I I've listened to Fighters talk how up until two minutes before they have to leave and finally get in there when it all shuts off there's like a million thoughts running through people's heads right they could and the biggest fear is uh you get exhausted or there's like you know you're going to get embarrassed and you're going to get like knocked out nobody's punching each other here but this type of Whirlwind of thoughts I think I've heard you say once you get there it also kind of shuts off you're back in like game mode right it's all all the thoughts before the Tournament begins yeah I think the main thing is that there was a lot of concern before about what could happen CU everything could go wrong and you see all the worst scenarios and also you imagine that your opponents will always play perfectly right and then once you get to the board you realize that nothing is clear nothing's easy and you're basically just in that mode where you play moves and you're trying to survive move by move because you can't really worry about like what's the evaluation am I going to lose is my opponent going to play all the perfect moves you just to kind of be in the in the in the flow of the game so especially when it comes to opening preparation which is such an integral part of Chess now um You always see like okay my opponent can make all these perfect moves and uh and what am I going to do and I have all these opening problems and so on that's what everyone is thinking whether they say it or not but once you get to the board you realize we're just playing a game I don't remember half the things I checked my opponent is probably in the same position and it's probably going to come down to who's playing better regardless which uh it's difficult to have that presence of Mind before the event but once you look back on it that's almost always the case amazing let's hit the pause button really quick on the candidates themselves and go back to world championship match you do have the unique experience of playing uh a world championship match and won against Magnus not against uh dingler Ren like Yan obviously has played against Magnus as well but you uh you played against Magnus and you are the only person also not to lose a game in the classical portion of the World Chess Championship can you take me back to that time and just tell me and the people watching like the candidates is the most stressful tournament but the match is the match and so what uh how did it feel how did it feel to play both of those and the preparation the nerves that everything like the training camp leading up to both uh of those major events I I think that there are some ways in which a world championship match is easier than the candidates and and also ways where it's more stressful because you're at the Finish Line basically uh the ways in which is it's easier is that your goal is a little bit more clear cut it's just you have to be stronger than your opponent while here you have to be stronger than seven other people and one of them could run away with it right someone could win all their games while in a match uh it's only you against them so you don't have to worry about will all my other player will all the other players collapse against this one particular player and and suddenly I'm playing catch up uh in that sense a match has a more clearcut uh goal and finish line while the candidates you don't always know what you're playing for in terms of uh do I sometimes have to go all out do I have to um try to win games I I have to try to be very solid it's it's um Less clearcut in in that sense so the candidates does have its unique strategy uh unique challenges and strategies and I would also say generally speaking like the chance of winning the candidates should be lower than winning the world championship match once you get there um just because of the amount of people who are here and they all have their chances um some some players certainly have better chances than others but definitely you would have to give every player in this tournament a certain share of the of the odds yeah that both are super stressful I mean I I think I handled the stress in some candidates well and some candidates not so well like specifically the last candidates just my the the way that I handled the stress and the challenge of uh dealing with pressure in that candidates I I have to say I did a very poor job while in 2018 although I didn't do it perfectly uh when I won the candidates I did did overall do a good job like in the most critical moments although I did lose that game to Sergey in the 12th round so you can say I didn't do that very well but still after that I I did do I did do my utmost in the last two rounds but a lot also comes down to circumstance like if I look back on when I won 2018 uh I was playing leevon in the 13th round and we had a rest day before that and we were preparing uh for two openings one was the Berlin one was the Marshall Leon's two main openings the Marshall we had had an idea which ended up appearing on the board I got a big advantage and I won uh the Brin we had no idea so it was very much a 50/50 like I get to the board and I'm just hoping don't play Knight F6 on the third move or I have no idea what I'm going to do and maybe I wouldn't have won that game probably not and I would have had to win the last round and you know history might have changed for that tournament yeah very much things are up to circumstance in some sense but generally speaking the player who plays best wins I think that like in the last two candids and especially in the last one we have to say that like Yan was Head and Shoulders above the other players in the previous one it was a little bit more close like you could say Okay Maxim had his had his moments other players had their moments but overall we can say that Yan was the best player again that one was also weird though it was interrupted there was like a year off right and so yeah that was that was very strange tournament and I think that a lot uh of that tournament really did depend on the circumstances of Co and and the tournament being postponed halfway which um is a really weird story also because we heard before the tournament that it would be postponed halfway before yeah like we had heard before the tournament uh like maybe it'll be postponed halfway do you want to maybe maybe not play WoW but we had already traveled to Russia I was like okay I mean we're already here wow and that was the one RAB dropped out of yeah yeah tamore dropped out and was replaced by Maxim a week before the event yeah uh which I have to say Tamar did basically have to right like when he was complaining that this this tournament probably shouldn't be happening at this period it was probably correct because you shouldn't have a tournament that could or could be canceled at any moment yeah but obviously now we're here and this candidates is uh a little bit different in the sense that well let's just start with it's your fourth one I mean technically you have more experience than everybody I think karo's in the third it's is Neo's third obviously he had he had the two uh half the field is really young half three of the players are are super young two of the players are also in their first candidates but they're both 29 I think they're both in in ' 94 so it's a it feels like a huge Wild Card of the candidates does it feel that way to you yeah if I think back to previous candidates probably the players were more experienced a bit older compared to this one I don't know what effect that will have on the tournament like how the young players will perform how the older guys will perform I guess I'm counted among the older guys um how experience will matter uh and yeah you have the guys who are a bit like let's say closer to um to 30 like okay n and and vidit but who haven't played the candidates so you can say they're not super experienced in terms of this but I don't know if experience matters like I've said this I think in the past my first candidates I had zero experience very um naive preparation I would say looking back but I did get very close to winning it and even without the experience somehow I was ready in in some sense and in my last candidates with all the experience in the world you can say uh didn't really play very well overall and um and I didn't handle the pressure well so will experience matter uh I don't know I mean I I also have very little uh playing experience against some of the guys like I've played Prague in four classical games sure three or four uh I've played vidit maybe in just one classical game and niot in two and of course against players like Hikaru Ali Resa and Yan I've played like a million games especially Hikaru so it'll be interesting I don't have the most experience against the young guys like I've started to play them more and more of course they're they're really top players prag and GES I mean uh and Ali Resa I don't know do we count him as a young guy anymore yeah I don't know right it's a he he is very young but he has been playing top tournaments for the last four years so it's hard to say you know after the pandemic a lot of people went up like a lot of people had incubated knowledge and all this and they went up and I was fascinated I didn't quite realize like to what degree there's no easy way to phrase it and now you're 2800 so I hope you excuse the way I phrase it like your rating fell a lot like I was shocked and I think I heard you talk about it in places but that's a wild that's a wild ride down right and that entire time did you know in the back of your mind I was 2850 it's just a matter of time until I'm back or did you really truly sort of fall out of love with the game and have to relight a fire like what happened and what happened on the way down and how are we back to 2803 and the world is calling you the favorite in the tournament right like I not to pour these thoughts into your head but how do you go down and how did you reemerge I I wasn't too surprised I lost my rating I was sort of expecting it in 2021 like 2020 I stopped working after the candidates after the first like I Was preparing a lot before the candidates um had like a lot of training then everything gets postponed and from that period of I forget exactly the date but mid- March let's say or late March until the next time that we started preparing for the same candidates tournament which was January uh 2021 that we started again I basically didn't look at chess so okay if you don't look at chess for uh for almost a year then and then in 2021 I started to realize that the people who I felt I had some Edge over uh I no longer felt like I had any any Edge over them like let's say Anish um started to feel like like he was really gaining some momentum and Yan as well he went from being we could say sort of an underdog in the candidates to to winning the candidates and I didn't feel like I was any stronger than him and other players as well who who were playing like Maxim Guk and so on yeah I realized that okay if I'm not feeling like I'm stronger than any of these players then there's probably a reason for that and probably our ratings will at some point uh come together or maybe I'll be passed and that's that's kind of what happened over 2021 I also dealt with a lot of illness and 2021 um not nothing like super serious but as it turned out but um but stuff which probably wasn't good for my chest as well and so I wasn't surprised and then 2022 I started to like really ramp up the preparation for candidates again I somehow um locked my way in by getting second place in the grand Swiss so I qualified to candidates again started to prepare quite a lot um I would say like very serious prep for the for the last candidates uh but it just didn't work out and then after that I sort of lost my motivation again for for a while and had some yeah like serious follow my rating from the Olympia losing a lot of rating there from the candidates complete collapse and after that I started to like come back a little bit at least I found my footing again like I wasn't collapsing psychologically anymore which is already a good start uh I mean you can have like all the preparation in the world but if you're if you're not there mentally then it's probably going to going going to go wrong and that's that's what happened to me over the last year let's say I kind of found my form in some ways it was it was up and down but I did have a number of quite good tournaments and overall I was happy with my level in classical chess and I won the singfield cup I think I played well there and Bucharest and so on so it is good to to feel like I'm playing well again um I I still view chess very differently in like how how chess is than a few years ago uh I I think that it was there was like a clear divide of players a few years ago and now the Divide is much less clear everyone is sort of good everyone has good openings everyone has um good understanding like the overall level has increased and maybe not like the overall practical level like once you get in wor in the game people start to make mistakes but um the level like from the start like people get a very good Head Start uh in the game just from General opening knowledge and understanding of positions and it's it's much harder to make Headway against players who in the past you might have thought this is someone who I should beat and now I I never have this feeling before game like I should beat this player it just feels like okay I'll try to get a game and then we'll see what happens but um I don't think I've ever had this emotion recent times like like this is a game where it's mine to win while if you told me a few years ago like I'm playing um someone who's like 2720 with the white pieces I would think like I have to win this game yeah uh so things have changed very ially in that sense I spoke to Magnus during the Champions chess tour final uh and he he always speaks like especially in classical chess there is nobody in the world who challenged them as much as you right he has said this on many occasions and I sort of get the sense that over the last whatever it is almost 13 years 14 years in this in in the Magnus Reign a lot of the top players are contending for top 10 spots for invitations and just in general relatively happy with top five finishes I think you and you can correct me if I'm wrong but I think you're in a unique position where you had a legitimate claim especially on certain days and periods to being the best player in the world and do you feel like at some point over the last few years uh that was your goal your goal was not to was not to just get into a match and and that's that your goal was to be the number one player and be better than Magnus well I think when we were younger it was also a bit different like let's say he's he's two years older than me and but we let's say when we were in our early to mid 20s I didn't think about this stuff at all like I was just playing I I really wasn't thinking about my place in the Chess World or becoming world champion um like when I missed out on 2016 World Championship I I had to beat Sergey with black pieces in the last round of the candidates it was quite a long shot but I was pretty close to um to winning that tournament if a few other things had gone well like let's say if I had beaten Peter speeder in the 13th round um and I think a lot of people around me felt like okay you you missed a huge chance and I I really wasn't thinking about the world championship at that time sure uh those thoughts come a little bit later I think at some point you realize okay there is um maybe more limited time you know it's uh you don't have all the chances in the world right you're not going to be playing chess forever uh although I don't know how long I'll be playing chess but it's like you start to have of okay let's let's try to take our chances uh but when you're younger like I I assume although I don't know how it is for for some of the guys playing this tournament but if you're like 17 years old you probably think that you're going to be playing chess forever yeah and you're going to be playing like the next 20 candidate tournaments and you don't think like this is an urgent matter uh although you you've spoken to gashin and maybe he has has different view but he's next that no that's how i' like imagine and how I felt when I was um when I was a young player trying to you know come up into the world rankings for the first time and playing these top tournaments I was just happy to be there at the start because it wasn't even a guarantee that I would be a top player if I go back to when I was 1819 and I first broke through to the like top 10 list um like many people or even most people were surprised that I even made it there and it was maybe a surprise for me as well um then you kind kind of get accustomed to it and you start to think you get those thoughts in your head like okay I can be world champion I can try to win the candidates and eventually it did happen for me that I won the candidates and I was there um but yeah it it also feels like a distant memory at this point six years ago I mean I can't um kind of formulate all my emotions during that time and um yeah I don't know like some days I I think okay I probably missed a huge chance like if I had taken this chance against Magnus or that chance on the other hand if I had won that match then he would probably think well how could I not win game one or how could I not like he had some also very big advantages in that match so um I try not to look at it as like I you know I missed this huge chance because okay a million things could have gone differently I could have lost the first game and uh you know you lose the first game of white you don't feel too good about your chances sure um but yeah it's it's been a long time of course on a lighter note I've been asking uh everybody today uh you're you obviously left chess and you're very very good at chess what uh if anything is there anything in your life that you really love but you're really bad at I love many things that I'm terrible at and I wish I were good at them like any like I I I love tennis I love watching tennis players play and I'm amazed at what they do and it always looks easy when you look at them mhm and then you actually like hold a racket and you just everything is off just everything is wrong you play tennis like I I I have played and I've taken maybe 50 hours of lessons Okay uh and I'm very bad like what's your tennis ELO I mean I 1,200 it's better than me I'm 800 you know so that's pretty good car said 1300 so we might have to set this up I heard that he's like decent so if he's 1300 I'm probably lower than than 12200 but whatever it is like it's not a level where um I'm going to be beating too many people except people who have just started so uh so very bad and I really wish I could be good and um there are many other things which I haven't even tried but I do wish I could could be good U like I wish I could be a good musician okay I've never tried to to practice an instrument so I I can't even say that I'm uh like I've even made the effort you know to to be good once chess is over Will You guitar piano no it's too late but not like as a profession but just for fun I may maybe someday um I haven't thought about it too much I mean there there's like a million things that I would would like to try and have like dabbled in a tiny bit and realized that um it it's like sometimes you realize you can get better at something and there sometimes you realize that no matter how much I practice Yeah I can get better but I'll never be good uh tennis one is one of those things for me is it worth doing hobbies that you can't improve at oh I think it's great okay yeah yeah I think it's great I didn't know if you were positive or negative about no no I I like I'm I'm glad that I took up tennis for example um like in the worst case it's just a de-stressing sort of good physical activity which is healthy and uh and some hobby that you can do with your friends like that's in the absolute worst case in the best case you actually get good and um and there are a number of chess players who are quite remarkably good at tennis as well I'm I'm not among them of course so but there are like U ma is is very good um Sebastian yeah the French Grand Master yeah and from like American players um I think that Josh friedell is quite good okay wow like I think tournament Tournament level I mean say like 2200 something like that wow that that is very good and I've been seen you post stuff with boxing what's what's going on is that just exercise or yeah for me it's just just excise I've taken maybe 10 hours of lessons Okay if that maybe yeah around that it's a good workout right it's yeah it's it's a really good workout it's really tough um but for me it's just I I I don't want to fight yeah I I like the uh conditioning part of it yes but I I really don't want to fight anyone no we definitely talked about that a little bit I I asked you for the for the price and uh to chess box but uh no there there won't be there's always a price oh of course there's yeah there's there's always a price um I I I'll let you go I guess the uh the last thing that I will ask of you is if you have any thoughts for the fans who are going to watch back home there going to be a lot of fans watching this tournament specifically you for sure so any words for them yeah I hope that it's uh it's a good spectacle um I hope that I play well and that I you know I appreciate my fans um they've you know gone through the the difficult times with me so I hope that this is a good time Fabby I appreciate it thank you so much thank you and uh all the best in the tournament thanks

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Id: FWH4BkzHRKc

Length: 21min 39sec (1299 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2024