Magnus Carlsen: Chess Grandmaster | Full Q&A | Oxford Union Web Series

[Music] magnus you were born and grew up in in norway a nation without the chess pedigree of the us russia from usa um or other to the countries that are known for chess perhaps per se do you think that it made it much more difficult to get into the world of professional chess i wouldn't necessarily i wouldn't necessarily say so um because i in a sense i was very lucky since the place i grew up it was very close to sort of the best stress environment we had in in norway and i'm not so sure if i i'm the personality who'd worked who would have worked very well under let's say a soviet type regime since i'm somebody who's always been sort of driven more by inner motivation rather than anybody anybody uh pushing me and norway is a typical country in that sense in that you're not particularly pushed to do anything it's more like you do what you want and that doesn't necessarily promote excellence overall but it does give a decent environment for for for those who who just have a very strong inner motivation because they're being told that you know you can do whatever you could do whatever you want yeah you meant you mentioned in a motivation how much of a role do you think chance has to play because you frequently said that at least at a young age you almost accidentally stumbled into playing chess due to being competitive with your sisters and your dad being only an amateur player at the time how much do you think chance has to play in that as well i think it's it's a massive it's a massive role i mean first of all my my father um is a very keen chess player at a reasonable level uh without him i don't think i will would have gotten into chess in the same in the same way uh then we lived abroad um in in belgium for for a year we were supposed to stay there for three if we'd stayed there for three i wouldn't have started playing chess probably because um it's the thing i only started to do once we got back to norway also belgium didn't have didn't have much of an infrastructure for for for chess uh i think it's just like overall in in life like obviously being born at all is uh it's a massive coincidence and everything that that happens um after that um yeah i think it's some some sometimes being underestimated how much is just it's just pure pure chance yeah would you say then as a sort of final question on the sort of early stages aspect of your of your life would you say that your early early experiences of the game differ massively than from other grand masters is there generally a standard route into into professional chess if at all i think most uh most of the best chess players in the world are relative prodigies when when it comes to chess probably also other things i wouldn't say that i'm somebody who just caught it immediately uh it took some some time but i'm somebody who probably keeps learning when others when others stop and that's something that i i think sets um sets a lot of the best players um apart from from others because chess isn't really a game that's suited to to somebody who's just who's used to like being good at school catching things immediately it takes it takes a little a little bit more time um let's talk a bit about your your tournaments then um what time when would you say you're most proud of oh there's no there's no question um that's the uh norwegian under 11 championship in in 2000 when i was i was nine um that was the first time i sort of established myself as one of the best kids um in the country um before that i i'd sort of been somebody was improving but was always a bit of an underdog and that was yeah that was the time when i i realized that i'm i i can i can actually be very good at this so um yeah that's for me that's the the one that i always come back to obviously i'm [Music] i'm uh proud of many of my my successes but nowadays i usually spend more time uh being bothered by the games that i i lose regardless of what preventive tournaments or i don't know so it's yeah yeah uh we have to go way back of course um you say that's a sort of bit of a turning point for you would you say that there are any other tournaments that have been really big turning points in your chest career uh yeah i would would say the um uh there was a tournament in in this halfway in mexico and halfway in spain um morelia and in 2007 um it was one of my first um one of my first tournaments with with all the uh or most of the best players in the world i just one month before that i had yeah i got beaten pretty um pretty bad at a tournament in the netherlands and a lot of people were wondering uh i was i just turned 16 they were wondering if i would if i was ready at all i i didn't know if i was ready uh but yeah i got second place in in that tournament finally um but most of all it was just the feeling of actually beating some of the best players in the world um and it sort of made me made me realize that this is this is what i i need to um to do i i up to that point in the world uh sorry up up to that point in time i'd always um strive to to play against better and better opponents um and i didn't care that much whether i was winning all my tournaments i just wanted i just wanted to improve i just wanted to learn and uh that's aft after that i realized that i was i was getting ready i wasn't ready yet but i was getting there to beating the best players in the world and that was really that was really big for me could you give us a bit of a insight into the pressures and mental state you faced just before a huge match like a world championship or a game with max at the start of this the start of this talk um i mean what can i say most of the pressure i have obviously i sort of put on put them put on myself uh i'm um usually pretty pretty hard on on myself i always want to to be better i always want to i always want to to learn uh but i think the world championships differ a lot from from others um because in other tournaments i i really want to do well i want to show my best i want to learn all of these things um but when it comes to the world championship i feel like i have to i have to win uh because i can i cannot like i cannot imagine not winning and i'm sure you can imagine what kind of pressure that puts puts on on your on yourself and that's why those particular tournaments are a bit of a mixed um mixed blessing for me um and they are in a sense the most rewarding but they're not the ones that i uh enjoy the most because it sort of takes away at least to me it takes away from uh from the joy i've always had playing the game what advice would you give for players at beginner intermediate and advanced levels um of playing um and how would that advice differ depending on somebody's level i think it's it's very very difficult to me uh very difficult for me um the best advice i could probably uh give is not listen to me because i'm not a professional in that sense i'm not i'm not a chess coach um and all the experiences that i have are extremely subjective and massively biased so any advice i give based on what's worked for me um would not necessarily work for for somebody else um because my own experience was most of all um starting out starting out fairly young i loved it i spent a lot of time on it not because somebody wanted me to but because i wanted it because i i love the game and i i would not do a lot of organized training i would just um i would just uh you know play some games on the internets i we had some chess books so i would sit and and analyze with them uh read the books then analyze some of the positions on the board i would do most most of these things on on on my own and i would think about jess all the time because um because i loved it and that wouldn't necessarily work for for somebody else i can just tell you about my own own experiences so my from my experience what works is um just if you if you're interested enough you can just wing it and then obviously you need some people to to guide you especially um especially if you're if you feel like you're you're stuck at a certain level but like my general advice is just do what you love and see where it takes you uh and if you if yeah if you want serious uh ask somebody else because i i don't know i just i'm just somebody who plays their game very very well i i'm not i don't claim to be anything more awesome um i'll try and keep my questions briefer um and only ask a few more because there are a lot of audience questions um which is very exciting one of the last questions i'll ask um is a bit about online chess across your career the rise of computers has had a huge impact on the world of chess software like snapfish now enables us to compute the best possible move in every scenario to a high degree of accuracy how has this changed how is the change this has caused been noticeable to you in particular whilst playing or throughout your journey in chess uh well chess engines have certainly made it easier to to learn because you can get sort of instant feedback on your on your games without consulting consulting a coach as you had to do before it has certainly also enhanced opening theory massively because you can just sit and analyze um with uh quick computers and find new possibilities that way and it's made it also easier to [Music] sort of more more accessible to to watch because you can you can see more or less a live score in the sense based on what what the engines tell you um so that those are i would say huge positives uh in terms of negatives i think it's removed some of the mysticism about uh about chess um i think before my time uh chess players were were considered like half almost magicians in a sense they could create something that nobody could understand um and now it's just yeah uh stockfish or lila zero or whatever they just spit out the same moves in in a matter of uh in a matter of seconds um so i i feel like that's um that's a bit of a shame but overall obviously chess computers have made them have made the game a lot more accessible um around the world and it's it's been a huge net positive where do you see that sort of particular change in like 10 years time in particular uh i think classical chess um in classical chess is going to get just more and more difficult to win games at the top level um since the game is just getting out more and more analyzed and like the um the oasis of openings um that that you can find they're getting fewer or fewer like lines that are hard to analyze or haven't been analyzed that that much so i think uh we will eventually get more and more into um faster time controls uh like blitz or or rapid um that's already happening online that most people play blitz or or or rapid in in casual games and i think that will happen more and more in in tournaments um and probably also some shift uh towards variants of chess like just 960 where the the pieces on the on the back rank are randomly distributed and also um and also there are other variants like no castling chests or no stainless chests that are are very interesting but i i think eventually uh we will get more creative about about those things because um yeah it's uh at the moment it's it's um it's it's really really uh difficult in in classical class and yeah you know it's just uh the way science works of course um as a penultimate question from me which historical player would you most likely to would you most like to play in their prime oh there are so there are some many um we'll give us a few if you yeah i'll give you uh i'll give you a few um kasparov obviously i played kasparov after after his prime uh but not in a very competitive setting um sin and i mean that's the most obvious answer since i concerned him to be the best player of all time um and there are others like um frankly i found fisher's style a little bit maybe on the on the doll side um so i'm not too sure about about him uh even though i i still think he's one of the very very best players of all time um maybe somebody like mikhail was world champion in 1960 and who played um a brand or chess that was pretty outrageous at a time and with will it with a lot of um both um dynamic and speculative um sacrifices and yeah i would would have loved to try and refute them of course um as a last question from me before i move on to the audience questions i'm going to ask you a bit about visualization when it comes to boards do you find it easier to visualize the board in online chess or sort of real life chess but in addition to that do you visualize real real-life chess from a bird's-eye perspective um or from your viewing angle is it sort of a queen's gambit type view that you sort of look up at the ceiling and i would say if i do look up or away um that is what people do when they try and remember something so so that's all usually um i would say that i find it somewhat easier to visualize the board uh when i'm playing at a physical board rather than online and i think that is because i actually i started out playing on a physical physical board like i'm i feel like i'm in the sort of hybrid generation there um i have one foot in the in the old world and one foot in the more modern world but i would say that i'm a little bit more comfortable visualizing it on on on on a physical board i feel like i can i have a better understanding of the geometry of the game when i do that um apart from that yeah i would say that i um yeah i don't think there's a um there's a bird's eye view or anything it's just yeah i i i have i have the the board in my head and in that sense the um the queen's gambit thing is a little bit exaggerated i think that's very fair enough um moving on to the audience questions the first audience question is from felix westcott at st peter's college felix asks what does the average training session look like for you how much do you train per day or week so i would say um again don't take any advice from from me uh because my average training session it depends what if i'm if i'm at a training camp uh which i would be a lot before world championships uh then it would be very easy you wake up um you wake up you have breakfast two hours of chess approximately one and a half hours of physical training then lunch and then um four more hours of of chess training dinner and maybe one or two hours of chess training again before you go to sleep um when i'm at home i think about the game all the time but there isn't so much uh there isn't so much organized chess training um i i talk with with my coach but apart from that i'm just i i really really can't force myself to just sit down and study for for no reason that's fair enough um the next audience question comes from melissa hinckley who's a former librarian vice president of the union from keyboard college melissa asks how did it feel to win the new in chess classic against nakamura recently um it felt very very good to to to win to win that tournament and i talked about earlier how these days even when i win a tournament i i or a game i'm maybe a little bit disappointed disappointed because i feel like i didn't play my very best um but in this particular case i hadn't won a tournament for for a few months so it felt very very good to to win one again um but then my thoughts turned very very quickly again to how can i improve my game because i didn't feel like i i i could show my best but i did take at least a few minutes to to to enjoy the next question comes from adam me from cats college adam asks you said in an interview as a child that your goal was to become a grand master and the interviewer questioned how realistic that was do you have any goals at the moment which some might think are unrealistic uh truth be told i don't actually remember saying that um it could be the way that i remember it i didn't have too many concrete goals i just wanted to wanted to to learn uh and right now i don't know like a lot of people have goals for me in terms of what rating i should achieve or how many world championships i should i should win and so on um i don't know i want to win the next one i want to play well in the next game that's that's what drives me more than than any of uh of those things like okay goals uh i did have a brief thought during the my 125 game unbeaten streak like i did briefly think maybe maybe i don't have to lose a classical chess game again and then after i lost one then i i i've now lost i think three more in in about 30 games uh so no that's uh that's not realistic um the next question comes from anya at st cross college anya asks do you think chess should be included in the school curriculum i i i think there are a lot you can you can learn from from chess um and i think at least for some you people it can help a lot in your in your your education um for me maybe the most the thing it helps the most with um is to make quick decisions um because that's something i've learned that there are a lot of people who are very very analytical um but they can't seem to make decisions without having sort of perfect information and in in chess even though that is technically a game of perfect information a lot a lot of the decisions you make aren't 100 informed they're based on educated guesses and in in that's certainly what i learned from from from chess to to make uh try and make just educated guesses based on based on on quick thinking uh whether so i think i think in general there are a lot of positives where that you can take from from from chess whether you should replace other subjects with that i don't know uh that's i don't think it would be the worst thing but i'm i'm not one of those who is 100 in um uh chess should be a part of the curriculum to move on we've got about i think 14 minutes left and we have a lot of audience questions okay i'll try and be faster the next question comes from josh greensmith at some hilda's college joshua josh asks what are your opinions on chess 960 or fischer random a few years ago it seemed it would become a major format for super gms to play at a high level but has faded away from popularity so what i think happened is i played uh two world championships in chess 960 uh the first an unofficial one i won and the second one was an official world championship and i was second uh and basically people i think decided that it would be um bad for bad publicity for for chess if i wasn't world champion and everything so that's why we we stopped uh seriously though i would love to see um more more chest 960 fish random uh in in a classical format so far it's mainly been sort of a slow rapid style but i do feel like you need more time for for fish random so in so that's what i would love to see classical um classical format fish random and that's something that i've talked about a lot actually uh in the last couple of years and yeah that's what i would love to see perfect um the next question is from charlie reeder at hilda's college charlie asks what is your favorite chess opening i think my favorite chess opening uh is and has always been the the rulopez because it uh it can lead to open gains or more close games it can lead to a lot of um varied pawn structure uh pawn structures and different strategic themes and in terms of learning i think it's one of the best openings to play because you will get you will get everything from from that particular opening clifford marcus from cable college says you retained your title against caruana by 12 draws and a quick play finish how good do you think that is for popular popularizing chess would it not be better just to have a yearly tournament to decide the world champion instead of having this challenge system uh well you're preaching to the choir that's what i've been advocating for for a long time [Music] very quickly as a follow-up on that how best do you think well how how would that be achieved like how likely is that sort of to be achieved to reframe that question so i think the main issue that we have we have now is that the champion has such a huge advantage and a privilege from from winning the previous match and i just don't think that's the way it should be and believe me i've tried i've that's what i was saying before i came before i became world champion and it's what i've been saying since uh i wrote an open letter uh about that in in 2014 uh after i'd won my first world championship uh and i um i i was very vocal about about my opinion that we should have yearly world championship matches and they should be in a knockout format because that is the only format that is i that or that's the closest you can come to something that's completely fair um yeah and what what i got in return is um basically we want the system as it is um and what i've been saying since is well if you want that stupid system i'm going to take the world championship title i'm going to sit on it and i'm not going to give it back awesome the next question comes from ewan richardson from st cross college euan asks how do you come back from an emotional loss in the tournament or match does it make you play even better i i have a reputation of coming back from losses and very often winning the very next game um often in good style i do think it's somewhat exaggerated though um i think it's just from the i win a lot of games in in general sometimes just happen to come after after losses what i would say is that i'm certainly not somebody who takes very well to to losing um and it does so when you talk about emotional losses for me every loss is emotional um and i just try and channel that anger into something something positive but it is it isn't it isn't always um easy what what what yeah what can i say of course um the next question comes from jack hughes owen marshall and zara siddiqui from exeter and jesus college they say you speak a lot about your coach how does one go about coaching the best player in the world in the first place obviously you said before that it's very tailored and very specific but could you give us an insight into that it's a lot about new opening ideas um that's the most obvious way to to get to get get results because a lot of other things you can you can try and get a little bit better at and i'm my coach certainly can see things in in my game that i that that i can improve and that my my style evolves um over over time um for instance i would say that uh sort of by more dynamic parts of my game became a lot better in the last couple of years uh but then i've probably lost a little bit um in terms of in terms of what i used to do before that which was more of a um an accumulation of small advan advantages that i could eventually turn into into something so uh um yeah certainly my approach feels those things um very keenly and has suggestions for for how i can try and try and be more balanced um yeah we've got about six minutes left so i'll try and get through as many more questions from the audience as i can the next question comes from thomas hackman from green green templeton college thomas asks could you tell us a bit more about or some some about um why you played the legendary double bond cloud versus hikaru during the magnus castle invitational and what you thought of the aftermath um why i did it that's very easy i did it for the memes in terms of in terms of the aftermath i i think that was uh um pretty predictable um the the relatively newer fans liked it some of the others older didn't i would say that in general i'm somebody who has a lot of fighting spirit so i i can i i i i play every game and i can i can get the argument about respecting the game uh and so on um but it was one game that was um we were both qualified for for the knockouts then it was the last game the preliminaries and for mostly i would say um yeah uh you you don't you don't you don't have to hate fun you can you can embrace you can embrace it sometimes um the next question is from will kirkpatrick will asks whether or not you'll start streaming more like hikari does or do you think you'd lose focus on the tournaments and then will also ask is it true that ludwig is your best friend um uh yeah i'll address the second first point first uh yes of course it's my best friend why would i lie about that in answering the first question i have streamed a little bit more recently i think doing that um seven eight hours like a lot of people do i do respect the effort that they put in uh personally i would consider it a massive massive waste of time uh since there are a lot of other things you can do as well but i do think i will stream some more since i enjoy it very much and i like to to give people some some decent free free content um and i don't think it hurts hurts my chest now george whitaking from keller college asks how do you explain your performance in fantasy football and how do you approach your game i watch a lot of football i read some stats and i have some luck that's all fantastic um next question is from ben gades and hilda's college alongside janice tang as well they ask how do you feel about your wc match with nepo later this year historically he's been playing well against you is that a concern i wouldn't say it's a it's a concern he played very very well now in the in the candidates and that concerns me more than our historical record uh he's somebody who i've known for i think 19 years we played a lot of a lot of training games as well as official games and shorter time controls uh and in those i've generally been um been you know beating him very fairly fairly handily so um i think the whole um yeah the whole official record there is is his thing is being a bit overblown um but he has made a lot of improvements recently in classical so he is more than worthy and very very interesting opponents michael from university college asks what are your thoughts about daniel dubov dupov is i think the uh um i i think he's the in in a way the um direct successor to his mentor alexander mirozovich who was one of the best jazz players in the world i think he was ranked number one for a week or something at some point but he was not somebody who could consistently win at at the highest level um but somebody who uh inspired a lot of people and played some of the best games and best tournaments um so i imagine danny will have a similar career that his peaks will be very very high but i don't think you'll ever be consistent enough to um to be the best in the world fantastic i'll ask about two or three more questions because you've got about a minute to go now before we start wrapping up simon norris from oreo college says considering the year that chess has had have you felt any direct impact from its explosion in popularity or has it been a change that you've seen separate from the professional circuit um certainly it's it's been a it's not been a good year um for uh for the world obviously but it the this sort of switch to more online chess and the pandemic which means that people have a lot more time it's been it's been great for for chess um whether i felt it um i don't know um my social media has increased a lot of volume uh without me particularly trying to uh to do that uh apart from that i i don't i don't i don't know i've not like no i haven't felt it uh but i i love the fact that that chess is doing it's doing well obviously fantastic um as a last question um from theodore sergio from keyboard college the current senior access officer um theo asks have you watched the queen's gambit what are your thoughts of it and do you think it's inspired more chess broadly speaking i certainly think queen's gambit was part of the reason why chess became more popular the last year uh i watched it uh and i very much much enjoyed it and i think they did the chess very well and obviously that was part of the joy for me uh seeing if i could recognize the positions and if i couldn't then trying to figure out what's what's um what's what was going to happen so that was very very enjoyable fantastic um just before we finish um we partnered as you know magnus with the university chess club um to organize the competition that we raise money for charity in which is why max got to play you um it was their 152nd birthday last week and they've asked for a shout out so wouldn't it be possible for you to say shout out and belated 152nd birthday to the oxford university chess club uh yes a happy birthday to the oxford university chess club may there be 150 more thank you so much thanks a lot for joining us today magnus and thank you to the audience for coming all the best thank you [Music] you

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Length: 40min 13sec (2413 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/KingSmasher100]

All of Magnus' interviews sound exactly the same as if he has rehearsed answers. I'm sure he's far more charismatic in Norwegian

[u/MumboTheOld]

It’s probably because they are rehearsed by force. He’s answered the same or similar questions dozens if not hundreds of times.