Homeroom with Sal & Magnus Carlsen - Friday, March 12

Hi everyone! Welcome to homeroom with Sal. We have a very exciting conversation, and I also have two temporary co-hosts today because our guest is a bit of a hero for them. We have a bit of a chess household, so we're going to have a hopefully very engaging conversation with Magnus Carlsen, world chess champion and highest rated chess player, about all things chess and life and getting better at things that might seem hard at first.

But before we jump into that conversation, I will give my standard announcements. First of all, a reminder that Khan Academy is a not-for-profit. We can only exist through philanthropic donations. So if you're in a position to do so, please think about going to khanacademy.org/donate. I also want to give a special shout-out to a whole series of organizations that really helped step up when it was clear that the world was depending on Khan Academy more than ever during the pandemic and we were running at a deficit. So special thanks to Bank of America, AT&T, Google.org, Novartis, Fastly, and General Motors, and our many other supporters of all levels, hundreds of thousands of folks who donate whatever they can to make Khan Academy a possibility.

I also want to remind everyone that there is a podcast version of this live stream wherever you get your podcast: Homeroom with Sal, the podcast. So with that, I'm excited to introduce Magnus, world chess champion. Magnus, great to have you here!

Magnus: Thank you, thank you so much! Great to be here.

Sal: This is a very special occasion; we've never had quite this many co-hosts on this session. It's because of you, you know? Maybe we're getting so many questions that are coming in over social media and beyond. Maybe a good place to start is, you know, where, when you were young, when did you first realize that you had, for lack of a better word, a gift; that chess was something that you were drawn to and that you might be able to stand out in?

Magnus: I think it sort of started when I was nine and a half years old. I started playing chess a little bit later than many of the other kids, but I could notice that I was sponging up information in a way that they were not. So like, I would play tournaments with kids my age pretty much every weekend, and I could feel that I was sort of improving week by week by week. And they were not. I realized that I had just much more of a passion and a drive to do this than they had. So I think that's when I realized that I could actually be very good at this.

Sal: We have questions coming in from Instagram. Creation asks, "Who taught you how to play chess? How did you get introduced to the game?" And you mentioned it was relatively late for someone who gets to your level of chess.

Magnus: Oh, yeah, absolutely. So my father is quite a keen chess player. He still enjoys playing chess a lot. I would say he plays probably more chess than I do, to be honest. He taught my sister and me at a fairly young age, but up until the age I was eight, I really didn't know much at all. But certainly without him, I would never have pursued chess the way that I did.

Sal: We're having tons of questions, you could imagine, from both experienced and beginner chess players. From Instagram, Clara is asking, and I'm curious whether you followed your own advice: What is the most important thing beginners should work on to get better at chess, and what were you working on when you were a beginner?

Magnus: The thing is, I don't think I was working on anything in particular. So we had some chess books and magazines at home, so I would read them. And there was this chessboard we had, so I would move the pieces around, sometimes trying to imitate the games that I'd seen there. But like, after learning the very basics and the rules from my father, it was more really a case of me just trying out different things and seeing what worked.

Sal: Was it really just when you started playing other people? It was a bit of a rocket ship; you just realized, hey, there are things you're processing that other people aren't, you're getting better faster. Were there times that you were starting to plateau, and you had to do certain things to get out of that to get to another level?

Magnus: There were certainly times when I was younger when, yeah, I couldn't reach that next level immediately. And in hindsight, obviously, that's something that happens to everybody. What I believed back then is I had this sort of irrational confidence that these are temporary setbacks. The only reason why I'm not progressing to the next level is because I've had some bad luck, or in this particular tournament I wasn't able to show my best. So I always believed that I was gonna pull through: next tournament, next game, that's gonna be mine. I think that mentality, more than anything else, is what allowed me to push through.

Sal: I'm asking you all of these questions because people might not realize I'm going to play a computerized 10-year-old version of you in a few days, so I'm trying to get as many tips as possible to improve my chess game. Here's the little card about it: I'm going to be playing your computerized ten-year-old Magnus. I'm a reasonably serious amateur, but I don't want to raise anyone's expectations too much.

Magnus: You probably don't remember this, but about, I would like to say about four or five years ago, we actually played each other at an event. This was out here in Silicon Valley, where I was randomly selected from a hat. I was one of four people to play you; you're blindfolded. I know you probably do this a lot, but it was very memorable for me. I was the last person standing.

Magnus: So that was an exciting blindfolded timed match.

Sal: Yes, that was one time, yeah. I then remember.

Magnus: I'm sure that game you remember vividly in your head as you know. [Laughter]

Sal: No, but is that a game where I forgot the position once?

Magnus: Yes, I briefly had an advantage! I tell people I don't believe, I think I blundered a rook or something because I misremembered one of the positions. I was up a rook at one point in the game. I tell this to everyone who would listen: at one point, I had an advantage versus Magnus Carlsen. Then I later tell him that you were blindfolded, playing four other people, and I think you might have had less time on your clock than I did. But it was good for my self-esteem!

Magnus: I remember the moment when I saw that and thought, "He's doing something really deep." I think I can just take this.

Sal: I surprisingly often, when you see a very strong player appear to miss something obvious, they just missed it. So I keep telling everybody if it looks like your opponent missed something and you can't see why they didn't, they probably did.

Sal: That's actually good life advice because I think all the time we question when there's something good happening. You know, I think this relates actually to my two kids, who are very serious chess players: Imran, and this is Azad, who've been hanging out here. Why don't you all ask your questions? They're actually missing schoolwork for this.

Imran: How do you beat all the people?

Magnus: How do you beat all the people? I don't know, to be honest. I don't beat all of them.

Azad: More talent? Harder work?

Magnus: Who knows? Talent and hard work, you hear that?

Sal: Okay, and then Ron, what's your question?

Ron: So when you play blindfolded against my dad, is there any specific way that you can memorize multiple boards in your head, or do you just do it?

Magnus: I think you sort of store them in different parts of your brain. So it's really only necessary to have one board at a time, but it's good to have some kind of face or some kind of name that you connect with a certain board so it's easier to distinguish them from each other.

Sal: Following on actually both of their questions, famously, and I think a lot of people, and you've commented on Queen's Gambit, a lot of people are really getting into chess these days. But it does seem like people who can perform even close to your level seem to have almost superhuman memories. It seems like you do remember a lot of things. The fact that you remember that game versus me, which is probably the least important game you've ever played, does speak to that. Is this something you've trained? Is it only in chess, or do you have the ability to memorize scenarios and visualize things outside of chess as well?

Magnus: I would say that when I was young, I had a very good memory. Now it's not so great anymore. I would say at this point my memory is nothing exceptional. I can remember patterns still; I can remember the broad ideas. But I cannot remember everything. When I was a teenager, at least in my early teens, there was no way that I would have been able to tell you I blundered a rook at some point because I misplaced my pawn. Back then, I would have been able to tell you the whole game and details about it. Now it's more about remembering the broad lines of everything, and I don't think I'm particularly exceptional there.

Sal: I think you're probably being humble, but it is fascinating that you're saying that in some ways your brain tackles chess and you've stayed at the top of your game this entire time, but it has transitioned from being more, I guess you could say memory intensive or computational intensive. Now it's more almost pattern recognition is what I'm hearing.

Magnus: There’s a question from Instagram: Brian is related to this. Does being a world champion stop you from constantly trying to improve your chess? How do you get better when frankly you're the best right now? How do you push yourself to be better?

Magnus: The emphasis for me is on learning. I don't know exactly how that is going to make me a better chess player, but I feel as though my understanding of chess is evolving. Looking at my games, let's say five to six years ago, my understanding of the game was considerably worse back then. My results weren't necessarily worse, but that is the fascinating part for me: the game is evolving, my understanding is evolving, and I'm always learning something new. That really is enough motivation for me to keep on learning. Whether it will make me a better chess player, I don't know because sometimes in chess, ignorance really can be bliss. Sometimes, if you have less knowledge but knowledge that you are confident about, it can be better than just having many ideas that just make you overthink.

Sal: That's fascinating. I’m really blown away by that comment where you say that four or five years ago, your understanding of the game was much less deep than it is today because four or five years ago you were already world chess champion, and you're saying that you had a more superficial understanding of the game. So, I mean, it’s fascinating that there are still layers that you are uncovering even after becoming world chess champion.

Magnus: Absolutely. I think that happens to all chess players because the game is evolving and it's the tragedy for everybody that the more you know, the worse you play becomes at some point.

Sal: I'm curious, you know, as someone who is an amateur chess player, but I’m sure even many experienced chess players: what goes on in your head? You know in a lot of chess, someone like me might recognize certain things, but I'm also doing a lot of the scenarios, "Well, if I do this, they're going to do this. If I do this, they're going to do this." I can go down that tree maybe three or four or five moves at best. Are you doing that same type of thing? “Wait if I do this, they do that,” or is it something else?

Magnus: It can be, but since I'm much more experienced, I would use sort of my long-term memory more than my short-term. But clearly, sometimes you do have to calculate, and then it's, as you say, no deeper than, "If I do this you will have to do this, and then I'll do that," and so on. There may be two or three options on each move, so the variation sort of becomes broader and messier. But at the end of the day, you can't escape calculation by brute force, no matter how much you want to play on intuition and strategy rather than tactics.

Sal: I can imagine. We have a question here from Facebook: Margot McGinnis, who actually helped coordinate the first time we played and now this time that I'm going to be playing versus the digital you. What was your most memorable or nerve-wracking match? And I'll add to this: do you get, how do you deal with stress? Do you get nervous during matches?

Magnus: Yeah, I would certainly say the first world championship match that I had in 2013 at the start, I was so, so nervous that I dropped one of my pieces on the first move. Which is sort of fascinating because even at that point, I was the highest rated player in the world. I was very experienced, but the task of playing a world championship was so daunting to me that for the first three or four games, I was still unbelievably nervous because it was something that was absolutely new to me.

Sal: How do you deal with that? Do you just say, you know, breathe, one move at a time kind of thing?

Magnus: I don't know how to deal with it, to be honest. So the way that I dealt with it was I played one good game, and then my confidence was back, and I didn't have a care in the world. Very often, people search for do I have any method or deeper meaning to what I do, but as I explained at the beginning, my method was mainly trial and error, and it still is to some extent. I find out what works for me at some point simply by experiencing it, not necessarily by good planning.

Sal: You know, you ever while you're in the middle of a game? I mean, less experienced, we always go, “Oh, I can't believe I made that move! That was a stupid mistake!” How often does that happen to you, where you’re like, “Oh my God, that was a careless mistake” or “I can't believe I did that”?

Magnus: Every single game. I can't remember a single one where I haven't had those thoughts. Sometimes it would be a massive blunder; another time it will be an unavoidable inaccuracy. But every time it's like, you've played chess your whole life, and still, you can't figure this out.

Sal: It sounds like, you know, to your earlier comment about that moment, which I will never stop bragging about—where I had an advantage versus you playing blindfolded against four other people—is what you said earlier. You probably hide it well because now when you make what you know to be a mistake or you miss something, most other people will probably see it as a deep insight. It's something that probably scares them.

Magnus: Normally, it's just a mess up—that's what it is.

Sal: You know, there's a lot of questions coming in about chess and your life. This is a question from YouTube: Ghost Tommy asks, “How's chess affected your life? How has it improved you?” I'll extend that question of how are you viewing chess and your life going forward. You've achieved the top of your game literally at a very young age; you're still very, very young. What do you see as the future? Do you feel, you know, defending your title? Are you constantly on your game, or is it really just the love of the game? What else is going on outside of chess?

Magnus: No, really. I just want to learn, and playing both tournaments and casual games still give me satisfaction and joy. So at the moment, I haven't really thought too much about anything else: whatever titles may be out there—that's not the main motivation at this point. I feel like it's just come with me; it's about learning and having fun, to be honest.

Sal: It's good to hear that. I mean, it's amazing when you even said that how much more you've learned about the game of chess over the last four or five years when you're already at the top of the game. It really does sound like there's this opportunity, this journey; there's a beauty in the game that never gets old. And related to that, there's a question here from Facebook: Cynthia Hurtado asks, “What do you think about the rise of chess engines and the digital age of chess? How has that changed the game? How does it change your thinking? Is it different to play against a supercomputer versus a great human player?”

Magnus: Frankly, I don't play a lot against computers. Like, basically, the only time that I play against computer opponents is when I play my own app. Computers have changed dramatically the way that we prepare for games, not necessarily for the better, because it's left less scope for creativity. I think computers, though, have made the game much more accessible for casual fans because now you can sort of see a score, and they can also aid in giving you instant feedback when you play your games. So I guess overall they've certainly been a positive, but in terms of how I view chess engines, I view them as more of a necessary evil than a good thing. To me, the game would be just as interesting without computer analysis.

Sal: You know, you said a really interesting thing that I've heard great chess players say: the creativity of the game, the beauty of the game. I definitely have glimpses of that when I sometimes play, but double-click on that a little bit. What do you mean when you say that when you play against human versus human, there's maybe a little more space for creativity? What does that mean?

Magnus: It just means that humans have emotions; they have actual thoughts. So you can, it’s sort of a game of both some emotion and ideas. With computers, it just becomes technique basically. It’s only about technique. That's why I find it in general less interesting.

Sal: Is that part of your game?

Magnus: I find it fascinating, you know, chess famously was built off of a metaphor for real warfare in the real world, ancient warfare. Ancient warfare, we all know, isn't just who is the best tactical fighter; there are psychology, tricks, faints. How much of it is playing with the other person's emotions or tricking them or making them not see something, kind of doing a sleight of hand, things like that?

Magnus: I think the faster the games, the more there's room for all sorts of trickery that, to my mind makes the game more interesting. The faster the games, the more room there is for all sorts of trickery. To my mind, it makes the game more interesting because as you have more time, it becomes more technical.

Sal: And you know, I think a lot of people have watched Queen's Gambit. I've seen on social media you've commented on it a good bit. I am curious in this forum: what are your thoughts about it? Do you think it was pretty realistic to the game of chess? The main character in Queen's Gambit, she's famously an intuitive player versus a computational, I'm sure she's doing some of that too, or at least the character would—what are your thoughts about it and what’s it done to the game of chess?

Magnus: Well, I think the only reason she can be intuitive is that she studied very, very hard, and that's one of the things I love to see about the series—is that she studies so hard and has such great respect for the game. Also, I feel like they did the chess pretty well; the fragments from games were very realistic and sometimes beautiful as well when it comes to the atmosphere around the tournaments and so on. I guess some things are fictionalized, but overall, I was very happy with it and hopefully, people will watch it and they will not be scared but rather encouraged to play chess.

Sal: Yeah. You know, there are so many questions. I know we're running a long time, but I'll ask a few more of these really around how do you cope with especially in the early days when maybe you were getting beaten every now and then? How did you deal with that failure? And how do you manage your own emotions? I mean, are there times that you feel bad about yourself or angry or frustrated with a given opponent?

Magnus: I have to say that when I was young and I guess I lost a lot more than I do now, I didn't care so much about losses because I didn't expect to win all the time. As I said, it was like I wanted to play stronger players that I could learn the most from. It was not about winning; I just wanted to get to the next level, that I could match up with stronger and stronger opponents and then beat them eventually. In recent years, when I've become used to being at the top most of the time, yeah, now losing hurts. I'm not gonna lie; every time, and it's not even losing. I might be equally upset after a game that I won as a game that I lost if I feel like I did something, I made a mistake that I could easily have avoided or I didn't act professionally enough in the way that I executed the game.

Sal: Twenty years of playing chess has not prevented me from having emotional reactions to things that happen at the chessboard.

Magnus: Absolutely.

Sal: And how do you deal, you know, one of the things that I think is hard when people have been so successful for so long. Do you sometimes model in your mind what if five years, ten years in the future, the next Magnus Carlsen comes and is able to beat me? Is that something that you think about? How would you think that would affect you if that happened?

Magnus: I remember I was asked this question about 11 years ago, and at that point, it upset me because they worded the question as, "What are you gonna do when that next one comes along?" I said very clearly that in my mind, this was the question of if. Also, I thought, I have so many years till that will be a real thing. I think I’m realistic enough, though, at this point to realize that I'm not gonna be able to be at the highest level forever, so if I do want to keep on playing chess at the highest level, then at some point I'm going to start regressing. But for the moment, I'm thinking like I should still be in my prime, and that's what I should strive towards.

Sal: Yeah, no, I definitely phrase it as if I'm not assuming that anyone is gonna, obviously the most likely scenario is that somebody's gonna surpass me. I wouldn't say sooner rather than later, but in the not too distant future, but I'm gonna try and hold on as long as I can!

Magnus: And what do you know? When we think about the arc of the game of chess, how it's evolved, do you think that the competition is only going higher and higher and higher over time—that people are understanding the game at deeper and deeper levels—or do you think some of the old greats from fifty years ago or sixty years ago or even a hundred years ago would actually still be great today?

Magnus: I think it's a bit of both. The game is certainly evolving, especially with the computers that have made us reevaluate a lot of the truths that we held to be self-evident long ago. But I also do feel—and this is gonna make me sound a lot older than I am—that I feel some of the youngsters today are not too good at the basics. I feel like the generation that I'm a part of and the generation before maybe understood the fundamentals of the game a little bit better than the kids do today. I think that's partly a result of growing up with the computer rather than a board.

Sal: It's fascinating because I'm sure the youngsters that you're talking about are still quite good at chess, but you're saying even some of these folks, when you say the basics, what do you mean by that? What types of things do you think they have maybe some gaps in?

Magnus: I think some gaps in just general positional understanding of the game. Studying classic games, I think, has clear value. Far from everything that you learn from back then is still true today, but I don't think you can develop a broad enough understanding of the game to be the best by only training with the computer.

Sal: No, it's fascinating. And yes, you do sound older than you are.

Magnus: [Laughter] Yeah! I just turned 30 last November. What I will say though, I think I'm lucky to be in sort of a hybrid generation that I started playing chess before the computers were absolutely everywhere. I actually went to school with books and notebooks before everything became computerized. I think it's sort of a good position to be in, to be in that sort of a hybrid, that you have a good knowledge of computers but can also relate to the old way the game was played.

Sal: Maybe in the time we have left, one question that I'm sure a lot of people—and people are asking this question—what other subjects are you interested in? Math or physics? Sometimes there is a connection between chess. But I am curious, have you ever done the thought exercise: if you weren't world chess champion or if you didn't have this chess life, in that alternate reality, what would Magnus Carlsen be doing?

Magnus: I've been asked it many times, for sure, but I never had a good answer. Probably still don't. One thing that I will say though is that I have massive respect for people in almost any field, and I think there are a lot of even fairly bright people who think that somebody like me could become good at something else with very little effort. But I really don't think so. I think most of all I'm somebody who evidently has some talent for chess, but most of all I've spent a lot of time working on it and thinking about it. I'm not necessarily the fastest at anything; I need some time. Then I just keep learning. But to think of something else, I don't think there's anything that I could just imagine I would be anywhere equally as good at. In that case, I would have to spend nearly all my time on it, as I have with chess.

Sal: Well, it does seem like the mindset that you've taken to chess, and there are probably things your mind can do that would be very useful in other fields— even if we limit ourselves to games. Do you play other games, or have you ever—famously, a lot of elite athletes, you know, Michael Jordan tried golf. LeBron James—I recently read an article; he could have been a football player. Have you thought, “Well, there's other games I could have played?” You know, Go or Mahjong or just something else. Have you ever tried these things, or do you even play other games outside of chess?

Magnus: The thing is, for something like Go, I feel like chess might almost be—having spent a lot of time on chess might almost be a disadvantage. Because I think the mindset there is very different. For a chess player, Go seems very, very abstract compared to chess. I wouldn’t say I'm great at anything else. I’ve tried games like I play poker with my friends occasionally without being particularly great at it. I’ve tried Shogi, Go briefly without excelling at any of those things, so I really wouldn’t know.

Sal: You know, I just imagine playing poker or any other game against you, and I do think you have an intimidation factor which would play to your strength.

Magnus: It goes away very quickly. [Laughter]

Sal: Well, I know we're all out of time. First of all, thank you so much! I look forward to playing the robot version of you, which I still will: I’m pretty sure will crush me, but I'm going to practice with my co-conspirators that you met earlier: my older son, he's pretty decent. I think he's just gotten better than me, so he gives me a run for the money. But Magnus, thank you so much!

Magnus: Thank you so much!

Sal: Obviously, fascinating what you've been able to accomplish in chess, but I think even more, chess as a metaphor for life is very powerful. What you've been able to do in the game and just understanding a little bit of how you think about chess and life, I think has a lot of insights that go well beyond chess. So thank you so much for joining us today!

Magnus: Thank you so much for having me, and all the best to all of you in this difficult time!

Sal: Great, thank you so much, Magnus! So thanks everyone for joining today's homeroom. As you all know, I could have talked to Magnus for a few more hours. I feel like we got glimpses into what goes on in his mind, both intellectually and emotionally. Some of the takeaways: he's a human being just like the rest of us, but it would be fun to see a chessboard the way that he sees a chessboard.

You can see a 10-year-old robot version of Magnus crushing me, likely in chess. It's all about setting expectations in the right place. We're going to have a live event as the card had shown in a couple of days, but thank you all for joining us! It's gonna be at championschesstour.com, and I'm definitely part of the entertainment more than the serious competition. Oh, I do play a little bit. As Magnus said, it's now documented. Not only does he remember the game, which I find incredibly flattering, but he also admitted that I briefly had a moment where he forgot something because he was playing four other people simultaneously with a blindfold on. But with that, thanks so much for coming to today's homeroom, and I will see you all next week, I think. See you then!