与 Hans Niemann 的一次不加滤镜的对谈

How are you, man?

Doing well. Thank you for having me on.

Dude, welcome to the stream. Let me give you an intro real quick. I don't know anything about chess. I know almost nothing about chess. The only reason I was familiar with you is from crypto guys tweeting about you, like CZ and others tweeting about you.

Yeah.

I had seen some stories, whatever. But you hit me up, so I sent it to the chat. I'm like, “You guys know who this is?” And everyone's like, “Dude, you have to get him on the stream.” I'm like—

All right.

So I sat down last night. I went out, had a couple of drinks, came back, and watched the documentary last night. Bro, it's cinema. It is genuinely cinema. I was telling the chat a rough TL;DR for anyone who hadn't watched it. It was an unreal story. I was blown away by it, and by the conclusion of the whole thing. Then what you're doing afterward—first of all, I imagine you can't talk about the lawsuit, but launching a competitor with what you're working on right now is pretty sick.

I appreciate you coming out. It's an unreal story. How do you feel about how the producers told the story?

The crazy thing is that what you see in that room—it was like a cathedral, where I was speaking, and where all the clips are from—I sat there for, I think, 3 or 4 days in a row, for 8 hours straight. They were hammering me with this and that, and there were so many things that, when I watched it, I was like, “Oh, is this going to make it in? Is that going to make it in?”

It was such a nuanced story, and so many things were happening, that it was hard for everything to be included. Generally, they did a really good job. I personally felt inspired watching it. I felt like it was a reminder of what my mission is and what I'm trying to do, and why I started playing chess.

They also admitted that they had no evidence and that I was innocent. They had never really done that on camera before. Generally, it's a big win, and the feedback has been great.

It's not at the same scale, but I had some controversial moments in the finance community as a trader where I had to step away for a couple of weeks, put out a video, clear my name, and do the whole victory tour, which is definitely stressful. How did you get set up with this documentary? Did you commission these people to work on it? Did they reach out to you? Who was in charge of telling the story, and how did you set the whole thing up?

Interestingly enough, Netflix was hounding me, and I didn't want to do it. From the beginning of whatever happened, I started getting probably 1,000 DMs from different documentary producers reaching out. They kept messaging, and then one day my legal representation saw that Netflix was in discussions. They were trying to get Magnus to agree, and they had gotten Chess.com to agree. Eventually, they convinced Magnus, and I was actually the last person to sign.

I wasn't sure because they had always manipulated the narrative. I thought it was just going to be me and all of them. But at some point, I realized, “This is the biggest platform in the world. I have to do something to clear my name. This is the best chance that I have.”

Eventually, everything was signed. We started filming in March 2024. It took a while to come out. It had been ready for a while, so maybe it was 2020.

Wait, so that last match where you played Magnus for the third time in the documentary—that was in February 2024, I think.

It was in September 2024. That's the end of the documentary. It's almost 2 years ago.

Funnily enough, last year, in June or July in Vegas, I placed ahead of him and Hikaru. That would have been a better finale, but—

Did you play him or no?

I didn't play him directly, but I did make it to the finals, and he was in the loser's bracket. There have been many instances where I've triumphed over them, especially online and in the Circle of Title Series. I've beaten them many times. I've proven my level. Even now, I'm number 12 in the world.

There were better instances of triumph and comeback. I think the main story is—when I had a private screening of the documentary where I showed it to my close friends—

Okay.

I would pause and give context and explain—

I wish I was there for that. Oh my God.

Yeah, I know. I'm actually doing something on the 23rd if you're in New York, but I'll send you the details. It's a bigger version of that.

Basically, a lot of the things in the documentary—as a chess player, you hear them and you're like, “This is stupid.” But without the context of chess, the mainstream audience doesn't know all the details. You really need a lot of context because it's so nuanced.

I could write a 500-page book about everything that happened and go into all these details. In the mainstream news, usually just the headlines get picked up, and that's what defines the story.

Generally, the main thing I feel I accomplished is that I was completely blacklisted. I've seen some of your scandals. What was that cabal thing? What was that called? I only remember seeing some headline about the cabal thing or some random guy.

The Babe Cabal, yeah. I'm sure you understand these things.

The main thing is that I basically got blacklisted. I had to go to Kazakhstan and play all these random tournaments. Kazakhstan is a great country. I recommend anyone visit, but the main point is that I had to organize my own tournament.

Now, being number 12 in the world and still on the path to become world champion—for example, I tied for second in the world championship just 3 months ago, in the World Rapid Championship—I feel like the documentary ended at a weird time. I think the story is still developing.

I was looking last night on these chess ranking websites, and you're not on quite a few of them. I had to search “Hans Niemann ranking.”

No, dude. First of all, on Chess.com, I call them the chess mafia. I've been number 1 in the entire world multiple times. If you want the official rating system, you go to 2700chess.com.

Okay, okay, cool, cool.

I'm number 12. In crypto, I know you guys have those perp-trading leaderboards.

Yeah, of course.

I guess that would be the equivalent of an online rating. I wouldn't say I'm quite like James Win, but we're a little bit more serious than him.

Too. Okay, word, word, word.

Yeah, I'm a little more serious than him. Anyways—

How does head-to-head work in chess? In basketball terms, can a 16-seed beat a 1-seed? How are upsets possible? If you're better than a—

Yeah, I'll give some context. When I won that match, I was 19 at the time, in St. Louis in 2022. This was the big one. When I won that match, I was ranked about 30th in the world, and he was ranked number 1.

From the game itself, he honestly played really poorly, and I played a decent game. I was on a roll. I had won the game prior to that. After I beat him, I was actually leading the tournament by a big margin.

This was kind of my Emma Raducanu moment—winning the US Open as a wild card and having my big breakthrough. He's lost to players far below me recently, so it's not like it can't happen. Considering how poorly he played, it's not that much of an outlier.

Got it. Can you explain the controversy with this opening that happened in that game? You did this interview afterward, and you were like, “I happened to—”

The opening, yeah. So this—

Yeah, what's up with the opening?

I'll explain this. This is actually interesting. I went on a 10-minute monologue about this in the interview.

Okay, okay.

They didn't give me any context in the interview. Here's the funny thing: I'm going to give two pieces of context about the 2 Chess.com guys who run that company.

One of them is an International Master, which is the second-highest level in chess. But he's very far from being a top player. I would compare him to one of those gambling larpers who pretend to be top—

An Axiom badge shilling a lot of meme coins.

Yeah, I can imagine. People who post fake screenshots and promote an affiliate link, but aren't actually high-level traders. That's my analogy.

Okay, okay.

And then you have the CEO of the company, who's not even a real chess player. He can barely play; he's around 1,500-something.

Which one is which?

The CEO is even worse.

Who's the mentor character? Which one is he?

The mentor is an International Master.

Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay.

He is not completely—he's not that stupid. The other guy, when he talks about high-level opening analysis, has no idea what he's talking about. It's like some middle schooler talking to a PhD about advanced mathematics.

He has no idea what he's talking about. The example I would give is: imagine a Hyperliquid trader trying to explain that to a 9-year-old kid, and the 9-year-old kid says, “Now I understand.” That's the equivalent.

Anyways, the point is that with this opening—in chess, the beginning stage of the game is really important. In chess, we have this thing called transpositions. Let's say on move 15, we both know this position. But you can reach that position without playing the same sequence of 15 moves. Perhaps on the 10th or 12th move, you go through a different order, but you reach the same position.

In chess, sometimes you play different moves in different orders, but you still reach the same position. The position that I knew was something I had prepared against one of his main lines, and it was something I reached through a transposition.

The reason I didn't say in the interview that I knew it because of a transposition was that I would have given away my repertoire. If I gave away my repertoire, people could prepare exactly against what I wanted to do.

In chess, basically, I have my repertoire and you have your repertoire. Our coaches match our games, see where there's overlap, and then try to predict a preparation—or a move 20, a preparation 25 moves ahead—where they can catch you and have an opening novelty.

For example, if I know that you play rock-paper-scissors and 70% of the time you choose scissors, I can exploit that by changing my game-theory approach. Preparation in the openings is very much a metagame of game theory, trying to predict what your opponent will do.

I didn't want to give that information because it would harm me in future games. Even in the documentary, my coach and I discussed this. I have WhatsApp messages of me discussing this line. But, yeah, that didn't make it—

Really? Yeah, yeah. How obscure was it, from the perspective of the CEOs of Chess.com?

The funniest thing is them talking about high-level theory. It's like somebody who knows nothing about chess trying to discuss it.

Got it. Yeah, I see.

These guys just don't know what they're talking about. First of all, they don't know what they're talking about. Second of all, they're not top-level chess players.

If it were another top grandmaster talking about this—someone who understood the subtleties and nuances of high-level preparation—then perhaps they could be taken seriously. But what they said, they just have no understanding of.

They said it was a 1-in-10,000—

In 10,000, but miracles are possible.

All of this is absolute fantasy. I completely refuted this in the documentary, and it wasn't included. So, yeah, that was unfortunate.

Interesting. You're really 25 moves ahead when you're—

From the first position, you branch out. You have your openings and your repertoire based on what your opponent does. Some people prepare 30 moves ahead.

It's this whole metagame of memorizing and then preparing a novelty. A novelty is a new move that has never been played before. It's this weird sort of metagame, and that's how—

How often is there a reshuffling of the top 30 or so players? Does everybody know everybody and play everybody all the time, or is there frequently a newcomer changing the order?

The way chess tournaments work is that most of the top tournaments are comprised of 10 players, and they're invitation-based. The most common format is a 10-player round robin, where you play one game against each person. In those 9 games, whoever scores the most points wins the tournament.

Usually in chess, it's very prestigious to be in the top 10. I'm number 12, so once I break into the top 10, that likely means I get into the most prestigious events. It's kind of like a gentlemen's club. If you're in the top 10, you're considered one of the best of the best.

If you're in the top 20 or top 30, usually, unless you're really young or quite famous and bringing a lot of sponsorship, you're not getting as many opportunities.

Got it. So, you're out of the top 10? Or did they force you in because—

I'm number 12. I organize a lot of my matches. I kind of forge my own path. Now I've been getting more opportunities. Obviously, Netflix is great.

Yeah.

If you're an organizer and you invite me, you're going to get more journalists coming to the tournament. You're going to get way more viewership. From a commercial perspective, it's stupid not to invite me.

So, okay.

Some organizers are quite old-fashioned. It's a very traditional game.

Traditional, yeah, 100%. So, when you do a lot of trading analogies, you want to—

In trading, at least from what I know, the perception of chess from the outside is that, in order to be a good chess player—a top-level chess player—you have to be this super-IQ genius, autistic at least about chess.

In trading, this is sort of true. A lot of the best guys also happen to be really smart, genius, autistic about trading. But there are also a lot of edges that can be exploited where people maybe aren't super-great fundamental or math guys, but they're really good at attention, or they're really good at finding specific spots.

They're really good at a certain type of thing. The meme-coin guys have a completely different skill from the speculators in big-cap stocks. It's not necessarily the case that IQ equals profitability in trading. How does that cross over with chess?

Chess is an open-information game. There's no hidden information like there is in poker, and there's no variance like there is in backgammon. In a game with completely open information, it's obviously going to skew more toward pure intelligence and skill.

In trading, there's a lot of asymmetric information.

Yeah.

It's Polymarket and all that. That's the direction Polymarket and Kalshi are going in. With all the instability in the world, a lot of people are trading oil based on their interpretation of the media or how much they believe a certain media outlet.

When you're operating in the real world, a friend of mine who's really into business—he's very successful in business and in all sorts of things—said to me that the reason he loves chess is that, in chess, there are clear rules, and when something goes wrong, you can pinpoint exactly what went wrong.

In life, you can be the smartest person, make the right investment, and have everything together, and things can still go wrong. My personal belief about trading, or anything in life, is that there's at least 4 times more variance. I personally believe there are a lot of people who are incredibly successful just because they have a crazy belief in themselves and get a little bit lucky, or because it's less of an exact science.

Becoming rich or becoming successful—whatever your metric is—

This is like a curveball, but that first interview—the chess speaks for itself. Did you know, when you—did you know that was going to be—were you walking off thinking, “Fuck, that was cold,” or, “This is about to go triple platinum”? Did you prep that?

You know what's funny? Everyone thought this was scripted. Everyone thought it was scripted.

At some point, honestly, before this, I had given a lot of interviews where I felt like I was trash-talking, and I thought I should be focused and shouldn't get distracted. So, that was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. I honestly just said it, and then I realized later on that it was probably—

Because you see it, right? You watch it for the first time and you're like—

I know. Twitter exploded after that, and there were Reddit threads. Whenever I do anything, there are always massive Reddit threads. I hate Reddit. I find people who—

Your Reddit sucks.

People who are obsessed with Reddit are just deranged. I actually use it as a metric to know when I’m right. If Reddit is positive, then I know I’ve done something amazing. I measure how negative they are because I factor in the Reddit bias and stupidity. It’s a great signal for judging things. It’s a good metric, in my opinion.

Did you think you were going to win—I mean, maybe not think, but did you think you could win that match, that first one at FTX?

That first one, yeah, in the FTX thing. I won that first game, and I think I was just too excited and too nervous. I didn’t have the nerves or the experience. I was 19 at the time, and that was my first real super tournament. I just didn’t have the composure.

I didn’t even have a coach. Now I’m far more prepared. I have a full-time coach and a team around me. I’m way more disciplined and way more professional. My lifestyle is super regimented.

Back then, I was just doing trial and error. I didn’t really have the emotional control or capacity to calm down and weather the pressure. I was enjoying the chaos.

By the way, I couldn’t believe it was FTX. I’m watching this documentary and I’m like, “What the fuck?”

You know what’s so funny? I remember they did a boat day, and we went out with FTX’s head of marketing. At this point, I had just ended my sponsorship with the Play Magnus Group, which was Magnus’ company and was acquired by Chess.com.

This merger—

Yeah, it’s quite funny. They talk about how much they hated me, even though I was a brand ambassador for the company. That’s a whole other thing.

The other point is that I remember talking to the guy. I had just ended my sponsorship with them, and I said, “You know, FTX is putting a lot of money into this thing. I’d love to maybe discuss a sponsorship.”

The guy was like, “Oh, yeah, for sure. We’ll figure something out. We’ll figure something out. Open checkbook.” I thought, “Okay.”

Also, that was 2022.

Yeah, August.

August of chess, man.

I should have taken an upfront payment.

Yeah, upfront payment. So, you said that during FTX your lifestyle was kind of a mess, and now it’s much more regimented. What was your day-to-day like then? More specifically, what is your process now? What does a day in the life look like when you’re really focused?

Back then, I was kind of a vagabond, traveling the world on my own with no clear path. I wasn’t as disciplined as I should have been. I also didn’t really understand the game theory behind it. I didn’t have the psychological awareness or the ability to be introspective and prevent myself from going on tilt.

Now, I would say the ideal training days are when I’m out of training camp. Even now, I’m planning a training camp somewhere warm in Europe. I’ll play tennis for 2 hours, and then I’ll have 1 or 2 guys who I play over the board with and discuss ideas. We might do that for 6 to 8 hours.

Oh.

Then I just try to stay focused, not drink, and sleep well.

You said you played 260 matches in a—

Yeah. For context, a lot of people watching don’t really understand the distinction between an online chess game and an in-person chess game. Our lives have become so online that distinction isn’t really clear to a lot of people.

Yeah.

Online chess is real rated chess. If you want a rating, you have to play online. Online chess became more popular, but it’s not official in the same way. In-person classical chess games last between 3 and 5 hours.

Whoa.

Some classical tournaments last a really long time, with games that can last 8 hours. So, 260 days means I was literally playing chess for at least around 260 days a year, and that’s just classical chess. I was on the road 365 days a year. I lived in hotels for 3 years. I had no address.

Do you not— I remember talking to some people in the poker-to-crypto pipeline, and all they want to do is talk about crypto because they fucking hate poker. Do you not hate chess at this point?

Honestly, when I hang out with chess players, I must—actually, I would say chess players discussing anything other than chess are terrible. If you try to discuss pop culture, mainstream news, geopolitics, or the economy, they’re not the sharpest tools in the shed.

But when it’s about chess, it’s nice to discuss things. If I try to discuss chess with a regular person, they’ll bore me with endless stupid questions, and I become a bit annoyed. So, you have it both ways.

No, I love chess. I don’t really socialize with chess players at all, but I feel a sense of camaraderie because we’ve had similar lifestyles. We’ve both given our entire lives to this from childhood. I’m sure you—

Sorry, I feel bad about the crypto trading. What do you do for a living, man?

You guys bond over the lack of hard work and cheating.

There you go, right?

Yeah, exactly.

A little cheating.

No. Tell me this—

Just say insider trading and—

Yeah, you know all about this, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Tell me about the money in chess. How many chess players can actually afford to play chess full-time and live off it?

Not that many. Interestingly enough, chess has historically been a very political game. The Soviet Union used chess as an intellectual game to defeat America intellectually during the Cold War. That’s why you have the whole Bobby Spassky match.

Yeah, yeah.

For example, Javokhir Sindarov just won the Candidates Tournament, and the president called him and welcomed him home with a parade. The entire government is behind these people.

If you’re a top-10 player in the world, you’re probably making $500,000 or more, depending on your sponsors. If you’re a top-3 player in the world, at Magnus Carlsen’s level, you’re probably making $1 million a year, depending on your endorsements.

If you’re a top-5 player in the world, you’re probably making $600,000 to $800,000. If you’re a top-10 player in the world, depending on your sponsors, I’d say $300,000 to $500,000. If you’re a top-20 player in the world, you’re lucky to make maybe $100,000 to $150,000. Some people have big sponsors. If you’re a top-40 player in the world, you’re lucky to make $100,000 a year. There’s a huge drop-off.

Yeah, I imagine you’re pretty unique in that—

Well, I also started a company and raised venture capital. We raised $5 million at a $30 million post-money valuation. I’m a founder and CEO. I have sponsors.

Last year, I think I won maybe $350,000 in prize money, which isn’t bad, but some people have more endorsements. I’m kind of blacklisted in the American community. If I wasn’t blacklisted, I’d be making much more.

There have been countries that have offered me the opportunity to represent them. If I switched to another country, they’d pay me a ridiculous amount of money.

Yeah, I’ve been offered by multiple places. I have diverse heritage, so I can say I’m from a lot of places if I really want to—

Would you do that?

No. I’m a very patriotic American. My idol, Bobby Fischer, was the first and only American world champion. My mission and fulfillment are to become world champion.

Eventually, I think chess should be a way for America to assert intellectual dominance over the world. We want to be the best in the military and all these other things, but I think we have to show that we’re the smartest. America doesn’t have the best reputation with all these brain-rotted TikTok users, and our education system is collapsing. I think we need to make America smart again.

Before we talk about the company, how crazy was the streaming era of chess? What’s the backstory on your rise and blow-up?

I used to stream on Twitch for 6 or 7 hours a day. Before COVID, I was averaging around 2,500 to 3,000 viewers.

Chess was huge. I was streaming with xQc, playing Among Us in 2020.

I remember playing an Among Us game with xQc, Ludwig, and all the massive streamers.

How old are you at this time?

I’m 16. It was a pretty funny ride. That exploded, but then, in my senior year of high school, I went to Italy and Spain and skipped the last 4 months of my senior year. I just couldn’t keep up with the streaming. I wanted to go all in on competing.

Even for me now, it’s a balance. If I stream more, I could get more endorsements and make more money, but I really want to be a purist and focus on competing. I balance that with running my company. Streaming is still big, though. When I stream tournaments, I still get pretty good viewership, and there’s a fan base there for sure. YouTube is probably the biggest.

It’s crazy when the Chess.com guys talk about the COVID spike and then The Queen’s Gambit spike. I forgot about The Queen’s Gambit.

Yeah, The Queen’s Gambit was huge. I loved the show. When I watched The Queen’s Gambit, it was right before my big surge, my big comeback. I finished it and couldn’t stop watching, then slept an entire night. It really left me very inspired.

What was your pop moment? Was it the first Magnus game?

If I had never been accused of anything and that had just happened, that would have been my moment. I would have been the star of chess. Every opportunity would have opened up. I’m trying to think—who’s the darling of crypto Twitter?

Probably Ansem?

Ansem? I don’t know. Who’s that guy that did the podcast?

Yeah, didn’t—

Cobie, yeah, yeah, Cobie.

That’s the guy they paid for the podcast at Coinbase?

Maybe not quite that, but I would have been at that stage. Being an American player, having the whole support of the American chess system behind you, and having all the invitations—every door would have opened.

You talk about it a little bit in the documentary. How much aura does Magnus have?

I would say that the fact that he was broken by a 19-year-old and never admitted to it means his aura is rapidly decreasing. Obviously, he’s achieved a lot, but his greatest blemish is what happened. Only I can see the delusional vision of what’s going to happen.

I see the delusional vision that I would have become world champion, and once I become world champion, people are going to look back and say, “Wow, he just stole 3 years of this kid’s life and did irreparable damage, and still I became world champion in spite of that.”

I think that story will be so inspirational that it’ll overshadow all of the negativity that surrounded it.

When you sat down for that second game, did you feel like he was legitimately afraid of you because he didn’t know whether you were cheating?

We didn’t play. After the Sinquefield Cup, the next time we played over the board was at the World Blitz Championship. I was incredibly close to beating him and eventually becoming world champion.

We played in the quarterfinals. It was a 4-match series.

It was a 4-match series?

Yeah. This wasn’t Paris; this was in New York. It was the World Blitz Championship. We played in the quarterfinals, separate from what’s in the documentary. This would have been good to include in the documentary.

I was so close to beating him. I was leading 1½–½, then I lost the third game. In the fourth game, I had White and was doing really well. If I won that match, I could go on to become world champion at the age of 21, and my life would change.

For me, it’s not even the fact that I haven’t accomplished it yet. That just reaffirms my belief that I’m going to accomplish it, and it reaffirms why I need to continue pushing harder. In sports, no matter how good you are, sometimes things just don’t go your way.

Chess is such a competitive sport that you need things to go your way sometimes. Even 3 months ago, I was second. I tied for second in the world championship. I’m just a hair away from becoming world champion. It’s really a matter of time. Once that happens—

Yeah. What are you doing right before these matches, before the big one? Are you tweaking? Are you anxious?

No, I listen to music, manifest, and visualize. Djokovic has some great—

Also, how quickly do you know how the game is going to play out? How many moves in do you think—

You just feel it. You feel the momentum, especially in the quicker games. They last only 10 minutes, whereas a typical chess game lasts hours and hours.

That’s why you’re [__] ripping, yeah, yeah.

At some point, you can feel the momentum shift. You can feel the dynamic, the tension, and the momentum. Sometimes you realize it’s too late, and sometimes you don’t realize it and you’re suddenly winning. The swings are super high.

Before we talk about the company, somebody in the chat asked if you could talk about how good the hood chess players are at the park.

That was actually in the documentary. I went there, and one of the guys said, “Hans has been coming to this park for so long. He’s so good. He’s our monster.” Then he started yelling, “He’s our monster!” It was such a funny clip.

ESPN did a profile on me a week ago, and I took them to the park. They’re very passionate and supportive. In my opinion, I would compare the Washington Square hustlers to meme coin traders who trade $10 in volume but feel the same passion as someone trading $10 million.

How good are they?

They’re pretty good. They’d beat any random person who shows up.

They’d crush any random person?

Any random person—they’d crush them.

That was one of the sickest moments in the whole documentary. It was like the hometown kid. That was sick.

You just launched—I honestly don’t know if I ever finished the chess game I was playing on it before you came on, just to try the platform. Endgame.ai is the name of the platform you just launched. Tell me the story behind that.

It’s a website and an app. You can play chess on both. About a year and a half ago, I had a lot of friends who founded companies, mainly in the AI space. One of them said, “Why don’t you just start a company? There’s this chess mafia; they have a monopoly. Why not just start a company and compete with them?”

Within 10 days, I had raised the seed round. It all happened so quickly that I was kind of shocked. I thought, “How did this happen? I’m just a chess player. I’m not some Stanford founder.” It all came together quite quickly.

Then we built the app and the platform. One of the interesting things I’ve been trying to make work in chess is really high-stakes matches. You see it a lot in poker. People do prop betting, but you also see it when you buy into a poker tournament.

Yeah.

If you buy into a poker tournament for $1 million, most people don’t have $1 million, so they’ll sell action at a markup. If you’re Daniel Negreanu playing in a $1 million event, you might sell 50% to 70% of your action at a markup, depending on how good you are. People pay the markup for a percentage of the winnings.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do is bring millions and millions of dollars into high-stakes chess matches. About a year and a half ago, I planned a match where 4 different players would each put up $1 million.

Whoa.

The winner would get $2 million, the second-place finisher would get $1.5 million, the third-place finisher would get $400,000, and fourth would get zero.

I coincidentally tweeted, “I’m looking for a sponsor,” because I wanted to sell some action. This guy DMed me from Mount Everest base camp and said, “Do you take Bitcoin? Let’s do it.” We met a week later, signed a contract, and the money was ready.

It turned out the other people had misrepresented whether they had the funds. It became a contractual nightmare. But what I’ve really been trying to do is create high-stakes chess and bring millions and millions of dollars into these matches where people are playing each other.

One of the plans was to do that through crypto and the blockchain, and bring high-stakes staking to these big matches. For example, let's say you're a wealthy person and you like chess. A lot of chess tournaments are pretty boring to go to. There aren't a lot of high-end experiences like Formula 1, where it's kind of a social event. You don't really go for the race; you're going for the experience.

Chess is an interesting game itself, but you have to present the experience in a way that's interesting. For example, in 2 weeks I'm playing a guy in a private match where we play 24 games, and each game is $5,000. If you win the match, there's a $10,000 bonus for winning, and every extra game you've won is $5,000 U.S., but we're paying it out in Bitcoin. This is a private match, and I'm trying to get more people to do that.

One of the things that we really want to do is for me to play against, let's say, Magnus Carlsen. You put up $5 million each, have it staked through crypto, and people can choose which player they want to invest in or support. That's one of the things that we're trying to launch and planning to launch. Getting the players involved is difficult, but it's in the early phase, and I'm doing it.

So, what's the current state of high-stakes chess?

I mean, it's me.

It's just you. It doesn't even exist.

I'm the only one who's pushing this initiative. For example, I've offered Magnus and Hikaru $5 million each to play a match.

They won't play you.

I've put this offer directly to them. Let's each put up $5 million. You can raise it however you'd like, I'll raise it however I'd like, and let's play. Winner takes all. Imagine what that could do for chess.

In poker, people find it interesting because of the money involved, right? In chess, you can bring so many wealthy people as viewers. All of my friends who are in tech, who are founders, who are very wealthy and successful, love chess, but there's not really a way to get them involved.

For example, if you want to organize a chess tournament, most of them will rely on billionaires just burning money every year. One of the biggest sponsors in U.S. chess basically invented index funds, and he spends $20 million a year just bankrolling chess tournaments with no commercial return.

No upside at all. Just—

No, no. It's a charity. He just loves the game. He's a billionaire, and he just writes off $20 million every year to chess, right?

If you look at the ecosystem of chess, I'd say it's close to $100 million a year that's spent on organizing tournaments, if you include all the top-level tournaments. There's a huge ecosystem and serious investment, but none of it is centralized or commercially viable.

That's one of the things I'm trying to figure out. Where can I organize something? For example, I just had a one-on-one match in Paris.

Okay.

I'm playing 2 more in Serbia. Getting the players involved in the high-level staking also takes someone who can bring in people who would be interested. It's sort of an indirect prediction market.

When you look at Polymarket and Kalshi, I think that if you embed those types of prediction markets into actual platforms of games people play, like backgammon, poker, shogi, and Go, there's a lot of potential there.

Obviously, the money is what brings the viewership to poker. I'm not watching 5/5 at Hollywood Park for the love of God.

Exactly, right? Chess is, in my opinion, a far more interesting game than poker. But in poker, you can involve the billionaire fish. In chess, they can't play against the best of the best. How are they going to feel involved, right?

A lot of high-level poker players are staked privately by wealthy people.

I don't know that much about how that works.

There are actually websites for this where you publicly stake. I don't know what it's called. It's called something like StakeKings. There are a lot of poker websites where, if you're a famous player, you publish the action and people buy it.

Huh.

For example, I'm friends with some of the hottest high-stakes poker players in the world. I have friends who've played the craziest games, and they don't want to risk their bankroll.

Let's say you play a game where your bankroll for that game is $5 million. By appropriate bankroll management, you should have 100 times that in cash. It depends, but usual bankroll management is 100 times what you're risking per game because of the variance, right?

In crypto, you guys don't do the best bankroll management. You just let it rip on leverage. In theory, if you want to be EV-positive, you should be pretty balanced about how you're managing your bankroll, right? If you have $100 million, it's probably not a good idea to risk $10 million at a time. It depends on your risk appetite.

Most poker players will source their action privately, right? Let's say I'm Phil Ivey and I want to play in a game with a $5 million buy-in against some Chinese billionaires. I will sell my action to people who believe I'm going to win, to de-risk and then take the upside. That's how most of poker works at the highest level.

Someone said StakeKings is where most people do it.

Yeah. Those types of things are why I think that in chess you need to bring higher stakes, and it needs to be a one-on-one format. A chess tournament is so financially ineffective. You have 10 players, and these 10 players play. You have 2 expenses.

For example, I played a tournament in Las Vegas—the one where I actually placed above Magnus Carlsen. That tournament was 1 week. Guess how much they spent on it.

On the whole tournament?

A 1-week tournament at the Wynn in Vegas.

It's probably $5 million or $10 million plus, right?

$5 million.

Yeah.

What do you think the return on that was?

Yeah, nothing.

I mean, because you have 8 different players. Imagine how effective it would have been if they just rented out a massive boxing stadium, sold tickets, and had 1 3-hour period that people could come to.

You have to condense the product into something that's presentable. The viewership for chess is clearly there. If you search YouTube, if you search my name on YouTube, the viewership is there. It's all about making it financially interesting for wealthy people so you can involve real capital in the game, but also for the mass consumer.

That approach is lacking. That's why I literally organized so many one-on-one matches. For me to convince these people to do these things, it's like they're committing some traditional travesty by even engaging with these matches. They're so stuck in the old system that they don't want to engage in something new and revolutionary that can progress the game forward financially.

I feel like I'm watching Marty Supreme right now. Do you think you could pull this off? It feels like the obvious thing to build on top of what you should do. What does it practically take to pull this off?

I'm in talks with some players. For me, my plan is to convince 1 player, start it small with $500,000 each, have a proof of concept, and then go from there.

Let's say I want to play a top-10 player in the world. We start with a nice round number: $1 million each. If those 2 players, 1 of them being myself, have large enough fan bases, I don't know about crowdfunding it or crowdsourcing it. Anyone can buy action.

I would say it's easier if there's a minimum, so you can only buy $100,000 or more.

Fair. Then people are vetted; it's a private thing. I personally believe in it. I'm really trying to make it work, and I think this year I'll have organized 1 of these high-stakes matches.

I feel like once you open that door, chess becomes like UFC because all the money is in individuals and rivalries. It's so much easier to sell huge names than to have a product of 10 people playing 1 tournament that's inexpensive and 10 days long.

Are you ever going to go to a 10-day chess tournament where each game lasts 5 hours? No regular person is going to do that. I mean, there's no chance.

I'll tell you what, I would have pulled up to that 2024 match. I'm watching the documentary about the third Magnus match, and I'm like, “Bro, I wish I was there.” I would have watched that shit live, 100%.

That was cool. I mean, that was in the esports arena in Paris. That was so cool.

It had beef. I would have watched the shit out of it.

That was the second-highest-viewed chess match in the last 3 years.

How many?

180,000 live viewers.

What platform?

Twitch and YouTube.

Yeah, I would have absolutely watched it. Was that 5 hours? How long was it?

I don't know, but if you look at the YouTube viewership, it's millions of views. The match itself was 2 and a half hours, but there were 2 matches.

I'd probably throw on a post-game for that. You know what I mean? Where are you mainly based?

I just moved to New York.

I'm with you in New York, okay.

Yeah, I'll text you the details.

Nice. Nice.

Okay.

Okay, but part of your problem is that you can't get a game. I saw you make a tweet yesterday that Magnus won't play anybody. How does that work?

I'll explain this. He is from serious classical chess, which is the typical format. He plays 10 to 20 games a year, which is like Djokovic playing 1 Grand Slam, winning it, getting his ranking, and then never playing for the year while keeping his number-one ranking.

In chess, there's no minimum activity requirement to prevent your rating from decaying, and we don't have a typical Grand Prix system. It's a terrible system where a guy like Magnus can play 10 games a year for 10 years, and it will be very hard for anyone to surpass him because he's not going to compete against the people who are chasing him. So, there's no decay.

For example, imagine you have a leaderboard for the most profitable traders in the world.

Yeah.

And it doesn't reset every year.

Yeah.

Imagine it's a competition. I know some trading platforms have competitions. Let's say Polymarket says, “Okay, we have a ranking of people with the highest P&L.” You made $50 million in your first year, but then in your second year you made zero. Just because you made $50 million, your ranking stays the same.

You need to have a fluid, constant, adaptive system to prevent people from just sitting on their ratings.

Damn, so he doesn't play anybody? That's insane.

He just plays a select few tournaments a year where he doesn't risk much.

So, you could get him maybe once a year?

I mean, he avoids me pretty well. If I'm playing in a tournament and he's playing in a tournament, he'll make sure I'm not invited.

For example, he's playing in a tournament in Sweden this May, which I actually won in 2022, right before I beat him in the Sinquefield Cup. I won that tournament and was never invited back. In chess, when you win a tournament, you're automatically invited back with all the other winners.

Why would you not be invited back?

Yeah, so—

You know what? The better analogy than a trading leaderboard is the NBA, where you have a minimum number of games you have to play—65 games or whatever—to get an end-of-season award.

Exactly. Imagine the equivalent number of games he's playing is 20 games. He plays 20 games and expects to be given the MVP.

What about the rest, like Hikaru and those other guys?

Hikaru does the same. To qualify for the Candidates—which is an 8-player tournament, and the winner challenges the world champion—he played 40 tournaments against Mickey Mouse players, players who were unranked or super low-ranked, just to meet the technical minimum number of games.

Imagine you need 40 games to be MVP—

Uh-huh.

—but there's no stipulation that you have to play in the NBA.

Yeah, you're playing in the G League.

You go play in 40 AAU games, and then you win the MVP title for the NBA by crushing people in AAU.

Oh, you really pulled out AAU? You play basketball?

I do play basketball. I was actually playing pickup basketball in Paris just the other day.

Yeah. Damn, you just pulled out AAU? You like that?

How does online chess work with cheating at this point? How do you know? And is it going weird with the online takeover?

For most of the high-level tournaments, you're on camera, you have your microphone on, and you're sharing your screen, like on the Endgame platform.

Okay, weird.

Yeah, it's like taking an exam. There's software monitoring you.

One of the things Endgame does, and what we're doing for our future tournaments, is that if you win—so, we have the tournament, and then the top 4 people go to a knockout. Those top 4 people who want to win prizes have to go on camera, and we'll check them.

We have an algorithm that checks for overperformance. People have to verify their names and identities, so if they do something, they're liable.

How do you feel about the game going online? Do you like it more? You're a zoomer, so you probably like spamming games.

It's nice because you can be anywhere in the world to practice and train. I have so many training partners who are just online and whom I never really play in person.

However, in person, it just feels different. Even your pattern recognition changes when you're seeing the physical pieces on the board. Funnily enough, when I play online, I make the pieces 3D so that they look like they're real, in person.

Really?

Yeah, it's a visualization thing. Everyone thinks something is mentally off with me, and I'm like, “This is my visualization.” I want to see the pieces in 3D so that I train the same pattern recognition that I would have in person, on a physical board.

So, what would it actually take to take down Chess.com, or at least be a legitimate rival?

I would say a few things. We're working on a really good AI chess coach where you can get personalized chess training. You can literally look at your game and just talk to it and ask, “What did I do wrong?” That's a huge advantage that we're working on.

The second thing is, if people can watch a match and have some stake in the game, be involved, or bet on their favorite streamer or stake their favorite streamer, I think that's a unique feature that we're uniquely positioned to offer.

Damn, I feel like I would start gambling on this shit. I don't know if I'm saying I'd put down $100,000, but I would be down to throw some bets on some chess games. I'm not going to lie.

I mean, chess—if you're really into it, it's a hobby that can consume your life. Chess is a really addictive game. You start playing chess, and you just—I tell people, don't play too much. You're going to lose your girlfriend, stop sleeping, and get distracted.

I know one guy who runs a multibillion-dollar company, and he told me chess was bad, man. He went on a 3-month chess binge. It was not good.

What do you think about the Magnus table slam?

That's dramatized. I guess it's a viral clip. Those types of shows of emotion are honestly good for chess. You have to bring some passion.

What's this, by the way?

I actually had a chess match that was sponsored and organized by Amari Cooper, the NFL player.

NFL player, yeah. Hell yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Really?

Yeah, he's super into chess. He basically sponsored this huge tournament in Dallas. We were even close to playing in Cowboys Stadium, but we played in this massive hockey stadium.

We had a press conference and were trash-talking. Even right now, I'm trying to organize a really big match with one of the top 5 players in the world in New York. When we have this match, we're going to have it in a sick venue. One day it's going to be a boxing gym; one day it's going to be somewhere else. We're going to have a huge press conference and walk-ins with boxing gloves.

You have to make the sport interesting, right? Otherwise, chess has history and the advantage of having survived the test of time. It's been popular for 3,000 years, if not more. But you have to balance the history with adapting to modern times.

If you want real money, prestige, and viewership, and you want it to be a truly global sport, in this day and age you have to engage with the brain rot. You kind of have to play the game.

I feel like baseball's doing a pretty good job of this right now—MLB.

Yeah, you see Banana League.

Banana League does pretty well.

Really? Are you kidding me? They print. Do they?

Some of Banana League’s attendance is higher than MLB.

Stop.

They print. Absolutely.

I’m talking out of my ass. I don’t know. You watch—you don’t watch it, though.

I don’t. I see clips.

I do see some clips.

You see some clips, but of course I’m never going to a game. I’m not really a baseball guy, but—

It’s a little over the top. It’s a little like—

It is. But you say that about WWE.

Yeah.

And they allow it. I went to—You see that clip of IShowSpeed and Logan Paul at WWE? I was literally 5 feet away from him.

Stop. Really?

I was ringside, right next to him. Netflix sent me there because it’s streaming on Netflix, so they got me ringside tickets. I swear, I’m here—he’s literally, you know, three arms away from me.

Whoa. So you’re a real-deal, brain-rotted zoomer.

No, I just keep up with the times.

How old is Magnus?

35, 36.

35? What about Hikaru?

Hikaru’s in his 40s.

So, are you the youngest out of the top-10 crowd?

No, there are a few around my age. Generally, everyone’s in my generation, like 1 or 2 years apart.

Cool. So where do we land post-documentary? There’s the club. Do these people just hate you? Are you kind of accepted again?

I would say, other than the chess mafia, which is Magnus Carlsen and Chess.com, I’m pretty well respected. I get a lot of opportunities. I have great relationships with all the players. A lot of content creators and players will do promotions for my own company, so I don’t feel as ostracized as before. There was damage done, but right now I’m feeling pretty good. I’m feeling pretty good.

Like you’re lit right now.

No, this is certainly the time to apply pressure. I would say, by the end of this year, I want to be number 5 in the world and win a world championship.

How far off are you from number 5? I know it’s 7 spots, but—

I’m about 20 rating points away.

Which is like—

Yeah, 4 good wins, or 1 or 2 good tournaments. Each win usually gives you 5 points.

Oh, so you’re fucking close.

Four big wins. I gained 14 points in my last match.

When was it?

I went up from number 20 to number 12 in Paris just a few days ago.

Who’d you beat? Did you beat anybody notable?

I beat him. He’s number 25 in the world.

Okay.

Yeah.

How close was it?

It was not very close.

It wasn’t close?

No, it wasn’t close. He kind of collapsed at the end. But it was a very grueling match. We played 12 games over 6 days, 2 games a day. We were playing from about 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

How many did he get?

I won 3 games, and there were 9 draws. So I was undefeated.

That is crazy. You just win, then draw, draw, draw, draw, draw.

Yeah, then he wasn’t even trying to win. He was just mentally defeated.

And you can be defensive and just fight for a draw, right?

When you’re Black and moving second, you’re usually more defensive because White is in control. But all my games with White—or when I won 1 game with Black, he overpushed.

Oh, then you’re a GG.

Yeah. So you could have applied pressure. Imagine it’s like you’re playing a UFC fight—

You’re just prolonging it. You know you can’t take down the guy, so you’re hiding and trying not to get knocked out.

Someone in your chat keeps asking if you can take on freestyle chess.

Freestyle chess is basically where the starting position is random. You know how the king, queen, and so on are placed? You randomize them, and there are 960 possibilities. They raised $25 million to start a new Freestyle Chess League, which I’ve competed in a lot. That was the one in Vegas that I mentioned, which spent the money. It’s a new, interesting format.

A little gimmicky?

No, it’s a better format because it’s random. Imagine you play Call of Duty but only play 1 map.

Yeah, over and over and over.

Instead of playing the same thing over and over again, you have 960 options. From a player’s perspective, it’s so interesting because everything’s fresh.

Interesting. So there are tournaments? They have money? There are tournaments for that?

They organize a tour. Now, they only organize a world championship every year, but it’s a pretty big tournament. All the best players compete.

What’s the biggest thing circled on your schedule, game-wise or match-wise?

In 2 weeks, I’m playing something called the Grand Chess Tour, which is kind of like the ATP Tour of chess. Gukesh, the current world champion, will be there. Sindarov, who’s going to challenge the world champion, will be there. That’ll be a good opportunity for me to prove myself against the best of the best.

Wait, what does it mean to be the current world champion versus whatever Magnus is?

Classical. There’s a classical world champion, which is the most prestigious. Those are the games that last 5–6 hours, and he’s the world champion. But he’s actually ranked below me. He’s ranked around 20–25 in the world because you only have to defend your title once every 2 years.

Okay, yeah.

It’s kind of like—it’s not as prestigious. Then there’s the rapid title, where the games last about 30–40 minutes, and there’s the blitz title, which is super quick. Each game lasts about 10 minutes. There are different world championships. It’s like being the world champion of the 5K, 3K, or 100 meters. They’re different formats, so there are different standards. But that would be the big chance. Then I’m playing 2 matches in Serbia, which will be big. I’m playing the World Team Championship in Hong Kong.

Whoa.

My company is sponsoring a team, so it’s like the World Championship of teams. You have 4 grandmasters, 1 woman, and 1 amateur.

Whoa.

It’s like a mixed-doubles, pro-am game. So it’s a very busy schedule. I’m competing almost nonstop until the end of the year.

Hey, for the record, I thought that Piers Morgan interview—you were fresh in that interview.

The Piers Morgan interview? The guy’s not even a journalist, man. I think this show has been far more serious than Piers Morgan. I think you should start calling yourself an esteemed journalist and a—

I already do, but I’ll stick to it.

I thought you were fresh. Who are you with?

My lawyer. My lawyer.

I thought you were fresh in that you gave the little smirk afterward. I thought that shit was fresh. You hit him with the little—

It was pretty funny. Looking back at it, that was my first interview in a long time. But yeah, I guess Piers Morgan is Piers Morgan. I don’t know if I’m going on a show—I’ve got to go on a show again.

I thought you hit him with some shit, some snarky-ass comment. We were all laughing when I—

No, but even, dude, you see what Cody Keller did to Piers Morgan? He really got him, man. That made me so happy.

What do you think of Clapp? Are you all on the peptides?

I’m definitely on the peptides. I tend to looksmax to the best of my ability. I’ve got to shave, actually, but maybe I’ve got to take some. People comment on my hairline.

I just started taking it—finasteride. Hims—Hims is a peptide, by the way.

I get a lot of Norwood comments. I actually buzzed my hair. I don’t know. I have pretty long hair. Maybe it’s because of how I style it.

Yeah.

The hairline comments are whatever. Peptides are kind of a New York thing. I think everyone takes—

A New York thing.

Yeah. I’ve been playing tennis for 2 hours a day, and one of my friend’s sisters asked if I was on peptides.

One of my friend’s sisters complimented me. It’s a compliment.

By the way, you look lean. You look better than in the documentary.

You look good in the interviews, though, I think.

No, they had the lighting and they do all that. But I would say now I’m definitely leaner and in better shape than I usually am, just because of the tennis. Even with peptides, you also get piss-tested at tournaments.

Wait, for what? Adderall and shit?

Chess is under the IOC, the International Olympic Committee.

Yeah.

They do that because they want to eventually become an Olympic sport. India is hosting the Olympics, I think in 2032 or 2036, and the host can choose a sport. They’re going to choose chess. So there could be a day when I’m in the Olympics, but as a chess player.

Because the host can choose, so I'm waiting patiently.

Because they're the best at chess. Like, that's their thing. Like, India

Chess originated in India.

Really?

Chess was created by a king in India to teach his children about war. It originated in India, spread to the Persian Empire, then from the Persian Empire to the Ottoman Empire, and then to Spain. Eventually, it became an aristocratic game in Europe. India could make chess an Olympic sport.

Imagine chess in the Olympics: me and Bronny on the Olympic jet, talking like, “You handle basketball; I’ve got chess. Don’t worry.”

You, Bronny, and Magnus Carlsen just chopping it up. That’s my dream.

He’d be too old for that, but maybe he’ll try to make a Djokovic-style comeback.

Wait, what’s the drug? You can’t take Adderall, or what can’t you take?

No, there’s not really a specific restriction. I was drug-tested when I was in the World Championship match because I got fourth place. I was taking Zyrtec for my allergies, and I told them. They said that if you take something like Adderall, you just have to tell them.

I don’t even know the regulations. No one really cares. They do it because they want to be under the International Olympic Committee. It’s a prestige thing, and you have to do that if you’re under that umbrella.

I don’t think it would make a big difference. I’ve never tried Adderall. All my high school classmates were taking Adderall.

You don’t have to get tested for these drug-testing sessions?

Half of my classmates had extra time. I went to a New Rochelle private school, so all the kids had extra time. They’d double the time for the exam, and they’d be taking Adderall in the bathroom. It’s not exactly the intellectual type.

Well, sometimes those things go hand in hand.

I’m personally not an Adderall guy. I’m very paranoid about drugs because I feel like they could affect my chances. What if my brain stops working and I’m just—

That’s a scary thing, your brain.

What do you think about crypto degens?

I don’t know. Aren’t they afraid they’re just going to forget how to trade after all this degening out?

You just have to make it all before it happens, right?

You have to make it all and put it in your—

You put it in USDT and just disappear, yeah.

Is there a chess-to-trader pipeline? Is that a thing? You trade on Hyperliquid and [?]. What do you think?

I know a few players who are traders.

Are they good?

I know one guy who’s a very good trader. He’s an incredibly good trader.

What about the poker guys?

Not really.

Do you play poker?

If you’re too good at chess, you’re too egotistical, so you think you’re automatically good at poker. Once you build up that ego and try to apply it to other things, you can’t improve because you have too much self-belief.

If I play poker, I think I’m so smart and so good that my skill level will never match my ego. I wouldn’t be able to play well.

So you’re a decent poker player, but whatever.

No, I can play. I played a game with a bunch of founders, and I was not invited back. I was messing with them.

Against any average player, I know all the math behind poker. I’m friends with a lot of high-stakes poker players. I know one guy who was playing on his phone and showed me a $6 million Bitcoin balance in about an hour.

You were like, “Yeah, I’m coming for that.”

Sorry?

You were like, “Yeah, I’m coming for that.”

I’ve been around these crazy poker degens. I can talk about the game theory, but I’m just not that big of a degen. I feel like I need to be a billionaire first before I enter those waters.

Are you sitting at home watching chess films?

Yeah, I watch a lot of YouTube videos. I watch all the interviews from the top tournaments. I follow the game the way sports bettors follow women’s sports.

If anyone’s playing a game, you’re watching it. You’re asking, “Who’s playing today?”

The big tournament just ended. There’s the European Championship, and there’s the Bangkok Chess Open, where my buddy is playing.

What?

You can keep tabs on things.

How do you make a billion?

How do I make a billion? Startups are a good way. You keep raising money, then you get a billion-dollar valuation—a unicorn. Simple as that.

Do you think you’ll do it through the company, through chess? By making chess global? It’s already global, but by making it—

I also want to be involved in some private investment funds as a partner in some of them.

Okay.

That would probably be the way.

Just keep raising money and fucking do it.

No, I mean, I invest in companies. I’m sort of a partner in a venture fund.

Any interesting rounds you’ve gotten into? Philanthropically, like—

No, we just started it. It’s very fresh.

Whoa.

But yeah, anyway.

Okay, maybe we’ll get back to it later. Also, AngelList and Palantir.

Oh yeah, Palantir is great.

Dude, this is sick. I was excited when you came on, and I’m a fan now. Maybe I’ll see you on the 23rd.

No, no, I mean, if you love playing chess, you should download any game. If you’re into Bitcoin, we might have some interesting chess tournaments coming, so follow my Twitter. I don’t know—Twitter’s probably—

Dude, I feel like I remember Tom Dwan did that heads-up thing where he played a bunch of people for a million dollars.

That’s exactly what I’m planning to do. That’s a very good comparison. But Tom Dwan is massively in debt to a lot of people.

I just meant the game, not the money part.

Those types of things can be big. I have friends who, if I said we were playing Magnus today, would just send me $5 million in Bitcoin. They’d be like, “Let’s go.”

Yeah.

If these players can have those types of relationships and bring people into chess, you can have those matches. That type of money is easy to raise for high-level players.

If I were playing a match with Hikaru under unfair terms, I’m confident I could put up 5 million USDT against his and just rip it. It’s a game. It’s a match. That’s the only way to make chess intriguing and bring it to the highest level possible.

Is there one move in a match that you made that was just a terrible move, and you still think about it to this day because you would have won the match?

There are so many. You just think about it, and it replays in your head. The tough thing about chess is that you can’t blame anyone but yourself.

In sports, and I guess in trading, you can say, “Oh, this is that, or it’s that.” You can dissociate from the blame. But in chess, it’s just you and your own mind. If something goes wrong, it ruminates and marinates in your brain for a long time.

If I have a bad result, I can be in a terrible mood for a month, until I win and come back from it.

The rage compilations are real?

First of all, I was 16 at the time. That’s pretty regular 16-year-old behavior.

Do you still do it? Do you crash out?

In private, yeah.

During games?

Those were online matches. In person, you don’t do that stuff. If I lose a game in person, I’ll go back to my hotel room. I might throw a shoe.

Any holes in the wall? Any hotel bans?

I was banned from a hotel, actually.

Were you?

Yeah, I was fined $5,000 at the hotel. I took my shoe and threw it at this glass painting, which shattered. The glass fell on the couch and pierced it. Then I broke the remote, the lamp, and the ironing board.

Did you just check out and have them call you?

I checked out. I said, “I’m really sorry. Here’s my credit card. Charge whatever the damages are. I’m so sorry. There’s no limit to the damages—whatever you want.” And then I got banned from playing chess in America for 3 years.

For 3 years?

Yeah, they wanted to blacklist me, so they used it as an excuse.

Whoa. Wait, who did you lose to for that to happen?

It wasn’t even such a special guy. It was just really bad. It was very bad.

Banned for 3 years?

It’s a shadow ban, yeah.

Oh.

I was banned for the year prior, but this was really stupid because I gave them an excuse to ban me.

Is it still active?

No.

That’s a brutal one.

But yeah, no, listen, I’m a patron of hotels, man. I feel like I’ve stayed in 300 hotels in my life.

Yeah, right. You [__].

I’m only banned from one, statistically.

That’s actually pretty good. I haven’t thrown any crazy parties and gotten banned from hotels. Are you a big party guy?

Not anymore. I’m pretty focused now. I’m pretty focused.

Got it out of you when you were 17.

But you’ve got to be careful in New York, man. You’ve got to stay away from the—

I recommend, if I’m you, move to the Upper East Side.

Stay away from the downtown degenerates.

Really? It gets crazy. Yeah, it does get a little crazy.

I’d recommend it. But I guess in crypto, most of you guys are kind of—

By the way, we’re fine at this, by the way.

I’ve hung out with a lot of the crypto-adjacent crowds. I’ve ended up at some of these crypto parties, and I will say they’re actually way more interesting than the average New York person. The average New York person is a defined archetype. You see people and you know they went to this university, they’re in this type of job, and they fit into this kind of archetype where there’s not much of a surprise. A lot of the crypto people I’ve found are certifiably insane, but at least they have character.

I’ve seen you name-drop some higher-end traders on the timeline.

Yeah, no, I’m not referring to anyone specifically, but I’m more or less saying that I think they’re gamblers. They’re risk-takers. They’re vagabonds.

Vagabonds.

Lucky for you, I’m in finance, not crypto. I trade commodities, a little bit of everything.

Commodities? You were trading oil in your own—

Yeah, geopolitical commentator. I like to hit all my niches.

Yeah.

Dude—

A student of chess, if you will.

Shout-out to the attorney. They’re balling out there.

Big guy. What do you like right now? What do you hold?

You know, I hold Bitcoin.

No, I don’t. I don’t have any Chiliz. I was offered some, but I refused.

You hold Bitcoin and [__]?

Mainly Bitcoin. I mainly hold Bitcoin. Have you heard of Próspera? It’s in Honduras. It’s an island where Bitcoin is legal tender. They do a lot of experiments there.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Anyway, I played a tournament there, and the prize was in Bitcoin.

Really?

Yeah.

What was the prize?

First prize was 1 Bitcoin. It was not bad.

Whoa. You won?

Even in some of my tournaments—no, I didn’t do well, but I got some guaranteed prize. In some of the tournaments I’m playing, I’ve had sponsors who only want to put up Bitcoin.

Hey, what’s Pixie Chess[?]?

I’ve met the guy, actually. It’s interesting.

I like the guy. I don’t know what it is, but I like him. He’s a good Paradigm man.

I’ve met the guy a few times. It’s an interesting product. I haven’t checked it out, but I think anything in chess that’s new and brings in new people—and it seems very popular—is great. But I haven’t checked it out.

That wasn’t a sponsor plug, so if you end up using it, I need some money from somebody. But yeah, dude. Absolute pleasure. Anything else you want to share or drop links to? Send people somewhere?

No, this was a great interview. Thank you for having me, and I’ll send you the details for the premiere.

See, my goal was to get through without any cheating-allegation questions, so I think we successfully did it.

Yes. Very good. Okay, take care.

[__] it at the end. All right, have a good one, bro. You’re the man. Peace.

Ciao.

[__] it at the end. Ah, man, I was so close. I’m done. Oh, that was good. Was it as good as I thought it was? That was so fun. That guy rocks. He’s fascinating. He rocked. Yeah, that guy rocks. We’ve got to go link him. I feel like he’s lying about the party. He wants to rip. I’m down, by the way.