Chess Pro Explains Chess in 5 Levels of Difficulty ft GothamChess WIRED

I'm Levi Rossman. You might know me as Gotham Chess. Today, I've been challenged with the task of explaining chess in five levels of increasing difficulty. Chess is an absolutely fascinating game. Think of it as a language. It's completely timeless. It's been around for thousands of years. It's also completely ageless. A lot of people who are going to watch this video have never played chess before. How would you explain chess to them? I would start off with the basics by teaching them how to move the pieces, What's the goal of the whole game? Well, the goal of the game is trap the king and attack it at the same time. Yes, so it can't run away. Yeah. Exactly. And also take all of their pieces. Yeah. For me, I would describe chess as a lot of what you said. And also, it's a mix of really quick plans, like tactics, and then things that can take four, five, six, seven moves like a plan, like a strategy. So let's practice. In this position, I had the white pieces. You're playing on my side. My opponent was playing with the black pieces. So we switched a little bit. So if I said, hey, you get three moves in a row. Can you come up with a plan? I think I could. If I have three moves in a row, I'd probably checkmate them with rook h3, queen h4, and then queen takes h7 checkmate. I'm very happy. That's the first plan that you came up with, right? You can bring your queen out this way or the rook. You can start with both. And then you come here, and then you checkmate. But I did say white gets three moves in a row, right? Yeah. But that's how we have to think about plans, right? We have to think about, okay, well, if I get a couple of moves in a row, what would I like to accomplish? What does my opponent want to do? So I'm not just going to sit here and get checkmated, hopefully, right? So what do you think I want to do in this position? I think my king is on a bad square right now. So maybe you're trying to trade and then somehow get an attack on my king. Oh, you're saying, like, if I take this pawn, maybe in the future I'll try to open up this diagonal. That's very good vision. There's some pieces in the way. But yes, in chess, you have to always keep an eye on what can possibly open. Do you know how you can tell whether a position is closed or open? Usually when a position is closed, pieces are more squished together. The easiest way by far to figure out if a position is closed is how many pawns do we each have? Right now, it's eight. So think of it like a fence, right? So if you and your neighbor have a full fence, you can't really see each other. But if there's only four pawns, that means somebody probably knocked down half of the fence, right? So if we start picking up all these pawns, then the position is more open. So this would be a closed position. This type of strategy would be called an attacking strategy because you found a way to get your queen and rook down this line against my king. Before we even talk about what tactic is here, who does it look like is winning this game? I think white's winning. Okay, why do you think so? Well, the black king is very exposed into the white side of the board. And, like, the white king is a bit more safe. Yes, you're 100% right. Because in chess, the two most important things we have to think about are who has more material. But then, like you said, who has the weaker king? And I would say my king has gone way too far, right? So there's a tactic here for white. Um, maybe. Is it bishop takes pawn on e4? So that's, like, immediately you get a reward. But I'll give you a hint. The best way to start looking for a tactic, always look for a check first. Do you have a way to attack my king? Yes, rook h1. So exactly, you would give me that check. Now, where can my king go? Let's just try to think. Um, your king can go to king d4. Yes, that's my only move. So I would go here. Now, what else is on that diagonal? Um, the rook. Yes, and which of your pieces can... The bishop. So do you know what this type of tactic is called? A skewer. Yes, well done. And then I would take the pawn. And then I would take the rook. And then you would take the rook. Now, the funny thing is, you are now totally winning, right? But as we know in chess, maybe one day white will make a mistake in the future. So there's no point for black to surrender here. But this is definitely a really good start. How long have you been playing chess? I played a little bit of chess growing up against my brothers. But ever since the Queen's Gambit show came out, that's, I think, when I downloaded the app and started playing against friends for fun. So chess is separated into three games, obviously. You have your opening, which is the early stage of the game. Then we have the middle game, right? The most confusing, mysterious side of the game. And the end game, where there's no pieces remaining on the board. You have to know how to convert positions, defend positions, understand how to play the game with only five pieces remaining or something like that. So for you, what do you struggle with the most? Yeah, I would say I really struggle in the mid game. I feel like I've developed most of my pieces, try to control the center. But at a certain point, I'm a little bit stuck on, like, okay, now what do I do? So I'm going to look up your account. We're going to pick a game and we're going to analyze it. Sounds good. In all middle games, we have this mix of tactics, which are immediate gain or immediate loss, depending on if we're getting hit with a tactic or playing one. And strategic chess. I just want you to tell me, who do you think has a better position here and by how much? To me right now, it feels pretty even. Like, there's no major vulnerabilities from both sides. But I guess the white pieces, the pieces are a little bit more developed, I would say. Everything you just said is 100% accurate. So that's one of those baseline pieces of information that we need for the middle game. I have the two bishops. How can I activate one of my bishops? You have a little plan you could actually implement right now that would make one of your bishops extremely strong. You think you can find it? If I had to guess, I think it would probably be this bishop. Yes, you definitely want to get the bishop out, but you don't want to move it just yet. So how do you do that? I am not sure. This is how we unlock the intermediate level, which is this move. That move looks like it's disconnecting from the whole board, right? It's a move totally on the edge. But nobody is going to stop your bishop from going to that diagonal. And then you're threatening a tactic. You're threatening a skewer. You would hit my queen and my rook. Stronger piece in front, weaker piece in back, and then you would be guaranteed to win some material. Just like little pattern recognition in the middle game. So for the future, you're going to have a game where your opponent makes the same trade early, right? They trade their dark squared bishop and you can activate it like that. But in this game, you focused on the center, which was totally fine also. Maybe one question I have is like, as I'm also looking at this position, just trying to understand like, okay, what is my opponent trying to do here? One thing to always monitor in every chess middle game is, does my opponent have a pawn break? Can my opponent strike somewhere with a pawn that would open up the board? If you have a low risk position, your position is just nice and comfortably better, you don't want chaos. I guess maybe they would try to advance their middle pawn. Yes. And this move is actually very annoying for white because not only am I now targeting things in your center, what else have I changed just by moving this pawn? Now their bishop is activated. Yes. Another thing for middle game. So we just keep adding to that bucket of knowledge. Pawn breaks for the opponent. And then every time something moves, like a pawn, we have to look around what else is now opening up. And we want to get to a situation where you knew this move was going to happen. And the next, I'm going to come here. And then now what can I do? I can bring both my rooks. And now I have no problems, right? Now I have both knights, queen, rooks. So we need to get to a point where we see that coming and we're not just focusing on our own plans. But that's not always easy. So with pawn here, that disrupts my plan. Yeah. Because now this move fails to... Yeah, respond to the skewer. Yes. As you're trying to improve your middle game, one question you always have to ask yourself is, is that trade good for me? Is it good for my opponent? It's not checkers. You don't have to take me and I don't have to take you. So we can do something called keeping the tension. We're just having a staring contest here among the pawns. So I'm going to ask you, do you think it's better for black to capture this pawn or keep the tension? Just slide the rook over and threaten to push the pawn here, which would be a tactic and a fork. If I was black, I would advance the pawn because I think knowing that black has two knights and I have two bishops, they would want more of a closed game. Yes. But before we advance, we need to prepare it, right? Because you push it now. Right. These two would win that trade. Yeah. So yeah, rook e8 is a very good move. You used kind of like a heuristic, right? Well, black has two knights. So black prefers the position closed because the side with the bishops wants to be able to see the whole board. Yes, exactly. But your opponent disagreed with you and took this pawn. Yeah. Because that's just what intermediate players do. They see they can take something, pawn for pawn, what the heck, like sure. And you did this. Now, what does this move change in the white position? So that opened up the diagonal for my dark square bishop. Yep, here, yeah. And what else? What else did that move open up? It opened up the e-file for us. Yes, exactly. So now, in the snap of your fingers, you can get your bishop out and the rook. Two things that a move ago were just totally blocked in by a pawn. Exactly. So in the middle game, trades are either good or bad for you and for your opponent. You know, I'm in the mid game right now, but what do I need to do or learn in order to take it up another level to a more advanced player style? It's a lot of practice and analysis. Really, an advanced chess player was not born an advanced chess player. They have probably hundreds, if not thousands, of more games in their mind, in their past, in their history that they've analyzed, that they've studied. It's like any athlete. You know, I put my weight on this foot, and so I wasn't able to hit the shot back that well. So the next time that that happens, I'm going to be more prepared. I'm wearing a black hoodie, black pants. You definitely have more style than me today. So in chess, people have style too. Yeah. What's your playing style? I would say quite aggressive. I really want to win the game fast. So as we move up the levels today, we want to start introducing slightly more advanced terms. One of them is called initiative. What exactly does that mean to you? So, like, if you're in a battle, you win a certain, like, spot, right? A really important spot. That gives you initiative. When you get something, right, that you want, then it can start building up. It can start building up to be better and better and bigger and bigger. When you find a target, and you have a way to create threats, attacks against that target, against that goal, but you do it without sacrificing your resources, right? So imagine two boxers, right? One is being pushed into a corner. He could still win. He could totally still win. But for now, one side is definitely the aggressor. And has the initiative. Exactly, has the initiative. You're a tactical, aggressive player. You're always looking for the initiative. Me too. Why don't we play a Blitz game? Good luck. That's not the opening I remember you playing. We've played in the park. We've played online. How many games have we played against each other? We've played, I think, probably, like, including over the board and online. Maybe, like, nine, ten games. Okay, so we have, like, just, like, a regular pin shadow. Let's see. This is not the Tanya I remember. Tanya. It's quite slow. It's a very solid, you know, steady approach. There's nothing wrong with it. Okay. Let's see. Very balanced. Actually, I had this chess opening really recently. And I lost that game. And it was very painful and very sad. I feel like Black has more space. Would you say Black has more initiative? Not yet. But considering the way I said it, it's like you follow up with something. So you just attack like that and then move back. Right. So you kind of, you have the initiative. The tough thing about chess is you can have a good position, but you actually have to move pieces. You know, like, a piece of art, you just say, oh, it's done. So chess is different from art. Chess is different from art. Let's go here. I'm gonna go here. Okay, let's go here. Let's see. Can't go here. Just in case. I don't, I don't know. Let's, okay, I'm just gonna, like, take more space from you. This is quite like a, just a, just a position. You know what? We've been talking about initiative. I think I just gotta go for it. I just gotta, like, push all my pawns. That can be good. That can be bad. I have to deal with it at some point. No, you don't. Wow. Just in case. Because I feel like my position, it's like a fortress. So it feels like I can do moves like rook h1. It doesn't help my position if you don't attack, but I think it's just good to be just steady. I'm stunned. Okay, you know what? I'm gonna go bring more pieces to help. More pieces to help. Okay. How are you just ignoring all my, my whole squad is over there. Don't wanna take space. Wow. I mean, I gotta go for it, right? I feel like. You have to. Okay. I really feel like this is a nice example of Black has an initiative. Yeah, Black definitely has an initiative. Black has an initiative. But can Black capitalize on this initiative? I don't know. The problem with having a position like this is you feel a lot of pressure to do something. If I was Black, I want to end the game, like right now. You want to end the game right now? Yeah. Okay, let's see. What can I do? I'll do that. Okay. Try to roll up the sleeves. Okay. That's the chess player's sign of focus. Yeah, and you roll up the sleeves. I guess I have to defend my pawn. I mean, don't really want to, but fine. Now, I will be annoying to you. Take a bunch of pieces off. Now, I will take back. Would have been nice if you did it, but okay. Now, maybe we go up. And I will take that pawn. That was all part of the plan. It's a very greedy move of you. All right, let's see. Here. Now, I'll take a pawn. All right, let's see. What? I'm scared. Yes. The board looks different in this building. Are you up a pawn? No. Six, six each. We're good. That king of yours, just saying. Just saying, that king of yours. Come back. I'll go forward. No. I have to block with my rook. This is the tiny game in the tournament all over again. No. I almost lost on time. Yeah, I have no idea. Me too, by the way. Is your rook trapped? But like, I can't actually take it. That's so weird. Check. Wait, what? Okay, I'll take those pawns. Other pawns? No, I can't. Keep going. Whoa. Yes, keep going. No, I can stop you. Can you? Wait, can you? Okay. No, my bishop. Nice game. Oh, that was crazy. Generally in five levels, level five is the ultimate master. The person that's played the game 20, 30 years, has the highest pedigree. Actually, that's you in this case, and we're still on level four. Because computers have been better than humans at chess for like 30 years. How has it changed the way you approach the game? Yeah, I mean, I think chess players are using computers intensively all the time. Obviously with some material odds, it's going to be one part of the training. And other part of the training that I find interesting is like, you know, to find positions from, let's say, real-life tournaments. And I've been doing that actually from this recent tournament that's going on in Isle of Man, playing out some of those fascinating positions and just seeing what the computer does. And he's like coming up with resources that you would never think of, you know? Today, we've been talking a lot about how chess is kind of a mix of tactics versus strategy. Let's elevate that discussion. So what is chess to you? Well, the way my coach explains chess to me that really seems intuitive is that chess is a game of time, space, and harmony. You have one turn to get things done, right? Obviously, you try to make it as efficient as possible. We have the saying in chess that, you know, you lost by one tempo, by one move. Space, you know, we have a game of 64 squares, right? So control over these 64 squares is what the game is about. You can get control by moving up your pawns. You can get control by winning opponents' material, right? So obviously, that's another big element that we're fighting over. And harmony is basically like you got this army of pieces, right? Your job is to make them work well with each other, coordinate them, and build that beautiful picture of harmony that, you know, all chess players aim for and are so pleased when they can finally achieve. So I've never thought of chess that way. This is very interesting to me. So of those three, what would you say is the one that you have more mastery over than the other? Harmony trumps everything. It trumps, like you could be winning when it's not your turn, and you're like totally behind in material. So it shows me that harmony is the end goal. Chess is a miniature life. I always like to say that chess exposes all of your flaws on the board. Oh, yeah. Training habits in the way you approach certain positions. So you say you can see yourself on the chessboard. Who is Irina on the chessboard? Yeah, well, I think Irina is a fighter. You know, Irina is not someone who likes to give up. Irina is someone who wants to lead everything on the board, right? Like every last drop, that's the idea. How do you see yourself as a player? I think I like to be creative. So I find fun in chess by learning 10 different openings, trying different positions. I like chaotic positions. I like positions where I can attack. I like positions where I'm getting attacked, and I can maybe defend and find some creative ways to turn things around. And I really, really struggle when I need to sit there and just do nothing. So, you know, we have opposite styles, Levi. I think our Blitz game is going to be a lot of fun. All right. If I had to guess, I'd guess you're a King's Indian player. No, I... See, that's an opening that requires a lot of time and practice and dedication, and I'm... But I'll play something also still fun. Okay. The Dutch defense. Is that Leningrad? I think G6 is Leningrad. This, I don't... I've tried to find the name. I don't actually know the name of this one. I guess there's also, like, the Stonewall, right? You can play... Yeah. All right. Let's go for the most solid move. That's not fun. We don't want double pawns. No, we don't. I would have liked double pawns. Okay, let's complete that Bishop-Fianchetto. So you actually play the Dutch. That's not just, like, today's surprise. I play, like, a lot of openings poorly. That's my approach to chess. I just play things that I think will be fun. Then the game starts going, and I'm like, why did I play this? I should learn real openings. Okay, I guess I'll... Yeah, this is... Yeah. Nice and boring. Yeah. I prefer it wasn't boring. I think I gotta do something, like, on the queen side here before you get your e5 move in. I was debating playing a5. Question is, is e5 a good move or a bad move? There's only one way to find out, so... Yeah, you're gonna go for it. Yeah, all right. Well, I gotta take you. Can I take with the pawn? Probably. Five looks a little dangerous, but... I guess we can analyze that later. All right, so what are you threatening? At the moment, not much, yeah? If I take on e5, it gets very boring. I can also do something like... Now, it's a good thing that, like, my queen is not gonna hang when you take my knight. Yes. Oh, well, it's not... Actually, it's not a good thing. I would have preferred that it might, you know, it might hang, but we only have, like, 90 seconds. We have to make conversation and also play some semi-decent moves. That's what streamers do, right? I do YouTube, you know? Okay, I think we can... Yeah, I gotta save my queen. So we're gonna recapture like that. What if I do this? What if I just don't acknowledge what you're trying to do? That's interesting, right? Because I don't have a3. I can play b5. That's kind of interesting. Yeah. I have c6, but you can play b6. I can take on d6. Looks a little boring. Is that possible? The average chess player would want, like, five more minutes now. Yeah, I think this move is kind of interesting, so we're gonna go for that. It's a pawn sacrifice. Yeah, sort of temporary. But I'm trying to keep your rook closed. Yes, I take, right? I feel like that's... So we're trying to get the pawn back. I think this idea to keep talking during the game was really good by me. Yes. I strategized before the game started. I play best when I have no time on the clock. Okay. So if I take an f7, you take with the king, so I don't really get anywhere with that. So I guess I gotta take this pawn. So I was going for this position. I kind of like it. Okay. I think my plan here was to go here. Then your c7 pawn is kind of stuck forever. Plus I get the tempo on your rook. Oh, bishop d5 is always an idea too. Oh. Wow. I think you got some issues here, Levi. You should just think for like 47 more seconds. Yeah. Then you should make your decision. All right. I mean, I have some really tempting moves here. This was just information overload. Just give too many possibilities and then... All right, all right. It's kind of hard to decide here. Let's try not to win the game right away. Wow, that surprised me. You're sacking the exchange. All right. Yes, I will. Okay. Did we just go for counter play? Maybe going for counter play was not very smart. Maybe it was like very not smart. Wow. Okay, so I guess we should bring the rooks in. This is the most fun part of the game. When you have four seconds, you just have to... Very fun. Okay, is this going to look really terrible? Now the game could theoretically go... Oops, sorry. It's no fun. No. I took a really important pawn there. No. And that pawn is also really important. Why would you take both of my really important pawns? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And I lost on time. Double whammy. That was exciting though. This was probably my best move of the game, right? And taking my rook. Yes. Yeah, be fine. But this is the subtle stuff, Levi, that we, you know, build the game out of. Yeah, but I think... Yeah, but it's ugly. It's ugly because just in general, like this position, I think is kind of ugly. Yes. You know, you're stuck with this pawn. You're stuck with this pawn. The weaker king. Should you play a4? Because if you don't play a4 now, can I play a4? Can you play a4? Yeah, that's a question. I mean, okay, like, so like, you mean if I let you play a move like that? I still think, like, you're gonna... I feel like now I... You're gonna have, like, more problems. Like, even if I have, like, a pawn here. It's still annoying. And if I start generating some... Some play. Yeah, you can try. A little trap. Yeah, yeah. Do you see it? Do you see that, Bishop? This position is not fun. It's tough because you got some issues with the king, some issues with the rook, with the pawns, you know? But I think, yeah, like... Just exposes who you are as a person. I just have many issues. Your move was interesting. And it kind of posed this big decision in front of me, right? Like over here. So I think in terms of, like, strategy, this wasn't really the key moment strategically. Because I have to, like, make this big decision with the pawn structure. And so this one kind of prevented your rook from opening up on this file. And I keep my pressure on the queen side. So this is a perfect example of time, space, and harmony all in one move. Yeah, that's right. That's right. We're fighting for space. We're fighting to not let the opponent build harmony. Yeah, b5 I didn't even consider. I just thought you would either take or push or... But yeah, this game went more in my style, Levi. I listened to you carefully. Talk about all the things that you liked about chess. And I tried. That's what always happens. Now I know what to do against it. That's what always happens. Okay, I have a personal question. Yeah. You are the eight-time United States Women's Chess Champion. You also have the highest title in all of chess, Grandmaster. I'm an eternal runner-up. Like, what is the championship mentality? And how have you succeeded at it so many times? In terms of the Grandmaster title, that's like, I think, everyone's personal journey, right? It can take some people longer. I actually did it very late in my life. I don't know, Levi, if you know this, but I made Grandmaster when I was 29. Most people, if they don't do it by the time they're like 20, they'll probably never do it. In terms of becoming a Grandmaster, really, it's like that. It's the time and the commitment. I think if you're an international master like you are, like, everything is within reach. Like, if you've already played chess long enough in your life, you're close enough to that level, there really is going to be little things, like putting in the time, going to the best tournaments, and getting the best competition, and just maybe getting a good coach to help you as well. So it's not too late, Levi. Okay. We're going to look forward to Gotham Chess making Grandmaster. Yeah, then I'll retire and, I don't know, do horse racing or something. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Do you play chess? So I do play chess. I played as a kid. I remember learning from my grandfather when we lived in India, but I got recently more interested in it when my kids started playing chess in school. In New York, kids play chess at a very young age. Warms my heart. And it's, you know, it gets more and more intense, and he's playing tournaments. And I thought, let me try to keep up with this. And I realized that I could kind of do it in my work as well, because I study AI, and I study computer science in general. What type of AI? Are we talking chatbots? So I try to create what I call human-oriented AI. So I try to use AI to understand human behavior, what makes humans decide and make the decisions that they do. And we thought, wouldn't it be interesting to try to create an AI that actually tries to play like humans at different levels and tries to mimic their behavior? So that's what we set out to do with Maya. Generally, the chessboard does not care how you feel. I think it's how AI plays, right? It's sort of just figuring out the best move. You're right that AI is trying to play the best way possible. And it's combining this evaluation function with this search. It's powering it with brute force. Like it can do millions of searches a second. I think some of the components of the evaluation function map to some of the things humans do when they look at a chessboard, right, when they're thinking about the king being unsafe. Even that emotion you described, I feel uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable whenever I've castled and I push that g-pawn or something. But that feeling translates to some of the components of the evaluation function that Stockfish uses. Humans don't have this luxury of searching millions of nodes a second. I can't even finish one node without going, what about the second node? Right. As you get deeper and deeper in the tree, it just grows and grows, expands like combinatorially. And it starts getting very confusing. And your evaluation starts getting less and less accurate. You might make mistakes because you might miss something. And less and less confident, which is an emotion which the computer doesn't feel. One thing that we noticed when I was talking with a colleague of mine, his name is Ashton Anderson. He's a professor at University of Toronto. He was in my lab and we both had this passion for chess. But we realized no one had really used AI to play like a human would play. I think my audience once polled 92% are below the level of 1200. But it's really hard to learn chess because you don't get to experience learning content based on people who are your level. How did you really deduce how a 1200 will play? We use state-of-the-art neural networks like AlphaZero and Lila, but we instead try to predict what move a human would make given a board position. These deep neural nets are kind of like black boxes. So we've come up with interesting ways to probe at them to get an idea of, okay, what exactly is going on that is different about this person or different about that person? We had like a style vector for each person. We can compare those, see where you defer, and try to map those back to human understandable chess concepts. Because that's the key, right? If I just tell you, oh, they defer in the third number and the fifth number, you'll be like, what does that even mean, right? But if I can tell you, oh, I think this person worries more about their king's safety or sacrifices their centre at the cost of protecting their king or something like that, some kind of trade-off, then you might be able to understand what's going on there. So that's what we're trying to do now with these style vectors. And the fun thing about having numbers representing people is that you can add them together, you can mix them. With something like Maya, do you think it's possible to develop some sort of accurate measure? Let's say I'm a 1200, I have an opening course. I just want to practice my opening. Yeah. Can I do it some way against Maya or...? I think that's actually a good idea. And I agree with you that it's not something you can easily access today, like out with the online tools and the chess platforms that are out there. I played the Karakhan, and when I learned it, I started getting afraid of... So when you go, I started getting afraid of... Yeah, the advance. The advance. And even more so, at some point when I... Like, I always like to get my wish about it because I feel very uncomfortable if I don't. And then eventually something happens. This pawn making its way over here used to scare me. And I never experienced this in any, you know, looking at the openings in practice, because I would not know what to do. I would take it. I would get in trouble. And even if I let them take, I would... Yeah, you'd have to move your king. And so I remember hitting all these variations that just scared me. Pawn to e5 on the third move is the most challenging move against the Karakhan. It restricts the knight. And the main line, so the move is bringing out this bishop so you don't get locked. Right. I play that move. But the move that I also added to my toolbox and is the only move I teach now is this move, to try to undermine the center. It's not commonly played at the highest level. If you study master games, this is probably one in every six games or something compared to... Right? So now we go down a totally different path. We're taking a totally different train to our destination. Right. But just this undermining of the position, you know, splitting up these pawns and then slowly capturing them both, that does wonders at intermediate and early advanced level. This move, despite it being move three, according to databases, already gives black like a 53% chance of winning, which is crazy because normally white is about 52%. Right, right. White just doesn't know what to do. Is that like human empirically, though, based on the games that people are playing? Yeah, like I would say. But is the Stockfish Eval like weaker for black here? Computer... Computer will say... After like 12, 13 moves, it says white is better. White is better. Okay. But what does that really mean? Right. In practice... In practice, yeah. Even in Grandmaster level chess. Okay, move 13, white is better. And move 20, black is equal. I love this because this is an example of the kind of advice, as you said, in the intermediate and advanced level that could be appropriate because you're thinking about the human opponent that you're playing. And maybe you wouldn't recommend this at the highest, highest level. But in that range, I think it could very well be very good advice. And as they get more comfortable with it and understand it, your students, at some point, they might realize, you know what, I've progressed to a point where I don't want to play that anymore. It'll change. But for a good part of time, it could be very useful for them. In 1997, Kasparov lost to Deep Blue. We can say for about 26 years now, AI has been better than humans and chess. But where do we go from here? Thinking about chess, first of all, I have to hand it to AlphaZero and Lila and these other engines because I think they have sometimes given us interesting ideas. They've shown sparks of creativity that have inspired the way humans play. But I agree with you that right now, you look at the TCEC competitions and they're just kind of getting better and better and a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit more data, maybe a deeper neural network. And these advances, I don't find that interesting. I'm more interested in trying to get better and better at creating human-like presence and human-like avatars when it comes to chess or when it comes to other games. So I feel like within five years, we'll probably have a lot of human-like entities that we can interact in in virtual settings, not just because of the rise of large language models and the ability to converse and speak and produce text like humans, but hopefully the ability to produce actions like humans too. I hope you enjoyed this episode of 5 Levels. And before you go, I just want to say that it's probably one of the most unique episodes because our ages did not go up from low age to a higher age. Chess doesn't really care about any of that. Just give it a try. It is ever evolving and the learning journey is really never over when you play chess.