Ep. 71 (S5 Premier): A Journey to Chess Mastery feat. NM James Altucher

Narrator: 0:05

Welcome to the chess angle. This is not your typical chess podcast. If you're an amateur or club level player, the chess angle is for you. Our content is aimed at busy adults who are serious about the game but have limited study time. Featured guests include both amateur and titled players alike. And now here's your host, director of the Long Island Chess Club...

Neal: 0:37

Welcome everyone to season five. It's great to be back. Some quick production notes first. on our YouTube channel, i'm looking into posting video versions of our interview episodes rather than just having audio with a still image. That's in beta, so to speak, but it is something I'm working on. Also, i'm going to be experimenting with chapter markers as part of the show notes. That's also in beta, but I'm looking into adding that feature as a permanent fixture. I'll talk more about this and some other ideas when I do my first solo episode of the season. My guest this week to kick off season five needs no introduction and is a popular figure in both the chess and business worlds. I am, of course, referring to James Altucher. James is a national chess master, successful podcast or an entrepreneur and a bestselling author. His podcast, the James Altucher Show, which is part of my own weekly podcast rotation, is a top show that receives millions of downloads on a regular basis. He's the author of 18 books, including The Power of No and Choose Yourself, which were Wall Street Journal bestsellers. I was honored to speak with James recently and the bulk of our conversation was about adult improvement, especially as we get older, and James' quest to get back to a reading of 2200. That's coming up right now, james. good to see you. Really appreciate you coming on the podcast.

James: 2:16

Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate it.

Neal: 2:18

Definitely I'm going to jump right in. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about your current tournaments, like what kind of events you're playing in.

James: 2:26

Sure, let me just start off by saying just real quickly, i started playing in tournaments when I was 17 years old, so kind of late to the game. Then of course I stopped in college because girls. Then I picked it up again kind of in between jobs later on, when I finally hit the age of about, i guess, 28,. I hit master level like 2200 strengths. I played in a few tournaments after that I got up to about 2249, i think was my peak. Then I remember two tournaments specifically gave me heartache. I was having a good run. This is back in 1997. I was having a really good run of not losing against people my level, like 2200 or so. Then I had two games in a row one where I played this little kid I don't know if he was like 10 years old, 11 years old, and he was beating me. There was this other tiny little kid who couldn't see the board. He was about six or seven years old, i don't know. He couldn't see the board so he kept jumping up to see the board. Then, after the game was over, which I had lost, this other little kid who was like six or seven years old, was showing us all these moves that we both should have done. That was a car. I figured, oh my gosh, these kids are getting better than ever. What's going on here? Then, in the next tournament I played in was a local tournament at the Manhattan Chess Club. I lost the game. The girl who won the game told me maybe on move nine, you shouldn't have moved, bishop B4. This was the 13-year-old Irina Crush. I figured you know what I'm done. I'm retired. I had fallen from 2249 to a little above 2200. I decided you know what Being above 2200 is important for my career, just because of the cold. I was 27 years old, 28 years old. It was early on in my career, it was 25 years ago or a little over 26 years ago. Now It does have some cultural significance being a master. I didn't realize you take the master title with you. Once you get it, no matter what your rating is, you're still like a national and master. I didn't want to lose that title. I stopped playing. It's only in the past year and a half, almost coming on two years now, that I decided hey, i'm going to make a quest of this, which is everybody says I can't. But can someone in their 50s now get back to where they were before. So many people kept telling me no, no, it's impossible. Your brain's older. These kids are geniuses, they're computers. Now Their study techniques are different. Blah, blah, blah. Of course, when someone tells you you can't, you feel like, oh, i really should. Chess is always something I loved. I figured you know what. Why not pursue my childhood love? now, as an adult, as a seasoned adult, i'll tell you, neil, it is difficult. I've done a lot of difficult things in my life, for better or for worse. This is difficult, it is really hard. I don't know if I could do it, but I'm still trying.

Neal: 5:57

Yeah, and the players just seem so much stronger, even defensively as well. Do you find that? Because everything is like these young kids with tactics. But I'm finding even on the other end of the board, even defensively and positionally, they're a lot stronger, because traditionally excuse me, the kids it was always like tactics, tactics, tactics, attack, but it seems like they can also play solid and defend as well. Do you find that?

James: 6:22

Do they play solidly? I mean, i've done so much research on all of this. What actually does change in the brain between the ages of 27 and 55, which is what I am now And I've explored issues of memory, calculation, even my strategic sense and how the brain works with strategy versus calculation. But to answer your question, i think the kids are better defenders now than they were then. First off, there weren't that many kids in tournaments. Then Now you go to a tournament it's 70% kids. Back then it was maybe 80% adults, 20% kids. But leaving that aside, i think the younger kids are just. They're better tactically, they have better memories, they're better at the opening. So sometimes I get crushed in the openings, which has never used to happen to me before. Openings is studied in a much different way now than it was in the 90s. And there's other aspects too. I don't think they're that great at strategic play and I don't think they're that great at end games. I mean, of course there's exceptions. I'm making a huge generalization, but I think there are some aspects of the game where I've improved in ways that I don't see the kids really developing skills, because they don't have to, because their calculation is so great and their opening knowledge is so great that and I do think they have a better basic positional sense than when I was starting out Maybe not. Let's say the 2200s are the equivalent of 2400 tactically and 2000 positionally from when I was playing, and the tactics count for more, for better or for worse.

Neal: 8:06

Now, what does your study regimen look like? In other words, you're trying to get back to 2200. now What does that look like for you? as far as studying it, are you just mostly playing? Are you studying it, you and both? Are you studying anything specific?

James: 8:19

I'm studying and playing. I think you need to study and play. Let's say you're trying to get better at I don't know archery. You can't just read a bunch of books about archery and suddenly hit the target the first time you go to an archery range. You have to play, you have to analyze your games, you have to study the classics, you have to study openings, you have to study tactics, you have to study end games. And I've changed my regimen quite a bit in the past year and a half. But I would say like right now, today it's, let's say, an hour of tactics a day, maybe an hour of looking at classical games, and then I'll play six, five plus three Blitz games. So five plus three is five minutes plus three. Second increment after each move I'll analyze those, which I'll then later go over with a coach. So I work with AverTik Gregorian. You could find them at chessmoodcom. I've worked with many coaches over the years. All of them have been great. I've never worked with a bad coach. And just lately I've been working with AverTik and it's going very well And, and that's about it, you know, a combination of classic study, positional study, tactics, end games, and now I don't study as much openings. But about six months ago I was studying like 80% openings just because I was switching my repertoire.

Neal: 9:41

Right, and what does that look like now? Like, do you have a set opening repertoire? Like I'm just gonna stick with these, or are you mixing that up a little bit?

James: 9:48

I have a. So when I hit 2,200 back in 1997, i only played D4 and I had a very specific repertoire. I had one line for the Nimzo, for the King's Indian, for the Benoni, and then I used to play the King's Indian against Ponte Queen 4 and the modern defense against Ponte King 4. And that was it, and I only studied those from the ages of 17 to whenever it is. I stopped 27 or 28 years old And but then when I restarted I decided I'm gonna switch everything, because right away I saw that the openings were completely different than when I was like King's Indian. I had one plan, which is, you know, get into a lock center, then do F5, F4, g5, g4, sack on H3 with my bishop and checkmate. That was my only plan. And you know, with D4, let's say, I played a Queen's Gambit, but my only plan it was like to do Nite E2. I think this is now called the Bodvinic plan. But Nite E2, nite E3, f3, e4, maybe E5, f4, f5, sack something and checkmate. These were like my only plans. And now I'm playing Ponte King 4 and I switched also my responses to black and it's a completely different game. It is like comparing apples and oranges. It's like I'm playing. I went from playing checkers to playing chess or maybe that's not a fair comparison because D4 is not. It's like switching from checkers to back admin. It's like I'm playing a completely different game because the positions are much wilder, they're much more open, there's different sorts of plans. So I've had to expand not only my repertoire of openings but my repertoire of plans that I understood. There was very few plans I had to understand when I was younger, playing D4. And also, that's just the nature of how openings are studied now too, that everybody studies every line. So I remember I was still. When I first started playing again after this 25 year break, i was still playing the King's Indian, and then Gwain Jones would come out with a new course on a Friday on Chessable about the King's Indian, and on Saturday, let's say, it's the national open in Las Vegas. Suddenly everybody's playing the newest lines that came out the day before. So these younger people, i'll say instead of kids, they have phenomenal memories. They absorb all the lines they need to know. And I feel like I used to be able to do that when I was younger, but I didn't even need to do it that much. People didn't really study the openings as detailed as they do now. Like when I was younger, i had a book by Geller called the King's Indian Defense. That was my studying of the King's Indian. Now there's chessable courses, there's the computer lines, there's 6,000 games played a day in your obscure 20 move sideline variation that you thought you were the only one who knew it. But not only does everyone know it, everyone's also studied your games, playing it. So, like, studying the openings is a different beast which has its pros and cons which we can get into. And so I figure, where am I gonna get my edge? Because again, it used to be if you had a good position, yes, sometimes people could defend, but most of the time people just rolled over and died. And I don't wanna say that's all the time. But on my way up from like 1800 to 2000 to 2200, that's what my experience like. I won the under 2000 in the world open. I won the under 2200 in the world open. I had a pretty smooth ride up. And now just, it's just difficult. Like you could play a 1500 rated kid who will have spurts of playing like a 2200. Cause they'll either know the opening really well or you get into some tactical situation. They've studied a million times on puzzle rush And. But where I figured I could have my edge is doing something I've never done before, which is studying end games and positional stuff. And just as an example, like when I was younger, even in my twenties, i never under, i never studied any positional stuff at all. I didn't know what a space advantage meant. I was over 2200, i didn't know what a week square was or how to play with, you know, against a week square. I didn't need to, and maybe that's why I stopped at 2250, i don't know. But now This is like a huge area of study for me is studying these more positional aspects, studying classical games, which I never really did before, and really trying to expand my let's call it chest wisdom. I feel younger people don't have that as much because they have that raw let's call it athleticism of the tactics and the opening knowledge.

Neal: 14:50

Now a lot to unpack there. I wanna explore two areas. I wanna talk about your studying with your coaches your current coach and I know you had studied with Jesse Crye and then I wanna get into some ideas about chest improvement, like over the age of 50, right, cause you said you're 55, is that right? Yeah, all right, i'm 51, so we're old. we're quote, unquote old.

James: 15:14

But I wanna mention I am the Georgia Over 50 champion right now, and when I was a kid I was the New Jersey Junior champion, so I'm proud that I've bookended. I wish I had played in the middle 25 years, but unfortunately it is what it is. So I feel like among my cohort people over 50, i'm doing well, but when I'm in an intense tournament situation like the Chicago Open, national Open, world Open, it's really hard. It's a different experience for me than when I was younger.

Neal: 15:48

Right now. Let me hold on a second. Let me sort of interject with this before we get into the other things. When you play in these major tournaments with classical time controls, do you play in every game or do you take buys? Cause there's some thought that you know, once you get to a certain age, cause of the endurance, that you should just you should take some strategic buys to give yourself a rest. Do you do that or do you play every game?

James: 16:12

I play every game because if I'm gonna travel someplace, spend money on a hotel and all that kind of stuff, i'm playing every game. You know why? Because I'm not there to win that tournament, although that would be nice. I'm not there to win every game, although that would be nice, but I do wanna learn from every game And if I don't play the game I'm not gonna learn. So if I am going to a nine round tournament the Chicago Open I'm playing a bunch of 2200s and sometimes I'll play GM, sometimes I'll play lower rated. I wanna learn from every single game, Otherwise I'm wasting my money there.

Neal: 16:52

But do you think it would be? I'm just curious, not to I don't wanna sound like I'm pushing back on this, I'm just curious. I understand that point. Do you think your results would be better if you did take some buys though, Cause that's something that I feel for myself? if I were to do that, I think I would do better. But do you think it would be the same and that you would just be wasting around, Or do you think it might actually help you in the games you do play?

James: 17:15

It's a really good question. I don't know. I mean, i do know this is that my stamina does seem to wear out, like when you're playing. For some reason, my games tend to be like I'm usually like the last one in the playing hall, even if there's like 500 people there. So if you're playing, if it's 11pm at night and you're on the 10th hour of play that day, my stamina is not going to be as strong as my opponents And that's. But you know, i'm also trying to learn how to have more stamina or how to play well even when my stamina is down. So those are all learning points as well, that hopefully I can increase my stamina by putting myself in those difficult. You only learn when you get put yourself in a difficult situation. So, yes, those are difficult situations, but I'm trying to learn. And this is different also about my chest learning. Now. It used to be that I learned the openings, that I study tactics. Now it's. Did I get good sleep? Did I? is my diet good? So I have the stamina? Did I eat properly right before the game, you know? or two hours before the game, so I'm not digesting while playing. Did I exercise enough to increase stamina? So all these things now are on my mind where I could have cared less. When I was younger, i didn't even think about all these things. I didn't even think about from end games to diet, to sleep, you know. I now have to think about like Neil, let me ask you this have you ever played in like so I play in some locally? I'll play in like you know rapid, you know like 30 minute tournaments And I'll run out of time without even looking at the clock, like I'll remember. Oh, i looked at the clock when I had six minutes left, i'm fine. Then the next thing I know my opponent flags me. It's like an old man move.

Neal: 19:04

Well, those game thirties? yeah, Cause those game thirties are dual rated. But I tried those many years ago and like I got crushed those ratings. I don't know, i'm not a fan of those dual rated. I think that's one of the best ways for people to like actually lower their rating. I mean, what do you do? you play a lot of those They call what do they call those action?

James: 19:22

I play, i do play a lot of those. I do play a lot of those, and so you know it's one thing losing on time in a 30 minute, which is, like you say, it's both classical and rapid rated, but it's another thing where the last six minutes of play I was just so focused on what move I was making I didn't even look at the clock. So that's a skill is time management. I never had to think about it before cause I was always just moving fast like any other young person, and now I'm losing on time if I don't regularly look at the clock. Like I have to look at the clock and I have to calculate oh, this game is gonna probably go another 15 moves. I've got three minutes, so I need to basically spend no more than 10 to 15 seconds on average per move. I have to actually think about these things And I never had to think about that before.

Neal: 20:06

I mean, do you like those game thirties? Like when you joined it, do you like yeah, cool game 30. Or do you just do it? Or cause some people actually prefer that. They like that, some people like myself. I'm just curious, like do you enjoy those game thirties?

James: 20:20

I do. But here's my general thinking, and the one thing I might regret is that I didn't stick to playing online a little bit more And I went straight into over the board tournaments in this sort of comeback journey. But it's all correlated, right. You're not gonna be 1600 at 30 minute and 2000 at classical. You're gonna be. You know the same. You're gonna be 1600 in both or you're gonna be 2000 in both. You're gonna be your lead chess, your chesscom. You're over the board classical, you're over the board rapid. They're all gonna be roughly the same, within a hundred points of each other. And so if you get better at any one of those maybe Bullet is the one exception If you get better at Blitz, you're gonna get better at classical, and vice versa. I mean, when I was hitting 2250 in 1997, it meant my performance ratings were over 2300 and I was beating 2300, it said Blitz all of a sudden. So I enjoy it all except Bullet. You know, sometimes they get carpal tunnel syndrome if I play that. So I try not to play that. And I think there's value in all from Blitz on up and by Blitz I mean five plus three from Blitz on up. I think there's value, there's learning. There's educational value in everything, like you know, and classical. You're thinking of so many ideas and so many plans. You know it's so great to study those deeply, whereas Blitz I'll just study, you know, the opening and what plan did I come up with and what might've been a better plan, and I'll go over them. With every Blitz game I play I would go over with my coach and, of course, every over the board game.

Neal: 21:54

Okay. So, speaking of your coach, i wanna go back to the original topics I mentioned. You had studied correct me if I'm wrong you studied with GM Jesse Cry for a while, correct? And can you tell us yeah, tell us a little bit about that.

James: 22:07

So when I was like 18 or 19, i played in the US Junior Open and the young Jesse Cry was also playing and he was about 2300 and I beat him in round one or round two. I still remember the game. I had like sacked my queen And I remember thinking this guy is a really nice, polite, good person. Like here I had this great attack sacked the queen. One First thing he does is he, like you know, talks to the people playing all around us, like oh my gosh, did you see what this guy just did? Like he was bragging about my move to other players. I thought that was a really good sportsmanship way to play And we had been Facebook friends, you know, all along. You know, obviously Facebook wasn't made then, but you know, in the past 15 years we've been Facebook friends. So at one point I saw him, you know, online with Twitch. we played a little bit and then I asked him to give me lessons. He was very good. He has a very classical approach. It's very much focused on positional play and he really likes to go over the class. We could spend weeks going over one classical game that I play which is good, like that's a certain kind of studying And we go really deep into studying a classical game. But I really needed to get up to speed in, you know, make sure my openings didn't have major holes and make sure I understood enough of the plans in a new opening That. So I needed kind of like quantity, almost of course quality. But I really needed quantity. And with Avitik Gregorian, with him I play, let's say, six Blitz games a day, so about whatever it is 40 Blitz games a week And then once every week or so I'll have a bunch of over-the-board games And we meet once a week and sometimes it'll be a six-hour lesson but we go over every Blitz game and it's just bam, bam, bam, like in this opening there's this plan, this plan, this plan and this plan And we'll go over all of them just like quantity, and then I'll forget them. The next week We'll go over it again And then I'll write them down like which ones am I remembering, which ones am I forgetting? He'll give me homework, so I'll get, like the next day, if I was really bad on winning one position, so give me a bunch of positions white to move and win a one position. Or if I'm having problems defending lost positions, so give me exercise on that, or if I'm having problems understanding why a bishop pair is better than a bishop in the night, he'll give me problems on that. So I should mention that a lot some of my study each day involves this homework, and also he'll send me back the games we analyze and I'll write down the things that I'm having trouble remembering. I should also mention I took memory lessons from the World Memory Champion like Chessibou helped set that up for me And that was very interesting. I've spoken to I don't wanna say I've had lessons from lots of coaches, but I've spoken to a lot of people about improvement at this age.

Neal: 25:23

Now, well, now tell me a little bit about that memory lessons like. Give me a little snapshot of what that looks like.

James: 25:28

So if I was trying, like if I was trying, to remember a super tactical line of let's call it, you know, alakine defense, i was having trouble remembering And you know, then I would remember a line and then somebody would prepare for me and know five computer lines deeper. You know, computer moves deeper and just cause they have better memories. So with this guy and this was about a year ago we'd work on how to kind of store memory opening variations in what's called a memory palace, which is a technique used by memory champions. But it was good, i did memorize those variations. But what's been much better for me is really bulk understanding all the plans in a certain type of position. Like I said before, in the Kings Indian I had one plan. Well, now if I were to play the Kings Indian, i'd also understand. You know, okay, there's also opportunities to get play on the C file. There's opportunities when they exchange EF GF, so you can't do your normal Kingside Pawn Storm. So I understand more plans. Every opening has dozens of plans and nuances associated with it that I really wasn't aware of before.

Neal: 26:43

Now let's get into chess. Improvement as a quote unquote, older adults say over the age of 40, or in our case, over the age of 50. Do you feel you touched on this a little bit? but let's kind of take a deeper dive. Do adults quote unquote like age out of improvement? Do you think it gets to a point where you can only improve so much? And then, as part of that question, you do have people who claim to spend hours and hours studying and they're buying all the books and yet you know they've been rated 1400 for like 15 years straight. Like what are your thoughts on that?

James: 27:18

It's almost really two questions, and I'll start with the first one, which is do older people plateau? And I don't think the answer is definitively no, but it gets harder, and because, for lots of reasons, one is the brain. So again through this journey I've talked to neuroscientists, i've talked to psychologists, i've talked to performance coaches. So on the neuroscience side, the brain does change. So things like memory and raw calculation start to decline, no matter what. Like I can say, my memory is still exceptionally good, but not as good as it was when I was hitting 2200 back in the day. And memory just simply declines. Like how often you make it to the afternoon and you forgot what you had for breakfast that day. Like that starts to decline when you're like 40 or even in your 30s And you see this all the time Like with why do kind of the older world champions who come back to play, they switch from playing the sharpest Sicilians to 9F3, g3, d3, b3, because those are a little easier to get a position and then they figure it out. So that's neither good nor bad, but maybe that's a technique I have to do eventually, but so far I haven't been doing that. But the other thing that changes is your raw calculation ability, and it's not just in chess, by the way. You see this in mathematics, for instance. The peak age for a professional mathematician is 25 years old. That might be the peak age for a chess player. Magnus is in his 30s, but he's the world champion. He might be an exception. Typically, most of the people in the top 10 or top 20 are people in their 20s. When I turned 40, i remember I was like, oh, i'm an old man now And I looked at the top 20 chess players and the only one over 40 at that time, i think, was Anand. So everybody else was under 40. And Anand, to his credit, is still a top 10 or top 20 player. He's amazing. But what improves with age? People don't realize, and maybe this is more new discoveries. The brain does improve as it gets older. There's something called neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to learn new things. You still have neuroplasticity, it's just in different parts of the brain. And so what does improve and this is going to sound weird and it only improves if you work at it is wisdom. So, for instance, i'll give an example The peak age for historians. Now remember the peak age for mathematicians 25. The peak age for a historian is 69. And the peak age for writers in their 60s. And the reason is that your ability to recognize patterns in many disparate areas and then combine them to form cohesive theories becomes better. So you might say to yourself oh, the air conditioner was invented in 1900. I don't know if it was, but let's just say the air conditioner was invented in 1900. Southern urbanization started to happen in the early 1900s, like skyscrapers started to be built. Well then you can make the connection. Air conditioning, which cools down the highest floors, enabled urbanization to happen in the South, which increased the economic development of the United States and led to a booming, innovative United States for the next century, with innovations happening both North and South. So historians make those connections and connect those dots and then write good books about it and refer to other books and refer to other things. And in chess the same thing could happen, like oh, i saw this position on the black side of a Portuguese, scandinavian, but now it looks like I can do it in a Roy Lopez over here. So you make connections between plans and positions you saw in one game. Oh, i remember when Ulf Anderson played this versus Bobby Fisher or Bobby Fisher played this versus Spassky, and you form more of these kind of wisdom connections. Now the question remains, though which is why, by the way, i study a lot more of the classical games than I ever studied before, and I studied a lot more end games than I ever did before. Because that's all pattern recognition, end games and these classical games. There are tactics. Of course You need tactics to win, but you need that pattern recognition. Oh, this is the time when I'd go King H1, rook G1, g4, g5, and attack that way, as opposed to F3, e4. Like your, pattern recognition for good positions versus bad positions is better, and so you don't need maybe as many tactics. The question is is what you lose greater than what you gain or vice versa? And the theory is that what you lose is worse than what you gain. Losing memory and losing calculation is worse than what you gain. But again, you see, among like older players, like older grandmasters and so on, they're able to play well. Let's use an example of computers. There's the stockfish style computer and there's the alpha zero style of computer. Stockfish looks at like, let's say, 20 million moves in a second or 500 million moves in a second. Alpha zero actually looks at relatively few moves, but its evaluation function per move is much greater And so it doesn't need to look as many moves. And it's the same thing when your pattern recognition and your quote unquote wisdom is good. When you're older, you don't have to. The idea, hopefully, is that you don't have to have as many tactics, although I do spend an hour a day on tactics, so I think that's what. When you're older, you kind of have to really learn new things. It's like I'm learning chess for the first time and learning things I never knew before, like what to do with the space advantage. Never knew What to do when you have Bishop and Bishop versus Bishop at night. Never used to know, didn't need to know, didn't care.

Neal: 33:44

Which leads us to your own journey as someone trying to get back to 2200 over 50. I know you're writing a book about that, about your journey to do that. A lot of it is improvement over the age of 50. So can you tell us a little bit about the book and maybe give us a little sneak preview what kind of things we'll see with that?

James: 34:08

This has not just been a journey of improvement. It's really been an exciting quest for me back into this game and this subculture that I loved so much when I was 25, 26, 30 years younger. And so, yes, initially I thought I was gonna be just about. Here's what I did Like. I had written this book called Skip the Line, which talks about how to learn things very quickly, and a lot of my the neuroscience stuff and the psychological stuff and other things are included in that book Skip the Line And now I'm specifically applying it to chess And I thought it'd be fairly straightforward. But also I will add that this has been such an exciting adventure Because I had a whole career for those 25 years. I wrote lots of books. I was like a hedge fund manager. I was on CNBC quite a bit. I've written books about going broke and failing and coming back from that, so I built an audience from that. I've written books about entrepreneurship, so I have an audience of people from different. I did stand-up comedy and toured the country for six years. I've done lots of different things, for better or for worse. I could be a jack of all trades. Master of none is what my fear is. But when I first went to my first tournament coming back into this, like in December 2021, i had readers of my books and listeners to my podcast come up to me and it was a nice feeling. And then New and Chess Magazine, which was my favorite magazine as a kid, asked me to start writing columns for them And I couldn't believe it. Like, oh my gosh, new and Chess I mean I'm a total imposter syndrome on there, like there'll be an article from Jan Timmon, then me, then Judith Polgar, which one doesn't belong, and it's me. And you know, along the way, i've you know, gary Kasparov's been on my podcast a bunch of times. We've become good friends. I just was in Norway speaking at the Norway Business Summit, but that was side by side with the Norway Chess Tournament. So I met a lot of the top players, had dinner with Magnus Carlson, his dad, Peter Nielsen, his coach, and every day something new happens, which is part of this adventure and part of this journey of really immersing myself in a different way now as an older person rather than as a young person. It's different And that's been exciting. It's been frustrating sometimes. The learning part, because I'm not learning, i mean. So Peter Nielsen says something interesting to me and that's Magnus's coach. Peter Nielsen said you know you might already be better than you were. It's just that the chess world as a whole is a lot better than it was 25 years ago, and so you know that's worth thinking about. And I don't know how to measure that, but that's worth thinking about. I mean, i guess the way a little I mentioned that is how I do against other people in their 50s, but that's not really that accurate because who knows what they've been doing these years. And it's just been an interesting journey. I spoke to one IM at the last so I'm representing Georgia in this senior championship coming up at the US Open, and last year I did as well And I was speaking to one IM who was representing California, as Elliot Winslow was an IM back in the 80s, and he told me he's 250 points lower than his peak and he always thinks he's gonna get back and he never. And he says, and I know I never will now And he said don't delude yourself in the thing, you're gonna get back. And so I'm not saying he's a naysayer, that's his experience and he might be right. I haven't made it back yet, but I did go down the list of everybody playing in that tournament and there were a lot of people who were like there was my old coach, john Fedorowicz was representing New York in that tournament. Everybody was 200 to 250 points lower than their peak 100% of the people.

Neal: 38:19

I was gonna add. We were talking a little bit about that in the pre-interview. Yeah, 200, that seems to be the magic number. Whenever people take a hit, that's like the magic number.

James: 38:28

Yeah, and I'm 200 points lower than my peak. Yeah, same here. I know I have more, i mean, but this could be self-delusion, but I feel like I have more knowledge, but it's really hard. It's just, it's really hard playing in tournaments because of issues we spoke about earlier. It's the kids. Now they're just super good tactically. Their memories are great on openings. Every kid's got a coach, you know, because of Zoom, and you call up somebody in a GM in whatever country. You could pay $10 an hour. I don't know for lessons And I mean I know people who have former top 10 players giving them lessons for hardly anything And it's a really different competitive environment. Hikaru does this one video a few months ago. I saw it where he described how he would study openings in the year 2000 compared to how he studies openings now And it reminded me the way I studied openings. You didn't really have to know everything, you just had to know kind of the basic ideas and you go out there and you play it. Now you have to know, you have to have huge files on every possible move And the kids do it, or I should say young people do it. It's just very hard to do But we'll see, i mean again, i feel like improving, but sometimes I just I have a lot of volatility. I've beaten the highest rated players I've ever beaten during this past year and a half over the board, but I've also lost to the lowest rated players I've ever lost to even when I first started playing back when I was 17.

Neal: 40:07

Now that's something I wanted to ask you about. How are you at handling those tough losses, Like, do you find yourself tilting a lot? Because I know for me that's a big problem. I'm just curious how you handle that.

James: 40:17

I do. Everybody tilts. I don't think there's a way to truly avoid it. Everyone gets upset. You play four hours a game, you're winning for three hours and 59 minutes, and then you make a blunder and lose. That is not gonna be something you celebrate. It's gonna feel painful and you should feel pain from it. You should feel, you know, a little bit of loss of respect for yourself. You lost the game you should have won And that pain will either drive you to quit, as it did for me when I was 27 or 28, or it'll drive you to learn, as I'm trying to do now. I mean, between that time when I last played chess and now, i built businesses, i sold them, i made money, but then I also went broke several times where I made a ton of money and then I would just make very poor decisions with that money and go completely broke, back to zero and have to do it all over again and then go completely broke again. So I've been through kind of ups and downs and I realized that through time and persistence you can learn from these mistakes. But you have to really try to. You don't? it's more important to break bad habits than to get good habits, because what's really causing you to lose a one position is some bad habit, like maybe you lack confidence or you decided you were winning. You're already thinking about how are you gonna show other people oh, look at my great win and you forget it. You miss a tactic, you're not as focused or you don't focus as much on time management. You're just like bragging in your head to yourself or this is me, at least And so I tried to tell. Last tournament I played in Chicago Open, i was just around 2100, so I was really kind of I had bounced off of my floor at 2000, and in just like a month, and so I felt like okay, i could really make a run now to 2200, and then I lost the first seven games. Like that is brutal. And after like three or four I called my wife and I'm like I just may have to give up, and she didn't necessarily disagree, but she did say that I do have a tendency to bounce back from these moments and I did try to transform it afterwards to like, wow, this is valuable. I'm bringing a treasure trove of material to my coach, like because you learn more from losses than wins. So I'm certainly gonna learn a lot this time from this tournament. So I try to reframe it and it's hard. But You know I don't let myself really tilt and I have a tendency to win the last round or two in these tournaments. So I I try not to tilt as Much as my opponents because in the last round or two everybody's sucking. So if you're, if you're, if you're sucking in, you're playing people in last run, they're sucking also.

Neal: 43:11

Yeah, you just have to suck less than the other guy.

James: 43:14

Yeah right, it's like that, saying like you don't have to run if a bear is chasing you. You don't have to run faster than the bear, you just have to run faster than the other people running from the bear.

Neal: 43:24

Yeah, exactly right. So, james, I do listen to your podcast and one of my favorite episodes was Alex Benayan, where he talks about the third door as far as success. So for the uninitiated and James correct me if I'm wrong When you want to achieve something in life or get somewhere, there's essentially like like three ways, and he uses the analogy of getting into a nightclub. Right, so you have the people. It's a small amount of people, they're powerful, they know people. It's all politics. They can kind of have a connection. Most people aren't in that situation. That's one way. The other way is what most people do, which is they wait online like everybody else and they hope the bouncer lets them in. But then he talks about The third door. Like you sort of find a window to kind of sneak in like a creative way. So is there like a third door because I, you know I was thinking about this as it relates to the chest Is there sort of a third door that older adults can use to get better, or is that a myth? They just have to study like anyone else? like, are there hacks that Someone over 50 can use, as opposed to, say, like an energetic 20 year old?

James: 44:32

Yeah, that's a great question and I Don't fully. My initial assumption Was yes, because this is very similar also to the theme of my book. Skip the line, like what he's really talking about is to get in the Knight Club is. You have to figure out a way to skip the line and I'll give you an example. One of my daughters was having trouble getting into college. One year She basically applied to 20 different colleges, got into zero of them. It's very competitive. And so I said to her, look. And she was very upset and I said to her look, why don't you take a year off and Let's figure out an unusual? like No, don't do charity, don't do, don't have an A plus grade, like that stuff doesn't matter. Everybody who applies to college has 1600 SAT score. Now, whatever, let's do something unusual. So I gave her a bunch of options, including chest. Actually, because there's very few Compared to men. There's very few women who are moving up the ranks in chess. I'm not saying women are not good at chess, i'm saying there's fewer. The more women should play chess, there's fewer women doing it. So I gave chess is one of the options She chose race car driving. So I sent her to a race car driving school. She got a race car driving license, she participated in some professional races and, lo and behold, next year She applies to college. She got into every college, like doesn't matter high, high, how high the tier she is, is going to Duke University right now and and I don't even approve of kids going to college, but that's a whole other story But it was a skipped-aligned technique, like who else was a professional, a female race car driver Applying to college? She stood out. By the way, one of the reasons I stopped playing chess before I went below 2200 is I wanted, for I Got jobs. Because of chess. I raised money for businesses because of chess. I raised money for hedge funds. Because of chess I get, i got introduced. You know corporations hired me to be a speaker because I was a chess master. Like chess is important cultural significance. So it's a being strong at chess is a good skip the line technique in the Alex Benayan. You know style and so okay. But now just for getting better at chess, you know there's there's a couple of, a couple of, let's say, third doors, but I I don't think any of them work consistently. So, for instance, if you learn a lot of gambits, you're gonna win. You're gonna win some games, particularly in blitz, just on those gambits like that'll add, you know, 50 to 100 rating points to you. If you, if you are good at memorizing all the obscure lines and like the Stafford gambit For instance, and doesn't matter how many times grandmasters prove, the Stafford gambit is no good, if you're 1800 or 1900, 2000, you're gonna win a lot of games with the Stafford gambit. You know what the most successful move is in bullet after e4, g6, d4, bishop, g7, the most successful opening move is Bishop h6. So because it's just like you'll, you'll either win the piece immediately or if you're down a piece You do. It's not necessarily an immediate loss at bullet, like you could still play on. So you know stuff like that is like almost a third-door technique in in bullet. But I think my suspicion now is is that playing a good endgame and is, is, is For older people is a good third. I have won many more endgames that I've won out of the opening. Even though I studied opening, i know my openings very well. I'll win in the endgame and even from. If a young person even offers me a draw and they're upon ahead and totally crushing me, i'll refuse the draw, because I know I'll know the endgame better than them. And so now there's a famous quote between the opening and the middle and the endgame, there's the middle game and You know. So you have to know middle game strategies and plans as well. So that's a third door. If you know what to do with a bishop pair, that's like a little bit of a third door. And Tactics are a third door like. So, again, even though my tactical ability is probably worse than when I was younger, i try to keep it up there. I study it an hour a day. Avitec Gregorian, the coach I'm working with, he tells me he doesn't feel Tactics are. You know, they're definitely worth studying, he says, but you really have to know positional middle game strategy to be 2200 and 2300 these days, and so I've been really focusing on that. But you know, everybody has their opinion on this and I don't think we know and again I I'll tell you more when I hit 2200 again What, what does really work?

Neal: 49:28

Hopefully you will reach 2200 And we'll have you back on and we can discuss that journey. You know getting up those extra 200 points, but James Althacher, really appreciate you coming on the podcast. It was an honor to speak with you, thank you.

James: 49:41

Neil, thanks so much and good luck on your own journey as well.

Neal: 49:44

Absolutely thank you, and for those of you listening at home, as always, i hope you win your next game. Have a great day, everyone. You.