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[Rainn Wilson] In an average year,
more than 7,000 new movies are released
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and over a thousand new TV shows,
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thousands of new video games,
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hundreds of thousands of new podcasts,
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and more than 60,000 new tracks
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are uploaded to Spotify every day.
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Among all these options
for pleasure and diversion,
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the one that experienced
the greatest surge in popularity in 2020
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is over 1,500 years old.
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A boom is taking place in chess
like we have never seen.
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[reporter] The game is topping wish lists
this holiday season,
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and retailers say they're having trouble
keeping it in stock.
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Even internationally,
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it looks like downloads for chess
are up by 11%.
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[narrator] For a brief period,
it was the most popular genre
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on the streaming platform Twitch,
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surpassing video games
like League of Legends and Fortnite.
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Thousands even tuned in to watch me play.
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He blunders to H4.
Logic's gonna see the checkmate, I think.
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[Wilson] What was that? Idiot!
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When I look at chess through its history,
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it was considered a game
that people who were very smart played.
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Great leaders have been drawn to it.
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And thinkers,
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and artists,
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and elite athletes.
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[man] Celebrities who come to play chess
in the store.
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Marcel Duchamp
used to come and play in this address.
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Stanley Kubrick used to come and play.
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But also Bobby Fischer
used to come and play.
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To be a good chess player,
you do not have to be a genius.
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I think that's a very big myth.
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[Wilson] But chess has always been
more than just a pastime.
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One that transcends
age, creed and culture,
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but somehow never gets old.
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It's fascinating.
It's like escaping from your real life
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into this new world of 64 squares.
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[Wilson]
So why does this ancient board game
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continue to capture our imagination?
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What's so special about chess?
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[man 1] Chess is a great game.
A game and a sport for the mind.
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[man 2] One needs to give
all one's time to it to make
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the top players in the world.
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I like to play chess
because it's a nice game.
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We now realize that anyone with
a normal one of these pieces of equipment
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can become a Grandmaster.
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[man 3] The chess-playing machine
learns the best moves
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by using its past experience to analyze
a number of different moves.
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And then selects one.
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[crowd clamoring]
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[Wilson] A kingdom is under attack.
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The enemy's cavalry
has stormed the castle.
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The king already fled.
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Nobody's sure where he's going,
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but they'll fight
until they learn he's dead.
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For the first time in her life,
the queen is entirely helpless.
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An empire brought to its knees
so spectacularly,
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it's the kind of thing
future generations should study.
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And they have.
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That's all happening on this chess board.
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And this moment in this game
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is the stuff of legend.
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[man] It was a beautiful game.
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And to beginners, of course,
it just looked miraculous.
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[Wilson] Edward Lasker, a German engineer,
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had no idea he was about
to make chess history
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when he got off the boat in London
on that fateful day in 1912.
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And his first stop
was the city's top chess club.
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Lasker didn't speak a word of English,
but here,
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it didn't matter.
A man invited him to play a quick game.
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Lasker didn't know
it was Sir George Alan Thomas,
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arguably the best player in England.
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It was a casual, offhand game
that happened to be recorded.
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It was not in a tournament,
and it was not for money.
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[Wilson] Today, it's nicknamed
"The Perfect King Hunt"
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because it's so exquisitely brutal.
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Or sometimes "Fatal Attraction,"
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because it's beautiful at the same time.
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And to really see the beauty of it,
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it first helps to know how to play.
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Am I teaching a six-year-old
or a 20-year-old?
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[woman] A six-year-old.
Definitely a six-year-old.
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[Wilson] At your disposal are eight pawns,
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your foot soldiers.
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[Saidy] The six-year-olds
identify with the pawns.
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They're the weakest little pieces,
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but they can overcome the enemy king.
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Then you have the rooks,
the powerful castles.
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It just goes in a straight line.
It's not the most exciting piece.
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[Wilson] Next to the rooks
are your knights.
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They look like…
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Horsies. Everybody loves horsies, okay?
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[Nakamura] They move in an "L" shape.
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-[Saidy] They hop around.
-Kind of like a horse.
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[Khachan] Next player is the bishop.
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[Nakamura] Very far distance. They can go
from one end of the board to the other end
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and attack your opponent's pieces.
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[Wilson] Next to the bishop
is your most powerful piece.
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Prior to the late 15th century,
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that piece only went one square.
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[Wilson] But then a lot of powerful
female leaders emerged all over Europe.
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And suddenly that weak piece…
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[Saidy] Was replaced by a queen
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that could go all over the board
in one move.
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Without a queen, unless you are good,
you might as well resign.
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[Wilson] And then there's
your most important piece of all.
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[Saidy] The little king,
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that can only go
one square in any direction.
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He seems like such a weakling,
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but if you don't protect him,
you lose the game.
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[Wilson] In ancient Persia, they'd say,
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"Shah mat,"
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"The king is dead,"
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which became "checkmate."
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And that's it.
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This is your army, same as your enemy's.
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Now, you just have
to make your first move.
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Edward Lasker drew white pieces,
which meant he would go first.
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And there were 20 things he could do.
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Same for Sir Thomas.
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But already those two choices
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could result in 400 different games.
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Lasker and Thomas played this one.
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A move later, the number of possible
board configurations shoots up
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to 71,852.
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After each player makes their third move,
it's around nine million.
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With that many options,
how do you decide what to do?
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For centuries, the answer was
"You're out for blood."
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[Saidy] In the 18th century,
that was considered
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the only gentlemanly way to play the game.
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And you attack the opponent
with complete abandon,
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you give away pawns at will.
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We call that the Romantic era of chess.
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[Wilson] It roughly coincided
with the Romantic era in the arts.
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Music, painting, poetry
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focused on emotional expression
rather than technical mastery.
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Chess wasn't just about winning.
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It was about winning beautifully.
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[Saidy] Then Steinitz came along.
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[Wilson] Wilhelm Steinitz,
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the first official world chess champion,
and he said…
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[Saidy] "Well, this is a little crude."
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[Wilson] Steinitz ushered in a new era,
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the scientific school of chess.
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Just as artists moved away from drama
in favor of realism and precision,
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chess players set about laying down
fundamental principles of the game.
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Look at these moves again.
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Lasker goes for the center of the board.
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Trying to control the center
is principle number one.
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It's the heart of the battlefield.
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Then Lasker moves his knight.
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That's a second principle.
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Get your more powerful pieces
into the action as soon as possible.
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But in the opening,
you're not on your own.
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The great players of the past have
already done a lot of the heavy lifting.
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[Nakamura] There's the Danish Gambit,
the Evans Gambit.
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[Saidy] Sicilian Defense,
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the French Defense, the Ruy Lopez.
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[Wilson] And yes, the Queen's Gambit.
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Hundreds of openings have been codified,
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and it helps to know some opening theory.
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[Saidy] If your opponent knows it
and you don't,
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you may fall into a trap.
You don't want to be in that boat.
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[Wilson] But by move four, the number
of distinct board configurations
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is already at 315 billion.
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Sooner or later,
you have to abandon the book moves
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and start fending for yourself.
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[Saidy] The middlegame is
the main fighting arena,
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where plans and strategies
are carried out.
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The middlegame usually decides
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the outcome of the game.
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[Wilson] Lasker's bishop is out for blood.
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But the triumph is short-lived.
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A pawn bravely enters the bloodbath
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and is instantly slaughtered.
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The white queen
almost had the king in her sights,
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before he ducked for cover.
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This was an exhilarating game
for the time it was played.
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Remember, this was 1912.
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The scientific school was at its peak,
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and chess had been transformed
into something more sophisticated,
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calculated, and…
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boring.
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But a whole new era
was just about to begin.
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The age of rebellion in arts, music,
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politics, and chess.
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Meet the hypermodernists.
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[Saidy] They were iconoclasts,
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and they said,
"We're going to play differently."
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[Wilson] Like leaving the center
of the board open,
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but positioning their pieces
in such a way that the center
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became a death trap.
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"We're not giving up the center,
we're just controlling it differently."
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[Wilson] The hypermodernists did to chess
what surrealists did to art.
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Taking things that seemed ordinary
and reimagining their possibilities.
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Nothing had to be what it seemed.
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We have to keep in mind that chess
is the oldest war game in history.
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At the highest competitive level,
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it's really a blood sport.
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It's hard.
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[Wilson] During a tournament,
a chess player's blood pressure
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can stay as high
as a competitive marathon runner's.
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And they can burn
up to 6,000 calories a day,
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more than a world-class tennis player.
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All while sitting down,
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simply thinking.
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So in the 1940s, a Dutch psychologist,
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Adriaan de Groot,
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set out to study
what goes on in a chess player's mind.
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He presented players
of various skill levels
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with an unfamiliar position like this,
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and then asked them to think aloud
as they decided their next move.
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And he found that Grandmasters
and regular pros
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considered around the same number
of options for their next move.
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And they plotted out an almost
identical number of moves ahead.
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So, what made the great players great?
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Well, they saw better options.
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[Saidy] Richard Réti,
one of the great hypermoderns,
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was asked how many moves
did he look ahead.
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And he said,
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"Only one. The best one."
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I think, first and foremost, you have
to be very strong at memorizing.
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Almost everybody
who's a very strong Grandmaster
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will have some way of recalling games
they've played over their long career,
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so oftentimes will look at the placement
of where the bishops and knights are,
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where the pawns are,
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and try to compare it
to games we've played in the past.
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[Wilson] To a chess player,
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the positions of pieces
are like piano chords to a composer.
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After each chord,
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the player might consciously consider
just a few options,
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because they've stored deep down
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how dozens would sound.
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And that comes
from studying scales and keys,
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wisdom codified centuries ago
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about what patterns of notes sound good.
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And it also comes
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from playing.
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It's a matter of experience.
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And believe me,
there's a lot of playing and studying
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that goes into making a master player.
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[Wilson] And in the 20th century,
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nobody studied harder than the Soviets.
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Chess was studied in schools
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and played in the parks,
and along riverbanks.
246
00:12:21,574 --> 00:12:23,368
Clubs emerged all over the country,
247
00:12:23,451 --> 00:12:26,996
and magazines reprinted
famous games and analyses.
248
00:12:27,080 --> 00:12:30,583
Chess is one of the things
that nations compete in,
249
00:12:30,667 --> 00:12:34,545
because it's, in a way, a reflection
of the progress of the nation.
250
00:12:35,171 --> 00:12:38,591
[Wilson] For the regime, chess dominance
wasn't just about the fight on the board.
251
00:12:39,384 --> 00:12:42,762
It was the proof
of communist intellectual superiority
252
00:12:42,845 --> 00:12:44,722
over the decadent West.
253
00:12:44,806 --> 00:12:48,184
For 24 years, they didn't
just win the World Championship.
254
00:12:49,060 --> 00:12:51,854
Nobody else qualified
to even play against them.
255
00:12:52,563 --> 00:12:54,357
Until 1972
256
00:12:54,440 --> 00:12:55,984
and Bobby Fischer.
257
00:12:56,776 --> 00:12:57,860
In the US,
258
00:12:57,944 --> 00:13:00,863
chess was suddenly prime-time material.
259
00:13:00,947 --> 00:13:03,741
Russia's Boris Spassky,
the world champion,
260
00:13:03,825 --> 00:13:05,618
is to meet America's Bobby Fischer
261
00:13:05,702 --> 00:13:08,538
in a 24-game championship match
this summer.
262
00:13:08,621 --> 00:13:11,374
At stake,
immense prestige for the Russians,
263
00:13:11,457 --> 00:13:14,752
who jealously guard their reputation
as the country of the chess masters.
264
00:13:14,836 --> 00:13:18,548
The International Chess Federation wants
word by tomorrow morning from Fischer
265
00:13:18,631 --> 00:13:21,467
on whether he's agreeable
to 24 games in Iceland,
266
00:13:21,551 --> 00:13:23,428
and Fischer is taking his time answering.
267
00:13:23,511 --> 00:13:25,555
He had had a reputation
268
00:13:25,638 --> 00:13:28,975
for being extremely finicky and demanding
269
00:13:29,058 --> 00:13:30,476
throughout his career.
270
00:13:31,144 --> 00:13:33,479
[Wilson] Bobby Fischer
finally did agree to go
271
00:13:33,563 --> 00:13:36,607
and traveled to New York
to catch the flight, but then
272
00:13:37,275 --> 00:13:38,693
changed his mind.
273
00:13:39,319 --> 00:13:42,196
Nobody knew what to do.
He wouldn't get on the plane.
274
00:13:42,280 --> 00:13:44,449
[Wilson] Leaving Boris Spassky
275
00:13:44,532 --> 00:13:46,117
and the rest of the world,
276
00:13:46,200 --> 00:13:47,702
in suspense.
277
00:13:47,785 --> 00:13:50,538
Is it upsetting your routine,
this waiting?
278
00:13:50,621 --> 00:13:54,208
No, thank you.
Thank you very much for your questions.
279
00:13:54,292 --> 00:13:57,211
[reporter] You don't seem very worried
by what's going on. Are you?
280
00:13:57,962 --> 00:13:59,505
[Saidy] We were stuck,
281
00:13:59,589 --> 00:14:02,216
and we didn't even know
where he would sleep.
282
00:14:02,300 --> 00:14:04,469
Called up my mother
in the middle of the night,
283
00:14:04,552 --> 00:14:09,474
and true to her Lebanese hospitality,
she said, "Sure you can bring him over,"
284
00:14:09,557 --> 00:14:12,852
not knowing that our home
285
00:14:12,935 --> 00:14:16,814
would be turned into
the new center of the world,
286
00:14:16,898 --> 00:14:19,067
as hundreds of journalists
287
00:14:19,150 --> 00:14:20,568
camped outside,
288
00:14:20,651 --> 00:14:23,071
as Henry Kissinger called up
289
00:14:23,154 --> 00:14:25,365
to try to get him to move his ass.
290
00:14:25,907 --> 00:14:28,743
And um, the rest is history.
291
00:14:29,619 --> 00:14:31,871
[Wilson] The tournament stood
for a lot more than a game.
292
00:14:33,206 --> 00:14:34,665
This was the Cold War,
293
00:14:35,333 --> 00:14:38,503
which itself was often described
like a chess game,
294
00:14:38,586 --> 00:14:41,005
with potential traps everywhere.
295
00:14:41,089 --> 00:14:44,592
And lots of things were pawns
in the bigger power struggle,
296
00:14:44,675 --> 00:14:46,844
including chess itself.
297
00:14:48,346 --> 00:14:50,264
After snatching the world title,
298
00:14:50,348 --> 00:14:51,891
Bobby shot to stardom.
299
00:14:51,974 --> 00:14:53,393
The king is dead!
300
00:14:53,476 --> 00:14:54,644
[audience laughing]
301
00:14:54,727 --> 00:14:56,604
Not yet, he isn't.
302
00:14:56,687 --> 00:15:00,316
I'm sure the entire world
knows the name Bobby Fischer by now.
303
00:15:00,400 --> 00:15:03,319
He is the best chess player
in the entire world.
304
00:15:03,403 --> 00:15:06,489
How did Bobby Fischer beat you?
He was a better player?
305
00:15:06,572 --> 00:15:08,324
Yes, he is a better player.
306
00:15:10,243 --> 00:15:11,619
[Wilson] But in one crucial way,
307
00:15:11,702 --> 00:15:14,622
the Cold War wasn't like
a chess game at all.
308
00:15:14,705 --> 00:15:17,500
With chess, you know
all the information at the start.
309
00:15:17,583 --> 00:15:18,626
Nothing is hidden.
310
00:15:18,709 --> 00:15:21,963
Nothing like cards, where you keep
the cards close to your chest.
311
00:15:22,046 --> 00:15:24,173
You're not relying on a dice roll.
312
00:15:24,257 --> 00:15:26,676
You're not relying on luck of the draw.
313
00:15:26,759 --> 00:15:30,471
You are staring at the question,
and you are staring at the answer,
314
00:15:30,555 --> 00:15:32,014
if only you see it.
315
00:15:32,640 --> 00:15:35,685
[Wilson] Lasker's queen
decides it's time to strike.
316
00:15:35,768 --> 00:15:38,438
She boldly crosses into enemy territory.
317
00:15:39,272 --> 00:15:42,525
But the black queen
steps forward to defend her man.
318
00:15:43,192 --> 00:15:45,278
The king is now safe in his corner,
319
00:15:45,361 --> 00:15:46,946
guarded on all sides.
320
00:15:47,738 --> 00:15:50,867
If you play chess,
what would you do in this position?
321
00:15:51,742 --> 00:15:55,329
Lasker says he knew
this was the decisive moment of the game,
322
00:15:55,413 --> 00:15:57,623
that he had to do something drastic.
323
00:15:58,458 --> 00:16:01,085
He had five minutes to decide,
324
00:16:01,169 --> 00:16:03,337
and, sadly, we don't have that time.
325
00:16:04,005 --> 00:16:05,673
Lasker did this.
326
00:16:06,632 --> 00:16:09,302
His queen is now
face-to-face with the king.
327
00:16:09,844 --> 00:16:10,845
Check.
328
00:16:11,429 --> 00:16:14,640
And Sir Thomas did
what most people would probably do.
329
00:16:16,225 --> 00:16:17,310
He killed her.
330
00:16:17,977 --> 00:16:20,188
It looks like Lasker made a fatal blunder.
331
00:16:20,771 --> 00:16:22,440
It's not yet apparent
332
00:16:22,523 --> 00:16:25,735
that this is the beginning of the end.
333
00:16:28,654 --> 00:16:31,782
We've been teaching computers
to play chess for decades,
334
00:16:32,325 --> 00:16:34,202
feeding them billions of games.
335
00:16:34,827 --> 00:16:38,164
And endowed them with memories
that far surpassed ours.
336
00:16:38,748 --> 00:16:43,127
While a human Grandmaster
can consider tens of moves per decision,
337
00:16:43,836 --> 00:16:47,006
a machine looks at tens of millions.
338
00:16:47,089 --> 00:16:49,926
What would take you
maybe years to figure out,
339
00:16:50,009 --> 00:16:53,387
the computer could look at it
within less than a second.
340
00:16:53,471 --> 00:16:56,349
[Wilson] And on May 11th, 1997,
341
00:16:56,432 --> 00:16:58,643
in the final tiebreaking game
342
00:16:58,726 --> 00:17:01,270
between the world chess champion,
Garry Kasparov,
343
00:17:01,938 --> 00:17:05,525
and IBM's supercomputer, Deep Blue,
344
00:17:05,608 --> 00:17:08,569
the machine prevailed.
345
00:17:08,653 --> 00:17:10,488
We'd basically been beaten
346
00:17:10,571 --> 00:17:12,323
by a giant calculator.
347
00:17:12,406 --> 00:17:14,867
There is no psychological pressure
348
00:17:14,951 --> 00:17:16,994
that can reverse this opponent.
349
00:17:17,078 --> 00:17:19,038
Except, you know, if it's unplugged.
350
00:17:19,789 --> 00:17:22,833
[Wilson] Human players, on the other hand,
are prone to weakness.
351
00:17:23,668 --> 00:17:26,546
The king didn't realize
he'd walked into a trap,
352
00:17:27,171 --> 00:17:30,216
and thus the perfect king hunt begins.
353
00:17:31,384 --> 00:17:34,554
The knight gallops forward,
putting the king in double check.
354
00:17:35,972 --> 00:17:37,348
If the king retreats,
355
00:17:37,431 --> 00:17:39,433
the next move would be checkmate.
356
00:17:43,354 --> 00:17:44,981
So he only has one option.
357
00:17:46,983 --> 00:17:49,026
And then Lasker attacks again.
358
00:17:49,652 --> 00:17:50,611
And again.
359
00:17:51,654 --> 00:17:52,780
And again.
360
00:17:53,781 --> 00:17:57,285
Chased out of his kingdom,
his queen abandoned.
361
00:17:57,994 --> 00:18:00,371
When you pass the point of no return,
362
00:18:00,454 --> 00:18:01,789
first, there's shock,
363
00:18:02,456 --> 00:18:03,958
and then acceptance.
364
00:18:04,041 --> 00:18:05,710
As computer power increased,
365
00:18:05,793 --> 00:18:08,879
and as the computers
played more against each other,
366
00:18:08,963 --> 00:18:10,840
they would improve and improve.
367
00:18:10,923 --> 00:18:15,886
Now, no human would really dare to take on
a computer in a match at all,
368
00:18:15,970 --> 00:18:17,805
because the computers are gonna win.
369
00:18:17,888 --> 00:18:19,682
[Wilson] And in 2017,
370
00:18:19,765 --> 00:18:21,559
a new kind of chess player
371
00:18:21,642 --> 00:18:23,769
took the world by storm.
372
00:18:23,853 --> 00:18:25,855
Its name was AlphaZero,
373
00:18:25,938 --> 00:18:27,898
and it wasn't a supercomputer.
374
00:18:27,982 --> 00:18:30,318
It could only consider
a tiny fraction of the moves
375
00:18:30,401 --> 00:18:32,987
of the mightiest chess engines,
376
00:18:33,070 --> 00:18:35,656
but it had been taught very differently.
377
00:18:35,740 --> 00:18:37,992
AlphaZero meant zero human knowledge.
378
00:18:38,075 --> 00:18:39,952
[Wilson] It was just given the rules,
379
00:18:40,036 --> 00:18:42,038
and then it had played itself,
380
00:18:42,121 --> 00:18:43,789
over and over,
381
00:18:43,873 --> 00:18:45,625
and over again.
382
00:18:45,708 --> 00:18:50,421
[Regan] Forty-four million games
at lightning-fast speed against itself.
383
00:18:50,504 --> 00:18:52,006
At first, because it was random,
384
00:18:52,089 --> 00:18:54,508
quite a lot of the games
wouldn't even reach any conclusion,
385
00:18:54,592 --> 00:18:57,303
'cause it wouldn't know
how to checkmate, for example.
386
00:18:57,386 --> 00:19:01,098
But, by chance, some of the games
did reach a conclusion,
387
00:19:01,182 --> 00:19:03,517
so it would look at the moves
on the winning side
388
00:19:03,601 --> 00:19:05,394
and try and play a bit more like that.
389
00:19:05,478 --> 00:19:07,146
In nine hours of training,
390
00:19:07,229 --> 00:19:10,566
it learned kind of the whole
of human chess history.
391
00:19:10,650 --> 00:19:11,942
[Wilson] And AlphaZero,
392
00:19:12,526 --> 00:19:14,612
it didn't play like a computer at all.
393
00:19:15,112 --> 00:19:18,282
It engaged in bold attacks
and daring sacrifices,
394
00:19:18,366 --> 00:19:20,159
like the Romantics.
395
00:19:20,242 --> 00:19:22,453
And it seemed to follow
some of the basic principles
396
00:19:22,536 --> 00:19:24,413
laid out by the scientific school.
397
00:19:25,039 --> 00:19:27,875
And, at the same time,
it sometimes broke them,
398
00:19:28,459 --> 00:19:30,961
because it didn't have
any preconceived notion
399
00:19:31,045 --> 00:19:33,214
that general rules should always apply.
400
00:19:33,297 --> 00:19:37,385
When I was growing up, there were certain
moves that we considered completely crazy.
401
00:19:37,468 --> 00:19:40,262
And now computers have taught us
that you can do these things
402
00:19:40,346 --> 00:19:43,849
that for centuries
were thought to just not be possible.
403
00:19:43,933 --> 00:19:46,018
[Wilson] Computers didn't kill chess.
404
00:19:46,102 --> 00:19:49,772
They fueled the greatest explosion
of chess knowledge in history.
405
00:19:50,398 --> 00:19:53,067
The number of Grandmasters
has been going up,
406
00:19:53,150 --> 00:19:55,820
and they achieve that high rank younger.
407
00:19:55,903 --> 00:19:56,946
[Nakamura] In the past,
408
00:19:57,029 --> 00:19:59,949
almost all the top chess players
were from the former Soviet Union,
409
00:20:00,032 --> 00:20:02,159
because that was
where the top players were.
410
00:20:02,243 --> 00:20:05,371
You had to be around the best players
to obtain that experience.
411
00:20:05,955 --> 00:20:08,666
[Wilson] But now, you just need
an Internet connection.
412
00:20:08,749 --> 00:20:12,420
I think Rubius has been putting in
a lot of work off-stream as well,
413
00:20:12,503 --> 00:20:14,547
because he's playing this very, very well.
414
00:20:15,256 --> 00:20:18,300
[Wilson] And countries that don't have
a history of competitive chess
415
00:20:18,384 --> 00:20:21,053
are producing
some of the world's best chess players.
416
00:20:21,137 --> 00:20:22,722
[Nakamura] Countries like India.
417
00:20:22,805 --> 00:20:25,558
You have countries like Iran,
for example, as well.
418
00:20:25,641 --> 00:20:28,269
Of course, even Norway.
Prior to Magnus Carlsen,
419
00:20:28,352 --> 00:20:31,689
they had no chess players,
I would say, in the top 20 in the world.
420
00:20:31,772 --> 00:20:35,484
It really has leveled the playing field,
and you see that people can get good,
421
00:20:35,568 --> 00:20:38,446
no matter where they are in the world
or what the circumstances are.
422
00:20:39,155 --> 00:20:41,615
[Wilson] Within the strict confines
of the rules,
423
00:20:41,699 --> 00:20:44,285
bound by just 64 squares,
424
00:20:44,368 --> 00:20:47,371
the total number of unique chess games
is estimated to be
425
00:20:47,455 --> 00:20:50,374
around ten to the 120th power.
426
00:20:51,167 --> 00:20:52,752
Or in plain English,
427
00:20:52,835 --> 00:20:56,589
a thousand trillion trillion trillion
trillion trillion trillion trillion
428
00:20:56,672 --> 00:20:59,008
trillion trillion trillion games.
429
00:21:00,217 --> 00:21:04,847
More possibilities
than there are grains of sand on Earth,
430
00:21:04,930 --> 00:21:07,933
or dust particles in the Milky Way,
431
00:21:08,017 --> 00:21:11,729
or atoms in the observable universe.
432
00:21:12,438 --> 00:21:16,066
The beauty and I think the magic
of the game is this fluidity.
433
00:21:16,150 --> 00:21:18,486
With every move, the whole game changes.
434
00:21:18,569 --> 00:21:21,363
You have to reconfigure,
you have to keep looking at the board.
435
00:21:21,447 --> 00:21:24,867
There's enough richness to it
that you'll never be the perfect player.
436
00:21:24,950 --> 00:21:26,827
And there's always ways to improve.
437
00:21:26,911 --> 00:21:29,205
Even though I've spent much
of my career playing the game
438
00:21:29,288 --> 00:21:31,290
and I've spent many,
many years studying it,
439
00:21:31,373 --> 00:21:34,460
there's still a lot of "Aha" moments
where I look at a game or I study,
440
00:21:34,543 --> 00:21:36,670
and there's something
even I have not seen before.
441
00:21:36,754 --> 00:21:40,382
Chess has this addictive quality,
I admit it.
442
00:21:40,466 --> 00:21:41,842
I didn't get rich,
443
00:21:41,926 --> 00:21:43,385
I didn't get famous,
444
00:21:43,469 --> 00:21:46,722
but it was very satisfying
to play a good game.
445
00:21:46,806 --> 00:21:49,600
And I remember those moments
with happiness.
446
00:21:51,894 --> 00:21:54,271
[Wilson] After a series of forced moves,
447
00:21:54,355 --> 00:21:57,608
the black king reaches
the opposite end of the board
448
00:21:57,691 --> 00:21:59,693
in the heart of the white kingdom.
449
00:22:00,361 --> 00:22:02,029
With his royal grace,
450
00:22:02,112 --> 00:22:05,282
the white king advances one step forward,
451
00:22:05,366 --> 00:22:06,659
letting his rook,
452
00:22:06,742 --> 00:22:09,328
which hasn't made a single move
the entire game,
453
00:22:09,954 --> 00:22:12,039
deal a mortal blow.
454
00:22:14,250 --> 00:22:15,376
Checkmate.
455
00:22:19,630 --> 00:22:23,425
[closing theme music playing]