Journey to Chess Grandmaster Title

Ladies and gentlemen, this video is being recorded on January 22nd, 2025. And at the time of recording this video, I would like to name it The Future of the Road to Grandmaster Series. But whether that actually is the title or I changed it due to YouTube algorithm reasons, we will figure out later. For anybody that doesn't know, this series is a series where I take you through the ups, the downs, the training, the behind the scenes, and ultimately the tournaments required to achieve the Grandmaster title in chess. To get that title, you have to have an international rating of 2500, and you have to have three Grandmaster Norms, which are special tournament performances above a certain threshold. At the time of recording this video, my rating is back down to 2324-ish, which is where it was when I started this series, back in, really, April, May of 2024. I went up about 50 points, and I went down about 50 points. So we ride the roller coaster. of the ELO ladder. Now, in this video, I wanted to gather my thoughts. This video comes on, you know, sort of right after another very bad tournament performance. In fact, I think my worst in history, in my entire career. And I've already shared all of my recaps and so on. But I want to kind of take you through the last eight months. I want to take you through how we got here. I want to take you through why I think I've struggled quite a bit. I want to take you through some of the things that I was a little bit upset about, and probably also slightly sensitive about, as they pertain to Hikaru and other people talking about the Road to Grandmaster series. I will address Hans Niemann's big video, and the social media interaction that we had, and just about everything else. So the video, as always, will be split into a few parts, and I think we can start. Oh, and a side note, I know it- kind of seems like I'm always promoting something, but that's really because there's always something to look forward to in the Gotham universe. We've actually added two cities to the 2025 Gotham European Tour in May. So Berlin and Warsaw, Poland. I'll put a link in the description if you'd like to get tickets. I'll be in London. I'll be in Brussels. We'll have special guests, live guests, the ELO Q&A sessions. I'm so excited to meet so many people. And I haven't been talking about the tour a lot, and they're a little mad at me. They want me to start talking about the tour a little bit more. So... There are still some VIP tickets, and if you'd like to check it out, please do. So, we kick things off back in mid-2024. I was inspired by the Candidates Tournament, and I was inspired by my presence in Toronto and getting to interview players who were playing in the Candidates and even Legends of the Game, like Vishyanand, who I got to speak to. And actually, funnily enough, a few weeks after I spoke to him in Toronto, I ran into him at the Moritzhaus in... Den Haag in the Netherlands while on vacation with my wife. Vishy was with his family. We took a photo of it. I'll probably post it on the screen. That was crazy, running into him in a museum in a different country, completely different continent completely. That tournament kind of inspired me, and I wanted to get back into the swing of things in competition. And I remember at the time, I planned a whole ecosystem around it. I would train seriously. And I would go to tournaments and I would maybe even live stream my games like some other content creators had been doing. And I would sort of take you through the whole journey. And I would really put my best foot forward. Like I would dedicate as much time as possible to training. Something that I hadn't really seriously done in 2021 and 2022 when I was making videos and losing a lot of games and being really upset. And I was like, I'm going to really, really do this. And it wasn't. Yes, I had the Patreon, but the goal of the series was not really to monetize. Like, the Patreon wasn't such a substantial chunk of Gotham Enterprises that, you know, it was something that I... It's not like I created the series to do the Patreon. I just thought, if I'm going to travel a lot and play tournaments and have a lot of instructional content with Grandmasters, might as well let people enjoy it. That was sort of my thought. And so I trained. I trained pretty seriously. I was taking some lessons. as you all know, with Artur's next chance. And I will talk a little bit more later in the video about our future training sessions. And I went to Madrid. And obviously, first and foremost, I was in Madrid for the clash of claims between Jose Martinez and Vladimir Kramnik. But then I started the tournament with an unbelievable result. I beat the highest rated player in the section with the black pieces in the first round. And much like I have recently, Tomas ended up having one of his worst tournaments. Maybe it was as a result of that first round game. Maybe it was just... where he was at in terms of his chess or life in general. But it sort of happens. Even if you're a 25-35 GM, and Tomas is a great player. But for me, I couldn't imagine a better start. And then in the next round, I drew Pepe Cuenca, and I, a few rounds later, defeated the only remaining Grandmaster in the section. And I remember I was showing up to these games, and I was pretty happy. Like, I was pretty excited. I was happy to play. I was nervous. And there were problems, like... The chess club that we were playing at, Ajedrez con Cabeza, it was a very nice chess club, but it was a little crowded. It was hot. It was Madrid in June. It wasn't extremely comfortable, but still, I was playing, and I was with my friends there, and we would go get Cuban food and Spanish food after the games, and Eric Rosen was there, and a Kremling was there. We were having a very fun time. I ended up a game away from, not even a game, I ended up a few good moves away from a Grandmaster Norm. I was winning my 8th round game against Julio Suarez, who also was playing for a Grandmaster Norm. It was unbelievable. I don't know why I played that well in that tournament, but what I learned about myself, really my whole life, is I'm pretty streaky. And when I win early in tournaments, like I did against Tomas, it skyrockets my confidence. But also at the time, I was trading a lot. In fact, the first like... few months of this, look how much I was training. I was, you know, doing a lot of exercises, tactical exercises on the website, Chess Tempo. You can actually see some of my calendar here. And I was pretty actively reviewing my variations in my Karo Khan defense and trying to strengthen my opening repertoire with the white pieces. And I think some of the momentum carried over into tournament number two. But tournament number two was unique. It was an I am Norm Round Robin here in New York City. There was actually nobody in my section who was a young teenager. meaning a potential person that will gain 200 to 300 points in the future. And also, I got a bit lucky. Like, in the first round of the tournament against Danila, I was in a very bad position. And in the third round of the tournament, I was completely lost against Novik. But I ended up not losing either of those games. Then I ended up playing a great game against Megan Lee, and the rest was history. I just caught fire, and I started winning, you know, almost every game. I couldn't beat my, I think, sixth-round opponent. While up a queen, which was kind of hilarious. Sevenovich, that was the game that was completely bananas. And I was winning, but then I, you know, messed it up. But I ended the tournament eight out of nine. I mean, that was, I've never, I've never like scored that many points in a tournament ever. And I was up to 2370, 48 rating points. Just incredible. Absolutely incredible. So I decided on whim to just go to Italy, play another, you know, tournament in Europe, which started not so well. You know, I... drew a lot of games against lower rated players. I was jet lagged. It was definitely like a stupid and rash decision to just leave and fly to Venice like eight and a half hours and then drive an hour and a half into some, you know, some Northern Italian village. But that tournament I ended with one of the greatest wins of my life. And also I played the game of my life where I had the bishop and the four pawns or whatever versus the queen, which was, which was unbelievable. Like I couldn't believe that that had happened. And I won the last game of the tournament against the Italian Grandmaster Alberto, David. And I mean, what a game that was and what a tournament that was. I met so many people. It was a huge open, 500 people. I've been playing all these closed events. But, you know, and that was a really special trip. But I didn't gain any rating in that tournament. Although at some point I was down about 12 points. So that was a bad tournament and I bounced back in a great way. And then the problem started. You know, in August, I joined a tournament here in New York City. And, you know, I didn't know what to expect. But I certainly wanted to have a strong showing. And I wanted to continue my momentum. And I think the famous quote, I think Mike Tyson said it, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, is really what happened. I was stunned when I lost my first round game to Jurebek. But what made it much worse was that in the second round, I had a very tense battle against Chirilov, who is a strong player and will likely be an IM and maybe a GM in the future. And I blundered late in that game. And I started the tournament 0-2. 0-2 quickly became half out of five. And it was almost zero out of five because I was completely losing in the third game. I don't really know what happened. Now. Of course, I support the philosophy of, you know, up and down and so on. And you're going to win. You're going to lose. Hot streaks run out. I'm a streaky player. You know? If I have a bad result early, the whole tournament might be a wash. And, I mean, I barely made it out of that tournament alive. And I ended up changing things in that tournament, too. Like, I didn't stream one of my games. And I, you know, I didn't play with a camera. But I was streaming all of my games before that, and I did fine. So I started kind of messing with my routine a bit. And I undid a bunch of the gains that I had gained, you know, previously. And around that time, I would say the Chesley team, which is led by me. Chesley isn't a company that I am an ambassador for. I own Chesley. That's why I'm very excited to promote it to all of you. Because it's not like somebody is making money off of my promotions. I'm sharing and building. one of the best educational platforms for chess, in my opinion, if not the kind of premier educational platform. And at that time, we sort of decided we want to relaunch the entire thing. We want to redesign the entire thing. And I knew that that would mean that my commitment to training would sort of go down. And so for the next one or two months, I said, I'm not going to stress so much about the results. I'm not even going to stress so much about the lessons. I felt like I'm going to take a little bit of time off after. brutal tournament, really, really brutal event, and I'm just going to kind of play for fun. And I sort of did. I had the tournament in Sweden, the match against Pia Kramling, the Battle of Generations, an awesome event we put on with Anna Kramling, of course. And in that event, when I lost the first round, I couldn't sleep. That was probably as close as I've ever been to a panic attack. It's not a laughing matter. I mean, people suffer from panic attacks. But I remember laying awake at three in the morning. My wife is asleep already. And I'm having this crisis. Like, I'm just going to lose every single game in this match. I don't know why I signed up to play Pia. Like, I'm so close to, like, a full-blown meltdown. You know, on the heels of the last tournament that I had played. And the pressure. And all the comments. And all that stuff. And, you know, there is a timestamp in the video player about Hikaru and whatnot. But, uh... That stuff all started like, I started like really thinking about that stuff. I ended up stabilizing the match. I kind of tricked her with an opening the next day. And then we had a couple of closed games. And throughout all those classical games, I doubted myself every step of the way. I really felt like maybe how Ding Liren has expressed his self-doubts and struggles, you know? And that's how I felt when playing Pia. But it felt like I was shackled to my chair and I had to play the game. And I just had to play the best moves that I could. You know, and I messed up a winning advantage ultimately in the fourth game, but I managed to win it on time, which is not really how I wanted to win, but it's how I won. I managed to play better chess on the Rapid. I think I played my best day of chess on the Rapid, and I ended up winning the match after we had a close blitz. But, you know, after that match, I really thought I reignited just the level of excitement for the game and just playing. playing, enjoying, having my pieces talk to each other during the game without, you know, being under the influence of any substance. And so then I did a four-round substitution in New York right after that. That was my fifth competitive event. I played four games. I played my first Sicilian, you know, against Isik Can. And by the way, since that game, Isik became a Grandmaster. He got a Grandmaster norm a little while later. I had this game against Brewington Hardaway, one of America's newest Grandmasters, where I was upper rook, but he was attacking me. And then it was a checkmating attack. And, you know, I could have defended, but I sort of panicked. And then even that tournament ended with a horrible taste in my mouth, with like one of the worst performances I ever had. Like, as far as I'm concerned, where I just played a game where I self, you know, I self-doubted myself every step of the way. I was so, so, so upset about how I played that game. Not that I even lost, just how I played. And so then I spent time just building Chesley. I went hermit mode for about three months. I didn't do any lessons. I didn't really do any puzzles. I just focused on Chesley. And when I sort of emerged in January after we had launched it, I came back. I started reviewing openings. I was doing a little bit of training. And I thought, look, the last time I played an I Am Norm Round Robin, I got eight out of nine. I don't expect to get eight out of nine, but I'm going to have a strong showing. And I got a totally winning position in my first game and blew it. And then I lost the second game to... Ryan, and he ended up getting an I Am Norm. He got his first I Am Norm. He will probably have the title within a year, maybe within a year and a half or two years. I didn't really feel unconfident during these games. But what I did feel for the first time was almost a level of hangover from my last bad tournament. And once I got to like half out of three and half out of four, you know, that's why I said what I said. And this will sort of be a bridge now to some of the other stuff that I was saying. It finally caught up to me that I have. a top three player in the world, I don't know if Hikaru is number two or number three, watching every step of the way, live streaming, making recaps. And since I restarted the journey, it has been a constant question stream of have you seen what person A has said about you? Have you seen what person B has said about you? What about this person's comments? I mean, sometimes I just open up YouTube because I want to watch like UFC press conference. And it's like, here's what person X or Y or you know, A, B, C, D, F, G, things about Gotham's Road to GM or like, and I was like, man, when I started this journey, I really like, I guess I should have anticipated it, but I really just wanted to like train, play, take you all through the process, make recaps about the games and not have to answer things like, did you see the Hikaru clip where somebody asked him if he thinks you can be a grandmaster? And he says, no, but that's just clickbait. I mean, he kind of elaborates that I have too many commitments and that's sort of, that's really, yeah. I mean, if I went radio silent, you never saw me again, and all I did was train chess, my chances of becoming a Grandmaster are higher than they are now, certainly. I'm not going to do that. And that's, you know, that's sort of part of the problem. But during this tournament, I really was like, wow, this, I really hate this pressure. Like, I, I'm not loving playing. Like, I... I just want to train and play and win or lose. Like I want to learn and I want to keep training. But I felt like an animal at the zoo. And like you're like hitting on the glass, you know? And I'm reacting. And that's why I said what I said. And I mean, you know, I'll chat with Hikaru. But I can't, I mean, that's not like a reason that I underperformed. It's just... The thought of it just really started like getting me more rattled than normal. And the thing is, everything is better when you're winning. When you're winning, you don't care. You win. You're gaining rating. Like, but the whole point of the Road to GM journey was not to obsess over the result. And it's not like I was going to win eight tournaments in a row and become a Grandmaster. I'm going to lose. But it's so much more painful and like magnified and everything when I lose. And I just feel... So stupid, you know, going through this and like bringing you like five losses in a tournament where I don't even know like what happened. I mean, I'm like slightly shell shocked myself. And in this tournament, I started like getting those nerves like when you're freezing cold. That's like that's like anxiety, man. Like that's and, you know, now on top of having to stay off social media, I have to hire a sports psychologist or I have to work with a mental coach or I have to do. And it's just like. adding and adding and adding and it's you gotta ask yourself like why like what for what to get the title yeah it's the only thing i haven't really like achieved in chess right i became an im and there's gm i'm not going to be world champion or anything like that but i did have to sit back and go is that like where this is headed i don't i don't really know i mean i i i can't treat it like a full-time job and that leads me all Sort of to conclude by saying that's sort of why I said what I said after my second recap. And the irony is not lost on me that on this channel, we make fun of, you know, low elo chess kind of as a meme. And, you know, we have guest the elo. And in that series, it's me clowning on chess games. So obviously, I should not be sensitive to the fact that people are clowning on my chess games. I'm not saying that's happening. I'm just saying. The irony is not lost on me. It's just one is a voluntary submission process and low elo chess is hilarious. And one is like, you know, working toward a life goal of a thing that you've been doing for 20 years very publicly. While the entire world in chess does not have subjectivity when they watch your games, they have objectivity. So they just immediately see to which degree you are an idiot. It's very different, but I totally understand. And it just all caught up. It all caught up. Which leads me to... Hans Nieman, who made a post. Basically, I'm not going to read it word for word. You can pause here and read it. But the summary was... Uh, I will coach Levy and I would love to give him the opportunity. And, you know, um, I responded, I, I, I didn't think through my response. I responded to him while I was in an Uber and about three minutes from my house. And I just typed something out and I sent it. And I immediately regretted when I sent it because I knew how it would be perceived. I basically said, we can film it. And if I become GM, I'll give you, you know, a hundred. K because the joke was that Hans Niemann was charging me $100,000 for his coaching after the interview that I did with him. But I knew right away when I sent that, I was like, oh, people are going to think that I am not a serious player. I'm just doing this for content. And right away, I was like, man, that's social media. You don't think through what you post. And then he made a video and he said some insightful things in the video. Take a look. You have to manage your time better. because every single time he gets low on time, look what happens. And then someone loses the game. It's like Levy is living his own nightmare over and over and over again. And this is a complete telltale sign of like a psychological block that needs to be broken through by systematic analysis of all these mistakes and what's going wrong in the thought process. Then he needs to play the right tournaments. Why on earth are you playing a round-robin tournament with other low-rated talented kids who are super, super hungry? First of all, American players are extremely underrated. And he's playing against literally the Hunger Games. You've got underrated kids. You've got talented players. This is the worst possible tournament to gain rating in. You need to go to Europe. You need to play Opens. And both Hans and Hikaru and many other Grandmasters make points. They're not groundbreaking points, but yeah, they make good points about my openings, about my middle gameplay, and so on. The problem is... It's a mix of skill and things I can practice, but also the spotlight. And I don't know if you can train the nerves and the spotlight. And maybe you can, and maybe in the long run I will. But that's a whole new element to this series that I really didn't think too much about when I first announced. And also even when I was having good tournaments. Because like I said, winning shuts everything. Shuts everybody up and shuts everything down. You just win, and you keep winning, and you're in a very good mental space. So, will I take Hans up on his offer? I'm not sure. Hikaru already seems to think so. When I haven't said anything except my tweet, and already he's my coach, apparently. And Hikaru won against him in title Tuesday. I think I will, but that sort of leads me to my next and final point, which is whether it's Hans, whether it's any coach, whether it's Nick Shantz, I'm going to train. But I think the future for the Road to Grandmaster series, for my own well-being, is that I don't publicize the entire training process. And I want to go, as the kids say, into my winter arc. And I would like to get better, and I would like to train these things behind closed doors. Nowadays, you can't really play tournaments without them being broadcasted. But man, I would love that. Everybody has DGT boards. Everybody broadcasts the tournaments. But man, I would love to just play somewhere in a quiet, small chess club. Round robin. No broadcast. Bring the games to you after. But maybe that won't even help. The truth is, I don't know. The truth is, I will train. And I will do it quietly and I will make improvements. And when I'm ready to play again, I still have to make a decision yet how publicly I'm going to go about the whole thing. Because either I have to really work on my mental, I have to hire a mental coach and so on. I have to take a shot of whiskey before every game that I, sorry, apple juice before, you know, every game that I play or what. But what's funny is that in Madrid, Last year, that's what I wanted to do. Here's a fun story about Madrid. Maybe I should have told it in the beginning of the video. The night before the tournament started in Madrid, we played Blitzchess at the bar of the Gran Via Casino in Madrid. And I was, you know, I was sipping on a little gin and tonic. And I won every game I played. I remember I beat, I made one draw, and I beat several title players. I won a Blitz game against Pepe. I won a Blitz game against Tomas. I was completely losing. I won six games. I made one draw. Relaxed, blitzing, having a great time in person, live, over the board, not hiding my opponent's names. Maybe that gave me confidence. I'm not sure. But in Madrid, I considered having a gin and tonic at every game before my tournament, and ultimately, I didn't need that. So yeah, publicly sharing such a series. came with unintended consequences for my own well-being, which is losing publicly really is brutal. It's really, really, really brutal, especially if it happens consecutively. I mean, I just, mentally, I'm not cut out to be an athlete. I cannot just only grind and focus on the sport and not pay attention to anything going on around me because that's not my primary job. My primary job is spreading the love of the game of chess, making tournament recaps, making interesting chess content, and building Chessly. That is my main thing. And now the European tour and other things like that, which just engage people with chess. So yeah, I'll probably hit a Ponce, maybe do a couple of training sessions, see how it goes. I'm going to continue to work with our tours. You're not going to hear too much about it because that's what I want to do. And then we'll see. Maybe if I get lucky, I'll find a tournament that's not broadcasted. play it somewhere quietly on a beach somewhere, maybe one game a day. I don't know, but I want to like, like, I want to love playing chess and love the process and not think about all the results and not think about the broadcast and not think about until I'm ready mentally. I still think I can rebuild it, but I've already started thinking about things like man you know what if like when i'm 35 or 36 i have like a well then i'd have to have the kid now so i'm not sure but just thoughts like well what if like in the future i'm a dad in my 40s i'm a dad and i go with my son or daughter to a chess tournament that would be special i would actually enjoy i wouldn't care about the result at all at that point nobody's gonna watch this channel probably well hopefully maybe i'll have a pewdiepie arc on uh on uh on youtube where 15 years later people are still watching but these are the thoughts that i've had like i just want to love playing i'm i'm not an athlete i'm not cut out to to have my games uh dissected and scrutinized and and and yeah like i just i'm struggling to cope with that but i will continue to train and when i'm ready to come back and play maybe i'll tell you about it maybe i won't we'll see but i will be ready And as I saw from the tournaments last year, I can be a really, really good player when my head is screwed on straight. I'm thinking clearly and everything is good. So that's all. The road to GM continues, but slightly less publicly. And frankly, the name of the series, as catchy as it is, it's just road to improvement. GM can wait. It's just getting better, enjoying playing, winning games, and being happy about it. And not adding something to my life that causes such a degree of stress and anxiety. And not focusing on the results so much. It took me about a day and a half to kind of gather all my thoughts. I hope I verbalized them. You know, I provided context about, you know, the Hikaru stuff. I'm not, like, upset. at him i i it's just sort of an unintended consequence of the whole thing that i really didn't see coming and um maybe i'll train with hans once or twice hey maybe i'll train with hikaru hikaru will do a training session with me that'd be kind of cool anyway i'm gonna end the video now european tour tickets in the comments and in the description get out of here

To get that title, you have to have an international rating of 2500, and you have to have three Grandmaster Norms, which are special tournament performances above a certain threshold. At the time of recording this video, my rating is back down to 2324-ish, which is where it was when I started this series, back in, really, April, May of 2024. I went up about 50 points, and I went down about 50 points. So we ride the roller coaster.

of the ELO ladder. Now, in this video, I wanted to gather my thoughts. This video comes on, you know, sort of right after another very bad tournament performance.

In fact, I think my worst in history, in my entire career. And I've already shared all of my recaps and so on. But I want to kind of take you through the last eight months. I want to take you through how we got here.

I want to take you through why I think I've struggled quite a bit. I want to take you through some of the things that I was a little bit upset about, and probably also slightly sensitive about, as they pertain to Hikaru and other people talking about the Road to Grandmaster series. I will address Hans Niemann's big video, and the social media interaction that we had, and just about everything else. So the video, as always, will be split into a few parts, and I think we can start. Oh, and a side note, I know it- kind of seems like I'm always promoting something, but that's really because there's always something to look forward to in the Gotham universe.

We've actually added two cities to the 2025 Gotham European Tour in May. So Berlin and Warsaw, Poland. I'll put a link in the description if you'd like to get tickets. I'll be in London. I'll be in Brussels.

We'll have special guests, live guests, the ELO Q&A sessions. I'm so excited to meet so many people. And I haven't been talking about the tour a lot, and they're a little mad at me.

They want me to start talking about the tour a little bit more. So... There are still some VIP tickets, and if you'd like to check it out, please do.

So, we kick things off back in mid-2024. I was inspired by the Candidates Tournament, and I was inspired by my presence in Toronto and getting to interview players who were playing in the Candidates and even Legends of the Game, like Vishyanand, who I got to speak to. And actually, funnily enough, a few weeks after I spoke to him in Toronto, I ran into him at the Moritzhaus in... Den Haag in the Netherlands while on vacation with my wife. Vishy was with his family.

We took a photo of it. I'll probably post it on the screen. That was crazy, running into him in a museum in a different country, completely different continent completely. That tournament kind of inspired me, and I wanted to get back into the swing of things in competition.

And I remember at the time, I planned a whole ecosystem around it. I would train seriously. And I would go to tournaments and I would maybe even live stream my games like some other content creators had been doing. And I would sort of take you through the whole journey. And I would really put my best foot forward.

Like I would dedicate as much time as possible to training. Something that I hadn't really seriously done in 2021 and 2022 when I was making videos and losing a lot of games and being really upset. And I was like, I'm going to really, really do this. And it wasn't.

Yes, I had the Patreon, but the goal of the series was not really to monetize. Like, the Patreon wasn't such a substantial chunk of Gotham Enterprises that, you know, it was something that I... It's not like I created the series to do the Patreon.

I just thought, if I'm going to travel a lot and play tournaments and have a lot of instructional content with Grandmasters, might as well let people enjoy it. That was sort of my thought. And so I trained. I trained pretty seriously. I was taking some lessons.

as you all know, with Artur's next chance. And I will talk a little bit more later in the video about our future training sessions. And I went to Madrid. And obviously, first and foremost, I was in Madrid for the clash of claims between Jose Martinez and Vladimir Kramnik.

But then I started the tournament with an unbelievable result. I beat the highest rated player in the section with the black pieces in the first round. And much like I have recently, Tomas ended up having one of his worst tournaments. Maybe it was as a result of that first round game.

Maybe it was just... where he was at in terms of his chess or life in general. But it sort of happens. Even if you're a 25-35 GM, and Tomas is a great player.

But for me, I couldn't imagine a better start. And then in the next round, I drew Pepe Cuenca, and I, a few rounds later, defeated the only remaining Grandmaster in the section. And I remember I was showing up to these games, and I was pretty happy. Like, I was pretty excited. I was happy to play.

I was nervous. And there were problems, like... The chess club that we were playing at, Ajedrez con Cabeza, it was a very nice chess club, but it was a little crowded. It was hot. It was Madrid in June.

It wasn't extremely comfortable, but still, I was playing, and I was with my friends there, and we would go get Cuban food and Spanish food after the games, and Eric Rosen was there, and a Kremling was there. We were having a very fun time. I ended up a game away from, not even a game, I ended up a few good moves away from a Grandmaster Norm.

I was winning my 8th round game against Julio Suarez, who also was playing for a Grandmaster Norm. It was unbelievable. I don't know why I played that well in that tournament, but what I learned about myself, really my whole life, is I'm pretty streaky.

And when I win early in tournaments, like I did against Tomas, it skyrockets my confidence. But also at the time, I was trading a lot. In fact, the first like...

few months of this, look how much I was training. I was, you know, doing a lot of exercises, tactical exercises on the website, Chess Tempo. You can actually see some of my calendar here.

And I was pretty actively reviewing my variations in my Karo Khan defense and trying to strengthen my opening repertoire with the white pieces. And I think some of the momentum carried over into tournament number two. But tournament number two was unique. It was an I am Norm Round Robin here in New York City. There was actually nobody in my section who was a young teenager.

meaning a potential person that will gain 200 to 300 points in the future. And also, I got a bit lucky. Like, in the first round of the tournament against Danila, I was in a very bad position.

And in the third round of the tournament, I was completely lost against Novik. But I ended up not losing either of those games. Then I ended up playing a great game against Megan Lee, and the rest was history. I just caught fire, and I started winning, you know, almost every game. I couldn't beat my, I think, sixth-round opponent.

While up a queen, which was kind of hilarious. Sevenovich, that was the game that was completely bananas. And I was winning, but then I, you know, messed it up. But I ended the tournament eight out of nine. I mean, that was, I've never, I've never like scored that many points in a tournament ever.

And I was up to 2370, 48 rating points. Just incredible. Absolutely incredible. So I decided on whim to just go to Italy, play another, you know, tournament in Europe, which started not so well. You know, I...

drew a lot of games against lower rated players. I was jet lagged. It was definitely like a stupid and rash decision to just leave and fly to Venice like eight and a half hours and then drive an hour and a half into some, you know, some Northern Italian village.

But that tournament I ended with one of the greatest wins of my life. And also I played the game of my life where I had the bishop and the four pawns or whatever versus the queen, which was, which was unbelievable. Like I couldn't believe that that had happened. And I won the last game of the tournament against the Italian Grandmaster Alberto, David.

And I mean, what a game that was and what a tournament that was. I met so many people. It was a huge open, 500 people.

I've been playing all these closed events. But, you know, and that was a really special trip. But I didn't gain any rating in that tournament. Although at some point I was down about 12 points. So that was a bad tournament and I bounced back in a great way.

And then the problem started. You know, in August, I joined a tournament here in New York City. And, you know, I didn't know what to expect. But I certainly wanted to have a strong showing. And I wanted to continue my momentum.

And I think the famous quote, I think Mike Tyson said it, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, is really what happened. I was stunned when I lost my first round game to Jurebek. But what made it much worse was that in the second round, I had a very tense battle against Chirilov, who is a strong player and will likely be an IM and maybe a GM in the future. And I blundered late in that game. And I started the tournament 0-2.

0-2 quickly became half out of five. And it was almost zero out of five because I was completely losing in the third game. I don't really know what happened.

Now. Of course, I support the philosophy of, you know, up and down and so on. And you're going to win. You're going to lose.

Hot streaks run out. I'm a streaky player. You know?

If I have a bad result early, the whole tournament might be a wash. And, I mean, I barely made it out of that tournament alive. And I ended up changing things in that tournament, too. Like, I didn't stream one of my games. And I, you know, I didn't play with a camera.

But I was streaming all of my games before that, and I did fine. So I started kind of messing with my routine a bit. And I undid a bunch of the gains that I had gained, you know, previously.

And around that time, I would say the Chesley team, which is led by me. Chesley isn't a company that I am an ambassador for. I own Chesley. That's why I'm very excited to promote it to all of you.

Because it's not like somebody is making money off of my promotions. I'm sharing and building. one of the best educational platforms for chess, in my opinion, if not the kind of premier educational platform. And at that time, we sort of decided we want to relaunch the entire thing.

We want to redesign the entire thing. And I knew that that would mean that my commitment to training would sort of go down. And so for the next one or two months, I said, I'm not going to stress so much about the results. I'm not even going to stress so much about the lessons.

I felt like I'm going to take a little bit of time off after. brutal tournament, really, really brutal event, and I'm just going to kind of play for fun. And I sort of did.

I had the tournament in Sweden, the match against Pia Kramling, the Battle of Generations, an awesome event we put on with Anna Kramling, of course. And in that event, when I lost the first round, I couldn't sleep. That was probably as close as I've ever been to a panic attack.

It's not a laughing matter. I mean, people suffer from panic attacks. But I remember laying awake at three in the morning.

My wife is asleep already. And I'm having this crisis. Like, I'm just going to lose every single game in this match. I don't know why I signed up to play Pia.

Like, I'm so close to, like, a full-blown meltdown. You know, on the heels of the last tournament that I had played. And the pressure. And all the comments. And all that stuff.

And, you know, there is a timestamp in the video player about Hikaru and whatnot. But, uh... That stuff all started like, I started like really thinking about that stuff. I ended up stabilizing the match. I kind of tricked her with an opening the next day.

And then we had a couple of closed games. And throughout all those classical games, I doubted myself every step of the way. I really felt like maybe how Ding Liren has expressed his self-doubts and struggles, you know? And that's how I felt when playing Pia. But it felt like I was shackled to my chair and I had to play the game.

And I just had to play the best moves that I could. You know, and I messed up a winning advantage ultimately in the fourth game, but I managed to win it on time, which is not really how I wanted to win, but it's how I won. I managed to play better chess on the Rapid.

I think I played my best day of chess on the Rapid, and I ended up winning the match after we had a close blitz. But, you know, after that match, I really thought I reignited just the level of excitement for the game and just playing. playing, enjoying, having my pieces talk to each other during the game without, you know, being under the influence of any substance.

And so then I did a four-round substitution in New York right after that. That was my fifth competitive event. I played four games.

I played my first Sicilian, you know, against Isik Can. And by the way, since that game, Isik became a Grandmaster. He got a Grandmaster norm a little while later.

I had this game against Brewington Hardaway, one of America's newest Grandmasters, where I was upper rook, but he was attacking me. And then it was a checkmating attack. And, you know, I could have defended, but I sort of panicked. And then even that tournament ended with a horrible taste in my mouth, with like one of the worst performances I ever had. Like, as far as I'm concerned, where I just played a game where I self, you know, I self-doubted myself every step of the way.

I was so, so, so upset about how I played that game. Not that I even lost, just how I played. And so then I spent time just building Chesley.

I went hermit mode for about three months. I didn't do any lessons. I didn't really do any puzzles.

I just focused on Chesley. And when I sort of emerged in January after we had launched it, I came back. I started reviewing openings. I was doing a little bit of training. And I thought, look, the last time I played an I Am Norm Round Robin, I got eight out of nine.

I don't expect to get eight out of nine, but I'm going to have a strong showing. And I got a totally winning position in my first game and blew it. And then I lost the second game to... Ryan, and he ended up getting an I Am Norm. He got his first I Am Norm.

He will probably have the title within a year, maybe within a year and a half or two years. I didn't really feel unconfident during these games. But what I did feel for the first time was almost a level of hangover from my last bad tournament. And once I got to like half out of three and half out of four, you know, that's why I said what I said.

And this will sort of be a bridge now to some of the other stuff that I was saying. It finally caught up to me that I have. a top three player in the world, I don't know if Hikaru is number two or number three, watching every step of the way, live streaming, making recaps.

And since I restarted the journey, it has been a constant question stream of have you seen what person A has said about you? Have you seen what person B has said about you? What about this person's comments?

I mean, sometimes I just open up YouTube because I want to watch like UFC press conference. And it's like, here's what person X or Y or you know, A, B, C, D, F, G, things about Gotham's Road to GM or like, and I was like, man, when I started this journey, I really like, I guess I should have anticipated it, but I really just wanted to like train, play, take you all through the process, make recaps about the games and not have to answer things like, did you see the Hikaru clip where somebody asked him if he thinks you can be a grandmaster? And he says, no, but that's just clickbait.

I mean, he kind of elaborates that I have too many commitments and that's sort of, that's really, yeah. I mean, if I went radio silent, you never saw me again, and all I did was train chess, my chances of becoming a Grandmaster are higher than they are now, certainly. I'm not going to do that.

And that's, you know, that's sort of part of the problem. But during this tournament, I really was like, wow, this, I really hate this pressure. Like, I, I'm not loving playing. Like, I... I just want to train and play and win or lose.

Like I want to learn and I want to keep training. But I felt like an animal at the zoo. And like you're like hitting on the glass, you know?

And I'm reacting. And that's why I said what I said. And I mean, you know, I'll chat with Hikaru. But I can't, I mean, that's not like a reason that I underperformed.

It's just... The thought of it just really started like getting me more rattled than normal. And the thing is, everything is better when you're winning.

When you're winning, you don't care. You win. You're gaining rating. Like, but the whole point of the Road to GM journey was not to obsess over the result.

And it's not like I was going to win eight tournaments in a row and become a Grandmaster. I'm going to lose. But it's so much more painful and like magnified and everything when I lose.

And I just feel... So stupid, you know, going through this and like bringing you like five losses in a tournament where I don't even know like what happened. I mean, I'm like slightly shell shocked myself.

And in this tournament, I started like getting those nerves like when you're freezing cold. That's like that's like anxiety, man. Like that's and, you know, now on top of having to stay off social media, I have to hire a sports psychologist or I have to work with a mental coach or I have to do. And it's just like. adding and adding and adding and it's you gotta ask yourself like why like what for what to get the title yeah it's the only thing i haven't really like achieved in chess right i became an im and there's gm i'm not going to be world champion or anything like that but i did have to sit back and go is that like where this is headed i don't i don't really know i mean i i i can't treat it like a full-time job and that leads me all Sort of to conclude by saying that's sort of why I said what I said after my second recap.

And the irony is not lost on me that on this channel, we make fun of, you know, low elo chess kind of as a meme. And, you know, we have guest the elo. And in that series, it's me clowning on chess games.

So obviously, I should not be sensitive to the fact that people are clowning on my chess games. I'm not saying that's happening. I'm just saying.

The irony is not lost on me. It's just one is a voluntary submission process and low elo chess is hilarious. And one is like, you know, working toward a life goal of a thing that you've been doing for 20 years very publicly. While the entire world in chess does not have subjectivity when they watch your games, they have objectivity. So they just immediately see to which degree you are an idiot.

It's very different, but I totally understand. And it just all caught up. It all caught up.

Which leads me to... Hans Nieman, who made a post. Basically, I'm not going to read it word for word. You can pause here and read it. But the summary was...

Uh, I will coach Levy and I would love to give him the opportunity. And, you know, um, I responded, I, I, I didn't think through my response. I responded to him while I was in an Uber and about three minutes from my house.

And I just typed something out and I sent it. And I immediately regretted when I sent it because I knew how it would be perceived. I basically said, we can film it. And if I become GM, I'll give you, you know, a hundred.

K because the joke was that Hans Niemann was charging me $100,000 for his coaching after the interview that I did with him. But I knew right away when I sent that, I was like, oh, people are going to think that I am not a serious player. I'm just doing this for content. And right away, I was like, man, that's social media.

You don't think through what you post. And then he made a video and he said some insightful things in the video. Take a look.

You have to manage your time better. because every single time he gets low on time, look what happens. And then someone loses the game. It's like Levy is living his own nightmare over and over and over again. And this is a complete telltale sign of like a psychological block that needs to be broken through by systematic analysis of all these mistakes and what's going wrong in the thought process.

Then he needs to play the right tournaments. Why on earth are you playing a round-robin tournament with other low-rated talented kids who are super, super hungry? First of all, American players are extremely underrated.

And he's playing against literally the Hunger Games. You've got underrated kids. You've got talented players. This is the worst possible tournament to gain rating in.

You need to go to Europe. You need to play Opens. And both Hans and Hikaru and many other Grandmasters make points. They're not groundbreaking points, but yeah, they make good points about my openings, about my middle gameplay, and so on.

The problem is... It's a mix of skill and things I can practice, but also the spotlight. And I don't know if you can train the nerves and the spotlight.

And maybe you can, and maybe in the long run I will. But that's a whole new element to this series that I really didn't think too much about when I first announced. And also even when I was having good tournaments. Because like I said, winning shuts everything. Shuts everybody up and shuts everything down.

You just win, and you keep winning, and you're in a very good mental space. So, will I take Hans up on his offer? I'm not sure.

Hikaru already seems to think so. When I haven't said anything except my tweet, and already he's my coach, apparently. And Hikaru won against him in title Tuesday. I think I will, but that sort of leads me to my next and final point, which is whether it's Hans, whether it's any coach, whether it's Nick Shantz, I'm going to train.

But I think the future for the Road to Grandmaster series, for my own well-being, is that I don't publicize the entire training process. And I want to go, as the kids say, into my winter arc. And I would like to get better, and I would like to train these things behind closed doors. Nowadays, you can't really play tournaments without them being broadcasted. But man, I would love that.

Everybody has DGT boards. Everybody broadcasts the tournaments. But man, I would love to just play somewhere in a quiet, small chess club.

Round robin. No broadcast. Bring the games to you after.

But maybe that won't even help. The truth is, I don't know. The truth is, I will train.

And I will do it quietly and I will make improvements. And when I'm ready to play again, I still have to make a decision yet how publicly I'm going to go about the whole thing. Because either I have to really work on my mental, I have to hire a mental coach and so on.

I have to take a shot of whiskey before every game that I, sorry, apple juice before, you know, every game that I play or what. But what's funny is that in Madrid, Last year, that's what I wanted to do. Here's a fun story about Madrid.

Maybe I should have told it in the beginning of the video. The night before the tournament started in Madrid, we played Blitzchess at the bar of the Gran Via Casino in Madrid. And I was, you know, I was sipping on a little gin and tonic.

And I won every game I played. I remember I beat, I made one draw, and I beat several title players. I won a Blitz game against Pepe. I won a Blitz game against Tomas. I was completely losing.

I won six games. I made one draw. Relaxed, blitzing, having a great time in person, live, over the board, not hiding my opponent's names.

Maybe that gave me confidence. I'm not sure. But in Madrid, I considered having a gin and tonic at every game before my tournament, and ultimately, I didn't need that.

So yeah, publicly sharing such a series. came with unintended consequences for my own well-being, which is losing publicly really is brutal. It's really, really, really brutal, especially if it happens consecutively.

I mean, I just, mentally, I'm not cut out to be an athlete. I cannot just only grind and focus on the sport and not pay attention to anything going on around me because that's not my primary job. My primary job is spreading the love of the game of chess, making tournament recaps, making interesting chess content, and building Chessly.

That is my main thing. And now the European tour and other things like that, which just engage people with chess. So yeah, I'll probably hit a Ponce, maybe do a couple of training sessions, see how it goes. I'm going to continue to work with our tours.

You're not going to hear too much about it because that's what I want to do. And then we'll see. Maybe if I get lucky, I'll find a tournament that's not broadcasted.

play it somewhere quietly on a beach somewhere, maybe one game a day. I don't know, but I want to like, like, I want to love playing chess and love the process and not think about all the results and not think about the broadcast and not think about until I'm ready mentally. I still think I can rebuild it, but I've already started thinking about things like man you know what if like when i'm 35 or 36 i have like a well then i'd have to have the kid now so i'm not sure but just thoughts like well what if like in the future i'm a dad in my 40s i'm a dad and i go with my son or daughter to a chess tournament that would be special i would actually enjoy i wouldn't care about the result at all at that point nobody's gonna watch this channel probably well hopefully maybe i'll have a pewdiepie arc on uh on uh on youtube where 15 years later people are still watching but these are the thoughts that i've had like i just want to love playing i'm i'm not an athlete i'm not cut out to to have my games uh dissected and scrutinized and and and yeah like i just i'm struggling to cope with that but i will continue to train and when i'm ready to come back and play maybe i'll tell you about it maybe i won't we'll see but i will be ready And as I saw from the tournaments last year, I can be a really, really good player when my head is screwed on straight. I'm thinking clearly and everything is good. So that's all.

The road to GM continues, but slightly less publicly. And frankly, the name of the series, as catchy as it is, it's just road to improvement. GM can wait.

It's just getting better, enjoying playing, winning games, and being happy about it. And not adding something to my life that causes such a degree of stress and anxiety. And not focusing on the results so much.

It took me about a day and a half to kind of gather all my thoughts. I hope I verbalized them. You know, I provided context about, you know, the Hikaru stuff. I'm not, like, upset. at him i i it's just sort of an unintended consequence of the whole thing that i really didn't see coming and um maybe i'll train with hans once or twice hey maybe i'll train with hikaru hikaru will do a training session with me that'd be kind of cool anyway i'm gonna end the video now european tour tickets in the comments and in the description get out of here

Transcript for:Journey to Chess Grandmaster Title

Transcript for:
Journey to Chess Grandmaster Title