Amateur Challenges Chess Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen | WSJ 

He learned how to waste 21 minutes of Magnus' time in one month

Forget about trying to beat Magnus, this guy thought he could actually memorize all the best moves from all possible games in chess.

Dude didn't even learn enough chess to understand that he had absolutely no chance against Magnus.

Anyone who is even slightly into chess probably laughed when this guy blamed his loss on his lack of time, or thinks he had Magnus “worried” at any point.

This must be stupidest thing I have ever seen.

"Keeping him a little bit nervous for at least 8 moves was a minor victory." Yeah Magnus was obviously terrified of the main line Ruy Lopez

“I solved a rubick’s cube, next month, I’m going to find the cure for cancer.”

Magnus expected someone who dedicated a whole month to chess. This guy dedicated his computer to a month of chess and learned the mainline Ruy Lopez in an hour.

The fact that he didn't learn anything in a month amazes me

This dude literally thought that he could memorize billions of chess positions

"I lifted weights for a month and challendged the world's strongest man to a deadlift competition." "Except I didn't lift, I studied anatomy to figure out the best way to do a deadlift. This revolutionary way of thinking might just be the edge I need." "At the end of the day, I didn't really understand what "bones" or "muscle" mean so I'm just coming here on my own. Excited."

POV: you’re scrolling down the comments section looking for more ways people have managed to roast and toast this guy

He sounds like he actually thought Magnus was worried about losing this game. He's completely delusional.

This is like trying to get better at math by remembering the numbers

Wow this man built an algorithm for chess? Genius. Absolutely lightyears ahead of everyone. Stockfish is shaking

Magnus has defeated Grand masters while eating chillies, being half submerged under ice water, (for a show match) with 1 min to 5 minute time odds, and has played and defeated 15 opponents simultaneously blindfolded. And then here is this guy.

Magnus Carlsen: Spends years training and utilises his natural genius to become the best chess player ever Max: *solves a Rubiks cube I thInK Im ReAdY

His approach is like trying to memorize every single name of every single person in the world, and then try to guess the name of a random person from Sri Lanka.

I think the reason why people give him so much hate for this video is it’s fairly insulting to chess. Like, another one of his 30-day challenges was “learn a backflip” it wasn’t “beat Simone Biles on a floor routine.” But when it came to chess he begins by saying he can design software to solve the game as if there haven’t been actual programmers and chess players refining exactly that sort of software for decades. Then he pays however much money for the greatest player alive, maybe ever, to play against him and be nice to him afterwards so he can feel like he wasn’t being a total clown the whole time. The entire thing just reeks of cringy, entitled arrogance. - Morgan Freeman

4:43 Dude wouldn't even know he got mated if Magnus didn't shake his hand

This must be what happens when parents tell their kids that they're special too many times.

Race with Usain bolt after a month of excercise.

I bet if Magnus just extended his hand to shake at any move, he would have believed him 😂

That was a huge effort from Magnus... to remain polite.

guy's impressive, in just one month made the cringiest video ever

"keep him a little bit nervous" oh. my. god. Magnus Carlsen that draw a game with Kasparov at age of 13 nervous against the fAsT lEaRnEr guy.

This was like watching a 5 year old in a boxing match against Tyson in his prime. "At that moment you got nervous, right!?" Exactly what a 5 year old would say.

"aha, Magnus is taking a longer time to play, he seems nervous!" Magnus Carlsen's brain: "Wasn't the guy who proofread Hitler's speeches technically a grammar Nazi?"

Nervous for 8 moves? Does this guy know what level Magnus is on?

This really comes off as disrespectful and pretentious.

Well, the result wouldn't have been any different if he had actually spent a month practicing chess. Or a decade.

some random guy who learned chess for a month: *I'm a GOD* the actual chess world champion and the best in history: *The knight moves like an L*

I just learned how to solve a rubiks cube, time to go 1v1 Lebron James!!

looks like this guy watched too much anime with op protagonists.

The most frustrating thing isn’t the notion that he claimed his computer could come up with the perfect game and it would go well with Magnus, it’s that he thought he could memorize all of the moves and all of the responses in a few hours.

The only time Magnus was nervous in this entire video was probably when they asked him why he agreed to this. He was probably going through a hundred different responses to say "I wanted to see how stupid this man is" as humbly as possible. And saying Magnus is a chess player and he wins a lot is like saying Muhammad Ali is a boxer and he punches a lot.

This is like saying "I'm 20 and tried to turn 22 in 1 month."

"Keeping him a little bit nervous for at least 8 moves was a minor victory." This is kinda sad. The guy really is completely delusional.

Magnus is actually an 'extreme learner' and a true 'genius' and obsessive personality who has spent his entire life doing every single month what Max just did for only one month. What Max did this month - obsessively learning the 'algorithm' of the Ruy Lopez - Magnus did when he was 7. Not only that Magnus has done it consistently better than hundreds of other 'extreme learners' and 'geniuses' and this dude thought he could beat Magnus!!! lol

“When I moved my knight, you kind of twitched a bit” That “twitch” was definitely the same reaction that Magnus had when Nepo played c5 at the World Chess Championship.

His mom told him he has a high IQ.

If he studied chess for a decade straight and managed to draw against Magnus I would be genuinely surprised.

Side topic, but notice how Magnus, introduces himself in the most humble way possible. 'I am _currently ranked_ No 1. in the world in chess'. This phrasing kind of ephasises that the ranking is made by others, and it won't last forever. It's quite elegant.

This Max guy is lucky Magnus is polite, if he challenged Kasparov the Karen of Chess, he'd been shamed and ridiculed to death

Max: He’s thinking, he’s nervous! Magnus: What should I eat for dinner?

"Keeping him nervous for the first 8 moves" someone needs to deck this kid

“I moved my knight here and you twitched a little bit” Magnus: tf are you talking about

He played ten players without looking at the board When he played kasparov at age 12 It was a drawn Nervous in first eight moves? He has entire games and possibilities Memorised with almost every opening you could have come up with

This guys ego is bigger than his brain

Even if this guy studied chess for literally the rest of his life, he'd still never be #1

"I learned boxing in 30 days and challenged prime Mike Tyson. He knocked me out in 12 seconds but he was nervous at the staredown"

Him next month be like: "Keeping Usain Bolt a little bit nervous for at least 10 meters was a minor victory" 💀

This poor guy probably thinks Magnus was worried about losing to him.

The reason why Magnus took quite long to respond to e4,is cus he questioned his decision on taking up the challenge

It’s funny how Magnus was explaining the game at the end and he was nodding along. He had no clue what was going on 😂

Everytime when im feeling depressed imma just watch this masterpiece

He actually believes he made Magnus nervous for even a second?!?😂

"I'm gonna try and beat Bruce Lee while watching WWE for a month straight"

This guy really figured it out. All you have to do to crush Magnus every game is to play like Stockfish...

Just to visualize the severity of the Dunning-Kruger effect: This dude thought he could memorize the outcomes of his chess program (for which already many, many programs exists..). This means memorizing Shannons number, 10 to the power of 120, possible states and their connections. It's absurd.

I like the part where we didnt get to watch the game at all

Legend says that his computer is still calculating algorithms until now.

I don't think Max understands the difference between beating the World Champion at chess, and becoming good at something. When he was able to solve a Rubik's cube in under 20 seconds, that was impressive, but the equivalent achievement to beating Magnus Carlsen at Chess in Cubing terms is to be able to solve a Rubik's cube in an average of 6 to 8 seconds which is, believe me, extremely far from a sub 20 second personal best. But there is an even greater discrepancy between Max and Magnus when you take into account how old Chess is and how precise every nuance has to be. Additionally, Magnus has been playing chess almost all his life, and I don't doubt that even if Max intensely studied chess for that entire month, that Magnus has studied it many times in an even more concentrated time per month period during his whole career.

I remember reading this story when it first came out and thinking, “Wait, so…. Some over-confident dude thought he could beat Magnus, and didn’t win…. Why is this a story?”

Just did a backflip, time to solve *Rienmann's Hypotesis*

Max: "You were very serious, I throwed my punch there and you twitched a little bit." Mike Tyson: "Yeah yeah yeah."

This challenge was absolutely laughable if you even know the smallest amount of chess skill you know that this guy playing someone even a quarter of Magnus’s skill level could beat him 10 times out of 10 probably blindfolded. It was interesting to see unfold but the way he approached this was nothing short of idiotic. Have a little respect for the game. You can dedicate 30+ years of your life doing nothing but playing chess and still be no where near his skill level.

"I'm an obsessive learner, I have one month to memorize these algorithms." "I'm three hours from the match and have nothing memorized."

"When i moved my knight here you kind of twitched a little bit" It's funny how he has the audicity to say this to a chess world champion.

He should've made his 30 day challenge to achieve a 1000 rated elo and that would've been sufficiently impressive on its own

This video has zero dislikes so i assume this is probably the smartest chess video on youtube. Am i right guys?

ELO 2835 vs EGO 2900

"Unfortunately I ran out of time" Dude, you got mated, and didn't even notice it. Magnus had to extend his hand to you for you to understand it. Usually it's the loser that extends his hand to admit defeat.

I've watched this vídeo for the first time maybe 2 or 3 years ago. At the time, I was starting to get interesting in chess. Until to day, I play and study chess. I'm a regular player, maybe intermediate. And today I can realize that this challenge was totally unreachable, also disrespectful. Even the approach, which involved memorize (!) all positions, is computationally unpractical.

The fact that they didn't even use a proper chess clock tells HOW SERIOUS THIS WAS😂

Just sad that Magnus did not try to scholar mate this guy

Magnus checkmates this dude Him: I raN ouT oF tImE

Dude is saying he lost on time when he got mated

Lesson learned to this guy, Playing chess is lightyears away of playing rubiks cube.

Magnus when he is in public: "Oh no the first ten moves were really good" Magnus at home at his computer: "That was a really stupid move"

Imagine looking at Magnus in the eyes and telling him your one move made him twitch with nervousness.

He could have hired some high level gm coach, learned the basic ideas, played a lot of games with the coach’s students, THEN use an engine to try and understand how he’s messing up, and then after a month lose to carlsen. I think people would have appreciated his efforts

What would’ve been funny is after Magnus they brought in a 1200 rated 11 year old and said “here you go Max, let’s give you an opportunity to make yourself look like more of a clown”

That “ twitch “ was him waking up from his long nap after it took you 21 minutes to make a move

Max not only needs to learn what Stockfish is, but also look up what the Dunning-Kruger effect is because he's the walking embodiment of it

In this guy's head he's the hero. Meanwhile the whole venue is in awe of the GOAT's presence

He completely wasted Magnus' time

The fact that magnus even entertained this is hilarious in itself

Bro didn’t learn anything for a month except the main line of Ruy Lopez

Bro really fired a water pistol at the sun

Knowing Carlsen for the humongous troll that he is, he agreed to this with the sole purpose of publicly spanking this guy. Which he totally did.

He’s the kind of guy who brags to everyone that his mom said he’s smart

The idea of overcoming 12 challenges in different fields is interesting, but he should remain realistic in his challenges. Even a genius who started studying chess one month ago wouldn't be able to beat Magnus Carlsen. First of all, he's also a genius. And he's a genius who studied chess his entire life as a full time job. And he's a genius who dedicated his time to study something that he already had a natural talent at. Only a GM chess player has a chance to win against Magnus Carlsen because even the world champion cannot win all games. He's the world champion because nobody can win as much as he does, but pretending that even a genius who started playing chess one month ago has a tiny chance of beating him, it's ridiculous. Even if Magnus was sick that day, he could win easily.

Learning one skill in one month is like learning a sentence in all the world languages and braggingg you speak every language. And knowing one sentence in Norwegian you came here to have a conversation with Magnus and he didn't understand a word you said

"Making him nervous for the first 8 moves was quite a victory" if you only played a trash-talking Carlsen...

This is an insult to chess grandmasters everywhere.

Legend has it that his "algorithm" is still chugging away to this day.

Who else keeps coming here just to see how brutal the new comments are? :D

It’s admirable how polite and patient Magnus is with this “dog ate my homework” fool

This is an indirect insult of the GM's who haven't yet defeated magnus