GM Vinay Bhat Bringing 'Centaur Approach' to New Chess.com AI Department

GM Vinay Bhat bounces in and out of the chess universe, but he may have finally found his perfect home. Unlike many American grandmasters, who either permanently leave the game after adulthood or grind it out for a lifetime without any steady employment, his journey has gone back and forth. Once the youngest master in U.S. Chess history, his on-again, off-again playing career has been interrupted by several stints in the professional world, even once working for a company that gives digital health care consultations for cats and dogs.

But now, his worlds have collided. Earlier this month, Bhat was hired as the first Chess.com Director of AI and ML (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning). "This is like this is a match made in heaven," Bhat said his peers have been telling him. "This is like the obvious choice for me... Even when I wasn't playing chess, I still followed what's going on. And so I like that this kind of brings those two worlds together."

Together with three other AI/ML engineers and two interns, this new department initially will have three user-facing foci according to Bhat:

• Trust and safety/content moderation
• Coaching product
• Better and more human-like computer engines and bots

"We're trying to develop a sense of, 'What does it mean to play chess kind of like in a human in a way?'" Bhat said. "I do think that we will get to that point that a chess engine will pass the Turing Test of, 'Is this really a 600-rated player or is it a 600-rated engine?'

"If I'm lucky enough to be here [a long time] I hope to be able to expand beyond just those few areas," he said, specifically referencing Game Review and puzzles. "I think there's actually a lot of different applications... some of it I think maybe less AI and more just traditional machine learning." Bhat also explained that some internal processes will be improved by his team's work, with the goal of increased speed and productivity of developers. 

Bhat was born in California in the mid-1980s and so he is able to bring the mindset of a player who remembers pre-computer days. He is a firm optimist in the world of AI and believes that combining, rather than replacing, human creativity and ingenuity with AI will bring the best products to the public. He calls this the "centaur approach" and remarked that it will likely be the norm for the workplace, unlike in the chess world.

Bhat remembers watching the legal computer assistance chess matches held at the turn of the century (often dubbed "advanced chess"). GM Viswanathan Anand dominated the format, winning three consecutive tournaments in Spain from 1999-2001.  "You paired his chess ability, his intuition plus the strength of the engine, it was unstoppable," Bhat said.

Bhat didn't have the help of an engine or AI back in 2005 for this wild game, which he called one of his favorites. You might think this is the outcome of AI being asked to create a beautiful checkmate in 20 moves; but no, this two-knight mate actually happened! Here's Bhat's analysis of the game:

Nowadays those "advanced chess" events aren't held anymore since humans have become of a liability to engine play than a benefit. Even so, Bhat doesn't see any sort of doomsday event coming to the workplace, or a Hollywood-style AI-driven war with humans.

I trust that nothing we are working on at Chess.com will lead to the Terminator 2 scenario.

 - GM Vinay Bhat

"I'm a humanist... so far I don't see as many examples of AI truly replacing humans," Bhat said, noting that automated processes like assembly lines are the main exception. A lot of Twitter hype I feel hasn't converted into real businesses yet. AI is more of a tool, as opposed to a replacement."

As far as general AI programs playing chess on their own, they still can't hold a candle to legacy engines like Stockfish. This past summer, GothamChess was less than impressed with their ability, while GM Magnus Carlsen faced notorious "hallucinations" versus ChatGPT... and answered with humorous illegal moves of his own:

Getting back to both Carlsen and Bhat's peripatetic chess journey, the two actually played both blitz and bughouse once (you can hear much more about this on episode of "The Perpetual Chess Podcast"). Bhat remembers the former world champion's "extreme competitiveness" and laughed when recalling that Carlsen has even posted on social media about beating people in Mario Kart.

"He's what I imagine Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant to be in terms of competitiveness," Bhat said. During their social game, the crowd seemed to sense this too. You can hear how much quieter the cocktail hour becomes as the game intensifies:

Bhat has also played chess against luminaries like RZA and GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan, the 2300-rated Peter Thiel of Paypal, and strong players like GMs Wesley So, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, and Teimour Radjabov (his dream celebrity player to face would be longtime chess-playing NBA star Klay Thompson). Bhat also has some fascinating tournament games with several of his new colleagues. He even wrote some articles for this site in the very early days of Chess.com, including this one where he explains his short game with Chess.com CCO Danny Rensch. That game helped Rensch secure one of his IM norms, and another loss versus Rensch helped him secure another.

Maybe deep down he knew some of his opponents would be colleagues in the distant future, because he also played a short draw with another future IM and current Chess.com VP of Global Operations Dmitry Schneider. That game was from the 1998 U.S. Cadet Championship (for players under 16) and the two would go on to share first place. However, six years later, they rematched in the U.S. Junior Championship and showed each other no mercy:

Bhat learned chess from his mother and had another in-house sparring partner in the form of his older brother, who eventually got to around the 2000 rating and later played for the Harvard chess team. Bhat learned from game collections of older players like Paul Morphy, Adolf Anderssen, and Jose Capablanca. He made master at the age of 10, then a record, but admitted that chess was never his only focus as a kid.

Eventually, the public library classes he attended would be elevated to private coaching with GM Gregory Kaidanov. Bhat said Kaidanov figured out early on that he wasn't the most studious player, so he was taught the French Defense, not the Sicilian. Despite the part-time nature of the game, Bhat managed a tie for second at the World Youth (U-12) Championship in 1995, bested only by GM Etienne Bacrot. He followed with a bronze in the same section the next year, then a tie for third in the U-14 section two years after that.

Shortly before his 16th birthday, Bhat became an IM, but progress came more slowly after that. He did win the California State High School Championship four times, but said he basically stopped playing his senior year and eventually enrolled at UC-Berkeley. He only played two tournaments in four years while getting his degree in statistics and political economics.

After graduating, Bhat got reinvigorated with chess after he lost invigoration with his job at an economic consulting firm that did research for cases going to litigation. Even while employed, Bhat would use his time off to travel to Europe and try to furiously squeeze in three norm tournaments in three weeks! The tactic worked, as he finished off his GM norms by creatively stringing together events in micro-states like San Marino and Andorra.

He still needed the 2500 rating, and that would come in 2008 while living in the so-called "GM House" in the Bay Area of California. Bhat roomed with GM Jesse Kraai, GM Josh Friedel, and IM David Pruess, along with other titled players who passed through. Bhat explained that the four of them had different learning styles, which made studying a challenge, but ultimately it proved helpful. "I think a bunch of us probably we learned stuff there, but at the same time we weren't able to like apply it often until afterwards... I enjoyed playing and discussing positions more than just sitting down and trying to solve calculation problems."

Something else that had to be learned: Bhat said only two of the four could operate a dishwasher! He said he was in the "learned half" but tactfully declined to who else was in that cohort. "We actually came back from dinner on the first night together and it turned out the entire ground floor was flooded because somebody had put in Palm Olive instead of dishwasher detergent, and so there were suds everywhere!"

Bhat eventually got the rating and the GM title at the age of 23. After a few years, he moved out of the GM House, replaced by GM Sam Shankland. Bhat qualified for the 2010 U.S. Championship and competed a little more that same summer, but then left chess, again.

"I played professionally for about two-and-a-half years. I was making a living, but not a great living. I was admittedly probably a little bit mentally burned out. So I decided, hey, I used my economics background in my first job, [but] didn't love it as much. Let me try and use my statistics background...I got a job as a marketing analyst, and now I've played one classical tournament in the last 16 years."

He would go on to jobs with companies like that remote veterinary company; the delivery company Shipt (acquired by Target during his tenure), where he was head of data science; and Warner Music, where he had the same position and also worked remotely, like he does now with Chess.com. One big difference? Even though he's only been at Chess.com for a few weeks, he's already appreciating that nearly all of his colleagues are fans of chess. 

Bhat never stopped following chess. He played for many years in the US Chess League, which became the PRO Chess League. During one those matches, he battled back from a worse position to take over the initiative and beat GM Hikaru Nakamura:

His final game in the database is a loss to GM Fabiano Caruana from a blitz tournament that was held as a side event to the 2019 PRO Chess League Finals. He's not sure if that will be the last game of his career, but he did find it suitable as the last game in his book. In 2023, Bhat wrote How I Became a Chess Grandmaster, which chronicles his journey to the top title.

What about in his personal life? Does Bhat use AI programs outside of his professional job? Indeed he does. Bhat still likes to travel and often seeks advice on where to go. Just for fun, I asked him for a few more personal interests and then entered in the prompt: "Where should a grandmaster go on vacation that is a city with live music and vegetarian food?"

ChatGPT responded with Austin, Texas as the top destination, followed by Portland, Oregon and New Orleans, Louisiana. Bhat has been to more than 20 countries, many of them for tournaments, so if he recharges his chess career and his country count, ChatGPT also recommends London and Leipzig, Germany.