Interviewing Hest1805

Recently, Hest1805 came over to my very new chanel of YouTube MoreMao Dice. As a result, we have this article, which is just a resume of what we talked during our meeting, and this video, with spanish subtitles : Interviewing Hest1805 (Subtítulos en español)

MoreMao
Hest, it's a pleasure to having you here! Can you tell us a bit about you? Where are you from?

Hest 
Yeah. So I'm Henrik or from the four player chess (4pc) community, you probably know me as Hest1805. I'm 24 years old, I'm from Norway, basically, from Capital outskirts. I've been living very close to the Capital, almost my entire life in a very densely populated area, almost a city. Right now I'm studying, I'm doing an engineering degree, focusing on physics, I'm in my fifth year, so next year I'll have my master's degree. I used to be a maxim chess player. But then I got into 4pc instead.

MoreMao 
Do you find time to play chess, maybe to train?

Hest 
To play regular chess? Well, I don't spend a lot of time on regular chess anymore. I like to spectate the big tournaments, the best players in the world, like I'm a big fan of for Carlsen, for example. Sometimes I play myself for fun, but I'm not really training regular chess anymore. That's something I did maybe five years ago, when I was in high school, and played a lot of regular chess, met a lot of tournaments. But these days, it's more relaxed the way i'm playing chess.

MoreMao
You don't play frequently or you don't play at all at this moment? (regular chess)

Hest 
This moment, not at all. I quitted competitive chess when I was 19.

MoreMao
Okay. But regardless, you see the matches and you follow your players

Hest 
Right You can say, I'm a chess fan, basically. And if I have friends who want to play with me or something, yeah, I can play some games. It's fun. I mean, I still appreciate chess I still like chess it's just not something I take seriously anymore.

MoreMao 
Okay. Even 4pc?

Hest
4pc is a bit a different matter. 4pc is basically what I do, I find it more interesting. I've been doing it now for several years. You know, I'm also an admin... So yeah, it's basically 4pc, that's my thing.

I learned chess when I was like, six or seven, I learned it at school: it had a chess program we can do after school, one day, every week. So I learned the rules there, kind of got introduced the game. And then when I was 15, ( I had a long break after that, I didn't really pay anything at all) I thought maybe I should try to get better at chess. And so I started practicing a lot and I got a coach participate in some big tournaments, some abroad, like I belong to Denmark and I was in Iceland. And that was like three years from 16 to 19. I played a lot of chess, lots of competitions, national competitions and stuff like that. I think I puted a lot of pressure on myself I really didn't like to lose especially classical chess like it was much much worse to lose than it was good to win. At some point I started to losing motivation, I didn't want to play anymore. And I just figured it: it got too serious. So it's better for me to just do chess for fun when I felt I'd like it and not to do a lot of competitions anymore.

MoreMao
At this moment, do you think that you're still like that or you feel like more prepared...

Hest 
Maybe I'm more mature, more able to handle defeats and not take it personally, you know? So that's very possible. I might do that in the future like I'm not ruling out that possibility. And about 4pc the thing with 4pc is that when you lose in 4pc you don't feel as stupid as you lose in regular chess, like this game is so complex, there's three other players so much happening that that is not like this, like regular chess is very like a duel between two players to see who's the smartest. Let's like make it easy for me to like, take 4pc seriously, while just having fun at same time, is that it's kind of chaotic and messy. And also stuff happening. So when I lose, it can be annoying, of course. But generally, I take it much less personally than I do when I lose in regular chess.

MoreMao 
Yes, I get it. And 4pc, how long have you been playing 4pc?

Hest 
Well, I joined it a bit more than three years ago, I think it is now when a friend of mine showed me this YouTube video with Jon Ludvig Hammer, a norwegian Grandmaster. He streams and makes videos. And he had a video where he was trying 4pc for the first time. And well, my friend knew that I was into chess, so he thought I might be interested. And I thought it was very interesting. So as soon as I saw the video, I decided to try the game myself. And then I started playing a lot. And I quickly became one of the highest ranked players. That was fall 2017. And it was free for all because back then FFA was the only mode. And that's what I was interested in.

MoreMao
When you started to play 4pc, who were the top players at that moment, who were the guy that or the people that you used to see?

Hest 
Yeah, well, things were a bit different back then. Because many of the players in the in the leaderboard weren't active players like they almost never played and many of them were also cheating. Like they paired up with one other player all the time. You know, we prefer all it's quite easy to cheats, like in general because if you have a friend you can try to play with your friend every game and just play together. And there was no mechanism for for for catching cheaters and and blocking them from game. So leaderboards full of people playing with a friend every game. And to be honest, I don't remember a lot of the a lot of the like big names back then. Remember, Wraku, who is now one of the big teams players was on the top of the leaderboard. I remember I think when I started playing he's a Polish Grand Master

MoreMao  
rook with a number... isn't it?

Hest
Yeah, it says there's a number I don't remember.

MoreMao
Me neither.

Hest
But later on. One player I remember in particular is Spaksi, a russian player that I've played many times. That was, for a long time, the only player that I felt was around my my level at the game. And they were fighting a lot harder for the top spot when when the admins were able to remove the cheaters.

MoreMao
At this moment, do you do you find that this have changed that we don't have so many cheaters or that admin can catch easier the cheater than before?

Hest 
Yes, sure. I think admin are very good at finding players that play together in FFA like, it's not that hard to spot, you know, because you just have to look and see if the same two players play every game together. That's very suspicious. So if you see that, I mean, I'm also an admin. So I'm used to doing this, you see that and you see that they tried to cooperate together, then that's not allowed. And they're probably going to receive playban. So definitely all the players now that are in the leaderboard in all the leaderboards are all strong players and legit players. And number of it

MoreMao 
At this moment, why aren't you playing that much FFA?

Hest  
Okay, that's, first of all, I'm not sure if that's a true statement. I don't think I'm playing less than I did before. Maybe I'm playing ta bit less... let's say I could play more but I think the game can be improved. Like I think there are flaws in the game. And I've been quite convinced about this for more than half a year. Like, first I thought that FFA and SOLO need some sort of improvements, I think FFA now is basically a worse version of SOLO; because to me, it doesn't make any sense that the fourth place loses a tone of rating. And then second and third like nothing... it doesn't really make much sense at all, it's often not very fair, like who ends up getting checkmated first? Depends on the other players. I definitely do prefer SOLO. But there's a completely different matter. That struck my mind, which was this spring, and I wrote a long forum post about it, about things that I think should be changed in FFA. And the main thing is that I think the king values is way too high. I don't think there's any reason why the king value should be 20 points, or even anything like high at all. And secondly, I also believe that the game would be very much improved if the capture the king rule was implemented in FFA. 

MoreMao
how many points would you propose for King?

Hest 
My proposition? Initially, it was to put it zero points, actually.

MoreMao
Oh, really?

Hest 
Yes, I think that's quite okay.

MoreMao
in that way, we are going to lose like the combinations like the tactic to do checkmate.

Hest 
But that's where I think you're wrong. Because I think that the king is such an incredibly valuable piece anyways... like losing your king is devastating. So if you have a tactical combination to check mate or take the king, is still going to be good, even if you're not getting points for it. So I don't think that's the case. We should try to create a game that works the best way possible. Like, well, the inherent problem that is, like you just said it yourself, which is at FFA, and SOLO is that you don't have to do much. So often the player who wins just sit and wait. And this can lead to very long games. Necessary very spectator friendly. So that's another aspect of this, as you said, with a lower value King, you will have to be more active, you have to join the action. And I think is big improvements. Yeah,

MoreMao 
I think, I don't know, 15, or 14, because  the Queen has already nine points.

Hest 
Right. But the thing with the Queen is the Queen is also very powerful piece. So you can generally expect to get nine points for queen. The problem with having a high king value is that you don't have anything to do with your king. Like that's something you notice, if you try to play the hyper Fiesta format is that even if you only have your king left, you still have something to do, you can still try to trade off your king for something. And so you never distortion game, you never have like a spot where you can't do anything, and you just have to sit and wait. And I don't think the current game is terrible. But in my opinion, reducing the king value just makes the game better.

MoreMao
I agree with you. I don't know how many points. But yes, that makes sense. Remember me how many points did you propose.

Hest 
Three points for king. And this exists now. So this is something you can play if you want, then you have the variant rating. And also quite recently, the possibility to play with that 10 point King was ultimate available. So if you think that three is a little bit too little, then you can try 10 maybe there's more to your taste, but it's all out there. 

I really recommend people to try to play with lower Valley kings and try it out and see how it affects the game because it is very interesting.

MoreMao
But wait, can we give value to the pieces as we want?

Hest 
No, no, it's only the king. It's only the king that you can choose. You choose between 3, 10, 20 and 40 for king. Other pieces you can't choose

MoreMao 
okay

Hest 
and then there's also the capture the king mechanic that you can also choose if you want to try so. Yeah, so it's out there. 

MoreMao 
Okay, I didn't know.

Hest 
Yeah, it can be hard to find. That's it. 

MoreMao  
Hest, at this moment, I am very interested to take the conversation to the point that you were new here in FFA. Can you tell us a bit about your experience, like, how did you grow up in this middle? And like the changes that have you seen? 

Hest  
yes, I mean, there are tons of things I can say about this topic. First, when I started playing, when the game was quite new, it was very, very different from the way it is now, at least at the higher rated games. First, you know, you try to play it like it's regular chess, because that's what used to try like normal chess openings. And see how it goes. I mean, that was I was trying, those people were playing the Queen's Paul first, and just trying to push it away. That was a very common strategy. I would say that generally, in the beginning were two things: one was to have a safe King. And the other one was to be able to  to get as many queens as possible, because nobody really knew about the sort of aggressive teaming openings that we know about today. At least nobody didn't practice it anyways. So it was all about, like finding the best King setups, you can notice that all the highest rated pairs, learn fast, how to make the king safe. I remember one thing that I learned quite fast is that, first of all, you want to go to the right with your King. Because the left pressure is very dangerous, with his checks the player on your right can join the attack. And also you want to try to get a close pawn structure before you take your king to the right or to the left.

MoreMao 
but that kind of knowledge or things that you have recognized, they belong as well to regular chess. Like if you want to castle to that side, or if you want to attack at the other side; you decide to close this flank or to open that flank... 

Hest 
Yes can set a principle is the same. But the pawn structures are of course, very different. And also in for purchase. castling is very risky. Like it's a lot more risky than regular chess. So So step one, like try to avoid casting unless you have to. And also, so that the fianchetto setup is very, very solid and safe. Having the extra layer of peace on the bishop in front of the king really helps. So all your prayers like men for the cattle system, everything safely. So that was like the very first initial things, I think. And then as the game progressed, maybe the first year I think people started being more and more cooperative with the opposite. They're like the player on the other side. And that could lead to like very big discussions in the community like because you know, it's free for all so you're not supposed to play the team game. It was very controversial because the problem with it is that it's hard to doesn't really break any rules, right? If you just cooperate with another player then it's like how can you How can you punish this right? And it just kept increasing like some players does this more and more. And also, because it was the rating system that was that's like the clear first place there's a good place their third place on the pier fourth place. If you were left in the middle, if the opposite player was knocked out first then usually have no chance because the other two players on the flanks were happy to get first and second place because both were good. So it became quite a cooperative team style game.

MoreMao
Do you remember MoreMao and Angelina at that moment? In my opinion, we started the thing of cooperation between opposites or we started to do it very systematically.

Hest 
Okay. Actually, I didn't know about that. Like I knew that Kali did this a lot like he was one of the most cooperative players. Mm hmm. I can't remember you doing it as much... at least in my games, but well, yeah, I remember some games with both of you. And especially Kali was very aggressive.

MoreMao 
Oh, yes.

Hest  
Which might have been correct in the unlikes. Turns out, it's interesting. I didn't like the cooperative style of play. And also, I didn't really know how to do it. Because I haven't learned any of the team tactics yet. I haven't played teams at all. So I just played like solid openings...

Full version at Interviewing Hest1805 (Subtítulos en español)