What do you think about the Laker team now?

You follow the box scores of the games every day?

Just the Lakers.

You're kidding.

That is really a compliment.

I was pleased to see you smile at the top bar show because once the game starts, you have a game face.

You don't smile much out there.

I don't think you have to do things for money anymore. Correct. What's up, Laker fans? Welcome to the Laker Film Room podcast, brought you by the Blue Rard Podcast Network. I'm Pete, joined by Darius and Mike. And guys, when I was a kid, for a couple of years, I competed in chess tournaments. there's the U.S. Chess Federation that would put on tournaments where

it would determine your rating, right? And they'd publish a book on, you know, like how high

you were ranked or they'd publish a book on like the top 50 rankings for age groups and things

like that, right? And so I competed. I did this for about, I don't know, 18 months, maybe two years. And in one of the bigger tournaments that I entered in, which was in L.A., I did not grow up in L.A. I grew up on the other side of the San Gabriel Mountain. So going to L.A. was a thing, right? It was an event when you're not from there. In a couple of the bigger tournaments that I was in. There was a second division, kind of like how like if you were to enter Wimbledem. There's the men's doubles, women's doubles, singles, mixed doubles, right? All of that. There's different versions kind of of the game. And it was a smaller division, but it was called speed chess. And so normally when we think of chess, we think of two people deliberating, you know,

hand on chin, contemplating their next move. And usually in a sanction tournament, you have a

clock next to you. And every time you're done, you make your move, you hit the clock and it shifts

to the other person's clock. And it was either you had like either 10 minutes or 15

minutes in a normal game of chess. But in a game of speed chess, you only had one minute on each

side of the clock. And I was always fascinated by what that did to the strategy of chess in the

first place because kind of the tyranny of that ticking clock forced people to make decisions, quick decisions under pressure.

And a lot of times the aggressor in the match might make a move that if the other person had a

little more time, Dee, that they would be able to counteract that. But because that constant

ticking of the clock, and especially once you got into midgame,

and you see people, this was, I was a speed chess player, but it was an awesome sport to watch

because they'd move, hit the clock, move, hit the clock, and they're going back and forth like this.

...