Chess engines didn't replace Magnus Carlsen, and AI won't replace you

Summary

Chess engines didn't replace Magnus Carlsen, and AI won't replace you October 22, 2025 I've been thinking about how Magnus Carlsen talks about using chess engines to train. He doesn't let them play for him during the game itself (that would be cheating), but after the game? That's when the real learning happens: he reviews his games with an engine, finds mistakes, discovers better moves he didn't see. Lately I've realized that's exactly the relationship I've developed with coding assistants. I don't let them commit straight to main (that would be reckless). But after they generate code? That's when the learning happens. Code review becomes like chess post-game analysis where I'm dissecting what the LLM produced, finding the subtle mistakes, learning new patterns I hadn't considered. How Magnus uses chess engines (and what developers can learn) After DeepMind's AlphaZero beat Stockfish, Carlsen studied those games deeply. In his own words: I have become a very different player in terms of style than I was a bit earlier, and it has been a great ride.Magnus Carlsen, Interview on learning from AlphaZero, Chess24, 2020 According to his coach, the change came from wild ideas AlphaZero uncovered: sacrificing pieces for long-term advantage, pushing the rook pawn aggressively, using the king as an active fighter.Peter Heine Nielsen, Carlsen's Coach on AlphaZero, ChessBase, 2020 Things human experts thought were unsound, but the engine showed they can work. The key thing: Carlsen isn't blindly memorising engine moves. He's learning why those moves work by reviewing them. He still plays the game himself, but with a broader vision. The engine is a coach, not an autopilot. That's the parallel I see with coding assistants. They can crank out solutions in seconds, show me approaches I didn't consider. But if I just accept suggestions without thought, I'm basically hoping Stockfish in my assReference to the 2022 Hans Niemann cheating scandal. After 19-year-old Niemann defeated Magn...