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Carlsen–Karjakin World Championship

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Re: Carlsen–Karjakin World Championship

#21

Post by conistonwater »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #19
conistonwater wrote: post #11

This time around there was an unusual amount of match strategy involved. In fact, what's interesting is that they always played the Spanish or the Italian, but in the one game where Karjakin wanted to (had to) win, he played the Najdorf. Peter Svidler mentioned a very interesting suggestion that the players should play the tie-breaks before the match, which should produce more interesting games (in particular, it sho…

> the players should play the tie-breaks before the match But then wouldn't the game before the 'tie break', essentially become the tie break in pressure/strategy etc?

Maybe I'm missing something, but I think not: the first point of it is that it will never happen that the match is even, someone will always be leading. So it affects even the very first game, unlike in the current set up, where the first game (Trompowsky?!) is not a real game. At the beginning of the first game, someone would already have to play like they are behind. It also means that a you (I think) don't get situations where a draw is "good enough", a draw always solidifies someone's lead. That said there might be other consequences that I don't see.

Re: Carlsen–Karjakin World Championship

#22

Post by logicallee »

zbik wrote: post #7

I whipped up a little demo illustrating Carlsen's decisive rapid game 3. It transposes the move sequence to show white's 13-move opening (Karjakin) followed by Carlsen's 13-move response as black, and so on through the game - using the longest possible sequences consistent with legal positions from the original game. http://transpose.fantasychess.co.uk/

hey that's incredibly clear! From your description I thought it'd be practically pointless - but actually you can see each sides strategy developing quite interestingly.

I actually saw people play out of sequence - some buskers or homeless or whatever people - just used to playing so many games against each other they'd get through the openings quickly by each person making several moves. It seemed too fast for me to see that they kept a correct pace, but maybe. I believe the games were very rapid. they stopped and started switching turns normally as soon as they were out of the opening. (so this refers to just a handful of moves at most.)

so with a bit of sportsmanship it's possible to actually play that way over the board with somebody who's cooperating with you to get through the opening quickly.

Re: Carlsen–Karjakin World Championship

#23

Post by jimmytucson »

conistonwater wrote: post #11

This time around there was an unusual amount of match strategy involved. In fact, what's interesting is that they always played the Spanish or the Italian, but in the one game where Karjakin wanted to (had to) win, he played the Najdorf. Peter Svidler mentioned a very interesting suggestion that the players should play the tie-breaks before the match, which should produce more interesting games (in particular, it sho…

As Greg Shahade pointed out[1], Kasparov had to beat Karpov to win the title, as did all the other world champions in the 20th century. He argues bringing back draw odds for the defending champ would lead to more interesting matches.

[1] https://gregshahade.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/how-to-make-the...

Re: Carlsen–Karjakin World Championship

#24

Post by jotvid »

CalChris wrote: post #4
slm_HN wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The queen sac itself was a mate in two, which is pretty simple even in a rapid game. However he did need to see the mate in 8 before committing to Rc8+. In the end Magnus was much stronger in the rapid games. He was winning in three of the four even though he let one slip to a draw.

Game two of the rapids playoff was a fine ending by Karjakin, a stalemate after sacking everything. But MC the WC was much stronger at rapid.

Yeah - the endgame stalemate was remarkable https://www.jotvid.com/video/3ecaDYWXoZc?ct=9450

Re: Carlsen–Karjakin World Championship

#27

Post by CalChris »

stouset wrote: post #14
conistonwater wrote: post #11

This time around there was an unusual amount of match strategy involved. In fact, what's interesting is that they always played the Spanish or the Italian, but in the one game where Karjakin wanted to (had to) win, he played the Najdorf. Peter Svidler mentioned a very interesting suggestion that the players should play the tie-breaks before the match, which should produce more interesting games (in particular, it sho…

> Peter Svidler mentioned a very interesting suggestion that the players should play the tie-breaks before the match, which should produce more interesting games. This is the first such suggestion I've heard that I actually like.

Since 2003, MLB determines home field advantage in the World Series by the winner of the All–Star Game. Not same but similar.

Re: Carlsen–Karjakin World Championship

#29

Post by tzs »

conistonwater wrote: post #11

This time around there was an unusual amount of match strategy involved. In fact, what's interesting is that they always played the Spanish or the Italian, but in the one game where Karjakin wanted to (had to) win, he played the Najdorf. Peter Svidler mentioned a very interesting suggestion that the players should play the tie-breaks before the match, which should produce more interesting games (in particular, it sho…

I'd like to see tiebreaks first in soccer.

Yasser Seirawan had an interesting suggestion. Make championship matches 13 games, not 12, with the challenger getting white 7 times and the defending champion getting white 6 times, and with the championing retaining the title in the case of a 6.5 - 6.5 tie.

One nice thing about Seirawan's suggestion is that it does not involve rapid or blitz. Many people don't like the idea that the world championship of classical chess might be decided by rapid or blitz games. (There are separate championships for rapid and blitz, held annually).

As computers get better and better at chess, I wonder if it might become reasonable someday to use computer evaluations to break ties? There has been work on using computer evaluations to measure how accurate and strong chess players are. Computer scientist and IM Ken Regan has done a lot in this area, both in the context of trying to determine how strong past players actually were, and in the context of trying to determine when someone is using a computer to cheat.

For instance, in this match Carlsen had winning positions in some of the drawn games, but was not able to convert. I don't think that in any of the drawn games Karjakin ever had a winning position. I suspect that if polled, most GMs would say that Carlsen outplayed Karjakin during the classical portion of the match. With computers, that could be put on an objective basis.

Svidler is an interesting commentator. He has a quick and sharp wit. During one of the earlier games, when Eric Hansen was co-commentator [1], they were talking about IM Lawrence Trent (Fabiano Caruana's manager). I didn't catch all of it as I was listening while working, but apparently Carlsen was playing an opening line or something that Trent doesn't think is good. Hansen said something like "I wouldn't want to be Lawrence Trent, betting against Magnus Carlsen". Svidler immediately shot back, "That sentence was too long".

[1] This was on chess24.com. Svidler and Hansen were commenting for them, not for the official broadcast. For the later part of the match, the chess24 commentary was Svidler and German GM Jan Gustafsson. Both the Svidler/Hansen and the Svidler/Gustafsson pairings were quite good.

Re: Carlsen–Karjakin World Championship

#30

Post by NhanH »

tzs wrote: post #29
conistonwater wrote: post #11

This time around there was an unusual amount of match strategy involved. In fact, what's interesting is that they always played the Spanish or the Italian, but in the one game where Karjakin wanted to (had to) win, he played the Najdorf. Peter Svidler mentioned a very interesting suggestion that the players should play the tie-breaks before the match, which should produce more interesting games (in particular, it sho…

I'd like to see tiebreaks first in soccer. Yasser Seirawan had an interesting suggestion. Make championship matches 13 games, not 12, with the challenger getting white 7 times and the defending champion getting white 6 times, and with the championing retaining the title in the case of a 6.5 - 6.5 tie. One nice thing about Seirawan's suggestion is that it does not involve rapid or blitz. Many people don't like the ide…

Computer evaluation would cut off all the "human" factors involving in a match, especially championship one. It is part of any sport that being slightly better is not enough, you have to be able to turn that into concrete advantage over the scores. To put it another way, "match strategy" is part of the game.

We know with reasonable certainty that Carlsen is the stronger player, thanks to the rating system. Championship match has always be about more than being _just_ the stronger player.

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