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Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

deadspin.com

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Re: Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

#41

Post by cortesoft »

necubi wrote: post #38
tux1968 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really seems to favor black by a rather large margin. Wonder if there are any stats on the win ratios for each color in this format. And how do they decide who get's each color?

Color is determined by random draw. I think most people feel that black has the advantage, but because there's no standardized timing it's hard to find relevant statistics. Armageddon is pretty much a thin chess-like veneer on top of a coin flip.

Most sports that have these 'last ditch tiebreaker' rules end up being coin flips in practice, or at least end up testing a completely different skillset than the normal game. Hockey and soccer shootouts are pretty much coin flips, and American pro football overtime is a completely different game. College football overtime is even more of a diversion from the actual game.

Whenever you try to force an outcome in a sport, you get further and further away from the original game.

Re: Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

#42

Post by pbhjpbhj »

gregorymichael wrote: post #9
mindgam3 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don’t understand is why Carlsen didn’t push for even a few more moves. Fabi was running out time, it was low risk for him to probe a little more and see if he could get something a little more decisive.

I don't understand either. But Carlsen was in the seat for all 12 games, and he knows what was going on in his own head. Maybe he was simply exhausted and didn't trust his decision. Maybe that particular position gave him difficulty in a match four years ago. For whatever reason, the best chess player in the world decided that offering the draw was his best move in that moment.

Is it possible he gets paid per game by a sponsor and was confident he could push through and win ... just as an alternative option.

If he were a narcissist, another option would be to bask a little more in the limelight.

Just throwing these out there, as we really don't know his motivation.

Re: Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

#43

Post by Jach »

tux1968 wrote: post #32
z92 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Armageddon : "the players proceed to a single game of Armageddon, where the parameters are set to so far as possible give each side a 50-percent chance of winning—White gets 5 minutes, Black gets 4 minutes, and a draw will make Black the World Champion."

That really seems to favor black by a rather large margin. Wonder if there are any stats on the win ratios for each color in this format. And how do they decide who get's each color?

A fairer approach might be to auction the time. i.e. each player bids on number of minutes (or perhaps 10 second intervals?), the highest bid takes black with the win-on-draw condition and that many minutes taken from the 5 minute time.

Re: Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

#44

Post by pbhjpbhj »

marvin wrote: post #29
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it not occurred to anyone that maybe Carlsen is just bored? It takes effort to tie 12 straight games between two world champions. Additionally, it is not in Carlsen's best interest to finish the tournament. During the tournament he is a super star. After the tournament he is just some guy who has a chess trophy (i.e. most people in real life don't care). Maybe he is just testing himself with some criteria that is…

As a non-chess-fan but casual observer, I would say that this is what sports showmanship really looks like. This is Petter Northug jr. (a fellow Norwegian; controversial cross-country skier and Olympic champion) playing chess. The big fame and sponsor money is not in _merely_ being the best in the world, it's in winning while pushing the creative limits of the sport and causing a fair amount of drama and controversy.…

I love the idea that he's so next-level that he's playing the game of 'playing the game of chess' (sic). That he's playing with a view not only of winning by also of winning at being a chess champion.

I used to wonder if the likes of McEnroe (80s tennis player) courted controversy with aggression that ran the boundary of acceptable behaviour in order to - win or lose - be the one everyone was talking about.

Re: Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

#45

Post by rtkwe »

tux1968 wrote: post #35
oh_sigh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't though, because black has 20% less time than white.

Yeah, but these guys blitz out great moves like crazy, I just don't think an extra minute is enough time to capitalize on any slight inaccuracies induced by the time pressure black is under. I could be wrong of course, which is why I was interested to know if there are any win ratios for the format around.

Black has two disadvantages starting though, second and additional time pressure. As for the win rates I can't imagine they'd be very good data because armageddon is the format of last result for tournaments so there's likely fewer games played. On top of that there's a lot of player variation under time pressure. Some (like Carlsen who has a rapid elo of 2880 and a blitz rating of 2939) have their ELO improve as you move to faster formats while others get worse (like, unfortunately for him, Caruana who goes from rapid 2789 to blitz 2767). The rating differences alone mean Carlsen is the heavy favorite to win going into these tie breakers well before we get to the armageddon round. [1]

I think given the probabilities in the 538 model Carlsen's decision makes a lot of sense. Why slug it out to a probable draw with the chance to lose out of nowhere when you can move to another format that drastically favors you?

[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decisi...

Re: Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

#46

Post by laxatives »

tux1968 wrote: post #32
z92 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Armageddon : "the players proceed to a single game of Armageddon, where the parameters are set to so far as possible give each side a 50-percent chance of winning—White gets 5 minutes, Black gets 4 minutes, and a draw will make Black the World Champion."

That really seems to favor black by a rather large margin. Wonder if there are any stats on the win ratios for each color in this format. And how do they decide who get's each color?

Its pretty unlikely to end in draw with blitz clocks, one player can usually gain a minuscule advantage and win on time if necessary.

Re: Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

#47

Post by pbhjpbhj »

oh_sigh wrote: post #36
EGreg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, it is not in Carlsen's best interest to finish the tournament. During the tournament he is a super star. After the tournament he is just some guy who has a chess trophy (i.e. most people in real life don't care). This!

No, it doesn't make any sense at all. The only people that care about Carlsen during the tournament are the same people who care about Carlsen not during the tournament - chess fans.

I don't agree. Having the focussed attention of those fans is different. Also there's a euphoria associated with being involved ina large event that means when it ends there's a sense of loss, normality is so humdrum it's depressing. I can see someone curtailing that return to normality by all means.

Re: Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

#48

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ubernostrum wrote: post #25
mindgam3 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don’t understand is why Carlsen didn’t push for even a few more moves. Fabi was running out time, it was low risk for him to probe a little more and see if he could get something a little more decisive.

chess.com is running a "tournament" of the top computer chess engines to play out the final position of Game 12 and see how it goes: https://www.chess.com/news/view/computer-chess-championship-...

How many milliseconds does that take?

Re: Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

#49

Post by jammygit »

gojomo wrote: post #40
scrooched_moose wrote: post #3

If anyone doesn't know, "Armageddon" is a type of chess game that guarantees a victor; it's not just a click-bait title. It's the last tiebreaker after a series of other Rapid and Blitz games. (all this is covered, just way at the end of the article) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess#Armageddon fivethirtyeight has been covering the tournament and their rough calculation gives it a 1:5000 chance of making it to…

It might spice-up the whole match to have this final-someone's-gotta-win tiebreaker before other tiebreaker matches, and then hold the result "in case it's needed". That'd be in the same spirit as this recommendation to have Soccer penalty-kick shootouts before overtime. https://slate.com/culture/2016/06/how-to-fix-the-penalty-sho... That is: you know who will win if all other tiebreakers draw, giving the side which…

It would also encourage the winner of that game to play extra slow and defensively for a draw, but still - the tradeoff might be neat

Re: Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

#50

Post by dfan »

gojomo wrote: post #39
tux1968 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really seems to favor black by a rather large margin. Wonder if there are any stats on the win ratios for each color in this format. And how do they decide who get's each color?

It could make sense to instead let the players bid for black (ie, winning draws), in units of time-differential, similar to this idea for auctioning off 1st possession in a USA-Football overtime by starting yard-line: https://slate.com/culture/2009/01/why-the-nfl-should-replace...

This has been tried (I think for some US Championship tiebreaks), and I like it a lot. If memory serves, the winning time bids for Black were quite low; people really value draw odds.
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