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Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

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Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#111

In the end, Carlsen is the man who knows the best how to win in chess. Regardless of all critics. He played the 12th game safe knowing he's a huge favourite in rapid and blitz. Like Kasparov and Grischuk pointed out today, every other chess player gets worse playing rapid/blitz but Carlsen is the only one who actually improves. Under these conditions it's more than sensible to move into the terrain where you have an…

I think they only pointed out that he improves relative to his opponent.

Grischuk pointed out that according to universal rating system that measures the gap for each category like rapid or blitz and apparently Carlsen is the only one who sometimes gets a negative number on blitz/rapid. Which is most interesting.•

But I agree even so relative to Caruana, whose gaps are much higher. He must have been aware of this.

http://universalrating.com/ratings.php

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they only pointed out that he improves relative to his opponent.

Grischuk pointed out that according to universal rating system that measures the gap for each category like rapid or blitz and apparently Carlsen is the only one who sometimes gets a negative number on blitz/rapid. Which is most interesting.• But I agree even so relative to Caruana, whose gaps are much higher. He must have been aware of this. • http://universalrating.com/ratings.php

He made a >joke< that maybe Carlsen should have a negative gap.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grischuk pointed out that according to universal rating system that measures the gap for each category like rapid or blitz and apparently Carlsen is the only one who sometimes gets a negative number on blitz/rapid. Which is most interesting.• But I agree even so relative to Caruana, whose gaps are much higher. He must have been aware of this. • http://universalrating.com/ratings.php

He made a >joke< that maybe Carlsen should have a negative gap.

oh, it's hard to tell when Grischuk is joking. It's true, he never had a negative rating: http://universalrating.com/player.php?PlayerID=16626

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#114
post #20
post #5

I’d like to offer a few thoughts on this match as a former internationally competitive player/US Cadet U16 champion, current ~2400 bullet chess addict, and someone who has played bughouse with Fabiano as my partner at the Sinquefield Cup in 2017. First, hats off to both players for a hard fought match. To Magnus for successfully defending his title, and to Fabiano for pushing Magnus right to the brink. This was an ex…

I am nowhere near you score, but I have heard many strong players stating that blitz is bad for you, and actually creates bad habits for classical.

I think these IM/GMs are forgetting what it was like to play chess when they first started out. Nowadays, they see the board as, well, IM/GMs, and it's a different experience from someone who's just starting out.

I'm terrible, terrible at chess, but at least I don't hang my queen or do other truly stupid shit in longer time controls. You can't even really start to play chess for real until you stop just giving up pieces and I think as long as you're throwing games that hard, I dunno if rapid/blitz is the best place for you.

Or at least, that's what I think you might have heard when you say you've heard "blitz is bad for you". Once you stop doing the truly stupid shit, then you can start learning chess for real, and maybe then it's better to do rapid/blitz.

I know in Starcraft2 there was a component of grinding that pros would recommend, but you can't really grind if you don't know how to do screen hotkeys, for example.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#115

In the end, Carlsen is the man who knows the best how to win in chess. Regardless of all critics. He played the 12th game safe knowing he's a huge favourite in rapid and blitz. Like Kasparov and Grischuk pointed out today, every other chess player gets worse playing rapid/blitz but Carlsen is the only one who actually improves. Under these conditions it's more than sensible to move into the terrain where you have an…

I can't argue with your first premise. Your following points, however, are less convincing.

"Like Kasparov and Grischuk pointed out today, every other chess player gets worse playing rapid/blitz but Carlsen is the only one who actually improves."

Even if Kasparov and Grischuk said this today (citation please?), it doesn't make it true. There are many players who get better playing rapid and blitz. Look at the trajectory of the Bay Area's own GM Daniel Naroditsky. Nakamura.

I suspect most of the blitz haters are people who simply haven't spent enough time to get good at it.

"Regardless of all critics."

To your main point, the critics weren't saying that Carlsen isn't the best. They were complaining because he is not acting with respect to the purity and beauty of the game. There is simply an aesthetic ugliness to offering a draw with such a crushing time advantage in a better position.

I'm not arguing that this may not have been good strategy, lose the battle, win the war, etc etc.

What I'm saying is that there is a war to be won that is different than a 1 or 0 point. It's the battle for hearts and minds, which is won not just through victory but through integrity and courage. You win hearts by showing hearts.

Magnus didn't win hearts with his mercilessly pragmatic approach to winning the world championship title. I still respect him as the rightful owner of the title of best chess player in the world.

But if we're going to employ the "good by association" logical fallacy with whatever Kasparov and Grischuk may have said today, why not actually just quote the champion Magnus himself?

In the press conference, he came out and told everyone that Fabiano earned the right to share the crown of world's best player in classical chess with him.

Who am I, who are you, who are any of us to disagree with that?

I also enjoyed the final a lot. But the fact remains that the beauty and spectacle 2018 World Championships of the world's most beautiful mind game was marred by a decidedly un-beautiful game in round 12.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#116
I'd wager 20% of Norway or more has been actively following these games. Everyone has been talking about it, the last few weeks the lunch at work has been mostly discussing the game the night before. All over the media. Biggest tv channel (NRK) showed the 15 games live, same for the biggest news page (VG) .

And this is nothing new, ever since the first time Carlsen was in a WC match Norway has been obsessed with chess. Some joke it's because we're so fond of slow-tv here. Both NRK and VG has made it like a panel/talk-show with a mix of chess experts and entertainers. The format works well.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#117

You may recognize RebeccaHarris from Lichess, but for those who don't: I'm GM Daniel Naroditsky, senior at Stanford and - like all of us - still wrapping my head around the massacre we just witnessed in Rapid. I had a feeling this would happen, though I have gotten the better of Magnus in bullet on Lichess with a mix of wild play and lucky tactics. Speaking of which, I've been involved in beta-testing the killer onli…

Correction: daniel@stanfordchess.org. Thanks for letting me know... too much going on today!

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#118

You may recognize RebeccaHarris from Lichess, but for those who don't: I'm GM Daniel Naroditsky, senior at Stanford and - like all of us - still wrapping my head around the massacre we just witnessed in Rapid. I had a feeling this would happen, though I have gotten the better of Magnus in bullet on Lichess with a mix of wild play and lucky tactics. Speaking of which, I've been involved in beta-testing the killer onli…

I think you might have dropped a 'd' from your email address, eh?

Thank you for the spellcheck

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#119

In the end, Carlsen is the man who knows the best how to win in chess. Regardless of all critics. He played the 12th game safe knowing he's a huge favourite in rapid and blitz. Like Kasparov and Grischuk pointed out today, every other chess player gets worse playing rapid/blitz but Carlsen is the only one who actually improves. Under these conditions it's more than sensible to move into the terrain where you have an…

I can't argue with your first premise. Your following points, however, are less convincing. "Like Kasparov and Grischuk pointed out today, every other chess player gets worse playing rapid/blitz but Carlsen is the only one who actually improves." Even if Kasparov and Grischuk said this today (citation please?), it doesn't make it true. There are many players who get better playing rapid and blitz. Look at the traject…

Kasparov had said that all players are worse in blitz, but that Carlsen gets least worst https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067826806823297029

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#120

I just want to give a mention to ChessNetwork on Twitch[1]. I watched many of the games of this series live via this channel, and it was great how the commentator had his own board to demonstrate the next few moves and explain the players' thinking. It was really interesting and relaxing. https://www.twitch.tv/chessnetwork

I agree, I saw a few of the games via his LiChess slot and I thought he did a phenomenal job in terms of making advanced chess concepts accessible to a very wide range of skill levels.

I also loved elements of the chess.com stream, especially when guys like Levon Aronian and Hikaru Nakamura come on, but there's something to be said for just a very high quality stream with somebody who both knows what he's talking about and is super humble and interesting.

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