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What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

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Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#51

Post by trashtester »

soperj wrote: post #44
trashtester wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also argue that there is a source of ELO deflation going on. As the top level players all get better, theory evolves, people generally play better chess. A player with a rating of 2750 today might have beat Kasparov in his prime, simply because chess has evolved. In a way, it's similar to sports. Plenty of people today might have beat Carl Lewis at 100m 30 years ago, but they would probably not be considered…

> In a way, it's similar to sports. Plenty of people today might have beat Carl Lewis at 100m 30 years ago, but they would probably not be considered greater athletes. Same with Lance Armstrong...

I did remember Lance's drug use, but had forgotten about Carl's :)

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#52

Post by ChrisLomont »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #37

The whole 2900 thing is so strange. ELO is a relative scale. The number only makes sense in relation to the ratings of other. You could shift everyone or scale it differently and it wouldn’t change anything. What a poor goal. I view the whole thing more as a criticism of the sorry state of FIDE and the world championship that an actual serious goal.

One person reaching 2900 when it's not by changing the scale shows their relative position to others is a new record. it's a worthy psychological goal, like breaking a 4 minute mile even though a minute and a mile are made up quantities. Or scoring 300 in bowling, when 10 rounds is arbitrary.

Pretty much every record in every sport is arbitrary, yet people like to set goals for motivation.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#53

Post by icoder »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #52
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #37

The whole 2900 thing is so strange. ELO is a relative scale. The number only makes sense in relation to the ratings of other. You could shift everyone or scale it differently and it wouldn’t change anything. What a poor goal. I view the whole thing more as a criticism of the sorry state of FIDE and the world championship that an actual serious goal.

One person reaching 2900 when it's not by changing the scale shows their relative position to others is a new record. it's a worthy psychological goal, like breaking a 4 minute mile even though a minute and a mile are made up quantities. Or scoring 300 in bowling, when 10 rounds is arbitrary. Pretty much every record in every sport is arbitrary, yet people like to set goals for motivation.

Yes but the examples you mentioned are (in practice) absolute and can be reached independently of how others are performing. In that sense, ELO _is_ different (as also explained in another answer, he can reach 2900 more easily if others start performing worse).

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#54

Post by uf00lme »

icoder wrote: post #53
ChrisLomont wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person reaching 2900 when it's not by changing the scale shows their relative position to others is a new record. it's a worthy psychological goal, like breaking a 4 minute mile even though a minute and a mile are made up quantities. Or scoring 300 in bowling, when 10 rounds is arbitrary. Pretty much every record in every sport is arbitrary, yet people like to set goals for motivation.

Yes but the examples you mentioned are (in practice) absolute and can be reached independently of how others are performing. In that sense, ELO _is_ different (as also explained in another answer, he can reach 2900 more easily if others start performing worse).

Actually, he can reach his goal more easily if the people he wins against are closer to his score, so it helps if a few start perform better.

I wonder if it is a valid strategy if he drops out of World Championship title contests to allow others to increase their score by not losing against him. I would have thought that wouldn't move the needle much but I guess he needs everything there is to get to 2900.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#55

Post by squidbeak »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #37

The whole 2900 thing is so strange. ELO is a relative scale. The number only makes sense in relation to the ratings of other. You could shift everyone or scale it differently and it wouldn’t change anything. What a poor goal. I view the whole thing more as a criticism of the sorry state of FIDE and the world championship that an actual serious goal.

It's a measure of strength.

And the ambition to reach unprecedented strength in a sport is emphatically not an 'unserious' or 'poor' goal: it's the motivation of all sporting champions.

2900 might seem arbitrary, but it's a symbolic level under the rating system we have.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#56

Post by ritchiea »

kzrdude wrote: post #45
ritchiea wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically he could, I believe FIDE has a minimum rating increase of 1 point for the winner of a game with > 400 ELO advantage on their opponent. But if he broke 2900 by playing in minor tournaments against low rated amateur opponents no one would take it seriously that he broke 2900. Realistically many, maybe even all of the top players could push for record ELOs by only playing against players well below their lev…

So.. he has rating 2861 now and 39 points left to 2900. In theory he plays one 2500 player every month, and wins, for 39 months in a row and we're done? I'd be impressed if he won all of them (he doesn't usually do that.) His most recent game on 2700chess is a draw vs 2490 rated player Schitco.

The post I was replying to asked if he could play against 1800's and gain rating. Players in the 2500s are much more capable of forcing a draw. It'd be unlikely he'd gain much rating playing against them because wins wouldn't move the needle much and draws would be very costly.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#57

Post by hakuseki »

franknstein wrote: post #36
pxeger1 wrote: post #29

Knowing very little about chess, what is the current state of the best chess AI compared to human players like Magnus Carlsen?

Magnus Carlsen: 2864 Elo Stockfish: 3585 Elo "Elo suggested scaling ratings so that a difference of 200 rating points in chess would mean that the stronger player has an expected score (which basically is an expected average score) of approximately 0.75, and the USCF initially aimed for an average club player to have a rating of 1500." I guess that means that Magnus has expected score of roughly 0.25^((3585 - 2864)/2…

That is not quite the right calculation. To see this, try plugging 0.75 into the same formula to get Stockfish's expected score. The result is about 0.3545. If this were the correct formula, then the two expected scores should sum to 1, but in this case we only get 0.3612.

Instead, you should convert the 0.25 to "odds" form. 0.25 is 1:3 odds, represented by the number 1/3. (1/3)^((3585 - 2864)/200) is about 0.01905 (still in odds form). To convert this back to an expected score you would take 0.01905 / (1 + 0.01905) = 0.0187. So Magnus Carlsen's expected score is 0.0187.

Applying the same method to Stockfish, we have 3:1 odds, which is represented by the number 3. 3^((3585 - 2864)/200) is about 52.48. Converting back to expected score we get 52.48 / (1 + 52.48) = 0.9813. So Stockfish's expected score is 0.9813.

Our sanity check is to add 0.0187 + 0.9813. The result is 1.0, as it should be.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#58

Post by pmontra »

iopq wrote: post #31
pmontra wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the manner of victory, I make an example from the game of go, which being points based makes this case more straightforward to evaluate. In go it's either win or loss, there is no draw. You can win by one point or by one hundred and you still score only one point in the tournament table. Why is that? Because if you count to be losing by five points you could either resign (I'm assuming a game between strong pla…

In Baduk gambling in Korea, you pay for points, so you might expect people to just minimize differences to pay out less, but they end up fighting all game instead. This is because it's capped for resignation, it might be cheaper to resign if you're too far behind (why count and pay more?)

As a note, baduk is the name of go in Korea.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#59

Post by kwartz »

Hopefully the whole takeover of his (~8% stake) company "Play Magnus" (owner of chess24, chessable, etc.) by chess.com does not affect him.

There is a cringey announcement of the takeover on YouTube, including a TikTok video of Danny Rentsch dancing (to put it mildly ...).

The plan seems to be to draw Carlsen into that toxic sphere of influence. Chess streaming and the culture surrounding chess.com seem to be for the lowest common denominator.

Carlsen fit much better into the European culture of chess24, I hope he can ignore the circus and it won't affect his play.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#60

Post by tialaramex »

sgjohnson wrote: post #13
mpol wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lichess doesn't use ELO rating but a different rating system. And yes, I don't understand that difference either. About white versus black, there is some consensus that after about 20 moves, white's advantage is gone. I doubt that statement is supported by statistics. I guess the rating just assumes everyone plays white and black just as often, so it will even out in the end. (edit) By the way, if you are strong with…

> About white versus black, there is some consensus that after about 20 moves, white's advantage is gone. I doubt that statement is supported by statistics. That statement is supported by statistics, however, the problem with that statement is that the average chess game is 25 moves . except in top-level classical play. But it's not relevant, because virtually all experts agree that chess is a theoretical draw. It's…

I wonder if there's even a way to be sure of a minimum length? Like suppose I'm White, I know how to play Chess perfectly and so does my opponent. So (if the popular assumption is correct) we will eventually draw, but how many moves can I draw the game out for, assuming my opponent isn't willing to concede, but is trying to shorten the game ?
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