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Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

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Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#51

Post by mythz »

I enjoyed the entire match and was surprised to see Ding putting up such a good fight given his poor form going into the match and Gukesh's great form after leading India to gold at the Olympiads.

Ding was inconsistent at times but had moments of brilliance where he played like an engine, unfortunately he also exhibited poor time management throughout the match and failed to capitalize on his chances where he instead seemed content to play for draws whereas Gukesh would take every opportunity to play on, even when it would require taking a slight disadvantage.

Unfortunately the last game was lost more than it was won, as Ding was looking for every chance to draw where he gave up a pawn in order to trade queens and a pair of rooks to go into an equal pawn down end game, which he eventually blundered under time pressure. It's a common sentiment in chess that to get a draw you have to play for a win, ultimately Gukesh's tenacity to keep games going and applying constant pressure eventually rewarded him as history's youngest Chess World Champion.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#53

Post by MrMcCall »

verbify wrote: post #47
david-gpu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those statistics blow my mind. For reference, Bobby Fischer became a GM at fifteen.

Online and computer chess have changed things. 12 year old kids generally can't travel to tournaments, but they can play against other strong players or against the computer online. Fischer lived in New York, and therefore could play in the Manhattan Chess Club.

Yes, they amass thousands upon thousands of games at a very young age. I did the same programming my C64 in 8th-10th grades. The hours just fly by, doing what you love.

One other factor is that 3500-level chess engines are freely available for anyone with the net to analyze every situation, every move.

And then there are the streamers like Hikaru who teach chess so brilliantly. He is a true one-off, to be that top-level and able to live-comment his own blitz games. It is an underappreciated and completely unique talent, and enlightening for the chess afficianado.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#54

Post by kamaal »

eterm wrote: post #23
zwnow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listening to chess event commentators it's all sequences

Outside of the opening, Chess players tend to call them combinations, and it's not really memorisation as such, it's pattern recognition, and it's a very difficult skill to master. Outside of the opening, it's not rote memorisation, it's a mix of pattern recognition and calculation. You have to spot familiar patterns, but from a "distance", and calculate whether the differences in your specific instance are crucial o…

>>Chess is incredibly difficult.

Its not exactly difficult. Or more precise, It can appear difficult as people don't show how the work is done.

You see this even among the Math people as well. It appears as pure magic. But in reality its mostly understanding what the axioms and rules are. Then starting at some point, and making the most smallest atomic change possible to a thing and seeing it its consistent with the rules. Else move to making new change(s) and test if it works/consistent with rules. This can resemble working down trees of changes.

At the end its basically having the patience to sit for hours, and then days full of such hours- And then work things on paper(paper work). At the end you will find yourself with lots of paper work, basically trees of decision branches, that you made while making small changes.

Think of it like a trial of large change log. And forks.

When people see this from the outside, they only see the start point to end result, not all the decision trees. So there is a tendency to imagine the Math guy thought up a perfect solution in exact number of steps. The paper work is hidden and it all looks like pure magic.

When it comes to chess, more top people need to come out and show how they are working through their decisions. Their prep work, their though log etc.

Long story short, they are showing you a magic trick, like a excellent display of sleight of hand. Once you see the practice and the trick is revealed it doesn't appear as difficult.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#55

Post by benatkin »

alephnerd wrote: post #42
FactolSarin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so it's an anti-caste thing?

Historically yes. But in 2024 it's just a naming convention now. Being Telugu in Tamil Nadu, they probably adopted Tamil naming conventions to make life easier. States in India are basically different countries, and the existing state borders for most states don't make sense.

Reminds me of falsehoods programmers believe about… https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#56

Post by [deleted] »

seanhunter wrote: post #31

That was a absolutely horrible finish to a really exciting championship if you ask me. For anyone who doesn't know, there was a lot of drama because Gukesh was playing amazingly coming into this (eg winning the gold medal on board 1 at the olympiad in crushing style) and Ding had been playing terribly. Then there were 13 games of back and forth with stalwart defending and imaginative computer preparation by both side…

[deleted]

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#58

Post by philipwhiuk »

ourmandave wrote: post #22
alex1138 wrote: post #4

At 18, this is no small thing. Kasparov was 22, I don't see Gukesh's record being broken for a long while

With 12-year-old GMs running around it's hard to know how long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_prodigy

There's a decent gap between GM and world champion to be honest.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#59

Post by philipwhiuk »

kamaal wrote: post #54
eterm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of the opening, Chess players tend to call them combinations, and it's not really memorisation as such, it's pattern recognition, and it's a very difficult skill to master. Outside of the opening, it's not rote memorisation, it's a mix of pattern recognition and calculation. You have to spot familiar patterns, but from a "distance", and calculate whether the differences in your specific instance are crucial o…

>>Chess is incredibly difficult. Its not exactly difficult. Or more precise, It can appear difficult as people don't show how the work is done. You see this even among the Math people as well. It appears as pure magic. But in reality its mostly understanding what the axioms and rules are. Then starting at some point, and making the most smallest atomic change possible to a thing and seeing it its consistent with the…

> Its not exactly difficult. Or more precise, It can appear difficult as people don't show how the work is done.

What is difficulty other than priori repetition of a sequence? Anything difficult can be trivialised to this requirement.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#60

Post by coldpie »

tech_ken wrote: post #57

Why would you spoil match 14 for me like this T_T

You're not the first to say this here, and I've been trying to think if there's a good solution to the problem. The headline could be something like, "Chess world championship winner declared." But I'll be honest, I probably wouldn't have clicked on it without the "youngest" hook, which is exactly the problem you're talking about. I don't know. Tough problem :)
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