Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

lichess.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 484 posts

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#251

Post by paulddraper »

tomatovole wrote: post #164
ANewFormation wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really misses the key drama of what happened in the last game. Ding had a perfectly safe position where he could try to squeeze Gukesh pretty much endlessly with basically 0 risk. He then, completely inexplicably, went down a forced line which led to the final phase of the game. In this phase the position was drawn with perfect play, but that is completely irrelevant because it is really tough to play. And more…

Is there a metric I can look at in engine evaluations to determine when a situation is "risky" for white or black (e.g., the situation above) even if it looks equal with perfect play? I've always been interested in understanding situations where this is the case (and the opposite, where the engine favours one side but it seems to require a long, hard-to-find sequence of moves. Playing out the top lines helps if equal…

You can evaluate on lower depth/time.

But even that isn't a good proxy.

Humans cannot out-FLOP a computer, so they need to use patterns (like an LLM). To get the human perspective, the engine would need to something similar.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#252

Post by sourcepluck »

screye wrote: post #233
paulsutter wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chess really baffles me Most of the more sophisticated people I know are completely disinterested in sports. Not that they dislike sports, it just never occupies their mind. Sports is a purposeless activity for kids Chess is different from sports in only one way: the loss of very intelligent capable people who could be helping to create the future. Chess is even more tragic than the olympics.

Disagree, but I have a funny anecdote in your favor. My university's top Dota player was a 2.x GPA slacker who did nothing but play games all day. Guy was going to continue wasting-away by going to a mediocre foreign grad school, but he got his admit revoked because of stupid visa reasons. Life hits him in the face and for 1 year, he quits dota and studies. Goes in, bags 99.99 percentile score in exam with 300k appli…

> Guy was going to continue wasting-away by going to a mediocre foreign grad school

Wow. Who knows what amazing stuff that guy could have done if he'd escaped to a new place, with new people, in an exciting new culture, rather than the very close-minded one you describe here!

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#253

Post by dorgo »

qq66 wrote: post #236
tomatovole wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a metric I can look at in engine evaluations to determine when a situation is "risky" for white or black (e.g., the situation above) even if it looks equal with perfect play? I've always been interested in understanding situations where this is the case (and the opposite, where the engine favours one side but it seems to require a long, hard-to-find sequence of moves. Playing out the top lines helps if equal…

Making a computer play like a 1300-rated human is harder than making a computer beat Magnus Carlsen.

Take the computer which beats Magnus and restrain it to never make the best move in a position. Expand this to N best moves as needed to reach 1300 rating.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#254

Post by hilux »

nottorp wrote: post #70
hbn wrote: post #5

For being the headline, they sure hid his age pretty well. Not at the opening paragraph nor end of the article, nor photo captions near the top or bottom. cmd+f "years" 0 results cmd+f "age" 0 results And scanning for numbers is useless since most of the article is chess moves written out.

I suppose in the usual lichess watchers bubble, everyone knows who Gukesh is and how old/young he is :)

Why the snark? Is it so surprising that spectators following a world championship match in any sport would know something about the competitors?

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#255

Post by NickC25 »

12345hn6789 wrote: post #213
wongarsu wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, legendary Magnus Carlsen was 23 when he first became world champion. Ding Liren, the other finalist and previous winner, is 32. The title holder before Magnus was Anand who first won the title at age 31 (or arguably 38, depending on your stance about the PCA). Kramnik before him was 31. Legendary Garry Kasparov was 22. It's normal for the champion to get his first win in his early 30s. Getting it in your…

Why wasnt Magnus in this tournament? Surely this would be impressive if the headline was: Youngest champion ever beats current best chess player. Instead it's new champion crowned after legendary chess play does not partake in said competition

Magnus didn't show up because he more or less just doesn't give a shit anymore about classical chess.

He got bored. Won the thing 10 years in a row and just didn't fancy it anymore. That's really it - he's so much better than, well, everyone that he just didn't want to go through the stress of prepping for such an event.

I think he's not a huge fan of classical chess, prefers more dynamic, creative and faster games. He's effectively mastered classical chess and wants a new challenge.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#256

Post by FreakLegion »

awongh wrote: post #152
neaden wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to put it in numbers since high level chess players start very young, it's basically considered impossible to become a titled player learning chess as an adult, with a slight exception for high level players from similar games transferring over. So becoming the youngest champ and becoming the champ in the shortest time are very similar. For comparison Magnus started playing chess at 5 and became WC at 22.

5-22- so 17 years instead of 11. Quite a difference! Can any of that be put down to advances in training tech that wasn't around when Magnus started playing?

There's not much point comparing them. The WCC cycles are inconsistent and Magnus has never liked the format. He played the Candidates in 2007 when he was 16, but there was a four-year gap after that until the next one. By that point he was already the top player and, just like in the cycle Ding won, he decided not to play. The explanation is here: https://www.chess.com/news/view/carlsen-quits-world-champion...

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#257

Post by hilux »

nilslindemann wrote: post #182

I am not happy with this result (quite the blunder deciding this match) and in general who played for the crown here. Ding is not in the top for a while now and Gukesh has rarely played in Top GM tourns. The silent champ (Magnus) is still around, winning tournaments. "World champion" currently means "some lucky Top GM" and not "the undisputed number one".

If I follow your logic, why have a world championship cycle in any sport - chess, tennis, soccer, whatever?

We could just use the rating or ranking list.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#258

Post by MrMcCall »

BurningFrog wrote: post #138
chairmansteve wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Only programming is more difficult....". Programming is definitely easier for me. In chess, my ego gets in the way. I hate to lose.

Programming is easy. There is no opponent!

Perfection is a difficult foe, and requires a fanatical devotion to even match, and there are levels upon levels of perfection.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#259

Post by MrMcCall »

chairmansteve wrote: post #118
MrMcCall wrote: post #32

Wow. What a match. Been watching with my son, a chess lover since we started watching the Magnus-Fabi match. Now, my son loves his chess club and has retired me from playing :-) Two thoughts: 1) Gukesh took Ding into the deep water the entire time. Few people realize how draining chess is, especially at that level for this time control. It's beyond gruelling. Only programming is more difficult ;-) 2) Gukesh had an ex…

"Only programming is more difficult....". Programming is definitely easier for me. In chess, my ego gets in the way. I hate to lose.

It all depends upon the problems you are solving, and they are only bounded by your own creativity.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#260

Post by ganeshkrishnan »

FactolSarin wrote: post #40
alephnerd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the deal with Gukesh's last name In Tamil Nadu, an initial is often used in the surname due to the Periyar/Dravidian movement in the 20th century. Furthermore, plenty of people in Tamil Nadu historically didn't even use surnames. Gukesh is Telugu, but his family are Chennai natives. Chennai becoming part of TN instead of Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh was very politically charged in the early days of India.

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

yes in an abstract way. Same for Vishwanathan Anand (name and his fathers name with no surname) or even Sundar Pichai (name and fathers name)
Post reply on HN