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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

#281

Post by JshWright »

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…

> After 14 games of 4+ hours each It had gone from being a dead draw with him a big favourite in tie breaks to all over in a few seconds.

_Very_ casual chess follower here. Why was Ding a big favorite in the tie breaks? My takeaway from the match was that Ding seemed to always be worse on time, so wouldn't a shorter time control favor Gukesh?

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#282

Post by Someone »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #275
qq66 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is really interesting because i ran into a pokemon bot the other day were its training led to calibration of 50% winrste at all levels of play on Pokémon showdown. It was a complete accident.

But that doesn’t imply that that bot played like an average human.

Making a computer have a 50% score against a 1300-rated human is way easier than making it play like a 1300-rated human.

For the former, you can take a top-of-the-line program and have it flip a coin in every game whether to make a random move every move or not.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#283

Post by benatkin »

justin66 wrote: post #266
benatkin wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't how most appreciate sports. People are hoping for the contenders to be at the top of their game towards the end of the championships. Nobody says "Hey, at least this has a human touch! I'm sick of basketball video games." if the NBA finals are relatively boring one year. I think maybe "that was a absolutely horrible finish" got interpreted as saying that the win wasn't well earned. That's not how I saw it…

> That isn't how most appreciate sports. People are hoping for the contenders to be at the top of their game towards the end of the championships. I'm not sure how "hope" plays into it but few of the sports I follow allow for contenders to be at the top of their game towards the end of the championship. People are tired or playing injured, and it never occurred to me to believe that this made their performances less…

Good point. Still there is something along those lines in a really good matchup. The teamwork often thrives when the individuals are tired/injured.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#284

Post by neaden »

nurettin wrote: post #280
neaden wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear the high level chess engines are so far above the best humans that there isn't a point anymore.

Engines are unbelievable in open positions, so GMs who know that they are up against an engine usually just pawn lock the center and wait for the engine to start sacrificing in order to avoid a draw.

That might have worked once, but modern stockfish has an estimated elo of 3642 compared to Magnus 2882. I don't think any human could get a draw against it these days.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#285

Post by neaden »

stormfather wrote: post #263
awongh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

He's also not really the world champion. The world champion just got bored of winning so hard.

He's the World Champion, he might not be the best in the world but that is always an arguable thing.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#286

Post by joshuamorton »

JshWright wrote: post #281
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…

> After 14 games of 4+ hours each It had gone from being a dead draw with him a big favourite in tie breaks to all over in a few seconds. _Very_ casual chess follower here. Why was Ding a big favorite in the tie breaks? My takeaway from the match was that Ding seemed to always be worse on time, so wouldn't a shorter time control favor Gukesh?

Ding is rated over 100 points higher in rapid than Gukesh. The choice to spend time early was a choice by Ding and Ding's team. Ding is better at faster time controls than Gukesh, Gukesh was better prepared.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#287

Post by xpe »

jedberg wrote: post #201

Since there seem to be a lot of chess nerds in here, I have a question. Why didn't Fischer chess ever take off? A lot of comments in here amount to "he went slightly off book and it was amazing!". Wouldn't Fischer chess take the game to a whole new level, making it so that all the opening books are useless and the midgame requires much more improv?

From the Wikipedia page on Chess960:

> Hence, on average, a Chess960 starting position is actually 18.2% more balanced than the standard starting position.

I'm also interested in the underlying distribution (not just the average). For each of the 960 starting positions, what is known about the first-player advantage? (I'm pretty sure these would just be estimates because a full solution is still infeasible.)

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#288

Post by Miraste »

JshWright wrote: post #281
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…

> After 14 games of 4+ hours each It had gone from being a dead draw with him a big favourite in tie breaks to all over in a few seconds. _Very_ casual chess follower here. Why was Ding a big favorite in the tie breaks? My takeaway from the match was that Ding seemed to always be worse on time, so wouldn't a shorter time control favor Gukesh?

The World Chess Championship uses rapid and blitz matches (much shorter time controls) for tie breaks. Gukesh is 46th in the world in rapid, and 82nd in blitz. Ding is 2nd and 6th.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#289

Post by jodacola »

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.

Don't disagree it was annoying.

While this is no defense, clicking Gukesh's name when it was hyperlinked from the article led here: https://lichess.org/fide/46616543/Gukesh_D

Age and other info present.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#290

Post by zeven7 »

offbymuch wrote: post #104

Remarkable to watch the reactions in real-time, of both players and fans from India at the moment the decisive move is played. https://www.youtube.com/live/5-uuDuGQLQA?t=14497s . Only started following chess due to the covid shutdowns, much for fun from a fans point of view than I had imagined it would be. Having the computer evaluation at the side really helps novices like me to know what's going on, interestingly a…

I used to watch a lot of Go. I watched live as Lee Sedol beat AlphaGo in one single game in the last match a human could feasibly compete against AI. Against all odds, and knowing AI had overtaken us, Lee Sedol found a move to get one last victory. [1]

But I never saw anything like the crowd hype from the clip you posted, lol. This was next level in terms of the energy in the room. Very fun, thanks for sharing!

[1] https://youtu.be/mzZWPcgcRD0

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