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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

#331

Post by kelipso »

bbconn wrote: post #330
kelipso wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t like it because you can get some starting position that’s not balanced, or that one of the players has memorized the openings for. So it feels much more luck based than regular chess, whereas luck is pretty much the antithesis of what chess is all about.

Introducing: Balanced Fischer chess. Just randomly sample from the starting positions that are more balanced than regular chess.

It’s still annoying if the starting position is one that only one of the players is deeply familiar with. Too much luck factor. They should go the shogi route and get rid of draws if they want to improve chess so much.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#332

Post by stormfather »

kelipso wrote: post #317
stormfather wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’s his excuse anyway. If you can’t hold on to the title, no matter the actual or stated reasons, then you are simply not the World Champion.

Excuse? You must not follow chess too closely. He is the undisputed GOAT. He is clearly bored - he plays atrocious opening moves these days just to get an interesting game. He's so good he transcended the need to keep proving it. Excuse. Lmao. Gukesh is the WC only because he is not good enough to present an interesting challenge.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#333

Post by sourcepluck »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #150
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.

Intelligent people who create the future must choose that path for themselves. Chess isn't preventing people from making that choice. If chess didn't exist, most chess players would probably just be playing some other game instead of STEM careers or whatever your definition of creating the future is. Also plenty of very strong chess players do ultimately wind up pursuing other career paths. And then there's also the…

A tradition (of being highly dysfunctional at the top of chess) kicked off in great style, I would say, by the legendary Paul Morphy.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#334

Post by rieska »

School-Cotton wrote: post #298
SpaceManNabs wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not hard to make a chess bot that plays at a 1300 strength, i.e. its rating would converge to 1300 if it were allowed to compete. But it will not play like a 1300-rated human. It would play like a superhuman genius on most moves and then make beginner-level blunders at random moments. Making one that realistically plays like a human is an unsolved problem.

Of course, you are right. But (the linked site) at least has a bot that plays the opening like a human of chosen rating perfectly. It stops working after the opening-stage (since it just copies moves from humans in the lichess game database), but it is still very impressive. For later game stages, some other method would have to be used (unless we play multiple orders of magnintude more games on lichess).

Now that i think about it, i remember the people in the alphago documentary talking about the bot giving its moves percentage scores in both how high winning % the move had and how high % chance that a human would have made the same move that it just played. I wonder why they never showed what a full game of the most human-like moves from alphago would look like. Maybe it actually worked, by feeding it all the pro games in existence, and training it to play the high human % instead of the higest win probability moves like they did in the end.

https://www.chessassess.com/openings

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#335

Post by WJW »

__s wrote: post #179
staunton wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ignores the question how hard it is for a human to find the best (or a "good enough") move. It's easy to find games with 10 "only move" 's in a row where even a beginner could easily have played all if them.

Sure, but it's a start on adding nuance to eval beyond minmax

Is it? TBH it sounds like "climbing a tree is a start on getting to the moon beyond just jumping up and down". Yes, it does "more". But whether it will actually get you to the desired end state is highly dubious. Nobody knows if that will make chess bots more human-like, despite decades of research into the topic.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#336

Post by DEADMEAT »

veidelis wrote: post #165

First of all, I have the greatest respect for the two individuals who played their hearts out in this event. Personally, I'm on the side which thinks that this format is a total stagnation. Maybe the new no-increment under 40 moves is an improvement, but overall it does not count. I agree with Carlsen that the format has to be drastically changed to determine who is the better player. Much more games, shorter games.…

I find it funny when people say it's not on Carlsen when it was entirely his decision to not compete. We already have rapid and blitz world championships that are separate. This is the classical world championship and I think the format is both exciting to watch and decently fair.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#337

Post by jedberg »

kelipso wrote: post #327
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?

I don’t like it because you can get some starting position that’s not balanced, or that one of the players has memorized the openings for. So it feels much more luck based than regular chess, whereas luck is pretty much the antithesis of what chess is all about.

Luck is what makes it interesting for spectators though. :). Just like with other sports -- a lot of it is skill but there is always some luck involved.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#338

Post by kmacdough »

cenamus wrote: post #261
eitally wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think what you're saying are "a lot of exceptions" are primarily going to be in what are historically referred to as "revenue sports" in the US -- football & basketball -- and also in individual sports where personal marketing is key to financial success (e.g. sponsorships). I don't see it as unexpected for there to be big egos and boisterous personalities in sports where individuals are hugely rewarded…

I agree, but some people, that are just 100% driven by success really become cunts that way, even in non-commercial sports. Never seems to be the best of the best though, more those in 2-3rd place or really narrow 1st place, something about the uncertainty of staying on the top, or never quite reaching it...

Ah yes, Hikaru.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#339

Post by 8note »

veidelis wrote: post #165

First of all, I have the greatest respect for the two individuals who played their hearts out in this event. Personally, I'm on the side which thinks that this format is a total stagnation. Maybe the new no-increment under 40 moves is an improvement, but overall it does not count. I agree with Carlsen that the format has to be drastically changed to determine who is the better player. Much more games, shorter games.…

of this tournament, i think magnus would have loved to play against ding, and not at all gukesh.

prep memorization remains a bit of a cheat where its your memorization and prep picking thats playing the game, rather than actually playing the game.

i think a randomly chosen "start from x position, with y time, and z increment after move c" for some 30 games over two weeks would do pretty well. Steal the formats from engine chess.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#340

Post by sashank_1509 »

devsda wrote: post #94
FactolSarin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not everything in India is/have to be about an individual's caste at all. The most plausible and likely explanation is that it is just shortened initials of surname for convenience. Typically indian teachers have a habit of turning surname to initials to deal with multiple students having same names. Those names tend to be sticky and students just refer themselves with initials in such contexts. I'd be very much surp…

Not everything about India has to be about caste but this is definitely about caste even though it probably happens on autopilot now.

A social movement throughout TN, has made people give up their surnames and instead only mention their initial, so that no one can tell your caste easily. And everyone just follows that convention now. A remarkable example of a societal wide movement making real progress on societal issues without requiring the force of government.

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