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

371–380 of 484 posts

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#371

Post by darepublic »

nomilk wrote: post #39

I was struck by Ding's thoughtfulness, objectivity and humility when asked how he felt after the match (while clearly utterly dejected): > How do you feel? > I think I played my best tournament of the year. I think it was a fair tournament in the end. I have no regrets. > Any message for fans? > Thank you, I will continue to play, I hope I can show strength like this time. Gukesh was equally as objective, humble, and…

Chess and its superstars are often anything but humble and modest. Magnus Carlsen's commetary for this match was riddled with derogatory statements. since he wanted to sit out this championship he should be gracious and respectful toward the players who fought for the title in his stead but he has been anything but that.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#372

Post by darepublic »

MrMcCall wrote: post #48
nomilk wrote: post #39

I was struck by Ding's thoughtfulness, objectivity and humility when asked how he felt after the match (while clearly utterly dejected): > How do you feel? > I think I played my best tournament of the year. I think it was a fair tournament in the end. I have no regrets. > Any message for fans? > Thank you, I will continue to play, I hope I can show strength like this time. Gukesh was equally as objective, humble, and…

Absolutely. Nepo and Magnus seem to be cut from a different cloth, although Magnus has never had a moment where he could demonstrate whether or not he can be humble, because he has always just crushed. Anish Giri kind of took a shot at Magnus (with respect to his retiring from classical chess) in his early commentary with Petr Leko a few days ago. People are funny, and one doesn't usually get to be where Ding and Guk…

Magnus described Ding's abilities as a 4/10 in the lead up to the match. In match commentary he regularly called the games "baffling" (as in baffingly bad) and regularly said they weren't strong grandmaster calibre. He is definitely very conceited and resents not being the world champion, even if it's only because of his absence.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#373

Post by auc »

stouset wrote: post #352
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.…

> Personally, I'm on the side which thinks that this format is a total stagnation. I was with you until this WCC. In almost every game, Gukesh took Ding out of prep extremely early. It wasn't always a success for him either! Leaving the opening book typically means you accept an objectively-worse position, but one that your opponent has to spend a significant amount of time finding the right ideas in. Even in the cas…

This lacks some context. Gukesh took Ding out of prep bc Gukesh prepped for 7 months, while Ding prepped for 3 weeks and basically wanted to retire from chess. Ding would be out of prep by move 8 as white and be an hour down on time very consistently.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#374

Post by sourcepluck »

NickC25 wrote: post #255
12345hn6789 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Have you heard of Stockfish? Makes Magnus look like a child. Stockfish and the other engines arguably keep getting better too, and in the engine tournaments like TCEC they continue to discover crazy new lines. E.g.

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=4HQZSMZz_MY

That's Stockfish playing black in the Ruy Lopez, and the game is effectively over after 18 moves, against an engine rated 3692. Magnus' highest rating was 2882. Ratings aren't really sensibly comparable like that between humans and engines, but I'm trying to put it in a way that chess bros will understand.

The point being - neither Magnus nor the top engines who are leagues above him have "mastered classical chess". So your comment is very ignorant of the realities of chess.

Magnus is incredible, and dominated human chess, and I have immensely enjoyed following his games, for the record. Human chess and engine chess are both wonderful in their own ways.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#375

Post by jquery »

jawarner wrote: post #192
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…

You can measure the sharpness of the position, as in this paper section 2.3 "Complexity of a position". They find their metric correlates with human performance. https://en.chessbase.com/news/2006/world_champions2006.pdf

Nice paper. I’d like if someone re-ran the numbers using modern chess engines… the engine they used is exceedingly weak by modern standards.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#376

Post by jquery »

throw310822 wrote: post #359
WJW wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even 1300s sometimes make the best move. Sometimes the best move is really easy to see or even mandatory, like if you are in check and MUST take that checking piece. Sometimes the best move is only obvious if you can look 20 moves ahead. Sometimes the best move is only obvious if you can look 5 moves ahead, but the line is so forcing that even 1300s can look that far ahead. Despite decades of research, nobody has fou…

Then I can't refrain from asking: and what's the style of LLMs? For example the ChatGPT which is apparently rated around 1800? That should be completely different from that of a classic chess engine.

I can’t speak for ChatGPT, but your intuition is correct that LLMs tend to play more like “humans” than Stockfish or other semi-brute force approaches.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#377

Post by jquery »

School-Cotton wrote: post #351
scott_w wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really because it’s subjective to the level of player. What’s a blunder to a master player might only be an inaccuracy to a beginner. The same applies for higher levels of chess player. I’ve watched GothamChess say “I’ve no idea why made this move but it’s the only move,” then Hikaru Nakamura will rattle off a weird 8-move sequence to explain why it’s a major advantage despite no pieces being lost. Stockfish is a…

> Stockfish is a level above even Magnus if given enough depth. "a level" and "if given enough depth" are both underselling it. Stockfish running on a cheap phone with equal time for each side will beat Magnus 100 games in a row.

I believe it’s something like 500 elo points difference at this point between Magnus and Stockfish running on cheap hardware. Computers are so strong the only way to measure their strength is against other, weaker computers, and so on until you get to engines that are mere “grandmaster” strength.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#379

Post by svat »

le-mark wrote: post #362
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…

The winning move is at 4:01:45 for anyone looking (like I was).

Just curious: The comment you're replying to had the link with timestamp 4:01:38 which is basically just before the move happens; is that not enough as it is?

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#380

Post by dyauspitr »

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 don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe for someone that watched every chess game all year that might be the case but I watched all 14 of these games and thought they were fantastic.
Post reply on HN