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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

#391

Post by hilux »

meta_x_ai wrote: post #229
FactolSarin wrote: post #17

What is the deal with Gukesh's last name? It's officially listed as just D on his FIDE profile. I asked a couple Indian coworkers who said it was probably just being abbreviated for being long, but honestly it's not that long of a name and Gukesh isn't from the same region as them. I've read elsewhere that Telugu speaking people don't really use last names.

As a South Indian My name (in public school records) till I was age 21, was . I was forced to pick the last name for passport purposes and typically i either have the option of attaching my dad's name or my dad's town name. My wife, didn't even do that and when she migrated to US, she was LNU (short for Last Name Unknown). While applying for greencard we decided it was too much of a hassle for her and she attached he…

> when she migrated to US, she was LNU (short for Last Name Unknown).

Interesting!

The loser of the previous World Chess Championship match was Russia's Ian Nepomniachtchi. His last name means "one who doesn't remember [his last name]" -when asked by the Czar's census taker!

I guess this kind of thing happens in many countries.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#392

Post by nomilk »

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…

The interview (quotes at 2m10s; watching from 0m33s captures more emotion/context):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmYAvrJjWsY&t=33s

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#394

Post by hilux »

chilmers wrote: post #30
selectnull wrote: post #2

It was painful watching Ding Liren blunder the rook and realize what he had done.

Amazing to watch Gukesh as well as he realised the opportunity. At first confusion and disbelief, then excitement, joy and nervousness as he tried to calm himself down and take the win.

"Sitting on his hands" to double check showed great maturity!

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#395

Post by dyauspitr »

keybored wrote: post #77
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

Didn’t Kasparov say that he doesn’t consider this a World Chess Championship since the best player isn’t playing?

Gukesh has beaten Magnus before. Sure Magnus is an demi god of chess but we haven’t seen him play this format against gukesh and that’s entirely his fault.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#396

Post by dyauspitr »

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?

Not at all.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#397

Post by scott_w »

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.

That’s fair, I was leaving wiggle room for things like being able to force the engine into doing stupid things like sacrifice all its pieces to avoid stalemate.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#398

Post by SamPatt »

darepublic wrote: post #372
MrMcCall wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it conceit if he's correct, though?

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#399

Post by animal531 »

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…

I'm not a constant follower of chess and only see events now and then, but its great to see some new faces on the block.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#400

Post by somenameforme »

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

I think this is something a bit different. That sort of assessment is going to find humans perform poorly in extremely sharp positions with lots of complicated lines that are difficult to evaluate. And that is certainly true. A tactical position that a computer can 'solve' in a few seconds can easily be missed by even very strong humans.

But the position Ding was in was neither sharp nor complex. A good analog to the position there is the rook + bishop v rook endgame. With perfect play that is, in most cases, a draw - and there are even formalized drawing techniques in any endgame text. But in practice it's really quite difficult, to the point that even grandmasters regularly lose it.

In those positions, on most of every move - any move is a draw. But the side with the bishop does have ways to inch up the pressure, and so the difficulty is making sure you recognize when you finally enter one of those moves where you actually need to deal with a concrete threat. The position Ding forced was very similar.

Most of every move, on every move, led to a draw - until it didn't. Gukesh had all sorts of ways to try to prod at Ding's position and make progress - prodding Ding's bishop, penetrating with his king, maneuvering his bishop to a stronger diagonal, cutting off Ding's king, and of course eventually pushing one of the pawns. He was going to be able to play for hours just constantly prodding where Ding would have stay 100% alert to when a critical threat emerges.

And this is all why Ding lost. His final mistake looks (and was) elementary, and he noticed it immediately after moving - but the reason he made that mistake is that he was thinking about how to parry the other countless dangerous threats, and he simply missed one. This is why most of everybody was shocked about Ding going for this endgame. It's just so dangerous in practical play, even if the computer can easily show you a zillion ways to draw it.

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