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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

#431

Post by register »

ludston wrote: post #428
register wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ding's was not objective neither thoughful, Ding was completely melted down after the interview and the interview was a reflection of that. Chess is a drawn game and the gist of playing chess is to be more resilient, blunder less and exploit as many of the chances you got in your game. Matches and games are won exactly because the opponent doesn't make the best of his chances. This is the cruel nature of the game. A…

I reckon Ding would probably beat you in chess, even if you had 2 hours and he only had 10 minutes.

In a normal game yes, but he won't beat me in the ending that he has lost. I can draw that against Stockfish for all that matters.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#432

Post by xpe »

kelipso wrote: post #325
xpe wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

On average. Some starting positions are much less balanced than regular chess.

>> I'm also interested in the underlying distribution (not just the average).

> On average. Some starting positions are much less balanced than regular chess.

Yes, I expect variation, which I why I asked. :confused-face: At the risk of over-explaining, when I said "distribution" I meant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_distribution

What does "much less" mean, quantitatively? For each position, what is the white-winning probability if you used e.g. Stockfish or some suitably adapted tool?

I would love to see e.g. a histogram where the x-axis buckets the estimated-advantage-to-white and the y-axis counts how many of the 960 starting positions fall into the bucket. What shape might it take? Lacking any particular insight, I would guess normal.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#433

Post by kelipso »

monooso wrote: post #426
kelipso wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just what he says. He is obviously not going to publicly say that he is scared of competing in the WCC. But in all likelihood, he is. At least Ding could compete in the WCC without 6 months prep, which Magnus clearly cannot.

Your apparent personal dislike of Magnus Carlsen (based on this and other comments) does not make your baseless assertions any more convincing.

What I am saying is true. I am not interested in convincing a delusional person.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#435

Post by sashank_1509 »

kelipso wrote: post #331
bbconn wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve thought about this quite a bit. I don’t think this possible. Draws happen when two players are very closely matched that the difference in their play is not large enough to lead to a definite outcome. Currently in chess, 2800 like Magnus would draw say 70% of the time against a 2600 and win the rest (making up numbers here). The only way to solve this problem, is if the game magnifies differences in capability and enables a certain side to win. Making a game that does this, is probably very hard and would not look anything like chess.

Any other solution would face the same issue that chess faces now. For example let us say, we imbalance the sides a bit more so that white has a more definitive advantage. That just means that players will alternate winning and you’ll have to play a lot of games before anything definitive happens. In a technical sense there may not be draws, but if it just alternates 1-0, 0-1 and so on, is it better than 0.5-0.5 and so?

Shogi allows early momentum to snowball (since a captured piece is your piece). This means white has a much more definitive advantage in Shogi as white has the tempo, so I don’t think Shogi will fix anything, it will just cause see-saws. In fact I think fixing this chess issue, is far harder than it looks, and may require coordination to move all chess players to a new tactical game that magnifies differences in playing capability far more than chess which already magnifies it quite a bit.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#436

Post by Scarblac »

hilux wrote: post #249
RUnconcerned wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's not quite the point. Leela has an advantage over AB chess engines, where it has multi-PV for "free", meaning it will evaluate multiple lines by default at no cost to performance (traditional engines, like Stockfish, will lose elo with multi-PV). This allows us to know at a glance if a position is "draw/win with perfect play" or if there is margin for error. If Leela shows multiple moves where one side…

Yes and no – the number of playable lines does not necessarily tell us how "obvious" those lines are to find for a human. To give a trivial example, if I take your queen, then recapturing my queen is almost always the single playable move. But it's also a line that you will easily find! Conversely, in a complex tactical position, (even) multiple saving moves could all be very tricky for a human to calculate.

And also, humans vary wildly in their thinking and what's "obvious" to them. I'm about 1950 and am good in openings and tactics (but not tactics for the opponent). Others around the same rating are much worse than that but they understand positional play much better - how to use weak squares, which pieces to exchange and so on. To me that's a kind of magic.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#437

Post by School-Cotton »

somenameforme wrote: post #406
School-Cotton wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's 100% possible to become a master starting as an adult Do you have any examples of someone who has done it?

We might bicker on the meaning of "starting", but Mikhail Chigorin is definitely the most famous example. He was taught the moves at age 16 by a school teacher but in no way pursued the game until well into his twenties. He would then go on to compete at the highest level, including for the world championship. While he's the most famous example, many famous older masters also started quite late. And I think one big d…

Your examples are all people from 100 years ago when the game was completely different. Not a ringing endorsement of the claim that it's 100% possible (present tense). If Chigorin were magically transported to the present day he would not be a professional level player.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#438

Post by xhkkffbf »

eitally wrote: post #208
cenamus wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of exceptions sadly. But with the amount of neuroticism you see with top athletes that's to be expected I suppose

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…

Google Bobby Fischer. Chess has its share. Hard to tell if it's greater or lesser per capita.
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