Interesting to see FIDE officially embracing Freestyle now
Freestyle is great! My main OTB buddy and I have largely switched and it's completely changed our games. Much more fun!
Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
171–180 of 280 posts
Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I recall, he automatically lost that one game but was not thrown out of the tournament. Eventually he just stopped playing the world championship altogether, which is when he lost his title.
I don't really follow human chess, but I wonder what the new nr 1 player thought of themselves after essentially becoming the "best player in the world who doesn't wear jeans." Must be so frustrating to know there is something left to achieve but your league's shenanigans will prevent you from achieving it in an official and prestigious manner.
The jean controversy was a couple of years after Magnus stopped defending the title. It has nothing to do with it. Magnus just doesn't care about the format of the world title.
I think something broke for him while playing Caruana in 2018. The classical games were a snooze fest of defensive plays after defensive plays and everything was settled in the rapid tie break in a fairly unsatisfying manner.
He is not the first to complain about that by the way. Fischer hated the format too.
The freestyle championship was better in pretty much every way.
Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
#173Chess is in such a sad situation again. The world champion (which is determined for classical chess) isn't even remotely the best player. He's barely even in the top 10 and may soon fall out of that too. In terms of strength he's the weakest player to win in half a century even in absolute terms. And I can't think of any time in modern history of chess when such a low ranked player won. We really need to do something…
I dunno, I think this says more about FIDE and the championship title than the state of the game.
Online chess is huge, streaming is huge. You do have these big personalities in the game, and an often unfortunate amount of drama.
People wrote chess off after Deep Blue, but the game is really going from strength to strength right now. It's just that classical isn't the focus.
Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
#174Here are the replays https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-freestyle-chess-world-cha...
What are the rules of castling in chess, and why is there castling in chess 960!? I somewhat remeber reading that this format is about playing against book opening, and I thought there is no castling. Magnus does a castling from king d1 rook h1 which I didn't even know its an allowed move! https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-freestyle-chess-world-cha...
After castling, the final positions of king and rook are the same as in classical chess. Castling prerequisites are the same as in classical chess.
source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960#Castling_rules
Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
#175Wait why are there separate mens and womens prizes?
Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like my answer below, that's wrong. Even I have achieved a few draws or even wins against Stockfish in training games, and I am FM strength. From time to time you are happy to reach a simple rook endgame which happens to be won and the engine doesn't anticipate that (horizon effect). You still draw or lose 90% of those but you win 10%.
That's an extraordinary claim. What level was Stockfish and what were the settings for these training games?
It is also not extraordinary to do that.
I have achieved these results around 2015, sitting at home, relaxed. I was not in a match situation observed by millions. Such a situation can knowingly lead to blunders like Kramniks overlook of mate in 2.
I also sometimes "cheated" by aborting the game when I was tired and continuing it the next day (if at all). That's what the player in a match can not do.
I also sometimes restarted a game at a specific position. Can also not be done in a match. Finally, they used better hardware in these matches. I had eight threads on my old Laptop and I used four of them. The Laptop itself was bought around 2005. Between 2000 and approximately 2020 I trained every day and I was on my peak. I am still around 2400 on Lichess today, without training.
So, I hope it does not sound that extraordinary any more. It isn't. Maybe it is now, but not then.
Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
#177It feels like the cohort GM player pool is mentally cooked against Magnus. Youngsters like Lazavik during the Speed Chess Championship or Sindarov in Freestyle were the most recent convincing wins against Magnus, but the historical mental edge that Magnus comes into each game after beating the brakes out of everyone is hard to overcome. Magnus' time will come! But not today.
Same exact thing happened in tennis. There was a whole "lost generation" of amazingly talented players who just basically shat the bed whenever they stepped onto the court with Djokovic, Federer, or Nadal. It wasn't until much younger players like Alcaraz and Sinner came on the scene, who weren't quite as overpowered by the aura of the Big 3, that the playing field finally leveled. (And now they themeselves are turni…
imho Sinner and Alcaraz didn't solve the "overpowering aura" so much as the physical wear and tear took the trio down enough pegs to be much more attainable, and Djokovic is still competing impressively well.
Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
#178It feels like the cohort GM player pool is mentally cooked against Magnus. Youngsters like Lazavik during the Speed Chess Championship or Sindarov in Freestyle were the most recent convincing wins against Magnus, but the historical mental edge that Magnus comes into each game after beating the brakes out of everyone is hard to overcome. Magnus' time will come! But not today.
I’d love to see a classical (or rapid/blitz) tournament where the players don’t know who they’re playing.
Separate rooms, arbiters make the moves for the opponent.
I think we’d see some interesting results.
Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't say it's "boring" (hence the downvotes, I imagine) - but this does seem like an interesting idea, to let the players choose their positions. Does such a style exist?
It is called Placement chess, you can play it on PyChess. [1] As far as I know no tournament ever used this rule. [1] https://www.pychess.org/variants/placement
Apparently also called Bronstein Shuffle (which also sounds like a fun dance)
A key part seems to be alternating turns placing pieces. I wonder if this would result in top level gameplay converging on certain opening placements? If so, I wonder how not taking turns but deciding on placement privately beforehand might affect gameplay.
Anyway, maybe when the pros get sick of Chess960 they'll give this a shot :)
Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
#180Wait why are there separate mens and womens prizes?
There are currently no active women players ranked within the top 100 overall.