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Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games

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Re: Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games

#111

Post by tarre »

trycatch wrote: post #54

By the way, there is a very interesting tournament going on currently -- TCEC, unofficial computer chess championship [1]. The main intrigue of the tournament is the fight between Stockfish and Komodo. Houdini, dominating engine in the last few years, already lost any chances to go into the superfinal -- two very strong challengers, Komodo and Stockfish, in the last few months were able to eat huge advantage of Houdi…

This is a very interesting tournament. AFAIK it is the only computer tournament with long time controls and equal hardware for both sides. I have been following it for some years already since the times of Old TCEC. The most interesting games annotated by GM or FM level players can be found here [1]. My favourite is the game Old TCEC Elite Match - Season 1 game 1.1, in which Houdini crushed Rybka with black pieces very convincingly by sacrificing 3 pawns to get a devastating advantage.

[1] http://www.tcec-chess.net/annotated_games.php

Re: Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games

#112

Post by auctiontheory »

jrs99 wrote: post #59
auctiontheory wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you get a reputation for playing out positions more than a rook down, you may have a harder time getting tournament invitations, sponsors, collaborators, etc. If you're an amateur, soon even your friends won't want to play you.

If Carlsen started playing out all his games do you think he wouldn't be invited into tournaments? He'd be in the tournaments, it would just be a waste of time for him to play out all the games, when he is certain to lose. instead, he resigns and relaxes his mind and winds down before the next game.

If Carlsen started playing out all his games do you think he wouldn't be invited into tournaments?

I think that if Carlsen had started out in life being a brat, he wouldn't have got much support to get to where he is today. Besides, other players are not Carlsen. E.g. Topalov seems to receive fewer invites than other comparable players. Could it be because of his (and his manager's) abominable behavior during two WC matches?

Re: Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games

#113

Post by clarky07 »

pa5tabear wrote: post #61
kadabra9 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Carlsen isn't quite at Kasparov's level of dominance yet (he's only 22), but the James Harden analogy is a poor one. Harden is a great player (say someone like Aronian in the chess world) but isn't quite a once in a generation talent like, say, Lebron James. I think it's quite fair to call Carlsen the Lebron James of chess.

So the greatest of all time? It's getting hard to argue LeBron is not...

It's not that hard to argue. Given there are lots of things to take into account, but Jordan averaged 2.5 more ppg than lebron, and 5 ppg if you take out the wizards comeback. Jordan also won 6 out of 8 championships, (and you know, was playing baseball for the other 2 years).

Obviously ppg is not the only metric, and championships are won by teams. LeBron is probably in the argument for best all time, and by the end of his career may have a legitimate argument, but he certainly isn't just obviously way better than everyone else. He's probably top 5 though.

Re: Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games

#114

Post by hrjet »

trycatch wrote: post #54

By the way, there is a very interesting tournament going on currently -- TCEC, unofficial computer chess championship [1]. The main intrigue of the tournament is the fight between Stockfish and Komodo. Houdini, dominating engine in the last few years, already lost any chances to go into the superfinal -- two very strong challengers, Komodo and Stockfish, in the last few months were able to eat huge advantage of Houdi…

Wouldn't a match with an open-source engine be unfair? The competing close-source engine could embed the opponents source inside it to predict the exact moves that the opponent would make, thus gaining a speed advantage.

Even more interestingly, what would a match between two open-source engines look like, if they both embedded each other?

Re: Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games

#115

Post by dfan »

Peroni wrote: post #72

I'm an experienced poker player however I'm an absolute chess novice. Aside from the obvious "just practice" advice, what are the best resources to fall back on in terms of books, videos etc if I wanted to learn the game in significant depth?

The number one thing you should work on as a chess novice (and a chess intermediate!) is tactics. chesstempo.com is the best place on the web to practice tactics: it serves you tactics problems from a database of over 100,000 problems harvested from actual games, and keeps track of both your ability and the difficulty of the problems so that it can give you problems appropriate to your level.

There are other tactics servers on the web (chess.com, chess.emrald.net), but Chess Tempo is easily the best.

Re: Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games

#116

Post by CurtMonash »

deletes wrote: post #66
auctiontheory wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

his response was a curt "no, I was thinking of what to eat tonight." I was up at 5am to watch that. Embarrassing. Other great players (e.g. Kramnik) have lost tough matches with a lot more class.

Wait, so he wasn't being sarcastic? I wouldn't think someone at that level would be so insecure.

Look into any history of Bobby Fischer. He was batshit crazy.

Re: Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games

#117

Post by gnaffle »

auctiontheory wrote: post #49
po wrote: post #32

During the press questioning the computer they were using froze up a bit and Anand became frustrated and rattled through his thinking out loud instead. The commentator then asks Anand something along the lines of "did you think through all of these complications?" and his response was a curt "no, I was thinking of what to eat tonight." "Yeah… so, do we have questions to the players?" oof... such high stakes and he ju…

his response was a curt "no, I was thinking of what to eat tonight." I was up at 5am to watch that. Embarrassing. Other great players (e.g. Kramnik) have lost tough matches with a lot more class.

While the response might have been unnecessary, the question certainly was as well.

Re: Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games

#118

Post by cdelsolar »

Reminds me a bit of this guy's dominance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Richards_(Scrabble)

Winning 4 national championships in a row is one of the most amazingly dominant feats in anything, especially given a game that has a significant luck factor.

A top tournament player in a Scrabble Facebook group just said this about him:

"I'm pretty sure what he's doing is not capable by most human brains tbh, he plays better than any computer with seemingly a very small amount of tilt. You will never be as good as him, no matter how hard you try. Makes the game pointless (said this a million times b4). As a sidenote, his existence in scrabble is terrible for the game"

Re: Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games

#119

Post by kadabra9 »

dfan wrote: post #115
Peroni wrote: post #72

I'm an experienced poker player however I'm an absolute chess novice. Aside from the obvious "just practice" advice, what are the best resources to fall back on in terms of books, videos etc if I wanted to learn the game in significant depth?

The number one thing you should work on as a chess novice (and a chess intermediate!) is tactics. chesstempo.com is the best place on the web to practice tactics: it serves you tactics problems from a database of over 100,000 problems harvested from actual games, and keeps track of both your ability and the difficulty of the problems so that it can give you problems appropriate to your level. There are other tactics…

great call. You can be a strategic genius but it will mean nothing if you can't get out of the opening without hanging a piece.

chesstempo is a great resource that I completely forgot about. Thanks for bringing it up.

Re: Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games

#120

Post by cscheid »

hrjet wrote: post #114
trycatch wrote: post #54

By the way, there is a very interesting tournament going on currently -- TCEC, unofficial computer chess championship [1]. The main intrigue of the tournament is the fight between Stockfish and Komodo. Houdini, dominating engine in the last few years, already lost any chances to go into the superfinal -- two very strong challengers, Komodo and Stockfish, in the last few months were able to eat huge advantage of Houdi…

Wouldn't a match with an open-source engine be unfair? The competing close-source engine could embed the opponents source inside it to predict the exact moves that the opponent would make, thus gaining a speed advantage. Even more interestingly, what would a match between two open-source engines look like, if they both embedded each other?

Eliezer Yudkowsky gave a talk at MIT recently that touched on this very subject:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/itp/meetup_talk_by_eliezer_yudkowsky...

Some commentary by Scott Aaronson:

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1558#comment-89317

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