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Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

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Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#91

Does anyone know some good alternatives to chess, as a game that mixes deep thought and aesthetic variety? I tried Go, but found it somewhat boring compared to chess, because of its uniformity (which, on the other hand, has the advantage of beautiful simplicity and symmetry.) On another note: it is unfortunate, in my opinion, that chess has a special standing among board games. I would love to see some more variety i…

Magic: the Gathering? It's a game of infinite possibilities and strategies and has a big meta game around it, too. Plus collectibles. Plus cool artwork. Plus good apps.

(not the op) I love Magic: the Gathering and played on and off for 18 years now.

It has two big downsides, the main one for me is that it's extremely expensive (a brand new console + collection of titles is equivalent in price to owning a couple of top tier decks).

The other one is that it's seen as uncool or childish or nerdish. I'd rather not mention it in workplaces anymore.

That said, yeah, building decks playing the metagame is very rewarding intellectually :) and having games 24/7 on Magic Online is great.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#92

Does anyone know some good alternatives to chess, as a game that mixes deep thought and aesthetic variety? I tried Go, but found it somewhat boring compared to chess, because of its uniformity (which, on the other hand, has the advantage of beautiful simplicity and symmetry.) On another note: it is unfortunate, in my opinion, that chess has a special standing among board games. I would love to see some more variety i…

You should really give No Limit Hold'em or Pot Limit Omaha a try. Poker is a game of astounding complexity once you start taking it seriously and it's quite fun. Combine that with the ability to take a small bankroll, $100 or whatever you're comfortable using as seed money, and turn it into a roll sufficient for high stakes poker (with enough dedication and time) and it truly does become quite an amazing game to play.

I personally play heads-up poker. Unlike 9-handed poker, heads-up poker is constant action. It's more dependent on opponent profiling and maximizing expectation on the fly, using experience and statistics. A game of infinite variety.

Since April I've taken $200 and, playing online and live poker, have profited in the following ways:

+$6458 - online poker heads up matches

+$2900 - rakeback/bonuses from pokerstars

+$12500 - live tournaments and pot limit omaha cash

And that's merely playing recreationally, completely separate from my full time job. You can play a complex, fun game and make money doing it. Who wouldn't enjoy that?

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#93
post #74

Of course he won the name alone speaks for itself "Magnus!" Just fucking HUGE at anything you can think of! Compared to Viswanathan which sounded like a vegtable ready to be consumed or a rubbing oil or even like a dip for your prata.

Viswanathan means lord of the Universe.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#94

Reading more about this match and Magnus in general, I learned of a measure termed "Nettlesomeness" which has been used to measure which players do the most to make their opponents to make mistakes. Magnus, with his highly creative style of play and unexpected moves, not surprisingly ranks the highest in this measure. He seems to have this remarkable gift of making moves which aren't just strong, they get inside his…

If Magnus is making strong yet unexepected moves relative to his opponents - doesn't that mean he simply has a higher degree of mastery at the game?

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#95
post #74

Of course he won the name alone speaks for itself "Magnus!" Just fucking HUGE at anything you can think of! Compared to Viswanathan which sounded like a vegtable ready to be consumed or a rubbing oil or even like a dip for your prata.

I downvoted you for your terrible bigotry. It's not welcome here.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#96
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for Bridge. Bridge is a game of short-term and long-term memory, strategy (in long matches), tactics, deduction, induction, risk assessment, hidden information, and finally a strong test of character, and your judgment of the characters of others. Unlike chess it does not seem to have a "limit" where you stop getting smarter and start merely learning more about chess. There's a reason it's the favorite game of som…

Do you play on BBO? Always looking for good partners, especially those interested in playing weird stuff, which I have a feeling you might...

My BBO name is ckane, but I haven't found much time nowdays. Feel free to add me and maybe we'll catch each other.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#97

Does anyone know some good alternatives to chess, as a game that mixes deep thought and aesthetic variety? I tried Go, but found it somewhat boring compared to chess, because of its uniformity (which, on the other hand, has the advantage of beautiful simplicity and symmetry.) On another note: it is unfortunate, in my opinion, that chess has a special standing among board games. I would love to see some more variety i…

There's already something very similar to a "board game Olympics", it's called the Mind Sports Olympiad: http://www.boardability.com/games.php I'd give Go another try. If you're interested in watching anime, I found the series _Hikaru no Go_ pretty good motivation to keep learning.

Agreed. I'm not even a big anime fan and Hikaru no Go really kept up my motivation when I was first starting. It's hard to believe how exciting they made Go look, when it's actually just two people quietly placing stones on a board for hours. Here's a trailer if you don't believe me: http://youtu.be/XpV4ZWh4NkQ

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#98
post #81

Does anyone know some good alternatives to chess, as a game that mixes deep thought and aesthetic variety? I tried Go, but found it somewhat boring compared to chess, because of its uniformity (which, on the other hand, has the advantage of beautiful simplicity and symmetry.) On another note: it is unfortunate, in my opinion, that chess has a special standing among board games. I would love to see some more variety i…

If you see many, many people getting obsessed with a game, and you think it's boring, it's usually a sign that you're not understanding something. Go and no limit poker are getting massively popular. They are both like chess, but much less tactical and a lot more strategical games. In other words, computers can't beat the best players in these games yet. For whatever reasons, the status of games is somewhat related t…

Although the best chess players are now computers, chess doesn't seem anywhere close to being solved in the formal game theory sense (where we know how to produce perfect play that can't be beaten even in principle). There was a gap of over a decade between a machine becoming the world checkers champion (1994) and checkers becoming a formally solved game (2007). (Impressively, both of these were achieved by the same person, Johnathan Schaeffer.)

The difference, of course, is between "this machine can beat the best existing human player" and "this machine can beat any conceivable player as long as it's logically possible to do so". And right now we're at the former stage for chess (at least in some abstract sense: I'm not sure that a specific machine exists in operable condition that reflects the state of the art), but nowhere near the latter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess#Predictions_on_w...

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#99
post #81

Does anyone know some good alternatives to chess, as a game that mixes deep thought and aesthetic variety? I tried Go, but found it somewhat boring compared to chess, because of its uniformity (which, on the other hand, has the advantage of beautiful simplicity and symmetry.) On another note: it is unfortunate, in my opinion, that chess has a special standing among board games. I would love to see some more variety i…

If you see many, many people getting obsessed with a game, and you think it's boring, it's usually a sign that you're not understanding something. Go and no limit poker are getting massively popular. They are both like chess, but much less tactical and a lot more strategical games. In other words, computers can't beat the best players in these games yet. For whatever reasons, the status of games is somewhat related t…

>If you see many, many people getting obsessed with a game, and you think it's boring, it's usually a sign that you're not understanding something.

I love chess, but this type of thinking is flawed. Using this logic, the Twilight movies are misunderstood masterpieces, Justin Beiber is the millennials' Mozart, and WWE style wrestling should be in the Olympics alongside the decathlon.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anand gave up a knight advantage, purposedly for a clear cut draw. When you assume that a world-class GM played "purposedly" for a draw that would lose him the championship title, you're probably wrong. > He took queen with queen, clearly He was in check. Taking W's queen was the only way to avoid losing his own for nothing.

are you sure about that? the king could have moved back up, but in front.. moved from right side to left side between those two lines, without moving in front of the queen line.

Little reminder: Don't downmod people just for asking questions. Even if they are wrong.
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