211–220 of 258 posts
Congrats Magnus Carlsen! You finally unseated our beloved Vishwanathan Anand and made the beautiful game even more beautiful. Allow me to go on a tangent to let me tell my personal story with chess. I began playing at age 7 when my elder brother borrowed a chess board from a friend. It was a nice break from the physical altercations between us(read mat fights). My maternal grand ma called it "Satan's Game". And my mo…
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Comparing a centuries old board game with completely balanced rules, to an infant video game that still has major balance problems (if you looked hard enough), is silly. Chess is as balanced as it gets.
>Chess is as balanced as it gets. It's "balanced" in some respects but both sides use the same features and most games end in a draw, and high level play is less and less interesting. And for that matter it's not even balanced really -- tournaments have players play both white and black because they are so inequal. This is like balancing starcraft by having everyone play mirror matchups or swap races. >So Anand encou…
I still remember some important match almost 15 years ago between two world class Starcraft players, who also apparently were friends off the board, being settled in 3 minutes by one guy "4 pooling" (basically sucker punching) the other.
I'm super excited to see the impact this will have on our noble game. I think it could see a real surge in popularity in the years ahead. And at the age of 22, Magnus is only just getting started.
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…
Chess 2 ( http://ludemegames.com/chess2/ ). I'm not joking. USGamer has a good write-up on it: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/chess-2-the-sequel I agree there's a certain amount of hubris behind the endeavor. But I'm interested in the design of balanced games, and the ways in which some old games are not balanced or rigid.
To me the trick is preserve some kind of backward compatibility with chess while finding a way to increase the strategic content. Ironically stuff like increasing the board size like in 3D chess variants, can actually reduce the strategic content by reducing the role of long-term factors like pawn structure.
EDIT: I can see some combination of the game's features -- particularly the king "touchdown" -- sort of working against the strategic content. IE people just playing gimmick openings to sneak their king across.
I am Norwegian and fucking proud of it right now, due to Magnus Carlsen. He comes from a Nation consisting of 5 mill. people, compared to Anand's billion people. This is probably the greatest sports achievement our country will ever make, as there are really no comparable sports achievements in the world, not now, anyway. IMHO: They should knight him the second he gets of the plane when he returns home. Because no ot…
Vishwanathan Anand was not the rule but an exception.
I am Norwegian and fucking proud of it right now, due to Magnus Carlsen. He comes from a Nation consisting of 5 mill. people, compared to Anand's billion people. This is probably the greatest sports achievement our country will ever make, as there are really no comparable sports achievements in the world, not now, anyway. IMHO: They should knight him the second he gets of the plane when he returns home. Because no ot…
Probably without realizing it, your ego is merely interested in these false associations (Magnus > Anand => Norway > India, and parents-who-gave-birth-to-me-think-they belongs-to Norway => I belongs-to Norway) because it can grab a free ride to better self-esteem without any personal effort. I believe there are false notions of separateness and identity involved here.
Nationalism is also spiritually detrimental because it prevents you from realizing that you are not who you think you are. How can you even ask the question, "Who am I?" if you are so comfortable with who you think you are?
Sorry for the lecture. I hope there is something useful here for you despite raining on your parade!
I am Norwegian and fucking proud of it right now, due to Magnus Carlsen. He comes from a Nation consisting of 5 mill. people, compared to Anand's billion people. This is probably the greatest sports achievement our country will ever make, as there are really no comparable sports achievements in the world, not now, anyway. IMHO: They should knight him the second he gets of the plane when he returns home. Because no ot…
PS: Before you all get on my case let me tell you I do get the fact that sports does have display of skills value (same as skills of artist) that is worth paying for. I also get that professional sports is hard and money hungry adventure and without fans it won't exist. What I don't get is why is it a matter of pride?
I am Norwegian and fucking proud of it right now, due to Magnus Carlsen. He comes from a Nation consisting of 5 mill. people, compared to Anand's billion people. This is probably the greatest sports achievement our country will ever make, as there are really no comparable sports achievements in the world, not now, anyway. IMHO: They should knight him the second he gets of the plane when he returns home. Because no ot…
I'm always amused by how people tie their pride to things they have absolutely no control over. In case of sports, it's even worse. Most sport outcomes aren't repeatable. When "your" team/person wins it is very likely due to random mistakes others made or you were fortunate to avoid this time . They may very well loose if the game was repeated again. Would your pride wash away then? Even if sport events were repeatab…
If someone wins "we won"
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It was the best option in both cases. He was in check when he took the queen, so the queens had to swap or black would lose his queen. At the end Anand traded his knight for the pawn as a king and knight (black's material) can't win, but a king and pawn (white's material) can, so it is in blacks best interest to swap.
what rule is that? are you implying even if only white king, black king, and black knight would be left on board, it would be a draw/win for white by default? Instead of trying to isolate white king into a corner for checkmate? Never heard of a rule like that. Are you sure?
It's not in the written rules of the game, but is a consequence of the rules.
To place the opposing king in checkmate, you must have sufficient pieces to threaten the square the king is on, and all adjacent squares, simultaneously. This means anywhere from 4-8 squares depending on the position.
King and knight, alone, cannot threaten enough contiguous squares simultaneously to cause checkmate in any position, largely because the knight must place the opposing king in check (a king cannot get close enough), but due to the mechanics of the knight's move there will always be at least three adjacent squares not threatened by the knight at that moment, and at least one that cannot be threatened by the knight's king.
You should feel free to try this yourself: place a king of one color on the board, and a king and knight of the other color, and then use only those pieces to try to construct a checkmate. It simply cannot be done. The best you can do is isolate the lone king in a corner and cause a draw by depriving it of moves (but it will not be in check at that time, so it will be stalemate, not checkmate).
And as luiz-pv9 points out, king+knight is not the only "insufficient material" combination.
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The people who play tournament chess rarely deviate from proven opening sequences as well. As such, publishing move by move accounts of Chess tournaments for documentation and study hinders creativity. See what I did there?
For ranked players, you are absolutely correct. That being said, there is still quite a bit more variety in chess at any level than there is in any given T2 cycle of MTG. With MTG, even if I went down to my local card shop for Friday Night Magic, there would be enough people there with netdecks to ensure that creative attempts at deck building don't succeed very often. In a local chess tournament, the level of play i…
So, I spend my weekends putting on a black uniform and working as a tournament judge at professional-level Magic events. And... maybe you're right that someone could do well at a local FNM this way. But at any sort of serious competitive level (even at the Pro Tour Qualifier level), your assertion just doesn't hold up.
You can see this in tournament results, by the way. Card availability is basically only an issue for casual/FNM play. At any sort of real competitive tournament, the field is made up of players who have access to the cards they want, and the winner is determined by a combination of preparation and skill.
Most importantly, you can see this in results from Limited formats (where players build decks using cards opened on-site from standard booster packs, which are unpredictable enough to constitute a random per-player card pool). Though there are certainly "Limited specialist" players, for the most part you will see similar lists of names among the top finishers in both Limited and Constructed formats, which drives home the point in a frankly undeniable way.