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Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

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Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#231

Post by macspoofing »

3327 wrote: post #9

Chess is amazing it blows my mind why simple tools and games like this are not incorporated in some 'fun' way into the education system. By 'fun' I mean that if children were told to play chess they would not. A system would be need to be designed so that they look forward to chess class as they do for PE and art.

There's only so much time in a day, and there's a lot that one wants to throw at a kid to learn (everybody has a pet topic he or she thinks kids should study, whether it's chess, or music, or programming or personal finance or whatever..)

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#232

Post by crusso »

anExcitedBeast wrote: post #146
sergj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boring compared to chess? As a Go player I take this as an insult. Go is way more interesting, there are more fights, more complexity and you make a lot of tactical and strategic decisions in one game. Also you have a great handicap system, playing stronger players is no big problem. Did I mention that there are no remis and pro matches are often decided by 0,5 points which is really little. I am ending my rant with…

The bitterness between the go and chess communities is silly to me. There is more depth in either game than any one person could ever fully appreciate. Hell, checkers has more depth than any one person can appreciate, and that's a solved game. Pick a game and enjoy it, and don't try to yuck someone else's yum.

I agree completely, as long as those Othello jerks don't come in here with their crappy attitudes.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#233

Post by NoahTheDuke »

smky80 wrote: post #214
scott_s wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That actually looks pretty promising, but seems like it will have major balance issues. 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 c…

Those kinds of "gimmick" openings don't work well once people know the game. It's like losing to the 4-turn checkmate: it only happens once or twice before you start looking for it and planning against it.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#234

Post by zwischenzug »

beefman wrote: post #170
lifeformed wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, "unexpectedness" isn't just a failure to anticipate by weaker players. A non-optimal move could be intentionally made with the intention to be unexpected, in order to play mind games with the opponent. Unexpectedness could be a factor in what makes a move strong, not just an after-the-fact observation.

Chess is a game of perfect information. Chess players at this level do not intentionally play suboptimal moves hoping to trick their opponents. They try to find the best move given the position on the board. In some cases two moves may be roughly objectively equal, one leading to more complex positions than the other. In these cases players do sometimes choose according to the situation on the clock, their style, or…

I refer you to the infamous Lasker-Capablanca game where Lasker played a dull drawish game to throw Capa off his guard.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#235

Post by phaus »

ubernostrum wrote: post #220
phaus wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The difference is pretty simple. In MTG, anyone with 200 bucks can buy a world class T2 deck and learn to play it reasonably well in just a few hours. 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 Qua…

I wasn't really claiming that its easy to win MTG tournaments. I was just illustrating that fairly standardized play begins at a much lower level than it does in chess, because even beginners can buy a world class deck for a small amount of money.

Limited is a great format that I'm glad you mentioned. Anything involving a draft is going to be pretty creative.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that MTG is inferior to chess. I like both games equally well.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#236

Post by RRiccio »

RRiccio wrote: post #210
flud43 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you aren't enjoying it anymore, you probably shouldn't be playing any longer. I didn't advocate playing only for the sake of making money. I suggested it because of how complex a game it is. How much time it takes to master. And because the potential rewards once you do are quite significant, which is a nice added bonus. And I'm not sure when you stopped playing (pre black friday?) but I don't think there's a sing…

There is always room for improving. What I'm saying is that going from level 2 to 3 isn't nearly as fun as going from level 9 to 10. To put in another way: most MtG players I know are still in love with the game 10 years after they started playing competitively, while nearly none of my poker pro friends still play or enjoy poker 5 years after we started. P.S. Played mostly on PP, pre-BF, diff alias.

Edit: Of course I meant the opposite on the first sentence.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#237

Post by Tycho »

kadabra9 wrote: post #10

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…

I believe there was a Russian grandmaster in the 60s who is credited with introducing psychology into chess because he would deliberately play moves which would stir up uncomfortable memories of defeat for his opponents (based on study of their past tournaments) and this distract them from the game at hand. Can't remember his name though.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#238

Post by tzs »

Yovel wrote: post #78
jballanc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but just wanted to add that if you find Go boring, I suggest you pick up a good Go book or two. The really good Go writers can construct an entire war narrative from a game of Go, all the while giving you deeper insight into the strategy and tactics at play in the game. To be honest, compared to Go writing, I find much writing about Chess to be very boring and analytical (though I'm sure that has as much to…

Do you have any good Go book suggestions?

"Go for Beginners" by Iwamoto is a classic [1].

"Go: A Complete Introduction to the Game" by Chikun Cho generally gets very high recommendations [2].

When you finish your first book a good followup is "The Second Book of Go" by Bozulich [3].

Finally, the series "Graded Go Problems for Beginners" is excellent [4]. Volume I problems are suitable for beginners starting as soon as you learn the rules.

If you have an iOS device, take a look at smartgo books [5]. Chikun Cho's book listed above and the graded go problem series are available from them, as are many many other books. These books are in an interactive format that works with their free reader app.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Go-Beginners-Kaoru-Iwamoto/dp/03947333...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Go-Complete-Introduction-Beginner-Elem...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Second-Book-Beginner-Elementary-Books/...

[4] http://senseis.xmp.net/?GradedGoProblemsForBeginners

[5] http://gobooks.com

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#239

Post by Scriptor »

girvo wrote: post #172
Scriptor wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But...he didn't even mention balance. He simply was saying how Starcraft helped him appreciate the "nettlesomeness" aspect of professional chess more. It's just a comment about an interesting observation.

Scriptor! I just wanted to geek out a little and say I love Pharen so much!

Haha, thanks! Glad you like it. I recently got back into toying around with Pharen, the goal being to get accepted to the next Strange Loop.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#240

Post by edgarvaldes »

TylerE wrote: post #159
KedarMhaswade wrote: post #150

Brilliant! Magnanimous. I am a Vishy fan, but this match was really one-sided when Vishy faltered at critical moments. Does it mean age matters? Will Vishy rebound? I hope so, but perhaps it's the sad reality that I acknowledge -- better player won and the problem with the chess world (the number 1 elo-rated player was not the WC for so long) got corrected. Where do we go from here?

Highly unlikely. It seems that most super-GMs start to decline around 40. Vishy is 44. There have been some that have stayed quite strong into their later years - Korchnoi, quite a strong player at his peak (Peaked at 2695 @ age 48, quite late in and of itself), played for the world championship in 1978 and 81 (age 47 and 50), and stayed a regular on the tournament circuit - he beat a 2700+ ranked GM in a 2011 at the…

V. Korchnoi is (was) a great player. His matches with Karpov were always interesting.
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