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Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

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Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#101

Post by somenameforme »

saucymew wrote: post #9

It 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.

Chess ability seems distributed in a power law, rather than any sort of a normal distribution. There are repeatedly, throughout history, players that are just much better than everybody else, including the 2nd best player in the world. Lasker, for instance, was world champion for 26 consecutive years while also regularly dominating tournaments during that period as well. Kasparov was #1 for 21 years, and so on.

I'd go further to say I think this is true in many things. For instance if you're into wrestling, you know the name of Alexander Karelin [1] who ended his career with a record of 887 wins and 2 losses (both losses by a single point and both highly controversial). He was winning olympic gold, repeatedly, not only without a single defeat but without his opponents even scoring a single point against him. His ears tell the story - 889 world class matches, and he doesn't even have cauliflower ear.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Karelin

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#102

Post by somenameforme »

epolanski wrote: post #23
saucymew wrote: post #9

It 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 don't think it's merely mental albeit it seems like even nervous Carlsen is cooler than his very focused opponents (see game 3 vs Fabiano where caruana had a completely winning position after carlsens blunder). Carlsen has spent the core of his career mastering two aspects historically underlooked aspects of the game. The first is the endgame, and there isn't much to say there. He's by far the best end game player…

They had a heart rate monitor at one of the freestyle events which physically affirms what you're saying here. Carlsen's heart rate was barely above resting while his opponents were invariably like they were running a marathon. Even when he was losing, he remained calmer than when his opponents were in normal positions.

I think that should be a normal part of chess competition. It provides some really interesting metadata for spectators. To some degree it also emphasizes the importance of something people don't normally associate with chess - physical conditioning. When your heart is pounding for hours and the cortisol flowing, you literally get physically exhausted.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#104

Post by nilslindemann »

LogicalRisk wrote: post #99
nilslindemann wrote: post #76

Earlier 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?

I do not know the time controls anymore, but I always use the latest Stockfish with all available threads. No opening book, but I do not repeat lines to take advantage of that, because I play to train calculation. I guess hash was the (for my setup) normal 4096 MB.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#105

Post by nilslindemann »

galkk wrote: post #97
nilslindemann wrote: post #76

Earlier 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%.

Either the engine was misconfigured, the hardware you were playing on was glitching or you are omitting something. There is no chance in the world that you can beat stockfish in standard time control.

Just because you can not do it it does not mean that others can not do it. If you search for Lichess games where strong players play against (edit: strongest!) Stockfish (which, admittedly is not the full throttle Stockfish) you will find that Stockfish by far does not win all the time. Such is a claim which only inexperienced chess beginners and Stockfish fanboys make. Stronger players know that Stockfish is relatively better, and by a far margin, but – obviously – does not win all the time due to the huge drawing range in chess. Admittedly, winning a game gets more and more difficult with every year. And, to make you happy, I have never beaten Lc0.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#106

Post by angry_albatross »

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #81
gpm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magnus not participating in FIDE events seems to have absolutely nothing to do with his longevity, it just means that FIDE is no longer meaningfully hosting THE world championship because they failed to attract the talent.

Yeah if FIDE crowns some other champ without Magnus people wont think oh wow Magnus lost the spot, people will think oh wow FIDE lost the spot of being the kingmaker. chess.com is probably the more credible org for global rankings anyway

You know that he already has stopped participating in the world championship organized by FIDE, right? The current 'world champion' is Gukesh Dommaraju, who took it from Ding Liren the year before, but of course Magnus would probably still be the world champion if he kept competing for it.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#108

Post by somenameforme »

saucymew wrote: post #38
FreakLegion wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to the odd individual game? Magnus beat Lazavik pretty badly in the SCC and knocked Sindarov out of the Freestyle final.

Individual games. The ones that specifically come to mind are Lazavik vs. Carlsen, Speed Chess Championship 2025 Semi-Final, Round 3, and Sindarov vs. Carlsen, Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Finals 2025 in South Africa, Round 1 of the Group Stage Finals.

I assume you mean that beautiful tactical shot Lazavik found? In general these sort of games are the opposite of convincing. The reason is that we're all human and make tactical mistakes now and again, even more so in very rapid time controls. What generally defines players overall edge though is the ability to grind small edges, rather than stumble into knock-out blows.

For instance this is why Carlsen was so crushed by his loss to Niemann in 2022 (that led to the cheating claim controversy). Niemann actively avoided a draw and then systematically outplayed Magnus in a very difficult R+N v R+B ending. This is also why players like Erdogmus seem to have so much potential. It's not the tactics - which is basically a prerequisite to high level play, but his ability to just systematically grind down extremely strong players like MVL.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#109

Post by HarryHirsch »

freetime2 wrote: post #28

How long do chess players typically remain at their peak for? According to wikipedia, Magnus is currently 35. Is it impressive to be winning at 35? Would we expect to see his performance drop off in the next 5-10 years? Even if he is still capable mentally and physically, I would think the stress of training and competing at that level must get old after a while.

George Sheldrick wrote an important program at the age of 75. He chose not to follow a chess career as a young man, but he could have.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#110

Post by josephg »

nilslindemann wrote: post #105
galkk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either the engine was misconfigured, the hardware you were playing on was glitching or you are omitting something. There is no chance in the world that you can beat stockfish in standard time control.

Just because you can not do it it does not mean that others can not do it. If you search for Lichess games where strong players play against (edit: strongest!) Stockfish (which, admittedly is not the full throttle Stockfish) you will find that Stockfish by far does not win all the time. Such is a claim which only inexperienced chess beginners and Stockfish fanboys make. Stronger players know that Stockfish is relativ…

> If you search for Lichess games where strong players play against Stockfish ([..]) you will find that Stockfish by far does not win all the time.

I'm sure some of those games are actually stockfish v stockfish or something similar. Its pretty easy to run stockfish or lichess locally and copy the moves from each engine back and forth.

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