Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

new.chess24.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 132 posts

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#121

Post by ChrisLomont »

icoder wrote: post #53
ChrisLomont wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person reaching 2900 when it's not by changing the scale shows their relative position to others is a new record. it's a worthy psychological goal, like breaking a 4 minute mile even though a minute and a mile are made up quantities. Or scoring 300 in bowling, when 10 rounds is arbitrary. Pretty much every record in every sport is arbitrary, yet people like to set goals for motivation.

Yes but the examples you mentioned are (in practice) absolute and can be reached independently of how others are performing. In that sense, ELO _is_ different (as also explained in another answer, he can reach 2900 more easily if others start performing worse).

Ok, but the point is the same - a huge amount of human records and skills are scored against a moving backdrop of human scores that are current competitors.

Federer getting grand slams - all against local in time competitors - is impressive. Had he played 50 years ago, he'd have likely gotten more. Had he played in 50 years, likely less, expecting competition to improve.

Same for NBA records - all against a moving, relative backdrop.

Same for wrestling, baseball, hockey, and on and on and on.

Just because your score is relative to others does not make reaching some milestone, especially this one, less impressive.

Also, it's easier to have a higher ELO if others do too, not the other way around.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#122

Post by wonnor »

jedberg wrote: post #93

> Considering that draws at the grandmaster level are occurring 70 − 75% of the time nowadays, Does this mean we've basically solved chess at this point?

The fact that these grandmasters would get destroyed by engines means that no, we are not even close to chess being solved for human gameplay.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#123

Post by wonnor »

kwartz wrote: post #59

Hopefully the whole takeover of his (~8% stake) company "Play Magnus" (owner of chess24, chessable, etc.) by chess.com does not affect him. There is a cringey announcement of the takeover on YouTube, including a TikTok video of Danny Rentsch dancing (to put it mildly ...). The plan seems to be to draw Carlsen into that toxic sphere of influence. Chess streaming and the culture surrounding chess.com seem to be for the…

What a shame that chess is becoming more accessible to the unwashed masses.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#124

Post by 8note »

franknstein wrote: post #36
pxeger1 wrote: post #29

Knowing very little about chess, what is the current state of the best chess AI compared to human players like Magnus Carlsen?

Magnus Carlsen: 2864 Elo Stockfish: 3585 Elo "Elo suggested scaling ratings so that a difference of 200 rating points in chess would mean that the stronger player has an expected score (which basically is an expected average score) of approximately 0.75, and the USCF initially aimed for an average club player to have a rating of 1500." I guess that means that Magnus has expected score of roughly 0.25^((3585 - 2864)/2…

Stockfish competes in fide competitions?

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#125

Post by epolanski »

trashtester wrote: post #30
epolanski wrote: post #26

I think one major piece is consistently missed in those articles. Yes, the chances of him hitting 2900 do not depend only on his performance against other players, but from their elo as well. If the following 25 players in the world where all 2800+ Carlsen would already be 2900+. Thus, Carlsen's best chances largely depend on elo inflation to widen the elo distribution itself. One example of this: Louis de Bourdonnai…

I would also argue that there is a source of ELO deflation going on. As the top level players all get better, theory evolves, people generally play better chess. A player with a rating of 2750 today might have beat Kasparov in his prime, simply because chess has evolved. In a way, it's similar to sports. Plenty of people today might have beat Carl Lewis at 100m 30 years ago, but they would probably not be considered…

Elo doesn't measure absolute but relative strength. It is not relevant whether the top players get better, what matters is their winrates against each other.

The fact that chess has evolved is irrelevant because it applies to all players from carlsen to beginners everyone has the same tools.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#126

Post by bsder »

gnulinux wrote: post #69
ChrisLomont wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person reaching 2900 when it's not by changing the scale shows their relative position to others is a new record. it's a worthy psychological goal, like breaking a 4 minute mile even though a minute and a mile are made up quantities. Or scoring 300 in bowling, when 10 rounds is arbitrary. Pretty much every record in every sport is arbitrary, yet people like to set goals for motivation.

> their relative position to others is a new record. This doesn't seem necessarily true to me. If Magnus was in his prime in say 1980s it's not clear if he could ever get so close to 2900 since every other super-GM had lower ELO which would make his progress slower than now. Not only do we not know how an average 2022-super-GM compares to a 1980-super-GM, we also don't know how Magnus compares to an 1980-super-GM. E.…

> Not only do we not know how an average 2022-super-GM compares to a 1980-super-GM

I suspect this is false. Chess is one of the few endeavors where we have decent historical records. Combine this with the fact that computers can now analyze lines a very long way, and I suspect that you can do things like compare how often GMs missed a superior line of play.

By most measures, the GMs of the past played weaker chess than our current GMs. The current GMs benefit from having started at younger ages with a larger body of chess theory and super-strong computers to work with and against. I suspect that the GMs of the past would be as strong as the GMs of the present given those. However, they didn't have those and, consequently, the chess, itself, was weaker.

Side note: I adore Mikhail Tal's "This position looks interesting and complex. Banzai!" games. However, most of them would get him absolutely creamed against the current top players. And to be fair--even the top players of his own time tended to refute them. However, Tal's games are often way more exciting than everybody else's.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#127

Post by cwillu »

Quekid5 wrote: post #94
lake_vincent wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the discussion that makes you a crank. It's publishing a paper claiming you have solved something that you haven't even begun to understand. It's bypassing peer review. It's ignoring all the literature out there and claiming that is somehow a virtue. You have an interesting idea? Go ahead, please share it! But it's not productive to just start with "Look everybody, I solved it!" It just wastes everyone's tim…

Further, in certain cases (P =? NP is one I know of) it has been proven that certain types [0] of proofs cannot possibly work -- and yet people keep offering "proofs" of those bound-to-be-wrong types. [0] Not sure if 'types' is the right word? Using it colloquially. Maybe 'classes' would be more accurate?

It's subtle, because some of the impossibility proofs are effectively saying that any real proof needs to be somehow sensitive to whether it's in an imaginary universe with oracles, so they can _fail_ in them!

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#128

Post by epolanski »

jononomo wrote: post #67
epolanski wrote: post #26

I think one major piece is consistently missed in those articles. Yes, the chances of him hitting 2900 do not depend only on his performance against other players, but from their elo as well. If the following 25 players in the world where all 2800+ Carlsen would already be 2900+. Thus, Carlsen's best chances largely depend on elo inflation to widen the elo distribution itself. One example of this: Louis de Bourdonnai…

"If the following 25 players in the world where all 2800+ Carlsen would already be 2900+." Why are you assuming that Carlsen would always win against other players if the other players are that much stronger? Maybe if the following 25 players were all 2800+ then Carlsen would take more losses.

Because, as already explained elo measures relative strength not absolute one. If he's a better player he's going to beat them more often than not while not losing all the points he does now for drawing.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#129

Post by QuantumGood »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #20

How much would get gain for a win vs a say 1800 rated player? Could he game the system by doing 1000 rated matches against poor players until he hits 2900?

They would have to be demotivated, and Carlsen would have to never make a mistake causing huge loss of ratings points. And in reality they would be more motivated than by most of their other games, and Carlsen makes mistakes.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#130

Post by mda »

bagacrap wrote: post #81
mda wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering there are quite a few players from young generation who reached 2700+ recently I don't see him reaching his goal and even 5% looks optimistic.

doesnt that help? he needs to play (defeat) opponents with high scores to have a chance to boost his own score

Problem is new generation probably are less affected psychologically against him and I suspect Carlsen has higher. risk of losing against them compared to old guard.
Post reply on HN