151–160 of 461 posts
It might be worth mentioning a famous abdication which caused a lot of consternation, albeit in another game. I love this story but may have gotten some details wrong. Marion Tinsley was world checkers champion from 1955-1958, then took a break, then again from 1975-1991, when he resigned in protest (at age 64 ). He was utterly dominant; indeed it is hard to think of a competitor in all of history more dominant over…
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In theory, wouldn't the player who takes the first move have a tiny tiny edge? Or is the second mover always able to guarantee a draw if they play perfectly?
Unless I missed something recent, it is not known whether any player has a winning strategy (or a drawing strategy, for that matter). It would be quite the discovery as well.
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No one is going to waste the CPU time running Stockfish (or GPU with Leela) against each other at classical time controls long enough to see a decisive game which might never happen anyway so we will likely never know. I think current Stockfish on a modern ThreadRipper with classical time control will never be beaten. I am not 100% sure I am right but I don't expect (but would love to!) to be proven wrong.
Stockfish won't solve it. We need a full game tree. Stockfish is not designed to build a full game tree. Generating a full game tree would be a truly daunting undertaking, and I can't even fathom how much memory would it take.
"However, one cannot say that he has beaten Caruana or Karjakin convincingly. [Both matches were decided on tiebreaks]. There were questions in his match against Anand too. If he had beaten all three of them as clearly as he won against Nepomniachtchi, I would understand Carlsen. But is he already tired of winning after winning one match clearly?" (Karpov)
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Does it count as 'breaking' if you're just tired of the game and don't want to play any more? Surely it's OK to stop and do other things eventually?
Yes, that's what people mean, almost by definition. In highly competitive events, even a slight break in focus and drive toward winning are often really problematic. Once that wolf-like focus and readiness to fight is broken, a competitor is usually done.
FWIW Hikaru pointed out that some of Magnus's complaints are kinda moot because Fide created the world rapid/blitz championships. If you prefer shorter games, go win that one. If you enjoy classic, then do the classic tournament.
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> And against Nepo it was a steamroll, understandably meeting him again isn't that exciting. The first half of the match wasn't even close to a steamroll. It's just Ian broke mentally after that famous 6th game. The candidate tournament showed that he had more than recovered from that loss and I think he would be in a much better shape to challenge Carlsen again. Also, with Carlsen's current attitude, it is quite pos…
Does it count as 'breaking' if you're just tired of the game and don't want to play any more? Surely it's OK to stop and do other things eventually?
He's just not playing in the FIDE World Championship because he dislikes the process.
1. Make it so that repeating a position is not a legal move 2. Remove castling as a legal move
Or, if the rules of the game stay the same, change the tournament format radically:
3. Force specific openings like they do in the computer chess tournaments. Both players play as white and black. Select positions that are far from equal.
Time to change the format. It's understandable you don't want to spend your whole career preparing for these long matches all the time. For the challenger it's 6 months of preparing, but for Carlsen it would've been his 6th time of preparing for this in a few years. They have also become less entertaining. 12 matches is long (edit, 14 now), but no one dares to take any risks. Caruana was just defensive and all games…
For those of us who don't follow this closely, why is the format such a problem? Is it because its stressful, and demands too much work and prep from participants. Just asking as competitive sport at the top level be it chess, football, or even swimming for that matter demands lots of work and a kind of work ethic not easy for most of us.
An athlete can spend all day in the gym and then grab a shower and roll into bed. They may be sore as hell from head to toe but they will be so exhausted they can just pass out and get a great night's sleep. They also get the benefit of endorphins which make them feel good and rewarded for doing their exercise.
On the other hand, a chess player spending all day going over variations and practicing is going to have a difficult time sleeping with all of those lines and positions flying around in their head. They will be mentally exhausted but still active and alert. It is an absolutely miserable experience. So to prevent it you need to cut back on the hours which means spreading out the preparation over many days/weeks/months. It can also get very boring because you don't get the same rewards you get from playing and winning games. The only reward comes when you finally get to the WC match and then you actually have to win or it's utterly heartbreaking.