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FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

chess24.com

161–170 of 184 posts

Re: FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

#161

Congratulations to both players for providing us with so many decisive and interesting games! Particular congratulations to Ding! I played in the US Chess Open in 1978, but I am not much of a player. I did write the shitty little Chess program that Apple distributed on the Apple II demo cassette tape. Off topic, but I 100% support Magnus’s decision to do what he enjoys: playing in tournaments and not time spent prepa…

"I played in the US Chess Open in 1978, but I am not much of a player. I did write the shitty little Chess program that Apple distributed on the Apple II demo cassette tape."

Sometimes...you meet the most interesting people on here!

Re: FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

#162
post #88

Does anyone have tips on how to watch chess? I got pretty into chess during lockdown. I read several books on the subject, was playing a few hours each day. I had friends who got into it as well, and they would watch the tournaments and high profile matches, but I couldn't enjoy them. I didn't feel like I understood the game enough, and the commentary sometimes went over my head/went by too quickly. Anyone been in th…

GM Daniel King explains games in an accessible and very insightful way on the PowerPlay Chess youtube channel.

absolutely my favorite commentator both for his game analysis and his depth of experience from his own chess career

Re: FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

#163

A lot of people (me included) thought this series was dire for Ding after watching him get crushed a few days ago by his opponent Nepo where Ding visibly froze and was in a state of total mental disarray after he couldn't decide on his move, wasted a ton of time, and ended up making a bad move anyways. Commenters said that this was Nepo's strength, even if he doesn't make the absolute greatest move he makes a good en…

The "Ding froze" assessment from game 7 was the fake-news media meme but wasn't the reality. He explained it after the fact. He knew what he was doing. He thought his position was lost, so he was calculating everything to look for a line to save a draw with perpetual checks / threefold repetition. He felt he had nothing to lose by expending all his time searching for that since he was going to lose anyway if he didn'…

I can’t find any video of Ding saying that but I’ll assume it’s true.

Well, then Ding is lying to himself (which would actually be a clever strategy so that doesn’t weigh on your mind the next time you’re in a tough time situation). Ding started his move with over 5 minutes to go. He finally played a move with about 45 secs remaining. He still had 8 moves to make in 45 seconds before time would be extended.

The 5 or so seconds he was leaving himself for each move was close to being physically impossible to achieve. Ding absolutely froze.

Also, it wasn’t “Fake news media” claiming he froze. It was live commentators who are largely GMs themselves who recognized it as him freezing. Anish Giri predicted he froze live when there was about 4 mins to go, from the fact that he hadn’t made a move yet.

Re: FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder if Fabiano Caruana (the commentator in question, world #7) is going to have some introspection following these events, because that pattern occurred several times during his commentary. He came up with endless (and completely valid) ways for both players to 'kill'/simplify/draw the games at various points, but the players chose far more ambitious routes ultimately culminating in the final game where it de…

The weird thing is that, if you look for stylistic differences in super-grandmasters, Fabiano is one of the most combative in tournament play. In any random day, he is far less drawish than Ding himself, or Anish Giri, the commentator earlier in the match. It's not that Fabiano was too passive: It's that the two players in this tournament took unreasonable risks with black. If you look at the Fabiano/Carlsen matches,…

Ding vs Fabiano is +6 =10 -3 (including 2 wins with the black pieces)

Nepo vs Fabiano is +7 =21 -2 (including 3 wins with the black pieces)

---

I think a lot of what we're seeing is not about openings, but risk tolerance. Fabiano has incredible, and fighting, opening preparation. But what really matters is what happens after the opening. In high level chess you often find yourself in a scenario where you see two main ideas in a position. One gives you slight winning chances, but basically zero losing chances. The other gives you good winning chances, but the position will be complex and difficult to play - your opponent will also have plenty of winning chances. And Ding, in particular, seemingly had just zero fear of risk this entire match, which is largely what drove everything.

I'd also add this drives another common misconception in chess. If two very strong players both play a game while making a conscious effort to avoid complexity, you'll end up with a draw that has an extremely high level of accuracy. By contrast if they decide to enter into these sort of unclear positions, you'll see even the best in the world make mistakes, and even blunders, because chess is hard! So people outside the game see the mistakes as driving the results, and that's certainly true. But the reason those mistakes are happening is not because the players are just playing weaker, but because even the best in the world will make mistakes in complex positions.

Re: FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been a massive positive for chess. People (especially young people) aren't being introduced to its excitement and beauty via Ding & Nepo playing loooooooong matches in championships like this. They may go on to watch the world championship after Botez have converted them though.

I'm sure they also abetted people losing their savings in FTX though.

I agree they should stay clear of stuff they haven't done due diligence in, learn from mistakes and hope that money doesn't become the overriding motivator. It is fair to be sceptical though if and when they screw up and don't sincerely acknowledge and apologise.

Re: FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carlsen was pretty clear on this all along. He said there was a _slight_ chance of him changing his mind if Firouzja won the Candidates, which he was nowhere near doing. The announcement after the Candidates was just the final confirmation. Everybody playing knew very well that the second spot would give them a very real shot at playing the WCC, Ding and Nakamura included.

That's true. But Carlsen still leaving the possibility meant it was always going to be a match in this cycle. So if Carlsen forfeiting should have consequences for the way the cycle is structured it should be now, after the match, not instead of it Btw, are you in any way responsible for analysis.sesse.net? I've been using it every day!

I don't think Carlsen demanded changing the cycle, so indeed. (Well, he voiced opinions ten years ago, but this time around, there were no negotiations AFAIK. Just him plain stating he wasn't likely to show up.)

a.s.n is my site, yes. I haven't been following this match as closely as the previous ones, so it's been a bit delayed some days (and I haven't bothered dealing with some bugs in the source PGN, so the clocks have been off at times).

Re: FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, now you have computers that show you the best moves, ok. But this knowledge still has to be squeezed into a human brain. So I don't see any problem with the match format. And even 'draw death' talks are laughable after latest candidates tournament and yours championship.

Memorizing 20-30 or even 40 lines is next to trivial for a Super GM. And prior to this year with more decisive games, the championship was becoming incredibly stale with every event being decided by tie breaks. And despite how exciting this event was, it was still decided by rapid tiebreaks. So do what Carlsen says, reduce the number of classical games and throw in rapid and blitz, winner takes all. That makes the mo…

Quite the opposite approach would be better. Tiebreaks only happened because players are actively seeking them for various reasons, playing to 14 draws in previous matches. Set the formula to 5 wins in classical (like it used to be), and it would be a real chess championship event. Players would no longer seek draws hoping for some luck in the tiebreaks.

Re: FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memorizing 20-30 or even 40 lines is next to trivial for a Super GM. And prior to this year with more decisive games, the championship was becoming incredibly stale with every event being decided by tie breaks. And despite how exciting this event was, it was still decided by rapid tiebreaks. So do what Carlsen says, reduce the number of classical games and throw in rapid and blitz, winner takes all. That makes the mo…

Quite the opposite approach would be better. Tiebreaks only happened because players are actively seeking them for various reasons, playing to 14 draws in previous matches. Set the formula to 5 wins in classical (like it used to be), and it would be a real chess championship event. Players would no longer seek draws hoping for some luck in the tiebreaks.

...and then you get what happened in 84-85, a match that lasts 48 games and 159 days.

Re: FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

#169

Congratulations to both players for providing us with so many decisive and interesting games! Particular congratulations to Ding! I played in the US Chess Open in 1978, but I am not much of a player. I did write the shitty little Chess program that Apple distributed on the Apple II demo cassette tape. Off topic, but I 100% support Magnus’s decision to do what he enjoys: playing in tournaments and not time spent prepa…

I finished in-the-money in the Open in 1982, which hooked me a bit, and I also later played in the World Open and finished in-the-money in the New York open.

For NY, had to live in Manhattan for two weeks, play 6 days, one day off, then 6 more days, several hours each day. I wouldn't have been able to remotely afford it, but my cousin was out of town for two weeks, and let me stay at her place. Taking two weeks off for an open Chess tournament seems insane to today's player's brought up on blitz, rapid, bullet and hyper-bullet (which I confess I enjoy a lot myself).

Re: FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks

#170

Good to see human beings are still challenging themselves in chess after AlphaGo

By that logic 100m dashing should be abondoned after the invention of cars.

This is a good viewpoint. You actually make me feel relieved. I used to worry about human jobs being taken by AI. Now that I think of it as something like cars, I can see human life will be much more convenient as long as we go through that transition.
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