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Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

chess24.com

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Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#171

Post by EvgeniyZh »

noSyncCloud wrote: post #114
nhumrich wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chess is still no-hard, so "proving this" will be near impossible. The closest we have is statistics. I remember watching a "bot battle." A chess tournament for bots only, algorithms playing eachother. Nearly 70% of these games ended in draw.

https://tcec-chess.com/ 70% draws is a very small number, really. Not conclusive at all.

TCEC is forced to choose very imbalanced openings to make sure there are some non-drawn games. From starting position it'd be 100 draws out of 100 (also all very similar o each other)

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#172

Post by franknstein »

Gehinnn wrote: post #119
franknstein wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a small chance that deep into the tree the first to play gets into zugzwang first, meaning position with no good moves. Is there any other scenario where playing black would give you theoretical edge? So until proven otherwise it's still possible that its theoretical win for white, theoretical draw or theoretical win for black as i understand it.

Zugzwang is the only way for white to lose. Without Zugzwang and a winning strategy for black for chess with Zugzwang, white could skip the first move and now has the winning strategy.

What do you mean skip the first move? Like play a neutral move? Why would such a move exist?

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#173

Post by dalbasal »

matsemann wrote: post #2

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…

Chess' centre of gravity is increasingly online centred now. Carlson himself has a lot to do with it. So do other charismatic super GMs like Nakamura.

A light hearted, unplanned and unadvertised naka-carlsen bullet match can attract a lot of viewers. They both stream, and lots of other chess streamers will switch to watching and doing commentary when these matches happen.

They'll play silly openings like the double bong cloud and have fun.

Carlson's into this new egaming vibe. He's good at it, and it's good for chess. Meanwhile, high-level classical is brutal. The level is so high that the game is hard to follow. It takes forever and is draining. Most games end in a draw.

I feel like Fide should focus more on rapid, and get more involved in the online scene. Maybe this is the opportunity.

I suspect the most anticipated, spectator matches of the future will be rapid matches and alt formats like team tournies (go Norway gnomes). They're just more fun for everyone but your cranky old chess instructor, and even she loves it in secret.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#174

Post by q7xvh97o2pDhNrh »

fdeage wrote: post #138
SeanLuke wrote: post #92

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…

> He was utterly dominant; indeed it is hard to think of a competitor in all of history more dominant over his sport or game than Tinsley. Very interesting comment. This sentence about dominance in a field made me think of Stu Ungar, who dominated Gin Rummy so completely that he had to switch to Poker (where he became a 3-time world champion) to meet interesting adversaries. I couldn't find an exact reference for the…

Fascinating character. I ended up reading the whole Wikipedia article [1] because of your comment.

Sounds like he was very skilled and continuously getting better -- which is of course impressive. At the same time, his overall life story turns out to be tragic. Two choice quotes from the article really jumped out for me:

> Ungar told ESPN TV... that the 1980 WSOP was the first time he had ever played a Texas hold'em tournament. Poker legend Doyle Brunson remarked that it was the first time he had seen a player improve as the tournament went on.

> Ungar is regarded by many poker analysts and insiders as one of the greatest pure-talent players ever to play the game. But on the topic of his life, Stu’s long term friend Mike Sexton said “In the game of life, Stu Ungar was a loser.”

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stu_Ungar

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#175

Post by Bootvis »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #105
taneq wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think Magnus just changed focus to being the first 2900. I bet the way the last match went was a bit of a let down for him as well.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#176

Post by rofo1 »

jmyeet wrote: post #136
AmericanChopper wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fischer is clearly the goat in my view. But it’s not so obvious to me that Kasparov and Carlsen are better than say Vishy or Morphy or Botvinnik or Capablanca…

I find these conversations amusing because it really is the nerd (I mean that as a nerd myself; not perjoratively) version of arguing about whether LeBron is better than Jordan (in their respective primes) or whether the GOAT is Brady, Woods or LeBron. It's just funny that this same argument structure repeats in radically different fields with (often) very different people. Personally I've never gotten too invested i…

I think most chess players are comparing them in the same circumstances, e.g on pure skill.

So for example Fischer said Capablanca and Morphy, under the same circumstances, could beat anyone (if they were born in the same era, using the same tools, etc.)

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#177

Post by PeterisP »

amelius wrote: post #170
PeterisP wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote by Paul Morphy, one of the great old chess masters, seems relevant here - "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life."

I hope it doesn't apply to coding too.

Perhaps you might say something like that for e.g. competitive coding or leetcode.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#178

Post by stolenmerch »

jonahbenton wrote: post #149
stolenmerch wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read this story in Jordan Ellenberg's book, "Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else" as part of the section on decision trees, evaluating state, etc. Tinsley is the GOAT.

Oh, intriguing title. How is the book?

It's probably too basic for anyone who's taken even college-level math courses, but I thought it was an engaging summer read that got my imagination going. Easy to read but also required some work. It was fun to imagine examples of everyday life as geometric objects -- but you probably have to be in the mood for that to enjoy it.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#180

Post by YawningAngel »

franknstein wrote: post #172
Gehinnn wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zugzwang is the only way for white to lose. Without Zugzwang and a winning strategy for black for chess with Zugzwang, white could skip the first move and now has the winning strategy.

What do you mean skip the first move? Like play a neutral move? Why would such a move exist?

You can play e.g.

1. e3 e5 2. e4 whatever

And you effectively have a king's pawn opening with colours reversed

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