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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

#191

Post by frankenstain »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #128
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.

The most devastating fact of life is that physical (and mental) performance drops off at around mid 30s. Hakuho, by far the greatest sumo wrestler in history, retired at 38 when he should have retired years earlier.

> The most devastating fact of life is that physical (and mental) performance drops off at around mid 30s

Different faculties peak at different times. While MIT/Harvard research shows that raw processing speed peaks early, it highlights that social intelligence and crystallized knowledge don't peak until our 40s or 50s [I]. Specifically, the Whitehall II study identifies age 45 as the inflection point for initial reasoning decline [II], while research from Stony Brook found that changes in brain network stability—the metabolic cost of cognitive maintenance—typically don't begin until age 44 [III].

[I] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761456733...

[II] https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.d7622

[III] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2416433122

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

#192

Post by Sesse__ »

josephg wrote: post #117
nilslindemann wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@josephg (for reasons I do not know there is no reply link below your post) Sure, some people are cheaters. Some are not. There is no personal win in cheating against Stockfish. Usually strong players do it for training purposes, or to entertain their watchers when they stream. I actually remember having seen one who did that, and he drew. That was a party.

Yes. I hear this claim from above: "Some humans can beat stockfish." Evidence given: "There exist some small number of games on lichess.org played against stockfish where the user won." My counter argument is that games on lichess against stockfish don't imply a human beat stockfish. It could just be that stockfish (or other bots) can sometimes beat stockfish. And some humans surely use bots to play on their behalf i…

> My counter argument is that games on lichess against stockfish don't imply a human beat stockfish. It could just be that stockfish (or other bots) can sometimes beat stockfish. And some humans surely use bots to play on their behalf in order to cheat in online games.

Also, Lichess' Stockfish runs in the browser (with all the slowdown that entails), plus is limited to one second of thinking time even on the highest level. It also has no tablebases and AFAIK no opening book. Even if you _can_ consistently beat Lichess Stockfish level 8, there's still a very long way from there to saying you can beat Stockfish at its maximum strength, which is generally what people would assume the best humans would be up against in such a duel.

People generally don't play unencumbered engines anymore because the result isn't interesting.

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

#193

Post by fc417fc802 »

LanceH wrote: post #133
Trufa wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a sharp decline with age. Magnus himself says he's not as sharp as he was younger, even if he can compensate with experience.

There are a lot of confounding variables. Chief among them is someone at the top just wanting to get on with their life, start a family for instance, or basically anything other than study 12 hours a day. It's hard to say it's cognitive decline for most of the people who just aren't working as hard at 40 as they were at 25.

If Chess960 or some other variant that doesn't involve as much rote work becomes sufficiently popular for long enough perhaps it will yield some valuable data about mental function versus age. At least a more holistic view than the studies we currently have.

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

#194

Post by fc417fc802 »

tux1968 wrote: post #116
angry_albatross wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the point the poster was making, is that there is an asterisk beside Gukesh and Liren's world champ status. Nobody really thinks they're the actual world-champ, regardless of what FIDE says. FIDE failed to attract the best player, to even play.

By the same logic, why would anyone expect that the best player in the world for any given sport happens to compete in the olympics? The issue here is the semantics. FIDE titling someone "world champion" is at the end of the day no different than a burger joint claiming to be the best in the country after winning some competition or another.

To be clear, I don't mean to take issue with the competitions themselves.

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

#195

Post by n4r9 »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #155
Pay08 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I recall, he automatically lost that one game but was not thrown out of the tournament. Eventually he just stopped playing the world championship altogether, which is when he lost his title.

I don't really follow human chess, but I wonder what the new nr 1 player thought of themselves after essentially becoming the "best player in the world who doesn't wear jeans." Must be so frustrating to know there is something left to achieve but your league's shenanigans will prevent you from achieving it in an official and prestigious manner.

In my experience many highly competitive people care mostly about the win itself, and less about the how.

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

#196

Post by kachapopopow »

enizor2 wrote: post #154
Taek wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He declined to defend it because he disagreed with the way FIDE was organizing and managing the tournament. I believe this is around the time they threw him out of a tournament for wearing jeans, when he was not the only competitor present in jeans. I think it's nearly universally accepted that his streak ended on a technicality rather than a legitimate decline/defeat.

Absolutely not. He refused to defend his classic title in April 2023, citing a lack of motivation for this format. The "Jeans" controversy happened during the Rapid championship in December 2024, nearly two years after. It's universally accepted that his streak Classic Championship ended because of his lack of motivation, not on technicalities.

Actually he recently stated that he IS still disappointed about that whole incident because nothing changed and is currently backing up hikaru on drama around similar issues.

The motivation issues can stem from poor management :)

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

#197

Post by u1hcw9nx »

somenameforme wrote: post #77
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.

On average players start declining in their mid to late thirties, just about the age of Magnus (and Hikaru). But even with that decline, it's not like they simply can't play anymore. Drag Kasparov out of retirement and he's still going to be an extremely strong player, even in his 60s. And a lot probably comes with environmental rather than physical issues. Staying at the highest level in chess requires never-ending…

It's the ability to concentrate that starts to go.

Kasparov have talk about this. Older players can play at a world-class level for the first few hours, but their ability to maintain intense concentration declines as the game progresses. Most blunders by older GMs happen in the 5th or 6th hour of play. Older players also can't recover from earlier intense game next morning as well.

According to Kasparov older players get "calculation blackouts" and inability to visualize the board.

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

#198

Post by somenameforme »

enizor2 wrote: post #154
Taek wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He declined to defend it because he disagreed with the way FIDE was organizing and managing the tournament. I believe this is around the time they threw him out of a tournament for wearing jeans, when he was not the only competitor present in jeans. I think it's nearly universally accepted that his streak ended on a technicality rather than a legitimate decline/defeat.

Absolutely not. He refused to defend his classic title in April 2023, citing a lack of motivation for this format. The "Jeans" controversy happened during the Rapid championship in December 2024, nearly two years after. It's universally accepted that his streak Classic Championship ended because of his lack of motivation, not on technicalities.

I think it's more that he wanted to go out undefeated, rather than lacking motivation. Or rather the former driving the latter.

He made 5 title defenses. Two were against the previous generation of players, and he did extremely well. 2 were against players of his generation and were anything but compelling victories. He only won a total of 1 classical game in the 24 played, and that was in a must-win scenario because he had just lost for a final record in these matches of +1 -1 =22. And finally there was his match against Nepo which was looking to be another extremely close match until Nepo lost a critical game, and then went on monkey tilt, as is his reputation - proceeding to play horribly for the rest of the match and get wiped.

In an interview with Rogan, Carlsen stated he felt he peaked a bit before his match against Nepo, and so he probably did not view his chances of success in a world championship match as especially high. So he was going to have to spend months preparing for a match he could very well lose which would certainly tarnish his reputation as the GOAT of chess. I think this is why he couldn't find the motivation.

For instance there were new world records just around the corner. The most successful world title defenses is 6 and that was back in the early 20th century. With one more he could have surpassed Kasparov and at least tied the record.

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

#200

Post by OJFord »

somenameforme wrote: post #77
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.

On average players start declining in their mid to late thirties, just about the age of Magnus (and Hikaru). But even with that decline, it's not like they simply can't play anymore. Drag Kasparov out of retirement and he's still going to be an extremely strong player, even in his 60s. And a lot probably comes with environmental rather than physical issues. Staying at the highest level in chess requires never-ending…

> The rise of freestyle chess could viably see players extending their dominance for much longer, because there's currently believed to be no realistic way to do impactful opening prep in that game.

For those out of the know like me, the tldr seems to be that it shuffles the positions in the first rank - symmetrically with your opponent, but not the usual rook/knight/bishop/royal both sides. So you can't study openings well because you don't even know the starting position.

https://www.freestyle-chess.com/fc-players-club-rules/

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