Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope it doesn't apply to coding too.
Perhaps you might say something like that for e.g. competitive coding or leetcode.
Code golfing!
Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
211–220 of 461 posts
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
there's a (so-so) movie - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338467/
when the show Billions did a poker game they used a famous Stu Ungar hand https://somuchpoker.com/calling-with-ten-high-stu-ungar-vs-m...
(but OMG that game was so cringey for so many reasons, you don't get to call time and go talk to your therapist in the middle of a hand)
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know next to nothing about competitive chess, other than watching the Magnus documentary about a younger Magnus. What kinds of things are chess players doing to prepare for a match for 6 Months? Is there something they're memorizing, studying video (what would they be looking fro)? I'd have always just thought they were good to play at any time. This sounds super stressful.
In a normal tournament, you meet so many different people (and you often don't know in advance exactly who you will meet of all the participants), so it's hard to specifically prepare. For a match of this kind, however, you know your opponent will prepare specifically against you. So you kinda have to do the same. That entails analyzing all of their games and finding defenses and weaknesses. But also trying to find n…
the top 100 players in the world is a small list, and at this level you don't need to worry about anyone below that (until they get higher) as you are enough better than them that you can beat them. Thus for tournaments you don't have worry as you have already studied everyone you need to worry about before the tournament. Odds are you know ahead of time who is in the tournament and so you have a couple weeks to study all possible opponents.
Remember for the best players in the world chess is their full time job. They spend 12 hours a day on the game. They are earning enough from tournaments to support life.
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#214The candidates might as well be the world championship. But they need to make sure wins give you e.g. 3 points and draws only 0.5. Even in the candidates this year Ian - having obtained a nice lead - played drawing lines with white to perfection. I don't blame him, it was the right decision. The incentive structure needs to change. Even after a draw, the concept of Armageddon games to give another half point would be…
This year's candidates was pretty combative, I don't think they have a problem to solve more with that.
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chinook was obviously playing the long con. Knowing Tinsley's weakness was his humanity, so it continued to draw until his frail human body succumbed to the forces of nature, thus winning once and for all.
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life.
Whoosh
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#216I guess when a particular game has been figured out thanks to AI, we will hear more and more professionals and world champions throwing the towel. Yes there will be a market for watching human vs human games but can we still call them the best of the best when some AI program can play it not only better but teach us more axioms and undiscovered patterns or rules?
Good on him to call it quits, shouldn't impact his standing in the world any less.
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#217Time 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…
Cricket went through a similar revolution and now we have a single game that last 5 days (Tests) which is an intense high-skill perseverance play, a game that last a whole day (One Day Internationals) and a much shorter format (Twenty20) that last 3 hours.
All three formats are thriving with some superstars playing all three formats and official World Championships being played in all three formats
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#218Face it FIDE, chess.com is where the chess world is at these days, and when in a mood, Lichess.
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
WC requires copious amounts of high-intensity prep, close to a year from what he has said before, so this is a ROI thing for Carlsen. He has spent half-ish (emphasis on the ish) of his adult life preparing specifically for WC matches.
Why does the WC take so much more prep than other tournaments? Is it because of the format, or just the pressure to win?
In terms of preparing against your opponent, at their level and with enough time to think over the board, one has to know so much theory about many lines, that as white you're forced to find "novelties", which are brand new or mostly never played lines that might never come up in the game, in the hopes of throwing your opponent of their preparation. With black, you have to prepare a few opening lines and know them so well as to avoid surprises and maximize chances of at least a draw. This takes a lot of time and energy and memorization becames a huge factor.
When you face many opponents, the ROI of deep studying a few lines doesn't pay off against people who have a myriad of styles, so memorization plays a lesser role; and you play many tournaments so having a few bad ones isn't such a big deal, comparing to playing for WC.
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#220Time 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…
Chess960 or other variants would be nice to mix things up over time