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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

#241

Post by pfannkuchen »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #187
nanna wrote: post #175

Wait why are there separate mens and womens prizes?

Like a lot of men dominated spaces, even when we know ability is not a definying factor, culture is. Many male domianted spaces are pretty antagonistic to women, making separate prize pools, tournaments and events allows for women to play in spaces where they are the mayority. Normalise their participation and open the door to better performance on the mixed queue.

> even when we know ability is not a definying factor

Spatial reasoning?

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

#242

Post by Retric »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #239
n4r9 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But that's it. There was no win because the opportunity to even compete was taken away. Imagine you train your whole life and finally win the Olympic Gold medal, but everyone knows it's only because the true nr 1 ignored to compete in this format.

Winning a title is never about facing the greatest possible opponent. Even the people who show up aren’t at their absolute best, but consider everyone who doesn’t devote their lives to the sport. The greatest potential chess player of all time likely does something else with their lives.

Without prep Magnus would be vastly less likely to win, and he’s not doing the prep because he’s not competing. How exactly is that different than someone not devoting themselves to the sport 20 years ago?

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

#243

Post by Taek »

Taek wrote: post #227
nilslindemann wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also not extraordinary to do that. I have achieved these results around 2015, sitting at home, relaxed. I was not in a match situation observed by millions. Such a situation can knowingly lead to blunders like Kramniks overlook of mate in 2. I also sometimes "cheated" by aborting the game when I was tired and continuing it the next day (if at all). That's what the player in a match can not do. I also sometimes…

2015 stockfish is quite a different beast from 2026 stockfish. Stockfish didn't even add NNUE until 2020. Based on what data I can find, it's estimated that the difference between the 2025 stockfish (stockfish 6) and today's stockfish (stockfish 18) is nearly 400 points. That's the difference between Magnus Carlson at his peak and someone who doesn't even have enough rating to qualify for the grandmaster title. So ye…

Out of sheer curiosity, I did a bunch of research to understand just how dramatic a 350 point rating gap is in real word chess. Magnus Carlson, for example, has a 98% win rate against players >350 rating points lower than his own, with zero recorded losses.

In fact, there is only one game I could find in all of Chess history (Anand vs Touzane, 2001) where a super GM (rating >2700) dropped a classical game to someone more than 350 points below theirs (gap: 402 points). (it's estimated that there are between 2000 and 3000 classical games in history played between Super GMs and players >350 points below them) And it could easily be that Anand was ill, or suffering some other human condition which made his play significantly worse than his typical play for that game - which you would not see from a computer engine.

In other words, the Stockfish that you beat in 2015 would itself be expected to get 3-5 points (that is, 6-10 draws and 0 wins) in 500 matches against the best chess engine of today. The delta in strength is immense, and it is reasonable for everyone else in this comment thread to assert that you would have zero chance at all of picking up a draw against Stockfish 18 in a fair game of any time control, regardless of how many matches you played.

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

#244

Post by copper4eva »

nilslindemann wrote: post #124
baumy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to bet money that you can beat a properly setup stockfish, no piece odds and even time controls? I'll give you literally any odds you name and let you try an unlimited number of times until you give up. 100% serious. P.S: You should not take this bet. You will lose. You are mistaken if you think you beat stockfish.

The only bet I would take is that I can draw against Stockfish. But I am in general not betting. I also don't have the time currently.

If you're betting against modern stockfish, respectively, that's a terrible bet.

There are some games of knight odds Leela playing superGM's. For example, Hikaru Nakamura went 1 win, 2 draws, and 13 losses against LeelaKnightOdds at 3 minutes + 2 sec increment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYO9w3tQU4Q So that's a score of 2 out of 16. Which is apparently actually very good. I know Fabi played a lot of games too, and also lost almost all of them.

And that is with knight odds lol. And stockfish is ever better than Leela, but generally less aggressive and more methodical.

You clarified in another post that you had won back in 2015. I have no clue the strength of engines back then (I imagine still very strong of course), but a decade of growth is a lot. They're completely insane nowadays.

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

#245

Post by copper4eva »

nilslindemann wrote: post #146
School-Cotton wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is the last time a human has beaten a computer in a fair chess game?

A fair match has never been played between humans and computers. Let's say we have a fair match: * 100 games, to have some statistical relevance. * One move per day, so that being tired is no disadvantage (engine can ponder all day). * Human has access to endgame tablebases and opening databases, like the engine. * Human can make notes and has a software like Chess Position Trainer, which can min max, like the engine…

You're way off the mark here on modern engine strength.

There are many examples of top players playing Leela Knight Odds. And none of them even got remotely close to a decent record. Usually a few draws, and maybe a win. But almost entirely losses.

And that is with knight odds. Without that, zero chance.

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

#246

Post by SauntSolaire »

squigz wrote: post #179
nilslindemann wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is called Placement chess, you can play it on PyChess. [1] As far as I know no tournament ever used this rule. [1] https://www.pychess.org/variants/placement

Apparently also called Bronstein Shuffle (which also sounds like a fun dance) A key part seems to be alternating turns placing pieces. I wonder if this would result in top level gameplay converging on certain opening placements? If so, I wonder how not taking turns but deciding on placement privately beforehand might affect gameplay. Anyway, maybe when the pros get sick of Chess960 they'll give this a shot :)

It would be effectively be the opposite of Chess960 -- instead of reducing the impact of studying openings, it would add a whole genre of placement meta you'd need to study to be competitive.

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

#247

Post by renewiltord »

bsder wrote: post #24
make3 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ageism also just one of these shitty unproven biases, like sexism, which is self-realizing by applying pressure to people who fall out of the mold even slightly. He's 30 something, not 90.

> Ageism also just one of these shitty unproven biases You might be right, if we were talking about anything except chess. Chess, unlike everything else, has a clear ranking system and lots of records for people to analyze. And unfortunately, the record is very clear: chess ability decreases after a certain age. However, the decrease is more likely due to stamina than mental decline. Chess tournaments take a long tim…

He’s got a point. If the measure works for age, then let’s run it for sex, race, and religion. Then we can make conclusions about these categories and test if we’re willing to accept them. If we’re not, but we’re willing to accept them for age, then the balance of chance is that we’re ageist and just blinding ourselves to it because we are ageist.

I think looking at the data you’d have to conclude that women can’t play chess as well as men, that black men can’t play chess as well as white men, and that Judeo-Christian (and perhaps Hindu Brahmins) beliefs are just as indicative.

If we deny those conclusions as bigotry of immutable characteristics, it naturally leads to the age question.

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

#248

Post by FreakLegion »

somenameforme wrote: post #198
enizor2 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Magnus has always been unhappy with the format of the WCC cycle. He first skipped it in 2011, when he was already the top-rated player but not yet champion (https://www.chess.com/news/view/carlsen-quits-world-champion...), and very nearly skipped it again in 2013.

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

#249

Post by NickC25 »

nilslindemann wrote: post #124
baumy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to bet money that you can beat a properly setup stockfish, no piece odds and even time controls? I'll give you literally any odds you name and let you try an unlimited number of times until you give up. 100% serious. P.S: You should not take this bet. You will lose. You are mistaken if you think you beat stockfish.

The only bet I would take is that I can draw against Stockfish. But I am in general not betting. I also don't have the time currently.

I doubt that. Stockfish 11 years ago as you claim (which around then was rated approximately 2800), maybe. Stockfish today? Stockfish on Lichess is 3000 and that's not even running at full capacity. A fully supported Stockfish running on top hardware is currently 3650ish. It can avoid known draw lines and stalemate lines, and could absolutely crush the likes of Magnus.

You would lose every time, not even close.

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

#250

Post by NickC25 »

quantummagic wrote: post #118
fernandopj wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO a huge aspect of Carlsen mental strength isn't just the focused, at-the-game part, but we just see him enjoying Chess in many angles: not only he plays all styles, he streams relaxed, he plays Lichess and Chess.com; Chess is not only his job and passion, but it seems that he's also able to relax while engaging with it. The only top-athlete that I see do the same is Max Verstappen, who is know to play competitive…

Magnus has streamed playing chess while drunk, in a party/loud atmosphere, and had some very fun and exciting games. He's a blast.

he's played other GMs while very drunk and playing bullshit openings.

He still wipes the floor with them. Guy is just a beast even compared with normal grandmasters.

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