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Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

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Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#241
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That actually looks pretty promising, but seems like it will have major balance issues. To me the trick is preserve some kind of backward compatibility with chess while finding a way to increase the strategic content. Ironically stuff like increasing the board size like in 3D chess variants, can actually reduce the strategic content by reducing the role of long-term factors like pawn structure. EDIT: I can see some c…

Those kinds of "gimmick" openings don't work well once people know the game. It's like losing to the 4-turn checkmate: it only happens once or twice before you start looking for it and planning against it.

Yeah but this game has like 10 times as many openings so it will take much longer to learn them.

The reason why memorization is a problem in chess isn't because there aren't enough openings/endgames to remember, it's because most players need to memorize certain patterns to reach a certain level of effectiveness, because they would rarely be able to solve those problems over the board.

So the solution to the chess memorization problem isn't necessarily more openings and more complexity, which ironically could just INCREASE opening importance. Rather I think the idea is to increase the importance and depth of long term strategic factors like pawns, the sort of understanding of which grows over time and doesn't lend itself to rote memorization.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#242
post #44

Does anyone know some good alternatives to chess, as a game that mixes deep thought and aesthetic variety? I tried Go, but found it somewhat boring compared to chess, because of its uniformity (which, on the other hand, has the advantage of beautiful simplicity and symmetry.) On another note: it is unfortunate, in my opinion, that chess has a special standing among board games. I would love to see some more variety i…

You can try Chinese chess (xiang qi) or Japanese chess (shogi). I particularly like shogi because it has the rule that you can reuse the pieces of your opponent you capture. Both are a bit hard to learn though because the pieces are oriental characters.

Shogi is derived from xiangqi (same with Korean chess or janggi). And note that the characters are called hanzi or kanji (literally Chinese/Han characters), not oriental characters. It may be hard because the pieces don't have distinct shapes, but it's not after you learn/recognize the characters.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#243
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is pretty simple. In MTG, anyone with 200 bucks can buy a world class T2 deck and learn to play it reasonably well in just a few hours. So, I spend my weekends putting on a black uniform and working as a tournament judge at professional-level Magic events. And... maybe you're right that someone could do well at a local FNM this way. But at any sort of serious competitive level (even at the Pro Tour Qua…

I wasn't really claiming that its easy to win MTG tournaments. I was just illustrating that fairly standardized play begins at a much lower level than it does in chess, because even beginners can buy a world class deck for a small amount of money. Limited is a great format that I'm glad you mentioned. Anything involving a draft is going to be pretty creative. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that MTG is inferior to c…

I usually reply like that because often I see the attitude that Magic is just a game of spending money on cards -- whoever buys the best cards wins. When in reality, card availability is more of a barrier to entry, and all it does is get you to the point where you're on an even field, card-wise, with actual competitive players. From there it's up to you to have the skill to hang in there.

Beyond the decks/openings analogy though, I'm not sure Magic and chess really compare well.

I think the most interesting distinction is in innovators vs. honers; Gerry Thompson is now out of the game at the professional level, but he was one of the greatest honers who ever played the game. Gerry was not known for coming up with new deck ideas, and in fact the few times he tried it he did horribly. But his ability to analyze the tournament landscape week to week, and make the perfect couple of tweaks to existing deck shells, was unmatched.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#244
post #81

Does anyone know some good alternatives to chess, as a game that mixes deep thought and aesthetic variety? I tried Go, but found it somewhat boring compared to chess, because of its uniformity (which, on the other hand, has the advantage of beautiful simplicity and symmetry.) On another note: it is unfortunate, in my opinion, that chess has a special standing among board games. I would love to see some more variety i…

If you see many, many people getting obsessed with a game, and you think it's boring, it's usually a sign that you're not understanding something. Go and no limit poker are getting massively popular. They are both like chess, but much less tactical and a lot more strategical games. In other words, computers can't beat the best players in these games yet. For whatever reasons, the status of games is somewhat related t…

You can apply your first statement to most things in life. When people think things are boring, most of the time it is because they don't understand the nuances, history etc

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#245
post #224
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really give No Limit Hold'em or Pot Limit Omaha a try. Poker is a game of astounding complexity once you start taking it seriously and it's quite fun. Combine that with the ability to take a small bankroll, $100 or whatever you're comfortable using as seed money, and turn it into a roll sufficient for high stakes poker (with enough dedication and time) and it truly does become quite an amazing game to play…

FWIW, this is called run-good. It's unlikely your $200 was a proper bankroll when you started, and it's even more unlikely that you or anyone else could consistently replicate these results (when starting out). That said, I'm an ex-husng player, and played them professionally for three years, and I don't disagree with your overall message. Poker is a wonderful game, heads-up play is great and has almost no boring par…

Lol, I never said I started out in April, I said I started my bankroll. I've been playing for 5+ years. I just restarted my bankroll in April because I had spent it on bills in February.

Those results are based on the following:

2,615 $3.50 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos

1,605 $7 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos

1,792 $15 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos

16,715 $30 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos

211 $60 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos

I've also played a handful of MTT tournaments which are a miniscule part of sample size but which result for about $7,500 of that $12,500. I played the $880 Fraser Downs Fall Poker Challenge in Vancouver and cashed 3rd for $7,384. I also won $5,000 that weekend in one session playing pot limit omaha cash. So that is, indeed, small sample size, but the rest is not. Read on.

This isn't run good. Once you're up to a sample of around 5000 heads up hyper turbo games, your results begin to accurately depict your actual skill level. I've played 22,938 heads-up hyper-turbo matches since April with a 1.08% ROI, 51.80% winrate, and $6,063.56 net profit before rakeback.

And yes, I practiced perfect bankroll management. If you're not living off your bankroll, using a 35/50 buy-in rule (move up when you have 50 buy-ins, move down when you're at 35 buy-ins) is a good, aggressive system to use. If you are, 100 or 200 buy-ins minimum is best, depending on how comfortable you are with variance. I started with $200 which was ~57 buy-ins for the $3.50s on PokerStars. I'm now playing the $30s and $60s with a bankroll over $6000.

And yes, people can replicate these results. Easily. My results are, honestly, more on the weaker side among regulars. As for a beginning player, they could easily replicate these results if they actually studied. It's really not that hard to crush the $3.50s-$15s on PokerStars. You just have to think. Most people are there to gamble.

The games are excellent these days. Of course the overall player pool took a hit on Black Friday, but there is still tons of action. Hyper-Turbos have only gotten more popular, especially because the best players are booking some of the highest profits among all high stakes players each year.

As for a 60% winrate and 14% ROI at super-turbos, THAT is too small of a sample size. It's highly like you're a winning player with a great ROI, but you were on an upswing. You're ROI was likely in the 2.5%-5% range. The highest ROI I've ever seen was around 6% over 20k games (also someone hit 7.5% over 3k games but thats too small a sample). And yes, the average player is slightly better, and the regs have definitely improved as well, but fish are fish. The games up to $15s are very, very soft. The $30s are as well but you'll start to run into a lot more regs at that stake.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#246
post #212
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Chess is as balanced as it gets. It's "balanced" in some respects but both sides use the same features and most games end in a draw, and high level play is less and less interesting. And for that matter it's not even balanced really -- tournaments have players play both white and black because they are so inequal. This is like balancing starcraft by having everyone play mirror matchups or swap races. >So Anand encou…

As much as I recognize and appreciate the limitations of chess, it pains me physically to see the strategic depth of it compared to something like Starcraft. It's not close by orders of magnitude. I still remember some important match almost 15 years ago between two world class Starcraft players, who also apparently were friends off the board, being settled in 3 minutes by one guy "4 pooling" (basically sucker punchi…

A 4 pool isn't a sucker punch. It is a highly risky opening strategy that almost always ends the game very quickly. If your opponent does not scout it quickly, he is very likely to lose. If he does, you are very likely to lose. The existence of this early all-in option does much to "keep players honest" during the opening phases of the game and greatly expands the strategic depth of the beginning minutes. Without this option, each player's optimal strategy would always be to sacrifice defense and scouting early in favor of better late-game economy.

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#247
post #246
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I recognize and appreciate the limitations of chess, it pains me physically to see the strategic depth of it compared to something like Starcraft. It's not close by orders of magnitude. I still remember some important match almost 15 years ago between two world class Starcraft players, who also apparently were friends off the board, being settled in 3 minutes by one guy "4 pooling" (basically sucker punchi…

A 4 pool isn't a sucker punch. It is a highly risky opening strategy that almost always ends the game very quickly. If your opponent does not scout it quickly, he is very likely to lose. If he does, you are very likely to lose. The existence of this early all-in option does much to "keep players honest" during the opening phases of the game and greatly expands the strategic depth of the beginning minutes. Without thi…

> a highly risky opening strategy that almost always ends the game very quickly

In other words, a sucker punch?

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#248
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scriptor! I just wanted to geek out a little and say I love Pharen so much!

Haha, thanks! Glad you like it. I recently got back into toying around with Pharen, the goal being to get accepted to the next Strange Loop.

Nice one! I'm still working on a better web dev framework for it, basically a really nice, functional wrapper for Slim + ORM's -- taking a leaf out of Haskell's book, keeping it all pure except for where IO operations have to happen (and making sure that that is demarcated in the code itself!). It's so much fun to hack on (although I do crash the REPL constantly. I might have to hack around on that actually, see if I can't get a super REPL going that you can use for actual development).

Now I remember you had a build system that came with Pharen, any plans for that in the future? Mainly because I think using it as a build system with a nice functional syntax would be _amazing_ to use even with normal PHP!

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#249
post #247
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 4 pool isn't a sucker punch. It is a highly risky opening strategy that almost always ends the game very quickly. If your opponent does not scout it quickly, he is very likely to lose. If he does, you are very likely to lose. The existence of this early all-in option does much to "keep players honest" during the opening phases of the game and greatly expands the strategic depth of the beginning minutes. Without thi…

> a highly risky opening strategy that almost always ends the game very quickly In other words, a sucker punch?

I think parent was reading sucker punch (as I did) as not "risky", but unfair -- as you can't see it coming (by definition).

In SC2, 6pooling is certainly quite powerful (Zerg makes Tassadar cry...) but if it is scouted, the Zerg is now fucked.

The thing is, in the current meta, you never bother drone/probe/scv scouting that early, so you'd have to be able to read your opponent and know that he's a kind of player that loves those "Cheesy" build orders!

Re: Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion

#250
post #246
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I recognize and appreciate the limitations of chess, it pains me physically to see the strategic depth of it compared to something like Starcraft. It's not close by orders of magnitude. I still remember some important match almost 15 years ago between two world class Starcraft players, who also apparently were friends off the board, being settled in 3 minutes by one guy "4 pooling" (basically sucker punchi…

A 4 pool isn't a sucker punch. It is a highly risky opening strategy that almost always ends the game very quickly. If your opponent does not scout it quickly, he is very likely to lose. If he does, you are very likely to lose. The existence of this early all-in option does much to "keep players honest" during the opening phases of the game and greatly expands the strategic depth of the beginning minutes. Without thi…

Tell that to Taeja, the "I'll go 3 command centre before rax if I wanna" Terran player ;)

I love Taeja so much.

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