Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

fide.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 280 posts

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

#261

Post by renewiltord »

bsder wrote: post #254
renewiltord wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pl…

> 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. Actually, chess data suggests that all of them are as good as one another. As soon as you have enough candidates in the pipeline, magically, any specific group suddenly becomes as goo…

In the history of the sport one woman made the Top 100 of the sport and this is supposedly evidence. And how many black? Count them out. They form at least a sixth of the world population. Now how many old? And perhaps then we find out that we can invent reasons for the defence of the old: traveling is hard, they have more responsibilities with children, they are more senior in primary career.

> The fact that the women's side hasn't exploded just like the men's side can mostly be tracked to the fact that chess isn't considered a "feminine pursuit" worth putting the time into (that finally seems to be changing slowly in recent decades).

A defence that doesn’t pass for software engineering, amazing. This old canard. The girls just don’t like engineering. It’s not feminine enough. Damore got whacked for this.

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

#262

Post by thrance »

renewiltord wrote: post #261
bsder wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Actually, chess data suggests that all of them are as good as one another. As soon as you have enough candidates in the pipeline, magically, any specific group suddenly becomes as goo…

In the history of the sport one woman made the Top 100 of the sport and this is supposedly evidence. And how many black? Count them out. They form at least a sixth of the world population. Now how many old? And perhaps then we find out that we can invent reasons for the defence of the old: traveling is hard, they have more responsibilities with children, they are more senior in primary career. > The fact that the wom…

The first generation of programmers counted more women than men. Chess would have more women than men if it was taught to more girls than boys. Simple as.

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

#263

Post by bsder »

thrance wrote: post #262
renewiltord wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the history of the sport one woman made the Top 100 of the sport and this is supposedly evidence. And how many black? Count them out. They form at least a sixth of the world population. Now how many old? And perhaps then we find out that we can invent reasons for the defence of the old: traveling is hard, they have more responsibilities with children, they are more senior in primary career. > The fact that the wom…

The first generation of programmers counted more women than men. Chess would have more women than men if it was taught to more girls than boys. Simple as.

> The first generation of programmers counted more women than men.

I have heard this before, but you need to back that up with more qualifiers.

There were a lot more female plug technicians because women were trained as phone operators. There were a lot more female keypunch operators because women were trained in typing to be secretaries. However, most people would not refer to those as "programmers" like we would definitely say for someone like Margaret Hamilton.

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

#264

Post by traes »

Mr_Minderbinder wrote: post #260
light_hue_1 wrote: post #161

Chess is in such a sad situation again. The world champion (which is determined for classical chess) isn't even remotely the best player. He's barely even in the top 10 and may soon fall out of that too. In terms of strength he's the weakest player to win in half a century even in absolute terms. And I can't think of any time in modern history of chess when such a low ranked player won. We really need to do something…

> In terms of strength he's the weakest player to win in half a century even in absolute terms. Gukesh is arguably stronger than either of Khalifman, Kasimdzhanov and Ponomariov, who won the FIDE title before it was re-unified. Also his current rating is higher than either Karpov’s or Kasparov’s were when they first won the title. His rating when he first won was about the same as Fischer’s when Fischer first won. Ne…

> Also his current rating is higher than either Karpov’s or Kasparov’s were when they first won the title. His rating when he first won was about the same as Fischer’s when Fischer first won.

This doesn't really mean anything. Rating is a purely relative system, as in the other thing that matters when performing Elo calculations is the difference in Elo between the two players. The absolute value of an Elo rating carries no real meaning and drifts over time based on the volume, skill level, and initial rating of lower level players. Since these change frequently, it's pretty much useless to compare ratings separated in time by more than a decade or so, maybe less. 50+ years is certainly far too long.

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

#265

Post by traes »

gosub100 wrote: post #236
light_hue_1 wrote: post #161

Chess is in such a sad situation again. The world champion (which is determined for classical chess) isn't even remotely the best player. He's barely even in the top 10 and may soon fall out of that too. In terms of strength he's the weakest player to win in half a century even in absolute terms. And I can't think of any time in modern history of chess when such a low ranked player won. We really need to do something…

I think the household names are perfectly able to start their own league and deprecate FIDE. Maybe they are already? This is a situation where the org needs the players more than the players need the org. I think it was F1 auto racing that recently (10 or so) years ago went through a revolution that changed the rules (for fans, in that case) that dramatically increased the viewership of the sport, mainly because the…

This is an incredibly ironic comment. "Freestyle" chess was an attempt to do exactly this with Magnus's support, and it failed to secure funding after its initial run. This event is them running back to FIDE in shambles to salvage their tour. Kasparov attempted something similar in the 90s, making his own world championship title, and similarly failed horribly.

The stability of a 100+ year old international organization that's led by serious politicians with connections in every major country is hard to contend with. FIDE's current president was Russia's Deputy Prime Minister for 6 years.

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

#266

Post by delaminator »

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.

Modern women are the most privileged class in existence.

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

#268

Post by delaminator »

wslh wrote: post #217

Sidenote: I didn’t know anything about Freestyle Chess before reading this, so I checked Wikipedia first[1]. Interestingly, the randomized nature of the format, its defining feature, isn’t strongly emphasized upfront, which may make it less immediately clear to newcomers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freestyle_Chess_Grand_Slam_Tou...

Because they won't call it by the proper name, Fischer Random

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

#269

Post by delaminator »

nilslindemann wrote: post #72

It is not freestyle, it is "play a random position chosen by an algorithm" style. This is boring. Let the players freely place their pieces in the start position, that would be of interest.

They changed the name because it was proposed by Fischer

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

#270

Post by OJFord »

avadodin wrote: post #256
OJFord wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 openin…

It goes to show my expertise in chess that I watched a whole encounter and it looked exactly the same as regular chess with castling and all. I don't know if I would call the positions symmetrical, though, they seem mirrored(I just checked and regular chess is mirrored as well).

I've only had the one coffee, but surely mirroring is symmetry in the plane of the mirror? Anyway, yes, that's what I meant - you have the same order each, so neither disadvantaged, it's just not the usual order.
Post reply on HN