Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by gosub100 » Tue, Feb 17, 2026, 12:37 PM UTC

traes wrote: post #265

gosub100 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 organizat…

But notice they changed the game AND started a league. I'm suggesting they ignore fide, start a new league based on vanilla chess, and try to get sponsors and modernized it. Relative to how many people love following the drama, it should be cheap to start a league compared to racecars or even bike racing. There's only travel, lodging and broadcasting as expenses.

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

#272

Post by davidguetta » Tue, Feb 17, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC

sebstefan wrote: post #212

For those wondering why Nakamura (who we're used to seeing winning, or in the top 3 in chess960 tournaments) isn't there > Hikaru Nakamura, the 2022 Fischer Random World Champion, declined his invitation to the event, citing the changes in the format, rushed arrangement, reduced prize fund, and his focus on the upcoming Candidates Tournament 2026. He said he had been invited to the first leg of the 2026 Freestyle Tou…

Is there an alternative 'actual' reason #drama #politics ?

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

#273

Post by davidguetta » Tue, Feb 17, 2026, 12:59 PM UTC

Taek wrote: post #143

Etheryte wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think motivation really is the key term here. Magnus is a five-time world chess champion, in a complete league of his own even when everyone else was literally only prepping to defeat him. He held the world champion title for ten years and eventually just declined to defend it. And that's relatable, if you're at the absolute top for ten years and no one manages to put a dent to it, what else is there? I think most…

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.

This is plain wrong for anybody that has been actually following chess.

He said like a year before declining that he would only defend against Alireza because he was the younger generation. Nobody believed him, Alireza didn't win the Candidates and he said "no thanks" and then everybody was surprised pikachu.

The Jean thing was way later and in an unrelated event.

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

#274

Post by sebstefan » Tue, Feb 17, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

davidguetta wrote: post #272

sebstefan wrote: post #212

For those wondering why Nakamura (who we're used to seeing winning, or in the top 3 in chess960 tournaments) isn't there > Hikaru Nakamura, the 2022 Fischer Random World Champion, declined his invitation to the event, citing the changes in the format, rushed arrangement, reduced prize fund, and his focus on the upcoming Candidates Tournament 2026. He said he had been invited to the first leg of the 2026 Freestyle Tou…

Is there an alternative 'actual' reason #drama #politics ?

this is plenty of actual reasons already

A world championship with rapid timecontrols alone should have been enough reason

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

#275

Post by slater » Tue, Feb 17, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #263

thrance wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

No true scotsman?

This is a good book on the topic:

https://www.amazon.com/Programmed-Inequality-Discarded-Techn...

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

#276

Post by Mr_Minderbinder » Tue, Feb 17, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

traes wrote: post #264

Mr_Minderbinder wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 car…

My views on this, which are mature and have been held for many years now, are mostly informed by the results obtained by Kenneth Regan and Guy Haworth in their paper “Intrinsic Chess Ratings” which, unless you have intelligence to the contrary, is the only rigorous treatment of this issue that has yet been performed and is yet the only argument that has any persuasive hold over me.

You say that ratings drift over time to such an extent that to use them in comparisons across long time spans is meaningless yet their analysis determined that chess ratings as a measure of intrinsic quality of move choice (which must be highly correlated with playing strength) is stable over several decades with only some indications that a small amount of deflation has occurred.

Your argument in comparison amounts to informal speculation. If I were to share my own I would say that those potentially error-inducting considerations, are statistically insignificant compared to the sheer number of games, that is to say corrective and informative exchanges of points, that occur. Further, I would add that the absolute values of ratings were defined by the playing strengths of the original players and that this definition has been well preserved even as the player pool has evolved.

I have heard many such arguments in my time yet not a single proponent cares to demonstrate them. What I find amusing is that those same proponents will often readily accept a comparison across time of a single player (often themselves) across similar time spans without controversy, as evidence of their progress as a player, for instance using Carlsen’s rating today and comparing it with one from early in his career, say from 2003 or 2004, which at this point was more than 20 years ago.

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

#277

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 6:16 AM UTC

slater wrote: post #275

bsder wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 de…

No true scotsman? This is a good book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Programmed-Inequality-Discarded-Techn...

[deleted]

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

#278

Post by galkk » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

Taek wrote: post #232

copper4eva wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah his claim is quite absurd really. If it was a weaker stockfish (bad hardware, older version etc.) then maybe. Modern stockfish pretty much crushes any and everyone. A draw alone would be extremely impressive, and maybe doable with enough luck from a top player. But even that is very far fetched nowadays. Let alone actually winning.

Elsewhere in the thread he revealed that he achieved these results around the year 2015, which means we was playing against Stockfish 6 or earlier, estimated to have about 400 less ELO than today's Stockfish 18. Stockfish 6 didn't even have NNUE, so the real issue seems to be that he thinks his results from 2015 hold any relevance to the chess engines of today.

Quick search shows elo of stockfish 6=3278 (1 cpu).

To assume that a human can beat that is just delusional.

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

#279

Post by Taek » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

galkk wrote: post #278

Taek wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elsewhere in the thread he revealed that he achieved these results around the year 2015, which means we was playing against Stockfish 6 or earlier, estimated to have about 400 less ELO than today's Stockfish 18. Stockfish 6 didn't even have NNUE, so the real issue seems to be that he thinks his results from 2015 hold any relevance to the chess engines of today.

Quick search shows elo of stockfish 6=3278 (1 cpu). To assume that a human can beat that is just delusional.

No not at all! You can find plenty of videos on YouTube of humans taking down 2015-era stockfish. Usually it involves exploiting specific weaknesses in the engine, for example bringing the game to a stalled position where the game nearly reaches the 50 move rule, and then the engine makes a disadvantaged move to avoid a draw.

Especially pre-NNUE, chess engines were often not fully well-rounded, and therefore a human with specific knowledge of the chess engine's weaknesses could take it down with enough attempts.

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

#280

Post by hveksr » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:48 PM UTC

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #211

hveksr wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no snooze fest though in 2018 WCC. The games were extremely exciting, with unbalanced pawn structures. They all ended in draws only because of their strong defensive skills and a touch of luck in a few games.

Unbalanced pawn structure is a feature of the Sveshnikov Sicilian but Caruana had done a lot of prep and it was obvious. Carlsen quicky left the main line for the boring 7. Nd5. Plus, Carlsen missed a lot of good moves because he had to play it safe. To me, it was boring chess of the highest level. A lot of it felt like watching engines by proxy. One prepared well on a very complex opening. The other found the best m…

You are clearly confused. 1. It was Magnus who played Sveshnikov, and Fabi who played the 7. Nd5 line.

2. 7. Nd5 line is not boring, it's one of the sharpest things to play against Svehsnikov, with pawns marching on both sides of the board. Mainline Sveshnikov on the other hand can be very drawish, with maneuvering play, where no side has a pawn break in sight.

3. It was the beginning of the Leela era, with many new opening concepts. It was a short-lived golden age, with players excited to try new ideas. After this match Magnus had a second peak, incorporating new knowledge, and won quite a lot of sharp games in Sveshnikov.

4. Well, game 12 was interesting, but EV of extra time to relax and prepare for rapid games with Caruana in 2018 was quite high. Fabi wasn't a very good rapid/blitz player back then.

5. Carlsen-Nepo WCC was a massacre, while the games were quite boring, except a few at the beginning. That match or any of the next matches would be a much better example for a case against classical chess.

I myself quite like chess960, and it's clearly the right direction. Opening prep is absurd now, especially at super GM level.