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Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

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Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#281

Post by sgjohnson »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #269
fouronnes3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chess, in theory, with absolutely perfect play, is a draw. While this is highly likely and essentially agreed upon by all experts on the matter, it's not proven yet.

I don't see why anyone would agree to that. In fact, I can see it being far more likely that chess experts believe it ends in a win for white considering that today white is favored, to the point where if offered a quick draw, black will almost certainly take it (unless they need a win to move up a rank in a tournament, etc).

This is flat out false. Virtually all of the experts agree on this, and in top engine and human play the percentage of games drawn is increasing, not decreasing. AlphaZero on autoplay @ 1 minute per move draws 98% of the games.

> if offered a quick draw, black will almost certainly take it

[citation needed], and 1200 elo games on lichess aren’t a valid citation

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#282

Post by cupofpython »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #262
panda-giddiness wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You skipped the best part of the story! > We [Chinook and the lead programmer] played an exhibition match against Marion Tinsley in 1991. And the computer told me to make this one particular move. When I made it, Tinsley immediately said, "You're going to regret that." > Not being a checkers player, I thought, "what does he know, my computer is looking 20 moves ahead." But a few moves later, the computer said that Ti…

> and Tinsley was able to see the win 64 moves into the future. It's more likely that Tinsley was able to see a winning position much closer to the present than that, without bothering about the details of how exactly the winning position 6 turns in the future converted into an actual win 64 moves in the future.

the point is that his winning position was a 64 move convert and he was correct. Lots of players believe they will end up in a winning position, but overlook something while "not bothering with the details".

it's less about how much he calculated in that moment and more about the accuracy of his confidence and the work he had to have put in alongside his talent prior to that moment to achieve that confidence and back it up.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#283

Post by whatshisface »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #262
panda-giddiness wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You skipped the best part of the story! > We [Chinook and the lead programmer] played an exhibition match against Marion Tinsley in 1991. And the computer told me to make this one particular move. When I made it, Tinsley immediately said, "You're going to regret that." > Not being a checkers player, I thought, "what does he know, my computer is looking 20 moves ahead." But a few moves later, the computer said that Ti…

> and Tinsley was able to see the win 64 moves into the future. It's more likely that Tinsley was able to see a winning position much closer to the present than that, without bothering about the details of how exactly the winning position 6 turns in the future converted into an actual win 64 moves in the future.

People aren't like minimax, they can see 64 moves into the future if there's something about them that fits into a simple pattern.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#284

Post by allenrb »

moffkalast wrote: post #225
solardev wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoosh

Nah, he's quoting a TNG episode where Data does the exact same thing.

Data may have said it in TNG, but pretty sure this originated with the 1983 film “WarGames” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames).

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#285

Post by Epa095 »

epups wrote: post #16

Hopefully now he can dedicate more time to reaching 2900, a much more interesting accomplishment than winning 1, 2 or even 5 more world championships in their current format.

Given that you get more points the higher ranked opponents you beat, the best way to get to 2900 might be to coach other players so they get higher scores, before beating them.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#286

Post by timerol »

kamaal wrote: post #42
matsemann wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Say a player just rote memorised moves from a chess engine and just played it. Would that be considered cheating?

That is the strategy of opening preparation. For the most common openings, GMs often have a 20 move sequence memorized. The time limit of chess matters a lot, so the strategy is to break your opponent out of their preparation with a move that is unintuitive or considered untenable, after you have determined the ways in which it is actually better than widely considered.

The ideal at top level is to get to move 20 or so with a slightly better position, essentially all of your time (because you've been playing memorized moves), and your opponent already having used most of their time.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#287

Post by thaumasiotes »

whatshisface wrote: post #283
thaumasiotes wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and Tinsley was able to see the win 64 moves into the future. It's more likely that Tinsley was able to see a winning position much closer to the present than that, without bothering about the details of how exactly the winning position 6 turns in the future converted into an actual win 64 moves in the future.

People aren't like minimax, they can see 64 moves into the future if there's something about them that fits into a simple pattern.

Potentially. A ladder in go would match this description if the board was large enough. I stand by my comment.

Note that the first quote agrees with me:

> Not being a checkers player, I thought, "what does he know, my computer is looking 20 moves ahead." But a few moves later, the computer said that Tinsley had the advantage and a few moves after that I resigned.

We know as a matter of literal truth that the computer is looking 20 moves ahead, but it doesn't need 44 moves to realize that it's losing, even though the other guy says that recognizing the win would require looking 64 moves ahead. That guy was wrong; recognizing the win didn't require looking 64 moves ahead. He just had trouble imagining other methods of recognizing a win.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#288

Post by thaumasiotes »

cupofpython wrote: post #282
thaumasiotes wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and Tinsley was able to see the win 64 moves into the future. It's more likely that Tinsley was able to see a winning position much closer to the present than that, without bothering about the details of how exactly the winning position 6 turns in the future converted into an actual win 64 moves in the future.

the point is that his winning position was a 64 move convert and he was correct. Lots of players believe they will end up in a winning position, but overlook something while "not bothering with the details". it's less about how much he calculated in that moment and more about the accuracy of his confidence and the work he had to have put in alongside his talent prior to that moment to achieve that confidence and back…

> it's less about how much he calculated in that moment and more about the accuracy of his confidence and the work he had to have put in

That is a matter of opinion. Looking a certain number of "moves ahead" is an important metric in game engines and also something that human players will tell you that (1) they are consciously doing and that (2) is important to them. So it's worth discussing on its own terms.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#289

Post by cupofpython »

Bootvis wrote: post #175
Enginerrrd wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's what people mean, almost by definition. In highly competitive events, even a slight break in focus and drive toward winning are often really problematic. Once that wolf-like focus and readiness to fight is broken, a competitor is usually done.

I think Magnus just changed focus to being the first 2900. I bet the way the last match went was a bit of a let down for him as well.

i have to imagine there are only so many 'tricks'/new lines left for him to use to win games at that level. revealing them on center stage for a single win is wasteful of the resources he has. the WCC games get studied by everyone, not only live with the worlds best engines, but after the fact too. much better to use those resources in tournaments where you can actually play a lot of games with it before people really get a chance to study it in depth.

By resources i mean things like going into a position that gives your opponent an incredibly small advantage but is hard for them to play. It's one of the best ways to win games. it's hard work to find those lines, and he's been doing it for so long at WCC level it's not surprising that he's tapping out against someone he's already beaten. if you use a line in the WCC, it becomes very risky to use it again - because if your opponent studied it and plays it correctly then all you've done is make it even harder for you to win the game.

to reach 2900 he has to win games, not tie

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#290

Post by kzrdude »

matsemann wrote: post #2

Time 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…

One thing they could change with the format, without changing the format(!) is to schedule the game very close to the candidates, say with four week's distance.

That way the match is the same but the half year of prep is gone.

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