Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title • Hacker News Board

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#291

Post by fzliu » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

Although a lot of folks are undoubtedly disappointed, props to Magnus for understanding that there are other great accomplishments to be had besides continuously winning the WCC. I think the format of the championship match was a deal breaker for him - months of preparation and a slew of classical games meant that he would have little time to devote to other shorter time format tournaments.

With that being said, match between Ian and Ding would also be incredibly entertaining. I look forward to it.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#292

Post by tzs » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

CSMastermind wrote: post #257

endorphine wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My read is he's being honest and will not in fact enjoy playing the World Championship.

I think he had issues with the challenger selection process. That's why he was willing to play if it was Firouzja but isn't interested in a rematch with Nepo. And I think pretty much everyone predicted that had Naka won Magnus would play.

Nakamura on a video posted to his YouTube channel earlier today said he also thinks Carlsen would have played if he came in second in the Candidates.

His reasoning was that he and Carlsen are the two most widely known and followed active chess players at the moment, and Carlsen is not going to allow a world where Nakamura is Champion instead of him.

Nakamura doesn't seem upset or anything over not coming in second at the Candidates, which up until the last game it looked like he almost had a lock on.

The person he said is probably the most upset by Carlsen's decision is Caruana. Caruana collapsed in the second half of the tournament, which Nakamura thinks is because Caruana thought that only 1st mattered and so had to play for wins to try to catch Nepo. If Caruana had played for top 2 instead of 1st, Nakamura thinks he would have had no trouble achieving that.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#293

Post by pdevr » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

skilled wrote: post #8

pdevr wrote: post #7

He has every right to decide so. It is his prerogative. Nonetheless, this will, for sure, be disappointing for many chess fans.

I'm pretty sure 99% of Carlsen's fans expected him to do this since he has talked about it for a long time now. And as the article points out, he's still going to remain _very_ active in the Chess community, tournaments in particular.

Expected by many. Still, disappointing for many, including me :)

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#294

Post by ghostly_s » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

Wow, this site's GDPR cookie nag exhibits the worst dark pattern I've seen in the genre, and that's saying something.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#295

Post by toolz » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #256

toolz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nepo at candidates was in my opinion favored to beat magnus...he dominated the candidates harder than anyone else has in the history of the candidate matches - and it was not an easy pool of candidates, either. Sure, there were a lot of sloppy games, but only a couple vs nepo - with one of them being after the 1st place spot had been guaranteed. If nepo plays like he did in the candidates, I would not be so quick to…

> nepo at candidates was in my opinion favored to beat magnus...he dominated the candidates harder than anyone else has in the history of the candidate matches - and it was not an easy pool of candidates, either. What about Fischer? The format was a little different then, but here was his route to the Championship. 1. Won the Interzonal tournament 18.5/23 (+15-1=7). The top 8 from the Interzonal then played a knockou…

You make a very strong argument, but if you take fischers score vs the top 8 in the interzonal and double it, fischer would've had 10/14 to nepos 9.5/14, which given it was just 1 game vs the top 8 and given the ELO spread was vastly more spread than current candidates games(easily fischer had 100+ more ELO than the other top 7 opponents) I think it's fair to say you could say nepo was more dominant when compared to the interzonal

granted it becomes more clear that fischer dominated in the quarterfinals forward, but it still is worht pointing out that his opponents weren't nearly as strong as nepo's opponents, relatively speaking

I imagine nepo's score would've been MUCH stronger if he was playing 100-200 ELO points weaker opponents all candidates. Instead nepo had 3 opponents with higher ELO and his weakest opponents ELO was only 19 points lower than his own...

in summary, I think you're correct and I was wrong, but I'm not so sure it's quite so clear-cut when you factor in other variables

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#296

Post by joshuamorton » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #259

dalbasal wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chess' centre of gravity is increasingly online centred now. Carlson himself has a lot to do with it. So do other charismatic super GMs like Nakamura. A light hearted, unplanned and unadvertised naka-carlsen bullet match can attract a lot of viewers. They both stream, and lots of other chess streamers will switch to watching and doing commentary when these matches happen. They'll play silly openings like the double b…

I've thought for a while that someone should go hard on an esports style lightning tournament. Basically, try to recreate the energy that happens when an aggressive game happens between chess hustlers and everyone crowds around, but done as a stadium audience spectacle like esports. Big stage lighting setup, music, live commentary, crowd roar encouraged, etc. Besides a main event focused on rated pros, have side tour…

Did you watch PogChamps? It had some great moments like this: https://youtu.be/YyG6HtsaF0w

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#297

Post by KingOfCoders » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

qw wrote: post #47

matsemann wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found them entertaining to watch. But Norwegians are master of slow-TV, so I guess that's why. They have good experts that manage to explain it to normal people. Interesting guests in the studio between moves. Interact with audience through questions from chat etc. > Chess, in theory, with absolutely perfect play, is a draw. I don't think that's solved, actually.

> I've found them entertaining to watch. But Norwegians are master of slow-TV, so I guess that's why. They have good experts that manage to explain it to normal people. Interesting guests in the studio between moves. Interact with audience through questions from chat etc. I usually don't follow chess, but I still end up watching the WC matches on Norwegian TV. They manage to make it interesting and exciting.

If find it suspicious calling a match interesting when people need to have "Interesting guests in the studio between moves. Interact with audience through questions from chat etc." - I always found that suspicious with the NFL too.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#298

Post by fknorangesite » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

allenrb wrote: post #284

moffkalast wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ).

It was Picard to Data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4A-Ml8YHyM

The WarGames "the only winning move is not to play" quote is about mutually assured destruction; a rather different lesson than the one Data learns in 'Peak Performance'.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#299

Post by SamReidHughes » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

kzrdude wrote: post #290

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.

That only takes prep time away from the world champion, not the candidates winner.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#300

Post by cowmoo728 » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #173

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…

Chess' centre of gravity is increasingly online centred now. Carlson himself has a lot to do with it. So do other charismatic super GMs like Nakamura. A light hearted, unplanned and unadvertised naka-carlsen bullet match can attract a lot of viewers. They both stream, and lots of other chess streamers will switch to watching and doing commentary when these matches happen. They'll play silly openings like the double b…

You aren't kidding about classical games being hard to follow. I'm a pretty strong amateur at about 2200 on lichess, but some of the recent Candidates games are so dense that I can't make sense of them without a computer analysis. With blitz even when the super GMs play I can usually tag along and figure out what's happening once I see an interesting move played.