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Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

chess24.com

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Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#311

Post by Scarblac »

usrusr wrote: post #69
pred_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I missed something recent, it is not known whether any player has a winning strategy (or a drawing strategy, for that matter). It would be quite the discovery as well.

It would be wild if it turned out that some of the 20 first moves led into a tree that included a perfect winning path for black while others were draw on perfection: "take it, if you can, I bet you can't"

With connect-4 it's like that: playing in the middle on the 1st move means the first player wins, playing adjacent to the middle means the game will be drawn, and starting further to the side means the second player wins (all assuming otherwise perfect play).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_Four#Mathematical_solu...

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#312

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

TylerE wrote: post #309
tmjwid wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life.

Not in checkers. The Chinook team later proved it is a draw if both players play perfectly.

In the context of the GP quote, Data did ~~achieve victory~~ busted him up, in a sense, by playing for a draw, so...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIRT6xRQkf8

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#313

Post by Scarblac »

franknstein wrote: post #50
TomGullen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, wouldn't the player who takes the first move have a tiny tiny edge? Or is the second mover always able to guarantee a draw if they play perfectly?

There is a small chance that deep into the tree the first to play gets into zugzwang first, meaning position with no good moves. Is there any other scenario where playing black would give you theoretical edge? So until proven otherwise it's still possible that its theoretical win for white, theoretical draw or theoretical win for black as i understand it.

Having that happen in one place deep in the tree wouldn't mean much: black would need to be able to get such a zugzwang (or other win) against anything white does.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#314

Post by Scarblac »

sgjohnson wrote: post #73
bluecalm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't anymore, at least not the computers. When you let them start from normal starting position and provide decent hardware and some time it's always a draw and has been for a few years now.

> always Not always. Almost always.

When have you last seen a decisive game from the starting position by two modern engines on normal hardware? I haven't seen one for many years.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#315

Post by dalbasal »

whimsicalism wrote: post #276
econnors wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A light hearted, unplanned and unadvertised naka-carlsen bullet match can attract a lot of viewers. I'd bet a 20 game rapid series over 4 days between naka-carlsen would attract more viewers than the world championship.

Viewership is not all that matters. I doubt it will happen, but I certainly wouldn't cheerlead the death of very high-level chess.

That's a bit strong. The levels attained by the likes of Magnus is true art, and it's cool that the art has had such a following for so long.

I agree on fast chess being more fun, but hey now :)

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#316

Post by Scarblac »

taude wrote: post #10
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…

I know next to nothing about competitive chess, other than watching the Magnus documentary about a younger Magnus. What kinds of things are chess players doing to prepare for a match for 6 Months? Is there something they're memorizing, studying video (what would they be looking fro)? I'd have always just thought they were good to play at any time. This sounds super stressful.

Going through all of opening theory to invent enough new ideas that might give them a tiny edge, somewhere. And then eventually memorizing what they found.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#317

Post by dalbasal »

cowmoo728 wrote: post #300
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…

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.

Exactly.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#318

Post by Scarblac »

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?

No. But the opponent will do that too. The trick is to find a move that is just slightly worse according to the engine, but that gives a complicated position that's hard to figure out behind the board. That you will then learn all the in and outs of, and memorize. And then hope you get it on the board...

They need hundreds such ideas for a match.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#319

Post by dalbasal »

tux1968 wrote: post #186
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…

> They'll play silly openings like the double bong cloud and have fun. It's kinda fun to see this referenced recently in a television quiz show: https://youtu.be/aD2mUHeBIRA

Guggling.. gas!

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#320

Post by Scarblac »

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.

They need to know who the players are so they can look for sponsors willing to put up the prize money and organising costs. The events are often sponsored by companies from the home country of one of the players. Doing it before the challenger is known makes the pool of potential sponsors too small.
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