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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

#331

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

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…

> And then in the Championship against Spassky he won 12.5-8.5 (+7-3=11)

TBH in that match Fischer started his shenanigans about demanding all sorts of things which most likely unbalanced Spassky - who was known to be somewhat lazy - so with all the political pressure and mind games he likely decided that he doesn't care enough.

The match was actually not that top-level chess as it is presented in chess mythology. Reshevsky [1] said the following things about it:

"True, there were several excellent games, but the match as a whole was disappointing. It was marked by blunders by both players. The blunders committed by Spassky were incredible. In two games, for example, Spassky overlooked a one-move combination. In the first, he was compelled to resign immediately, and, in the other, he threw away all chances for a win. Fischer was also not in his best form. He made errors in a number of games."

... and he is also very critical of how Spassky was prepareding for the match. So a well-prepared Karpov would likely have been able to dethrone Bobby, and I think Fischer knew it, and it played a big part in why he had forfeited the defence.

[1]: http://billwall.phpwebhosting.com/collections/The%20Fischer-...

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#332

Post by veidelis »

I wonder what Magnus' suggestions for the WC format are. It's very well known that current classical format has the issue of a lot of memorization/theory. To me the issue does not lie in the time format as a lot of people here suggest, but the format of the game. I would appreciate if a couple of chess 960 (Fischer variation) games were added to current format to determine world champion of classical chess.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#333

Post by mikaeluman »

__s wrote: post #75
mikaeluman wrote: post #61

The candidates might as well be the world championship. But they need to make sure wins give you e.g. 3 points and draws only 0.5. Even in the candidates this year Ian - having obtained a nice lead - played drawing lines with white to perfection. I don't blame him, it was the right decision. The incentive structure needs to change. Even after a draw, the concept of Armageddon games to give another half point would be…

How do you disincentivize win trading?

How do you mean one can trade when someone has lose? Do you mean that all russians agree to lose to their number 1?

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#334

Post by Gehinnn »

franknstein wrote: post #226
bluGill wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skip your turn. Don't move anything at all. Zugzwang means that you would be better off not moving any piece on your turn letting your opponent make two moves in a row. There are a number of endgames that depend on getting your opponent into a position where he has only one legal move and by making it you can then play the winning move. If your opponent could instead skip his turn you have no ability to win the game.

I know what zugzwang is. I was just asking what he meant by 'skipping turns' because skipping turns by simply refusing to make a move is illegal, so i was not sure what point was Gehinnn trying to make.

The question was if there is any other scenario where black could force a win other than by forcing a zugzwang.

I would say no by contradiction. Let's assume black could win without zugzwang. Then white would win (and in particular not lose) by skipping the very first move and then playing blacks strategy (because now black has to make the first move and by white skipping the first move, the colors swapped).

If white would not skip the very first move and play an arbitrary move instead, white loses and black wins.

But this is the very definition of zugzwang! Thus, black can only win because of white's initial zugzwang, which contradicts our assumption.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#335

Post by mikaeluman »

tzs wrote: post #148
mikaeluman wrote: post #61

The candidates might as well be the world championship. But they need to make sure wins give you e.g. 3 points and draws only 0.5. Even in the candidates this year Ian - having obtained a nice lead - played drawing lines with white to perfection. I don't blame him, it was the right decision. The incentive structure needs to change. Even after a draw, the concept of Armageddon games to give another half point would be…

> But they need to make sure wins give you e.g. 3 points and draws only 0.5. As black under such a system I might be more strongly incentivized to go for the draw than under the current system. I'm already starting at a disadvantage by having black, so pressing for the win is extra risky, and if I do go for it and lose my opponent gains 3 points on me. If you want to reduce draws by playing with points you probably s…

To your point - White steers the game. People only go for wins with Black when forced to. So I don't see how that changes anything?

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#336

Post by usrusr »

Scarblac wrote: post #311
usrusr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Plenty of forced moves in that game, where there is only one option to not lose immediately. I basically sacrificed the last years of school math to a 10x8 variation of that game, it was almost as if there were two competitions in parallel, who would win and who could call a game decided first. Declaring the other guy winner before he even knew was almost better than winning (but certainly not as good as declaring victory and then explaining why)

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#337

Post by thaumasiotes »

cupofpython wrote: post #327
thaumasiotes wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

there needs to be work done and intuition developed in order for a human to look any amount of moves ahead. we do not look ahead in the same way a computer algorithm does we look ahead in ways like "doing this leaves this area weak, and the opponent has resources that can take advantage of that, and i cannot intervene on those resources in time" or "if i create a strong threat then the opponent will be forced to reac…

> there needs to be work done and intuition developed in order for a human to look any amount of moves ahead. we do not look ahead in the same way a computer algorithm does

I mean, that's just plain wrong on both counts. You need to do work to do a good job at looking ahead. You don't need to do work just to be able to imagine what the board might look like after a particular move is made.

> they are not doing things like "let me simulate moving every one of my pieces right now, and then every one of my opponents pieces in response to each of those moves, and then my options again, and review 10,000 possible scenarios in my mind individually for the best min/max situation" like a classical computer engine does.

You don't understand what the computer is doing. Pruning its options is just as important for the computer as it is for the humans.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#338

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

cupofpython wrote: post #289
Bootvis wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reall…

> that he's tapping out against someone he's already beaten.

Many observers overplay the importance of one match loss. More than one chess champion title was taken by a challenger who had lost in the previous attempt [1] - and considering there was just a handful of champions, it is a lot.

[1]: Spassky and Kasparov have lost in their first attempts against Petrosyan and Karpov.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#339

Post by asdf_snar »

Gehinnn wrote: post #334
franknstein wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what zugzwang is. I was just asking what he meant by 'skipping turns' because skipping turns by simply refusing to make a move is illegal, so i was not sure what point was Gehinnn trying to make.

The question was if there is any other scenario where black could force a win other than by forcing a zugzwang. I would say no by contradiction. Let's assume black could win without zugzwang. Then white would win (and in particular not lose) by skipping the very first move and then playing blacks strategy (because now black has to make the first move and by white skipping the first move, the colors swapped). If white…

I think I may share confusion with the other poster. I don't understand the following step:

> Then white would win (and in particular not lose) by skipping the very first move and then playing blacks strategy

I understand the other comment, that there do exist setups in which colors can be effectively switched by e.g. 1. e3 e5 2. e4, but that requires cooperation on black's part. How does white "skip" the first move? Thanks in advance.

Edit: it may be that the statement "without Zugzwang" implicitly (or perhaps by definition) means you are allowed to skip moves? If so, that clarifies my confusion.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#340

Post by sgjohnson »

bluGill wrote: post #198
adrianN wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't build enough Dyson spheres to power a computer of the right size yet.

There are more states to calculate than atoms in the universe so it isn't possible to brute force the problem. Maybe it can be solved, but it will require math.

To be fair, on this scale, “the total number of atoms in observable universe” is quite a small number.

Even 52! comes pretty close to it, and that’s just one deck of cards.

Saying there are merely “more” states is almost insulting to the depth of a chess game :)

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