341–350 of 461 posts
In the end this might be the beginning of the end for the “world chess champion.” The game is moving online, and moving to rapid or blitz.
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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?…
When black has a winning strategy, black already applies "zugzwang" for white's very first move: Black only wins because white has to make a move. If white could skip, black would not win.
> Edit: it may be that the statement "without Zugzwang" implicitly (or perhaps by definition) means you are allowed to skip moves?
Yes. It's not well defined, but I'd say a non-zugzwang win is a win (or rather a winning position) where you would also win when your opponent can skip their turn. A zugzwang win is a win that is not a non-zugzwang win.
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> 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.
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Say a player just rote memorised moves from a chess engine and just played it. Would that be considered cheating?
No, that's part of the preparation. But remember that you have around ~16 moves to choose from each time it's your turn. And you have to prepare a response for all the possible choices your opponent can make. This of course gets unwieldy very fast. 16^5 is already over a million different games.
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Viewership is not all that matters. I doubt it will happen, but I certainly wouldn't cheerlead the death of very high-level chess.
Isn’t very high-level chess kind of dead already? I mean - watching Karpov-Kasparov was watching two best players in the world. But nowadays a match between human players just clarifies which of the second-rate devices is better than another. Or is it just me?
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There’s also not really any metric where any of them are better than Fischer. Neither Carlsen nor Kasparov challenged Vishy’s title during the peak of his career. He’s also such a phenomenal player, that if he’d been the one to abdicate the FIDE title instead of Kasparov, you’d easily be able to make the same kind of “top 3” comments about him.
> There’s also not really any metric where any of them are better than Fischer. Off the top of my head - World Championships matches won, time spent as number 1, peak Elo. > Neither Carlsen nor Kasparov challenged Vishy’s title during the peak of his career. When was the peak? He was WC between 2007 and 2013, he wasn't even the top ranked player for most of that time and then he lost the WC to Magnus (then lost the r…
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In March he condemned the invasion of Ukraine and stepped down from his other positions (which have not included working for the Russian state since 2018). You can always say he should go further, that he's tainted by his past links to Putin, or point out that if he had really turned on Putin he would have found polonium in his tea by now, but it's misleading to describe him today as "one of the closest allies of Put…
Isn't he still the Chairman of the Board of Russian Railways, a state-owned company?
https://ar2020.rzd.ru/en/corporate-governance/board-director...
It might be worth mentioning a famous abdication which caused a lot of consternation, albeit in another game. I love this story but may have gotten some details wrong. Marion Tinsley was world checkers champion from 1955-1958, then took a break, then again from 1975-1991, when he resigned in protest (at age 64 ). He was utterly dominant; indeed it is hard to think of a competitor in all of history more dominant over…
I've got another one: famous hold 'em poker player Stu Ungar never lost a game of gin rummy. Utterly dominant.
Obviously this raised the issue of Bobby Fischer. The article mentions this but doesn't really go into the details. Fischer beat Spassky in Rejkyavik in 1972 for the World Championship. This took almost 3 months (July to September) and there was controversy, disagreement and negotiation about where and how it would take place. This had the backdrop of being a Cold War proxy too of course. Interestingly, Fischer didn'…
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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…
Perhaps, just maybe, Nakamura doesn't quite understand what Magnus thinks, being different humans and all. So far it seems Magnus has been more accurate at predicting what Magnus will do.