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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

#411

Post by triyambakam »

bluecalm wrote: post #239

My view on this is that the current World Championship cycle achieves the opposite of what it should achieve: 1)There are many tournaments where the best player is not allowed to participate making them tournaments of second bests for no reason other than determining who plays in the Candidates 2)Other tournaments, even those with long tradition, are poisoned by the Candidates because many top players treat them as t…

So if you win the WC once, you then only perpetually play the WC games and not all the games leading up to it? Yeah, that's really strange and seems to favor the incumbent

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#412

Post by drc500free »

darepublic wrote: post #380
MikePlacid wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know the name of a single javelin throwing champion. But I know the names of chess champions… up to Kasparov.

You have no knowledge of Kramnik, Anand or Carlsen?

Carlsen, yes. But only because of his personality and streaming. I played in the chess club every day in high school in the 90s, and I must have had a similar reaction about computers, because I don't know what happened after Kasparov.

I also stopped watching red sox games once they won the world series. Fandom is weird.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#413

Post by asherah »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #403
junar wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His surname is 吳. Not only is it a different character from the one used to write 5, but it's also pronounced with a different tone in Chinese. Also, his given name contains the character 源, which is read "gen" in Japanese, not "gan". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Seigen

> Also, his given name contains the character 源, which is read "gen" in Japanese, not "gan". This may be way outside of your wheelhouse, but I have to ask - The Mandarin reading of 源 is yuán. The phonetics are something like [ʲyɛn]. A similar raising of the written vowel occurs in the pinyin syllable yan (e.g. 言, 严, 眼), which is [jɛn]. In other pinyin syllables, an "a" represents /a/, which is something sort of inter…

this smells exceptionally offtopic but if there's no phonemic -ja- then there's no reason to distinguish it from -jɛ- in a phonemic analysis, is there? although i believe mandarin can be analysed as a weird two vowel system if you take this approach too far though i don't have the paper handy

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#414

Post by thomasahle »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #299
kzrdude wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The candidates winner probably won't have spent that much time preparing for Magnus, since they had to prepare for all the candidates matches.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#415

Post by thomasahle »

Scarblac wrote: post #320
kzrdude wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The WC would basically become a part of the candidates tournament. So they could use the same sponsors.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#416

Post by MikePlacid »

darepublic wrote: post #380
MikePlacid wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know the name of a single javelin throwing champion. But I know the names of chess champions… up to Kasparov.

You have no knowledge of Kramnik, Anand or Carlsen?

I’ve heard of these guys. But I do not know which of them is/was a champion. But I can name the previous champions, and I think I can still remember the exact sequence: Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanka, Alekhin, Eiwe, Botwinnik, Tal… missed somebody?

But I’ve lost interest after Deep Blue event. Alpha Zero plays were fun to watch though.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#417

Post by thomasahle »

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.

This would be really great. Less prep could also lead to more opening mistakes and decisive games.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#418

Post by thomasahle »

kamaal wrote: post #15
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…

For those of us who don't follow this closely, why is the format such a problem? Is it because its stressful, and demands too much work and prep from participants. Just asking as competitive sport at the top level be it chess, football, or even swimming for that matter demands lots of work and a kind of work ethic not easy for most of us.

> Is it because its stressful, and demands too much work and prep from participants?

The problem is that the world champion is out of play for 6 months out of every two years, preparing for just one game.

It's boring for him as well as the fans to spend that much time in isolation just trying to memorize everything about one particular opponent.

It would be better to have him out and about playing tournaments and beating lots of different opponents.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#419

Post by V-2 »

why-el wrote: post #184
V-2 wrote: post #155

While he's (this goes without saying) perfectly within his rights to do so. I feel this decision will undermine his status as one of the GOATs of the game in the long run. "However, one cannot say that he has beaten Caruana or Karjakin convincingly. [Both matches were decided on tiebreaks]. There were questions in his match against Anand too. If he had beaten all three of them as clearly as he won against Nepomniacht…

"Did Michael Jordan win all six championships convincingly? All series went 5 games or more."

While Karpov's opinion is debatable of course (although the man knows a thing or two about the subject), I frankly can't see how this analogy is applicable here?

If anything, Carlsen's WC matches fell definitely on the short side (which is one of the reasons why 2 of them were only decided on rapid tiebreaks, which is kind of ridiculous in and of itself; not saying it's Carlsen's "fault", but still). And all but the last one - where Nepo self-destructed anyway - were 12 games long.

Back in the dya of Kasparov vs. Karpov a WC match was at least 24 games long - so for example Carlsen's both wins against Anand in 2013 and then 2014 combined were only as long as a single match before his era. And the (in)famous aborted match of 1984-85 lasted for 48 games. The struggle used to be much greater.

How does the analogy with Jordan fit here exactly?

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#420

Post by V-2 »

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…

> I feel like Fide should focus more on rapid, and get more involved in the online scene. Maybe this is the opportunity.

This cheapens the tradition and the prestige of the discipline. Chess has attained a revered status over the years. It's not perceived as a game like any other. That's why it's able to attract luxury sponsors, if nothing else. Shifting the focus onto the "double bong cloud drunk banter blitz" territory destroys this legacy. This casual, fun aspect exists and does very well independently of the official, suited up aspect. They are complementary. But I'd really think twice before trying to remove one of the pillars. Chess is the most known, researched and commented mind game on the globe, it doesn't suffer from niche viewership. There's no need to try and fix a problem that doesn't exist. Tradition and legacy is something no amount of online clicks could ever buy.

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