Aside from watching the Magnus documentary about a younger Magnus while I was in high school, I have almost no knowledge about competitive chess. What sorts of things do chess players engage in during the course of the six months leading up to a match? Is there something that they're trying to remember or a video that they're studying (what would they be looking for)? From the beginning, I was under the impression that they might be played at any moment. This sounds like a really difficult situation.
Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
431–440 of 461 posts
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love this story so much. This The Atlantic article telling the full tale is a favorite of mine [1] It's hard to overstate how incredibly dominant Tinsley was. In his entire career, he never lost a match, and only ever lost 7 games (two to Chinook). That is out of maybe tens of thousands of games. He was a mathematician by training and taught at a historically black university. He was also deeply religious and a lay…
If you like that you might like Jonathan Schaeffer's (the creator of Chinook) book "One Jump Ahead" in which he discusses Chinook and Tinsley in great detail.
Just bought it thanks. I had no idea checkers was so involved!
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You missed a guy named Bobby Fischer, for one - a rather big name in chess history I would say. He was arguably a major driving force in turning chess into a professional discipline outside of the USSR.
As for computers, they've certainly changed the landscape tremendously, but it doesn't mean that players simply play like chess engines. You don't just get to transfer the chess engine heuristics to a human mind. Chess engines help players find ideas, refutations etc., and they're certainly significant when it comes to opening theory. The role of memorization in opening theory (at the highest level) predates computers though.
Computers have also levelled the playing field, improving (buzzword alert) inclusiveness. Players from countries with flourishing chess tradition, such as Russia, don't have the inherent advantage anymore. That's why the current top 2 (on the rating list) are from Norway and China, which would be rather unlikely a few decades ago.
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#434Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#435No post body was provided.
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
Magnus didn't destroy Nepo, he was the first to win a game. At the level of chess in the first 6 games catching up after a loss is difficult, and Ian likely decided not to fight too hard. Also he said he overprepared for the match and was to burned out. A fresh match with a new score could be very interesting.
7.5 - 3.5 is pretty much definition of total destruction. Bouncing back from defeat is part of the game (See Carlsen Karjakin match).
After the first five games it was 2.5 - 2.5. Whatever happened to Ian after the first loss does not indicate the level of the play he is capable of, and does not even in the slightest predict what would happen in the rematch.
I understand that Magnus glory hunting fans are everywhere and they love to pretend that once he had someone beaten, he'll repeat the feat with certainty, but have some more sense than that. More than one world champion has won the crown not on his first attempt, including one of the all-time greats, Kasparov.
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?…
Well, applying "zugzwang" means you only win because the opponent has to do a move and cannot skip their turn. 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 s…
Ahh okay I think I get it now, you are saying if chess is win for black, that immediately implies zugzwang for white from starting position.
In the same way, chess being a win for white implies zugzwang for black starting position.
So chess being a win for one side is equivalent to starting position being zugzwang for the other side.
It's obvious now, but so interesting to me, I never thought about it that way! Thanks for taking time for explaining yourself.
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would give black two moves in a row, which is a different scenario, and might still be optimal for black.
Black doesn't know it's getting two moves in a row when it makes the first move. And on the second move, it can only take advantage if white's first move reduces white's optionality in a specific manner, e.g. by blocking another piece essential for response to a certain tactic, which by construction, would mean it wasn't really an opportunity to transpose the game to hand over the initiative.
Not sure I follow.
The scenario we're positing is that perhaps, in fully-solved chess, white is actually in zugzwang, where every initial move is actually bad for them.
If there were some way for white to hand the first move to black, then clearly this would be the best solution.
But all the take-back solutions (e.g. move the knight forward and back again) actually give black two moves, which is a different situation.
And the stutter-step solution of white moving a pawn only one space instead of two doesn't work because that's simply refuting the premise that white is in zugzwang.
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you play tic-tac-toe for a win with that scoring ratio?
This is an inappropriate analogy. Chess at the highest levels is not drawish because the game is inherently drawish but because the meta of it is. The easiest way to illustrate this is with openings, though it applies throughout the game in different ways. Against e4 the Najdorf defense was once the opening of champions, being a major part of the repertoire of players like Kasparov and Fischer. In modern times it's a…
This reminds me of football analogy where goals scored at away matches count for two in competitions like Champions League.
I am not good at chess but would it help if win as black was rewarded more than win as white?
Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title
#440Time 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…
You can't just change the format. Then it's not the same sport. It's like saying we should change football (soccer), reduce the field size, make goals bigger and reduce play time to 60 mins. Then it's not football anymore, it's another sport.
If Magnus doesn't want to play this sport anymore, it's his decision, and totaly understandable. But don't try to change like a century of tradition (much like the rules of chess).
EDIT: fix typo