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Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

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Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#471

Post by ANewFormation »

monooso wrote: post #425
kelipso wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are stated reasons and there are actual reasons. You have to differentiate between the two, otherwise you are just extremely naive.

Please, enlighten us all.

Magnus played 5 world championships, with 3 against players of his generation. In those 3,he only managed a plus score once - against Nepo who was more than holding his own then lost one tough game and went on his notorious monkey tilt. The other two were drawn in classical.

Magnus is, by a landslide, the best tournament player (probably ever) but the world championship for classical is very different than a tournament, and his results there have not been anywhere near the level of his tournament performances.

And Magnus has also stated that he believes he has peaked. Basically - he was going to imminently lose, and I think he wanted to go out undefeated. Notably the one player he was willing to play, Alireza, was the only viable contender who he would expect to have been an overwhelming favourite against.

Also in terms of legacy, the max number of world championship victories is 6. He stopped at 5.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#473

Post by sourcepluck »

somenameforme wrote: post #467
sourcepluck wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your couple of comments on this thread are insightful, I will be watching that documentary! Cheers! What have you focused on in your chess learning to get to where you've gotten? I presume - everything?

It depends on the level. The big early gains to get to let's say 2200+ were basically exclusively tactics. You really have to get your board vision to quite a decent level before the other parts of learning really start kicking in, and that's going to take thousands of hours of tactics. An important part of tactics is to ensure you actually work out the entire line - instead of just playing the obvious tactical idea,…

Very good of you to get back to me with such a generous reply.

I'm happy reading it. I'd studied and played (in a club, real tournaments, etc) pretty "seriously" for about six months a couple of years ago, before stopping completely, even though it was going quite well, when some unavoidable life things got in the way.

Progress had been steady, climbing up to almost 1600 classical (before the statistical ratings hike last year, putting me on 1750). I was maybe going to at least temporarily settle around there, or slightly higher, it looked like. I'd played for a few years when I was younger, but didn't have serious coaching, unfortunately, so this was not 6 months from scratch at all.

What I'd come up with when studying tracks with some of your main points above. I was focusing very much on tactics, because I love them and because it seemed unavoidable - even the high-rated players who don't consider themselves "tactical players" still have an extremely solid tactical reading of any position, and spot all the usual patterns with ease.

I'd even mostly ignored heavy opening work! Which, I must say, is not a popular approach. A friend who'd seen a bit of your game would come up to you after a match in a tournament and say: "I can't beleve you played that on move six against the French defence, that's not the best move!", and I'd struggle to convince them that openings were not my main area of concern aha.

Anyway, thanks again, and congrats on your chess accomplishments - the tournaments truly are wonderful to be involved in, I find.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#474

Post by sherkaner »

bluecalm wrote: post #403
darepublic wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magnus described Ding's abilities as a 4/10 in the lead up to the match. In match commentary he regularly called the games "baffling" (as in baffingly bad) and regularly said they weren't strong grandmaster calibre. He is definitely very conceited and resents not being the world champion, even if it's only because of his absence.

Magnus was just being honest man. You seem to succumb to a common thinking fallacy that people who express criticism or negative opinions about something or someone must be jealous, conceited or just negative people in general. Meanwhile he was just expressing what is obvious to any strong player: Ding's level of play was subpar coming to the match, a league below elite at least. His play during the match was way bel…

Magnus blundered simple Nxe5 in better endgame in the 6th game of the second match with Anand. Anand missed it as well.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#475

Post by paulddraper »

lxgr wrote: post #459
paulddraper wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. And Google's AlphaZero did it years ago. I don't think the patterns are very human, but they are very cool.

Have you tried Maia? I haven't myself (there isn't one in my ballpark level yet), but supposedly it plays more human due to being trained mostly on human play, not engine evaluations or self-play.

I have not.

Thank you.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#476

Post by syllogism »

bluecalm wrote: post #403
darepublic wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magnus described Ding's abilities as a 4/10 in the lead up to the match. In match commentary he regularly called the games "baffling" (as in baffingly bad) and regularly said they weren't strong grandmaster calibre. He is definitely very conceited and resents not being the world champion, even if it's only because of his absence.

Magnus was just being honest man. You seem to succumb to a common thinking fallacy that people who express criticism or negative opinions about something or someone must be jealous, conceited or just negative people in general. Meanwhile he was just expressing what is obvious to any strong player: Ding's level of play was subpar coming to the match, a league below elite at least. His play during the match was way bel…

It wasn't even so much the blunders as the strategic decisions I think. Like, a blunder isn't in itself "baffling".

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#477

Post by [deleted] »

School-Cotton wrote: post #298
SpaceManNabs wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really interesting because i ran into a pokemon bot the other day were its training led to calibration of 50% winrste at all levels of play on Pokémon showdown. It was a complete accident.

It's not hard to make a chess bot that plays at a 1300 strength, i.e. its rating would converge to 1300 if it were allowed to compete. But it will not play like a 1300-rated human. It would play like a superhuman genius on most moves and then make beginner-level blunders at random moments. Making one that realistically plays like a human is an unsolved problem.

[deleted]

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#478

Post by somenameforme »

sourcepluck wrote: post #473
somenameforme wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the level. The big early gains to get to let's say 2200+ were basically exclusively tactics. You really have to get your board vision to quite a decent level before the other parts of learning really start kicking in, and that's going to take thousands of hours of tactics. An important part of tactics is to ensure you actually work out the entire line - instead of just playing the obvious tactical idea,…

Very good of you to get back to me with such a generous reply. I'm happy reading it. I'd studied and played (in a club, real tournaments, etc) pretty "seriously" for about six months a couple of years ago, before stopping completely, even though it was going quite well, when some unavoidable life things got in the way. Progress had been steady, climbing up to almost 1600 classical (before the statistical ratings hike…

Yeah, exactly on the tactics issue. Computers used to be quite horrible positionally, but were still extremely strong simply because their short-term tactical vision was nearly perfect. And you really need tactics to enable positional play. Petrosian was able to snuff out tactical possibilities so effectively only because he was fully aware of where they were!

Now a days I think the tactics streak offered on Lichess (and probably on chess.com as well) is a really great tactical resource. It's the untimed option, rather than the much more popular tactics rush where you have e.g. 5 minutes to do as many as you can. I think the 'woodpecker' method of tactics is a great idea. Basically you build up on a repeated series of tactical problems, until you're able to complete them all perfectly accurately at an extremely high rate of speed. This seems contradictory, because the sites have massive tactics database, but you will regularly see the same problems due to the birthday paradox. If you're looking for some achievable ballparks, on Lichess I tend to be able to hit around 50 somewhat regularly, with a high of about 90.

I think the fundamental thing with openings is that so long as you make logical moves, even if you make an objectively weak move - you will very rarely reach a losing position because of it. And from that point on both your opponent and you are both out of book, so whoever understands the position better, and plays better, will win. Many people, especially adults, get caught up in obsessive opening study because it's the one form of chess study where results can be immediately felt.

The one very good thing about opening study is seeing ideas and concepts that you may not otherwise be able to come up with on your own. Like in the Najdorf, the pawn structure with d6+e5 and d6 generally firmly blocked and on a semi-open file leaves d6 feeling like a major weakness at first. The fact that it's generally rock solid was a serious eye-opener for me! And that translates strongly to many other positions - backwards pawns are not necessarily dooming one to passive defense, and can even be a great dynamic weapon!

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#479

Post by beyondCritics »

jquery wrote: post #375
jawarner wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can measure the sharpness of the position, as in this paper section 2.3 "Complexity of a position". They find their metric correlates with human performance. https://en.chessbase.com/news/2006/world_champions2006.pdf

Nice paper. I’d like if someone re-ran the numbers using modern chess engines… the engine they used is exceedingly weak by modern standards.

Actually is is so weak, that it would be stomped out 1000:0 by modern engines. I like the methodology too, but the conclusions are not defendable.

Re: Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history

#480

Post by jquery »

scott_w wrote: post #418
jquery wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it’s something like 500 elo points difference at this point between Magnus and Stockfish running on cheap hardware. Computers are so strong the only way to measure their strength is against other, weaker computers, and so on until you get to engines that are mere “grandmaster” strength.

Bear in mind that, beyond the “top” elo ratings, that it’s purely an estimate of relative strength. The gap between a GM and me is far greater than the gap between a GM and Stockfish, even if the stated elo difference is the same. By this I mean, you can give me a winning position against Magnus and I’ll still lose. Give a winning position to Magnus vs Stockfish and he might draw or even win.

True, what is considered a “winning” position is different at different elo levels. The better someone is, the smaller their mistakes are relative to perfect play.

I wish top players like Magnus would do more exhibition games against top computers. They don’t have to all start with equal material or an equal position.

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