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Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

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Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#51

Post by nevi-me »

fileeditview wrote: post #41
nevi-me wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, their ELOs are just about the same, so I agree with the spirit of your viewpoint. I'd argue that he's better because he has mastered more than just one format. If we have a tie in one category, and one of the players has a strong advantage in another category; then they'll come out as "better".

Their ELOs are currently about the same but Carlsen is on that level(and higher) for a long time whereas Caruana and a few others have just come close. I wouldn't be surprised if Carlsen would soon again have a comfortable lead on the ELO ladder. He was once at 2882. I am however happy that he had such a worthy opponent in this tournament!

Interestingly, he has a wider gap on rapid and blitz, again showing the magnitude of his strength

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#53

Post by gmiller123456 »

nevi-me wrote: post #6

I was disappointed in Carlsen's 12th game draw. He might have etched something out of the game, as computers were clearly saying he had some slight advantage. After seeing the first games from today, I eased down on my disappointment. Today's first few games changed my mind. Carlsen remains the better player, because he does better where it matters; time pressure. Caruana seemed to battle with time a lot, I observed…

> because he does better where it matters; time pressure.

Not at all. Both of these guys would handily beat me and pretty much any other player quite easily in standard time controls. Time pressure was only a factor here because there's public pressure to name someone as the champion. In the vast majority of all tournaments, ties are left as ties. In the event there is a prize that can't be split (e.g. a title or a trophy) there are a series of tiebreak rules that don't involve playing any more games. The USCF rulebook lists the methods and priority that they are to be used, the FIDE rulebook gives several options which are to be announced in advance [1].

[1] https://www.fide.com/fide/handbook.html?id=187&view=article

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#54

Post by nevi-me »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #46
msbarnett wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree. Carlsen is the better player under time pressure, but they appear evenly matched in what I'd consider "actual" chess. Did they? The primary complaint about Carlsen's game 12 is that he had Caruana dead to rights, but chose not to press the advantage. Which isn't to say that Caruana didn't do a fantastic job of playing Carlsen to a standstill throughout the tournament, but Carlsen seemed to have more of…

You’re dramatically overstating the advantage Carlsen had in Game 12. It was not decisive or obvious in any way and afterwards various engines played out the position to a draw. It might have been possible to win, but it might also have been possible to blunder and miss the chance to go to rapid tie breaks (a format where Carlsen had the advantage). You’re also not doing Caruana justice. He worked Carlsen into badly…

I agree with your view on the overstatement. It wasn't a win, but a slight advantage.

Chess championships sometimes draw the same criticism as boxing, players strategise to win on technicalities and small margins, instead of taking risks and landing hard blows.

As fans, that is boring, but I agree; Carlsen made the correct choice in drawing.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#55

Post by joefkelley »

School-Cotton wrote: post #48
nevi-me wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, their ELOs are just about the same, so I agree with the spirit of your viewpoint. I'd argue that he's better because he has mastered more than just one format. If we have a tie in one category, and one of the players has a strong advantage in another category; then they'll come out as "better".

To someone (like the person you replied to) who considers slow chess to be "actual chess" and quicker formats to be a different game, this argument doesn't make sense. Imagine two people of equal ability at ice hockey. You wouldn't say that one is better than the other at ice hockey because he's better than the other at field hockey. Adding my edit to a below comment here: Probably the best analogy here is associatio…

Would you consider an ice hockey player's skill in 3-on-3 overtime or shootouts to be a factor in their overall ice hockey skill?

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#56

Post by fosco »

School-Cotton wrote: post #48
nevi-me wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, their ELOs are just about the same, so I agree with the spirit of your viewpoint. I'd argue that he's better because he has mastered more than just one format. If we have a tie in one category, and one of the players has a strong advantage in another category; then they'll come out as "better".

To someone (like the person you replied to) who considers slow chess to be "actual chess" and quicker formats to be a different game, this argument doesn't make sense. Imagine two people of equal ability at ice hockey. You wouldn't say that one is better than the other at ice hockey because he's better than the other at field hockey. Adding my edit to a below comment here: Probably the best analogy here is associatio…

albeit, if there were shorter time constraints for each period, I would say the team that wins in that smaller time constraint is better even though the meta changes, it becomes less a game of endurance and more a game of holding peak performance as long as possible. imagine 4 minute periods. it definitely changes the game but it is still all in all the game, goals are still scored the same way. (please note, I know extremely little about hockey... but I think the analogy works, if it doesn't please let me know.)

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#57

Post by rtkwe »

drewrv wrote: post #14
nevi-me wrote: post #6

I was disappointed in Carlsen's 12th game draw. He might have etched something out of the game, as computers were clearly saying he had some slight advantage. After seeing the first games from today, I eased down on my disappointment. Today's first few games changed my mind. Carlsen remains the better player, because he does better where it matters; time pressure. Caruana seemed to battle with time a lot, I observed…

> Carlsen remains the better player, because he does better where it matters; time pressure. I disagree. Carlsen is the better player under time pressure, but they appear evenly matched in what I'd consider "actual" chess. One of the things I love about the game is that it's a slow, pensive game.

Classical chess still includes the clock in induce time pressures so speed of decision making is already a factor in the main tournament. Rapid and blitz just take that and increase it's importance given the main matches have already determined the players are largely evenly matched.

I look at it this way. The main 12 games have already told us who is good given lots of time to deliberate now who has a good enough understanding to make those decisions quickly.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#58

Post by nevi-me »

gmiller123456 wrote: post #53
nevi-me wrote: post #6

I was disappointed in Carlsen's 12th game draw. He might have etched something out of the game, as computers were clearly saying he had some slight advantage. After seeing the first games from today, I eased down on my disappointment. Today's first few games changed my mind. Carlsen remains the better player, because he does better where it matters; time pressure. Caruana seemed to battle with time a lot, I observed…

> because he does better where it matters; time pressure. Not at all. Both of these guys would handily beat me and pretty much any other player quite easily in standard time controls. Time pressure was only a factor here because there's public pressure to name someone as the champion. In the vast majority of all tournaments, ties are left as ties. In the event there is a prize that can't be split (e.g. a title or a t…

He does better relative to his peer(s)

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#59

Post by mindgam3 »

Jach wrote: post #40
mindgam3 wrote: post #5

I’d like to offer a few thoughts on this match as a former internationally competitive player/US Cadet U16 champion, current ~2400 bullet chess addict, and someone who has played bughouse with Fabiano as my partner at the Sinquefield Cup in 2017. First, hats off to both players for a hard fought match. To Magnus for successfully defending his title, and to Fabiano for pushing Magnus right to the brink. This was an ex…

My aspirations for Chess are pretty low these days (my estimated ELO max was around a mere 1500 over a decade ago when I played regularly..) but I'm curious how your web interface actually works to improve play and whether it would translate to other games. I've heard conflicting advice about the value of blitz games for Go as well, though the strongest person I've played in person (5dan amateur chinese) thought that…

I barely know the rules of Go, but I have great respect for the game and I believe it would apply there as well. The interface is based on the fact that chess is primarily a game of visual pattern recognition. Tactics like forks and pins, positional concepts like isolated pawns and weak squares, these are captured and processed visually. Getting good at chess is as much about learning how to literally see the patterns as it is about calculating ability.

To your other point, intuition is never going to replace deep calculation for slower games. But the ability to process visual patterns still aids with the deep thinking aspect. You can perceive more subtle patterns and add them visually while thinking carefully about each move.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship

#60

Post by msbarnett »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #46
msbarnett wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree. Carlsen is the better player under time pressure, but they appear evenly matched in what I'd consider "actual" chess. Did they? The primary complaint about Carlsen's game 12 is that he had Caruana dead to rights, but chose not to press the advantage. Which isn't to say that Caruana didn't do a fantastic job of playing Carlsen to a standstill throughout the tournament, but Carlsen seemed to have more of…

You’re dramatically overstating the advantage Carlsen had in Game 12. It was not decisive or obvious in any way and afterwards various engines played out the position to a draw. It might have been possible to win, but it might also have been possible to blunder and miss the chance to go to rapid tie breaks (a format where Carlsen had the advantage). You’re also not doing Caruana justice. He worked Carlsen into badly…

> You’re dramatically overstating the advantage Carlsen had in Game 12. It was not decisive or obvious in any way and afterwards various engines played out the position to a draw.

You're misstating the results of the Game 12 replays (see: https://www.chess.com/computer-chess-championship, which is pitting numerous engines against each other in the position at Game 12's resignation).

It's currently +3-18=14. That's 3 wins for Caruana's position, 18 wins for Carlsen's, and 14 draws. That's about as decisive a position as you can get in high-level chess. Yes, with perfect play, Caruana might have reached a draw, but Carlsen was in an overwhelmingly strong position. And this isn't even truly accounting for the time pressure Caruana put himself in at that point. He would have been defending from an incredible time deficit.

> Meanwhile, Carlsen made absolutely the correct choice (best strategic choice) to draw in Game 12.

Numerous grandmasters disagree with you, including at least Anand, Nakamura, Hess, Kasparov, and Kramnik. The computer results also suggest he should have at least played on several moves before offering, because he was in a position where his likely worst case result was a draw and his best case was a decisive win.

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