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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

#51

Post by enugu »

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…

How about a very short gap, say a week, after the Candidates tournament to the Championship match to avoid long opening preparations?

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#52

Post by NhanH »

pmontra wrote: post #37
ginko wrote: post #3

From the outside the champion system in chess seems so weird. I know they do something similar in boxing, but there it sort of makes sense because attending too many boxing tournaments isn't exactly healthy.

Many national go tournaments have a similar format in all of the 3 countries it's worth talking about (China, South Korea and Japan): the champion waits for the result of the challenger tournaments and plays only the final series of games (3, 5, 7.) International tournaments tend to be shootouts with everybody playing from the first round. You can get a picture of how they are set up by looking at the tournament tabl…

Japan is the only country still have major tournaments with champion vs challenger format. None of the big tournament in China or South Korea has that type of game.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#53

Post by moomin »

kamaal wrote: post #42
matsemann wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a normal tournament, you meet so many different people (and you often don't know in advance exactly who you will meet of all the participants), so it's hard to specifically prepare. For a match of this kind, however, you know your opponent will prepare specifically against you. So you kinda have to do the same. That entails analyzing all of their games and finding defenses and weaknesses. But also trying to find n…

Say a player just rote memorised moves from a chess engine and just played it. Would that be considered cheating?

It isn’t, partly because you needed to predict the scenario would come up and partly because your opponent can do the exact same thing.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#54

Post by adrianN »

nhumrich wrote: post #44
fouronnes3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chess, in theory, with absolutely perfect play, is a draw. While this is highly likely and essentially agreed upon by all experts on the matter, it's not proven yet.

Chess is still no-hard, so "proving this" will be near impossible. The closest we have is statistics. I remember watching a "bot battle." A chess tournament for bots only, algorithms playing eachother. Nearly 70% of these games ended in draw.

Chess on an infinite board is asymptotically difficult in the worst case. Chess on an 8x8 board can be solved in constant time.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#55

Post by NhanH »

enugu wrote: post #51
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…

How about a very short gap, say a week, after the Candidates tournament to the Championship match to avoid long opening preparations?

That just forces 8 players in the candidates to do their preparation BEFORE the tournament.

Economically speaking, that won't be enough time for advertising, setting the venue or getting sponsor up either. It matters who plays in the WCC match before you can do either of those things. We still don't know when or where the match for this cycle will happen even now.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#56

Post by ChefboyOG »

kamaal wrote: post #42
matsemann wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a normal tournament, you meet so many different people (and you often don't know in advance exactly who you will meet of all the participants), so it's hard to specifically prepare. For a match of this kind, however, you know your opponent will prepare specifically against you. So you kinda have to do the same. That entails analyzing all of their games and finding defenses and weaknesses. But also trying to find n…

Say a player just rote memorised moves from a chess engine and just played it. Would that be considered cheating?

No, using engines to find lines is a common way to practice (at least, that's my understanding. Obviously, I'm not personally a world class chess player.)

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#57

Post by sgjohnson »

qw wrote: post #47
matsemann wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found them entertaining to watch. But Norwegians are master of slow-TV, so I guess that's why. They have good experts that manage to explain it to normal people. Interesting guests in the studio between moves. Interact with audience through questions from chat etc. > Chess, in theory, with absolutely perfect play, is a draw. I don't think that's solved, actually.

> I've found them entertaining to watch. But Norwegians are master of slow-TV, so I guess that's why. They have good experts that manage to explain it to normal people. Interesting guests in the studio between moves. Interact with audience through questions from chat etc. I usually don't follow chess, but I still end up watching the WC matches on Norwegian TV. They manage to make it interesting and exciting.

I do watch the WC matches myself, but definitely not live.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#58

Post by coremoff »

kamaal wrote: post #42
matsemann wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a normal tournament, you meet so many different people (and you often don't know in advance exactly who you will meet of all the participants), so it's hard to specifically prepare. For a match of this kind, however, you know your opponent will prepare specifically against you. So you kinda have to do the same. That entails analyzing all of their games and finding defenses and weaknesses. But also trying to find n…

Say a player just rote memorised moves from a chess engine and just played it. Would that be considered cheating?

That would depend on the opponent doing the same, and picking the same engine and settings for their side too.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#59

Post by gliptic »

kamaal wrote: post #42
matsemann wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a normal tournament, you meet so many different people (and you often don't know in advance exactly who you will meet of all the participants), so it's hard to specifically prepare. For a match of this kind, however, you know your opponent will prepare specifically against you. So you kinda have to do the same. That entails analyzing all of their games and finding defenses and weaknesses. But also trying to find n…

Say a player just rote memorised moves from a chess engine and just played it. Would that be considered cheating?

No, that is exactly what they do in opening preparation.

Re: Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

#60

Post by dane-pgp »

philipswood wrote: post #26
TomGullen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, wouldn't the player who takes the first move have a tiny tiny edge? Or is the second mover always able to guarantee a draw if they play perfectly?

Still an open problem. Unlike tic-tac-toe we're not certain if it is a win or a draw for perfect players.

To give an example from a game more complicated than tic-tac-toe, it is known that the player who goes first in Connect 4 can always win with perfect play if (and only if) they play in the middle column on their first turn.

The chess analogue to this would be that there is a single opening move for white that a perfect player can guarantee a win from, or maybe a limited set of opening moves.

In fact, there is a variant of chess where this the case, namely "pawns-only chess", where 1.b4, 1.c4, 1.f4, and 1.g4 are winning for white, whereas all other first moves are a win for black with perfect play.

https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/8755/is-the-result...

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