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Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

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Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#71

Post by lethologica »

smt88 wrote: post #44
lethologica wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context helps. A lot of really strong players are 12 years old.

That context doesn't help me at all. Is a "really strong" 12yo in contention to win this particular competition that a 35yo won?

Sorry, I thought you’d be able to make some logical inferences and I assumed you knew a little about chess.

In chess there’s a concept of strength, and ELO is used as a rough estimate of this. Further there are FIDE rankings like IM and GM that have certain requirements to achieve.

In most sports, there’s never such an age gap. Think of basketball or football. You don’t see 12 year olds hitting the equivalent of GM in those respective sports (going pro?) and being able to compete with the 35 year olds, do you? In most sports, they wouldn’t even be allowed to enter but in chess they could.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#73

Post by nilslindemann »

saucymew wrote: post #9

It feels like the cohort GM player pool is mentally cooked against Magnus. Youngsters like Lazavik during the Speed Chess Championship or Sindarov in Freestyle were the most recent convincing wins against Magnus, but the historical mental edge that Magnus comes into each game after beating the brakes out of everyone is hard to overcome. Magnus' time will come! But not today.

> Magnus' time will come! But not today.

Hasn't Magnus' time already come, and isn't it still Magnus' time? He is #1 on all three lists[1] and so long that I have forgotten when he was not.

[1]: https://2700chess.com/

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#74

Post by gpm »

xmprt wrote: post #64
freetime2 wrote: post #28

How long do chess players typically remain at their peak for? According to wikipedia, Magnus is currently 35. Is it impressive to be winning at 35? Would we expect to see his performance drop off in the next 5-10 years? Even if he is still capable mentally and physically, I would think the stress of training and competing at that level must get old after a while.

Magnus' longevity has more to do with his willingness to continue competing than his actual skill. He's been pretty vocal about his issues with FIDE so I can see a world where he stops participating in FIDE events to focus on non-FIDE events that he enjoys more. He's already withdrawn from the Candidates which qualifies you for the World Championship.

Magnus not participating in FIDE events seems to have absolutely nothing to do with his longevity, it just means that FIDE is no longer meaningfully hosting THE world championship because they failed to attract the talent.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#75

Post by nilslindemann »

School-Cotton wrote: post #63
throwpoaster wrote: post #17

Do the engines have a similar edge in Fischer Random and regular chess?

That's hard to answer because the advantage is essentially infinitely large. Engines never lose or draw against unassisted humans. Any modern chess engine, if it plays 100 games against any human (even magnus), will have a record of 100 wins, 0 draws, and 0 losses. This is true both in standard chess and Chess960.

This is most definitely wrong. There will be some draws and even a few wins, though that's very rare indeed.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#76

Post by nilslindemann »

Taek wrote: post #54
josephg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do modern chess AIs do any form of opening prep? Like, do they bake any opening analysis into their engines? Or is it all pure search?

Yes modern AIs have an entire opening database and generally have cached the first 20+ moves of the game (for most common openings) from a database of very deep searches identifying the best move. This is absolutely a form of opening prep for AIs. That said, even without that database a modern AI will completely topple the best human at every common chess variant. Humans cannot defeat modern AIs in chess like games.

Like my answer below, that's wrong. Even I have achieved a few draws or even wins against Stockfish in training games, and I am FM strength. From time to time you are happy to reach a simple rook endgame which happens to be won and the engine doesn't anticipate that (horizon effect). You still draw or lose 90% of those but you win 10%.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#77

Post by somenameforme »

freetime2 wrote: post #28

How long do chess players typically remain at their peak for? According to wikipedia, Magnus is currently 35. Is it impressive to be winning at 35? Would we expect to see his performance drop off in the next 5-10 years? Even if he is still capable mentally and physically, I would think the stress of training and competing at that level must get old after a while.

On average players start declining in their mid to late thirties, just about the age of Magnus (and Hikaru). But even with that decline, it's not like they simply can't play anymore. Drag Kasparov out of retirement and he's still going to be an extremely strong player, even in his 60s.

And a lot probably comes with environmental rather than physical issues. Staying at the highest level in chess requires never-ending opening preparation and study. This same is about the time that kings of the game have made their dominance clear to the point that there's just nothing more to achieve, start having families, and so on. It's going to be very difficult to maintain motivation.

The rise of freestyle chess could viably see players extending their dominance for much longer, because there's currently believed to be no realistic way to do impactful opening prep in that game.

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#78

Post by pinkmuffinere »

dwd wrote: post #58
epolanski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's merely mental albeit it seems like even nervous Carlsen is cooler than his very focused opponents (see game 3 vs Fabiano where caruana had a completely winning position after carlsens blunder). Carlsen has spent the core of his career mastering two aspects historically underlooked aspects of the game. The first is the endgame, and there isn't much to say there. He's by far the best end game player…

Carlsen has always had a tenacity that allows him to come back from positions other players would give up on thinking to conserve effort to fight another day. Mental strength and stamina to stay in the fight has always been something that made him who he is. You also can't underestimate physical stamina. Kasparov in his 5-3 result against Karpov in 1984-85 was eventually halted due to Karpov's exhaustion and losing 1…

> losing 18kg over the match period.

woah that's crazy, I was not aware of this. That's like 36 weeks of aggressive weight loss.

edit: Looks like it lasted 5 months (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1984%...).

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#79

Post by hyperbovine »

saucymew wrote: post #9

It feels like the cohort GM player pool is mentally cooked against Magnus. Youngsters like Lazavik during the Speed Chess Championship or Sindarov in Freestyle were the most recent convincing wins against Magnus, but the historical mental edge that Magnus comes into each game after beating the brakes out of everyone is hard to overcome. Magnus' time will come! But not today.

Same exact thing happened in tennis. There was a whole "lost generation" of amazingly talented players who just basically shat the bed whenever they stepped onto the court with Djokovic, Federer, or Nadal. It wasn't until much younger players like Alcaraz and Sinner came on the scene, who weren't quite as overpowered by the aura of the Big 3, that the playing field finally leveled. (And now they themeselves are turning into those guys for everyone else, haha.)

Re: Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

#80

Post by nilslindemann »

nilslindemann wrote: post #76
Taek wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes modern AIs have an entire opening database and generally have cached the first 20+ moves of the game (for most common openings) from a database of very deep searches identifying the best move. This is absolutely a form of opening prep for AIs. That said, even without that database a modern AI will completely topple the best human at every common chess variant. Humans cannot defeat modern AIs in chess like games.

Like my answer below, that's wrong. Even I have achieved a few draws or even wins against Stockfish in training games, and I am FM strength. From time to time you are happy to reach a simple rook endgame which happens to be won and the engine doesn't anticipate that (horizon effect). You still draw or lose 90% of those but you win 10%.

Further, if the engine does not use an opening database and the thinking time per game is the same, then the engine will usually make the same moves, so you can learn from your errors. There are just a few chess engines which "learn" per default and therefore change their moves, like BrainLearn.
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