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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

#81
post #74
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 He's already withdrawn from the Candidates which qualifies you for the World Championship.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.

Yeah if FIDE crowns some other champ without Magnus people wont think oh wow Magnus lost the spot, people will think oh wow FIDE lost the spot of being the kingmaker. chess.com is probably the more credible org for global rankings anyway

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

#82
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really a decline with age when it comes to chess? I’m not sure he will really decline until he reaches his retirement age.

There's a sharp decline with age. Magnus himself says he's not as sharp as he was younger, even if he can compensate with experience.

He just has to gain experience faster than he loses sharpness.

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

#83

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.

> the stress of training and competing at that level must get old after a while. The stress of elite competition clearly has a shelf life, but Magnus is not overly old. Cognitive performance typically hits a plateau at 35 years old and begins a sustained decline after 45 years old. The current youth wave of GMs is likely a function of compressed training efficiency. Modern players reach the 10,000 hours threshold muc…

The youth wave of GMs is also going to be driven by a general increase in the popularity and image of chess. There's probably way more parents competently teaching their children chess than there have ever been. This may be playing an even bigger role than the training itself. For instance Gukesh's coach was actively running an experiment on him, and as a result he did not use engines in his training until he was already 2500+.

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

#84
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

You have still failed to clarify whatever the hell you were attempting to communicate, all you’ve communicated is that you’re an asshole

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

#85

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…

Vishy's still a top player at 56

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

#87
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Chess isn't like most sports so it's hard to extrapolate from them. The existence of ELO in and of itself doesn't help explain whether the super youngs are competitive at the highest levels unless you are saying they should be manually looked up, and you didn't say any of that so it's ridiculous to treat that like it was implicit or an obvious logical inference.

And they were right that "a lot of really strong players are 12 years old" doesn't by itself help clarify where they are relative to elite competition at other age bands let alone clarify what age band perform bests at the end of the day. Even now I still don't understand how "a lot of 12 year old are good" is to supposed to answer that even implicitly. If anything the natural reading of that would be an implication that they are among the most competitive, yet your elaboration says the opposite.

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

#88
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/

I think they mean his time to be dethroned.

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

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When is the last time a human has beaten a computer in a fair chess game?

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

#90
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.

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…

IMHO a huge aspect of Carlsen mental strength isn't just the focused, at-the-game part, but we just see him enjoying Chess in many angles: not only he plays all styles, he streams relaxed, he plays Lichess and Chess.com; Chess is not only his job and passion, but it seems that he's also able to relax while engaging with it.

The only top-athlete that I see do the same is Max Verstappen, who is know to play competitive racing-sims online even hours before a real F1 race.

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