[HN Gopher] Magnus Carlsen wins longest world chess championship...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Magnus Carlsen wins longest world chess championship game of all
       time
        
       Author : Moodles
       Score  : 205 points
       Date   : 2021-12-03 20:18 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.chess.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.chess.com)
        
       | montblanc wrote:
       | I don't know much about chess but Magnus throwing away his queen
       | like that (traded his queen + rook for two rooks), was that a
       | common thing to do? Looked outrageous to me but what do I know.
        
         | fullwaza wrote:
         | There are values associated with pieces. Without considering
         | the position, a pawn would = 1, Knight = 3, Bishop = 3.5, Rook
         | = 5, and Queen = 9. I've not seen the game yet, but if he
         | traded a Queen for 2 rooks that isn't such a bad deal.
        
           | Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
           | Modern engines value the pieces more, like knight/bishop ar
           | 4.1, rook closer to 6 and queen at 11.
        
         | umanwizard wrote:
         | It looks like he traded just his Queen for two rooks.
        
           | montblanc wrote:
           | Ah sorry my bad
        
         | ajkjk wrote:
         | Not uncommon, but doesn't happen in most games.
        
         | DSMan195276 wrote:
         | A queen for two rooks is not too crazy, whether it's worth it
         | depends a lot on the position. The naive piece worth suggests
         | that two rooks (5 each) is worth more than a single queen (9),
         | but in practice it's more complicated. I would say though, as
         | someone who's not amazing at chess that was definitely one of
         | the most significant moments in the game for me - Not that
         | Magnus was making a mistake, but that he was creating a very
         | big imbalance in the pieces which was going to make the game
         | get a lot more interesting.
        
       | pg_bot wrote:
       | I feel like the 30 second increment is a bit cheesy given the
       | time constraints of classical chess. Magnus was down to less than
       | a minute but can just make some quick moves to add several
       | minutes back to his clock. If you have an increment it should
       | only be 1-2 seconds regardless of time format.
        
       | boomboomsubban wrote:
       | So now Carlsen is heavily encouraged to play for a draw in the
       | next 8 games?
        
         | birken wrote:
         | Yes, but also keep in mind Ian has a lot of agency. Throughout
         | the first 6 games, he has had moments to make the games more
         | chaotic, increasing the chances of one side having an
         | advantage, and thus far he has almost always played calmer,
         | less chaotic moves.
         | 
         | Now he will likely have to change tactics and enter into more
         | aggressive and risky ideas. It should increase the odds of a
         | decisive result one way or the other going forward, regardless
         | of whether Magnus is "playing for a draw" or not.
        
         | throwaway81523 wrote:
         | More or less yes, except it's 9 more games. The match ends if
         | someone reaches 7.5 points, and Magnus now has 3, so with 9
         | more draws he wins the match by 7.5 to 6.5. Going into the last
         | game the score is 7-6 so if Nepo wins then the match is tied
         | and goes into tiebreaks.
         | 
         | CORRECTION (see below): this was game 6, not game 5 (I had lost
         | count), so current score is 3.5 to 2.5, and there are
         | potentially 8 classical games left.
        
           | boomboomsubban wrote:
           | I'm only aware of this through this post, but the website
           | says Carlsen now has 3.5 points. So 8 draws.
        
           | junar wrote:
           | This was Game 6. Magnus leads 3.5 to 2.5. There are only 8
           | more classical games remaining.
        
             | throwaway81523 wrote:
             | Oops, sorry, I just came back to fix that but you caught it
             | first. I had somehow thought it was game 5.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | adflux wrote:
       | Change the title, wtf man?
        
       | YossarianFrPrez wrote:
       | I'm not a chess expert, so feel like I must be missing something.
       | In the last move Black's king isn't in check? Was the loss due to
       | time?
        
         | llimllib wrote:
         | The player with the black pieces, Ian Nepomniachtchi, resigned
         | because he saw his position was lost
        
           | YossarianFrPrez wrote:
           | Ah! Thanks a bunch for clearing that up.
        
         | Scarblac wrote:
         | The pawn wil advance twice and promote to a queen, after which
         | the win is trivial (both squares the pawn moves to are
         | protected, by the rook and the Knight).
         | 
         | In reply black can only try to give endless checks with his
         | queen, but the white king can hide behind the Knight and they
         | will end.
        
       | wadkar wrote:
       | Vishy Sir during the end game commentary said that the engines
       | say it'll be a draw.
       | 
       | Where/which move did Ian make the mistake?
       | 
       | Anyways, hats off to everyone involved. Magnus, Ian, commenters,
       | and the chess twitterati. What a game! ~8hrs!!!
        
         | icelancer wrote:
         | The game was drawn for about 30 moves but only Magnus had
         | winning chances with piece overload. Ian had to play very
         | precisely to preserve the draw, and he didn't, because Magnus
         | is elite in exactly these situations.
        
         | monkey_monkey wrote:
         | From the post game interview
         | 
         | Q. What was the decisive moment?
         | 
         | "I don't know," he [Carlsen] says. "But it felt like at the end
         | when I got [133. e6] and maybe there was still some miracle
         | defense there, but it didn't really feel that way. At that
         | point I felt very, very good about my chances."'
        
         | gpm wrote:
         | In the game theoretic sense, it was move 130... Qe6 which moved
         | the endgame from drawing to losing. We knew that under perfect
         | play the game had been drawn since 115... Qxh4, since that's
         | the point at which the pre computed table of endgames has the
         | position (which is also why we know the exact move where the
         | game from drawing to winning under perfect play).
        
         | perihelions wrote:
         | 130...Qe6 was the "mistake" (if one dares call it that!) I
         | don't think any commentators expected Nepomniachtchi to
         | actually hold this mathematical draw; it's superhuman. (I was
         | certainly rooting for him though!)
         | 
         | https://syzygy-tables.info/?fen=4k3/8/8/4PR2/5P2/6NK/q7/8%20...
         | 
         | > _" From May to August 2018 Bojun Guo generated 7-piece
         | tables. The 7-piece tablebase contains 423,836,835,667,331
         | unique legal positions in about 18 Terabytes."_
         | 
         | https://syzygy-tables.info/
        
         | thaurelia wrote:
         | This is why evaluation bars are misleading. Computer will say
         | it's equal but for one side, every move is equal and for the
         | other side, you have to make the only drawing move each time.
         | 
         | I wouldn't say that Ian made a mistake. That position was
         | winning for white after pawn on h4 was traded. It's not Leela
         | vs Stockfish, it's two humans playing. Defending with solo
         | queen against RNPP w/ connected pawns is extremely hard unless
         | perpetual check is unstoppable.
        
           | qw wrote:
           | The computer also does not take time limits into
           | consideration. If the players could take as much time as they
           | wanted, they might have been closer to the perfect match.
           | 
           | Maybe that would be a fun concept. A game where the players
           | would start with 1 year on the clock?
        
       | nvr219 wrote:
       | Imagine lasting 136 moves against Carlsen... This is the guy who
       | gives people eight free moves and still destroys them two minutes
       | later.
        
         | WJW wrote:
         | Nepo is not exactly a slouch either. There's a reason he's the
         | challenger for the world championship.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | ssiddharth wrote:
       | Magnus, the GOAT! What else is there to say? He's an endgame god.
       | Incredible win. After the 2018 championship match, I was pretty
       | much expecting no decisive games here.
       | 
       | Tough luck for Ian though. It'll be hard not to tilt after this
       | but he's a champion.
        
       | unixhero wrote:
       | Typical of Norwegians to win.
        
       | hardwaregeek wrote:
       | Utterly insane. Not only required a bunch of stamina but careful
       | work to not trigger a draw.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | typon wrote:
       | I know that because Magnus won, people will be heaping praise on
       | him. But it is incredible how well Ian kept playing engine move
       | after engine move to defend in the end game, while trying to keep
       | time. Unbelievable the level of chess that's being played here.
        
         | enneff wrote:
         | Nepo is fantastic. And of course Magnus is brilliant. The game
         | is at an all time high imo.
        
       | vittore wrote:
       | Was rooting for Nepo!
        
       | monkey_monkey wrote:
       | Carlsen's grind game is peerless.
        
       | systemvoltage wrote:
       | Please... please don't use titles like this and spoil it for
       | everyone.
       | 
       | Can we edit the title to say "Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomnitchi
       | play the longest world chess championship game"?
        
         | yyyk wrote:
         | You have a good point, however HN etiquette is to be as close
         | to the original headline as possible. Perhaps there should have
         | an exception for sports.
        
       | yyyk wrote:
       | Yet another example of the Carlsen special - drag a game to a
       | long not-obviously-drawn endgame, and grind a win from that.
       | Carlsen seems to have this match well in hand.
        
       | I_complete_me wrote:
       | Well done to Magnus. To Ian. To the commentators. This was an
       | unbelievable 'play' in three acts. A game for the chess books.
       | Great quality match so far and I hope Ian comes back from this
       | blow and makes a fight of it. I believe he will.
        
         | loh wrote:
         | It was an absolutely incredible match to watch live.
         | Historical.
         | 
         | My jaw dropped when Magnus ignored his rook being attacked at
         | the end in favor of the potential fork with his knight. It is
         | ultimately what led to the sure win.
        
           | ganeshkrishnan wrote:
           | The match was already lost at that point. Two moves before
           | that, Stockfish 14 has mate in 49.
        
             | varunprasad wrote:
             | Stockfish having mate in 39 moves says nothing about a
             | match between 2 humans, already having played for over 6
             | hours, under very limited time constraints.
        
             | tanmay7270 wrote:
             | Did Stockfish have a mate at 131. Kh4 Qe6+?
        
               | jstx1 wrote:
               | Yes. You can check it out here -
               | http://analysis.sesse.net/ - just click on history.
               | (Sesse is Stockfish with a lot of compute, you can also
               | follow it live during the games). At 131 it says "White
               | mates in 47".
        
           | tanmay7270 wrote:
           | You mean Rf7 when he ignored the *pawn on e6 being attacked
           | by the queen for a potential fork with the knight (Qxe6
           | Ng7+)?
        
             | loh wrote:
             | I'm referring to move 133, right after Ian moved his queen
             | from H6 to H7, attacking the rook. Magnus ignores this and
             | moves his E5 pawn to E6.
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWkBeTwbfj4&t=29890s
        
           | jstx1 wrote:
           | That specific moment is actually pretty basic. You're right
           | that it was a great match to watch though.
        
             | loh wrote:
             | In hindsight, yes, it's basic for sure. But in the heat of
             | the moment after 7 hours of thinking about nothing but
             | chess, Ian obviously missed the potential fork and was
             | visibly surprised that Magnus left his rook to be attacked.
        
               | jstx1 wrote:
               | He didn't miss it though - if he had, he would have taken
               | the rook. No one at their level misses something like
               | this in these games. This stuff is obvious to much much
               | weaker players than Ian.
        
               | loh wrote:
               | If he was aware of it, he would not have allowed it occur
               | to begin with. He was counting on Magnus to move the rook
               | and was very visibly surprised when Magnus left the rook
               | in place.
        
               | toong wrote:
               | Replying to sibling: no, he was not - it was obvious,
               | even to a low-level recreational player (like me)
        
               | loh wrote:
               | Copying what I said in another reply: I'm referring to
               | move 133, right after Ian moved his queen from H6 to H7,
               | attacking the rook. Magnus ignores this and moves his E5
               | pawn to E6.
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWkBeTwbfj4&t=29890s
        
               | jstx1 wrote:
               | The point is that both players know very well what's
               | happening and neither of them was surprised. Stuff like
               | this is very routine and straightforward. The stream that
               | you linked to is aimed at people who don't play a lot
               | chess and their tone and the way they present things
               | might have been a bit misleading.
        
       | thom wrote:
       | Genuinely enjoyable and timely game. Out of prep early, machine
       | evaluations useless throughout, plenty to play for and Magnus's
       | quality and stamina showed.
       | 
       | I'm of the opinion that there's nothing to gain from fans having
       | engines open during a game, despite working in sports analytics
       | and ostensibly being on the side of the machines. Obviously
       | engines have a lot to say about the modern game, and the match so
       | far had clearly been dominated by excellent prep by both teams.
       | But the excellent commentary on Levitov Chess World by the
       | peerless Peter Svidler, Vladimir Kramnik and Evgenij
       | Miroshnichenko was firmly of the opinion that we had a game on
       | our hands throughout. They were correct.
       | 
       | I looked into some stats from the most recent TCEC superfinal
       | just to get a feel for the error bars in engine evaluations. I
       | think it's clear that even up to about +1.5, a draw is still on
       | the cards between the superhuman engines, let alone humans. About
       | a quarter of the superfinal games were decisive, despite us
       | treating them as oracles. They're far more accurate in their draw
       | predictions - in games that reached a 0.0 evaluation, only 3
       | ended with a win.
       | 
       | But in this game, even when we hit the tablebase results, where
       | the result is a foregone conclusion for the machines, they still
       | don't reflect the outcome of a human game, especially when the
       | time controls start to get more stressful.
       | 
       | Anyway, what a wonderful, reassuring game. The players will be
       | exhausted and it sets up a fascinating weekend of play. I
       | couldn't be happier.
        
       | jjbinx007 wrote:
       | Bit of a spoiler :(
       | 
       | I prefer to watch analysis of games from YouTubers like Agadmator
       | or Jerry from Chessnetwork and discover who the winner was by
       | watching the game.
       | 
       | I wonder if these long games are not particularly helpful. Most
       | chess final games end in draws as players are reluctant to create
       | an imbalance and instead play it safe. There tends to be more
       | exciting games played in games with a shorter time limit.
       | 
       | I'm not advocating bullet but perhaps they could try 30 minute
       | matches instead?
        
         | sillysaurusx wrote:
         | You all need to watch GothamChess if games of chess seem boring
         | :)
         | 
         | I love Jerry, and I do watch him occasionally. But
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhJl3BKA-n8&ab_channel=Gotha...
         | is well done.
         | 
         | (If you do want to watch Gotham for this particular match,
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoY5RSCi5pE&ab_channel=Gotha...
         | starts the series, I think.)
        
           | jstx1 wrote:
           | Gotham's style isn't for everyone, he can get pretty
           | annoying. One good thing to say about him is that he really
           | gets how beginners think and he's good at highlighting the
           | moments of "this is what a beginner would do and this is why
           | the really good players do something else".
        
             | YawningAngel wrote:
             | I think Gotham's style is very oriented towards
             | entertainment. I don't mean this as a criticism - he has
             | successfully entertained a lot of people. But I feel like I
             | learn more from ChessNetwork. The absolute peak for me are
             | the recaps Peter Svidler used to record for Chess24, such
             | as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJlVjicymKI - I haven't
             | seen such deep and insightful analysis of games anywhere
             | else.
        
               | Scarblac wrote:
               | This current match has the Levitov chess channel with
               | Peter Svidler and Vladimir Kramnik analysing live. What a
               | team! No engine in sight, instead a glass of whisky,
               | decades of world top experience and love of the game.
        
               | thaurelia wrote:
               | You might be right in your assumption. I've watched Tata
               | Steel 2021 live with Peter Leko (ex WC challenger btw)
               | and Tanya Sachdev analysing the games live without
               | computer assistance (except eval bar sometimes but no
               | lines) and then watched Gotham's recap the next day. The
               | difference was obvious with Levy missing the most
               | interesting variations and positions in the game, which
               | is funny because he probably uses engines for these
               | analysis videos.
        
           | hcnews wrote:
           | Gotham is focussed on entertaining the masses and aims his
           | content for folks below 1500. If you are closer to 1800-2000,
           | you aren't going to enjoy GothamChess content much.
        
         | tiffanyh wrote:
         | +1 for Agadmator
         | 
         | Great Youtube reviews and explanation of strategy & gameplay.
        
         | shawnz wrote:
         | Perhaps the title should be edited to remove the winner's name
        
         | NewEntryHN wrote:
         | This game is a counter-example of a long boring game. It was a
         | long exciting game.
        
         | wadkar wrote:
         | > Bit of a spoiler :(
         | 
         | I get your sentiment but this is really exciting news in the
         | chess community. A win after so many years!!
        
           | LeifCarrotson wrote:
           | "World chess championship has win outcome in longest-ever
           | game" would be a great headline and wouldn't contain a
           | spoiler.
           | 
           | Unfortunately, they're probably optimizing for views, and
           | Magnus has a lot of name recognition.
        
         | Moodles wrote:
         | Sorry about the spoiler :(
        
         | ganeshkrishnan wrote:
         | You can watch the commentary by Judith Polgar. Of all the
         | people I enjoy watching her live commentary because she has
         | amazing insight into best moves and explains the reasoning
         | behind it.
         | 
         | For few of previous matches by Magnus, she found moves that
         | even Magnus had missed.
        
           | iechoz6H wrote:
           | Judit Polgar [1]
           | 
           | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r
        
             | _old_dude_ wrote:
             | Every time i see her, i see Anya Taylor-Joy in the Queen
             | Gambit ...
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | jpmoral wrote:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crhU-pg7Rvw
           | 
           | Skip to 12:48 for the start of the commentary, 32:15 for the
           | start of the game.
        
             | BurningFrog wrote:
             | Note that this is 8h47m long video!
        
           | hcnews wrote:
           | Yeah Judit/Anish and Judit/Surya combos have been amazing for
           | the 6 matches so far. It helps that Judit is a Catalan player
           | and Magnus is choosing her opening.
        
         | lvass wrote:
         | And unfortunate choice of news outlet. As a developer, I can't
         | help mentioning how baffling it is part of the chess community
         | keeps using a proprietary website filled to the brim on dark
         | patterns while a better and free as in freedom alternative is
         | available.
        
           | ajkjk wrote:
           | I think that chess.com pays some people to use their website
           | on streams, etc.
           | 
           | Although Lichess isn't perfect and it's kinda annoying. One
           | of the bad things about Lichess is how unrealistically
           | inflated their ratings are; 2100 on Lichess is equivalent to
           | about 1800 on Chess.com. Chess.com is much more similar to
           | the FIDE rating and other real-world systems. Lichess is just
           | super inflated for some reason and it makes it kinda hard to
           | compare your progress to other metrics.
        
             | hcnews wrote:
             | Its just a relative number. After getting to your stable
             | rating, you don't care about the actual number, you are
             | just focussed on improvement.
             | 
             | Lichess is overall better in my opinion, better & slicker
             | product, free analysis, opening explorer etc. Chess.com
             | only leads in video content imo.
        
             | __s wrote:
             | https://www.chessratingcomparison.com/Graphs
             | 
             | There's also https://chessgoals.com/rating-comparison if
             | you prefer a table
        
               | ajkjk wrote:
               | I'm amused to plug in my 2100 rating on Lichess and find
               | that I was almost exactly right; the site says it's 1780
               | on chess.com +- 100 or so.
        
             | Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
             | Just forego pathetic chess.com and fide ratings, lichess is
             | the best thing that happened to chess since castling.
        
               | azinman2 wrote:
               | Why is lichess so good? Just because it's free?
        
             | thaurelia wrote:
             | You cannot compare ratings between these websites and FIDE
             | for two reasons:
             | 
             | - they use different rating systems (Elo for FIDE, Glicko-2
             | for LiChess and afair, Glicko/Glicko-2 for chess.com)
             | 
             | - ELO / Glicko rating is calculated for a _player pool_.
             | Which means it will never correspond between FIDE-
             | registered players and chess websites because they don't
             | have the same player base.
             | 
             | It has nothing to do with being "inflated" or
             | "unrealistic". The difference is "by design"
        
               | Tenoke wrote:
               | You can't compare them 1 to 1 but you can still compare
               | them and lichess choice to have them so inflated is
               | annoying and likely self-serving.
        
               | amalcon wrote:
               | I think there's a third, bigger reason: FIDE rating is
               | based on classical time controls. Nobody uses classical
               | time controls online for various reasons. Even rapid is a
               | somewhat different skill set than classical.
               | 
               | Of course these things are correlated, but e.g. there
               | have been times in the world championship when one of the
               | players thought about a position for 20+ minutes before
               | making a move. That's _hard_ to do, and requires very
               | strong visualization skills.
        
               | tehnub wrote:
               | There are FIDE ratings for other time controls too. Here
               | are the top blitz players for example:
               | https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men_blitz
        
               | amalcon wrote:
               | Oh interesting, I didn't know that. Thanks!
        
               | not_kurt_godel wrote:
               | The bottom line is still that a chess.com rating will be
               | more indicative of what a theoretical FIDE/USCF rating
               | would be, and there's value in that, even if it's not
               | rigorously tethered.
        
               | thaurelia wrote:
               | Comparison sites will give you +-150 Elo relative error
               | (with I assume P=0.95).
               | 
               | 150 Elo on levels below 2700 FIDE is almost night and day
               | difference.
               | 
               | Chess.com ratings show nothing about theoretical FIDE
               | ratings. Comparison tables have been built with data
               | mining and lucky guesses, there's no quality difference
               | between Chess.com <-> FIDE and LiChess <-> FIDE.
        
               | zeven7 wrote:
               | I am not a chess player, but as a go player who has
               | played on several different servers, all of that can be
               | true and it can still be easier to compare progress
               | relative to a real world association on one server vs
               | another. ajkjk's point still makes sense to me.
        
           | icelancer wrote:
           | Indy streamers do a better job in this case (and most,
           | probably). GM Ivanchuk covers all games live on his Twitch
           | channel, and is my choice for analysis.
        
           | toolz wrote:
           | I can't get over how incredibly laggy chess is. It's the
           | single reason I moved to lichess as I started on chesscom.
        
             | not_kurt_godel wrote:
             | I have the opposite problem - Lichess lags like a dog for
             | me while chess.com is almost invariably rock solid.
        
           | anoncow wrote:
           | Are you referring to lichess? I second that if yes.
        
         | jacobolus wrote:
         | "It was the first decisive game in the classical rounds of a
         | world championship in over five years."
         | 
         | I wonder if there's some way other than time constraints to
         | encourage higher variance moves.
        
           | bananamerica wrote:
           | I'm not an expert, but, from what I can gather, every time
           | someone suggest a solution online they're immediately
           | countered by multiple strong and sound counter arguments.
        
           | ARandumGuy wrote:
           | There are plenty of ways you could do that. But then you
           | would be playing a completely different game, and hundreds of
           | years of theory and strategy would be gone.
        
           | varunprasad wrote:
           | The 5 year thing is misleading though.
           | 
           | It would have been 4 years if not for COVID.
           | 
           | And what it basically means is that there were decisive games
           | 4 years ago, and then 2 years later (the World Chess
           | Championship is played every 2 years), in the 2018 match
           | between Caruana and Magnus there were no decisive games.
           | 
           | So essentially there was 1 match with all draws during the
           | standard chess part of the tournament. And that match was
           | between Fabi who is regarded as one of the players with some
           | of the greatest prep and play in standard chess, and Magnus,
           | who is really one of the greatest players, if not the
           | greatest, of all time.
        
             | bjourne wrote:
             | But there were only two decisive games in the match against
             | Karjakin. So 22 of the last 24 classical world championship
             | games were draws (27 out of 30 if we count the current
             | match). Even Magnus himself has said that he thinks it is a
             | little dull.
        
         | thelittleone wrote:
         | Rapid would be great and even blitz. Both game types offer a
         | good intersection of being ease to follow and short enough to
         | watch entirely for a large audience.
        
         | monkey_monkey wrote:
         | Is it really a spoiler? Or is it just "news"?
        
       | jfengel wrote:
       | What does "first decisive game in the classical rounds of a world
       | championship in over five years" mean?
        
         | gameswithgo wrote:
         | The last five years were decided by shorter tie breaker games
         | as the longer classical games were all draws
        
           | bonzini wrote:
           | In 2016 the classical games were tied, but there were wins by
           | both Carlson and Karjakin. Otherwise it would have been 7
           | years, since the previous world championship match was in
           | 2014.
           | 
           | But titling "unlike the last time (and only the last time)
           | there has been a win and it's also the longest game ever"
           | would have been less clickbaity.
        
         | kjgkjhfkjf wrote:
         | When Carlsen previously defended his title agains Fabiano
         | Caruana, all the classical (slow) games were draws. The
         | championship was decided by rapid games, where Carlsen
         | demolished Caruana.
         | 
         | I love both playing and watching rapid chess, but I think it's
         | better for the world championship to be decided using classical
         | time limits. That way, we get more interesting games, rather
         | than the indignity of top players blundering while under time
         | pressure.
        
           | jfengel wrote:
           | Thank you for the explanation.
           | 
           | I think I agree with you. Chess is only a thing because
           | people have played chess for a long time. Different time
           | limits are a different kind of game -- neither better nor
           | worse, but different from the things that made tournament-
           | style chess popular.
           | 
           | Perhaps with computers it's time to retire the existing
           | notion of chess tournaments. But people still seem
           | interested, much as we still watch Usain Bolt despite him
           | being outclassed by cars and even bicycles.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | yupper32 wrote:
             | > Perhaps with computers it's time to retire the existing
             | notion of chess tournaments.
             | 
             | You clearly don't follow chess, given your question. So I
             | have to ask: why are you so quick to take a stance on
             | something you don't follow or understand?
        
               | jfengel wrote:
               | I'm unclear why you'd think that a question beginning
               | with "perhaps" constitutes taking a stand.
        
               | yupper32 wrote:
               | You didn't ask a question in the post I responded to.
        
             | varunprasad wrote:
             | Humans aren't computers.
             | 
             | A machine can throw a fastball at speeds well above what
             | humans can do. That doesn't mean we retire pitchers
             | completely and end the game of baseball. A car can cover
             | 100m in a fraction of the time humans can, doesn't mean we
             | end track and field.
             | 
             | Chess is a game between humans and that's what makes it
             | exciting.
             | 
             | And with computers we have a whole additional layer added
             | where we can see what an essentially perfect game would
             | look like and compare to that (although computers can still
             | occasionally be surprised by human moves).
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | spoonjim wrote:
         | It means the first non-draw. Almost all classical chess games
         | at the highest levels end in draws which has completely trashed
         | the game as a spectator sport.
        
           | tehnub wrote:
           | It's a bit of an exaggeration to say "almost all" games at
           | the highest level end in draws. I wouldn't have said that
           | from my personal experience following top-level chess, and
           | the data indeed indicates it's under 75% [0]--which is a
           | large proportion, but not "almost all".
           | 
           | [0]: https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-draw-rule-is-
           | classica...
        
         | initialized wrote:
         | lots of games at this level result in draws, this was a win.
        
           | NikolaeVarius wrote:
           | I wonder if this is a limitation on how humans conceptualize
           | Chess. Do games played with computers either vs human or
           | another computer frequently end in draws?
           | 
           | If not, maybe there is some insight to be gained to raise
           | high level play even more.
        
             | YawningAngel wrote:
             | High level computers draw each other almost 100% of the
             | time and beat humans 100% of the time.
        
             | umanwizard wrote:
             | In general as skill increases (assuming the competitors are
             | evenly matched), so does draw rate. Human grandmasters draw
             | much more often than human beginners, and engines draw even
             | more than human GMs.
             | 
             | This is one of the intuitive reasons for hypothesizing that
             | chess is drawn with perfect play, even though we can't
             | prove it.
        
             | throwaway81523 wrote:
             | Engine games (you can watch them at tcec-chess.com and some
             | are terrific) with the standard starting position are
             | almost always drawn. Engine tournaments are usually played
             | instead with human selected, unbalanced openings designed
             | to produce an exciting game with lower likelihood of a
             | draw. The unbalanced opening intentionally gives one side
             | (black or white) an advantage, so each opening is used
             | twice, with each engine playing one game as black and one
             | as white, to balance things out. The games are usually
             | drawn anyway, with some occasional exciting wins. The top
             | human players now study engine games closely, and play more
             | like engines themselves. Very few mistakes => more draws.
             | 
             | It's unknown what would happen if a top human with serious
             | preparation played against a modern engine. They'd have
             | basically no chance of winning and a fairly low chance of a
             | draw, with the unknown being "how low is fairly low". My
             | wild-ass guess is maybe 1 game in 10 when the human has the
             | white pieces and much lower with the black pieces. There is
             | not much chess theory about what happens when a human plays
             | a game from the beginning aiming for a draw, even though
             | they do that all the time in real chess. It is something of
             | a gap in the "literature".
        
           | jfengel wrote:
           | That was the one thing I found distractingly wrong in Queen's
           | Gambit. It completely glossed over the sheer number of draws.
           | I'm a dilettante at chess, and even I know that.
           | 
           | (I gather that the number of draws may have been lower at the
           | time, but they showed few or none.)
        
             | jll29 wrote:
             | It's perhaps a shortcoming of the medium - lack of time -
             | and to keep the script short & engaging for the viewers. In
             | a similar vein, computer nerds are shown to write code or
             | hack systems in no time, when in reality a lot of high-
             | concentration hours are burned, but from the outside
             | watching someone stare at a screen doing not much other
             | than think just isn't that exciting, and in the same way
             | chess games ending in draws again and again aren't that
             | exciting to watch for lay viewers. Also, films like that
             | tend to ignore the "team" element (whether it's in sports
             | or computing) and tend to over-emphasize the single
             | protagonist "genius", also unrealistic.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | monkey_monkey wrote:
         | It's the first 'classical' (ie with full time limits) game
         | that's had a win in the last 5 years of World Chess
         | Championships - since game 10 of Carlsen vs Karjakin in 2016
        
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