[HN Gopher] Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in ...
___________________________________________________________________
Gukesh becomes the youngest chess world champion in history
Author : alexmolas
Score : 742 points
Date : 2024-12-12 13:29 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lichess.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (lichess.org)
| selectnull wrote:
| It was painful watching Ding Liren blunder the rook and realize
| what he had done.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| i felt for ding, even though i was cheering for gukesh.
|
| i was so sure it was going to go into tiebreaks.
| selectnull wrote:
| I was looking forward to rapid, wanted more drama.
|
| In the end, Ding deservedly lost. He was constantly low on
| time; managed to play excellent in losing positions for the
| whole match but it took only a single mistake to lose the
| crown. One can do miracles only a few times before it fails.
| ceronman wrote:
| It was. But he had 9 minutes vs more than an hour for Gukesh.
| The entire match has been Ding defending miraculously, I
| thought it was a matter of time before he eventually failed.
| The fact that it happened on the last moves of the last game,
| it's definitely hard for Ding, but fair for Gukesh IMO.
| selectnull wrote:
| Agree completely.
| ronald_raygun wrote:
| Well it sounds like an instance of "your keys are always in
| the last place you look, because then you stop looking"
| qup wrote:
| The match was more than one game
| timerol wrote:
| This was game 14, they were tied almost the whole way, and
| this was the only time Gukesh won with the black pieces.
|
| Before the match, the expectation was that Gukesh would
| take an early lead and never look back, with the match
| ending before game 14. This morning, the expectation would
| be that Ding would make an easy draw with white (as he has
| done in 5 of his games as white already, winning the
| other), and it would go to tiebreaks.
|
| Having the championship decided by a decisive final
| classical game is pretty rare. The last time it happened
| was 2010.
| nebulous1 wrote:
| Overall I agree, the entire match seemed to be Ding
| defending. Gukesh kind of failed to capitalise the whole way
| through though.
|
| wrt the time, this is kind of a bread and butter endgame.
| Ding shouldn't have blundered here with 10 minutes on the
| clock. Highly unlikely he would have blundered this two years
| ago.
| endorphine wrote:
| I don't get the "fair" argument. Would it be unfair if Ding
| did not blunder the rook? How so?
| kelipso wrote:
| Presumably the classical world championship should be
| determined by classical chess games, and this was the last
| one before the shorter tiebreak games. Ding looked like he
| would've started losing more if there were more classical
| games, who knows though.
| chilmers wrote:
| Amazing to watch Gukesh as well as he realised the opportunity.
| At first confusion and disbelief, then excitement, joy and
| nervousness as he tried to calm himself down and take the win.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| And the graciousness to keep his joy in humble reserve,
| knowing how much Ding would be crushed. Truly a young man of
| God.
| alex1138 wrote:
| At 18, this is no small thing. Kasparov was 22, I don't see
| Gukesh's record being broken for a long while
| ourmandave wrote:
| With 12-year-old GMs running around it's hard to know how long.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_prodigy
| david-gpu wrote:
| Those statistics blow my mind. For reference, Bobby Fischer
| became a GM at fifteen.
| verbify wrote:
| Online and computer chess have changed things. 12 year old
| kids generally can't travel to tournaments, but they can
| play against other strong players or against the computer
| online.
|
| Fischer lived in New York, and therefore could play in the
| Manhattan Chess Club.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Yes, they amass thousands upon thousands of games at a
| very young age. I did the same programming my C64 in
| 8th-10th grades. The hours just fly by, doing what you
| love.
|
| One other factor is that 3500-level chess engines are
| freely available for anyone with the net to analyze every
| situation, every move.
|
| And then there are the streamers like Hikaru who teach
| chess so brilliantly. He is a true one-off, to be that
| top-level and able to live-comment his own blitz games.
| It is an underappreciated and completely unique talent,
| and enlightening for the chess afficianado.
| bmacho wrote:
| Yes, they didn't know this back then that it was possible.
| If they had known, they would have certainly made Fischer a
| GM much much sooner
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| There's a decent gap between GM and world champion to be
| honest.
| epolanski wrote:
| Absolutely, a huge one.
|
| But still, chess is a game that favours young people that
| have more energy and can calculate more, and that peak is
| achieved in one's late teens.
| wongarsu wrote:
| But also a big gap between 12 and 18, so who knows
| frakt0x90 wrote:
| There's also a decent amount of controversy around really
| young GMs. Basically that their parents game the system by
| choosing official tournaments with burnt out GMs with low
| ratings so they can get their norms easier. Mishra recently
| had a lot of backlash from top GMs with those types of
| accusations. If that's true, those players will likely never
| reach the top ranks, but who knows.
| keybored wrote:
| Didn't Kasparov say that he doesn't consider this a World Chess
| Championship since the best player isn't playing?
| DevX101 wrote:
| We're still relatively early in the chess engine era and there
| was an explosion of new young talent discovering chess in the
| covid years. I expect to see more young chess prodigies.
| hbn wrote:
| For being the headline, they sure hid his age pretty well.
|
| Not at the opening paragraph nor end of the article, nor photo
| captions near the top or bottom.
|
| cmd+f "years" 0 results
|
| cmd+f "age" 0 results
|
| And scanning for numbers is useless since most of the article is
| chess moves written out.
| gnaman wrote:
| for anyone wondering hes 18
| Jorge1o1 wrote:
| thank you!
| boringg wrote:
| Seems like its not that big of an accomplishment relative to
| the way the headline makes it (obviously a big personal
| accomplishment). I figure 18 year old chess should have the
| mental abilities and maybe experience at that point to be
| able to rise to the top...
| nottorp wrote:
| ... but you can infer from the HN post title that it's
| unusual.
| boringg wrote:
| Agreed. I think all the people who don't like my take i
| offer this. Blasting a headline like that typically
| implies like a 13-14 year old. This is impressive but its
| not some massive upset - 18 is a grown adult for all
| intents and purposes (brain still developing true...)
| roughly wrote:
| All intents and purposes not requiring the brain, then.
| Which one is chess?
|
| The only people who consider 18 year olds fully grown
| adults are 18 year olds.
| willy_k wrote:
| No one said very young. Youngest is a comparison, and
| having 6 years on the previous youngest is massively
| impressive.
| boringg wrote:
| Is it though? You can play so many more games now with
| computational aid and speed up your learning rates.
|
| I'm impressed but this isn't the same as coming from
| another era -- this feels like technology pushing the
| learning rate for younger people.
| borski wrote:
| He's only been playing chess for 11 years. That's very
| impressive.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| 18 is young. It's impressive.
| zanellato19 wrote:
| HAHAHA Only an HN comment could call the youngest person
| ever to do something would be said to "not that big of an
| accomplishment". How would you change that headline?
| dtquad wrote:
| To really put it in perspective _right now_ is the
| hardest and most competitive chess era in history thanks
| to computer-aided practice and international popularity.
| chatmasta wrote:
| It's not the most competitive world championship though,
| since Magnus opted out of playing it. If previous
| champions had similarly opted out of defending their
| championship at the age of 30 then maybe the average age
| of champions would have trended downward and this
| wouldn't have been the first 18 year old champion.
| smus wrote:
| Not nearly as big of an accomplishment as that guy
| reducing latency by 3.7% on the legacy microservice at
| work
| griomnib wrote:
| Hey now, that microservice happens to violate data
| protection law in 40 jurisdictions per second, that's
| basically a criminal mastermind.
| jstanley wrote:
| You think materially everyone over the age of 18 who plays
| chess ought to be good enough to be world champion?
| wongarsu wrote:
| For context, legendary Magnus Carlsen was 23 when he first
| became world champion. Ding Liren, the other finalist and
| previous winner, is 32. The title holder before Magnus was
| Anand who first won the title at age 31 (or arguably 38,
| depending on your stance about the PCA). Kramnik before him
| was 31. Legendary Garry Kasparov was 22.
|
| It's normal for the champion to get his first win in his
| early 30s. Getting it in your early 20s is how you become
| famous beyond the chess world. Doing it with 18 is seriously
| impressive.
| Certhas wrote:
| The comparison to others comes with a caveat though. The
| best player in the world is not participating in the
| current WC format.
| 12345hn6789 wrote:
| Why wasnt Magnus in this tournament? Surely this would be
| impressive if the headline was:
|
| Youngest champion ever beats current best chess player.
|
| Instead it's new champion crowned after legendary chess
| play does not partake in said competition
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Same reason it was Nepo and Ding last time. Combination
| of he wants to give other people the ability to compete
| for it, him not having the same interest for what it
| takes to prepare for such a tournament, and FIDE refusing
| to adjust the format to make for what he thinks would be
| a more interesting tournament.
| qq66 wrote:
| Magnus is bored of classical chess and doesn't want to
| spend 6 months every two years preparing for classical
| games against one opponent.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Magnus didn't show up because he more or less just
| doesn't give a shit anymore about classical chess.
|
| He got bored. Won the thing 10 years in a row and just
| didn't fancy it anymore. That's really it - he's so much
| better than, well, everyone that he just didn't want to
| go through the stress of prepping for such an event.
|
| I think he's not a huge fan of classical chess, prefers
| more dynamic, creative and faster games. He's effectively
| mastered classical chess and wants a new challenge.
| dhosek wrote:
| So my son has 7 years to set a new record. (I'm not really
| expecting that, of course.)
| dhosek wrote:
| I told him about the match and told him he only had 7 years
| to be the new youngest chess world champion and he told me
| that he didn't want to be a world champion, he just wanted
| to play. I approve of this philosophy.
| smokel wrote:
| For anyone wondering about related facts: the oldest age
| someone had while being the chess world champion was 58 years
| [1].
|
| https://www.chesspower.co.nz/chess-records.html#theoldest
| pjmlp wrote:
| My point exactly.
| bmacho wrote:
| For someone who has complained a LOT about this information not
| being readily available, you haven't put it here for us either.
| Salgat wrote:
| You bothered to comment but didn't bother to help either.
| Here, I'll do it, Gukesh is 18, Ding is 32.
| beepboopboop wrote:
| Do didn't reply to the OP so I had to look one thread
| deeper
| neofrommatrix wrote:
| 18. The answer is 18.
| nsmog767 wrote:
| came to the comments to try and find the answer, still don't
| see it lol
| nashashmi wrote:
| someone answered it 1 hr ago: 18.
| nottorp wrote:
| I suppose in the usual lichess watchers bubble, everyone knows
| who Gukesh is and how old/young he is :)
| hilux wrote:
| Why the snark? Is it so surprising that spectators following
| a world championship match _in any sport_ would know
| something about the competitors?
| nottorp wrote:
| Because HN is a different bubble so whoever posted this
| could have elaborated.
|
| The article itself is written assuming everyone knows who
| Gukesh is and says nothing about him, just his most recent
| matches that got him the title.
|
| Definitely written for a bubble.
| lxgr wrote:
| The article seems geared towards people at least already
| somewhat invested in either chess or the world championship,
| given that it's on a chess website and everything.
|
| That said, click either name in the article and you'll land on
| their respective Lichess profile, which prominently features
| their age.
| jodacola wrote:
| Don't disagree it was annoying.
|
| While this is no defense, clicking Gukesh's name when it was
| hyperlinked from the article led here:
| https://lichess.org/fide/46616543/Gukesh_D
|
| Age and other info present.
| laydn wrote:
| Terrible time management from Ding Liren in the most critical
| game of the match, leading to a very simple blunder. Painful to
| witness.
| trey-jones wrote:
| Apparently poor time management throughout the match, though I
| didn't see every game. It sounds like he was lucky to survive
| 6-6.
| epolanski wrote:
| He wasn't, Ding has played some terrific chess during this
| tournament.
|
| But honestly both players lack an end game killer instinct.
| trey-jones wrote:
| Spoiler alert! I was planning to watch the recap without knowing
| the outcome, but I'm not that invested. Congratulations to the
| new champion.
| gizmodo59 wrote:
| What a match! It was sad to see the blunder by Ding. Reminded me
| of Nepo dropping pieces in the tie-break last time. But its a
| great sportmanship by Ding as he said its a fair outcome given
| all the games they have played.
| FactolSarin wrote:
| What is the deal with Gukesh's last name? It's officially listed
| as just D on his FIDE profile. I asked a couple Indian coworkers
| who said it was probably just being abbreviated for being long,
| but honestly it's not that long of a name and Gukesh isn't from
| the same region as them. I've read elsewhere that Telugu speaking
| people don't really use last names.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > What is the deal with Gukesh's last name
|
| In Tamil Nadu, an initial is often used in the surname due to
| the Periyar/Dravidian movement in the 20th century.
| Furthermore, plenty of people in Tamil Nadu historically didn't
| even use surnames.
|
| Gukesh is Telugu, but his family are Chennai natives. Chennai
| becoming part of TN instead of Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh
| was very politically charged in the early days of India.
| FactolSarin wrote:
| Ah, so it's an anti-caste thing?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Historically yes. But in 2024 it's just a naming convention
| now. Being Telugu in Tamil Nadu, they probably adopted
| Tamil naming conventions to make life easier.
|
| States in India are basically different countries, and the
| existing state borders for most states don't make sense.
| benatkin wrote:
| Reminds me of falsehoods programmers believe about...
| https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood
| atulatul wrote:
| This is good.
| __rito__ wrote:
| My distant cousing, a Bengali, named, say, Rama Dass,
| also grew up in Tamil Nadu. His name was Tamilized to D.
| Rama or Rama D.- even though Dass was a family surname.
|
| > States in India are basically different countries, and
| the existing state borders for most states don't make
| sense.
|
| No. Huge oversimplification there. It's not definitely
| like oblasts of Russian Federation. Although they are not
| close like OR and ID.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > No. Huge oversimplification there
|
| I mean culturally and administratively.
|
| Heck, in my ancestral state, non-natives cannot purchase
| land.
|
| > It's not definitely like oblasts of Russian Federation
|
| It absolutely is.
|
| Heck, my ancestral state (HP) is a merger of 3 entirely
| distinct ethnic communities (Lower Himachalis who are the
| same community as in Jammu division, Upper Himachalis who
| are closer to Garwhalis and Kumaounis in Uttarakhand, and
| Changtang Tibetans in Lahaul/Spiti/Kinnaur who should be
| merged with Ladakh) with no rhyme or reason because it
| was a bunch of Himalayan hill states that where conquered
| by the Sikhs, Nepalis, and later British in the 19th
| century and merged into Punjab, and this has caused
| political deadlock.
|
| This is a common situation all over India. There's no
| reason that Purvanchal is lumped with Awadh, that
| Rayalseema is lumped with Kosta Andhra, or Barak Valley
| is lumped with Assam.
|
| My Pahari family has no traditional culture in common
| with a Gujarati from Saurashtra or a Bihari from Bhojpur.
|
| These ethnic (and linguistic) differences do impact
| internal mobility outside of Tier 1 cities.
|
| India has been very successful thanks to it's diversity,
| but most states still hold colonial era borders which
| exacerbate regional inequalities by giving regional
| interests an ethnic or even religious tinge (eg.
| Seemanchal and Bihar).
| __rito__ wrote:
| You took an extreme example (HP). But only a handful
| states in India have that restriction where outsiders are
| not allowed to buy land.
|
| There are many all-India services and people are
| transferred all across India. Many work in different
| states than those of their home state. Same Constitution,
| same legal framework. Same religion.
|
| I think if you go deeper you will notice the unifying
| characteristics rather than superficial differences among
| states of India.
|
| And while I differ with you on Indian states being very
| far aways from different Russian states in terms of
| similarity/differences, I definitely agree with your
| opinion that Indian state borders don't make much sense.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > You took an extreme example
|
| True! It was a rhetorical point, but similar examples
| abound in the Tier 3/4 cities and small towns that
| represent the majority of India.
|
| You're still at the mercy of the DC's office and the
| associated State PSC to let the transaction go through,
| and local bias will abound. And in these kinds of places,
| if you get into a land dispute, the entire apparatus will
| rally behind the local even if they are in the wrong,
| because the local can leverage their local family/social
| network.
|
| > Same Constitution, same legal framework
|
| Absolutely, yet dependent on state PSC to implement. And
| local customary laws can often take precedence over
| central rules and regulations due to Article 13(1).
|
| > There are many all-India services and people are
| transferred all across India. Many work in different
| states than those of their home state
|
| There are, yet at the end of the day, Home Bias remains,
| as IAS officers posted outside their home state are
| significantly less likely to climb up the ladder and tend
| to get hamstrung [0].
|
| Anecdotally, in the early 2000s, my ancestral district
| got an ethnic Tamil DC/ADC, but they were completely
| frozen out by the local panchayat, MLAs, and MP because
| they were viewed as an "Outsider", and the man was
| quietly transferred within 2 years and an ethnic Punjabi
| officer was brought it (still an "outsider" but viewed as
| "closer").
|
| > Same religion
|
| At a broad level Hinduism sounds unifying, but in action,
| the regional variations are massive.
|
| It doesn't matter as much to sharyi/city folk, but local
| deities and practices vary massively and what one regions
| treats as "Hindu" can appear entirely alien to another
| region.
|
| Tamil society doesn't bat an eye at cousin marriage while
| that would be grounds for a honor killing in HP/PB/HR.
| Meanwhile, in my region we revere a number of Muslim
| mystics like Lakhdata and in some cases even practice
| Muharram (Hussaini Brahmin), but to a Hindu from Gujarat
| or Karnataka, that would appear Muslim.
|
| > I think if you go deeper you will notice the unifying
| characteristics
|
| There absolutely are unifying characteristics, but I
| think these are much more prominent in Tier 1/1.5/2
| cities which are melting pots.
|
| Most Indian urbanization is being driven by Tier 3/4
| cities which tend to be much more insular.
|
| -----------
|
| Big picture, I think differences are significant when
| outside the Tier 1/2 cities, but this is part of the
| power of Indian federalism.
|
| The loosely coupled nature of Indian federalism allows
| regional ethnic identity to continue to exist with a
| unified "Indian" identity and act as an outlet to ethnic
| insurgency.
|
| This is how ethnic insurgents in NE India were able to
| merge into the BJP in the 2010s, and regionalist and
| linguistic parties such as Shiv Sena, DMK, TDP, TMC, etc
| are able to create loose political alliances and
| coalitions with "national parties".
|
| Also, this imo is a major reason why BJP has been so
| dominant over the past decade - they are able to co-opt
| localist movements into the state branch of their party.
|
| The INC used to be able to do this, but these local
| leaders split off to create their own parties by the
| 1990s.
|
| [0] - https://www.nber.org/papers/w25389
| leosanchez wrote:
| > that Rayalseema is lumped with Kosta Andhra,
|
| They share a common language ?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Sure (though imo, even the difference between dialect and
| language can be significant - try listening to
| Bundelkhandi as a Hindi speaker, you won't understand it
| even though Bundelkhandi is counted as "Hindi" largely
| for political reasons), but entirely different caste
| structure and political social structure historically
| speaking.
|
| Coastal Andhra had been under direct British rule since
| 1823 and before that largely under the Northern Circars,
| but Rayalseema was a frontier land between Mysore, the
| British, the Hyderabad Sultanate, and plenty of local
| kings and factions.
|
| All over India, the British administration largely just
| co-opted the preexisting administration and governance,
| which wasn't professionalized until the early 20th
| Century. This meant that functionaries of the pre-
| existing states were co-opted into local administration.
|
| Ofc, in princely states the difference was even more
| significant.
|
| But my argument is that it makes sense for Rayalseema to
| be split off from Coastal Andhra, as the administrative
| history is distinct, and even the history is distinct.
| devsda wrote:
| Not everything in India is/have to be about an individual's
| caste at all.
|
| The most plausible and likely explanation is that it is
| just shortened initials of surname for convenience.
|
| Typically indian teachers have a habit of turning surname
| to initials to deal with multiple students having same
| names. Those names tend to be sticky and students just
| refer themselves with initials in such contexts.
|
| I'd be very much surprised if his official government IDs
| have initials and not surname.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > I'd be very much surprised if his official government
| IDs have initials and not surname
|
| Not necessarily. He's from TN. Initials are fairly
| common.
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| yes in an abstract way. Same for Vishwanathan Anand (name
| and his fathers name with no surname) or even Sundar Pichai
| (name and fathers name)
| xdennis wrote:
| Wikipedia says his full name is "Gukesh Dommaraju".
| matrix2596 wrote:
| Yes. I am Telugu and family name is usually not written or
| called out. So he would usually write D. Gukesh or Gukesh D.
| Most people also have a sort of middle name for example D.
| Gukesh Kumar. Middle name is spelled and used for calling
| together with main name.
| __rito__ wrote:
| Gukesh's last name is Dommaraju. It's his family surname. He is
| a Telugu person by birth, but he grew up in Chennai, Tamil
| Nadu. In the state of Tamil Nadu, people often take their
| father's given names as their last names, and always write it
| in abbreviation. Indian last names often disclose caste, and
| due to a widely influential movement in TN (see [0]), most
| people of TN gave up using caste-based surnames, and switched
| to solely using father's names. But, the father's name is often
| written as the first letter of that name, and the person is
| called like that in official places, too. Among friends,
| colleagues, teachers, etc., only the given name ever is used.
|
| As Gukesh grew up in Chennai, he used his last name like that.
| His parents also use one name only.
|
| Anecdote: my distant cousin, a Bengali, also grew up in TN. His
| parents also Tamilized his name. His name was, say, Rama Dass,
| and he went by and put his name as D. Rama, or Rama D.
|
| When their family moved back to Bengal, his name was Rama Dass
| again.
|
| Srinivasa Ramanujan's given name was Ramanujan, and Srinivasa
| was his father's name.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periyar
| meta_x_ai wrote:
| As a South Indian My name (in public school records) till I was
| age 21, was <name>. <initial>
|
| I was forced to pick the last name for passport purposes and
| typically i either have the option of attaching my dad's name
| or my dad's town name.
|
| My wife, didn't even do that and when she migrated to US, she
| was <name> LNU (short for Last Name Unknown). While applying
| for greencard we decided it was too much of a hassle for her
| and she attached her father's name
| svat wrote:
| Naming conventions vary, and when you consider names across
| history/geography, it is the present-day Western convention of
| "GivenName FamilyName" that is unusual and needs explanation.
|
| Generally speaking, someone is born and at some point
| days/months later, their parents start calling them by some
| name, while the rest of the world might also doing so at some
| point, possibly different people using different names. For
| purposes of interacting with administrative systems yet another
| name may be adopted. Only when it has been necessary to
| distinguish between multiple people with the same name do
| secondary names start getting used, either occupational
| descriptions (John the Baker vs John the Carpenter vs John the
| Smith) or places where they came from or were noted for (Jesus
| of Nazareth, William of Orange, Leonardo from Vinci), or
| disambiguating with parents' names (Mohammed bin [son of]
| Salman, Bjork Gudmundsdottir [daughter of Gudmund]) -- these
| are all conventions still existing today, with occasional funny
| consequences when someone imagines one of these to be a "family
| name" that persists from father to child across generations.
| (See "what would Of Nazareth do" about people--even otherwise
| educated ones--treating "da Vinci" as such.)
|
| Coming to India: there are different conventions. Typically
| just a name and an initial letter (placed either before or
| after the name) to distinguish between multiple people (in the
| same classroom say) with that name. When a boy was named
| "Anand" by his parents, because his father was "K.
| Viswanathan", he became "V. Anand" in school records, and this
| is the name I remember reading articles about this chess
| prodigy in Indian newspapers. At some point the international
| press started spelling out his first name and called him
| "Viswanathan Anand", putting his father's name first, and even
| started calling him "Viswanathan" or "Vishy" -- he used to
| object and point out that they were calling him by his father's
| name, but eventually he just got used to it and even began to
| like it. In this generation, this boy was named "Gukesh" by his
| parents, and was "D. Gukesh" in school records and news
| reports, but somewhat wisely they decided for international
| sources to put the initial after the name, so "Gukesh D", and
| for those who cannot handle just an initial, spell it out to
| "Gukesh Dommaraju".
|
| (You have had other replies claiming this to have something to
| do with Tamil Nadu anti-caste politics. While no doubt that
| movement discouraged the use of caste names as surnames, the
| initial convention pre-exists any of those political movements
| and exists in parallel in other states too. E.g. "S. Ramanujan"
| was the name on his early papers before the movement being
| spoken of. Some families/communities use surnames (in the sense
| you're thinking of) and some don't; that's all there is to it.)
| thom wrote:
| Well, Ding's prediction was right, it wasn't a short draw.
| Horrible end to a another pretty disappointing cycle. Ding's game
| 12 win to tie the match was a positional masterpiece but it
| ultimately seems fitting that his blunder decided the result.
| Hope he gets a long break from classical chess and finds his way
| back to enjoying the game.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Ding has nothing to be ashamed of. He fought like a true
| warrior. He was a great champion, with class and brilliance. I
| just don't think he was physically as strong as he could be,
| and that affects one's ability to think as they must at that
| level.
|
| All said, tho, it was definitely Gukesh's time, and being 18
| has some serious benefits in terms of recovery and stamina.
| thom wrote:
| I don't think 26. a4 was fighting like a true warrior, it was
| more giving up half your kingdom in the hope that your
| opponent will then accept a peace treaty.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| I can't speak to the subtleties of chess, but I did watch
| Hikaru's recap and he was of a similar opinion.
|
| I still think Ding was physically and/or emotionally
| compromised to some extent. That's why I still consider his
| effort lionine, because his game 12 game was masterful and
| he was in it until the end. I hope he holds his head high.
| seanhunter wrote:
| That was a absolutely horrible finish to a really exciting
| championship if you ask me.
|
| For anyone who doesn't know, there was a lot of drama because
| Gukesh was playing amazingly coming into this (eg winning the
| gold medal on board 1 at the olympiad in crushing style) and Ding
| had been playing terribly. Then there were 13 games of back and
| forth with stalwart defending and imaginative computer
| preparation by both sides, playing a lot of fresh chess and both
| of them going for the most critical and challenging moves in each
| position. Ding was playing a lot better than a lot of people had
| expected and the previous game had been one of the best games in
| a world championship for a long time. Everything was tied going
| into the last game of the classical portion and the "bar room
| consensus" was that since Gukesh was so young and doesn't focus
| at all on the faster forms of chess (rapid and blitz) and is
| therefore much lower rated than Ding in those formats, that if
| this game was a draw then Ding would be a substantial favourite
| in the ensuing tiebreaks.
|
| The final game was a complex struggle, with Ding keeping
| everything in lockdown with the white pieces so as not to give
| Gukesh a ghost of a chance. Most of the pieces had been traded
| and it was the most drawish of drawn endgames. Gukesh was up a
| pawn, but they both had a rook and bishop and all Ding had to do
| was hang on to his pieces and keep them well away from the enemy
| king. On the stream I was watching IM David Pruess had just been
| asked by someone in chat whether Gukesh could win and he said "1%
| chance".
|
| Then all of a sudden Ding made 3 bad moves in a row. The first
| two were just poor endgame technique, putting his rook and bishop
| both on bad squares too close to the enemy king, then the real
| blunder. Completely inexplicably he traded off the pieces. Now he
| was in an endgame that was just dead lost. After 14 games of 4+
| hours each It had gone from being a dead draw with him a big
| favourite in tie breaks to all over in a few seconds.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Gukesh took him into the deep water the entire time, putting
| every possible strain on Ding's energy and reserves. It was the
| unrelenting pressure of an 18yo badass that cracked Ding, whom
| I truly feel sorry for. He is a great player and a very, very
| nice human being.
|
| What is crazy is that Gukesh has only been playing chess for a
| little more than 11 years.
|
| ETA: And Ding fought like a lion!
| awongh wrote:
| "only 11 years"... that seems like a lot to me, although
| reading further down in the thread it seems like it might
| take twice or three times as long to get to a very high
| level.
|
| Do people in the chess community measure players by number of
| years playing? Are there expectations of how long it takes to
| get to a certain level? (besides world champion)
| neaden wrote:
| It's hard to put it in numbers since high level chess
| players start very young, it's basically considered
| impossible to become a titled player learning chess as an
| adult, with a slight exception for high level players from
| similar games transferring over. So becoming the youngest
| champ and becoming the champ in the shortest time are very
| similar. For comparison Magnus started playing chess at 5
| and became WC at 22.
| awongh wrote:
| 5-22- so 17 years instead of 11. Quite a difference! Can
| any of that be put down to advances in training tech that
| wasn't around when Magnus started playing?
| ANewFormation wrote:
| In spite of claims to the contrary there is luck in
| chess. Your form (and your opponents') varies
| significantly over time, the outcome of competitive
| opening prep, or even just how well you're sleeping.
|
| The stars really aligned for Gukesh in countless ways,
| his form and openings hit when and where they needed to,
| and he was left playing a very out-of-form world champ
| who wasn't even in the top 20 in the world.
|
| I suspect his record (world champ at 18) will remain
| intact for many decades yet to come. He attributed much
| of his success to God, and even as an agnostic - I'm
| inclined to agree!
|
| Notably he's still nowhere near the strongest player in
| the world - he's not even the strongest Indian! The world
| championship in chess can be an odd beast at times.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Yes, the luck can be being able to sleep well during this
| grueling event, or having food that agrees with you, or
| even which virii are circulating around and whether or
| not they get you.
|
| As to Gukesh's faith, it brings inner peace and
| happiness, and if you observe the contestants' faces, the
| difference was evident. Gukesh isn't making a show of
| being prayerful, he's really doing it. It means he is
| doing what he is doing for a greater goal, which is
| _always_ for a worldwide peace and happiness for all
| human beings, when really performed in harmony with our
| Creator. If one 's religion's purpose is for dominance
| over others one can _never_ gain inner peace and
| happiness from it. It must be for personal harmonization
| with peace and happiness for _all_ human beings, or it is
| just more mammalian self-righteous warfare.
|
| That's why Rumi says, "You have no idea how little we
| care for what people say." What he means by this is that
| a lot of people talk about religion, but what we do and
| how we feel as a result of our religiosity is the only
| proof that is accepted by God. Most people do not
| understand that such proof is evident on people's faces
| and in the tone of their voice, but you seem to have
| noticed the reality that Gukesh has it and, sadly, Ding
| does not.
|
| Gukesh's victory is a way of demonstrating to folks that
| there are real gains to be had from seeking the peace and
| happiness of religion for peace and happiness's sake. No
| religion is superior to others in this respect. No. There
| are only true seekers and those who merely seek to
| justify their oppression of others by their religious
| affiliation.
|
| I extensively explain how this works in my comments over
| the past week or two.
|
| "The Way goes in." --Rumi
| FreakLegion wrote:
| There's not much point comparing them. The WCC cycles are
| inconsistent and Magnus has never liked the format. He
| played the Candidates in 2007 when he was 16, but there
| was a four-year gap after that until the next one. By
| that point he was already the top player and, just like
| in the cycle Ding won, he decided not to play. The
| explanation is here:
| https://www.chess.com/news/view/carlsen-quits-world-
| champion...
| stormfather wrote:
| He's also not really the world champion. The world
| champion just got bored of winning so hard.
| neaden wrote:
| He's the World Champion, he might not be the best in the
| world but that is always an arguable thing.
| kelipso wrote:
| That's his excuse anyway. If you can't hold on to the
| title, no matter the actual or stated reasons, then you
| are simply not the World Champion.
| stormfather wrote:
| Excuse? You must not follow chess too closely. He is the
| undisputed GOAT. He is clearly bored - he plays atrocious
| opening moves these days just to get an interesting game.
| He's so good he transcended the need to keep proving it.
| Excuse. Lmao. Gukesh is the WC only because he is not
| good enough to present an interesting challenge.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| It's 100% possible to become a master starting as an
| adult, but it requires a certain sort of person - you're
| looking at thousands upon thousands of hours of difficult
| work paired alongside endless frustrations, obstacles,
| seriously low emotional lows the game can cause (think
| about how Ding feels right now, even if it wasn't a game
| for the title), and more.
|
| The idea of becoming a master, especially as an adult, is
| far more appealing than the reality of it for most
| people.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| I've only heard of one person ever doing it, and that was
| in the 80s when the average age was older anyway.
|
| I think you've got to reach 1800 by your mid or maybe
| late teens to have a chance really.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Gukesh is born in 2006, so he started playing at 7.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| His quote from the interview was "six and a half to seven",
| so I rounded to 11 years, as he is now 18.
| fasdfdsava wrote:
| Wow great synopsis. Sounds like Ding just ran out of mental
| stamina just before buzzer.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I think it was thematic of the match:
|
| The whole time, Ding had failed to seize advantages and been
| low on time -- something criticized by GM Hikaru Nakamura. In
| this final game, those two things caused him to blunder in a
| complex endgame seeking a tie against Gukesh who had nearly an
| hour of advantage on the clock and been relentlessly pressing
| the whole match (and continued that pressure, into the
| endgame).
|
| That's a strategy, not mere misfortune. And personally, I'm
| glad it was decided in the match rather than tie-breaks.
| cyrillite wrote:
| It felt much more like forced error than unforced error or,
| thematically, the closest thing I've seen to a milling strategy
| in chess. Just make them keep drawing until they're out of
| ideas.
| taneq wrote:
| I'm explicitly not a chess player but this reminds me of Dave
| Sirlin's "Play To Win" where he starts by explaining that if
| doing a thing makes you not lose, you do that, and then
| eventually by definition you win.
| fsckboy wrote:
| chess has a lot of draws, and plenty of drawish strategies.
| Playing to not lose will not at all lead to winning.
| chongli wrote:
| Yes and if all you can do is draw in the world
| championship then you'll be in trouble when the faster
| time controls are brought in to resolve the match.
| pharrington wrote:
| That kinda works for fighting games, since draws are rare,
| as the players need to either double KO or timeout with the
| same exact amount of health. Chess is very different in
| theres (at least) 3 ways to draw, and it's very easy to
| fumble a won position into a draw.
| qq66 wrote:
| Not in chess, where the (by far) most likely outcome of a
| world championship classical game is a draw. When Magnus
| Carlsen played Fabiano Caruana for the world championship,
| EVERY classical game was a draw and they had to go to
| tiebreaks, which no longer makes it a classical tournament.
| thom wrote:
| It was a forced error in the sense that Ding forced that
| exact endgame for no real reason and then fluffed it with 10
| minutes on his clock plus increment. What's incredibly sad is
| that Ding clawed his way back into the match in game 12 by
| doing exactly what you describe - he created a horribly
| cramped position, refused to release the tension, and
| eventually Gukesh ran out of good moves and lost without any
| egregious blunders.
| wavemode wrote:
| I disagree. There were forced errors in this match, yes. But
| this final game's endgame wasn't an example of that. Ding
| collapsed of his own accord.
| the_clarence wrote:
| > imaginative computer preparation
|
| Are people training AIs to play in the style of the people
| they're going to play against so they can practice?
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| No, they use chess engines to find interesting lines of play
| that the opponent presumably is not prepared for. Say, an odd
| move that looks weak, but a few moves later is back at even,
| and the player that pushed down this line is now prepared to
| play on from there (with perhaps further traps laid ahead),
| while the opponent is somewhat in the dark and has to analyze
| the situation correctly.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Has anyone tried playing one of these "chess engines"
| against a human?
|
| We may have an opportunity to cut out the middleman here
| (no pun intended).
| bamboozled wrote:
| _Has anyone tried playing one of these "chess engines"
| against a human?_
|
| Million times a day ?
| neaden wrote:
| To be clear the high level chess engines are so far above
| the best humans that there isn't a point anymore.
| nurettin wrote:
| Engines are unbelievable in open positions, so GMs who
| know that they are up against an engine usually just pawn
| lock the center and wait for the engine to start
| sacrificing in order to avoid a draw.
| neaden wrote:
| That might have worked once, but modern stockfish has an
| estimated elo of 3642 compared to Magnus 2882. I don't
| think any human could get a draw against it these days.
| vunderba wrote:
| Are you serious?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_versus_Garry_Kasp
| aro...
| 8note wrote:
| i think theres something interesting for chess engines to
| cut out a middleman.
|
| the players have "seconds" who are doing things like
| finding and picking prep for the players to memorize.
| currently, theyre GMs/super GMs who are somewhat playing
| against each other, but i think you could train an AI
| look at lines for ones that the opponent might miss, or
| that would trip them up
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| Weirdly enough, that's a thought that I'm having in
| financial trading as far as using AI for idea generation.
|
| At first glance, charting the future possible moves of a
| chess game is just a huge branching tree, but humans (and
| engines that don't have the power to fully brute force
| the game) use filters to trim the tree. Some lines are
| dead ends, even though they may play out for a while
| (sacrifice both rooks and the game is over, no need to
| follow those branches). There is also a sort of heat map
| and gravity to some of the lines, in that there are
| likely directions that players will travel in (paths
| where you don't give away too many pieces, where the king
| isn't exposed, etc).
|
| Machines can help highlight specific areas where there
| are branching points that lead in many viable directions
| (these are the critical decision-making points in a game
| of chess), that are deceivingly hidden behind lines that
| look dead for a while.
|
| It would output a sort of heat map, and the search could
| even be tweaked for certain variables, such as for number
| crunching complexity (if the opponent is a bit weak
| there) or pathways into brutal end-game scenarios (if the
| opponent is weak there).
|
| This is a microcosm for the real world as well. Lines
| through time have reflexivity and can reinforce each
| other. A geopolitical situation can reinforce an economic
| situation which then feeds back into the political
| situation. Take something like inflation which tends to
| do that. But when humans normally look at the world, they
| see in a sort of normal distribution that is
| oversimplified. It's commonly understood that humans
| downplay the left and right tail risks (as explained by
| Taleb), but it's more nuanced than that. It's more like
| the chess game, in that there are these hot spots of
| complexity and interesting situations throughout the
| forward probability distribution.
|
| Some of these hotspots are deceivingly hidden, because
| only one multiple possible situations unfold do they feed
| back into each other and create something emergent.
|
| Back to an arena like trading, participants tend to track
| each possibility line independently of one another, which
| makes sense because humans are siloed and specialized to
| some degree. Technology like machine learning has the
| ability to synthesize this data and spit back out hot
| spots, just like in the chess example.
|
| The short-sighted conclusion that most will have is to
| say "Great! Let it give me a list of trades, and then we
| can back-test it." when I'm pointing out is that there is
| a lot of value when it comes to idea generation and
| efficiently mentally traversing the future probability
| space. Spending your time focusing on interesting places.
| Maybe a traitor would look at an implied outcome
| distribution and realize "Hey, I think that this little
| part of the curve is underpriced. Maybe I should hedge
| this specific outcome, because I have exposure to the
| inputs that feed into this underpriced emergent
| possibility."
|
| Of course, the trading example is also an abstraction
| from the raw real world, but it's a bit more close to
| reality than the chess example. Really, I think that this
| approach to using machine learning as a tool could be
| applied to many areas. Even more creative areas could
| potentially benefit from it.
| michaelt wrote:
| Normal, regular chess engines are sometimes called AI. Or at
| least they were back in 1997. And people have certainly made
| themed variants of these chess engines, which purport to
| simulate certain famous chess players.
|
| Right now you can visit https://www.chess.com/play/computer
| and play a Hikaru-themed chess engine - or a MrBeast-themed
| chess engine.
|
| I don't know how deep the simulation goes, though - they
| might all just be the same engine with a different difficulty
| setting and a different icon.
| bonzini wrote:
| The bots are tuned differently to be a bit more tactical or
| more positional, and they have an opening book that follows
| the preference of the chosen player.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| That's the most exciting and well written description of a
| chess game I've ever read!
| sourcepluck wrote:
| You must not read very much chess writing!
| mindfulmark wrote:
| Disagree. Gukesh was constantly putting pressure on Ding to
| find defensive moves and Ding finally made a mistake. The fact
| that it happened when it did just makes it even more dramatic.
| We know from the other matches that Ding is capable of finding
| them, and the fact that he didn't just highlights that they're
| both human, both under extreme pressure and that it's not just
| mindless computation.
| seanhunter wrote:
| I'm not sure we disagree at all. Gukesh's strategy throughout
| the match was to constantly ask difficult questions and the
| surprise really was that Ding didn't fold earlier.
| codeulike wrote:
| So why call it a horrible finish?
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| Because the ending was pretty meh. All this excitement,
| and then Ding just flubs up an end game that most super
| gm's should be able to draw against stockfish.
|
| The best finale's are often when two players at their
| best duke it out, and one comes out on top. This was
| simply not Ding's best.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Because as a chess fan and just as a human being my heart
| goes out to Ding Liren who seems like a genuinely
| likeable and nice human being who has been open about the
| tremendous struggle he has had with mental health etc
| since winning the world championships. To pull himself
| out of a hole that deep and play really great chess for
| 13 and 9/10s matches and then lose it with a blunder at
| the last second is awful.
|
| And I say that as 100% someone who wanted Gukesh to win
| from the beginning, which is a result I think is great
| for chess and I think is "objectively correct" in the
| sense that he has played better chess and has been (apart
| from Magnus Carlsen and his compatriot Arjun Erigaisi who
| is also a complete monster) the story of the chess world
| for the last year.
| mindfulmark wrote:
| I guess I was just disagreeing with your opening sentence,
| the rest was spot on.
| seanhunter wrote:
| If anyone's interested in what a GM's thought process on the
| game looks like there's a really great recap here which was
| produced without engines [1]
| https://youtu.be/97RZHG2rcbc?si=O41BRi2EC8Ryu0v2
|
| [1] With the intention of trying to as honestly as possible
| replicate the situation for the players where obviously they
| have to think for themselves and don't have access to an engine
| while playing.
| 8note wrote:
| you can also take a look at anish giri's recaps:
| https://youtu.be/EQDpuPzps88?feature=shared
|
| he streamed watching most of the openings, and kept his own
| eval bar on the side, occassionally checking his lines
| against strong engines
| paulsutter wrote:
| Chess really baffles me
|
| Most of the more sophisticated people I know are completely
| disinterested in sports. Not that they dislike sports, it just
| never occupies their mind. Sports is a purposeless activity for
| kids
|
| Chess is different from sports in only one way: the loss of
| very intelligent capable people who could be helping to create
| the future.
|
| Chess is even more tragic than the olympics.
| not_kurt_godel wrote:
| Intelligent people who create the future must choose that
| path for themselves. Chess isn't preventing people from
| making that choice. If chess didn't exist, most chess players
| would probably just be playing some other game instead of
| STEM careers or whatever your definition of creating the
| future is. Also plenty of very strong chess players do
| ultimately wind up pursuing other career paths. And then
| there's also the fact that a good number of the top chess
| players have shown themselves to be highly dysfunctional
| people who are unfit for the professional world such as Bobby
| Fischer and Vladimir Kramnik.
| paulsutter wrote:
| The stereotype of the absent-minded professor is a great
| illustration of how norms view the world. What WE see as
| focus, norms see as .. not conforming?
|
| Focus is crucial. To be great at chess you need to focus on
| it. To be great at creating the future you need to focus on
| it. By definition you can't focus on both
|
| If you aren't sacrificing, you aren't focusing. I'm not
| saying you need to sacrifice everything else. But
| definitely you need to choose very carefully.
|
| ps. Creating the future is easy to define. Look at OpenAI,
| Starship, Optimus, mass scale photovoltaic manufacturing in
| China. Someone had to make those happen and it took focus
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Nevermind all that we learned from teaching chess to a
| computer. Ya a total waste.
| nileshtrivedi wrote:
| We literally had a chemistry Nobel Prize winner crediting
| chess for making him curious about thinking and
| intelligence and ultimately to find DeepMind.
| sourcepluck wrote:
| A tradition (of being highly dysfunctional at the top of
| chess) kicked off in great style, I would say, by the
| legendary Paul Morphy.
| chongli wrote:
| I'll take smart people playing chess any day over those
| people choosing to go into the tech industry where they spend
| all their time building addictive products that drive ad
| impressions.
|
| I'd love it if they put their talents to work by going into
| medical research, chemistry / materials science, or even
| political science and try to take meaningful steps towards
| making the world a better place. That route seems to be a lot
| less popular these days and obviously compensation has a lot
| to do with it.
| fooker wrote:
| Not everything has to have a purpose.
|
| That most of the society thinks so is a failure of our
| systems.
| wbl wrote:
| "To play chess is the mark of a gentleman. To play chess well
| is the mark of a wasted life"
| crdrost wrote:
| Honestly this sounds like a knock-on effect of the US's
| constant erosion of the glue of community. Church attendance
| down, sport attendance down, theater attendance with friends
| down, it's all the same.
|
| Social norms can change this -- the Netherlands has a very
| similar culture to the US, But one thing people asked me
| while I was doing my M.Sc. there was just, "what is your
| sport?" ... and I got asked it enough that I eventually got
| one, and then for a good period of time I managed to
| completely kick my obesity, until I moved back to the
| American Midwest.
|
| The introvert/extrovert axis also plays a role in what sort
| of "sport" is right for you, of course, and many of your
| sophisticated friends still hit the gym or jog etc. -- those
| are just sports for introverts in my view.
|
| Sport time is _not_ , time that could have been better spent
| elsewhere. It's like how cleaning the sink isn't time that
| could have been better spent elsewhere -- if you don't have a
| clean sink, you'll pay the interest in terms of "ugh what's
| that smell [...] oh it was the standing water in this bowl"
| and "crap I don't have a clean glass, hm, I wonder if I can
| just buy compostable cups on Amazon so that I don't have that
| problem..." etc. So as an extrovert, I can go once a week to
| play soccer with friends in a small league, or, just hear me
| out, I can get lonely and then do what I do when I get
| lonely, which is pop on Physics Stack Exchange and answer
| physics questions so that I can feel Of Use. You pay the
| interest either way.
|
| Chess-time also is no great loss for the world. The top-level
| world chess community is something we have numbers for -- 17k
| titled players, 2k grandmasters, 4k international masters
| beneath that. They are pursuing something that exactly fits
| the nerdy way that their brain works -- memorize openings out
| to 20 moves deep, obsessively study and re-study their failed
| games to understand why the computer thinks they lost and how
| they might make better mistakes in the future, and for them
| it HAS to be competitive and they HAVE to have that immediate
| feedback of trying a new idea in the same narrow niche of
| ideas that they became a super-expert-in, against another top
| player who can punish their new mistakes.
|
| It's just not a set of transferable world-changing skills.
| It's like, my brother became single-mindedly obsessed with
| pool in High School. This persists even though he now runs a
| small company operating a strip mall. This was just his
| thing, he loves that there is no upper bound to how much
| control he can have over the cue and the balls, using the
| spins of each to control the layout, and precisely planning a
| course through a 9-ball break and setting himself up for a
| clean sweep through the game. There was no world in which
| some "world-changing create-the-future" lifestyle, would have
| felt as much of a glove fitting his hand to him, as this did.
| And it is no great loss for the world that he found the glove
| that fits his hand. It's not like the strip mall would have
| become an American retail empire rivaling Amazon, if only he
| had spent his nighttime hours working on the mall instead of
| on his life passion.
|
| For comparison, probably most of the people in the bottom 10%
| performance bracket at Google are being told and pressured
| "you need to do more, more, more, you're gonna get fired if
| you keep those low numbers up" and at 180k employees, that
| amounts to 18k people that, unlike top chess players,
| probably _could_ flourish and do better in some smaller
| scrappier company, but because America doesn't have a social
| safety net to speak of, they feel like "well I got the dream
| 6-figure job, I better hold onto that until my knuckles are
| white because if I got fired, Bay Area rent and cost-of-
| living could bankrupt me in 3 months." And that's literally
| just one megatech company, not even talking about the world
| of people Graeber argues are doing "bullshit jobs" etc. etc.
| vunderba wrote:
| Yawn. This banal criticism has been leveled against chess and
| really the pursuit of any game since the dawn of recreational
| activities.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Morphy
| screye wrote:
| Disagree, but I have a funny anecdote in your favor.
|
| My university's top Dota player was a 2.x GPA slacker who did
| nothing but play games all day. Guy was going to continue
| wasting-away by going to a mediocre foreign grad school, but
| he got his admit revoked because of stupid visa reasons.
|
| Life hits him in the face and for 1 year, he quits dota and
| studies. Goes in, bags 99.99 percentile score in exam with
| 300k applicants and ends up at my country's HBS. That's the
| power level dota was holding back.
|
| To be fair, a team of chess grand-masters tried to form a
| dota team once, and got destroyed. So maybe dota is harder.
| Speaking from personal experience, I haven't done anything in
| life that's as all consuming, rewarding or as destructive as
| dota.
|
| Don't do Dota kids. Try drugs.
| sourcepluck wrote:
| > Guy was going to continue wasting-away by going to a
| mediocre foreign grad school
|
| Wow. Who knows what amazing stuff that guy could have done
| if he'd escaped to a new place, with new people, in an
| exciting new culture, rather than the very close-minded one
| you describe here!
| mcmoor wrote:
| Funnily one of the two times world champion is a doctor who
| only plays competitively whenever there's world
| championship (And not the regional tournaments)
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > Chess is different from sports in only one way: the loss of
| very intelligent capable people who could be helping to
| create the future.
|
| Being good at chess does not mean you're "very intelligent".
| Most of the top players are good at chess because they are
| very good at memorization & pattern recognition, those are
| the actual abilities of a high level chess player. Does that
| translate into other intellectual pursuits like theoretical
| physics or math? Not _really_.
|
| Grandmasters aren't going to be dumb by any stretch of the
| imagination, but they aren't super-intelligent geniuses,
| either.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| This really misses the key drama of what happened in the last
| game.
|
| Ding had a perfectly safe position where he could try to
| squeeze Gukesh pretty much endlessly with basically 0 risk. He
| then, completely inexplicably, went down a forced line which
| led to the final phase of the game.
|
| In this phase the position was drawn with perfect play, but
| that is completely irrelevant because it is _really_ tough to
| play. And more importantly in this phase, Gukesh was the side
| pressing to win with all sorts of interesting ideas. Ding, by
| contrast, left himself in a position where he 's now going to
| be tortured for hours, has 0 chance of winning, and a single
| lapse of concentration means you lose. And that's exactly what
| happened.
|
| Engine evals are really misleading in these sort of positions
| because it says it's completely equal, which it objectively is,
| but white/Ding will lose that position with some degree of
| regularity, while black/Gukesh had 0 losing chances. So in
| practical terms equality is not really correct.
| tomatovole wrote:
| Is there a metric I can look at in engine evaluations to
| determine when a situation is "risky" for white or black
| (e.g., the situation above) even if it looks equal with
| perfect play?
|
| I've always been interested in understanding situations where
| this is the case (and the opposite, where the engine favours
| one side but it seems to require a long, hard-to-find
| sequence of moves.
|
| Playing out the top lines helps if equality requires perfect
| play from one side.
| Leary wrote:
| https://live.lczero.org/
| fernandopj wrote:
| This is great, but I think that % is about the
| "correctness" of the move, not how likely it is to be
| played next.
| RUnconcerned wrote:
| I think that's not quite the point. Leela has an
| advantage over AB chess engines, where it has multi-PV
| for "free", meaning it will evaluate multiple lines by
| default at no cost to performance (traditional engines,
| like Stockfish, will lose elo with multi-PV). This allows
| us to know at a glance if a position is "draw/win with
| perfect play" or if there is margin for error. If Leela
| shows multiple moves where one side maintains a winning
| advantage/losing disadvantage/equality, we can use that
| as a computer-based heuristic to know if a position is
| "easy" to play or not.
| hilux wrote:
| Yes and no - the number of playable lines does not
| necessarily tell us how "obvious" those lines are to find
| for a human.
|
| To give a trivial example, if I take your queen, then
| recapturing my queen is almost always the single playable
| move. But it's also a line that you will easily find!
|
| Conversely, in a complex tactical position, (even)
| multiple saving moves could all be very tricky for a
| human to calculate.
| amohn9 wrote:
| I wonder if there's a combined metric that could be
| calculated. Depth of the line certainly would be
| impactful. A line that only works if you do 5 only moves
| is harder to find than a single move line. "Quiet" moves
| are probably harder to find than captures or direct
| attacks. Backwards moves are famously tricky to spot. Etc
| nilslindemann wrote:
| The metric is to play the position against Stockfish. If
| you draw it again and again, it is trivial, otherwise, not
| so simple :-)
| jawarner wrote:
| You can measure the sharpness of the position, as in this
| paper section 2.3 "Complexity of a position". They find
| their metric correlates with human performance.
|
| https://en.chessbase.com/news/2006/world_champions2006.pdf
| esfandia wrote:
| Maybe the difference between the eval of the best move vs
| the next one(s)? An "only move" situation would be more
| risky than when you have a choice between many good moves.
| fernandopj wrote:
| That's it exactly. Engines will often show you at least 3
| lines each with their valuation, and you can check the
| difficulty often just from that delta from 1st to 2nd
| best move. With some practical chess experience you can
| also "feel" how natural or exoteric the best move is.
|
| In the WCC match between Caruana and Carlsen, they were
| at one difficult endgame where Carlsen (the champion)
| moved and engines calculated it was a "blunder" because
| there was a theoretical checkmate in like 36(!) moves,
| but no commentator took it seriously as there was "no
| way" a human would be able to spot the chance and
| calculate it correctly under the clock.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Not necessarily. If that "only move" is obvious, then
| it's not really risky. Like if a queen trade is offered
| and the opponent accepts, then typically the "only move"
| that doesn't massively lose is to capture back. But
| that's extremely obvious, and doesn't represent a sharp
| or complex position.
| EGreg wrote:
| Yes, it's called Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS used by
| AlphaZero) instead of AlphaBeta search (which is what
| classical chess engines used)
| elcomet wrote:
| Those are tree search techniques, they are not metrics to
| assess the "human" complexity of a line. They could be
| used for this purpose but out of the box they just give
| you winning probability
| RUnconcerned wrote:
| If multiple lines have equal-ish winning probability,
| rather than a single line, then you can sort of translate
| it to "human" complexity.
| hilux wrote:
| Not really - that's the point, engines, for all their
| awesomeness, just do not know how to assess the likelihood
| of "human" mistakes.
| qq66 wrote:
| Making a computer play like a 1300-rated human is harder
| than making a computer beat Magnus Carlsen.
| dorgo wrote:
| Take the computer which beats Magnus and restrain it to
| never make the best move in a position. Expand this to N
| best moves as needed to reach 1300 rating.
| JonathanMerklin wrote:
| You've identified a potential strategy by which a
| computer can play like a 1300-rated player, but not one
| where it will "play like a 1300-rated human". Patzers can
| still find and make moves in your set of N (if only by
| blind chance).
| dmonitor wrote:
| Yeah, you would have to weigh the moves based on how
| "obvious" it is, such as how active the piece has been,
| how many turns until it leads to winning material, or
| other such 'bad habits' humans fall for.
| coffeeaddict1 wrote:
| This won't work. With that strategy, you can make a
| computer make play like a 1300 player, but not a 1300
| _human_ player.
| qq66 wrote:
| That's kind of what they do for "training" bots and it
| produces something which plays NOTHING like a 1300-rated
| human.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| I assume you could just give the computer a large set of
| 1300 rated games and train it to predict moves from that
| set :)
| Spivak wrote:
| I think there's a real difference between "a computer"--
| in this context meaning an algorithm written by a human,
| possibly calibrated with a small number of parameters but
| not trained in any meaningful sense, and a "chess model"
| which works as you describe.
|
| I think the chess model would be successful at producing
| the desired outcome but it's not as interesting. There's
| something to be said for being able to write down in
| precise terms how to play imperfectly in a manner that
| feels like a single cohesive intelligence strategizing
| against you.
| WJW wrote:
| Even 1300s sometimes make the best move. Sometimes the
| best move is really easy to see or even mandatory, like
| if you are in check and MUST take that checking piece.
| Sometimes the best move is only obvious if you can look
| 20 moves ahead. Sometimes the best move is only obvious
| if you can look 5 moves ahead, but the line is so forcing
| that even 1300s can look that far ahead.
|
| Despite decades of research, nobody has found a good way
| to make computers play like humans.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| This is really interesting because i ran into a pokemon
| bot the other day were its training led to calibration of
| 50% winrste at all levels of play on Pokemon showdown. It
| was a complete accident.
| Someone wrote:
| But that doesn't imply that that bot played like an
| average human.
|
| Making a computer have a 50% score against a 1300-rated
| human is way easier than making it play like a 1300-rated
| human.
|
| For the former, you can take a top-of-the-line program
| and have it flip a coin in every game whether to make a
| random move every move or not.
| qq66 wrote:
| Playing a chess bot that works this way feels like
| playing a Magnus Carlsen who's trying to let you win.
| umanwizard wrote:
| It's not hard to make a chess bot that plays at a 1300
| strength, i.e. its rating would converge to 1300 if it
| were allowed to compete. But it will not play like a
| 1300-rated human. It would play like a superhuman genius
| on most moves and then make beginner-level blunders at
| random moments.
|
| Making one that realistically plays like a human is an
| unsolved problem.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| ah that makes sense. thanks!
| rieska wrote:
| Of course, you are right. But i wanted to take the
| oppurtunity to show that (the linked site) at least has a
| bot that plays the opening like a human of chosen rating
| perfectly. It stops working after the opening-stage
| (since it just copies moves from humans in the lichess
| game database), but it is still very impressive. For
| later game stages, some other method would have to be
| used (unless we play multiple orders of magnintude more
| games on lichess).
|
| The bot is especially useful if you are looking to
| practice your opening repertoire against realistic
| opponent moves.
|
| https://www.chessassess.com/openings
| scott_w wrote:
| Not really because it's subjective to the level of player.
| What's a blunder to a master player might only be an
| inaccuracy to a beginner. The same applies for higher
| levels of chess player. I've watched GothamChess say "I've
| no idea why <INSERT GM> made this move but it's the only
| move," then Hikaru Nakamura will rattle off a weird 8-move
| sequence to explain why it's a major advantage despite no
| pieces being lost. Stockfish is a level above even Magnus
| if given enough depth.
| paulddraper wrote:
| You can evaluate on lower depth/time.
|
| But even that isn't a good proxy.
|
| Humans cannot out-FLOP a computer, so they need to use
| patterns (like an LLM). To get the human perspective, the
| engine would need to something similar.
| rieska wrote:
| Yes, the Leela team has worked on a term they call
| Contempt. (Negative contempt in this case would make the
| engine seek out less sharp play from whites perspective) In
| the first link the authour talks about using contempt to
| seek out/avoid sharp lines. lc0 and nibbler are free, so
| feel free to try it out if curious.
|
| https://github.com/LeelaChessZero/lc0/pull/1791#issuecommen
| t... https://lczero.org/blog/2023/07/the-lc0-v0.30.0-wdl-
| rescale/...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Chess engines should come with another metric bar: "The
| twitchy-ness" of the position aka the gradient of primary
| eval metric as you pareto the possible moves from best to
| worst. The stronger this gradient, the more risky it is to
| play, and more changes to make a mistake.
| staunton wrote:
| This ignores the question how hard it is for a human to
| find the best (or a "good enough") move. It's easy to find
| games with 10 "only move" 's in a row where even a beginner
| could easily have played all if them.
| __s wrote:
| Sure, but it's a start on adding nuance to eval beyond
| minmax
| WJW wrote:
| Is it? TBH it sounds like "climbing a tree is a start on
| getting to the moon beyond just jumping up and down".
| Yes, it does "more". But whether it will actually get you
| to the desired end state is highly dubious. Nobody knows
| if that will make chess bots more human-like, despite
| decades of research into the topic.
| Sesse__ wrote:
| This is not a new request; many people, including engine
| authors, have suggested it throughout the years. The
| problem is that it's seemingly very hard to reliably
| quantify something like this and propagate it throughout
| the game tree.
| 8note wrote:
| engines arent great at that. they spot the beat move, and
| if you dont do it, it keeps spotting that same great move
| until your opponent notices it.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42401469
| lubesGordi wrote:
| Agreed. I always thought of it as 'how close to the cliff
| edge are you' metric. It'd probably be easy to do, look at
| all the possible moves and add up the resultant evals. If
| you're currently tied but you have only one good move to
| keep it tie while the rest of your moves give mate in 1,
| well, saying the board is tied is not helpful.
| mlyle wrote:
| Except a lot of the time there's an obvious threat that
| needs to be responded to, and a couple of obvious good
| responses that even terrible players spot.
| xmprt wrote:
| Not the mention the time trouble that Ding left himself in
| once again. This time Gukesh ended with almost a full hour
| over Ding. When you put yourself in a tough position, no
| matter how drawish it is in theory, you need to have enough
| time to figure out the ideas of the position and with only 10
| minutes left and 30 seconds per move, you might slip up and
| make a quick move when you really needed to think harder.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Yes and I think losing in this way is the most fair result.
| Ding has gone for a draw in every game where the score was
| tied, even with white (the first game, which he won as black
| was just a gift from Gukesh). Today, once again with white he
| could have pressed the position and played for more. Instead
| he sacrificed a pawn to play for a draw, and had the more
| difficult game to play even if it was always 0s. If he'd
| tried to play for a win today, almost certainly it would have
| been a draw anyway.
|
| While I was really happy to see Ding's fighting spirit in
| this match, and to have recovered much of his former
| strength, I've been rooting for Gukesh since around the half-
| way point just because Ding has not been playing superior
| positions for a win. I just don't think thats how a champion
| plays, even if its a sound strategy to try to win in tie-
| breaks.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I think this is an unfair characterisation of how Ding
| played. The issue wasn't lack of ambition, but lack of
| confidence leading to misevaluation. Judging from the long
| thinks and how he's played in recent years, it's clear he
| doesn't fully trust his calculation. But I think he
| deserves credit for his ambition, actually. If he really
| wanted to play for draws he wouldn't be playing the French
| or the English. He'd be aiming for e4 e5 with an early
| queen trade. He mostly chose interesting openings with a
| lot of fight in them, often got an advantage, and simply
| misplayed by underestimating his position. Classic sign of
| a player with confidence issues.
| hmm37 wrote:
| His long thinks is thought to be due to the fact that he
| simply hasn't been preparing. He stated he prepared for
| about 3 weeks for the championship match which was
| considered insanely low amount of time. But Caruana has
| stated he would be amazed if he even preped that long
| based on his games, and he always just looked like he was
| winging it every game.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| I watched the press conferences, and I agree that
| misevaluation was a big part of the problem. But even in
| game 6 for example, there is no way he could think he was
| not better after black refused the queen trade, and he
| just kept pressing for that trade. So yes, call that lack
| of confidence - but its still not what I want to see in
| the world champion.
| hmm37 wrote:
| It's strange/crazy because Ding even purposefully even gave
| up his B pawn, just so he could exchange queens and be in a 3
| and 2 pawn game with a bishop and rook still in the game.
| Gukesh just tried playing out the game to the last second
| making easy moves while Ding suffered.
| hilux wrote:
| I disagree completely. In the eyes of some modern fans, the
| popularity of engines and eval bars has reduced chess to an
| intellectual and computational exercise. It's too easy to say
| "bad moves" and "blunder" when Stockfish is giving you all the
| answers!
|
| In reality, chess is a fighting contest between two flesh-and-
| blood humans. And that's what we see throughout this exciting
| match, and in this final game.
|
| Gukesh won because of his greater fighting spirit throughout
| the match, which is as it should be. (Similar to how Ding
| played the daring move ...Rg6 in the final game of his match
| against Nepo.)
| benatkin wrote:
| That isn't how most appreciate sports. People are hoping for
| the contenders to be at the top of their game towards the end
| of the championships. Nobody says "Hey, at least this has a
| human touch! I'm sick of basketball video games." if the NBA
| finals are relatively boring one year.
|
| I think maybe "that was a absolutely horrible finish" got
| interpreted as saying that the win wasn't well earned. That's
| not how I saw it at all.
| hilux wrote:
| > Nobody says "Hey, at least this has a human touch! I'm
| sick of basketball video games." if the NBA finals are
| relatively boring one year.
|
| Complete strawman. You are one of very few people who think
| this match was "relatively boring."
| glenstein wrote:
| I'm not seeing the strawman. You did say:
|
| >In reality, chess is a fighting contest between two
| flesh-and-blood humans
|
| And they weren't suggesting that the match was boring so
| far as I can tell, but more generally, they were
| responding to your idea that high level play is
| intellectualized in a way that loses the human touch.
| hilux wrote:
| By "strawman" I'm referring to use of "relatively boring"
| in the NBA parallel, as if that's a generally accepted
| description of this match.
| justin66 wrote:
| > That isn't how most appreciate sports. People are hoping
| for the contenders to be at the top of their game towards
| the end of the championships.
|
| I'm not sure how "hope" plays into it but few of the sports
| I follow allow for contenders to be at the top of their
| game towards the end of the championship. People are tired
| or playing injured, and it never occurred to me to believe
| that this made their performances less amazing.
| benatkin wrote:
| Good point. Still there is something along those lines in
| a really good matchup. The teamwork often thrives when
| the individuals are tired/injured.
| dmonitor wrote:
| there's definitely the odd game where a player suffers an
| injury in practice or early in the game, and a
| potentially close matchup becomes a disappointing wash as
| a result.
| mcmoor wrote:
| I've seen people leaving a game when it's locked in a
| shitty meta. An unsatisfying world championship is one of
| the indication for that
| manojlds wrote:
| > imaginative computer preparation by both sides
|
| There was almost no preparation from Ding side. It was very
| weak.
| nanoxide wrote:
| I have little interest in chess and no real knowledge in its
| current events beyond mainstream media coverage, but always
| enjoy lively writeups of the matches like this one.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| I don't know much about chess, but this sounds like a downright
| unpredictable, exciting finish.
| fullwaza wrote:
| What a great breakdown, nicely done. You should be a chess
| commentator if you aren't already!
| JshWright wrote:
| > After 14 games of 4+ hours each It had gone from being a dead
| draw with him a big favourite in tie breaks to all over in a
| few seconds.
|
| _Very_ casual chess follower here. Why was Ding a big favorite
| in the tie breaks? My takeaway from the match was that Ding
| seemed to always be worse on time, so wouldn't a shorter time
| control favor Gukesh?
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Ding is rated over 100 points higher in rapid than Gukesh.
| The choice to spend time early was a _choice_ by Ding and
| Ding 's team. Ding is better at faster time controls than
| Gukesh, Gukesh was better prepared.
| Miraste wrote:
| The World Chess Championship uses rapid and blitz matches
| (much shorter time controls) for tie breaks. Gukesh is 46th
| in the world in rapid, and 82nd in blitz. Ding is 2nd and
| 6th.
| binarymax wrote:
| My best guess is he started feeling some time pressure and
| really wanted to trade for a clear draw, but crucially
| miscalculated the tempo and position of the K vs KP ending.
|
| I'm not a grandmaster though, so I can only vaguely speculate
| since that's how I would have lost :)
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Wow. What a match. Been watching with my son, a chess lover since
| we started watching the Magnus-Fabi match. Now, my son loves his
| chess club and has retired me from playing :-)
|
| Two thoughts:
|
| 1) Gukesh took Ding into the deep water the entire time. Few
| people realize how draining chess is, especially at that level
| for this time control. It's beyond gruelling. Only programming is
| more difficult ;-)
|
| 2) Gukesh had an extraordinary advantage. His mental health and
| resilience over the course of the match were a testament to it.
| And, then, his graciousness, thankfulness, and humble joy
| demonstrated the Way. It was That which Gukesh first thanked in
| his post-match interview with GM Mo. It was how he first began
| each game.
|
| And That was the difference. That said, being 18 didn't hurt
| either :-)
| chairmansteve wrote:
| "Only programming is more difficult....". Programming is
| definitely easier for me. In chess, my ego gets in the way. I
| hate to lose.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Programming is easy. There is no opponent!
| rossdavidh wrote:
| ...although that means you can't wear your opponent down.
| The computer will always still be there, not doing what you
| want, no matter how long you draw things out, it will never
| screw up and start working because it's tired. But I agree
| that programming is (usually) easier than chess, certainly
| at these levels.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| When you're programming it's an open book exam where the
| opponent is reality. You have all sorts of resources
| available to you and even the computer itself can help
| you find problems in your solution and you generally have
| as much time as you need.
|
| Chess is a closed book exam where your opponent is
| another human and you have a fixed amount of time to
| answer questions and managing that is as as important as
| asking and answering questions. The question asked is who
| prepared better and who understands the game better and
| playing the man is a better strategy typically than
| playing reality (ie they often make suboptimal moves to
| try to screw up preparation ideas).
|
| Different kinds of taxation but programming would
| generally be easier because there's not as much pressure.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| > you generally have as much time as you need
|
| That's hilarious. I wish you had been my manager :-)
|
| It reminds me of that quote by the author of the
| Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, about the wooshing
| sound deadlines make as they fly by him, or somesuch.
|
| Nicely said, friend.
| runekaagaard wrote:
| Rust's borrow checker?
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Perfection is a difficult foe, and requires a fanatical
| devotion to even match, and there are levels upon levels of
| perfection.
| linguistbreaker wrote:
| Writing good prose can be similarly taxing.
| zem wrote:
| way more imo
| MrMcCall wrote:
| It all depends upon the problems you are solving, and they
| are only bounded by your own creativity.
| nomilk wrote:
| I was struck by Ding's thoughtfulness, objectivity and humility
| when asked how he felt after the match (while clearly utterly
| dejected):
|
| > How do you feel?
|
| > I think I played my best tournament of the year. I think it was
| a fair tournament in the end. I have no regrets.
|
| > Any message for fans?
|
| > Thank you, I will continue to play, I hope I can show strength
| like this time.
|
| Gukesh was equally as objective, humble, and gentlemanly in
| victory.
|
| These attributes are what makes chess and its superstars so
| appealing.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| Nepo and Magnus seem to be cut from a different cloth, although
| Magnus has never had a moment where he could demonstrate
| whether or not he can be humble, because he has always just
| crushed.
|
| Anish Giri kind of took a shot at Magnus (with respect to his
| retiring from classical chess) in his early commentary with
| Petr Leko a few days ago. People are funny, and one doesn't
| usually get to be where Ding and Gukesh are without having a
| bit of an edge to their personality. That's what makes Ding and
| Gukesh so special to me.
| ignoramous wrote:
| You are quite the Chess enthusiast; I enjoy reading your
| comments!
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Thanks. My son and I first started watching together for
| Magnus-Fabi, so it's something we enjoy doing together. I
| enjoy the sporting aspect of it even though I've never been
| a particularly good chess player. I'm more interested in
| the human aspects of it, and I enjoy the commentaries by
| Leko, Bobby Chess (Robert Hess), Naroditsky, Giri, and
| Judit. I love learning from people who have achieved
| greatness.
|
| It was evident to me from the beginning that Ding was
| struggling physically (he had an occasionally rough-
| sounding cough throughout) and, perhaps, emotionally. And
| Gukesh was locked in from go. What a struggle!
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Everyone looks humble compared to Hans, though.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| He certainly has created a bit of buzz.
| ummonk wrote:
| Magnus doesn't usually direct his frustration at others
| (except in the infamous Hans Niemann game) but he has been
| known to storm out of interviews after some of his bad
| losses.
| wongarsu wrote:
| He sometimes lets the chess speak for itself /s
| rob74 wrote:
| > _These attributes are what makes chess and its superstars so
| appealing._
|
| I would say that what you just described is usually called
| "sportsmanship" and is pretty common in most sports (with
| exceptions of course, but at least most would agree that it's
| an ideal worth aspiring to)
| cenamus wrote:
| A lot of exceptions sadly. But with the amount of neuroticism
| you see with top athletes that's to be expected I suppose
| eitally wrote:
| I disagree. I think what you're saying are "a lot of
| exceptions" are primarily going to be in what are
| historically referred to as "revenue sports" in the US --
| football & basketball -- and also in individual sports
| where personal marketing is key to financial success (e.g.
| sponsorships).
|
| I don't see it as unexpected for there to be big egos and
| boisterous personalities in sports where individuals are
| hugely rewarded for personal success. From an athlete's
| point of view, creating a commercial persona is almost as
| important as performing at their best on the
| field/track/bike/pool/course/etc.
| cenamus wrote:
| I agree, but some people, that are just 100% driven by
| success really become cunts that way, even in non-
| commercial sports.
|
| Never seems to be the best of the best though, more those
| in 2-3rd place or really narrow 1st place, something
| about the uncertainty of staying on the top, or never
| quite reaching it...
| hu3 wrote:
| Did Magnus not compete?
| N-Krause wrote:
| No, he did not compete in the last one either.
|
| I suspect, the results would have been different if he had.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| No, he retired from the championship circuit last year which is
| why Ding was champion in the first place.
|
| He had concerns over the format and FIDE was unwilling to make
| changes.
|
| We're in a bit of a weird spot in chess right now because
| Magnus is still the consensus best player even though he's not
| the official champion.
| dentemple wrote:
| To add a little more color... Magnus, in recent years, has been
| expressing his dislike for chess under classical time controls,
| seeing it as a battle of prep vs prep at the SuperGM level
| rather than skill vs skill. He doesn't seem to be enthusiastic
| about doing that prep anymore, and that seems to have been a
| factor in his decision to no longer fight for the WC title.
| elevatedastalt wrote:
| No, he has been expressing his dislike for the format of the
| WCC. He has no major issues with Classical time controls.
| mythz wrote:
| I enjoyed the entire match and was surprised to see Ding putting
| up such a good fight given his poor form going into the match and
| Gukesh's great form after leading India to gold at the Olympiads.
|
| Ding was inconsistent at times but had moments of brilliance
| where he played like an engine, unfortunately he also exhibited
| poor time management throughout the match and failed to
| capitalize on his chances where he instead seemed content to play
| for draws whereas Gukesh would take every opportunity to play on,
| even when it would require taking a slight disadvantage.
|
| Unfortunately the last game was lost more than it was won, as
| Ding was looking for every chance to draw where he gave up a pawn
| in order to trade queens and a pair of rooks to go into an equal
| pawn down end game, which he eventually blundered under time
| pressure. It's a common sentiment in chess that to get a draw you
| have to play for a win, ultimately Gukesh's tenacity to keep
| games going and applying constant pressure eventually rewarded
| him as history's youngest Chess World Champion.
| tech_ken wrote:
| Why would you spoil match 14 for me like this T_T
| coldpie wrote:
| You're not the first to say this here, and I've been trying to
| think if there's a good solution to the problem. The headline
| could be something like, "Chess world championship winner
| declared." But I'll be honest, I probably wouldn't have clicked
| on it without the "youngest" hook, which is exactly the problem
| you're talking about. I don't know. Tough problem :)
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| The solution is to stay off the computer, or at least news
| websites. Sports scores always get pushed into your face from
| unexpected locations
| wavemode wrote:
| I empathize. The first thing I did when I opened my eyes this
| morning was watch a recap of the game, since I knew something
| somewhere (social media, reddit, youtube, etc) would probably
| have a headline that would spoil it.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| So does Magnus unretire?
| papercrane wrote:
| I don't think so. He's still active, he just wants to play
| tournaments and not championships.
| krishnasangeeth wrote:
| IMHO Gukesh is a great role model for everyone. Determination and
| humility shining right through. Though I really like Ding, it
| just felt that Gukesh was pushing more for a win in all the games
| and probably deserve this slightly more.
|
| Now hope that Magnus comes back into Candidates and we we have a
| Gukesh vs Magnus match in 2026.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The way that the game has been played and FIDE ignoring his
| feedback about format makes me think that's unlikely. Magnus
| has been fairly critical about the quality of play in many
| games and that the play has been boring. He's also talked about
| the importance of making space for the next generation of
| talent to have something to strive for because of how dominant
| he still is.
| univalent wrote:
| Two of the most humble, kind, professional players. And a great
| match.
| epolanski wrote:
| It's quite surprising what the brain can do to people under
| stress.
|
| Everybody, even chess amateurs knew that the rook trade was a
| blunder instantly, yet pressure can play such terrible jokes.
| amrrs wrote:
| It was quite sad to see Ding lose at the end. But it's been a
| very tough year and half or so. Precisely since he won the
| championship.
|
| I was quite sad at the way some very top players spoke of him.
|
| But the way he came back and almost took the game to tie breaks
| was unbelievable as a Ding fan.
|
| At the end of the day, it's generational shift that chess is
| witnessing.
|
| Almost written in destiny that it all started with candidates
| about how Alireza played against Gukesh and where it is now!
| offbymuch wrote:
| Remarkable to watch the reactions in real-time, of both players
| and fans from India at the moment the decisive move is played.
| https://www.youtube.com/live/5-uuDuGQLQA?t=14497s.
|
| Only started following chess due to the covid shutdowns, much for
| fun from a fans point of view than I had imagined it would be.
| Having the computer evaluation at the side really helps novices
| like me to know what's going on, interestingly a case of superior
| computer players helping as mere mortals to appreciate the game.
| silveira wrote:
| Wow. Thanks for this links. This is amazing.
| gwd wrote:
| Wow, that's a really fun video -- thanks!
| roughly wrote:
| That's a fantastic video - to see both of them see it in real
| time is incredible. The visible emotion from both is really
| something.
| zeven7 wrote:
| I used to watch a lot of Go. I watched live as Lee Sedol beat
| AlphaGo in one single game in the last match a human could
| feasibly compete against AI. Against all odds, and knowing AI
| had overtaken us, Lee Sedol found a move to get one last
| victory. [1]
|
| But I never saw anything like the crowd hype from the clip you
| posted, lol. This was next level in terms of the energy in the
| room. Very fun, thanks for sharing!
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/mzZWPcgcRD0
| deadbabe wrote:
| Must be amazing getting started off in life with such an amazing
| title out of the gate
| fernandopj wrote:
| He didn't become a Master yesterday to say "out of the gate",
| in his eyes he's been playing chess seriously for "all" of this
| life, and professionally for half of it.
|
| It's a weird thing to say to someone who overcame so much while
| still young. He wasn't given anything "out of the gate".
| neofrommatrix wrote:
| You should read about the amount of sacrifices he and his
| parents did. Chess is very expensive if you want to be a
| professional and progress to the GM title.
| qq66 wrote:
| He's not "getting started," it's just that he's finished his
| first marathon while most 18-year-olds are just tying their
| shoes for their first jog
| justhw wrote:
| Here's a really good explainer video of the blunder at the end.
| https://youtu.be/FJU4BXsZCvg?si=qC961oYH3wkB6Vyk&t=925
| rybosworld wrote:
| This was a great match overall, with a very dramatic/surprising
| end.
|
| But I disagree with other comments that are describing the
| overall championship in a favorable light.
|
| To me, this was some of the most boring chess I've watched. Ding
| was certainly trying to force draws in every game, which makes
| for some very unexciting lines. It's been suggested that Ding
| felt he had better chances in rapid formats, so forcing draws
| makes sense in that light. But it led to some extremely
| uncreative chess imo.
|
| Reminds me of many of the Magnus vs Fabi games in 2018.
| stormfather wrote:
| I agree! It's a shame you're being downvoted just for
| expressing your opinion. Come on HN, downvoting is not for
| expressing disagreement...
|
| And yeah. People saying this was exciting chess are lemmings.
| It was absolutely not. It was yet another boring draw-fest. The
| format incentivizes prep and penalizes creativity and risk-
| taking. If my child got very good at that it would be hard to
| be proud. What a waste of human spirit! Why would I want to
| watch two extremely smart young men waste months of their lives
| on this for the sake of boring us? It's perverse. Let's move on
| to Chess960 already. THAT would be exciting.
| sumodm wrote:
| FYI: Gukesh is 18 yrs old and the youngest World Champion. He is
| also the 18th champion, in its 138 years history.
| ken47 wrote:
| It seems like Team Ding's strategy was to survive until tie
| breaks, where he would have been the favorite. Given Ding's form,
| they probably didn't believe he could reliably win games in
| classical versus an in-form Gukesh.
|
| As such, Ding went for draws in multiple games with clearly
| superior positions that someone like e.g. Magnus Carlsen would
| have played out and won. I'm sure they regret that strategy now.
| ainiriand wrote:
| At least they could mention the age...
| veidelis wrote:
| First of all, I have the greatest respect for the two individuals
| who played their hearts out in this event.
|
| Personally, I'm on the side which thinks that this format is a
| total stagnation. Maybe the new no-increment under 40 moves is an
| improvement, but overall it does not count. I agree with Carlsen
| that the format has to be drastically changed to determine who is
| the better player. Much more games, shorter games. Fischer said a
| long time ago that chess is dead. Considering how deep some of
| the variations go into theoretical territory, I can surely
| relate. Magnus has also expressed that it's very hard to find
| novelties. I'm also totally on the side that Fischer Random
| (chess 960) has to be included in this tournament. I believe that
| ultimately it will happen - sooner or later. Magnus also said
| that he thinks that his match with Caruana was of extremely high
| quality - those 14 games were all draws. I totally understand why
| Magnus didn't want to defend his title. On the other hand I can't
| comprehend how FIDE let this happen because a lot of people don't
| think of current tournament as high as they maybe should be, just
| because Magnus is not participating. That's a shame. Not on
| Carlsen, not on chess. On FIDE.
| Halian wrote:
| I think something like game/30 would be better, but I'm not
| terribly edumacated on the intricacies of classical chess time
| controls.
| MP_1729 wrote:
| Really funny people complaining about classical chess, I don't
| know which games they have been watching.
|
| Nepo Magnus game 6, Nepo Ding many many games, Nepo Caruana
| draw on round 14 of candidates. ALL OF THEM WERE TERRIFIC
| GAMES.
|
| I don't understand what people mean by stagnation
| MrMcCall wrote:
| I agree, watching the World Rapid and Blitz Championships is
| more intense and interesting (IMO), for sure. That said, it's
| much more difficult for a non like me to follow those games; I
| can't even imagine how tiring it is for the commenters in those
| shorter time formats. Commenting those games is its own very
| specialized skillset.
| stormfather wrote:
| Absolutely. It would be AMAZING if no prep was possible.
| Memorizing engine lines 20 deep is nothing to be proud of.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| Congratulations Gukesh! Amazing run, truly living a dream.
| excalibur wrote:
| Why would you loudly proclaim "youngest world champion in
| history" in the headline and then never mention his age at any
| point? I clicked the article specifically looking for the answer
| to "how old is he" and was thoroughly disappointed. Author is
| fired from journalism permanently.
| nilslindemann wrote:
| I am not happy with this result (quite the blunder deciding this
| match) and in general who played for the crown here. Ding is not
| in the top for a while now and Gukesh has rarely played in Top GM
| tourns. The silent champ (Magnus) is still around, winning
| tournaments.
|
| "World champion" currently means "some lucky Top GM" and not "the
| undisputed number one".
| nilslindemann wrote:
| Ok, admittedly, in blitz and rapid Ding is quite close to the
| top.
| hilux wrote:
| If I follow your logic, why have a world championship cycle in
| any sport - chess, tennis, soccer, whatever?
|
| We could just use the rating or ranking list.
| teleforce wrote:
| Moral of the game, don't ever put white bishop in the white
| coner, or black bishop vice versa in the end game because it can
| be forced to sacrifice.
| thom wrote:
| For anyone that wants to test their mettle, the FEN of the key
| position in this game was:
|
| B7/8/4b3/4kp2/5Rp1/6P1/1r6/6K1 w - - 16 55
|
| Give yourself 10 minutes and 30 seconds increment as White and
| see if you can hold against Stockfish on maximum difficulty.
| jedberg wrote:
| Since there seem to be a lot of chess nerds in here, I have a
| question.
|
| Why didn't Fischer chess ever take off? A lot of comments in here
| amount to "he went slightly off book and it was amazing!".
|
| Wouldn't Fischer chess take the game to a whole new level, making
| it so that all the opening books are useless and the midgame
| requires much more improv?
| MP_1729 wrote:
| Because tradition is incredibly important.
| hilux wrote:
| It still might - that is an ongoing debate at the top of the
| chess world.
|
| For instance, Magnus Carlsen, the world number one by rating,
| is a fan of Fischer chess aka Chess960.
| judofyr wrote:
| Many different reasons:
|
| 1. The biggest one is probably that there is already so much
| interest and depth in regular chess. "Everyone" focuses on it,
| so that's what your friends know and where you can find
| competitions and community. This leads to a chicken-egg problem
| where it hard to kick it off. It's basically like another board
| game.
|
| 2. Some opening positions in Fischer chess are quite awkward:
| The pieces are on squares where it takes a while for them to
| come into proper play. This can make the opening phase quite
| unsatisfying to play. You need to make a lot of extra moves
| before you actually get into the interesting parts. It's not
| necessarily more "fun" to play this way than regular chess.
| There's also some positions which are much better for white
| (although it's on average more balanced I believe)
|
| 3. IMO, regular chess is easier for lower-rated players. The
| choice of openings don't matter so much (either way the game is
| decided by someone hanging a piece), and it's a lot easier to
| follow existing games. In Fischer chess it can be even harder
| to know "okay, what do I do?", while in regular chess there's
| both general principles _and_ systems to follow. This means
| that most newer players keep being exposed to regular chess
| instead of Fischer chess.
|
| > Wouldn't Fischer chess take the game to a whole new level,
| making it so that all the opening books are useless and the
| midgame requires much more improv?
|
| Magnus Carlsen is promoting and advocating for Freestyle Chess
| (same game as Fischer chess, but with different name):
| https://www.freestyle-chess.com/. Maybe it'll take off.
| jedberg wrote:
| Interesting, I read that link. It looks like they
| specifically call out Fischer chess: "all matches are played
| under Fischer-Random (Chess960) rules,"
|
| So he really is just trying to build a tournament format
| around Fischer chess. That's pretty cool. I hope it takes
| off.
| xpe wrote:
| From the Wikipedia page on Chess960:
|
| > Hence, on average, a Chess960 starting position is actually
| 18.2% more balanced than the standard starting position.
|
| I'm also interested in the underlying distribution (not just
| the average). For each of the 960 starting positions, what is
| known about the first-player advantage? (I'm pretty sure these
| would just be estimates because a full solution is still
| infeasible.)
| kelipso wrote:
| On average. Some starting positions are much less balanced
| than regular chess.
| kelipso wrote:
| I don't like it because you can get some starting position
| that's not balanced, or that one of the players has memorized
| the openings for. So it feels much more luck based than regular
| chess, whereas luck is pretty much the antithesis of what chess
| is all about.
| bbconn wrote:
| Introducing: Balanced Fischer chess. Just randomly sample
| from the starting positions that are more balanced than
| regular chess.
| kelipso wrote:
| It's still annoying if the starting position is one that
| only one of the players is deeply familiar with. Too much
| luck factor. They should go the shogi route and get rid of
| draws if they want to improve chess so much.
| benatkin wrote:
| surprised guke.sh isn't taken
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Just the World Champion. Youngest FIDE World Champion (the title
| Gukesh just won) was Ruslan Ponomaryov, at 6681 days old. Gukesh
| is currently 6772 days old.
|
| (And no, we shouldn't go arguing that Ponomaryov wasn't a real
| champion because the indisputably best player chose not to play
| sometimes earlier and created all that mess, because currently
| we're in exactly same situation.)
| kelipso wrote:
| Undisputed world champion and disputed world champion are
| different things than someone choosing not to compete. If you
| can't compete, doesn't matter the reason or excuses you can
| come up with, you are just not the world champion.
| Reason077 wrote:
| How come Gukesh got to sit in a really tall gaming-style chair
| which towers above Ding's ordinary looking chair?
|
| To me that looks like a power move designed to intimidate the
| opposition. Is there a story behind it or do they just get to
| choose their own chairs?
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| They can pick their own chairs.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Congrats to Gukesh
|
| Let's convert that chess knowledge to deep learning for more $
| gojomo wrote:
| He's 18.
| xiaodai wrote:
| Also as a great symbolism of our times: An Indian beat a Chinese.
| India is rising while China is already in decline.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-12 23:00 UTC)