Magnus Carlsen - The New Chess World Champion

Just to let people know (seeing as it is not in much mainstream press?) that we have a new world chess champion, as Magnus Carlsen beats Viswanathan Anand, the former Indian world champion today in Chennai, India.

http://chennai2013.fide.com/

Carlsen is from Norway, 22, and is the highest rated player ever and probably the best player of all time.

Really he is a chess genius. At 12 year old he drew with Kasparov, at the time unbeatable. He has a chess memory of about 10,000 chess games. These are all fully memorised which he can call upon at any time. Like a lot of top players he can also play numerous games at once, blindfold, but it is his ability to win from 'totally drawn' positions towards the end of games and his ability to grind down opponents with his computer-like brain, that really stands him out from the chess crowd. It is no surprise that he beat Anand and he looks to dominate world chess for the foreseeable future where he is only likely to gather in strength.

I don't know anything about chess so usually don't bother, but this time the tournament was in Chennai, Anand's from Chennai, and I'm from Chennai, so it was impossible not to be interested. Of course I was rooting for local boy Anand, but it was not to be. :)

Imagine what he could have done with that brain besides Chess. I still don't understand how, after memorizing so many games somebody can still think the game is fun. It seems more of a chore once it becomes scientific.

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Originally Posted by mona amon

I don't know anything about chess so usually don't bother, but this time the tournament was in Chennai, Anand's from Chennai, and I'm from Chennai, so it was impossible not to be interested. Of course I was rooting for local boy Anand, but it was not to be. :)

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Oh great. It sounds like there was a good atmosphere there.

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Originally Posted by JBI

Imagine what he could have done with that brain besides Chess. I still don't understand how, after memorizing so many games somebody can still think the game is fun. It seems more of a chore once it becomes scientific.

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Well many of the top GMs have huge chess memories - it's just that the figure of 10,000 has been associated with Carlsen and he doesn't dispute it, he might even have made that claim himself and would be about right. It sounds an amazing figure (and it is) but these top players have only to flick through a game once quickly and it is memorised and stored. It's not about who can memorise the most games though at all, it's a useful thing but it's not what separates him from the rest; he's just a better all round player, especially in the middle and end game. In terms of being bored, well it is all about perspective, it's a bit like someone saying 'I'm surprised JBI likes books having read so many!'

And I would agree - that's why I don't read novels anymore.

He should try playing Go instead, much better game :ciappa:

I do remember seeing an article in then newspaper about him, something about him being the 'Justin Bieber' of the chess world and attracting more younger players - I'm not sure if it has worked though.

...remind me, how does the horsey piece move again?

It's an impressive feat that this young chap has managed. I'm abysmal at chess, but I can understand the effort and mental agility required to succeed at it - not to mention a large dollop of innate talent!

Yes, when I was about 5, my father attempted to get me interested in it, but sadly I wasn't the girl to focus on what piece could move where and what my father could do afterwards... I was never that competitive.

I suppose memorising games is a bit like what they teach in the army in terms of strategy. Commanders of old learnt war history or whatever it's called in English, consisting of battlefield topography, positions and movements. I suppose if they were on a battlefield, the best commander would know what X, Y and Z did, which position they took and where they sent their troops and if they won or not. So never do anything that made X, Y or Z lose. As chess is derived a little from battlefield strategy, I suppose, the more games you know by heart, the more you can anticipate what your enemy is going to do and how you can either send him on a wild goose chase (and then attack his flank :D) or make hm fall into a trap (and attack from the rear :D)

Impressive that 10,000...

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Originally Posted by JBI

Imagine what he could have done with that brain besides Chess...

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Yes, it's the crack cocaine of physicists, Heisenberg's seniors banned him from playing because it was interfering with his research.

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Originally Posted by Lokasenna

...remind me, how does the horsey piece move again?

It's an impressive feat that this young chap has managed. I'm abysmal at chess, but I can understand the effort and mental agility required to succeed at it - not to mention a large dollop of innate talent!

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Yes you are correct he had a lot of innate talent. Here he is age 13 taking on Kasparov and drawing (typical mind games and disrespect from Kasparov too. I think after the game he just waked off). In the same tournament I think he beat an ageing Karpov too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjEmquJhSas

I read an article about Carlsen a couple of years ago. Apparently, unlike other youthful chess phenoms, he doesn't play against computers (or, at least, didn't back then). He sees chess as more of a "game" than a science.

Just in case anybody was interested, a good 13 minute summary of the entire match can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvmIv...N4_oIF76s6hTwL

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

I read an article about Carlsen a couple of years ago. Apparently, unlike other youthful chess phenoms, he doesn't play against computers...

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This makes sense, computers play in a different (and better :) ) way than humans. If you were a sprinter it would be like training with a cheetah - demoralising, and learning how to run on four legs would interfere with your style.

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He sees chess as more of a "game" than a science.

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So he uses a dictionary now and again, clever man.

At least he knows his place, being great at chess is like being great at scrabble, or bridge. Should we encourage youngsters to be great at these things? Who is the greater, Carlson or Darwin? As that's no contest, a more interesting questions is: Carlson or the average physics professor?

Chess is something that we should encourage bright youngsters to do when they can't face doing another physics homework question. They should be given the option to relax by playing chess, a video game, or watching Dr Who. (If they point blank refuse to read a novel!) That's all chess is, a possible source of relaxation after doing truly important things. Carlson is about as important as the world tiddlywinks champion, and deserves as much air time.

Being the school science geek I was quite good at chess. But I gave up "serious" chess because the chess club clashed with Star Trek. I don't think it was a wrong choice. (Better to have done even more physics homework though... or read a novel...)

Again it is a question of perspective. To the non-chess fan Carlsen might be of little or no significance, but to the chess enthusiast...

Personally I see chess as a bit of a blend of mathematics and art, not science. A blend of calculation and creativity. You need both to be a good player and a decent memory helps too. You also need lots of positive mental characteristics to make it, such as the ability to learn from your own mistakes (self reflection) resilience, determination, commitment etc. To compare chess to tiddlywinks is disingenuous.

Also there is no justification needed if one wants to pursue chess instead of more perceived 'worthy' causes.

In regard to the debate regarding the usefulness of chess, I will dredge up the quote by Tarrasch: Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy.

No less and no more. And I say that as someone who can't really be made very happy by chess - but if it works for some people, more power to them.

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Originally Posted by Neely

Yes you are correct he had a lot of innate talent. Here he is age 13 taking on Kasparov and drawing (typical mind games and disrespect from Kasparov too. I think after the game he just waked off). In the same tournament I think he beat an ageing Karpov too.

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haha don't talk smack about Kasparov. It must be incredibly frustrating and humiliating to spend your entire life dedicated to reaching perfection at Chess and achieve such mastery over the game... only to lose to some fourteen old kid, not that he lost there, but it happens quite frequently.

This match was utterly boring though, Carlsen was not seriously challenged, Anand just rolled over and died like everyone expected he would and I don't think Carlsen will be seriously challenged for probably at least five years.

I also think that regrettably the days of exciting (world champion) Chess are over. Anand was unable to win a single game with e4 (or any other opening) and I don't see Carlsens contemporaries as doing much better against his sophisticated Berlin defense. Nakamura plays interesting chess of course but he would never even touch Carlsen in a world championship match were he to make it past the candidates tournament. The days of a Tal, a Morphy, an Alekhine or a Fischer are probably over and done with now that the game has reached such sophistication.

The match system didn't help things either, so few games and draws counting for points means that very very safe play is encouraged and a lead of say, two games, will cinch the match.

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Originally Posted by Neely

Carlsen is from Norway, 22, and is the highest rated player ever and probably the best player of all time.

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Oh I also have to take issue with these statements. Carlsen is the highest rated player of all time, however ratings have been undergoing an inflation for years and years. Tellingly Fischer had the highest disparity in rating between himself and his peers and his rating (also the highest for his day of course) took something like twenty years to be surpassed. Fischer also demonstrated unprecedented - both then and now - dominance over his contemporaries, the very tough soviet professional squad and won the candidates tournament stunningly with multiple shut out scores of 6-0 and 4-0 a feat never before seen and likely never to be equalled .That fact alone of course doesn't necessarily point to Carlsen being an inferior player to Fischer, but rather because of the current state of Chess which is quite a bit different from when Fischer was making his cup run - though it does indicate the Fischer supremacy a lot of people believe in).

Kasparov also features in most peoples best ever lists because of the amount of time he spent as number one and his looooong world championship reign.

Carlsen is one of the historical greats no doubt (while Anand and Kramnik are not) and he may yet become the best player the game has ever seen, though I think likely the position will remain with Fischer who was a truly remarkable talent and literally became Chess, doing absolutely nothing else with his life or time for about thirty years.

Some other misconceptions to clear up when discussing the greatest player of all time include;

1. 'Capablanca is the most accurate player of all time according to present day computers.'
>This is a telling piece of information, but deceptive. When Capablanca was playing Chess the general line of strategy was passively defending a weak position (should you find yourself tending to one) in the hopes of simply not losing the game by defence. Capablanca exploited such play by gaining tiny yet often significant advantages in position and converting them against his opponents often hopeless defense. Current (super)GM theory insists on counter play when faced with a difficult situation because passive defense has been correctly assessed as untenable, and the sorts of complexities of position that top GM's experience are quite simply harder to wade through accurately than Capa's mounting pressure against his woebegone and timid opponents.

2. 'Lasker and Kasparov are the best because they held the title the longest.'
>In Kasparov's case this is likely a good, objective line of reasoning which stands up to criticism but with Lasker the argument completely falls apart. When Lasker was world champion there were no organized championship tournaments and players had to organize the matches and pay the fees associated themselves, or by sponsors. Lasker dodged Capablanca until war broke out and the match had to be postponed. During this time Capablanca was by far the strongest player and fittingly Alekhine prepared against him for years and years before he was officially world champion. When Capablance and Lasker finally played a WC match Lasker completely caved (though he was past his prime, granted).

3. 'Tal is the best because Fischer is really good and Tal's record against Fischer is four wins, zero losses and zero draws!'
>Despite the stupidity of this argument I see it foisted on people every week or so in youtube comments or on chess forums. Those games happened when Tal was world champ, or a world champ contender and Fischer was fourteen. Period. They never played seriously against each other when Fischer was at his prime and if they had Fischer would have obliterated Tal as evidenced by Fischers performance against Tal's and his own contemporaries whose records against Tal were median.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

This makes sense, computers play in a different (and better :) ) way than humans. If you were a sprinter it would be like training with a cheetah - demoralising, and learning how to run on four legs would interfere with your style.

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This is inaccurate. After decades of trying, computers have only recently approached humans in chess ability, mostly because of the tremendous brute forcing that modern hardware allows. For example, the Blue Gene supercomputer has "8,192 processors capable of 500 trillion floating point operations per second." [Wikipedia] Computers can do calculations much faster than humans, but they're not so good at seeing and dealing with patterns and thus skipping unnecessary calculations. AFAIK, even the top computers still need handicaps to give human grandmasters a good fight. At the game of Go, computers still aren't even close to humans.

Calidore, you're correct about computers being worse than humans at Go -- but certainly not at chess. Carlsen will lose to the best computers every time.

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haha don't talk smack about Kasparov. It must be incredibly frustrating and humiliating to spend your entire life dedicated to reaching perfection at Chess and achieve such mastery over the game... only to lose to some fourteen old kid, not that he lost there, but it happens quite frequently.

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Ha, ha, yes but he is so arrogant though! He really tried to unnerve the 13 year old by coming in late and not speaking to him, his usual sort of tricks. He must have felt a different type of pressure there facing the 13 year Carlsen. Of course he helped coach him later as he did with Anand, but Kasparov was deadly at the board and didn't like to lose, that's for sure.

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This match was utterly boring though, Carlsen was not seriously challenged, Anand just rolled over and died like everyone expected he would and I don't think Carlsen will be seriously challenged for probably at least five years.

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I also think that regrettably the days of exciting (world champion) Chess are over. Anand was unable to win a single game with e4 (or any other opening) and I don't see Carlsens contemporaries as doing much better against his sophisticated Berlin defense. Nakamura plays interesting chess of course but he would never even touch Carlsen in a world championship match were he to make it past the candidates tournament. The days of a Tal, a Morphy, an Alekhine or a Fischer are probably over and done with now that the game has reached such sophistication.

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I didn't think the match was boring. It is true that after the game 5 win it was no contest, but the edgy draws at the start looked good for Anand…if only for a while. We also learned a little about how to play rook endgames…I’m thinking about game 8 or 9 where Anand could have drawn if it weren’t for his own pawns blocking check, you know the game I mean!

I agree about the style of chess but that’s just the evolution of the game with more and more knowledge of theory and the use of computers, it is just the way it is. I agree, I don’t see anyone getting close to Carlsen for a long while. In fact I think Carlsen can get better from here as he gains experience; I don’t think he has peaked yet at all.

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Oh I also have to take issue with these statements. Carlsen is the highest rated player of all time, however ratings have been undergoing an inflation for years and years.

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Yes I know about the rating inflation and about Fischer - the way Fischer absolutely stormed the candidates etc. I did say that he was probably the best because the truth is it is hard to make that sort of assessment, different players, different eras etc. The modern players are strong because they have had the advantage of about 50 years of opening theory since Fischer and of course the use of computers. So it is very difficult to make a case for the absolute best for sure, but Carlsen is right up there as a strong favourite and he is not yet at his best I think.

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Yes unfortunately computers are well beyond even the Carlsens of this world now and have been for a while, as Nigel Short says when he plays the computer on his i-phone – ‘playing and hoping for a draw that never comes.’

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Originally Posted by Calidore

This is inaccurate. After decades of trying, computers have only recently approached humans in chess ability, mostly because of the tremendous brute forcing that modern hardware allows. For example, the Blue Gene supercomputer has "8,192 processors capable of 500 trillion floating point operations per second." [Wikipedia] Computers can do calculations much faster than humans, but they're not so good at seeing and dealing with patterns and thus skipping unnecessary calculations. AFAIK, even the top computers still need handicaps to give human grandmasters a good fight. At the game of Go, computers still aren't even close to humans.

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Saying that computers have only "approached" humans in Chess is a bit of a understatement as the current leading engine has a working rating of over 3200, some three hundred points above the current world champion and highest rated player in history.

Neely, Kasparov is also a little bit infamous for takebacks, which are well familiar to amateur players (being a move where, after played you realise it's bad/losing and immediately remove the piece from the square you placed it on), but a seriously rude gesture at top rated play.

On takebacks - yes I remember Judith Polgar said that he did it against her in one of the first games she played him, but she was a little overcome with playing against him so she didn't say anything. I think she got a draw out of the game in the end.

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Originally Posted by Neely

Personally I see chess as a bit of a blend of mathematics and art, not science. A blend of calculation and creativity. You need both to be a good player and a decent memory helps too. You also need lots of positive mental characteristics to make it, such as the ability to learn from your own mistakes (self reflection) resilience, determination, commitment etc. To compare chess to tiddlywinks is disingenuous.

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I agree, tiddlywinks is a far superior game, robots have got nowhere near beating humans. There is a world tiddlywinks championship, and it's at least being thought of as a possible olympic sport:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-pdglP7J8Y

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Originally Posted by Neely

Also there is no justification needed if one wants to pursue chess instead of more perceived 'worthy' causes.

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True, just be careful, you don't want to get to a state where a "chess intervention" is needed.

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Originally Posted by Clopin

Saying that computers have only "approached" humans in Chess is a bit of a understatement as the current leading engine has a working rating of over 3200, some three hundred points above the current world champion and highest rated player in history.

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I hadn't realized they'd come that far. Has the numerical rating translated into actual game success against the top grandmasters?

I guess the next question is, does a computer's ability to smash through strategy and nuance with brute computational power make it a "better" player?

If by 'better player' you mean 'never loses against humans', then the best computers are of course better players. They have been beating world champions since Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in the 90's.

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Originally Posted by Calidore

I hadn't realized they'd come that far. Has the numerical rating translated into actual game success against the top grandmasters?

I guess the next question is, does a computer's ability to smash through strategy and nuance with brute computational power make it a "better" player?

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I think when computers first started to really challenge humans, like in the first Deep Blue vs Kasparov match or just before that, humans would win by playing 'anti-computer' lines, more strategic positions, where the computer would take offered material for example, but end up in a worse position and lose. Now computers can't be 'fooled' in such a way, not for a long time, now they can read the board better strategically and tactically, really just better. So it's not a case I think that they just calculate with superiority over strategy, rather that they can combine the two. Endgames with six or less pieces are completely solved. Put a position with six pieces into an engine and it will show you a win or draw to 100% accuracy. They are working on seven now. With that said they still don't play like humans which means learning exclusively with their aid is not necessarily a good thing. A human needs concrete ideas to work with for choosing moves, a computer will play a move based on a +0.3 evaluation 20 moves down the line. I heard though that they are not so good at opening without having access to an opening database (or opening theory developed by human players over the centuries) well this is something I read the other day, I don't really work with chess computers that much.

The numerical rating is a very accurate predictor of results in a game yes. Something like a 2500 player will only beat a 2600 play one out of four games and as the rating increases the chances of winning dramatically decreases. Houdini I think is still the best computer with a rating around 3300+. Chances of anyone beating it in a game? Practically zero.