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posted by martyb on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the You-sunk-my-battleship!-oh,-wait... dept.

By the time the end came, the two duelling grandmasters had been dancing in New York for nearly three weeks. But Magnus Carlsen, the 26-year-old Norwegian prodigy, kept his crown as chess's world champion, emerging victorious in rapid tiebreakers after a dogged challenge from Sergey Karjakin, a Russian prodigy of the same age. In doing so Mr Carlsen, who won the title from Viswanathan Anand, an Indian grandmaster, in 2013, solidified his claim as the strongest chess player in history. He has already broken Garry Kasparov's record for highest chess rating ever.


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by quintessence on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:41PM

    by quintessence (6227) on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:41PM (#436658)
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @10:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @10:11PM (#436666)

    Nice finish. Anyone who has spent time playing chess can appreciate Carlsen's winning move. [slate.com]

    It's debatable whether the move deserves two exclamations. Sure is pretty though.

    • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Sunday December 04 2016, @12:10AM

      by richtopia (3160) on Sunday December 04 2016, @12:10AM (#436706) Homepage Journal

      Thanks for the link, the end of the article really helps visualize the final move to someone not familiar with competitive chess.

    • (Score: 1) by charon on Sunday December 04 2016, @12:17AM

      by charon (5660) on Sunday December 04 2016, @12:17AM (#436709) Journal
      I am only a dabbler at chess, but I know enough to see how really splendid that move is. And of course I would never have seen or used it myself.
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @06:06AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @06:06AM (#436790)

        That knockout combination reminds me of two famous games from the 19th century won by Adolf Anderssen, the Immortal Game and the Evergreen Game. You might want to look them up; each has multiple presentations online.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @04:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @04:11PM (#436905)

      Like the article mentions, it's not even Qh6 that's the amazing move but Rc8+ several moves back. He had to foresee a variety of different defensive possibilities for black. Kh7 (which allows the Qh6+) was just one of them. Look at the position and if white doesn't immediately mate black in this position he's losing by force himself with black ready to give checkmate as well. Oh and he had less than 2 minutes remaining on the clock when he played the combination start a few moves back with Rc8+!!

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @10:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @10:49PM (#436678)

    in my rectum

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:09AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:09AM (#436717)

    Thank you, Magnus Carlsen, for putting the robots and computers in their place!

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:32AM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:32AM (#436724) Journal

    Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in the late 90s. The next couple of champs scraped some draws against the computers. Hardware has only gotten faster in the near 20 years since, making those world champ beating machines even stronger. The top human players don't even try to beat the computers any more. They know they can't.

    Looks like Go is next, maybe already done with Google's AlphaGo beating Lee Sedol.

    Poker? Computing the odds exactly from the known cards is pretty easy for a computer. Coupled with an optimal betting strategy, they're poised to dethrone humans from the championship position of that game.

    And checkers? Not just better than every human. Perfect! They solved checkers, and now we know the game is a draw with perfect play.

    We gotta move on to some newer games. I mean chess is only how old, nearly 1500 years? And Go is even older. But... computers can play video games very well too. Ability to do a perfect replay takes a player a long ways in many of the classic arcade games.

    Another century will probably see AI that can learn the rules to a game it hasn't seen before, and in just a few hours be able to play it better than the best human players even though they have years of experience and study.

    Wouldn't count on sports being safe from this. In the near term future, will have a robot football team that can easily crush the Superbowl champions and robot soccer teams that can do the same to the World Cup winners. and robot tennis and golf players that can sweep all the greatest players of those sports right off the lists of top ten performances. They may manage a score of 18 on an 18 hole course, thus showing that golf is broken, for them.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @04:37PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @04:37PM (#436911)
      A robot NFL team could literally crush its human opponents. But it won't happen because it won't make $$$$$$$.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:35AM (#436725)

    Bobby Fischer in his brief prime would have beaten either one of these guys with ease.