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Chess: Magnus Carlsen to meet top teens in pursuit of record unbeaten run:
Magnus Carlsen, the world champion, will face five opponents aged 21 or younger when he bids for a record eighth victory at Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee in January. The traditional Dutch tournament at the small windswept North Sea town is by general consensus the best all-play-all annual event on the chess calendar and the invited entry for its 2020 version is bold and imaginative.
Fabiano Caruana, the world No 2, and Wesley So, who crushed Carlsen 13.5-2.5 at Fischer Random earlier this month, are in the field, but many dedicated fans will be watching Alireza Firouzja, who at 16 is receiving rave reviews comparing the Iranian teen to the legendary attacking genius Mikhail Tal. Jeffery Xiong, 19, the No 1 US junior, also has a breakthrough opportunity.
For Carlsen, the fifth round at Wijk, which will be played on tour at Eindhoven, could be the day when he sets a world record for the longest run of classical games without defeat. The Norwegian thought he had reached his target when he surpassed Ding Liren's 100 mark but then there was publicity for the Russian-Dutch GM Sergey Tiviakov's 110 against weaker opposition. So Carlsen still needs to stay unbeaten in four games at the Grand Tour final at London Olympia on 2-8 December and his first five rounds at Wijk.
(Score: 0, Troll) by ikanreed on Tuesday November 19 2019, @06:49PM (16 children)
Aims to extend record of most successful thefts by stealing candy from babies.
You'd think he'd want to break his record in a bout against other top-tier grandmasters, not picking on high schoolers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @07:05PM (1 child)
He's realized what a mistake his career has been and how computers can and will always do it better, so he's giving these kids an education while they still have an opportunity to pick a career that will actually mean something. :-)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @07:14PM
He's a multimillionaire creating games that people will likely still be discussing and analyzing centuries from now - all the while just for playing a game he loves to play.
But you're right, he could be doing something important like working for a company to help them spam users with more ads while engaging in hashtag activism. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @07:10PM (1 child)
Your thoughts are as well conceived as usual.
Carlsen was #1 in the world at 19, world champion at 23.
Alireza Firouzja is currently #29 in the world (and is likely to move up the rankings fast).
Jeffrey Xiong is currently #33 in the world.
And, of the 14 players in the event, those two are seeded well in the bottom half - 10th and 11th.
Wijk, as always, remains a really stacked event.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:17AM
What's that saying about winning in the Special Olympics?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday November 19 2019, @07:16PM (3 children)
Um, can't figure out if this is humor or ignorance, though I'm assuming ironic humor because you're smart...
But for those who don't read the humor in it, all those "High Schoolers" are Grandmasters. The youngest GM minted to date (as mentioned in the article) was Sergey Karjakin at 12 years, 7 months.
Anyway, here's the field for Tata 2020 Masters including the young'ins. Ought to be a good tournament to watch:
Title Name Country Rating World Rank
GM Carlsen, Magnus NOR 2870 1
GM Caruana, Fabiano USA 2822 2
GM Giri, Anish NED 2776 5
GM Nepomniachtchi, Ian RUS 2773 6
GM So, Wesley USA 2760 12
GM Anand, Viswanathan IND 2757 13
GM Yu, Yangyi CHN 2753 15
GM Duda, Jan-Krzysztof POL 2748 20
GM Artemiev, Vladislav RUS 2731 25
GM Firouzja, Alireza IRI 2720 29
GM Xiong, Jeffery USA 2712 33
GM Dubov, Daniil RUS 2676 58
GM Kovalev, Vladislav BLR 2674 63
GM Van Foreest, Jorden NED 2632
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday November 19 2019, @07:19PM (2 children)
I figured that might be the case, but, no I didn't actually know they were world-class.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:00AM (1 child)
Well, like I said, I couldn't tell. :) Popular wisdom these days is that if you want your child to be a Grandmaster someday one must now start them on chess by age 4 or 5 and it needs to happen no later than the early 20s. Not quite true but enough strength in it to not make it totally false, either.
I couldn't find the data I was looking for.... so...... Just for fun I went to Wikipedia's page listing all 1889 Grandmasters since the title was awarded by FIDE, dropped out the known death dates (left me with 1694), and calculated ages (the list has birth dates because, if nowhere else, it must be listed on the title application). But it's rough because they might not have all deaths recorded and the data is only as accurate as it is.
The current age breakdown (as above, the earliest GM became one at age 12 years 7 months) is:
12-14: 3
15-20: 65
21-25: 117
26-30: 204
31-35: 243
36-40: 203
41-45: 188
46-50: 177
51-55: 159
56-60: 133
61-65: 77
66-70: 47
71-75: 34
76-80: 19
81-85: 12
86-90: 7
91+: 6
Then I saw where I could see what year they were made Grandmaster, so here's the list by how old when the person became a GM (Rough, since it only has the year that one was made Grandmaster, not tournament date at last norm granting or the 'official' date of Grandmaster award which would be that year's FIDE annual meeting IIRC):
12-14: 43
15-20: 494
21-25: 483
26-30: 330
31-35: 191
36-40: 86
41-45: 34
46-50: 16
51-55: 5
56-60: 6
61-65: 1
66-70: 0
71-75: 0
76-80: 0
81-85: 0
86-90: 1
91+: 4
(Keeping in mind that FIDE did award some people GM titles posthumously, and the winner of the World Junior and World Senior tournaments is made a GM by fiat).
Finally, experience as a GM to today in years (i.e. GM date to now in years, again rough):
0-4: 251
5-9: 253
10-14: 336
15-20: 298
21-25: 211
26-30: 150
31-35: 76
36-40: 33
41-45: 54
46-50: 17
51-55: 6
56-60: 3
61-65: 5
66-70: 1
Yeah, this definitely proves it: I need a life. Especially when you consider I suck at chess, although I do direct chess tournaments fairly well if I do say so myself.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:21AM
Coincidentally very similar to the age distribution at which they lost their virginity.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 19 2019, @07:20PM (7 children)
21 is hardly high school - as a young player I'd love to have the chance to play the world champion in a forum like this, even if I might expect a thorough trouncing, just to have the chance is an honor; and though it's unlikely, it's far from impossible to think that some under 21 players have a shot at beating the world champion.
It's also a good to "mix up" the field... thinking of Starcraft now, some cheeseball strategies played in the bronze league can actually defeat gold level players, if they're not sufficiently on guard looking for them. Chess doesn't have as much hidden information as Starcraft, but the same principle can apply: top level players may become set in their top level ways and actually be vulnerable to some of the tricks that up and coming players have up their sleeves.
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(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @07:40PM
That actually happened to some guy I heard about. His opponent got completely flummoxed and didn't know how to respond to a Queen to Queen's Level 3.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:16AM (5 children)
Kind of like this commercial for AltaVista? [youtube.com] :) (It's really grainy in my browser... but ex World Champion Garry Kasparov is giving a simultaneous exhibition playing 20 or so players at once, then stops in front of a kid... and grabs a chair and sits down. Then it shows the AltaVista search box, "How do I beat Kasparov's Evans Gambit?") Still funny today.
But seriously, chess skill does not respect age (although older players almost invariably do go through some decline in rating if they keep playing). That said, chess is by theory a game of perfect information - all information is displayed to all and it should be possible to have an objective assessment of a game at any given point (again theoretically). There have been Grandmaster blunders, certainly. And players at that level can and do study their competition's games to assess them for weaknesses (again, having GM level skills of analysis in doing so). But generally GM's against untitled players in 1 on 1 play.... I can't recall any instance of that occurring - of course it really doesn't happen that often. Simuls, sure. But not 1-1.
That said, GM's do lose games. Winning 2 of 3 games is a pretty good record for a Grandmaster. Of course, they win those games against players of roughly equal rating. And there's a huge load of draws in that environment as well.
Sorry - I like talking chess. :)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday November 20 2019, @10:17AM (1 child)
More so, they'll have a *team* of advisers at GM level to assist them. Having said that, nowadays probably all you need is a computer and Komodo or Stockfish.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:43PM
Often, yes. And sometimes the full team members aren't revealed, so that the other side doesn't have that information. GM Magnus Carlsen has used 4-7 Grandmaster seconds at each World Chapmionship match during and since his successful bids. It's also been said that he's leased time on supercomputers to run analysis using engines. The only limitation there is that the engines, while generally recognized as being stronger than any human (they aren't truly parallel but one has to reach number 82 on the CCRL 40/40 list [computerchess.org.uk] before getting to Carlsen's FIDE Elo rating), are still running algorithms designed by humans. Grandmasters still beat computers by finding board conditions that the engine rates as inferior but have advantages. Still, a very useful force enhancer for confirming or rejecting potential strategies especially in deep opening variations or midgames.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 20 2019, @11:45AM (2 children)
Computers have proven now: strategy and tricks are useless, any mistake will result in defeat when your opponent has unlimited time/resources/processing power per move.
However, (disclaimer: I'm unfamiliar with modern top level tournament play) I'd really like to see a stratified ranking system with more emphasis on time per move. In this respect, humans could (fairly, in my opinion) be granted a handicap against computers, but for human vs human play: a 30 minute per move championship, a 10 minute per move championship, 3 minutes per move, 1 minute per move, 20 seconds per move, and even 5 seconds per move. I prefer the Fischer time rules, with something like a 10x maximum "bank" of saved time. As for the computers, I think it would be interesting to convert the human brain caloric consumption (during play) to watt-hours and grant the computers instead of equal time, roughly equivalent energy per move to the human players.
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(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:29PM (1 child)
Any mistake could mean a loss, true, and perfect play by both sides should (in theory) always lead to a draw. But remember that the computers are still applying algorithms written by humans to assess what the state of a board is and then use their speed to assess multiple boards. (It's not uncommon for a current computer to run between 10 and 40 million possible board variations per non-book move, several million just for a simple move). Modern Grandmasters try to take advantage of this by finding board configurations that a computer might calculate as suboptimal but have some advantage the computer hasn't been programmed to recognize.
There are both long-term and blitz championships. The FIDE World Blitz Championship is played at something like 3 minutes plus 2 seconds for each move (although I don't follow blitz much). What is referred to as "the" World Championship has been pretty similar for a very long time. The regulation for the 2020 match is: Each side gets two hours to complete the first forty moves, sixty minutes is then added after completion to complete the next twenty moves, then after move 60 another fifteen minutes is added per side with an addition 30 seconds added per move. The idea being that while one can't take all day, nevertheless a player should have considerable time to be able to think.
If the main event ends up in a draw (7-7 over 14 games) it moves to tie breaking games. Four games played at 25 minutes plus 10 seconds increment with first white by draw. If that ends up 2-2 then they play two games at 5 minutes plus 3 seconds increment and alternating colors each game. This 2-game match is repeated five times if necessary (five separate two game matches) and if all five matches are drawn 1-1 they then play a sudden death game (aka an "armageddon" game). The sudden death game colors are drawn by lot, white receives 5 minutes and black receives 4 minutes, and 2 seconds per move is added after move 60. If this game is drawn then black wins (i.e. white is forced to play for the win to get the title but gets an extra minute of thinking time to try to break black). Most major level tournaments, unable to extend matches indefinitely anymore, have some similar type of play of rapid game tiebreaks followed by an armageddon game. Some tournaments allow the players to 'bid' down black's time in order to receive the advantage of getting black (playing defense).
Incrementing time per move (Fischer time) is generally the standard for FIDE and international play. In the US delay, where one is given a countdown (typically 5 seconds for games over 30 minutes per side) time starts coming off but nothing is added to the base time, is still very popular (I think more popular than Increment, so long as the tournament is not being rated internationally). There are no top limits to the increment, however. If one considers that the longest recorded game was 269 moves under rules that no longer apply, and 240 is the next highest, and games over 150 moves are exceedingly uncommon, one might reach a theoretical maximum. The 269 mover took a little over 20 hours to play, but a 150-mover calculated by the rules above cannot go over 4 hours maximum per side. In practice the longest games still typically take 6-7 hours.
The biggest challenge is getting the players to actually go for a win. In Grandmaster play the main incentive is "don't lose" rather than "try to win," and as such there are a lot of draws in play. It's hard to get the player to try and risk loss to get the win, unless the player is certain (relatively) that a certain move will lead to a win - typically because the variation has already been analyzed by the player beforehand and then reconfirmed at the board before committing. To try and combat that, some events follow "Sofia rules," named after the location where they were first seriously employed. Normally (like in the championship) a win counts for 1 point, a draw 1/2 point for each player, and a loss 0. Sofia rules count a win as 3 points and a draw as 1, thus giving a greater reward in standing to players who gain wins. But this variation has never been terribly popular.
Human brain caloric consumption would be interesting to try and figure. Anecdotally, Garry Kasparov said he could lose something like 10-15 pounds during a top-level tournament and IIRC he might take a little walk or something but no strenous exercise. One might do that by comparing caloric consumption and weight loss before, during, and after tournaments to establish player baselines and then average them. But I fear what would be found is that the computer is a much more effective machine from the start - yes the power supply must run the whole computer but it doesn't have to run a body on top of it. :)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:13AM
The algorithm that started beating world champion Go players is Monte Carlo Tree Search [wikipedia.org], and in its most recent forms, this algorithm is not only beating top human Go players, but also Chess and Shogi, with only basic programming of the rules: what is and what is not a legal move, and no other library or strategy programming.
I haven't done a deep dive into AlphaZero or KataGo [github.com] but the 90,000 foot view is: they use random play, I believe sometimes in combination with minimax, to train neural networks. So, much like humans, that training phase is very computationally expensive, but the actual play is relatively efficient and fast.
Thanks, my attention span is dwindling as the years go on, but I don't think I ever had enough patience to spend a full 3 minutes considering a chess move - which is probably why I never achieved more than about 1800 ranking at my peak - at my current attention span capabilities I'm down much closer to 1200. But, when you put the clock around 15/60 seconds Fischer time, I do relatively better since that is well matched to my "interest level" in the game.
Contrast with Go, where 300+ moves are possible, though higher level players can usually forecast the final outcome long before the board fills, and uncertainty diminishes significantly as the board fills, usually leading to faster play.
Philosophically, that's an appropriate final analysis for the "game of Kings," though, I doubt the game's original designer knew this would be the case. Almost like WOPR and Global Thermonuclear War: the only way to win is not to play...
Go implemented something similar not so long ago [wikipedia.org] with Komi: 6.5 or 7.5 points (Japanese or Chinese rules) to the white (second) player to force black to make more aggressive choices, since it was generally agreed that black enjoys a clear advantage over white due to moving first.
I think back in the Deep Blue days, humans would have beat the computer handily even giving the computer the whole body caloric consumption budget. Today, with neural networks implemented on power efficient dedicated architectures, I think the humans are in deep trouble, even just counting the extra energy consumed for play above baseline consumption. Still - ratios could be established and pushing the computers ever lower in total power budgets while they still attempted to maintain a certain level of play would be a neat way to make it interesting to play against computers again. As it is now, a cellphone is a depressingly omniscient opponent.
🌻🌻 [google.com]