Chess
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Just kicked off this morning NZT. Not sure if it's the right place on a sports forum, but hey
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I dont know either, but it doesnt feel right to leave this with no responses...
😉
As an aside, good but nerdy article published today about the AI Google developed that is the clear dominant force in chess. Uses less computational power apparently, and learns to think "like a human ".
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12 games - one point for a win, half a point for a draw.
Winner needs six and half points to take the title.
Game one was drawn after Fabiano Caruana (white) played his 115th move but only after Magnus Carlsen (black) erred on his 40th move in a superior position.
Prize fund is one million pounds with the winner taking home 600,000 pounds.
Carlsen is not only defending his title, but is also the current number one on the ranking list with a rating of 2835 points. Caruana is currently number two with 2832 points.
In 2014 Carlsen had the highest ever rating in chess history of 2882, going past Garry Kasparov's 2851 in 1999.
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Game 2 was a draw. This time Carlsen was white and Caruana Black. Only 49 moves this time.
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I played in the English School Championship when I was 14. I remember playing a 9 year old (when most people were 17-18 and being completely psyched out that he must a child prodigy (he was). He played chess while holding a teddy bear he was attached to. He beat me, but I played bad chess. The teddy bear freaked me out.
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@mn5 said in World Chess Championship 2018:
My 8 year old has joined the chess club at school.
....and he beat me.
I'm equally proud ( of him ) and ashamed ( of myself )
I only ever beat my father at chess once. I was about 12. After I beat him he refused to ever play me again. To be fair to him, I was quite a good player in those days.
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@damo said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@mn5 said in World Chess Championship 2018:
My 8 year old has joined the chess club at school.
....and he beat me.
I'm equally proud ( of him ) and ashamed ( of myself )
I only ever beat my father at chess once. I was about 12. After I beat him he refused to ever play me again. To be fair to him, I was quite a good player in those days.
I downloaded one of those chess apps on my phone and annoyingly the levels progress from piss easy to impossible in one step so I pretty much gave up. The computer wasted me easily every time.
It is a great game though, the length and breadth of the moves that the top guys have is just staggering.
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@mn5 said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@damo said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@mn5 said in World Chess Championship 2018:
My 8 year old has joined the chess club at school.
....and he beat me.
I'm equally proud ( of him ) and ashamed ( of myself )
I only ever beat my father at chess once. I was about 12. After I beat him he refused to ever play me again. To be fair to him, I was quite a good player in those days.
I downloaded one of those chess apps on my phone and annoyingly the levels progress from piss easy to impossible in one step so I pretty much gave up. The computer wasted me easily every time.
It is a great game though, the length and breadth of the moves that the top guys have is just staggering.
Playing other people is much better than playing a computer. It is hard for a computer to play like a realistic beginner.
There are tonnes of live player chess games online that you could play if you desired.
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@damo said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@mn5 said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@damo said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@mn5 said in World Chess Championship 2018:
My 8 year old has joined the chess club at school.
....and he beat me.
I'm equally proud ( of him ) and ashamed ( of myself )
I only ever beat my father at chess once. I was about 12. After I beat him he refused to ever play me again. To be fair to him, I was quite a good player in those days.
I downloaded one of those chess apps on my phone and annoyingly the levels progress from piss easy to impossible in one step so I pretty much gave up. The computer wasted me easily every time.
It is a great game though, the length and breadth of the moves that the top guys have is just staggering.
Playing other people is much better than playing a computer. It is hard for a computer to play like a realistic beginner.
There are tonnes of live player chess games online that you could play if you desired.
Yeah wouldn't mind getting back into it ( if only to beat my son haahaha )
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@mn5 said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@damo said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@mn5 said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@damo said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@mn5 said in World Chess Championship 2018:
My 8 year old has joined the chess club at school.
....and he beat me.
I'm equally proud ( of him ) and ashamed ( of myself )
I only ever beat my father at chess once. I was about 12. After I beat him he refused to ever play me again. To be fair to him, I was quite a good player in those days.
I downloaded one of those chess apps on my phone and annoyingly the levels progress from piss easy to impossible in one step so I pretty much gave up. The computer wasted me easily every time.
It is a great game though, the length and breadth of the moves that the top guys have is just staggering.
Playing other people is much better than playing a computer. It is hard for a computer to play like a realistic beginner.
There are tonnes of live player chess games online that you could play if you desired.
Yeah wouldn't mind getting back into it ( if only to beat my son haahaha )
Started playing a bit with my boy recently, but it's hard work after a day at work.
This guy (John Bartholemew) has some really good tips and introductions fo rpeople. Well worth a watch.
John Bartholomew
Greetings! My name is IM John Bartholomew (FIDE: 2446, USCF: 2534). I'm a 36 year-old chess professional from Minnesota, USA, and I post instructional chess content and bullet/blitz/standard videos recorded on popular sites like Chess.com, ICC, and lichess.org...
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@frank said in World Chess Championship 2018:
Woody Harrelson, the good, old raw food vegan yoga practicing Southern boy, whose estranged father was a hit-man.
I'm betting that's not the first 'joke' Woody's had that just goes CLAAANG!!!!
disclaimer: I do the same thing from time to time
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@frank said in World Chess Championship 2018:
I played in the English School Championship when I was 14. I remember playing a 9 year old (when most people were 17-18 and being completely psyched out that he must a child prodigy (he was). He played chess while holing a teddy bear he was attached to. He beat me, but I played bad chess. The teddy bear freaked me out.
This may be the best post of the year! It really is brilliant.
It rivals one of @mariner4life posts on something which I forget now. But I do remember laughing loudly.
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@frank said in World Chess Championship 2018:
So I googled the teddy bear guy. Turns out he is now indeed a chess wizard.
Adam Hunt. Now has a rating of "International Master" FIDE rating 2401.
He was born in 1980, so was 9 at the time I played him.His gingerness is quite striking.
Good work Frank, this story is the Chess equivalent of being fended/trampled/stepped/smashed by ( insert famous Rugby player name here ) at college
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I made the semi finals of a local chess comp one time - I don't know how, still to this day I really don't know the tactics of chess. I came up against private schoolboys in the early rounds and was beaten by a little Maori kid two years younger than me who went to a school in my era that was crazy good at chess.
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@nepia said in World Chess Championship 2018:
I made the semi finals of a local chess comp one time - I don't know how, still to this day I really don't know the tactics of chess. I came up against private schoolboys in the early rounds and was beaten by a little Maori kid two years younger than me who went to a school in my era that was crazy good at chess.
Was there no spacies at the FnC shop in the Bay ?
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@mn5 said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@nepia said in World Chess Championship 2018:
I made the semi finals of a local chess comp one time - I don't know how, still to this day I really don't know the tactics of chess. I came up against private schoolboys in the early rounds and was beaten by a little Maori kid two years younger than me who went to a school in my era that was crazy good at chess.
Was there no spacies at the FnC shop in the Bay ?
You don't risk going to the FnC in our hood.
Nah, one of the primary schools in the hood just focused on chess as their before and after school activity so they played it all the time and kicked butt.
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@nepia said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@mn5 said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@nepia said in World Chess Championship 2018:
I made the semi finals of a local chess comp one time - I don't know how, still to this day I really don't know the tactics of chess. I came up against private schoolboys in the early rounds and was beaten by a little Maori kid two years younger than me who went to a school in my era that was crazy good at chess.
Was there no spacies at the FnC shop in the Bay ?
You don't risk going to the FnC in our hood.
Nah, one of the primary schools in the hood just focused on chess as their before and after school activity so they played it all the time and kicked butt.
True. You'd go in and your car would be on blocks before they'd even battered your fish
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Coincidentally, I'm just re-reading "Bobby Fischer goes to war".
The book reckons that when Spassky became world champion he was living in a one room apartment with his wife, his mother, his sister and his brother - that was 14 sq metres. Once he was world champion he was eligible for an upgrade to a two bedroom 28 sq metre "palace"!
Solution to the housing crisis right there!
Vote Communist Party!
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@chris-b said in World Chess Championship 2018:
Coincidentally, I'm just re-reading "Bobby Fischer goes to war".
The book reckons that when Spassky became world champion he was living in a one room apartment with his wife, his mother, his sister and his brother - that was 14 sq metres. Once he was world champion he was eligible for an upgrade to a two bedroom 28 sq metre "palace"!
Solution to the housing crisis right there!
Vote Communist Party!
Chris - if you can, see if you can get a copy of the book Bobby Fischer vs the rest of the world.
it came out in 1974 and was written by a journalist Brad Darrach. Darrach was a writer for Life magazine and had some access to Fischer's inner circle during 1972 when Fischer took the title from Spassky.
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That John Bartholomew dude is great. Am enjoying the 30 minute summaries of each game.
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@hooroo said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@frank said in World Chess Championship 2018:
I played in the English School Championship when I was 14. I remember playing a 9 year old (when most people were 17-18 and being completely psyched out that he must a child prodigy (he was). He played chess while holing a teddy bear he was attached to. He beat me, but I played bad chess. The teddy bear freaked me out.
This may be the best post of the year! It really is brilliant.
It rivals one of @mariner4life posts on something which I forget now. But I do remember laughing loudly.
Something to do with a dildo in M4L's mouth, perhaps?
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@billy-tell said in World Chess Championship 2018:
That John Bartholomew dude is great. Am enjoying the 30 minute summaries of each game.
he's good isn't he, really accessible for all levels
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@smudge said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@hooroo said in World Chess Championship 2018:
@frank said in World Chess Championship 2018:
I played in the English School Championship when I was 14. I remember playing a 9 year old (when most people were 17-18 and being completely psyched out that he must a child prodigy (he was). He played chess while holing a teddy bear he was attached to. He beat me, but I played bad chess. The teddy bear freaked me out.
This may be the best post of the year! It really is brilliant.
It rivals one of @mariner4life posts on something which I forget now. But I do remember laughing loudly.
Something to do with a dildo in M4L's mouth, perhaps?
Or indeed @Hooroo s old fella ?
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Very unusual for Black to have such a large (theoretical) advantage in these events - the usual plan is to aim to win as White and draw as Black (although at top level, most games are drawn).
I suspect Carlsen will retain but with relatively short matches (12 games compared to 24 in Fischer and Kasparov's era), his edge is smaller than it would be in longer matches.
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@damo said in World Chess Championship 2018:
10 games; 10 draws. Only one or two of which have been interesting games.
Has chess at the top level become too well analyzed?
Bobby Fischer thought so. In the 1990's he said it was all played out with chess computers doing all the work and players just having to memorise what the computer found, rather than players themselves thinking out improvements or new moves in openings during a game or in preparation.
Fischer's solution to this, after his return match against Spassky in 1992, was for each player to shuffle his backrow pieces in any order they like before the game, so that it would have to truly be thinking by player's over the board rather than coming to games prepared for any opening from previous computer analysis. He called the new setup Fischerandom.
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Fischer Random (aka Chess960) is an answer, and it's quite popular in pockets in Europe, but top level chess has always resulted a lot of draws, particularly world championship matches where the competitors are close in strength. I don't think computers are specifically to blame - the first Karpov-Kasparov match in 1984 was abandoned with the score at 5-3 after 48 games including two runs of 17 and 14 draws in a row (at that time, the winner was the first to win 6 games so draws weren't counted) and replaced with a 24 game match in 1985 which Kasparov won 13-11 including draws. Overall, Kasparov and Karpov played 5 world championship matches between 1984 and 1990 for a score in Kasparov's favour of 21 wins, 19 losses, and 104 draws in 144 games. Computers were part of Kasparov's preparation as soon as chess database software was available, but that wasn't until 1987 (and the playing strength of chessplaying software was still well below the top humans).
One of the issues current world championship matches face is that as a 12 game match, a loss can easily be fatal no matter how early it happens because the opponent will be very hard to beat to get it back to even, and a relatively long run of draws is quite possible. Also, because there are now rapid and lightning playoffs (in Kasparov's day and before, a drawn match meant the champion retained), there is less incentive to play to win the match in the standard time control as drawing the main match means a better split of the prize fund.
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@godder said in World Chess Championship 2018:
Fischer Random (aka Chess960) is an answer, and it's quite popular in pockets in Europe, but top level chess has always resulted a lot of draws, particularly world championship matches where the competitors are close in strength. I don't think computers are specifically to blame - the first Karpov-Kasparov match in 1984 was abandoned with the score at 5-3 after 48 games including two runs of 17 and 14 draws in a row (at that time, the winner was the first to win 6 games so draws weren't counted) and replaced with a 24 game match in 1985 which Kasparov won 13-11 including draws. Overall, Kasparov and Karpov played 5 world championship matches between 1984 and 1990 for a score in Kasparov's favour of 21 wins, 19 losses, and 104 draws in 144 games. Computers were part of Kasparov's preparation as soon as chess database software was available, but that wasn't until 1987 (and the playing strength of chessplaying software was still well below the top humans).
One of the issues current world championship matches face is that as a 12 game match, a loss can easily be fatal no matter how early it happens because the opponent will be very hard to beat to get it back to even, and a relatively long run of draws is quite possible. Also, because there are now rapid and lightning playoffs (in Kasparov's day and before, a drawn match meant the champion retained), there is less incentive to play to win the match in the standard time control as drawing the main match means a better split of the prize fund.
Yeah, agree with this Godder.
12 games is just too short. You can see why Fischer only wanted wins to count in 1975, the only drawback being unlimited games, which is the opposite end to a 12-game match.
The wins only counting was okay in 1978 and 1981 but when Karpov and Kasparov met in 1984 it went to the extreme. Kasparov was 4-0 down after 9 games and 5-0 down after 27, before it was eventually called off at 5-3 after 48 games.
It wasn't so much that there was 40 draws it was the fact that 23 of them were under 30 moves each, and the average was just 29 moves per player in the 40 draws.
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Carlsen 2-0 in the playoffs. Deadlock has been broken. Carlsen only needs a Draw as White in Game 3 to retain the title:
Carlsen defeats Caruana to retain World Chess Championship in tie-breakers – as it happened
Magnus Carlsen has retained the world chess championship with a series of decisive victories in Wednesday’s tie-breakers against Fabiano Caruana
World Chess Championship 2018 - Wikipedia
