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Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision

185 points by mindgam3 8y ago

mindgam3 8y ago
Ladies, if he: - doesn’t return your texts - doesn’t comment on your pics - offers a draw in a clearly superior position just as his opponent gets into time trouble in the final round of the World Chess Championships - says he “doesn’t care” at the press conference when informed that all chess playing engines, grandmasters, and rank amateurs could see that he had a dominating position - was previously legendary for his ruthless fighting spirit, grinding out wins against supergrandmasters with much less to work with - is Norwegian He’s not your man. He’s reigning World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen, only one more misstep away from losing his crown to Fabiano Caruana. #GoFabi
- mdallastella 8y ago
  Carlsen is not in the shape he used to be and I can understand his choice. I don't like his attitude, but he has all the rights to manage its tournament the way he thinks best.
  - mindgam3 8y ago
    Sure. I don’t like his attitude either, which is why I’m rooting for Fabi. I understand he has the right to manage the tournament as he sees fit. I just don’t understand the logic of not even trying to push for a few more moves. Low risk, high reward given his huge time advantage.
    - ubernostrum 8y ago
      It's a little more complicated than that. Yes, he was in a position that both engines and human grandmasters said was superior, with time pressure. But there's no clear line to force difficult moves for Caruana before the time control kicks in after move 40, and then it's a whole new game; Caruana gets a fresh 50 minutes on the clock and can potentially fight his way to an exhausting draw. Plus there's the risk that any blunder -- and remember this is coming in a crowded, grindy-looking middlegame -- loses the championship. From that spot, it makes sense for Carlsen to try to go straight to the tiebreak games where he feels he's more strongly favored.
    - ubernostrum 8y ago
      We now have a little more data courtesy of chess.com's computer tournament. Starting from the final position of Game 12, the engines have played 18 games to completion against each other, with more to come. 10 draws, 6 wins for Black and 2 for White. Both of the wins for White picked up the game from the point of the draw with 32. Qa3 Rb8 and continued with White, soon after, aiming to play Nd1 and Nc3 (Stockfish went for those on moves 34 and 35, Ethereal on moves 35 and 37). This is apparently exactly the line Carlsen said he was worrying about. The position also seems to present some pretty tricky endgames. Laser, which has a rating 300 points higher than Carlsen's and gets to play with tablebase, managed to lose as Black that way. (Caruana also suggested he might have tried to get a knight to e6; the engines have drawn a few times starting with that line)
      - mindgam3 8y ago
        The major problem with using the chess.com data is they don't take into account the time factor. When Magnus offered, the draw, Fabi had exactly 15min 42sec time remaining to play the next 10 moves. That's less than 2 minutes per move, versus Magnus having between 2x-3x that amount. It is hard to understand just how significant of a handicap this is unless you've ever played competitive chess at a national or international level. The human mind starts to break down and freeze up when it is forced to make critical decisions in limited time. This was already starting to happen in the game leading up to the draw offer, as Caruana took more and more time as his positioning was worsening. The end result of this is one player being forced to make a rapid series of moves in a "time scramble" while the other player has the luxury of checking and rechecking his calculations. This gives the player with more time a massive advantage in practice. We're talking at least 100-200 rating points. If chess.com wanted to do a fair analysis, they should have handicapped the White computer with 3-4x less compute time. I guarantee the results would have been significantly more favorable for Black then they already were.
        ubernostrum 8y ago
        Caruana's been under time pressure over and over and over in this match, and blundered his way into zero losses as a result. Time pressure is practically where he lives, because of how much time he spends calculating. The idea that he's suddenly going to completely forget how to play when the clock is running low doesn't hold water. Especially when he wasn't facing any immediate threat on the board; the advantage for Black was there, but it was theoretical/positional, and was going to take significant work to convert into a result, or even into lines that would make Caruana have to sweat through the next series of moves. And the engine games keep showing that all of Black's advantage can be thrown away with one or two inaccurate moves even very soon after the draw occurred; Carlsen's well within his rights to decide not to risk that just to try to toy with his opponent.
- enneff 8y ago
  > says he “doesn’t care” at the press conference when informed that all chess playing engines, grandmasters, and rank amateurs could see that he had a dominating position This response was to a question that only mentioned the engine, not the other embellishments you added. It was a stupid question. The engines can always see something that humans cannot. Magnus is one of the best chess players in the world, playing against his strongest competitor, and he didn’t see a path to a win from that position. Why should he care if the engine could?
- ggggtez 8y ago
  Please don't post your bad comedy routine here.
scrooched_moose 8y ago
If anyone doesn't know, "Armageddon" is a type of chess game that guarantees a victor; it's not just a click-bait title. It's the last tiebreaker after a series of other Rapid and Blitz games. (all this is covered, just way at the end of the article) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess#Armageddon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess#Armageddon fivethirtyeight has been covering the tournament and their rough calculation gives it a 1:5000 chance of making it to the Armageddon game, based on Carlesen's superior Rapid and Blitz rankings. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decision-has-sent-the-world-chess-championship-to-overtime/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decisi...
- z92 8y ago
  Armageddon : "the players proceed to a single game of Armageddon, where the parameters are set to so far as possible give each side a 50-percent chance of winning—White gets 5 minutes, Black gets 4 minutes, and a draw will make Black the World Champion."
  - tux1968 8y ago
    That really seems to favor black by a rather large margin. Wonder if there are any stats on the win ratios for each color in this format. And how do they decide who get's each color?
    - oh_sigh 8y ago
      It doesn't though, because black has 20% less time than white.
      - tux1968 8y ago
        Yeah, but these guys blitz out great moves like crazy, I just don't think an extra minute is enough time to capitalize on any slight inaccuracies induced by the time pressure black is under. I could be wrong of course, which is why I was interested to know if there are any win ratios for the format around.
lazyant 8y ago
In past World Chess Championships when they finished tied with points the current champion retained the title, which I found disappointing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1987#1987_Championship_match https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1987#...
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  The effectively cointoss plan for this tourney isn't better. They should accept co-titles for equally matched players
  - nic_wilson 8y ago
    I like this idea but not sure how that would work in the format of the World Chess Championship.
  - tedeh 8y ago
    At the next tournament, two challengers are presented to the two champions with a co-title. Imagine they also tie all their matches; now the world has four reigning chess champions!
    - adrianN 8y ago
      Well, if they all play equally well, what's the problem?
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  I believe Carlsen is on record as disliking the current format. The way it works right now, the reigning champion does nothing until a challenger has earned the right to face him by winning a candidates tournament. Then the winner of the candidates tournament faces the reigning champion in a match for the title. Carlsen, as I understand it, would prefer that the champion take part in a tournament. The women's championship (also played this month) does feature a tournament. 64 players were seeded, and played single-elimination two-game matches (with rapid games as tiebreakers). The final two players then faced each other in a four-game match (again with rapid games as potential tiebreakers). The final did go to tiebreaks, and was won by defending and now repeat champion Ju Wenjun.
gregorymichael 8y ago
tl;dr after 11 draws, Carlsen offered a draw from a superior position in the final game to head into the short-format tiebreaks, where: > he is ranked No. 1 in all three formats (classical, rapid, and blitz). Caruana is ranked 10th and 18th in rapid and blitz respectively. Critics are appalled that he didn't fight for the win out of sense of honor. I don't see how this is different than, for instance, fouling at the end of a basketball game. Hard to blame a player for working within the rules to put himself into a position where he feels he has a greater chance of keeping the title. "It's not the critic who counts...."
- mindgam3 8y ago
  What I don’t understand is why Carlsen didn’t push for even a few more moves. Fabi was running out time, it was low risk for him to probe a little more and see if he could get something a little more decisive.
  - gregorymichael 8y ago
    I don't understand either. But Carlsen was in the seat for all 12 games, and he knows what was going on in his own head. Maybe he was simply exhausted and didn't trust his decision. Maybe that particular position gave him difficulty in a match four years ago. For whatever reason, the best chess player in the world decided that offering the draw was his best move in that moment.
    - mindgam3 8y ago
      I tend to agree. The most plausible reason I can think of is a combination of him being supremely confident in his rapid skills + being a bit afraid of Caruana in classical. But his lack of confidence in himself in classical is not a good sign going into the blitz. The best chess player in the world got there by using good judgment when it comes to selective aggression. We’ll find out tomorrow if this was a brilliant move to fend off a challenger or the beginning of the end...
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      Is it possible he gets paid per game by a sponsor and was confident he could push through and win ... just as an alternative option. If he were a narcissist, another option would be to bask a little more in the limelight. Just throwing these out there, as we really don't know his motivation.
jeffreyrogers 8y ago
An alternative opinion for why Carlsen offered the game 12 draw: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/11/game-12-draw.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/11/ga...
- rtkwe 8y ago
  Another is that Carlsen is very good at rapid (Carlsen 2880 vs Caruana 2789) and blitz (2939 vs 2767) formats compared Caruana so it makes sense to just take things to the tiebreakers where Carlsen has a significant advantage. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decision-has-sent-the-world-chess-championship-to-overtime/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decisi...
  - cjbprime 8y ago
    > So it actually is a draw! (sort of) There's been a tournament of top engines playing out the position after the draw -- I think black (Carlsen) won 11 games and white won 2 games, with the rest draws. So this declaration of the lack of advantage just isn't true. > just take things to the tiebreakers where Carlsen has a significant advantage. But he had a significant advantage on the board, too. The question is the magnitude of the advantages. Caruana has previously been a world blitz champion too, so it seems unlikely that any advantage would be more than 60%-40% to Carlsen. Which seems smaller than the advantage we see from the computer tournament results.
    - rtkwe 8y ago
      Just take a look at their relative rankings though. Caruana may have previously been blitz champion but his current blitz elo is ~170 points lower than Carlsen who iirc is the current blitz champion. I'd like to see that same process repeated for all the other draws from the points of highest advantage and right before the draw too if we're going to be using it to evaluate the decision to draw. Not sure how closely the computer tournament reflects the actual progression we've seen from Carlsen and Caruana because if we just look at the pawn equivalent advantage game 12 wasn't the best game that's been fought to a draw in this series. (I know that doesn't take into account positional advantage but we don't have an easy number to sum up that over all the games).
sys_64738 8y ago
Kasparov is the greatest of them all, imo.
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
The article moans about Carlsen’s Game 12 draw offer but it’s ridiculous. He had a plan going in to play for a draw, and given how much of an advantage there was (a modest advantage that by no means guaranteed a win, and which would still be hard to spot by human players), he knew the risks in continuing to play and appraised it to be more prudent to spend that risk budget in rapid games where he has a superior record. There is no drama in this at all, and it’s hardly bad for competitive chess. This title matchhas produced exciting games and creativity, and yes also blunders. It’s been fantastic to watch! Carlsen stuck to his overall match plan. That’s all that happened. Now it’s up to Caruana to prove he can hold his own in rapid games, and frankly he should feel confident that he can given his overall performances across the 12 matches so far. Carlsen is the favorite for sure, but it looks to be a great set of rapid games.
- freyir 8y ago
  It's strategic, it's rational, and still it's disappointing. He was renown for pressing forward against the odds and clinching unexpected victories. Mathias Feist on Carlsen: "There is an equal position on the board, and the opponent thinks: this is dead drawn. I can play almost anything and there is nothing he can do. But Magnus plays on, seeking complications, setting up threats. He is narrowing the margin required to hold the draw. Soon his opponent is thinking: why is he still playing – I can hold a draw with any of these three moves. Then: I can hold with this move and with this move. And then: I still have one clear way to hold a draw. And under the strain of constantly having to solve deep and complex problems, more often than not the opponent will crack. Magnus wins not because it was in the position, he wins because he is Magnus."
  - Someone 8y ago
    Anish Giri: “the whole match was worth it because finally I saw Magnus offer a draw in a playable position” (https://youtube.com/watch?v=ikiHTNQnh58?t=237m45s https://youtube.com/watch?v=ikiHTNQnh58?t=237m45s)
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    > “It's strategic, it's rational, and still it's disappointing.” You’ve lost me there. I don’t see how disappoint is the conclusion. It seems equivalent to suggesting the player should take risks or chances based on what might stylistically please the audience as opposed to what might win the match overall. I’ve never understood spectators watching competitors and thinking, why won’t they do what I want them to do instead of what they think is best for the situation?
deepnotderp 8y ago
I don't understand the people saying that Carlsen was wrong for drawing there. Two engines (leela as carlsen, stockfish as caruana) playing it went to a draw
- mehwoot 8y ago
  Because engine chess is not human chess. Defending a position with a ~3300 ELO computer is not the same as doing it as a human down on the clock. Look up some of Mikhail Tal's games to see how you can become the best in the world whilst still playing moves that are "refuted" by engines. Still he's heavily favoured in the tiebreaks, so I don't necessarily fault his strategy.
- freyir 8y ago
  Leela is an inferior chess engine, and Leela and Stockfish were given equal time. In the human match, Carlsen and Caruana are closely matched and Carlsen had a significant clock advantage. The engines are playing out the position here: https://www.chess.com/computer-chess-championship https://www.chess.com/computer-chess-championship
  - Santosh83 8y ago
    Why do you say Leela is an inferior engine? Genuinely curious. Is it just a matter of the neural net not up to speed (and thus a matter of time before Leela is on par with Stockfish), or something else that will always handicap it?
    - freyir 8y ago
      I should say, it's presently inferior. It has repeatedly placed behind Stockfish in recent TCEC and CCCC tournaments. I imagine it will surpass Stockfish at some point.
hpbd 8y ago
>usually decreeing that a true winner would at all times play in the manner of a big tough macho caveman who has no need for nuance and no time for thought Sounds like this was written by someone with a grudge.
michalu 8y ago
For those who haven't watched the game you can see some nice analysis on Agadmator's channel which I enjoy the most, here is the last 12th game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOJNO8BRx_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOJNO8BRx_U
mindgam3 8y ago
Reposting this from a comment thread below which mentions the chess.com "what would have happened" computer playoff, as I think the HN community (who are far more well versed in computer chess than I) would benefit from a better understanding of how high-level competitive chess between humans actually works. tl;dr: In order to fully appreciate how bizarre Carlsen's draw offer was at that moment, you need to take into account the time factor, which (to my knowledge) the chess.com computer analysis ignores completely. --- The major problem with using the chess.com data is they don't take into account the time factor. When Magnus offered, the draw, Fabi had exactly 15min 42sec time remaining to play the next 10 moves. That's less than 2 minutes per move, versus Magnus having between 2x-3x that amount. It is hard to understand just how significant of a handicap this is unless you've ever played competitive chess at a national or international level. The human mind starts to break down and freeze up when it is forced to make critical decisions in limited time. This was already starting to happen in the game leading up to the draw offer, as Caruana took more and more time as his positioning was worsening. The end result of this is one player being forced to make a rapid series of moves in a "time scramble" while the other player has the luxury of checking and rechecking his calculations. This gives the player with more time a massive advantage in practice. We're talking at least 100-200 rating points. If chess.com wanted to do a fair analysis, they should have handicapped the White computer with 3-4x less compute time. I guarantee the results would have been significantly more favorable for Black then they already were.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't copy-paste comments in multiple places on HN. It's a fine comment, but doing that strictly lowers the signal/noise ratio. If you want us to move a comment to a better context, we're happy to help with such requests at hn@ycombinator.com.
  - mindgam3 8y ago
    Got it. Sorry about that and thanks for the heads up. I didn’t realize it was possible to move comments like that after the update window expires.
- Jabbles 8y ago
rhacker 8y ago
Is any of this being livestreamed anywhere? Specifically tomorrow's matches? 7am just seems so worth it after reading the exciting tie-breaks today.
- jhalstead 8y ago
  Chess24 has had 3 top 25 GMs narrating together for the last few games. Tomorrow's live stream is at https://youtu.be/HBvQ36SqgqM https://youtu.be/HBvQ36SqgqM. Note: If it wasn't clear, that stream will not literally be of Carlsen & Caruana. It mirrors the current position in the game and has commentators analyze it. I don't think a free livestream exists that shows Carlsen & Caruana live, making the moves.
  - rhacker 8y ago
    If that's what I can get I'll take it. Thanks!
- adharmad 8y ago
  World chess (https://worldchess.com https://worldchess.com) has live streaming with Judith Polgar commenting. Chess24 also has the same with Peter Svidler, Guramishvili, Anish Giri and Grischuk commenting.
- Santosh83 8y ago
  Chess.com also has a livestream on their Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/chess https://www.twitch.tv/chess) with the live board and analysis by IM Daniel Rensch and GM Robert Hess with other guests like GM Nakamura, GM Hou Yifan, GM Levon Aronian and so on.
- lisardo 8y ago
  I watched all streams listed in the comments, but I liked the most GM Jerry: https://www.twitch.tv/chessnetwork https://www.twitch.tv/chessnetwork
  - SolarUpNote 8y ago
brownbat 8y ago
If one preferred the tie break conditions and sought to actively play for draws, how confidently could one force draws? Could you force draws consistently with someone 100 points stronger than you? 200?
- pk2200 8y ago
  You definitely can't force a draw against a higher rated player, but you can make one more likely by choosing quiet openings and simplifying in the middlegame. But it's often tricky to pull this off. If you make too many second-best moves in pursuit of simplification, you'll drift into a position that's both simple and bad. :)
- lmm 8y ago
  You walk into the game with white aiming to win and black aiming to draw. If you played aiming for a draw as white, you could probably achieve it reliably against a player 200 or more ELO points ahead of you (or you could simply offer a draw at the earliest point that the rules permit - most of the time black will accept it). But if you can reliably achieve a draw as black, you're probably a better player (and certainly not a significantly worse player) than your opponent.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
StanfordChess 8y ago
Hi all, for those planning to watch tomorrow's rapid/blitz tiebreakers live, Stanford Chess team will be livestreaming analysis and commentary at https://www.twitch.tv/stanfordchess https://www.twitch.tv/stanfordchess and https://lichess.org/@/StanfordChess https://lichess.org/@/StanfordChess. Our team captain is GM Daniel Naroditsky, one of the top blitz and bullet players in the world, who regularly beats Magnus in the LiChess Titled Arena. And our coach is NM Jordy Mont-Reynaud, a ~2350 bullet player who formerly held the record for youngest master in the US. We'll be responding to questions and comments from the chat for any HN members who want more context on what's going on. Looking forward to an exciting finale!
- hardmath123 8y ago
  Can folks at Stanford come by and watch live? (This is the first I've heard of the Stanford Chess Club…)
  - StanfordChess 8y ago
    NM Jordy Mont-Reynaud will be live streaming from the CoHo at 7am. All Stanford students and affiliates are encouraged to join for commentary + banter! Normally we have a room reserved at Tresidder Old Union, but we got a bit of a late start on this so we're winging it for tomorrow. Slack group open to Stanford students/alums/faculty: https://stanfordchess.slack.com https://stanfordchess.slack.com FB page for general public: https://www.facebook.com/stanfordchessdotorg/ https://www.facebook.com/stanfordchessdotorg/
    - StanfordChess 8y ago
      Sorry guys, wifi issues at CoHo prevented streaming. We are live now on Twitch: www.twitch.tv/stanfordchess
bradvl 8y ago
Off topic but interesting: he's also rather good at Fantasy Football/Soccer. His team is currently sitting at 1,341st in the world out of nearly 6,000,000 teams! https://fantasy.premierleague.com/a/team/1224174/event/13 https://fantasy.premierleague.com/a/team/1224174/event/13

185 points by mindgam3 8y ago

Ladies, if he: - doesn’t return your texts - doesn’t comment on your pics - offers a draw in a clearly superior position just as his opponent gets into time trouble in the final round of the World Chess Championships - says he “doesn’t care” at the press conference when informed that all chess playing engines, grandmasters, and rank amateurs could see that he had a dominating position - was previously legendary for his ruthless fighting spirit, grinding out wins against supergrandmasters with much less to work with - is Norwegian He’s not your man. He’s reigning World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen, only one more misstep away from losing his crown to Fabiano Caruana. #GoFabi

mdallastella 8y ago
Carlsen is not in the shape he used to be and I can understand his choice. I don't like his attitude, but he has all the rights to manage its tournament the way he thinks best.
- mindgam3 8y ago
  Sure. I don’t like his attitude either, which is why I’m rooting for Fabi. I understand he has the right to manage the tournament as he sees fit. I just don’t understand the logic of not even trying to push for a few more moves. Low risk, high reward given his huge time advantage.
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    It's a little more complicated than that. Yes, he was in a position that both engines and human grandmasters said was superior, with time pressure. But there's no clear line to force difficult moves for Caruana before the time control kicks in after move 40, and then it's a whole new game; Caruana gets a fresh 50 minutes on the clock and can potentially fight his way to an exhausting draw. Plus there's the risk that any blunder -- and remember this is coming in a crowded, grindy-looking middlegame -- loses the championship. From that spot, it makes sense for Carlsen to try to go straight to the tiebreak games where he feels he's more strongly favored.
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    We now have a little more data courtesy of chess.com's computer tournament. Starting from the final position of Game 12, the engines have played 18 games to completion against each other, with more to come. 10 draws, 6 wins for Black and 2 for White. Both of the wins for White picked up the game from the point of the draw with 32. Qa3 Rb8 and continued with White, soon after, aiming to play Nd1 and Nc3 (Stockfish went for those on moves 34 and 35, Ethereal on moves 35 and 37). This is apparently exactly the line Carlsen said he was worrying about. The position also seems to present some pretty tricky endgames. Laser, which has a rating 300 points higher than Carlsen's and gets to play with tablebase, managed to lose as Black that way. (Caruana also suggested he might have tried to get a knight to e6; the engines have drawn a few times starting with that line)
    - mindgam3 8y ago
      The major problem with using the chess.com data is they don't take into account the time factor. When Magnus offered, the draw, Fabi had exactly 15min 42sec time remaining to play the next 10 moves. That's less than 2 minutes per move, versus Magnus having between 2x-3x that amount. It is hard to understand just how significant of a handicap this is unless you've ever played competitive chess at a national or international level. The human mind starts to break down and freeze up when it is forced to make critical decisions in limited time. This was already starting to happen in the game leading up to the draw offer, as Caruana took more and more time as his positioning was worsening. The end result of this is one player being forced to make a rapid series of moves in a "time scramble" while the other player has the luxury of checking and rechecking his calculations. This gives the player with more time a massive advantage in practice. We're talking at least 100-200 rating points. If chess.com wanted to do a fair analysis, they should have handicapped the White computer with 3-4x less compute time. I guarantee the results would have been significantly more favorable for Black then they already were.
      - ubernostrum 8y ago
        Caruana's been under time pressure over and over and over in this match, and blundered his way into zero losses as a result. Time pressure is practically where he lives, because of how much time he spends calculating. The idea that he's suddenly going to completely forget how to play when the clock is running low doesn't hold water. Especially when he wasn't facing any immediate threat on the board; the advantage for Black was there, but it was theoretical/positional, and was going to take significant work to convert into a result, or even into lines that would make Caruana have to sweat through the next series of moves. And the engine games keep showing that all of Black's advantage can be thrown away with one or two inaccurate moves even very soon after the draw occurred; Carlsen's well within his rights to decide not to risk that just to try to toy with his opponent.
enneff 8y ago
> says he “doesn’t care” at the press conference when informed that all chess playing engines, grandmasters, and rank amateurs could see that he had a dominating position This response was to a question that only mentioned the engine, not the other embellishments you added. It was a stupid question. The engines can always see something that humans cannot. Magnus is one of the best chess players in the world, playing against his strongest competitor, and he didn’t see a path to a win from that position. Why should he care if the engine could?
ggggtez 8y ago
Please don't post your bad comedy routine here.

scrooched_moose 8y ago

If anyone doesn't know, "Armageddon" is a type of chess game that guarantees a victor; it's not just a click-bait title. It's the last tiebreaker after a series of other Rapid and Blitz games. (all this is covered, just way at the end of the article) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess#Armageddon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess#Armageddon fivethirtyeight has been covering the tournament and their rough calculation gives it a 1:5000 chance of making it to the Armageddon game, based on Carlesen's superior Rapid and Blitz rankings. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decision-has-sent-the-world-chess-championship-to-overtime/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decisi...

z92 8y ago
Armageddon : "the players proceed to a single game of Armageddon, where the parameters are set to so far as possible give each side a 50-percent chance of winning—White gets 5 minutes, Black gets 4 minutes, and a draw will make Black the World Champion."
- tux1968 8y ago
  That really seems to favor black by a rather large margin. Wonder if there are any stats on the win ratios for each color in this format. And how do they decide who get's each color?
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    It doesn't though, because black has 20% less time than white.
    - tux1968 8y ago
      Yeah, but these guys blitz out great moves like crazy, I just don't think an extra minute is enough time to capitalize on any slight inaccuracies induced by the time pressure black is under. I could be wrong of course, which is why I was interested to know if there are any win ratios for the format around.

lazyant 8y ago

In past World Chess Championships when they finished tied with points the current champion retained the title, which I found disappointing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1987#1987_Championship_match https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1987#...

fjsolwmv 8y ago
The effectively cointoss plan for this tourney isn't better. They should accept co-titles for equally matched players
- nic_wilson 8y ago
  I like this idea but not sure how that would work in the format of the World Chess Championship.
- tedeh 8y ago
  At the next tournament, two challengers are presented to the two champions with a co-title. Imagine they also tie all their matches; now the world has four reigning chess champions!
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Well, if they all play equally well, what's the problem?
ubernostrum 8y ago
I believe Carlsen is on record as disliking the current format. The way it works right now, the reigning champion does nothing until a challenger has earned the right to face him by winning a candidates tournament. Then the winner of the candidates tournament faces the reigning champion in a match for the title. Carlsen, as I understand it, would prefer that the champion take part in a tournament. The women's championship (also played this month) does feature a tournament. 64 players were seeded, and played single-elimination two-game matches (with rapid games as tiebreakers). The final two players then faced each other in a four-game match (again with rapid games as potential tiebreakers). The final did go to tiebreaks, and was won by defending and now repeat champion Ju Wenjun.

gregorymichael 8y ago

tl;dr after 11 draws, Carlsen offered a draw from a superior position in the final game to head into the short-format tiebreaks, where: > he is ranked No. 1 in all three formats (classical, rapid, and blitz). Caruana is ranked 10th and 18th in rapid and blitz respectively. Critics are appalled that he didn't fight for the win out of sense of honor. I don't see how this is different than, for instance, fouling at the end of a basketball game. Hard to blame a player for working within the rules to put himself into a position where he feels he has a greater chance of keeping the title. "It's not the critic who counts...."

mindgam3 8y ago
What I don’t understand is why Carlsen didn’t push for even a few more moves. Fabi was running out time, it was low risk for him to probe a little more and see if he could get something a little more decisive.
- gregorymichael 8y ago
  I don't understand either. But Carlsen was in the seat for all 12 games, and he knows what was going on in his own head. Maybe he was simply exhausted and didn't trust his decision. Maybe that particular position gave him difficulty in a match four years ago. For whatever reason, the best chess player in the world decided that offering the draw was his best move in that moment.
  - mindgam3 8y ago
    I tend to agree. The most plausible reason I can think of is a combination of him being supremely confident in his rapid skills + being a bit afraid of Caruana in classical. But his lack of confidence in himself in classical is not a good sign going into the blitz. The best chess player in the world got there by using good judgment when it comes to selective aggression. We’ll find out tomorrow if this was a brilliant move to fend off a challenger or the beginning of the end...
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Is it possible he gets paid per game by a sponsor and was confident he could push through and win ... just as an alternative option. If he were a narcissist, another option would be to bask a little more in the limelight. Just throwing these out there, as we really don't know his motivation.

jeffreyrogers 8y ago

An alternative opinion for why Carlsen offered the game 12 draw: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/11/game-12-draw.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/11/ga...

rtkwe 8y ago
Another is that Carlsen is very good at rapid (Carlsen 2880 vs Caruana 2789) and blitz (2939 vs 2767) formats compared Caruana so it makes sense to just take things to the tiebreakers where Carlsen has a significant advantage. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decision-has-sent-the-world-chess-championship-to-overtime/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decisi...
- cjbprime 8y ago
  > So it actually is a draw! (sort of) There's been a tournament of top engines playing out the position after the draw -- I think black (Carlsen) won 11 games and white won 2 games, with the rest draws. So this declaration of the lack of advantage just isn't true. > just take things to the tiebreakers where Carlsen has a significant advantage. But he had a significant advantage on the board, too. The question is the magnitude of the advantages. Caruana has previously been a world blitz champion too, so it seems unlikely that any advantage would be more than 60%-40% to Carlsen. Which seems smaller than the advantage we see from the computer tournament results.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    Just take a look at their relative rankings though. Caruana may have previously been blitz champion but his current blitz elo is ~170 points lower than Carlsen who iirc is the current blitz champion. I'd like to see that same process repeated for all the other draws from the points of highest advantage and right before the draw too if we're going to be using it to evaluate the decision to draw. Not sure how closely the computer tournament reflects the actual progression we've seen from Carlsen and Caruana because if we just look at the pawn equivalent advantage game 12 wasn't the best game that's been fought to a draw in this series. (I know that doesn't take into account positional advantage but we don't have an easy number to sum up that over all the games).

sys_64738 8y ago

Kasparov is the greatest of them all, imo.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

The article moans about Carlsen’s Game 12 draw offer but it’s ridiculous. He had a plan going in to play for a draw, and given how much of an advantage there was (a modest advantage that by no means guaranteed a win, and which would still be hard to spot by human players), he knew the risks in continuing to play and appraised it to be more prudent to spend that risk budget in rapid games where he has a superior record. There is no drama in this at all, and it’s hardly bad for competitive chess. This title matchhas produced exciting games and creativity, and yes also blunders. It’s been fantastic to watch! Carlsen stuck to his overall match plan. That’s all that happened. Now it’s up to Caruana to prove he can hold his own in rapid games, and frankly he should feel confident that he can given his overall performances across the 12 matches so far. Carlsen is the favorite for sure, but it looks to be a great set of rapid games.

freyir 8y ago
It's strategic, it's rational, and still it's disappointing. He was renown for pressing forward against the odds and clinching unexpected victories. Mathias Feist on Carlsen: "There is an equal position on the board, and the opponent thinks: this is dead drawn. I can play almost anything and there is nothing he can do. But Magnus plays on, seeking complications, setting up threats. He is narrowing the margin required to hold the draw. Soon his opponent is thinking: why is he still playing – I can hold a draw with any of these three moves. Then: I can hold with this move and with this move. And then: I still have one clear way to hold a draw. And under the strain of constantly having to solve deep and complex problems, more often than not the opponent will crack. Magnus wins not because it was in the position, he wins because he is Magnus."
- Someone 8y ago
  Anish Giri: “the whole match was worth it because finally I saw Magnus offer a draw in a playable position” (https://youtube.com/watch?v=ikiHTNQnh58?t=237m45s https://youtube.com/watch?v=ikiHTNQnh58?t=237m45s)
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  > “It's strategic, it's rational, and still it's disappointing.” You’ve lost me there. I don’t see how disappoint is the conclusion. It seems equivalent to suggesting the player should take risks or chances based on what might stylistically please the audience as opposed to what might win the match overall. I’ve never understood spectators watching competitors and thinking, why won’t they do what I want them to do instead of what they think is best for the situation?

deepnotderp 8y ago

I don't understand the people saying that Carlsen was wrong for drawing there. Two engines (leela as carlsen, stockfish as caruana) playing it went to a draw

mehwoot 8y ago
Because engine chess is not human chess. Defending a position with a ~3300 ELO computer is not the same as doing it as a human down on the clock. Look up some of Mikhail Tal's games to see how you can become the best in the world whilst still playing moves that are "refuted" by engines. Still he's heavily favoured in the tiebreaks, so I don't necessarily fault his strategy.
freyir 8y ago
Leela is an inferior chess engine, and Leela and Stockfish were given equal time. In the human match, Carlsen and Caruana are closely matched and Carlsen had a significant clock advantage. The engines are playing out the position here: https://www.chess.com/computer-chess-championship https://www.chess.com/computer-chess-championship
- Santosh83 8y ago
  Why do you say Leela is an inferior engine? Genuinely curious. Is it just a matter of the neural net not up to speed (and thus a matter of time before Leela is on par with Stockfish), or something else that will always handicap it?
  - freyir 8y ago
    I should say, it's presently inferior. It has repeatedly placed behind Stockfish in recent TCEC and CCCC tournaments. I imagine it will surpass Stockfish at some point.

hpbd 8y ago

>usually decreeing that a true winner would at all times play in the manner of a big tough macho caveman who has no need for nuance and no time for thought Sounds like this was written by someone with a grudge.

michalu 8y ago

For those who haven't watched the game you can see some nice analysis on Agadmator's channel which I enjoy the most, here is the last 12th game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOJNO8BRx_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOJNO8BRx_U

mindgam3 8y ago

Reposting this from a comment thread below which mentions the chess.com "what would have happened" computer playoff, as I think the HN community (who are far more well versed in computer chess than I) would benefit from a better understanding of how high-level competitive chess between humans actually works. tl;dr: In order to fully appreciate how bizarre Carlsen's draw offer was at that moment, you need to take into account the time factor, which (to my knowledge) the chess.com computer analysis ignores completely. --- The major problem with using the chess.com data is they don't take into account the time factor. When Magnus offered, the draw, Fabi had exactly 15min 42sec time remaining to play the next 10 moves. That's less than 2 minutes per move, versus Magnus having between 2x-3x that amount. It is hard to understand just how significant of a handicap this is unless you've ever played competitive chess at a national or international level. The human mind starts to break down and freeze up when it is forced to make critical decisions in limited time. This was already starting to happen in the game leading up to the draw offer, as Caruana took more and more time as his positioning was worsening. The end result of this is one player being forced to make a rapid series of moves in a "time scramble" while the other player has the luxury of checking and rechecking his calculations. This gives the player with more time a massive advantage in practice. We're talking at least 100-200 rating points. If chess.com wanted to do a fair analysis, they should have handicapped the White computer with 3-4x less compute time. I guarantee the results would have been significantly more favorable for Black then they already were.

dang 8y ago
Please don't copy-paste comments in multiple places on HN. It's a fine comment, but doing that strictly lowers the signal/noise ratio. If you want us to move a comment to a better context, we're happy to help with such requests at hn@ycombinator.com.
- mindgam3 8y ago
  Got it. Sorry about that and thanks for the heads up. I didn’t realize it was possible to move comments like that after the update window expires.
Jabbles 8y ago

rhacker 8y ago

Is any of this being livestreamed anywhere? Specifically tomorrow's matches? 7am just seems so worth it after reading the exciting tie-breaks today.

jhalstead 8y ago
Chess24 has had 3 top 25 GMs narrating together for the last few games. Tomorrow's live stream is at https://youtu.be/HBvQ36SqgqM https://youtu.be/HBvQ36SqgqM. Note: If it wasn't clear, that stream will not literally be of Carlsen & Caruana. It mirrors the current position in the game and has commentators analyze it. I don't think a free livestream exists that shows Carlsen & Caruana live, making the moves.
- rhacker 8y ago
  If that's what I can get I'll take it. Thanks!
adharmad 8y ago
World chess (https://worldchess.com https://worldchess.com) has live streaming with Judith Polgar commenting. Chess24 also has the same with Peter Svidler, Guramishvili, Anish Giri and Grischuk commenting.
Santosh83 8y ago
Chess.com also has a livestream on their Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/chess https://www.twitch.tv/chess) with the live board and analysis by IM Daniel Rensch and GM Robert Hess with other guests like GM Nakamura, GM Hou Yifan, GM Levon Aronian and so on.
lisardo 8y ago
I watched all streams listed in the comments, but I liked the most GM Jerry: https://www.twitch.tv/chessnetwork https://www.twitch.tv/chessnetwork
- SolarUpNote 8y ago

brownbat 8y ago

If one preferred the tie break conditions and sought to actively play for draws, how confidently could one force draws? Could you force draws consistently with someone 100 points stronger than you? 200?

pk2200 8y ago
You definitely can't force a draw against a higher rated player, but you can make one more likely by choosing quiet openings and simplifying in the middlegame. But it's often tricky to pull this off. If you make too many second-best moves in pursuit of simplification, you'll drift into a position that's both simple and bad. :)
lmm 8y ago
You walk into the game with white aiming to win and black aiming to draw. If you played aiming for a draw as white, you could probably achieve it reliably against a player 200 or more ELO points ahead of you (or you could simply offer a draw at the earliest point that the rules permit - most of the time black will accept it). But if you can reliably achieve a draw as black, you're probably a better player (and certainly not a significantly worse player) than your opponent.

deleted 8y ago

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StanfordChess 8y ago

Hi all, for those planning to watch tomorrow's rapid/blitz tiebreakers live, Stanford Chess team will be livestreaming analysis and commentary at https://www.twitch.tv/stanfordchess https://www.twitch.tv/stanfordchess and https://lichess.org/@/StanfordChess https://lichess.org/@/StanfordChess. Our team captain is GM Daniel Naroditsky, one of the top blitz and bullet players in the world, who regularly beats Magnus in the LiChess Titled Arena. And our coach is NM Jordy Mont-Reynaud, a ~2350 bullet player who formerly held the record for youngest master in the US. We'll be responding to questions and comments from the chat for any HN members who want more context on what's going on. Looking forward to an exciting finale!

hardmath123 8y ago
Can folks at Stanford come by and watch live? (This is the first I've heard of the Stanford Chess Club…)
- StanfordChess 8y ago
  NM Jordy Mont-Reynaud will be live streaming from the CoHo at 7am. All Stanford students and affiliates are encouraged to join for commentary + banter! Normally we have a room reserved at Tresidder Old Union, but we got a bit of a late start on this so we're winging it for tomorrow. Slack group open to Stanford students/alums/faculty: https://stanfordchess.slack.com https://stanfordchess.slack.com FB page for general public: https://www.facebook.com/stanfordchessdotorg/ https://www.facebook.com/stanfordchessdotorg/
  - StanfordChess 8y ago
    Sorry guys, wifi issues at CoHo prevented streaming. We are live now on Twitch: www.twitch.tv/stanfordchess

bradvl 8y ago

Off topic but interesting: he's also rather good at Fantasy Football/Soccer. His team is currently sitting at 1,341st in the world out of nearly 6,000,000 teams! https://fantasy.premierleague.com/a/team/1224174/event/13 https://fantasy.premierleague.com/a/team/1224174/event/13