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In the end, Carlsen is the man who knows the best how to win in chess. Regardless of all critics. He played the 12th game safe knowing he's a huge favourite in

In the end, Carlsen is the man who knows the best how to win in chess. Regardless of all critics. He played the 12th game safe knowing he's a huge favourite in rapid and blitz. Like Kasparov and Grischuk pointed out today, every other chess player gets worse playing rapid/blitz but Carlsen is the only one who actually improves. Under these conditions it's more than sensible to move into the terrain where you have an advantage, if thinking strategically. I would argue the problem is that most of the fans have become conditioned to expect entertainment, drama and bold moves in sports like we see in overly dramatic movies. But historically, if you consider generals or even have a look into Sun Tzu's art of war, the strategists and generals that were most regarded were the ones who were able to win in a manner that it seemed easy, unimpressive, without drama or heavy losses or huge risks involved. That's what a great strategy is about taking battle where the outcome is decided beforehand. And that's what Carlsen did. The downside is it cost him €50k as the money distribution goes to 550/450 in tiebreak from 600/400 if decided in classical. So he exchanged a potential loss of €200k at a favourable odds for a sure loss of €50k with potential loss of €150k at a much better odds. Now here's where we could question his decision speculating what the actual odds were, but who knows if he cares about the money. I enjoyed this final a lot.

DFHippie 8y ago
I think they only pointed out that he improves relative to his opponent.
- michalu 8y ago
  Grischuk pointed out that according to universal rating system that measures the gap for each category like rapid or blitz and apparently Carlsen is the only one who sometimes gets a negative number on blitz/rapid. Which is most interesting.• But I agree even so relative to Caruana, whose gaps are much higher. He must have been aware of this. •http://universalrating.com/ratings.php http://universalrating.com/ratings.php
  - kristofferc 8y ago
    He made a >joke< that maybe Carlsen should have a negative gap.
    - michalu 8y ago
      oh, it's hard to tell when Grischuk is joking. It's true, he never had a negative rating: http://universalrating.com/player.php?PlayerID=16626 http://universalrating.com/player.php?PlayerID=16626
mindgam3 8y ago
I can't argue with your first premise. Your following points, however, are less convincing. "Like Kasparov and Grischuk pointed out today, every other chess player gets worse playing rapid/blitz but Carlsen is the only one who actually improves." Even if Kasparov and Grischuk said this today (citation please?), it doesn't make it true. There are many players who get better playing rapid and blitz. Look at the trajectory of the Bay Area's own GM Daniel Naroditsky. Nakamura. I suspect most of the blitz haters are people who simply haven't spent enough time to get good at it. "Regardless of all critics." To your main point, the critics weren't saying that Carlsen isn't the best. They were complaining because he is not acting with respect to the purity and beauty of the game. There is simply an aesthetic ugliness to offering a draw with such a crushing time advantage in a better position. I'm not arguing that this may not have been good strategy, lose the battle, win the war, etc etc. What I'm saying is that there is a war to be won that is different than a 1 or 0 point. It's the battle for hearts and minds, which is won not just through victory but through integrity and courage. You win hearts by showing hearts. Magnus didn't win hearts with his mercilessly pragmatic approach to winning the world championship title. I still respect him as the rightful owner of the title of best chess player in the world. But if we're going to employ the "good by association" logical fallacy with whatever Kasparov and Grischuk may have said today, why not actually just quote the champion Magnus himself? In the press conference, he came out and told everyone that Fabiano earned the right to share the crown of world's best player in classical chess with him. Who am I, who are you, who are any of us to disagree with that? I also enjoyed the final a lot. But the fact remains that the beauty and spectacle 2018 World Championships of the world's most beautiful mind game was marred by a decidedly un-beautiful game in round 12.
- johnb 8y ago
  Kasparov had said that all players are worse in blitz, but that Carlsen gets least worst https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067826806823297029 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067826806823297029
  - mindgam3 8y ago
    Thank you! With that nuance added, I believe it now. Kasparov generally isn't the kind of person to make sweeping statements that I know are false.
gpm 8y ago
We expect people to play to win. In other sports we have rules against playing to draw/stall (e.g. see delay of game in hockey). Likewise in chess (or this and a number of other tournaments anyways), we have rules against agreeing to draw within the first 30 moves to attempt to discourage this sort of behavior. Not only did Carlsen not play to win the game, he didn't even play to win the championship. Instead he chose to draw, explicitly deciding to split the prize with his opponent. I, for one, am highly unimpressed.
- monadgonad 8y ago
  He made a sacrifice and "conceded" one game to a draw in order to increase his chances of winning the championship via his superior rapid play. He lost the battle to win the war. That is complely playing to win.
  - gpm 8y ago
    I dispute this on two points. He did not fully "win" the championship. Sure, they had to give the title to somebody, so it's him, but splitting half of the prize is not a complete win. Even if he had fully won, I don't view it as a sportsmanlike strategy to give up a game to put yourself in an advantageous position. That's why we have a rule against agreeing to a draw to early. That's why in hockey stopping trying to score and just passing the puck in circles at center is against the rules (delay of game) - even when it's the best way to win.
    - FPGAhacker 8y ago
      Are you also against sacrificing a piece in a game to gain an advantage? How is this different? He played a sacrifice in the meta game to gain an advantage.
      - gpm 8y ago
        The difference is that: - This was part of the metagame. - This was agreeing to a "semi-draw" in the metagame when he did not need to.
sytelus 8y ago
This is quite funny thread. I often marvel at folks dissecting sport game outcome for hours retrospectively as if everything was perfectly explainable only after outcome was seen. We don't see this in HN threads much - well, except for chess games :). In reality, pro games have such strong contenders that each have very thin edge, if at all, and the outcome is usually just same as throwing dice.
- Retric 8y ago
  That does not really hold up. Serral for example is the current best StarCraft 2 player in the world. They operate in tournaments where X players face off usually starting with 16+ players doing single elimination. He won 4 regional, and 2 international tournaments in a row. The odds of him pulling that off if the odds of each win where close to 50/50 would be ~1/(2^30) aka 1 billion to 1. Instead, he was heavily favored in most of these match ups.
  - jpatokal 8y ago
    I think the previous poster was referring to sportsball/handegg type physical team sports, where there are a lot more changing variables (team composition, physical condition, stadium, weather, ...) than in chess or StarCraft.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  In the US, the major team sports are not at all "very thin edge". In fact, lack of parity is a real issue facing several leagues. Between "tanking" (teams that are deliberately bad in order to get better draft picks), massive budget differences (it's not unusual to see large-market teams with payrolls more than double those of small-market teams), and structural issues in the games themselves, parity can be very very difficult to achieve. 538 attempts to use chess-style Elo ratings to track the major sports, and currently they have: * ~200-point difference between best and worst major-league baseball team * ~400-point difference between best and worst NFL football team * ~400-point difference between best and worst NBA basketball team
inopinatus 8y ago
Re. the financial calculus. His sponsorship and modelling income is not known precisely but I've seen it estimated at $2 million per year. Losing the title puts all that at risk. A 50k penalty to prizemoney is peanuts.
kamaal 8y ago
>>I would argue the problem is that most of the fans have become conditioned to expect entertainment, drama and bold moves in sports like we see in overly dramatic movies. Sports is entertainment, social interaction, emotions etc. Other wise there is no point in wasting hours and hours of one's life other people's career. Also likability of a person in sport decreases when you take away these things.
phonebucket 8y ago
> So he exchanged a potential loss of €200k at a favourable odds for a sure loss of €50k with potential loss of €150k at a much better odds. Now here's where we could question his decision speculating what the actual odds were, but who knows if he cares about the money. You’re ignoring the fact that winning also guarantees him a spot in next year’s final, so that would heavily tip this analysis towards playing it safe. Although I don’t believe Magnus is trying to win this for the money, but that’s besides the point.
- addicted 8y ago
  Also, the draw guaranteed he held his #1 ranking until the early part of next year at least. And Carlsen has stated in the past that he values the #1 ranking more than the world chess champion title.
bsder 8y ago
> He played the 12th game safe knowing he's a huge favourite in rapid and blitz. I would argue he played ALL the games safe knowing he's a huge favorite in rapid and blitz. I would much rather they have to keep playing "classical" chess until somebody wins/loses. That means that the players would be far more motivated to drive home an advantageous situation when it arises. Carlsen's dominance in blitz is probably why he doesn't seem to be squeezing endgames into victories anymore.
- michalu 8y ago
  I agree he played all the games safe, I believe he said (or implied it) himself in one of the press conferences. I also agree that they should play the classical until somebody wins. As Carlsen said in the post final press conference Caruana has the same right to claim he's the best in the world in classical format.
busyant 8y ago
Kasparov did not say Carlsen improves w shorter time formats. He said that the degredation of his play at faster times was smaller than everyone else. This is still impressive, but definitely not an improvement.
otherme123 8y ago
It's very easy to be always right if you say a thing and the opposite. Kasparov said after the 12th game: "I reconsider my evaluation of him[Carlsen] being the favorite in rapids. Tiebreaks require tremendous nerves and he seems to be losing his." https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067125702712004609 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067125702712004609

DFHippie 8y ago

I think they only pointed out that he improves relative to his opponent.

michalu 8y ago
Grischuk pointed out that according to universal rating system that measures the gap for each category like rapid or blitz and apparently Carlsen is the only one who sometimes gets a negative number on blitz/rapid. Which is most interesting.• But I agree even so relative to Caruana, whose gaps are much higher. He must have been aware of this. •http://universalrating.com/ratings.php http://universalrating.com/ratings.php
- kristofferc 8y ago
  He made a >joke< that maybe Carlsen should have a negative gap.
  - michalu 8y ago
    oh, it's hard to tell when Grischuk is joking. It's true, he never had a negative rating: http://universalrating.com/player.php?PlayerID=16626 http://universalrating.com/player.php?PlayerID=16626

mindgam3 8y ago

I can't argue with your first premise. Your following points, however, are less convincing. "Like Kasparov and Grischuk pointed out today, every other chess player gets worse playing rapid/blitz but Carlsen is the only one who actually improves." Even if Kasparov and Grischuk said this today (citation please?), it doesn't make it true. There are many players who get better playing rapid and blitz. Look at the trajectory of the Bay Area's own GM Daniel Naroditsky. Nakamura. I suspect most of the blitz haters are people who simply haven't spent enough time to get good at it. "Regardless of all critics." To your main point, the critics weren't saying that Carlsen isn't the best. They were complaining because he is not acting with respect to the purity and beauty of the game. There is simply an aesthetic ugliness to offering a draw with such a crushing time advantage in a better position. I'm not arguing that this may not have been good strategy, lose the battle, win the war, etc etc. What I'm saying is that there is a war to be won that is different than a 1 or 0 point. It's the battle for hearts and minds, which is won not just through victory but through integrity and courage. You win hearts by showing hearts. Magnus didn't win hearts with his mercilessly pragmatic approach to winning the world championship title. I still respect him as the rightful owner of the title of best chess player in the world. But if we're going to employ the "good by association" logical fallacy with whatever Kasparov and Grischuk may have said today, why not actually just quote the champion Magnus himself? In the press conference, he came out and told everyone that Fabiano earned the right to share the crown of world's best player in classical chess with him. Who am I, who are you, who are any of us to disagree with that? I also enjoyed the final a lot. But the fact remains that the beauty and spectacle 2018 World Championships of the world's most beautiful mind game was marred by a decidedly un-beautiful game in round 12.

johnb 8y ago
Kasparov had said that all players are worse in blitz, but that Carlsen gets least worst https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067826806823297029 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067826806823297029
- mindgam3 8y ago
  Thank you! With that nuance added, I believe it now. Kasparov generally isn't the kind of person to make sweeping statements that I know are false.

gpm 8y ago

We expect people to play to win. In other sports we have rules against playing to draw/stall (e.g. see delay of game in hockey). Likewise in chess (or this and a number of other tournaments anyways), we have rules against agreeing to draw within the first 30 moves to attempt to discourage this sort of behavior. Not only did Carlsen not play to win the game, he didn't even play to win the championship. Instead he chose to draw, explicitly deciding to split the prize with his opponent. I, for one, am highly unimpressed.

monadgonad 8y ago
He made a sacrifice and "conceded" one game to a draw in order to increase his chances of winning the championship via his superior rapid play. He lost the battle to win the war. That is complely playing to win.
- gpm 8y ago
  I dispute this on two points. He did not fully "win" the championship. Sure, they had to give the title to somebody, so it's him, but splitting half of the prize is not a complete win. Even if he had fully won, I don't view it as a sportsmanlike strategy to give up a game to put yourself in an advantageous position. That's why we have a rule against agreeing to a draw to early. That's why in hockey stopping trying to score and just passing the puck in circles at center is against the rules (delay of game) - even when it's the best way to win.
  - FPGAhacker 8y ago
    Are you also against sacrificing a piece in a game to gain an advantage? How is this different? He played a sacrifice in the meta game to gain an advantage.
    - gpm 8y ago
      The difference is that: - This was part of the metagame. - This was agreeing to a "semi-draw" in the metagame when he did not need to.

sytelus 8y ago

This is quite funny thread. I often marvel at folks dissecting sport game outcome for hours retrospectively as if everything was perfectly explainable only after outcome was seen. We don't see this in HN threads much - well, except for chess games :). In reality, pro games have such strong contenders that each have very thin edge, if at all, and the outcome is usually just same as throwing dice.

Retric 8y ago
That does not really hold up. Serral for example is the current best StarCraft 2 player in the world. They operate in tournaments where X players face off usually starting with 16+ players doing single elimination. He won 4 regional, and 2 international tournaments in a row. The odds of him pulling that off if the odds of each win where close to 50/50 would be ~1/(2^30) aka 1 billion to 1. Instead, he was heavily favored in most of these match ups.
- jpatokal 8y ago
  I think the previous poster was referring to sportsball/handegg type physical team sports, where there are a lot more changing variables (team composition, physical condition, stadium, weather, ...) than in chess or StarCraft.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ubernostrum 8y ago
In the US, the major team sports are not at all "very thin edge". In fact, lack of parity is a real issue facing several leagues. Between "tanking" (teams that are deliberately bad in order to get better draft picks), massive budget differences (it's not unusual to see large-market teams with payrolls more than double those of small-market teams), and structural issues in the games themselves, parity can be very very difficult to achieve. 538 attempts to use chess-style Elo ratings to track the major sports, and currently they have: * ~200-point difference between best and worst major-league baseball team * ~400-point difference between best and worst NFL football team * ~400-point difference between best and worst NBA basketball team

inopinatus 8y ago

Re. the financial calculus. His sponsorship and modelling income is not known precisely but I've seen it estimated at $2 million per year. Losing the title puts all that at risk. A 50k penalty to prizemoney is peanuts.

kamaal 8y ago

>>I would argue the problem is that most of the fans have become conditioned to expect entertainment, drama and bold moves in sports like we see in overly dramatic movies. Sports is entertainment, social interaction, emotions etc. Other wise there is no point in wasting hours and hours of one's life other people's career. Also likability of a person in sport decreases when you take away these things.

phonebucket 8y ago

> So he exchanged a potential loss of €200k at a favourable odds for a sure loss of €50k with potential loss of €150k at a much better odds. Now here's where we could question his decision speculating what the actual odds were, but who knows if he cares about the money. You’re ignoring the fact that winning also guarantees him a spot in next year’s final, so that would heavily tip this analysis towards playing it safe. Although I don’t believe Magnus is trying to win this for the money, but that’s besides the point.

addicted 8y ago
Also, the draw guaranteed he held his #1 ranking until the early part of next year at least. And Carlsen has stated in the past that he values the #1 ranking more than the world chess champion title.

bsder 8y ago

> He played the 12th game safe knowing he's a huge favourite in rapid and blitz. I would argue he played ALL the games safe knowing he's a huge favorite in rapid and blitz. I would much rather they have to keep playing "classical" chess until somebody wins/loses. That means that the players would be far more motivated to drive home an advantageous situation when it arises. Carlsen's dominance in blitz is probably why he doesn't seem to be squeezing endgames into victories anymore.

michalu 8y ago
I agree he played all the games safe, I believe he said (or implied it) himself in one of the press conferences. I also agree that they should play the classical until somebody wins. As Carlsen said in the post final press conference Caruana has the same right to claim he's the best in the world in classical format.

busyant 8y ago

Kasparov did not say Carlsen improves w shorter time formats. He said that the degredation of his play at faster times was smaller than everyone else. This is still impressive, but definitely not an improvement.

otherme123 8y ago

It's very easy to be always right if you say a thing and the opposite. Kasparov said after the 12th game: "I reconsider my evaluation of him[Carlsen] being the favorite in rapids. Tiebreaks require tremendous nerves and he seems to be losing his." https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067125702712004609 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067125702712004609