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Iranian teen shocks Magnus Carlsen to win $14k prize
- throwaway6575 7y agoChess is one of the few fields where dominance can easily stretch into several decades - if you're a young prodigy you may breach into top level in your teenage years and last well until your 50s or 60s. Of course you won't be #1 this whole time (check out Lasker's longevity though) but you will always remain a top contender.
- ganeshkrishnan 7y agoI would like to differ on this. It's getting harder and harder to maintain dominance. Kasparov was the one to hold the longest. Magnus, even though he is one of the best ever, is already losing out to Alireza in bullet, blitz and even almost in classical. Chess theory has a new Renaissance due to neutral networks and we will see newer GM's adapting to it.
- vpa10 7y agoThis is not how I see it. Carlsen lost one insanely long online bullet match on lichess. He narrowly lost an online banter blitz match. This is not blitz, since also you have to talk while playing, which does not seem to suit Carlsen's personality. In classical, you can often "almost lose", except that Carlsen does not "actually lose", as exemplified by his ongoing record non-loss streak.
- lonelappde 7y agoIn the banter blitz I saw, they aren't really bantering, just making offhand comments during downtime.
- glxxyz 7y agoThey don't really banter in 'banter blitz', they explain the position and their strategy, which is much more interesting.
- thom 7y agoI watch a variety of games on Twitch, and I am fairly sure that no player would claim they play optimally while commentating themselves and explaining their thought processes.
- jquery 7y agoPeople are reading a bit too much into this loss. It is a big deal that someone was able to beat Magnus Carlsen at any time control, especially in this era where Magnus has seemingly reached a new level of chess skill, but bullet is by far the the easiest for a champion to make a mistake or series of them. Magnus is ridiculously strong at bullet but I’ve watched his live-streams and sometimes he blunders really badly, that’s just part of bullet. Although he is incredibly strong at bullet, probably 50-100 points higher than the world #2. Anyone not a high ranked GM wouldn’t stand a chance of beating him in a series of more than 5 games. But I’ve seen him lose to players he is obviously better than. He’s the #1 so they try their hardest. Nothing comes easily for Magnus.
- pedrosorio 7y ago“Although he is incredibly strong at bullet, probably 50-100 points higher than the world #2” Are you forgetting about Hikaru Nakamura?
- freyir 7y ago> "probably 50-100 points higher than the world #2" He can't be 50-100 points higher than himself. Hikaru is #1. https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men_blitz https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men_blitz
- Taek 7y agoThat's blitz. Bullet is a faster time control
- freyir 7y agoOh, you're right. Google pulls up FIDE's blitz rankings when you search for bullet chess rankings.
- ganeshkrishnan 7y agoBullet games are not officially rated
- me_me_me 7y agoThe classical time control chess is boring. It really feels like an exercise in memorization. I stopped watching those as almost every tournament ends in armagedon. Its a statement of the incredible skills top players poses, but its incredibly boring to watch draw after draw. Quicker time controls are more dynamic and allow to play subpar move to throw off your opponent. Often you can see some crazy attacks.
- im3w1l 7y agoAnd I thought short time controls were Magnus' forte. I guess it may be the one where age related decline sets in the quickest.
- jpmoral 7y agoIsn't he ridiculously strong at all time controls?
- emerongi 7y agoHe is. Carlsen is a unique player in many respects and he usually comes back even stronger from losses. To say that he is "losing out" to someone is a bit premature I would say.
- throwaway6575 7y agoMagnus is so incredibly strong that people think he's about to decline when suffering one (1) loss from another rising star in a niche online format. This is like when Capablanca didn't lose a single game between 1917 and 1924 and everyone acted like "the Schachmachine ist kaputt" when he broke his streak. The fact is that competition is incredibly tough and differences betwene player levels are imperceptible to all but the very most trained eyes. In fact that's why championships need so many games and tie-breakers - the people are so equal in ability that the most likely result from a match between to top level players is a draw.
- thom 7y agoI think if anyone has benefited from the coming of AlphaGo and Leela, it's Magnus himself. 2019 was such a renaissance for him partly because all these intuitive positional lines with pawn sacrifices opened up, and I felt in the years previous to that that his love for the game seemed slightly on the wane as he regularly became mired in others' Stockfish prep (while still being able to mostly pull it out due to endgame technique).
- dmit 7y agoIn fact, it was Magnus himself (currently 29 years old, as of April 2020) who said his favorite chess player was himself, when he was around 23. That Magnus apparently saw things on the board that current (overwhelmingly dominant) Magnus can't any more. So even in chess there's a physical prime, just like in pretty much any other sport.
- nal100 7y agoHe said that (jokingly) before his fabulous 2019 year. Right now he's spending a lot of time promoting chess24 with banter blitz, hanging around on lichess playing 100 games bullet matches, commenting on chess24 and other things that would profoundly ruin anyone else's concentration. So, no big deal if he very occasionally loses (online!) games.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoCarlsen losing is exceptionally good advertising, and makes him the center of more attention. It reminds me of the tennis player John McEnroe, win or lose we remember him for his outbursts, he made a lot of advertising money because of that. In short, Carlsen was probably beaten, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility that he was just winning at a different game (exposure or money).
- dejv 7y agoI am really curious if we are going too see players adopting AlphaZero tactics. Games I saw goes so against current intuition and it would be interesting to see chess evolving. Current crop of GMs benefited greatly from short feedback loops by using computers, but they still operate in explored problem space.
- gamegoblin 7y agoFor what it's worth, Magnus has recently hit an all-time ratings high after a very, very slow decline over the last 5 years. And he attributes his recent bump to studying the AlphaZero games. https://ratings.fide.com/id.phtml?event=1503014 https://ratings.fide.com/id.phtml?event=1503014
- buzzdenver 7y agoCome on, it's not like Kasparov won all the tournaments. Magnus is far from invincible, but currently he's still dominating.
- dntbnmpls 7y ago> Chess is one of the few fields where dominance can easily stretch into several decades Easily? No. The only player to have the top rating longer than 10 years is kasparov. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FIDE_chess_world_number_ones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FIDE_chess_world_numbe... > if you're a young prodigy you may breach into top level in your teenage years and last well until your 50s or 60s. Of course you won't be #1 this whole time (check out Lasker's longevity though) but you will always remain a top contender. No. There is nobody 50 or older in the fide ranking ( top 100 ). https://ratings.fide.com/ https://ratings.fide.com/ Chess is a mentally and physically draining sport. Top players tend to drop off considerably in their late 30s and 40s as younger talent takes over.
- thom 7y agoAnand, Gelfand, Dreev and Ivanchuck are all 50 or older, unless you just mean blitz, in which case it's just Anand and Dreev.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y agoAnand is about 100 Elo points weaker than Carlsen at all time controls. It's impressive that Anand is still #15 at his age (50 years), but he's the only 50-year-old at that elite level (2700+ Elo). The age distribution of the top 100 Classical players is: 16-19: 5 20-29: 39 30-39: 40 40-49: 12 50-51: 4 The 20s and 30s are really the peak ages for chess.
- thom 7y agoWasn't disputing that, just the inaccuracy of the previous comment.
- V-2 7y agoKorchnoi was still in the top 100 at the age of 76. Of course "easily" is a vast exaggeration.
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- Waterluvian 7y agoFWIW this is why I've adopted Curling after playing hockey for a decade. It is an incredibly skillful and physical game and yet you see 80 year olds at the rink playing it. You can get good at it and be good for a long long time. You don't get too old.
- exclusiv 7y agoAlso the beauty of golf. You can enjoy it until your 70s, some even older. You can do outings with several generations. Has shorter tees for younger, older, ladies if they want to use the. It also has a legitimate handicap system so everyone can compete. I also really love fishing, mostly for different reasons, but it's multi generational too of course.
- Nokinside 7y agoFormula 1 racing is similar. Drivers become aś good as they every can in pure pure driving skill in karting when they are still teenagers. All skills needed for driving fast are developed early. Rest of the career in F3/F2/GP2 feeder series to F1 is just maturing psychologically, getting experience and learning stuff you need outside the track. Ultimate skill level is already there or not. Drivers will eventually fade out when their physical performance declines in late 30's. (actual career performance depends on cars, teams, money, business and marketing)
- dominotw 7y agosame with skiing and many other sports.
- hyperbovine 7y agoWith chess you do not stand a nontrivial chance of dying each time you take to the field. So not the same, it seems to me.
- mrosett 7y agoThe dominant risk when I ski is traveling to and from the resort. So I suppose your point stands if you only play from home. Even so, it seems a bit irrelevant to the discussion.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoMaybe for you the travel to skiing is dominant, but I've known many people (UK acquaintances) who've been injured skiing but none who've been injured on route to go skiing. And that's just leisure skiing, in racing I'd imagine injuries are far more common.
- antasvara 7y agoThey were responding to the assertion that skiing holds a larger risk of dying than the travel to the ski resort. Statistically, it seems more likely that a person would die in a car accident versus skiing.
- edgarvaldes 7y agoSee the great Viktor Korchnoi[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Korchnoi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Korchnoi
- redis_mlc 7y agoThis appears to be some kind of speed chess, not chess.
- Fezzik 7y agoHuh? Variants of lightning/blitz/fast chess have been around since the late 19th Century. They are very much games of chess. I’m not sure what the quibble is? Is untimed chess, which is uncommon for competitive play, the only real form of chess? Or is timed chess, which almost all competitive matches are, an acceptable form of chess, so long as the duration allotted to each player is __________? https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/fast.html https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/fast.html
- keiferski 7y agoBlitz chess is not ‘standard’ chess. This is not a controversial fact.
- __s 7y ago> This appears to be some kind of speed chess, not chess. Where do you see the word standard?
- keymone 7y agoThere is no time format that is called “standard”, if anything, if somebody told me about “standard chess” I would assume they are talking about standard ruleset, in which case this article is definitely about standard chess. I think you meant “classical chess”, which is a time format.
- seamyb88 7y agoI think the argument here is that it's a very different game when you have to make the majority of your moves by intuition as opposed to systematic thought, and then decide which moves deserve an extra bit of thought. But, yeah, it's still chess.
- searchableguy 7y ago:) I wonder how good a random person from HN will be at chess. Let's figure it out - https://lichess.org/0wzDnVfy https://lichess.org/0wzDnVfy update: better than me. lol Created a hn tournament (finished): https://lichess.org/tournament/rWPYf1fK https://lichess.org/tournament/rWPYf1fK Created a second tournament: https://lichess.org/tournament/Wg6CHtmp https://lichess.org/tournament/Wg6CHtmp
- 1337shadow 7y agoThanks for playing ! Can't believe I made it 2nd, first podium of a tournament for me xD Another haxor created a team we can all join to keep in touch: https://lichess.org/team/hacker-news https://lichess.org/team/hacker-news GLHF ;)
- birdyrooster 7y agoIt seems way too easy to cheat at this, I wouldn't trust any of those results.
- searchableguy 7y agoIt's not. The site detects cheating and is pretty good at it.
- randomsearch 7y agoI know someone who worked on cheat detection in chess using ML. The solution turned out to be rather amusing, but I won’t disclose it here for obvious reasons. If you figure it out, it’ll probably amuse you too.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tmalsburg2 7y agoWhy is Alireza Firouzja being referred to as "Iranian teen"? He's an international top player. I doubt that Carlsen was referred to as "Norwegian teen" when he was ranking in the top 25. p.s: As always: responses > downvotes.
- gpm 7y agoBecause "person beats Magnus Carlsen" isn't nearly as interesting a headline as "really young person beats Magnus Carlsen" - the latter gives us a sense that we should be surprised. I think you're seeing racism where there is none.
- tmalsburg2 7y agoNothing wrong with pointing out that he's young. But he still has a name, and you've got to wonder about the significance of him being Iranian.
- gpm 7y agoChess, like olympic sports, is weirdly nationalistic and a source of national pride. I'm not much of a history expert, but I suspect that was largely caused by the soviet union deciding that they would be the best at it. As for not using his name, try and write the headline both mentioning his name, and his age. It's just clunky.
- dmurray 7y agoIf anything it's nice to see some good press for Iran on an American site. I fully expect him to be retconned as "French teen" or "American teen" or whatever else once he gets his new federation.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoOne reason to do that is to make it accessible for your reader. They hopefully have heard of Iran, they can "understand" the headline. Even for people who know of the situation sometimes players get a preceding nationality because then you don't need to remember the names to follow along with who is who.
- achow 7y agoChess fans won't have to wait long to see a rematch between the pair, as they face off once again on April 20 in the $250,000 Magnus Carlsen Invitational. The competition, hosted by Carlsen, will pit eight of the world's best players against each other for the record prize. Anyone knows if this can be watched Live?
- Someone 7y agohttps://www.magnuscarlsen.com/en/invitational https://www.magnuscarlsen.com/en/invitational
- dmurray 7y agoYes, on chess24.com with two matches every day and commentary from top players from now until May 3. Probably on other sites too but chess24 is hosting the event and typically has the highest-quality commentary.
- sfusato 7y agohttps://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/magnus-carlsen-invitational-2020/2/1/1 https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/magnus-carlsen...
- Izmaki 7y ago"Shock" is a noun. You cannot shock somebody... Why is a foreigner correcting the grammar of a huge, English-speaking news source?
- hyperbovine 7y agoThe level of pedantry and wrongness of this post shocks me.
- Finbel 7y agoIt's a verb as well: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/shock https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/shock
- whichquestion 7y agoShock is a noun, as well as a verb.
- doublesCs 7y agoAnd an adjective. I'm shocked.
- decasteve 7y agoI had been following Alireza's rise over the past year on Chess.com. It's not entirely surprising. He often plays against Hikaru Nakamura, one of the best blitz players in world, who streams many of the games on Twitch. The gap between them had been closing and I think it's pretty much closed now.
- lgl 7y agoHope he matured since this whiny moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPysTEW0YZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPysTEW0YZU
- Finbel 7y agoWow that hurt to watch.
- jwilber 7y agoYeah, not only did he throw his water bottle out of anger, he tried to appeal over something he lied about. Hard to care about him at all after seeing that behavior.
- rusticpenn 7y agoThat is a 14 or 15 year old kid playing on global level.
- sambroner 7y agoThat is a fascinating look behind the scenes of top flight blitz chess (I knew nothing). A few highlights: * There's a dispute over win vs draw, with a great behind the scenes camera work. * "If he can talk, this is a coffee house!" * They move so fast, they can't keep the pieces on the correct tile!
- glxxyz 7y agoAlso interesting was the actual complaint at https://youtu.be/YPysTEW0YZU?t=608 https://youtu.be/YPysTEW0YZU?t=608 To Appeal Commitie to Fide during the blitz game with Carlsen when I had 2 or 4 second my opponnet speak Loudly in his Language and of course if this will be allowed then every body can do this and of course everybody lose their consentratoin and I want to request appeal to check with camera.
- amsully 7y agoFor those interested, the POVs from each player are uploaded on youtube. Magnus POV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJtyQLkmRsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJtyQLkmRsU Alireza POV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb9RtOBuLm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb9RtOBuLm0 Best moment: https://youtu.be/rJtyQLkmRsU?t=3958 https://youtu.be/rJtyQLkmRsU?t=3958 Of the many spectacular moments and reactions, the best was Magnus winning a lost position and believing it won him the match (and implying Alireza has much to learn before being able to beat him). Magnus was still a professional when defeated, but emotions were running high at the point in the match.
- amsully 7y agoAlso, if you watch the game right after the Magnus victory, Magnus once again declares 'This is just game' before Alireza masterfully turns an amateur position into a victory over the world chess champion.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- yewenjie 7y agoRequest: would anybody higher rated than me (my Lichess classical rating is ~1670) be kind enough to mentor me in Chess (for as less as 1 hour in a week)?
- birksherty 7y agoNot the answer you wanted but there is an app called Magnus Trainer and some others by the man himself. https://www.playmagnus.com https://www.playmagnus.com
- keymone 7y agoMagnus wasn't shocked, he has very high opinion of Alireza's skills.
- freeflight 7y agoThis reminds me very much about a documentary I saw a while back about competitive fighting games [0]. A Pakistani newcomer ended up taking everybody by surprise in a big Tekken 7 tournament trough his unconventional way of playing. This was apparently the result of Pakistani arcade culture existing in its own isolated underground niche, in which a completely independent meta for playing the game evolved. International top tier players even traveled to Pakistan to learn and train that style of playing with local players to incorporate elements of it to their own. [0] https://youtu.be/m-fZciAKvho https://youtu.be/m-fZciAKvho
- tombh 7y agoWow, I loved watching that! Thanks for posting
- pknerd 7y agoWow thanks for sharing. Being a Pakistani I loved how he actually won the games.
- achow 7y agoThen you would much enjoy reading this (I did). The secret Pakistan masters of Tekken: Pakistani players seemingly came out of nowhere to dominate the classic fighting game this year. https://theoutline.com/post/8447/tekken-pakistan-lahore-fighting-game-community?zd=1&zi=qmen5rf6 https://theoutline.com/post/8447/tekken-pakistan-lahore-figh...
- awal2 7y agoIt's unfortunate that Alireza isn't mentioned by name in the headline and top photo accompanying the article is of Magnus alone holding a trophy.
- ajharrison 7y agoAgreed. Absolutely shameful
- betterattrib 7y agoBetter here: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/apr/16/chess-magnus-carlsen-shocked-by-16-year-old-in-banter-blitz-cup-final https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/apr/16/chess-magnus-c...
- ajharrison 7y agoMy favourite part is how the “Iranian teen” won the match but the first thing you see in the article is a picture of Magnus. CNN is trash.
- dzonga 7y agohopefully, one day geopoliticism will go away. so called sanctions etc affect regular people. the teen can't even fly easily or represent iran due to sanctions
- mcv 7y agoI'm not sure "shocks" is the right word. From what I understand, Carlsen already considered him his most dangerous opponent. Or at least a future rival.