13 ms·
Magnus Carlsen wins longest world chess championship game of all time
- rasulkireev 5y ago1. Didn't realize chess content was popular on HN. 2. Don't understand why people upvote a spoiler. 3. Was watching the stream, and couldn't stop watching, was too nervous for Ian.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- monkey_monkey 5y agoCarlsen's grind game is peerless.
- I_complete_me 5y agoWell done to Magnus. To Ian. To the commentators. This was an unbelievable 'play' in three acts. A game for the chess books. Great quality match so far and I hope Ian comes back from this blow and makes a fight of it. I believe he will.
- loh 5y agoIt was an absolutely incredible match to watch live. Historical. My jaw dropped when Magnus ignored his rook being attacked at the end in favor of the potential fork with his knight. It is ultimately what led to the sure win.
- ganeshkrishnan 5y agoThe match was already lost at that point. Two moves before that, Stockfish 14 has mate in 49.
- tanmay7270 5y agoDid Stockfish have a mate at 131. Kh4 Qe6+?
- jstx1 5y agoYes. You can check it out here - http://analysis.sesse.net/ http://analysis.sesse.net/ - just click on history. (Sesse is Stockfish with a lot of compute, you can also follow it live during the games). At 131 it says "White mates in 47".
- varunprasad 5y agoStockfish having mate in 39 moves says nothing about a match between 2 humans, already having played for over 6 hours, under very limited time constraints.
- jstx1 5y agoThat specific moment is actually pretty basic. You're right that it was a great match to watch though.
- loh 5y agoIn hindsight, yes, it's basic for sure. But in the heat of the moment after 7 hours of thinking about nothing but chess, Ian obviously missed the potential fork and was visibly surprised that Magnus left his rook to be attacked.
- jstx1 5y agoHe didn't miss it though - if he had, he would have taken the rook. No one at their level misses something like this in these games. This stuff is obvious to much much weaker players than Ian.
- toong 5y agoReplying to sibling: no, he was not - it was obvious, even to a low-level recreational player (like me)
- loh 5y agoCopying what I said in another reply: I'm referring to move 133, right after Ian moved his queen from H6 to H7, attacking the rook. Magnus ignores this and moves his E5 pawn to E6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWkBeTwbfj4&t=29890s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWkBeTwbfj4&t=29890s
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- loh 5y agoIf he was aware of it, he would not have allowed it occur to begin with. He was counting on Magnus to move the rook and was very visibly surprised when Magnus left the rook in place.
- tanmay7270 5y agoYou mean Rf7 when he ignored the *pawn on e6 being attacked by the queen for a potential fork with the knight (Qxe6 Ng7+)?
- loh 5y agoI'm referring to move 133, right after Ian moved his queen from H6 to H7, attacking the rook. Magnus ignores this and moves his E5 pawn to E6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWkBeTwbfj4&t=29890s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWkBeTwbfj4&t=29890s
- jjbinx007 5y agoBit of a spoiler :( I prefer to watch analysis of games from YouTubers like Agadmator or Jerry from Chessnetwork and discover who the winner was by watching the game. I wonder if these long games are not particularly helpful. Most chess final games end in draws as players are reluctant to create an imbalance and instead play it safe. There tends to be more exciting games played in games with a shorter time limit. I'm not advocating bullet but perhaps they could try 30 minute matches instead?
- sleepysysadmin 5y ago>I'm not advocating bullet but perhaps they could try 30 minute matches instead? Other time controls is already a thing. Personally a huge rapid fan. I think Fisher was right. The problem is just prep and theory. If we still have classical time but chess960 so there isn't 20 moves of theory memorized.
- wadkar 5y ago> Bit of a spoiler :( I get your sentiment but this is really exciting news in the chess community. A win after so many years!!
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago"World chess championship has win outcome in longest-ever game" would be a great headline and wouldn't contain a spoiler. Unfortunately, they're probably optimizing for views, and Magnus has a lot of name recognition.
- ganeshkrishnan 5y agoYou can watch the commentary by Judith Polgar. Of all the people I enjoy watching her live commentary because she has amazing insight into best moves and explains the reasoning behind it. For few of previous matches by Magnus, she found moves that even Magnus had missed.
- jpmoral 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crhU-pg7Rvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crhU-pg7Rvw Skip to 12:48 for the start of the commentary, 32:15 for the start of the game.
- jfengel 5y agoWhat does "first decisive game in the classical rounds of a world championship in over five years" mean?
- initialized 5y agolots of games at this level result in draws, this was a win.
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoI wonder if this is a limitation on how humans conceptualize Chess. Do games played with computers either vs human or another computer frequently end in draws? If not, maybe there is some insight to be gained to raise high level play even more.
- YawningAngel 5y agoHigh level computers draw each other almost 100% of the time and beat humans 100% of the time.
- throwaway81523 5y agoEngine games (you can watch them at tcec-chess.com and some are terrific) with the standard starting position are almost always drawn. Engine tournaments are usually played instead with human selected, unbalanced openings designed to produce an exciting game with lower likelihood of a draw. The unbalanced opening intentionally gives one side (black or white) an advantage, so each opening is used twice, with each engine playing one game as black and one as white, to balance things out. The games are usually drawn anyway, with some occasional exciting wins. The top human players now study engine games closely, and play more like engines themselves. Very few mistakes => more draws. It's unknown what would happen if a top human with serious preparation played against a modern engine. They'd have basically no chance of winning and a fairly low chance of a draw, with the unknown being "how low is fairly low". My wild-ass guess is maybe 1 game in 10 when the human has the white pieces and much lower with the black pieces. There is not much chess theory about what happens when a human plays a game from the beginning aiming for a draw, even though they do that all the time in real chess. It is something of a gap in the "literature".
- boomboomsubban 5y agoSo now Carlsen is heavily encouraged to play for a draw in the next 8 games?
- throwaway81523 5y agoMore or less yes, except it's 9 more games. The match ends if someone reaches 7.5 points, and Magnus now has 3, so with 9 more draws he wins the match by 7.5 to 6.5. Going into the last game the score is 7-6 so if Nepo wins then the match is tied and goes into tiebreaks. CORRECTION (see below): this was game 6, not game 5 (I had lost count), so current score is 3.5 to 2.5, and there are potentially 8 classical games left.
- junar 5y agoThis was Game 6. Magnus leads 3.5 to 2.5. There are only 8 more classical games remaining.
- throwaway81523 5y agoOops, sorry, I just came back to fix that but you caught it first. I had somehow thought it was game 5.
- boomboomsubban 5y agoI'm only aware of this through this post, but the website says Carlsen now has 3.5 points. So 8 draws.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- birken 5y agoYes, but also keep in mind Ian has a lot of agency. Throughout the first 6 games, he has had moments to make the games more chaotic, increasing the chances of one side having an advantage, and thus far he has almost always played calmer, less chaotic moves. Now he will likely have to change tactics and enter into more aggressive and risky ideas. It should increase the odds of a decisive result one way or the other going forward, regardless of whether Magnus is "playing for a draw" or not.
- wadkar 5y agoVishy Sir during the end game commentary said that the engines say it’ll be a draw. Where/which move did Ian make the mistake? Anyways, hats off to everyone involved. Magnus, Ian, commenters, and the chess twitterati. What a game! ~8hrs!!!
- monkey_monkey 5y agoFrom the post game interview Q. What was the decisive moment? “I don’t know,” he [Carlsen] says. “But it felt like at the end when I got [133. e6] and maybe there was still some miracle defense there, but it didn’t really feel that way. At that point I felt very, very good about my chances.”'
- gpm 5y agoIn the game theoretic sense, it was move 130... Qe6 which moved the endgame from drawing to losing. We knew that under perfect play the game had been drawn since 115... Qxh4, since that's the point at which the pre computed table of endgames has the position (which is also why we know the exact move where the game from drawing to winning under perfect play).
- perihelions 5y ago130...Qe6 was the "mistake" (if one dares call it that!) I don't think any commentators expected Nepomniachtchi to actually hold this mathematical draw; it's superhuman. (I was certainly rooting for him though!) https://syzygy-tables.info/?fen=4k3/8/8/4PR2/5P2/6NK/q7/8%20b%20-%20-%202%20130 https://syzygy-tables.info/?fen=4k3/8/8/4PR2/5P2/6NK/q7/8%20... >"From May to August 2018 Bojun Guo generated 7-piece tables. The 7-piece tablebase contains 423,836,835,667,331 unique legal positions in about 18 Terabytes." https://syzygy-tables.info/ https://syzygy-tables.info/
- icelancer 5y agoThe game was drawn for about 30 moves but only Magnus had winning chances with piece overload. Ian had to play very precisely to preserve the draw, and he didn't, because Magnus is elite in exactly these situations.
- thaurelia 5y ago
- hardwaregeek 5y agoUtterly insane. Not only required a bunch of stamina but careful work to not trigger a draw.
- karmakaze 5y agoI liked this bit. > Known for always being quite fit, the Norwegian GM admitted this was a tiring affair: "Sure, but I think that's the way it is. As I said, it shouldn't be easy in a world championship match. You have to try for every chance no matter how small it is. Part of it was by design at some point that I thought I should make the game as long as possible so that we would both be as tired as possible when the critical moment came. That turned out to be a good strategy." Turned the game into a sport. Which ended up paying off better than the counter-strategy of playing quick moves to apply extra time pressure. From the description it seemed like it could easily have gone either way, so clearly a win and yet by very narrow margins where replaying, if possible to go back in time, would likely yield different results.
- typon 5y agoI know that because Magnus won, people will be heaping praise on him. But it is incredible how well Ian kept playing engine move after engine move to defend in the end game, while trying to keep time. Unbelievable the level of chess that's being played here.
- enneff 5y agoNepo is fantastic. And of course Magnus is brilliant. The game is at an all time high imo.
- montblanc 5y agoI don't know much about chess but Magnus throwing away his queen like that (traded his queen + rook for two rooks), was that a common thing to do? Looked outrageous to me but what do I know.
- School-Cotton 5y agoIt looks like he traded just his Queen for two rooks.
- montblanc 5y agoAh sorry my bad
- DSMan195276 5y agoA queen for two rooks is not too crazy, whether it's worth it depends a lot on the position. The naive piece worth suggests that two rooks (5 each) is worth more than a single queen (9), but in practice it's more complicated. I would say though, as someone who's not amazing at chess that was definitely one of the most significant moments in the game for me - Not that Magnus was making a mistake, but that he was creating a very big imbalance in the pieces which was going to make the game get a lot more interesting.
- fullwaza 5y agoThere are values associated with pieces. Without considering the position, a pawn would = 1, Knight = 3, Bishop = 3.5, Rook = 5, and Queen = 9. I've not seen the game yet, but if he traded a Queen for 2 rooks that isn't such a bad deal.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y agoModern engines value the pieces more, like knight/bishop ar 4.1, rook closer to 6 and queen at 11.
- ajkjk 5y agoNot uncommon, but doesn't happen in most games.
- YossarianFrPrez 5y agoI'm not a chess expert, so feel like I must be missing something. In the last move Black's king isn't in check? Was the loss due to time?
- llimllib 5y agoThe player with the black pieces, Ian Nepomniachtchi, resigned because he saw his position was lost
- YossarianFrPrez 5y agoAh! Thanks a bunch for clearing that up.
- zarzavat 5y agoIn slow games (classical, rapid) it's considered disrespectful to keep playing if your position is clearly hopeless, as is perceived as wasting your opponent's time or insulting their ability to play out the winning moves. In fast games (bullet, blitz), anything goes and it's much more common to see games end in a checkmate - or very close to one - as players will often play to the bitter end to maximize the chance of their opponent making a mistake under time pressure, or running out of time completely.
- Scarblac 5y agoThe pawn wil advance twice and promote to a queen, after which the win is trivial (both squares the pawn moves to are protected, by the rook and the Knight). In reply black can only try to give endless checks with his queen, but the white king can hide behind the Knight and they will end.
- YossarianFrPrez 5y agoGreat, thanks for pointing that out.
- vittore 5y agoWas rooting for Nepo!
- pg_bot 5y agoI feel like the 30 second increment is a bit cheesy given the time constraints of classical chess. Magnus was down to less than a minute but can just make some quick moves to add several minutes back to his clock. If you have an increment it should only be 1-2 seconds regardless of time format.
- t-writescode 5y agoThat would be a different game mode, then. This is the game mode that has been decided and agreed upon by all parties.
- unixhero 5y agoTypical of Norwegians to win.
- systemvoltage 5y agoPlease... please don't use titles like this and spoil it for everyone. Can we edit the title to say "Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomnitchi play the longest world chess championship game"?
- yyyk 5y agoYou have a good point, however HN etiquette is to be as close to the original headline as possible. Perhaps there should have an exception for sports.
- Rexxar 5y agoI can understand "spoil" for films, book, games but this is just sport news.
- gpm 5y agoChess is different from other sports in that watching it "live" isn't really the best way to experience it. Half the time you'd be looking at a chess board with no one around it, and you don't get to spend time thinking where you want to think, you have to spend it where the players decided to. Lots of people are going to instead watch the game later, at their own pace, watching someone analysis of the game, or doing their own. It's not entirely unreasonable to not want that spoiled.
- adflux 5y agoChange the title, wtf man?
- nvr219 5y agoImagine lasting 136 moves against Carlsen... This is the guy who gives people eight free moves and still destroys them two minutes later.
- WJW 5y agoNepo is not exactly a slouch either. There's a reason he's the challenger for the world championship.
- routerl 5y agoNepo has previously worked as part of Magnus's team (one of his "seconds"), and they have been friends who compete against each other since childhood. It is likely that this is the most evenly matched world championship of the 21st century, as both players are extremely well-prepared to face each other at the highest level.
- lavp 5y agoIf you’re talking under classical time formats only, I would disagree with you since Caruana and Magnus were at equal strengths coming in and the consecutive 12 draws proved that too. The rapid tie-breaker was a different story however.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ssiddharth 5y agoMagnus, the GOAT! What else is there to say? He’s an endgame god. Incredible win. After the 2018 championship match, I was pretty much expecting no decisive games here. Tough luck for Ian though. It’ll be hard not to tilt after this but he’s a champion.
- yyyk 5y agoYet another example of the Carlsen special - drag a game to a long not-obviously-drawn endgame, and grind a win from that. Carlsen seems to have this match well in hand.
- thom 5y agoGenuinely enjoyable and timely game. Out of prep early, machine evaluations useless throughout, plenty to play for and Magnus's quality and stamina showed. I'm of the opinion that there's nothing to gain from fans having engines open during a game, despite working in sports analytics and ostensibly being on the side of the machines. Obviously engines have a lot to say about the modern game, and the match so far had clearly been dominated by excellent prep by both teams. But the excellent commentary on Levitov Chess World by the peerless Peter Svidler, Vladimir Kramnik and Evgenij Miroshnichenko was firmly of the opinion that we had a game on our hands throughout. They were correct. I looked into some stats from the most recent TCEC superfinal just to get a feel for the error bars in engine evaluations. I think it's clear that even up to about +1.5, a draw is still on the cards between the superhuman engines, let alone humans. About a quarter of the superfinal games were decisive, despite us treating them as oracles. They're far more accurate in their draw predictions - in games that reached a 0.0 evaluation, only 3 ended with a win. But in this game, even when we hit the tablebase results, where the result is a foregone conclusion for the machines, they still don't reflect the outcome of a human game, especially when the time controls start to get more stressful. Anyway, what a wonderful, reassuring game. The players will be exhausted and it sets up a fascinating weekend of play. I couldn't be happier.
- alexeiz 5y agoI also like Svindler's et al. commentary better because they don't resort to computer analysis. They explore ideas on the chessboard from the human point of view and that makes their analysis much better than what you see on chess.com or chess24.
- pedrocr 5y ago>I'm of the opinion that there's nothing to gain from fans having engines open during a game Isn't this game a great argument for engines. Using a threshold of 2 to be well above your 1.5 this game had a total of 4 moments where one of the players had a very good chance for a win, and one of those moments was for Nepo: https://analysis.sesse.net/ https://analysis.sesse.net/ Having the engine show you that is a great complement to hearing the commentary from top super GMs. Why would you throw away that part of the coverage? >But in this game, even when we hit the tablebase results, where the result is a foregone conclusion for the machines, they still don't reflect the outcome of a human game, especially when the time controls start to get more stressful. While true I think the solution is to double down and extract metrics from the engine search that reflect that. Not only the evaluation of the position but also how narrow the path is for white and black, to better understand how even if it's a draw from the machine's point of view, how hard of a draw it will be for the human to hold.
- routerl 5y agoWow spoiler in the title? Wtf