8 ms·

This was during an online rapid tournament. So still very impressive, but Magnus loses games online all the time and I'm not _quite_ sure why this is news. It

by tibbar 5y ago

This was during an online rapid tournament. So still very impressive, but Magnus loses games online all the time and I'm not _quite_ sure why this is news. It is interesting which junior players Magnus invited to the tournament, though - besides Praggnanandhaa, there's also Andrey Esipenko, who _did_ beat Magnus in a classical game once at the prestigious Tata Steel Masters 2021, and also Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who beat Magnus late last year en route to becoming the World Rapid Champion at 17 years old. A fun group! With Vincent Keymer in the mix too, you're only really missing Nihal Sarin and (of course) Firouzja for many of the future faces of chess. [Edit: the article says that Praggnanandhaa is the youngest player ever to beat Magnus since 2013, which would definitely be newsworthy. I think the article must be leaving out important context, since this tournament is (1) online, (2) speed chess and (3) not FIDE rated, so it typically wouldn't be included in records, and Magnus has almost certainly lost random online games to younger players before. I'm guessing the article is referencing some other source without providing the relevant criteria, which is why it looked a little weird to me.]

laxmin 5y ago
> loses games all the time to 16 year olds? That's the news.
- Dlanv 5y ago
  Yes. He even lost once in rapid to a person who was brand new to chess, if I recall correctly
  - Davidzheng 5y ago
    Lmao (obviously this never happened)
    - 8note 5y ago
      Losing says nothing about the seriousness of the game
- bigcat123 5y ago
- tibbar 5y ago
  Definitely. Off the top of my head: Abdusattorov, Sarin, Firouzja, Keymer, Niemann, Yoo as well as Praggnanandhaa could all take down Magnus in a given blitz game, and have been strong enough to do so for several years. Rapid is definitely a tougher proposition, but most of them could steal the occasional round from Magnus there, too. To be clear, Magnus is still one of the strongest, if not the strongest, players in the world at speed chess, but there's much more variability per game than in classical and at a given format (eg online 3+0, with premoves) probably he's edged out by any number of players.
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    I'm confused - the parent is referring to a "did", but you said "could".
    - tibbar 5y ago
      For example, here's Nihal Sarin beating Magnus at a blitz game at 16 years old: https://www.chess.com/events/2021-magnus-carlsen-vs-challengers/01-07/Carlsen_Magnus-Nihal_Sarin https://www.chess.com/events/2021-magnus-carlsen-vs-challeng.... Sarin is currently rated #5 on the chess.com blitz leaderboard with an absurd rating of over 3100. Online speed chess is just a different animal - ratings are different, everyone plays lots more games, and even Magnus loses fairly often. These players are all rated high enough to be competitive with Magnus at certain speed time controls, which is my point.
    - CaptainNegative 5y ago
      And here's another example, with FM Yoav Milikow beating him on stream in 8 moves at either 15 or 16 years old (depending on Yoav's birth month). Speed chess is a different animal. https://youtu.be/mor6qpyT7jA https://youtu.be/mor6qpyT7jA
- bryan0 5y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted. This is news because he is the youngest player to beat magnus since he became world champ, and it was an excellent game to boot.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
KingOfCoders 5y ago
Because India. [Edit] Thanks for the comments, in now way is this meant prejudiced and derogatory, I have worked with many excellent Indian colleagues. The country normally associated with Chess is Russia, lately India got a huge wave of great talents like Vidit Gujrathi or Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa.
- Markoff 5y ago
  What? I thought it's pretty common knowledge chess is very popular in India. Which is why they are in 5th place in world. https://ratings.fide.com/top_federations.phtml https://ratings.fide.com/top_federations.phtml
- DrBenCarson 5y ago
  I’ll go out of my way and assume you don’t mean to be prejudiced or derogatory. In return, I ask that you understand that your phrasing is prejudiced and derogatory.
- yumraj 5y ago
  > Because India. Do you have something against India or Indians? That too a 16 year old Indian kid.. Hopefully that is not part of your CTO coaching..
  - hackinthebochs 5y ago
    It's well known that Indians will absolutely swarm any content about India put on the internet. I follow multiple youtubers that randomly see 10x their usual traffic on a video that happens to be about India in some way.
    - mkl95 5y ago
      This is a well known phenomenon. IMDb (Internet Movie Database) added a Top Rated Indian Movies page* because tons of users rate virtually every Indian movie 10/10. * https://www.imdb.com/india/top-rated-indian-movies/ https://www.imdb.com/india/top-rated-indian-movies/
    - deleted 5y ago
youeseh 5y ago
Because, every time Magnus loses, it is news. When he is no longer number one, it will cease to be news.
- oldstrangers 5y ago
  Its not news to people who care about chess news, which is funny. Its news for people who don't play chess.
- greyman 5y ago
  No, it isn't. Especially not if it is online rapid tournament. Indian journalists made it news. :-) On another note, I like that guy and he is great talent, I followed his games live during the recent Tata Steel tournament (that was real classic chess tournament). He will need to prove himself against other such talents like Firouzja, which I think is around 18 and also very good, ando also that young Hungarian guy has a lot of promise. Hopefully they bring Magnus down soon. ;-)
  - okamiueru 5y ago
    Exactly this. I was very confused why this in particular was made into a news story, because in online rapid chess, and even more so for bullet, the only surprising outcome would be if he didn't lose a whole bunch of games.
    - kyawzazaw 5y ago
      Because it is a young child
cjbprime 5y ago
Moreover, Carlsen is currently symptomatic with a confirmed case of COVID. https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/chess/magnus-carlsen-struck-by-after-effects-of-covid-19-every-time-i-think-i-blunder-7785861/ https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/chess/magnus-carlse...
spoonjim 5y ago
This is news because it's a 16-year-old Indian kid. India has a huge Anglophone online audience that loves to boost news of Indian accomplishments, particularly those of people achieving something beyond their years.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  Any 16-year-old kid would make the news for doing this.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    Yes but this news would not get this much exposure if it was a Russian kid. They simply don't have the same online footprint.
    - rococode 5y ago
      Case in point: Last year, 18-year-old Andrey Esipenko beat Carlsen in classical time controls. It was Carlsen's first classical loss against a teenager in 10 years, and his first loss to a sub-2700 player in 5 years. It was also just 3 months after Carlsen's record-breaking streak of 125 classical games with no losses came to an end. There was a big buzz in the chess world at the time, but it was hardly front-page material for mainstream media. That said, of course, newsworthiness is not a competition - so congrats to both youngsters for their awesome achievements. The upcoming chess generation is looking promising! (I expect we'll see similar headlines for Alireza Firouzja someday soon)
      - dmurray 5y ago
        Firouzja has dozens of wins against Carlsen already. I'm only surprised that Pragg didn't.
- rishikeshs 5y ago
  As an Indian, I couldn't agree more.
- 5y ago
yashap 5y ago
This context would certainly be great in the article, but I still feel it’s newsworthy. Assuming the article is correct, he’s the youngest player ever to beat Magnus since he became World Champion in 2013 - that alone is worth noticing. He’s also the 6th youngest chess grandmaster ever, so it’s not like he’s a nobody, he’s a legit prodigy. Plus India has traditionally not been a strong chess nation (per capita), but has been up and coming recently, so that adds to the appeal of the story.
- screye 5y ago
  I mean, per capita, India is terrible at everything. We are much better at chess than say soccer or Basketball.
  - herodoturtle 5y ago
    Your cricket is world class though ^_^
    - aloisdg 5y ago
      Same in Kabaddi
      - revel 5y ago
        just putting it out there as a random foreigner that happened to watch kabaddi randomly on tv while travelling -- kabaddi rules! Great spectator sport
        ComradePhil 5y ago
        I have played Kabaddi as a kid but somehow never imagined that it was televised. Looked for clips of Pro Kabbadi League on YouTube and couldn't help but laugh out loud because of it being presented as a serious sport with commentators and everything.
        5y ago
happytoexplain 5y ago
"Why is this news" is almost always an unnecessarily provocative "high-heat low-light" question. It's more substantial to point out mitigating factors and add missing context, as you also did.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  > "high-heat low-light" question What does that mean?
  - hatefulmoron 5y ago
    I read it as a metaphorical nod to light bulbs: an inefficient light bulb spends most of its energy toward heat while producing little light. Instead of producing illuminating discussion, a "high-heat low-light" question produces flames.
    - Semaphor 5y ago
      Sounds right, thanks.
  - lordgrenville 5y ago
    It's an idiom from Shakespeare (though nowadays we reverse it, since light is more desirable than heat). https://blog.editors.ca/?p=3435 https://blog.editors.ca/?p=3435
gyc 5y ago
And, although not a junior, Eric Hansen aka one of the chessbrah also beat Magnus this tournament!
Lapsa 5y ago
because of indian spam. happy 4 pragg though
nextaccountic 5y ago
You seem to know your stuff, so I have a question, where's Firouzja? I expected him to participate in more tournments
- tibbar 5y ago
  Firouzja is at a different point in his career than the other juniors. For most people, competing in a top online tournament for prizes and a shot at taking down Magnus is a great use of time. But for Firouzja, who is the world no. 2 at 18 years old and will be participating in the next Candidates Tournament, it’s all about grinding out classical training, learning openings, etc. He spent some time doing the online circuit and even won Titled Tuesday (a major weekly tournament with hundreds of grandmasters) twice in a row last year. When he emerges again, it will be to show dominance against the world’s elite at the most rigorous time control, aiming for the next World Championship. That’s what he wants.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> I'm not _quite_ sure why this is news Perhaps not for most chess aficionados, But I for one don't mind this being blasted all over the news because Indian children have not seen school for two years now and they're hooked on to worthless reality shows & soap operas on television/streaming sites/FB/Instagram/WhatsApp; If this news motivates some of them (or) their parents to direct their attention towards chess even if its just for the prospects of fame then I'm all in for it.
qiskit 5y ago
> This was during an online rapid tournament. So still very impressive, but Magnus loses games online all the time and I'm not _quite_ sure why this is news. Not to mention, Pragg wasn't even the lowest rated player to beat Magnus in this unrated tournament. Eric Hansen is even lower rated than pragg and he beat magnus. Sure hansen is older but so what? Pragg didn't even make it out of the preliminary stage of this tournament while hansen did. This news story reeks of advertising masquerading as news. India is a potential huge market and it seems like the chess industry paid for this news. As someone who follows chess, this story is so forced and unbelievable. Pragg came in 11th out of 16 and didn't make it past the first stage. Why turn it into such a huge news story? If anything, the story should be about how pragg and ding liren have to compete in the middle of the time due to their time zones. The tournament is still going on and they make a huge story out of this? Does not compute.
- jsharpe 5y ago
  To be fair, Eric Hansen's win was probably because of a Magnus Carlsen mouse slip. He made a totally nonsensical move and then immediately resigned.
  - regularfry 5y ago
    As a player with a rating probably, on a good day, somewhere around one third Carlsen's it is heartening to know that there is at least one aspect of his play that I am able to emulate precisely. And, it would seem, repeatedly.
throwaway5486nv 5y ago
How do we know either party is not using computer to make moves?

by tibbar 5y ago

laxmin 5y ago

> loses games all the time to 16 year olds? That's the news.

Dlanv 5y ago
Yes. He even lost once in rapid to a person who was brand new to chess, if I recall correctly
- Davidzheng 5y ago
  Lmao (obviously this never happened)
  - 8note 5y ago
    Losing says nothing about the seriousness of the game
bigcat123 5y ago
tibbar 5y ago
Definitely. Off the top of my head: Abdusattorov, Sarin, Firouzja, Keymer, Niemann, Yoo as well as Praggnanandhaa could all take down Magnus in a given blitz game, and have been strong enough to do so for several years. Rapid is definitely a tougher proposition, but most of them could steal the occasional round from Magnus there, too. To be clear, Magnus is still one of the strongest, if not the strongest, players in the world at speed chess, but there's much more variability per game than in classical and at a given format (eg online 3+0, with premoves) probably he's edged out by any number of players.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  I'm confused - the parent is referring to a "did", but you said "could".
  - tibbar 5y ago
    For example, here's Nihal Sarin beating Magnus at a blitz game at 16 years old: https://www.chess.com/events/2021-magnus-carlsen-vs-challengers/01-07/Carlsen_Magnus-Nihal_Sarin https://www.chess.com/events/2021-magnus-carlsen-vs-challeng.... Sarin is currently rated #5 on the chess.com blitz leaderboard with an absurd rating of over 3100. Online speed chess is just a different animal - ratings are different, everyone plays lots more games, and even Magnus loses fairly often. These players are all rated high enough to be competitive with Magnus at certain speed time controls, which is my point.
  - CaptainNegative 5y ago
    And here's another example, with FM Yoav Milikow beating him on stream in 8 moves at either 15 or 16 years old (depending on Yoav's birth month). Speed chess is a different animal. https://youtu.be/mor6qpyT7jA https://youtu.be/mor6qpyT7jA
bryan0 5y ago
Not sure why this is downvoted. This is news because he is the youngest player to beat magnus since he became world champ, and it was an excellent game to boot.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

KingOfCoders 5y ago

Because India. [Edit] Thanks for the comments, in now way is this meant prejudiced and derogatory, I have worked with many excellent Indian colleagues. The country normally associated with Chess is Russia, lately India got a huge wave of great talents like Vidit Gujrathi or Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa.

Markoff 5y ago
What? I thought it's pretty common knowledge chess is very popular in India. Which is why they are in 5th place in world. https://ratings.fide.com/top_federations.phtml https://ratings.fide.com/top_federations.phtml
DrBenCarson 5y ago
I’ll go out of my way and assume you don’t mean to be prejudiced or derogatory. In return, I ask that you understand that your phrasing is prejudiced and derogatory.
yumraj 5y ago
> Because India. Do you have something against India or Indians? That too a 16 year old Indian kid.. Hopefully that is not part of your CTO coaching..
- hackinthebochs 5y ago
  It's well known that Indians will absolutely swarm any content about India put on the internet. I follow multiple youtubers that randomly see 10x their usual traffic on a video that happens to be about India in some way.
  - mkl95 5y ago
    This is a well known phenomenon. IMDb (Internet Movie Database) added a Top Rated Indian Movies page* because tons of users rate virtually every Indian movie 10/10. * https://www.imdb.com/india/top-rated-indian-movies/ https://www.imdb.com/india/top-rated-indian-movies/
  - deleted 5y ago

youeseh 5y ago

Because, every time Magnus loses, it is news. When he is no longer number one, it will cease to be news.

oldstrangers 5y ago
Its not news to people who care about chess news, which is funny. Its news for people who don't play chess.
greyman 5y ago
No, it isn't. Especially not if it is online rapid tournament. Indian journalists made it news. :-) On another note, I like that guy and he is great talent, I followed his games live during the recent Tata Steel tournament (that was real classic chess tournament). He will need to prove himself against other such talents like Firouzja, which I think is around 18 and also very good, ando also that young Hungarian guy has a lot of promise. Hopefully they bring Magnus down soon. ;-)
- okamiueru 5y ago
  Exactly this. I was very confused why this in particular was made into a news story, because in online rapid chess, and even more so for bullet, the only surprising outcome would be if he didn't lose a whole bunch of games.
  - kyawzazaw 5y ago
    Because it is a young child

cjbprime 5y ago

Moreover, Carlsen is currently symptomatic with a confirmed case of COVID. https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/chess/magnus-carlsen-struck-by-after-effects-of-covid-19-every-time-i-think-i-blunder-7785861/ https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/chess/magnus-carlse...

spoonjim 5y ago

This is news because it's a 16-year-old Indian kid. India has a huge Anglophone online audience that loves to boost news of Indian accomplishments, particularly those of people achieving something beyond their years.

whatshisface 5y ago
Any 16-year-old kid would make the news for doing this.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  Yes but this news would not get this much exposure if it was a Russian kid. They simply don't have the same online footprint.
  - rococode 5y ago
    Case in point: Last year, 18-year-old Andrey Esipenko beat Carlsen in classical time controls. It was Carlsen's first classical loss against a teenager in 10 years, and his first loss to a sub-2700 player in 5 years. It was also just 3 months after Carlsen's record-breaking streak of 125 classical games with no losses came to an end. There was a big buzz in the chess world at the time, but it was hardly front-page material for mainstream media. That said, of course, newsworthiness is not a competition - so congrats to both youngsters for their awesome achievements. The upcoming chess generation is looking promising! (I expect we'll see similar headlines for Alireza Firouzja someday soon)
    - dmurray 5y ago
      Firouzja has dozens of wins against Carlsen already. I'm only surprised that Pragg didn't.
rishikeshs 5y ago
As an Indian, I couldn't agree more.
5y ago

yashap 5y ago

This context would certainly be great in the article, but I still feel it’s newsworthy. Assuming the article is correct, he’s the youngest player ever to beat Magnus since he became World Champion in 2013 - that alone is worth noticing. He’s also the 6th youngest chess grandmaster ever, so it’s not like he’s a nobody, he’s a legit prodigy. Plus India has traditionally not been a strong chess nation (per capita), but has been up and coming recently, so that adds to the appeal of the story.

screye 5y ago
I mean, per capita, India is terrible at everything. We are much better at chess than say soccer or Basketball.
- herodoturtle 5y ago
  Your cricket is world class though ^_^
  - aloisdg 5y ago
    Same in Kabaddi
    - revel 5y ago
      just putting it out there as a random foreigner that happened to watch kabaddi randomly on tv while travelling -- kabaddi rules! Great spectator sport
      - ComradePhil 5y ago
        I have played Kabaddi as a kid but somehow never imagined that it was televised. Looked for clips of Pro Kabbadi League on YouTube and couldn't help but laugh out loud because of it being presented as a serious sport with commentators and everything.
        5y ago

happytoexplain 5y ago

"Why is this news" is almost always an unnecessarily provocative "high-heat low-light" question. It's more substantial to point out mitigating factors and add missing context, as you also did.

Semaphor 5y ago
> "high-heat low-light" question What does that mean?
- hatefulmoron 5y ago
  I read it as a metaphorical nod to light bulbs: an inefficient light bulb spends most of its energy toward heat while producing little light. Instead of producing illuminating discussion, a "high-heat low-light" question produces flames.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    Sounds right, thanks.
- lordgrenville 5y ago
  It's an idiom from Shakespeare (though nowadays we reverse it, since light is more desirable than heat). https://blog.editors.ca/?p=3435 https://blog.editors.ca/?p=3435

gyc 5y ago

And, although not a junior, Eric Hansen aka one of the chessbrah also beat Magnus this tournament!

Lapsa 5y ago

because of indian spam. happy 4 pragg though

nextaccountic 5y ago

You seem to know your stuff, so I have a question, where's Firouzja? I expected him to participate in more tournments

tibbar 5y ago
Firouzja is at a different point in his career than the other juniors. For most people, competing in a top online tournament for prizes and a shot at taking down Magnus is a great use of time. But for Firouzja, who is the world no. 2 at 18 years old and will be participating in the next Candidates Tournament, it’s all about grinding out classical training, learning openings, etc. He spent some time doing the online circuit and even won Titled Tuesday (a major weekly tournament with hundreds of grandmasters) twice in a row last year. When he emerges again, it will be to show dominance against the world’s elite at the most rigorous time control, aiming for the next World Championship. That’s what he wants.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

> I'm not _quite_ sure why this is news Perhaps not for most chess aficionados, But I for one don't mind this being blasted all over the news because Indian children have not seen school for two years now and they're hooked on to worthless reality shows & soap operas on television/streaming sites/FB/Instagram/WhatsApp; If this news motivates some of them (or) their parents to direct their attention towards chess even if its just for the prospects of fame then I'm all in for it.

qiskit 5y ago

> This was during an online rapid tournament. So still very impressive, but Magnus loses games online all the time and I'm not _quite_ sure why this is news. Not to mention, Pragg wasn't even the lowest rated player to beat Magnus in this unrated tournament. Eric Hansen is even lower rated than pragg and he beat magnus. Sure hansen is older but so what? Pragg didn't even make it out of the preliminary stage of this tournament while hansen did. This news story reeks of advertising masquerading as news. India is a potential huge market and it seems like the chess industry paid for this news. As someone who follows chess, this story is so forced and unbelievable. Pragg came in 11th out of 16 and didn't make it past the first stage. Why turn it into such a huge news story? If anything, the story should be about how pragg and ding liren have to compete in the middle of the time due to their time zones. The tournament is still going on and they make a huge story out of this? Does not compute.

jsharpe 5y ago
To be fair, Eric Hansen's win was probably because of a Magnus Carlsen mouse slip. He made a totally nonsensical move and then immediately resigned.
- regularfry 5y ago
  As a player with a rating probably, on a good day, somewhere around one third Carlsen's it is heartening to know that there is at least one aspect of his play that I am able to emulate precisely. And, it would seem, repeatedly.

throwaway5486nv 5y ago

How do we know either party is not using computer to make moves?