5 ms·

Magnus Carlsen forced into a draw by more than 143000 people playing against him

51 points by namanyayg 1y ago

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
sfblah 1y ago
Presumably "the world" used enough engine help to do this.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  This is interesting! I assumed the same thing, so I just skimmed through the game with an engine. The world, on average, was definitely not cheating. As early as move 7 Magnus was outright winning! But there's an interesting meta in that Magnus played far more passively than he normally would. And so I think he also expected he was probably playing an engine by proxy, and wanted to keep the position completely under control. If he knew the world was legit, they probably would have lost! I'm still trying to reconcile how it came to be that the world didn't cheat though. Lowest common denominator amongst 140k+ people paired with inevitable chatter of 'Hey best engine move is blah' seems unavoidable.
  - Scarblac 1y ago
    Maybe the non cheaters lost interest when he was winning and the cheaters held the draw?
  - rthnbgrredf 1y ago
    I think the assumption that more than 50% of people are cheating in online chess is not correct. Another Grandmaster and ex-world champion Anand recently also did a match against 70k people and won.
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      That's not the assumption at all. The percent of cheaters in online chess is approaching an asymptotic 0 (as a percent of all players) simply because the sites, and chess.com in particular, have gotten very good at culling them. But things like this are social. I didn't follow this (or even know it was going on somehow) but it seems very safe to assume that somebody and probably multiple somebodies were regularly pointing out and discussing engine moves. So my only real assumption is that a significant chunk of people would end up deferring to the engine moves rather than their own preference. Of course my implied assumption there is also that a significant chunk of people were involved in the social aspects of this, but I think that's also a fairly reasonable assumption.
      - squigz 1y ago
        Based on a quick skim of the article, I don't think this was, for example, Twitch Chat picking moves, which might enable the social aspect you're referring to - although I'd like to point out the difficulty inherent to being in a room with many thousands of people, all spamming chess moves, and trying to find the one engine move :P
        somenameforme 1y ago
        It was a correspondence event, played a move a day time control on chess.com. Chat would've probably been mostly on X and other such places.
        squigz 1y ago
        In that case, I definitely don't believe a majority of people interested in this sort of thing would be intentionally setting out to cheat.
        somenameforme 1y ago
        It's not that. It's that once you know the best move you start to see why. And then it becomes hard to get it out of your mind. It's the reason I don't recommend computer assisted game analysis, unless you just want a quick blunder check. A very non-zero chunk of people also probably would not have even understood that that's cheating if it wasn't really clearly laid out in the interface somewhere. For instance computer assistance in the largest correspondence chess league is legal.
drewbitt 1y ago
95 percent accuracy by the world. They traded most everything and played 99 percent accurate in the second half.
- globular-toast 1y ago
  I wonder how many people playing legit got bored and signed off leaving it to the people using engines?
EnPissant 1y ago
Magnus Carlsen would get crushed by an engine running on an iPhone 1. Meanwhile the world has access to iPhone 16s. The entire concept is flawed. I'm guessing someone made money off it, though.
- esseph 1y ago
  The proper question might be: Why is this one iPhone stalemating 140k other iPhones in this particular task? iPhone/computer/machine/etc
  - unsupp0rted 1y ago
    Better heuristics. Even 1% better heuristics is enough of an edge in a zero-sum game.
- analog31 1y ago
  I don't know enough about chess, and will take your word for it. What it suggests to me is a deeper question: How do you get 143000 people to all fall in line behind a single machine, or person, making the best decision for them?
  - EnPissant 1y ago
    If you had a military-like organization and turned 143000 people into calculators led by one (talented) person or a hierarchy, then yes, they would crush Magnus.
    - ars 1y ago
      No they would not. If you imagine running a computer chess engine on 143,000 humans, it's not even remotely close to the amount of compute you need to win. Humans don't win by calculation the way computers do. When you have multiple humans working together on chess they don't add up to an ultra-smart human. You are simply as smart as the smartest human in your crew, and that's it.
hnposter 1y ago
Reminds me of Gary Kasparov vs. The World on MSN Gaming Zone.
tedunangst 1y ago
How many people voted in complete accordance?
nurettin 1y ago
This means the world (or most of it) was not cheating! What makes it funny is: when 143000 chess players merge, they basically become Anish Giri.
- voxl 1y ago
  It might be natural to jump to immediately think the majority was cheating, but as you rightly point out if they were cheating Magnus would have lost. Human players cannot compete with even a couple hours compute on stockfish let alone 24 hours.
selcuka 1y ago
It's impressive that Magnus might have won if The World hadn't forced a stalemate. > In the Chess.com virtual chat this week, players appeared split on whether to force the draw — and claim the glory — or to keep playing against Carlsen, even if it ultimately meant a loss.
- cluckindan 1y ago
  It was not a stalemate, it was a threefold repetition.
  - selcuka 1y ago
    I stand corrected, thanks.
gangelov 1y ago
There is the full game with some more details here: https://www.chess.com/news/view/the-world-forces-draw-in-historic-game-vs-magnus-carlsen https://www.chess.com/news/view/the-world-forces-draw-in-his...
gcbill 1y ago
Perhaps it is worth considering that this was Freestyle chess and not classical chess. Which means the traditional book moves with which chess engines are trained goes out of window. I am not saying Stockfish cant beat Magnus in Freestyle chess but it makes sense to believe that Chess engines are better at classical chess when compared to freestyle. But then again, with 24 hour time to brute force every possible combination, I guess chess engines may be better at freestyle when compared to classical chess, due to the sheer amount of creativity and calculation involved.
- throwawayyy86 1y ago
  It's actually the opposite. Humans fare much worse at freestyle chess because they don't have any opening theory and are unfamiliar with the patterns that arise from nonstandard opening positions. Engines don't care much about opening theory one way or another Source: am rated 2000 fide (partly because I struggle with openings)
- Scarblac 1y ago
  Chess engines haven't needed book moves fed to them for a very long time now. Start up any modern engine and let it analyze, and it will only be considering strong theoretical main lines from the first second. That said, they have been trained almost exclusively on games that started from the normal starting position. But then, so have humans.
sceptic123 1y ago
Isn't this the promise of LLM, that with enough data the best answer will surface. The problem is that it needs training against a Magnus Carlsen which is definitely not going to happen.
darepublic 1y ago
Some irritating aspects to this story. It's a chess.com fluff piece and frankly it would have been disastrous to their bottom line if Magnus would have lost as of course it would mean a significant percent of the world was cheating. I would not be at all surprised if they had measures in place to stop that if it arose. Freestyle chess has been almost universally known as Fischer random. But of course Fischer being who he was history needs to be sanitized. The ap story is also wrong in its description of how it works since pieces are only randomized along the back rank not "all over the board" Then you have so called experts racing into this thread to pronounce that cheating had nothing to do with the outcome. On the contrary the accuracy of the world is suspicious and I don't believe chess.com would ever permit Magnus to lose this match so it makes sense that, despite strengthening its position a strong "draw by repetition" faction magically appeared to prevent that possibility.

51 points by namanyayg 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

sfblah 1y ago

Presumably "the world" used enough engine help to do this.

somenameforme 1y ago
This is interesting! I assumed the same thing, so I just skimmed through the game with an engine. The world, on average, was definitely not cheating. As early as move 7 Magnus was outright winning! But there's an interesting meta in that Magnus played far more passively than he normally would. And so I think he also expected he was probably playing an engine by proxy, and wanted to keep the position completely under control. If he knew the world was legit, they probably would have lost! I'm still trying to reconcile how it came to be that the world didn't cheat though. Lowest common denominator amongst 140k+ people paired with inevitable chatter of 'Hey best engine move is blah' seems unavoidable.
- Scarblac 1y ago
  Maybe the non cheaters lost interest when he was winning and the cheaters held the draw?
- rthnbgrredf 1y ago
  I think the assumption that more than 50% of people are cheating in online chess is not correct. Another Grandmaster and ex-world champion Anand recently also did a match against 70k people and won.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    That's not the assumption at all. The percent of cheaters in online chess is approaching an asymptotic 0 (as a percent of all players) simply because the sites, and chess.com in particular, have gotten very good at culling them. But things like this are social. I didn't follow this (or even know it was going on somehow) but it seems very safe to assume that somebody and probably multiple somebodies were regularly pointing out and discussing engine moves. So my only real assumption is that a significant chunk of people would end up deferring to the engine moves rather than their own preference. Of course my implied assumption there is also that a significant chunk of people were involved in the social aspects of this, but I think that's also a fairly reasonable assumption.
    - squigz 1y ago
      Based on a quick skim of the article, I don't think this was, for example, Twitch Chat picking moves, which might enable the social aspect you're referring to - although I'd like to point out the difficulty inherent to being in a room with many thousands of people, all spamming chess moves, and trying to find the one engine move :P
      - somenameforme 1y ago
        It was a correspondence event, played a move a day time control on chess.com. Chat would've probably been mostly on X and other such places.
        squigz 1y ago
        In that case, I definitely don't believe a majority of people interested in this sort of thing would be intentionally setting out to cheat.
        somenameforme 1y ago
        It's not that. It's that once you know the best move you start to see why. And then it becomes hard to get it out of your mind. It's the reason I don't recommend computer assisted game analysis, unless you just want a quick blunder check. A very non-zero chunk of people also probably would not have even understood that that's cheating if it wasn't really clearly laid out in the interface somewhere. For instance computer assistance in the largest correspondence chess league is legal.

drewbitt 1y ago

95 percent accuracy by the world. They traded most everything and played 99 percent accurate in the second half.

globular-toast 1y ago
I wonder how many people playing legit got bored and signed off leaving it to the people using engines?

EnPissant 1y ago

Magnus Carlsen would get crushed by an engine running on an iPhone 1. Meanwhile the world has access to iPhone 16s. The entire concept is flawed. I'm guessing someone made money off it, though.

esseph 1y ago
The proper question might be: Why is this one iPhone stalemating 140k other iPhones in this particular task? iPhone/computer/machine/etc
- unsupp0rted 1y ago
  Better heuristics. Even 1% better heuristics is enough of an edge in a zero-sum game.
analog31 1y ago
I don't know enough about chess, and will take your word for it. What it suggests to me is a deeper question: How do you get 143000 people to all fall in line behind a single machine, or person, making the best decision for them?
- EnPissant 1y ago
  If you had a military-like organization and turned 143000 people into calculators led by one (talented) person or a hierarchy, then yes, they would crush Magnus.
  - ars 1y ago
    No they would not. If you imagine running a computer chess engine on 143,000 humans, it's not even remotely close to the amount of compute you need to win. Humans don't win by calculation the way computers do. When you have multiple humans working together on chess they don't add up to an ultra-smart human. You are simply as smart as the smartest human in your crew, and that's it.

hnposter 1y ago

Reminds me of Gary Kasparov vs. The World on MSN Gaming Zone.

tedunangst 1y ago

How many people voted in complete accordance?

nurettin 1y ago

This means the world (or most of it) was not cheating! What makes it funny is: when 143000 chess players merge, they basically become Anish Giri.

voxl 1y ago
It might be natural to jump to immediately think the majority was cheating, but as you rightly point out if they were cheating Magnus would have lost. Human players cannot compete with even a couple hours compute on stockfish let alone 24 hours.

selcuka 1y ago

It's impressive that Magnus might have won if The World hadn't forced a stalemate. > In the Chess.com virtual chat this week, players appeared split on whether to force the draw — and claim the glory — or to keep playing against Carlsen, even if it ultimately meant a loss.

cluckindan 1y ago
It was not a stalemate, it was a threefold repetition.
- selcuka 1y ago
  I stand corrected, thanks.

gangelov 1y ago

There is the full game with some more details here: https://www.chess.com/news/view/the-world-forces-draw-in-historic-game-vs-magnus-carlsen https://www.chess.com/news/view/the-world-forces-draw-in-his...

gcbill 1y ago

Perhaps it is worth considering that this was Freestyle chess and not classical chess. Which means the traditional book moves with which chess engines are trained goes out of window. I am not saying Stockfish cant beat Magnus in Freestyle chess but it makes sense to believe that Chess engines are better at classical chess when compared to freestyle. But then again, with 24 hour time to brute force every possible combination, I guess chess engines may be better at freestyle when compared to classical chess, due to the sheer amount of creativity and calculation involved.

throwawayyy86 1y ago
It's actually the opposite. Humans fare much worse at freestyle chess because they don't have any opening theory and are unfamiliar with the patterns that arise from nonstandard opening positions. Engines don't care much about opening theory one way or another Source: am rated 2000 fide (partly because I struggle with openings)
Scarblac 1y ago
Chess engines haven't needed book moves fed to them for a very long time now. Start up any modern engine and let it analyze, and it will only be considering strong theoretical main lines from the first second. That said, they have been trained almost exclusively on games that started from the normal starting position. But then, so have humans.

sceptic123 1y ago

Isn't this the promise of LLM, that with enough data the best answer will surface. The problem is that it needs training against a Magnus Carlsen which is definitely not going to happen.

darepublic 1y ago

Some irritating aspects to this story. It's a chess.com fluff piece and frankly it would have been disastrous to their bottom line if Magnus would have lost as of course it would mean a significant percent of the world was cheating. I would not be at all surprised if they had measures in place to stop that if it arose. Freestyle chess has been almost universally known as Fischer random. But of course Fischer being who he was history needs to be sanitized. The ap story is also wrong in its description of how it works since pieces are only randomized along the back rank not "all over the board" Then you have so called experts racing into this thread to pronounce that cheating had nothing to do with the outcome. On the contrary the accuracy of the world is suspicious and I don't believe chess.com would ever permit Magnus to lose this match so it makes sense that, despite strengthening its position a strong "draw by repetition" faction magically appeared to prevent that possibility.