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Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion
- sethbannon 13y agoI'm super excited to see the impact this will have on our noble game. I think it could see a real surge in popularity in the years ahead. And at the age of 22, Magnus is only just getting started.
- aet 13y agoWhat do you think about freestyle chess?
- edias 13y agoIt will be interesting to see if Chess, or other boardgames for the matter, will benefit from streaming services as much as video games have. I've seen the Chess-Network on twitch.tv break 1k viewers which is tiny compared to the 300k League of Lengends and Dota 2 tournaments but still a substantial amount regardless.
- ramidarigaz 13y agoChess Network broke 4.5k within the first two minutes of last night's game. I imagine it went higher but I accidentally fell asleep :(
- robryan 13y agoYeah, it got up to around 20k on at least one of the games.
- primitivesuave 13y agoI get really annoyed with the commentators on Chess Network, they have a tendency to overanalyze and talk way too much. The best commentator I've found is an Australian named Mato: youtube.com/matojelic
- whtrbt 13y agoAustrian?
- nebffa 13y agoHe is European-born but has lived in Australia for some time now.
- e2e8 13y agoYour first sentence is confusing me, so I just want to clarify. Chess Network is one guy name Jerry who streams on twitch and uploads videos on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/user/ChessNetwork http://www.youtube.com/user/ChessNetwork http://www.twitch.tv/ChessNetwork http://www.twitch.tv/ChessNetwork
- booop 13y agoChess champions come and go, but why would Magnus becoming the champion affect the game any differently than his predecessors?
- maaaats 13y agoThe first obvious one is that he is from the western world. No matter what may be politically correct, that will be positive in the western world compared to a Russian or Indian having the title. Secondly, he is young, athletic and smart, getting a lot of media attention.
- jordanmessina 13y agoPress conference is live right now for anyone interested: http://chennai2013.fide.com/fide-world-chess-championship-2013-live/ http://chennai2013.fide.com/fide-world-chess-championship-20...
- deletes 13y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFJNESXsRkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFJNESXsRkY
- simias 13y agoMy god those comments. Even chess streams are not safe it seems.
- rikacomet 13y agolot of trolls in the wild.. without mods.. god bless the mods :D
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deletes 13y agoA couple of month ago my browser update( or an incompatible addon ) glitched and I can't see youtube comments anywhere anymore. Its great actually. If I'll want quality content I'll read Hacker News( and equivalent ), otherwise I'm interested in the video itself and i don't need others to form my opinion of it.
- kops 13y agoYoutube comment section is one of the few places that aptly helps define the meaning of the phrase "darkest corner of internet". Some of the commenters there seem to have been gifted with the brains of an amoeba.
- rikacomet 13y agoNow what the heck happened in the end? Anand gave up a knight advantage, purposedly for a clear cut draw. I have no clue why he did that this time. He took queen with queen, clearly, knowing it would be lost to king, and then again the pawn with knight. He had a knight, of all things!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- cjbprime 13y ago> Anand gave up a knight advantage, purposedly for a clear cut draw. When you assume that a world-class GM played "purposedly" for a draw that would lose him the championship title, you're probably wrong. > He took queen with queen, clearly He was in check. Taking W's queen was the only way to avoid losing his own for nothing.
- rikacomet 13y agoare you sure about that? the king could have moved back up, but in front.. moved from right side to left side between those two lines, without moving in front of the queen line.
- pothibo 13y agoAnd he would have lost his queen thus loosing the game.
- dfan 13y agoIf Anand played the king to the eighth rank instead of to h6, Carlsen would have kept checking on the seventh and eighth ranks, with a draw by perpetual check.
- dfan 13y agoJust to make sure I am absolutely clear, I am talking about 61...Kh6, which enabled Carlsen to play 62.Qb6+ forcing the queen trade.
- xfax 13y agoA well-deserved win. Can't wait to see what else Magnus goes on to accomplish.
- 3327 13y agoChess is amazing it blows my mind why simple tools and games like this are not incorporated in some 'fun' way into the education system. By 'fun' I mean that if children were told to play chess they would not. A system would be need to be designed so that they look forward to chess class as they do for PE and art.
- Aqueous 13y agoChess is very addictive and I think even if they were told to like chess they would. I know that we played chess sometimes in public grade school and having been encouraged to do so didn't prevent me from enjoying it. it eventually became quite difficult to pull me away :-)
- iends 13y agoArmenia requires chess in schools for at least two hours a week (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/07/chess-deserves-place-in-schools http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/07/chess-d...) and they consistently are one of the top countries in the Chess Olympiad.
- prof_hobart 13y agoMy daughter hates PE, but she's just been peer pressured into wanting to learn chess - at her first wet break time in her new class, half the girls sat down and started playing, and she felt left out. That (along with watching the World Championship) has got me back into the game after not really having played it for about 30 years.
- scrabble 13y agoMy daughter's grade school has chess lessons once a week (we are in Canada). They start as young as junior kindergarten. To reinforce the lessons and gauge her learning, I try to play at least one game with her a month. I'm impressed at how much she's learned in the program. She's still not capable of beating me, but I'm able to teach her things she's not learned yet in the program such as castling and en passant. Then I'm happy to see her come back after that week's lesson to tell me she used what I taught her and won her game.
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- kadabra9 13y agoReading more about this match and Magnus in general, I learned of a measure termed "Nettlesomeness" which has been used to measure which players do the most to make their opponents to make mistakes. Magnus, with his highly creative style of play and unexpected moves, not surprisingly ranks the highest in this measure. He seems to have this remarkable gift of making moves which aren't just strong, they get inside his opponent's head and cause them to either overthink/break down. I'm interested in the technical details behind this metric. Has anyone heard of it before? Regardless, congrats Magnus. You are truly a generational talent, and I'm excited to see what your win will do for the game. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/nettlesomeness-and-the-first-half-of-the-carlsen-anand-match.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/net...
- erikig 13y agoThanks for the comment, the concept of nettlesomeness intrigues me. "...Carlsen is demonstrating one of his most feared qualities, namely his “nettlesomeness,” to use a term coined for this purpose by Ken Regan. Using computer analysis, you can measure which players do the most to cause their opponents to make mistakes." I was surprised to see that this isn't just some subjective measure but can me measured using computer analysis. In chess this can be a great tool against one's opponents but in collaborative endeavors it can be a detriment to team productivity. I wonder whether the same analysis can be used to pin-point nettlesome members of team e.g members of an open source team whose contributions sidetrack collaborators and cause them to make more trackable errors...
- mathattack 13y agoImpressive that it's scientific. I think it also measures how much people are trained to learn all the historical games versus learn deep principles and truths of chess. The great ones should be able to thrive in chaos. This is true in other fields. Some traders get crushed in non-standard markets. Others thrive.
- biot 13y agoI think this is actually based on subjective measures. An annotated game[0] will have ?!, ?, and ?? added by human commentators to indicate varying levels of mistakes. A computer analysis can make use of these subjective move evaluations within an annotated game to easily measure which players cause their opponents to make mistakes at a significantly greater frequency than their normal rate of mistakes. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_annotation_symbols#Move_evaluation_symbols http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_annotation_symbols#Move_e...
- anuragramdasan 13y ago60 minutes from last year. pretty cool stuff right here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc_v9mTfhC8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc_v9mTfhC8
- aaronetz 13y ago<blasphemy alert> Does anyone know some good alternatives to chess, as a game that mixes deep thought and aesthetic variety? I tried Go, but found it somewhat boring compared to chess, because of its uniformity (which, on the other hand, has the advantage of beautiful simplicity and symmetry.) On another note: it is unfortunate, in my opinion, that chess has a special standing among board games. I would love to see some more variety in world-class intellectual matches, similar to what exists in physical sports. Something like a "board game Olympics". Edit: Thank you for all the useful replies! In reply to some of you, I am a complete beginner at Go. Maybe the word 'boring' was not carefully chosen. As a programmer, I should have known better - that things may seem boring (tiresome?) until you become more fluent with them. I should certainly give Go another shot...
- bmslieght 13y agoHave another go at Go. The handicap system is wonderful. It make two players of what ever standard have an equal match. There is a reason why Go is old and globally the uptake is far bigger than Chess - it combines very type of thinking. Strategic versus immediate tactical. Thinking globally versus locally. Chess appears too 1 dimensional now by comparison.
- cjbprime 13y agoThere's already something very similar to a "board game Olympics", it's called the Mind Sports Olympiad: http://www.boardability.com/games.php http://www.boardability.com/games.php I'd give Go another try. If you're interested in watching anime, I found the series _Hikaru no Go_ pretty good motivation to keep learning.
- jere 13y agoAgreed. I'm not even a big anime fan and Hikaru no Go really kept up my motivation when I was first starting. It's hard to believe how exciting they made Go look, when it's actually just two people quietly placing stones on a board for hours. Here's a trailer if you don't believe me: http://youtu.be/XpV4ZWh4NkQ http://youtu.be/XpV4ZWh4NkQ
- mattivc 13y agoIt's quite fun to see the media attention he has gotten here in Norway. For the last few weeks the sport segment of most news show spent as much time devoted to chess as football, which is not something i ever expected to see. I'm not much a chess player myself but it still very satisfying seeing so much attention brought to a intellectual sport. I hope at least some of it will stick around.
- gshakir 13y agoCool, it was held in Chennai, my home town. I remember some of my friends along with others (25 at a time) lining up to play Anand at the same time about 15 years ago. Anand was a Grand master at that time. Who else is from Chennai here at HN ?
- JonFish85 13y agoBut has he played Judah Friedlander?
- fedvasu 13y agoHonest Question : So now Chess will be more fashionable game?
- realrocker 13y agoCongrats Magnus Carlsen! You finally unseated our beloved Vishwanathan Anand and made the beautiful game even more beautiful. Allow me to go on a tangent to let me tell my personal story with chess. I began playing at age 7 when my elder brother borrowed a chess board from a friend. It was a nice break from the physical altercations between us(read mat fights). My maternal grand ma called it "Satan's Game". And my mother toed the line. Why? I don't know the exact reason, but I guess it was an amazing time sink. Or maybe they both had watched this Hindi movie by Satyajit Ray: The Chess Players(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076696/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076696/). When the game s between my brother and me became violent(You moved it when I was off to the toilet...) it was banned from our home. But we didn't give up. Our summers were spent playing chess in a nearby mango orchard or the graveyard a mile away. The chess board made out of paper with plastic pieces was the only "toy" we never broke. Those were the best days of my life. And it's still safe 20 years later. With every piece intact. What a game.
- denisnazarov 13y agoIntro to that film (amazing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zCsn-he5Kk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zCsn-he5Kk
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- RLC 13y agoOf course he won the name alone speaks for itself "Magnus!" Just fucking HUGE at anything you can think of! Compared to Viswanathan which sounded like a vegtable ready to be consumed or a rubbing oil or even like a dip for your prata.
- hatred 13y agoIf I were you , I will show the "guy" on the other side of the table some respect too after all he is a veteran and a champion since 2007.
- polar 13y agoViswanathan means lord of the Universe.
- sigzero 13y agoDidn't quite help him though.
- curiousDog 13y agoHelped him for a long time. He was champion since 2007.
- wavefunction 13y agoI downvoted you for your terrible bigotry. It's not welcome here.
- RLC 13y agoMagnus seems more like a guy I could invite over for a couple of beers. No offense on Anand he seem to be more like a KOOL-AID type of kid and always a boy scout but a douche!
- selmnoo 13y agoAnand is a total class act. All the other top chess players only ever had good things to say about him. And Anand is one of the people who coached Magnus. He's known to be focused strictly on the game and never do mind tricks to throw an opponent off. A lot of top players respect him for this.
- phaus 13y agoSo, no offense to him but then you call him a douche? Even if you did mean to be offensive, what exactly makes nice people douche bags? I find it far more douchey when people make fun of people that are different from them, and when they think that an appropriate way to judge a person's character is whether or not they think the person would be cool to drink with. Its 2013, I think by now we should all be smart enough to realize that the desire to drink alcohol doesn't really have anything to do with masculinity.
- lukekarrys 13y agoYou can watch IM Danny Rensch & GM Ben Finegold review the game right now on http://www.chess.com/tv http://www.chess.com/tv
- ktd 13y agoThis is actually a good example of why I'm not particularly interested in chess anymore-- a game that's that heavy on draws and where so many of the situations are adaptations of well-known positions simply isn't that thrilling. I really enjoyed chess when I was a kid, but the better I became and the more I learned about it the less I found it a compelling game.
- RBerenguel 13y agoThe huge amount of draws and the almost-required bibliographical knowledge of opening theory (aside from the seemingly arbitrary sets of rules and pieces) are why I decided to play go. Have not looked back, except to see what's going on in the chess world.
- elliptic 13y agoI don't understand - when you made this decision, did you expect that you were going to be good enough so that these features of chess (draws and deep, well-studied opening theory) were going to be relevant to you?
- ktd 13y ago>I don't understand - when you made this decision, did you expect that you were going to be good enough so that these features of chess (draws and deep, well-studied opening theory) were going to be relevant to you? Yeah. I played chess competitively as a kid, attending state tournaments, taking lessons outside of school, and so on. However, I found that the more I got into it and better I became, the less appealing it seemed. Ironically, I felt that chess between relative amateurs was much more interesting than chess between more skilled players, because the improvisational component that I loved was much more relevant when people hadn't been going through the opening books.
- icelancer 13y agoFischer et al saw it coming decades ago, unfortunately.
- pdknsk 13y agoI'm not a particularly good player, but the match was rather boring IMO, other than game 9, which Anand cut short with his blunder. I wonder if the dull first game, described by Anand as a "satisfactory draw with black pieces", set the tune for the remaining games.
- reidmain 13y agoAs someone who played chess as a child but gave up after high school what are some apps that would get me back into the game?
- Technophobe 13y agoBooks.
- girvo 13y agoI have to say, the combination of your username and comment was rather perfect (even if it was on purpose). And you're pretty correct there, too, according to the last person I asked this question of.
- gk1 13y agoConsider joining ICC (http://chessclub.com http://chessclub.com). It's the best place online for playing chess, and also comes with an app. Tell 'em gk sent you.
- anExcitedBeast 13y agoChess.com has a good app with tactics training, live play, and (my favorite) correspondence play (1-5 days per move; great for busy people). My favorite place to play live chess is lichess.org.
- adrianmn 13y agowww.chessclub.com and www.playchess.com have the best and strongest player pools. They also have educational materials and coaches if that is what you are after. Only ChessClub has a Mac client.
- oconnor0 13y agoIs the site down for anyone else?
- girvo 13y agoAfter spending the last 18-months immersed in the professional StarCraft 2 scene, I can totally appreciate a lot of the meta-stuff around Chess now. I always enjoyed Chess, and was not too bad at it (compared to those around me, certainly nowhere near even an amateur-pro!), but for some reason SC2 "clicks" better for me (I think being addicted to Brood War while spending 6 months in South Korea probably has something to do with it). The discussion of "mind games" {"nettlesomeness" here) is something that SC2 has an obsession with, and certainly can play a massive part in pro tournaments, and I'd never considered it applying to chess... but now that I think about it, everything in SC2's meta really came from Chess to begin with, only applied in real-time with 300+ actions per minute and hundreds of pieces with few illegal moves. And yet I struggle more with grokking the advanced strategies of Chess than I do for StarCraft!
- Segmentation 13y agoComparing a centuries old board game with completely balanced rules, to an infant video game that still has major balance problems (if you looked hard enough), is silly. Chess is as balanced as it gets.
- girvo 13y agoStarCraft has balance problems? So thats why the new patch got released! I find it funny that you'd assume that I don't know that. Of course I do. The balance in Chess is what makes it a far more strategic and "complex" (in terms of strategy and tactics) game. I said as much in my post. I like Chess, I just thought it was funny that despite playing chess all throughout school and competing in various tournaments, I'd never made the connection with StarCraft's various terms, ideas, and strategies. That's what I was expressing. I have no idea what you thought I was trying to say!
- rthomas6 13y agoWell... perfect balance has yet to be proven. But it's certainly better than Starcraft, at any rate.
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- wavesounds 13y agoI wish they gave the girl announcer access to the laptop as well so she could describe what she's saying using the screen just like the guy can.
- KedarMhaswade 13y agoBrilliant! Magnanimous. I am a Vishy fan, but this match was really one-sided when Vishy faltered at critical moments. Does it mean age matters? Will Vishy rebound? I hope so, but perhaps it's the sad reality that I acknowledge -- better player won and the problem with the chess world (the number 1 elo-rated player was not the WC for so long) got corrected. Where do we go from here?
- TylerE 13y agoHighly unlikely. It seems that most super-GMs start to decline around 40. Vishy is 44. There have been some that have stayed quite strong into their later years - Korchnoi, quite a strong player at his peak (Peaked at 2695 @ age 48, quite late in and of itself), played for the world championship in 1978 and 81 (age 47 and 50), and stayed a regular on the tournament circuit - he beat a 2700+ ranked GM in a 2011 at the age of 80, and continued to to play seriously until he had a stroke late last year.
- edgarvaldes 13y agoV. Korchnoi is (was) a great player. His matches with Karpov were always interesting.
- McUsr 13y agoI am Norwegian and fucking proud of it right now, due to Magnus Carlsen. He comes from a Nation consisting of 5 mill. people, compared to Anand's billion people. This is probably the greatest sports achievement our country will ever make, as there are really no comparable sports achievements in the world, not now, anyway. IMHO: They should knight him the second he gets of the plane when he returns home. Because no other Norwegian has ever accomplished anything close to this, with regards to bring honour to our nation. Gratuler Magnus!
- hrkristian 13y agoTo clarify: While theoretically the title of knight is attainable in Norway, it's not something that is practiced, and has not been for at least 150 years. Were there such a title I'd be happy to see our government/King knight him, though.
- sanoli 13y agoYou should be proud, Magnus is awesome! I'm Brazilian, and I would trade one of our World Cups for a chess World Championship. Hell, I'd even trade two-for-one :)
- sremani 13y agoHave you ever seen India's medal tally in Olympics - your logic will fade once your find India near the end of the tally with 2 medals one silver and one bronze. Vishwanathan Anand was not the rule but an exception.
- vijucat 13y agoThis may sound "negative" but I would appreciate if you can think about this : by "proud", you merely mean "lucky". You can only be proud of things that you achieve personally. Unless you trained him or helped him somehow) you have absolutely no part in Magnus Carlsen's success. Probably without realizing it, your ego is merely interested in these false associations (Magnus > Anand => Norway > India, and parents-who-gave-birth-to-me-think-they belongs-to Norway => I belongs-to Norway) because it can grab a free ride to better self-esteem without any personal effort. I believe there are false notions of separateness and identity involved here. Nationalism is also spiritually detrimental because it prevents you from realizing that you are not who you think you are. How can you even ask the question, "Who am I?" if you are so comfortable with who you think you are? Sorry for the lecture. I hope there is something useful here for you despite raining on your parade!
- eneveu 13y agoIt seems like the official commentary is of sub par quality. According to the /r/chess subreddit, this commentary is pretty good and fun: http://www.twitch.tv/chessnetwork/profile/pastBroadcasts http://www.twitch.tv/chessnetwork/profile/pastBroadcasts
- mmwanga 13y agoMove #14 (Nxc6) does not make sense. Why did Magnus do that?