7 ms·

Reading 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

Reading 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 ago
Thanks 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 ago
  Impressive 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 ago
  I 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...
  - ErikAugust 13y ago
    Right - a human would have to curate which moves were mistakes. Though I think that eventually computers could take over in this category as well.
  - GavinB 13y ago
    Since computers play chess (better than humans) by looking at moves and ranking them as advantageous or disadvantageous, I would think it would be relatively straightforward to use a computer to decide whether a move is a mistake or not.
    - Deestan 13y ago
      It would be able to tell if the move was a mistake if playing against a computer. A move that would be bad against a computer opponent might throw a human opponent off balance through surprise, or take the game into a type of board state which was unfamiliar and disorienting to the opponent.
      - rsl7 13y ago
        From the James T. Kirk school of chess.
      - icambron 13y ago
        I suspect that's precisely why the computer can measure it. This is the scenario: 1. Player A makes a move the computer considers suboptimal. 2. Disoriented player B responds with another move the computer considers an important mistake. 3. Player A capitalizes with moves the computer thinks improves his position, even relative to the original baseline. 4. The computer concludes that A is nettlesome. So it's measuring the delta of what it considers optimal with what actually happens against real humans.
- dfan 13y ago
  I believe Regan just measures how badly a given player's opponents tend to err (as determined by computer evaluation of moves). So it's just a post hoc statistical measure, not an actual evaluation of how tricky that player's moves are.
  - tokenizer 13y ago
    But funnily enough, all you'd need for erikig's program. A program runs through your git/svn and tracks the user, date, commit, and reversion. While analysing reversions vs commits and all the in between, I am confident it would be somewhat easy to tweak the analysis to be accurate. Each reversion you encounter, you check the five next and five previous commits. If any users stand out as being in the previous tree for additional/reversional... Actually, it may be a little complicated...
coob 13y ago
This reminds me of the sorry of Deep Blue's buggy randomness causing Kasperov to freak out: http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/09/deep-blue-computer-bug/ http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/09/deep-blue-computer-bug...
- cjo 13y ago
  There was a checker playing computer called Chinook that had something similar happen at one point (iirc one of its databases was corrupted). Definitely worth listening to the story: http://relprime.com/chinook/ http://relprime.com/chinook/
- sohailk 13y ago
  Not a bug, it was a feature.
brandall10 13y ago
If Magnus is making strong yet unexepected moves relative to his opponents - doesn't that mean he simply has a higher degree of mastery at the game?
- lifeformed 13y ago
  Well, "unexpectedness" isn't just a failure to anticipate by weaker players. A non-optimal move could be intentionally made with the intention to be unexpected, in order to play mind games with the opponent. Unexpectedness could be a factor in what makes a move strong, not just an after-the-fact observation.
  - oinksoft 13y ago
    More to the point, the players have minutes to hours, not days, to study the position. It can be a very good strategy to play a surprising but perhaps less than optimal move to break the opponents' concentration and hopefully get them into time trouble. That's why correspondence and tournament chess don't really intersect apart from studying the same game.
  - beefman 13y ago
    Chess is a game of perfect information. Chess players at this level do not intentionally play suboptimal moves hoping to trick their opponents. They try to find the best move given the position on the board. In some cases two moves may be roughly objectively equal, one leading to more complex positions than the other. In these cases players do sometimes choose according to the situation on the clock, their style, or their mood. For instance, if I have more time left than my opponent, I may choose the more complicated continuation, and vice versa. This sort of practical savvy is important, but not nearly as important as many casual players assume.
    - lifeformed 13y ago
      True, I was thinking more of the latter example. Several equally-optimal options are at hand - most people would pick the one they are most familiar with. A more devious player might pick the option that the opponent has least likely considered, taking advantage of their unpreparedness.
beefman 13y ago
I follow Regan's chess work pretty closely and I don't know where Cowen got this term. The link provided shows intrinsic ratings, not "nettlesomeness". As shown by Regan and others, Carlsen simply plays more accurately than anyone else. Chess is probably drawn, so one only wins when his opponent makes mistakes. Both Regan and Guid & Bratko have tried weighting the accuracy of moves by the complexity of positions faced. Carlsen is middle-of-the-pack in terms of reaching complex positions, so this doesn't seem to be the mysterious "nettlesomeness" either.
pawn 13y ago
I've tried a few techniques to try getting in a person's head while playing, but I wouldn't have any idea how to measure it. Some techniques are on the board, but some aren't. One thing I've tried is just staring at the player. I've also tried just barely glancing at the board and making the move on my turn while actually doing my studying on their turn. The funniest thing that someone tried against me was playing a guitar while also playing chess. This was in a local tournament in college. Half way into the game, he stopped and exclaimed "What am I doing??" and tried to play serious from that point forward. Luckily for me, he waited too late.
Tycho 13y ago
I believe there was a Russian grandmaster in the 60s who is credited with introducing psychology into chess because he would deliberately play moves which would stir up uncomfortable memories of defeat for his opponents (based on study of their past tournaments) and this distract them from the game at hand. Can't remember his name though.

erikig 13y ago

Thanks 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 ago
Impressive 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 ago
I 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...
- ErikAugust 13y ago
  Right - a human would have to curate which moves were mistakes. Though I think that eventually computers could take over in this category as well.
- GavinB 13y ago
  Since computers play chess (better than humans) by looking at moves and ranking them as advantageous or disadvantageous, I would think it would be relatively straightforward to use a computer to decide whether a move is a mistake or not.
  - Deestan 13y ago
    It would be able to tell if the move was a mistake if playing against a computer. A move that would be bad against a computer opponent might throw a human opponent off balance through surprise, or take the game into a type of board state which was unfamiliar and disorienting to the opponent.
    - rsl7 13y ago
      From the James T. Kirk school of chess.
    - icambron 13y ago
      I suspect that's precisely why the computer can measure it. This is the scenario: 1. Player A makes a move the computer considers suboptimal. 2. Disoriented player B responds with another move the computer considers an important mistake. 3. Player A capitalizes with moves the computer thinks improves his position, even relative to the original baseline. 4. The computer concludes that A is nettlesome. So it's measuring the delta of what it considers optimal with what actually happens against real humans.
dfan 13y ago
I believe Regan just measures how badly a given player's opponents tend to err (as determined by computer evaluation of moves). So it's just a post hoc statistical measure, not an actual evaluation of how tricky that player's moves are.
- tokenizer 13y ago
  But funnily enough, all you'd need for erikig's program. A program runs through your git/svn and tracks the user, date, commit, and reversion. While analysing reversions vs commits and all the in between, I am confident it would be somewhat easy to tweak the analysis to be accurate. Each reversion you encounter, you check the five next and five previous commits. If any users stand out as being in the previous tree for additional/reversional... Actually, it may be a little complicated...

coob 13y ago

This reminds me of the sorry of Deep Blue's buggy randomness causing Kasperov to freak out: http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/09/deep-blue-computer-bug/ http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/09/deep-blue-computer-bug...

cjo 13y ago
There was a checker playing computer called Chinook that had something similar happen at one point (iirc one of its databases was corrupted). Definitely worth listening to the story: http://relprime.com/chinook/ http://relprime.com/chinook/
sohailk 13y ago
Not a bug, it was a feature.

brandall10 13y ago

If Magnus is making strong yet unexepected moves relative to his opponents - doesn't that mean he simply has a higher degree of mastery at the game?

lifeformed 13y ago
Well, "unexpectedness" isn't just a failure to anticipate by weaker players. A non-optimal move could be intentionally made with the intention to be unexpected, in order to play mind games with the opponent. Unexpectedness could be a factor in what makes a move strong, not just an after-the-fact observation.
- oinksoft 13y ago
  More to the point, the players have minutes to hours, not days, to study the position. It can be a very good strategy to play a surprising but perhaps less than optimal move to break the opponents' concentration and hopefully get them into time trouble. That's why correspondence and tournament chess don't really intersect apart from studying the same game.
- beefman 13y ago
  Chess is a game of perfect information. Chess players at this level do not intentionally play suboptimal moves hoping to trick their opponents. They try to find the best move given the position on the board. In some cases two moves may be roughly objectively equal, one leading to more complex positions than the other. In these cases players do sometimes choose according to the situation on the clock, their style, or their mood. For instance, if I have more time left than my opponent, I may choose the more complicated continuation, and vice versa. This sort of practical savvy is important, but not nearly as important as many casual players assume.
  - lifeformed 13y ago
    True, I was thinking more of the latter example. Several equally-optimal options are at hand - most people would pick the one they are most familiar with. A more devious player might pick the option that the opponent has least likely considered, taking advantage of their unpreparedness.

beefman 13y ago

I follow Regan's chess work pretty closely and I don't know where Cowen got this term. The link provided shows intrinsic ratings, not "nettlesomeness". As shown by Regan and others, Carlsen simply plays more accurately than anyone else. Chess is probably drawn, so one only wins when his opponent makes mistakes. Both Regan and Guid & Bratko have tried weighting the accuracy of moves by the complexity of positions faced. Carlsen is middle-of-the-pack in terms of reaching complex positions, so this doesn't seem to be the mysterious "nettlesomeness" either.

pawn 13y ago

I've tried a few techniques to try getting in a person's head while playing, but I wouldn't have any idea how to measure it. Some techniques are on the board, but some aren't. One thing I've tried is just staring at the player. I've also tried just barely glancing at the board and making the move on my turn while actually doing my studying on their turn. The funniest thing that someone tried against me was playing a guitar while also playing chess. This was in a local tournament in college. Half way into the game, he stopped and exclaimed "What am I doing??" and tried to play serious from that point forward. Luckily for me, he waited too late.

Tycho 13y ago

I believe there was a Russian grandmaster in the 60s who is credited with introducing psychology into chess because he would deliberately play moves which would stir up uncomfortable memories of defeat for his opponents (based on study of their past tournaments) and this distract them from the game at hand. Can't remember his name though.