Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion(fide.com)
fide.com
Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion
http://www.fide.com/component/content/article/1-fide-news/7539-fide-world-championship-2013.html
26 comments
It 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
Move #14 (Nxc6) does not make sense. Why did Magnus do that?
I'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.
It 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.
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.
Chess Network broke 4.5k within the first two minutes of last night's game. I imagine it went higher but I accidentally fell asleep :(
Yeah, it got up to around 20k on at least one of the games.
I 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
Your 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.twitch.tv/ChessNetwork
Chess champions come and go, but why would Magnus becoming the champion affect the game any differently than his predecessors?
The 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.
Secondly, he is young, athletic and smart, getting a lot of media attention.
What do you think about freestyle chess?
Press conference is live right now for anyone interested: http://chennai2013.fide.com/fide-world-chess-championship-20...
My god those comments. Even chess streams are not safe it seems.
A 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.
Youtube 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.
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lot of trolls in the wild.. without mods.. god bless the mods :D
Now 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!
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!
> 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.
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.
are 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.
Little reminder: Don't downmod people just for asking questions. Even if they are wrong.
And he would have lost his queen thus loosing the game.
It was the best option in both cases. He was in check when he took the queen, so the queens had to swap or black would lose his queen. At the end Anand traded his knight for the pawn as a king and knight (black's material) can't win, but a king and pawn (white's material) can, so it is in blacks best interest to swap.
what rule is that? are you implying even if only white king, black king, and black knight would be left on board, it would be a draw/win for white by default?
Instead of trying to isolate white king into a corner for checkmate?
Never heard of a rule like that. Are you sure?
Instead of trying to isolate white king into a corner for checkmate?
Never heard of a rule like that. Are you sure?
Combinations with insufficient material to checkmate are:
king versus king; king and bishop versus king; king and knight versus king; king and bishop versus king and bishop with the bishops on the same colour. - wikipedia
king versus king; king and bishop versus king; king and knight versus king; king and bishop versus king and bishop with the bishops on the same colour. - wikipedia
Then you have the situations where a check mate is possible but cannot be forced. King and two knights against king cannot force a check mate, but if the player with the lone king knows what they're doing and wants to get check mated, they can help the other player to win. If I'm not mistaken, that counts as a draw even if the clock flags on the player with less material.
You can't checkmate with just a king and knight. Isolating into a corner won't help, as the king can not get close enough to keep the opposing king "in place", and while the knight can try to keep the king cornered, there would be no positions where the knight can check where the checked king can't escape the check by safely moving towards the knight.
EDIT: There would be positions where you don't try position the king to try to hold the opposing king in a corner where the opposing king can't move towards the knight to escape a check, but in those positions it will be able to move away in other directions.
EDIT: There would be positions where you don't try position the king to try to hold the opposing king in a corner where the opposing king can't move towards the knight to escape a check, but in those positions it will be able to move away in other directions.
how many times do you have to be wrong here before you question your chess knowledge?
Very sure.
It's not in the written rules of the game, but is a consequence of the rules.
To place the opposing king in checkmate, you must have sufficient pieces to threaten the square the king is on, and all adjacent squares, simultaneously. This means anywhere from 4-8 squares depending on the position.
King and knight, alone, cannot threaten enough contiguous squares simultaneously to cause checkmate in any position, largely because the knight must place the opposing king in check (a king cannot get close enough), but due to the mechanics of the knight's move there will always be at least three adjacent squares not threatened by the knight at that moment, and at least one that cannot be threatened by the knight's king.
You should feel free to try this yourself: place a king of one color on the board, and a king and knight of the other color, and then use only those pieces to try to construct a checkmate. It simply cannot be done. The best you can do is isolate the lone king in a corner and cause a draw by depriving it of moves (but it will not be in check at that time, so it will be stalemate, not checkmate).
And as luiz-pv9 points out, king+knight is not the only "insufficient material" combination.
It's not in the written rules of the game, but is a consequence of the rules.
To place the opposing king in checkmate, you must have sufficient pieces to threaten the square the king is on, and all adjacent squares, simultaneously. This means anywhere from 4-8 squares depending on the position.
King and knight, alone, cannot threaten enough contiguous squares simultaneously to cause checkmate in any position, largely because the knight must place the opposing king in check (a king cannot get close enough), but due to the mechanics of the knight's move there will always be at least three adjacent squares not threatened by the knight at that moment, and at least one that cannot be threatened by the knight's king.
You should feel free to try this yourself: place a king of one color on the board, and a king and knight of the other color, and then use only those pieces to try to construct a checkmate. It simply cannot be done. The best you can do is isolate the lone king in a corner and cause a draw by depriving it of moves (but it will not be in check at that time, so it will be stalemate, not checkmate).
And as luiz-pv9 points out, king+knight is not the only "insufficient material" combination.
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Clearly you should be in the next final of the world championship of chess.
A well-deserved win. Can't wait to see what else Magnus goes on to accomplish.
Chess 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.
There's only so much time in a day, and there's a lot that one wants to throw at a kid to learn (everybody has a pet topic he or she thinks kids should study, whether it's chess, or music, or programming or personal finance or whatever..)
Chess 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 :-)
Armenia requires chess in schools for at least two hours a week (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/07/chess-d...) and they consistently are one of the top countries in the Chess Olympiad.
My 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.
That (along with watching the World Championship) has got me back into the game after not really having played it for about 30 years.
My 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.
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.
Chess is great, but I prefer "Go." (An oddly named game.) Had I learned it when I was young, I feel I would have benefited greatly.
I've been teaching, middle school and high school, for the past 15 years. I have always had a stash of chess sets and clocks in my room. They see pretty consistent use.
I love chess in schools for a number of reasons. One of the most interesting things about watching chess in schools is seeing who rises to the top. The best players tend not to be the brightest academic students. The best players tend to be smart kids who fight some of the bs that schools make kids endure. These kids are smart enough to 'get' chess, and have enough fight in them to stick out the difficult moments in games and tournaments that separate the best from the really good. These are the kids who tend to get in trouble a lot, who get bad reputations among teachers. Watching those kids show everyone up by winning chess tournaments soundly against the brightest academic kids is pretty awesome, and can be life-changing for some students.
I love teaching chess because you can teach anyone some simple ideas such as opening strategies, piece values, and simple endgames, and they can then beat anyone who hasn't learned those concepts. Kids who never thought they could learn a "smart person" game like chess suddenly play well, and start to realize they can do intellectual things. Then you start to see natural talent come into students' games.
Playing chess with kids is fun! If you have the chance, introduce a kid to chess.
I love chess in schools for a number of reasons. One of the most interesting things about watching chess in schools is seeing who rises to the top. The best players tend not to be the brightest academic students. The best players tend to be smart kids who fight some of the bs that schools make kids endure. These kids are smart enough to 'get' chess, and have enough fight in them to stick out the difficult moments in games and tournaments that separate the best from the really good. These are the kids who tend to get in trouble a lot, who get bad reputations among teachers. Watching those kids show everyone up by winning chess tournaments soundly against the brightest academic kids is pretty awesome, and can be life-changing for some students.
I love teaching chess because you can teach anyone some simple ideas such as opening strategies, piece values, and simple endgames, and they can then beat anyone who hasn't learned those concepts. Kids who never thought they could learn a "smart person" game like chess suddenly play well, and start to realize they can do intellectual things. Then you start to see natural talent come into students' games.
Playing chess with kids is fun! If you have the chance, introduce a kid to chess.
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/net...
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/net...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
"...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...
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_e...
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_annotation_symbols#Move_e...
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.
You can't definitively say that a computer's move is best, the branching factor of chess means that searching the game tree until finding a checkmate is nearly impossible. It leads to the horizon effect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_effect
but recent advances in AI like in Deep Blue have introduced branch extension, where branches of the game tree with statistically similar rankings are searched further until one can be definitively regarded as the best one.
To summarize, chess engines can't give definitive answers on how good a move is because, like humans, they can't search the whole game tree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_effect
but recent advances in AI like in Deep Blue have introduced branch extension, where branches of the game tree with statistically similar rankings are searched further until one can be definitively regarded as the best one.
To summarize, chess engines can't give definitive answers on how good a move is because, like humans, they can't search the whole game tree.
This applies in the earlier stages of the game. In the endgame, when there are fewer pieces, computers can find the best move. There are many instances where say, you reach and endgame with some nine pieces, and the computer will find a mate in 18 moves.
Apparently Carlsen (and presumably other Grandmasters) are also able to look ahead 15-20 moves as well.
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1948809,00...
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1948809,00...
One of the reasons computers are so much stronger than humans, especially in the endgame, is because they have incredibly large pre-calculated tablebases[1] of 3, 4, 5 and 6 piece positions. So, if a computer calculates ahead 15 moves, and reaches a 6 piece ending, it already knows the exact evaluation of this position. And in some of these cases, the number of moves from that position to the final position (forced draw or checkmate) can be 10-100 moves [2]. But it is already calculated, the computer doesn't have to go any further. So in effect, the computer calculating 15 or 20 moves ahead in a late stage position can actually be calculating 50 or 100 moves ahead.
This is why the second part of Carlsen's quote is so important:
"Sometimes 15 to 20 moves ahead. But the trick is evaluating the position at the end of those calculations."
A human sees a late game position and has to actually calculate it all the way to its conclusion or at least a key position where they are confident of the evaluation [3]. A computer doesn't have to, and believe me, some of those 6 piece endgame positions are really weird. You move a piece just one innocuous looking square and it can alter the outcome from a win to a draw. There in fact were many endgame positions throughout chess history which were considered solved, only for the evaluation to change after a brute force calculation.
I'm not particularly good at chess [4], but in slow games I will routinely calculate 10 moves ahead in some sharp positions. Now, I'm not comparing my calculating ability to a GM, which is obviously better in every way, but the fact that a GM calculates 15-20 moves ahead is not why they are good. It is that at every step of that calculation they are evaluating the position incredibly accurately and are deciding the right moves to calculate.
In fact, due to the horizon effect, the reason computers got a lot better than humans wasn't due to raw calculation speed, it was due to massive improvements in their evaluation ability (like endgame tablebases) allowing them to put that massive calculation advantage to good use.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame_tablebase
2: All of which are already in the tablebase by definition, because you can't add to the number of pieces on the chess board
3: For example, if I can calculate a position to where I have a rook and a king and you only have a king, I don't have to think any further, I know this is a win for me.
4: ~1300 rating
This is why the second part of Carlsen's quote is so important:
"Sometimes 15 to 20 moves ahead. But the trick is evaluating the position at the end of those calculations."
A human sees a late game position and has to actually calculate it all the way to its conclusion or at least a key position where they are confident of the evaluation [3]. A computer doesn't have to, and believe me, some of those 6 piece endgame positions are really weird. You move a piece just one innocuous looking square and it can alter the outcome from a win to a draw. There in fact were many endgame positions throughout chess history which were considered solved, only for the evaluation to change after a brute force calculation.
I'm not particularly good at chess [4], but in slow games I will routinely calculate 10 moves ahead in some sharp positions. Now, I'm not comparing my calculating ability to a GM, which is obviously better in every way, but the fact that a GM calculates 15-20 moves ahead is not why they are good. It is that at every step of that calculation they are evaluating the position incredibly accurately and are deciding the right moves to calculate.
In fact, due to the horizon effect, the reason computers got a lot better than humans wasn't due to raw calculation speed, it was due to massive improvements in their evaluation ability (like endgame tablebases) allowing them to put that massive calculation advantage to good use.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame_tablebase
2: All of which are already in the tablebase by definition, because you can't add to the number of pieces on the chess board
3: For example, if I can calculate a position to where I have a rook and a king and you only have a king, I don't have to think any further, I know this is a win for me.
4: ~1300 rating
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.
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.
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.
From the James T. Kirk school of chess.
The computer program Fritz actually has algorithms to imitate a human's analysis. It's one of my favorite tools to improve my game, since it searches databases of master-level games to find games that progressed in the same way and also gives "human-like" annotations. Here's an example PGN[1] from one of my games (NAG[2] has been converted to Unicode for the sake of clarity)
[2] Numeric Annotation Glyphs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeric_Annotation_Glyphs
{C24: Bishop's Opening: 2...Nf6}
1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Nf6 3. d4 exd4 4. Nf3 Bb4+ 5.Bd2 Bxd2+ 6. Qxd2 O-O
7. e5 {White threatens to win material: e5xf6}
(7. O-O Nxe4 8. Qxd4 Nd6 9. Bd5 c6 10. Bb3 Nf5 11. Qf4 d5
12. Nbd2 Qd6 13. Qxd6 Nxd6 14. c4 dxc4 15. Nxc4 Nxc4 16. Bxc4 Bf5
17. Rfe1 Nd7 18. Nd4 Bg6 19. Re7 Rad8 20. Rd1 Rfe8 21. Nxc6 bxc6
{Jensen,B (1817)-Gade,J (1535) Helsingor 2009 1-0 (58)})
7... d5N {Black threatens to win material: d5xc4}
(7... Re8 8. O-O d5 9. exd6 Qxd6 10. Na3 c5 11. Nb5 Qb6
12. Qf4 Re7 13. Rae1 Be6 14. Bxe6 fxe6 15. Nd6 Qc7 16. Qg3 Nc6
17. Ng5 e5 18. Nf5 Ree8 19. Nf7 Qxf7 20. Nh6+
{1-0 (20) Le Dref,M (1770)-Bremond,E (1600) Angers 2006})
8. Qxd4?
(8. ⌓Bb3 {and White is still in the game} Ne4 9. Qxd4=)
8... Nc6∓ 9. Qd2 dxc4
(9... Bg4!? 10. Be2 Bxf3 11. Bxf3 Nxe5 −+)
10. Qxd8⩱ Rxd8 11. exf6 {White king safety dropped.} Re8+
12. Kd1
(12. Kf1 gxf6 13. h4 Be6∓)
12... Bg4 13. Nbd2 Rad8 {Black has a king attack}
(13... Re6!?∓)
14. Re1⩱ Ne5 15. c3??
(15. ⌓Re3⩱ {was necessary})
15... Bxf3+ −+ 16. gxf3
(16. Kc2 {doesn't do any good} Bg4 17. f3 Bf5+ 18. Ne4 Ng4 −+)
16... Rxd2+! {Deflection: e1} 17. Kxd2
(17. Kc1 Rxf2 18. Re4 Nd3+ 19. Kd1 Nxb2+ 20. Ke1 Nd3+ 21. Kd1 Rxe4 22.
fxe4 Rf1+ 23. Kd2 Rxa1 24. a3 Rxa3 25. Ke3 gxf6 26. h4 Ne5 27. Kd2 Ra2+
28. Ke1 b5 29. h5 b4 30. Kf1 b3 31. Ke1 b2 32. Kf2 b1=Q+ 33. Kg3 Qg1+
34. Kh4 Qh2#)
17... Nxf3+ 18. Kc2 Nxe1+ 19. Kd2
(19. Kd1 {the last chance for counterplay} Nf3 20. Rc1 Re1+ 21. Kc2 Re2+
22. Kb1 Nd2+ 23. Ka1 Rxf2 24. Rd1 Rxh2 25. Rg1 −+)
19... Nf3+ 20. Kc2 Re2+
(20... Re2+ 21. Kb1 Re1+ 22. Kc2 Rxa1 −+) 0-1
[2] Numeric Annotation Glyphs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeric_Annotation_Glyphs
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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...
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/
Definitely worth listening to the story: http://relprime.com/chinook/
Not a bug, it was a feature.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I refer you to the infamous Lasker-Capablanca game where Lasker played a dull drawish game to throw Capa off his guard.
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.
60 minutes from last year. pretty cool stuff right here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc_v9mTfhC8
<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...
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...
Boring compared to chess? As a Go player I take this as an insult. Go is way more interesting, there are more fights, more complexity and you make a lot of tactical and strategic decisions in one game. Also you have a great handicap system, playing stronger players is no big problem. Did I mention that there are no remis and pro matches are often decided by 0,5 points which is really little.
I am ending my rant with a quote: "Rather than being the image of a single struggle as in chess, Go is much more like the panorama of an entire campaign, or complex theatre of war. And so it is more like modern warfare where strategic mass movements are the ultimate determinants of victory. … As in modern warfare, direct combat, without supporting tactics, rarely occurs. In fact, to engage too soon in direct combat frequently spells defeat." -- Oscar Korschelt
I am ending my rant with a quote: "Rather than being the image of a single struggle as in chess, Go is much more like the panorama of an entire campaign, or complex theatre of war. And so it is more like modern warfare where strategic mass movements are the ultimate determinants of victory. … As in modern warfare, direct combat, without supporting tactics, rarely occurs. In fact, to engage too soon in direct combat frequently spells defeat." -- Oscar Korschelt
I agree, but just wanted to add that if you find Go boring, I suggest you pick up a good Go book or two. The really good Go writers can construct an entire war narrative from a game of Go, all the while giving you deeper insight into the strategy and tactics at play in the game. To be honest, compared to Go writing, I find much writing about Chess to be very boring and analytical (though I'm sure that has as much to do with specific authors as with the subject matter in question).
Do you have any good Go book suggestions?
"Go for Beginners" by Iwamoto is a classic [1].
"Go: A Complete Introduction to the Game" by Chikun Cho generally gets very high recommendations [2].
When you finish your first book a good followup is "The Second Book of Go" by Bozulich [3].
Finally, the series "Graded Go Problems for Beginners" is excellent [4]. Volume I problems are suitable for beginners starting as soon as you learn the rules.
If you have an iOS device, take a look at smartgo books [5]. Chikun Cho's book listed above and the graded go problem series are available from them, as are many many other books. These books are in an interactive format that works with their free reader app.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Go-Beginners-Kaoru-Iwamoto/dp/03947333...
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Go-Complete-Introduction-Beginner-Elem...
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Second-Book-Beginner-Elementary-Books/...
[4] http://senseis.xmp.net/?GradedGoProblemsForBeginners
[5] http://gobooks.com
"Go: A Complete Introduction to the Game" by Chikun Cho generally gets very high recommendations [2].
When you finish your first book a good followup is "The Second Book of Go" by Bozulich [3].
Finally, the series "Graded Go Problems for Beginners" is excellent [4]. Volume I problems are suitable for beginners starting as soon as you learn the rules.
If you have an iOS device, take a look at smartgo books [5]. Chikun Cho's book listed above and the graded go problem series are available from them, as are many many other books. These books are in an interactive format that works with their free reader app.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Go-Beginners-Kaoru-Iwamoto/dp/03947333...
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Go-Complete-Introduction-Beginner-Elem...
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Second-Book-Beginner-Elementary-Books/...
[4] http://senseis.xmp.net/?GradedGoProblemsForBeginners
[5] http://gobooks.com
I think Yovel was asking for 'Go Game' book.
You can lurk the go subreddit /r/baduk (baduk is the Korean name for go, helpful for web searches now Google killed the term) and Sensei's Library: http://senseis.xmp.net/ a wiki for and from go players.
Right now I'm working through the book "How Not to Play Go", by Yuan Zhou, but he has many very good books I could recommend. Neil Moffatt is another good writer, and I particularly enjoyed "Double Digit Kyu Games" by him. If you're not afraid of diving right in, Yuan Zhou's "Master Play" series, where he dissects games by different Go masters are very entertaining as well.
Where is the place to start for someone who understands nothing.
Yes, it looks like something from the late 90s (and it probably is), but this is a tutorial I used early on: http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/
The bitterness between the go and chess communities is silly to me. There is more depth in either game than any one person could ever fully appreciate. Hell, checkers has more depth than any one person can appreciate, and that's a solved game. Pick a game and enjoy it, and don't try to yuck someone else's yum.
I agree completely, as long as those Othello jerks don't come in here with their crappy attitudes.
> As a Go player I take this as an insult.
I'd be of the opinion that boring-ness is fairly subjective, so being insulted probably isn't warranted.
You make good points about the gameplay differences, though.
I'd be of the opinion that boring-ness is fairly subjective, so being insulted probably isn't warranted.
You make good points about the gameplay differences, though.
Chess 2 (
http://ludemegames.com/chess2/). I'm not joking. USGamer has a good write-up on it: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/chess-2-the-sequel
I agree there's a certain amount of hubris behind the endeavor. But I'm interested in the design of balanced games, and the ways in which some old games are not balanced or rigid.
I agree there's a certain amount of hubris behind the endeavor. But I'm interested in the design of balanced games, and the ways in which some old games are not balanced or rigid.
>Chess 2 ( http://ludemegames.com/chess2/). I'm not joking. USGamer has a good write-up on it: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/chess-2-the-sequel
>I agree there's a certain amount of hubris behind the endeavor. But I'm interested in the design of balanced games, and the ways in which some old games are not balanced or rigid.
The creator's blog post is quite entertaining, thought it was a joke but the game is quite real and looks interesting:
>Chess 1 was a big hit, no question there, but a few issues have cropped up over the years. First, the original game ends in a draw uncomfortably often. Second, memorization (rather than on-the-spot intuition) ended up being much more important than the original developers intended. Even top players such as Fischer and Capablanca complained about this. Third, because it has no hidden information, the ability to capitalize on reading your opponent is more limited than it could be. And finally, the first version offered only a single army and one matchup.
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html
>So Anand encountered a "mild surprise" in the opening moves that left him "flying blind" (meaning the board was in a position with which he had not previously studied) and because of that he decided to not keep pursuing the game. He just engineered a draw.
>ntuitive understanding of the game and moments of brilliant improvisation are the most exciting aspects, and yet memorized lines of play are so deeply entrenched now that when a top player encounters anything outside of memorized, studied lines he heads directly for the draw. It's really the opposite of what you'd hope.
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html
>I agree there's a certain amount of hubris behind the endeavor. But I'm interested in the design of balanced games, and the ways in which some old games are not balanced or rigid.
The creator's blog post is quite entertaining, thought it was a joke but the game is quite real and looks interesting:
>Chess 1 was a big hit, no question there, but a few issues have cropped up over the years. First, the original game ends in a draw uncomfortably often. Second, memorization (rather than on-the-spot intuition) ended up being much more important than the original developers intended. Even top players such as Fischer and Capablanca complained about this. Third, because it has no hidden information, the ability to capitalize on reading your opponent is more limited than it could be. And finally, the first version offered only a single army and one matchup.
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html
>So Anand encountered a "mild surprise" in the opening moves that left him "flying blind" (meaning the board was in a position with which he had not previously studied) and because of that he decided to not keep pursuing the game. He just engineered a draw.
>ntuitive understanding of the game and moments of brilliant improvisation are the most exciting aspects, and yet memorized lines of play are so deeply entrenched now that when a top player encounters anything outside of memorized, studied lines he heads directly for the draw. It's really the opposite of what you'd hope.
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html
> the ability to capitalize on reading your opponent is more limited than it could be
Shouldn't be a capitalizable entity in chess. I like chess (unfortunately I don't like it enough to practice it often) because of it's no make-a-poker-face-now requirement.
Shouldn't be a capitalizable entity in chess. I like chess (unfortunately I don't like it enough to practice it often) because of it's no make-a-poker-face-now requirement.
Since you bring up Sirlin, I would recommend Yomi, which is a card game that is very balanced and very competitive. I don't think it's as deep as chess, but I certainly enjoy playing it.
That actually looks pretty promising, but seems like it will have major balance issues.
To me the trick is preserve some kind of backward compatibility with chess while finding a way to increase the strategic content. Ironically stuff like increasing the board size like in 3D chess variants, can actually reduce the strategic content by reducing the role of long-term factors like pawn structure.
EDIT: I can see some combination of the game's features -- particularly the king "touchdown" -- sort of working against the strategic content. IE people just playing gimmick openings to sneak their king across.
To me the trick is preserve some kind of backward compatibility with chess while finding a way to increase the strategic content. Ironically stuff like increasing the board size like in 3D chess variants, can actually reduce the strategic content by reducing the role of long-term factors like pawn structure.
EDIT: I can see some combination of the game's features -- particularly the king "touchdown" -- sort of working against the strategic content. IE people just playing gimmick openings to sneak their king across.
Those kinds of "gimmick" openings don't work well once people know the game. It's like losing to the 4-turn checkmate: it only happens once or twice before you start looking for it and planning against it.
Yeah but this game has like 10 times as many openings so it will take much longer to learn them.
The reason why memorization is a problem in chess isn't because there aren't enough openings/endgames to remember, it's because most players need to memorize certain patterns to reach a certain level of effectiveness, because they would rarely be able to solve those problems over the board.
So the solution to the chess memorization problem isn't necessarily more openings and more complexity, which ironically could just INCREASE opening importance. Rather I think the idea is to increase the importance and depth of long term strategic factors like pawns, the sort of understanding of which grows over time and doesn't lend itself to rote memorization.
The reason why memorization is a problem in chess isn't because there aren't enough openings/endgames to remember, it's because most players need to memorize certain patterns to reach a certain level of effectiveness, because they would rarely be able to solve those problems over the board.
So the solution to the chess memorization problem isn't necessarily more openings and more complexity, which ironically could just INCREASE opening importance. Rather I think the idea is to increase the importance and depth of long term strategic factors like pawns, the sort of understanding of which grows over time and doesn't lend itself to rote memorization.
There's already something very similar to a "board game Olympics", it's called the Mind Sports Olympiad: 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.
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.
Agreed. 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
I agree, Hikaru no Go is amazing. I have not seen the anime, but instead read the manga (which is actually longer).
Magic: the Gathering? It's a game of infinite possibilities and strategies and has a big meta game around it, too. Plus collectibles. Plus cool artwork. Plus good apps.
In some ways, the internet ruined games like MTG. I still like to play, but the widespread availability of tournament decklists stifles creativity.
There are still formats where you see a wide variety of decks, but T2 play normally involves picking one of maybe 5 or 6 viable options.
There are still formats where you see a wide variety of decks, but T2 play normally involves picking one of maybe 5 or 6 viable options.
The netdeck argument is probably for a different site, but I strongly believe that MTG as a tournament format benefits enormously from widely available top-performing decklists, video and text coverage, and articles on deck strategy as well game tactics with particular decks or deck archetypes.
The publicity definitely helped the game grow, but at the same time, people who play tournaments rarely deviate from decks based on the ones that the pros are using.
The people who play tournament chess rarely deviate from proven opening sequences as well. As such, publishing move by move accounts of Chess tournaments for documentation and study hinders creativity. See what I did there?
For ranked players, you are absolutely correct. That being said, there is still quite a bit more variety in chess at any level than there is in any given T2 cycle of MTG.
With MTG, even if I went down to my local card shop for Friday Night Magic, there would be enough people there with netdecks to ensure that creative attempts at deck building don't succeed very often.
In a local chess tournament, the level of play isn't even close to being that standardized. Most of the local chess clubs I've been to don't even have more than one or two rated players.
The difference is pretty simple. In MTG, anyone with 200 bucks can buy a world class T2 deck and learn to play it reasonably well in just a few hours. On the other hand, highly standardized play in chess usually only occurs after years of intense study.
There is, however, an easy way to fix MTG's shortcomings. I just play casual/peasant/other unorthodox formats. It makes things more interesting and its cheaper.
With MTG, even if I went down to my local card shop for Friday Night Magic, there would be enough people there with netdecks to ensure that creative attempts at deck building don't succeed very often.
In a local chess tournament, the level of play isn't even close to being that standardized. Most of the local chess clubs I've been to don't even have more than one or two rated players.
The difference is pretty simple. In MTG, anyone with 200 bucks can buy a world class T2 deck and learn to play it reasonably well in just a few hours. On the other hand, highly standardized play in chess usually only occurs after years of intense study.
There is, however, an easy way to fix MTG's shortcomings. I just play casual/peasant/other unorthodox formats. It makes things more interesting and its cheaper.
The difference is pretty simple. In MTG, anyone with 200 bucks can buy a world class T2 deck and learn to play it reasonably well in just a few hours.
So, I spend my weekends putting on a black uniform and working as a tournament judge at professional-level Magic events. And... maybe you're right that someone could do well at a local FNM this way. But at any sort of serious competitive level (even at the Pro Tour Qualifier level), your assertion just doesn't hold up.
You can see this in tournament results, by the way. Card availability is basically only an issue for casual/FNM play. At any sort of real competitive tournament, the field is made up of players who have access to the cards they want, and the winner is determined by a combination of preparation and skill.
Most importantly, you can see this in results from Limited formats (where players build decks using cards opened on-site from standard booster packs, which are unpredictable enough to constitute a random per-player card pool). Though there are certainly "Limited specialist" players, for the most part you will see similar lists of names among the top finishers in both Limited and Constructed formats, which drives home the point in a frankly undeniable way.
So, I spend my weekends putting on a black uniform and working as a tournament judge at professional-level Magic events. And... maybe you're right that someone could do well at a local FNM this way. But at any sort of serious competitive level (even at the Pro Tour Qualifier level), your assertion just doesn't hold up.
You can see this in tournament results, by the way. Card availability is basically only an issue for casual/FNM play. At any sort of real competitive tournament, the field is made up of players who have access to the cards they want, and the winner is determined by a combination of preparation and skill.
Most importantly, you can see this in results from Limited formats (where players build decks using cards opened on-site from standard booster packs, which are unpredictable enough to constitute a random per-player card pool). Though there are certainly "Limited specialist" players, for the most part you will see similar lists of names among the top finishers in both Limited and Constructed formats, which drives home the point in a frankly undeniable way.
I wasn't really claiming that its easy to win MTG tournaments. I was just illustrating that fairly standardized play begins at a much lower level than it does in chess, because even beginners can buy a world class deck for a small amount of money.
Limited is a great format that I'm glad you mentioned. Anything involving a draft is going to be pretty creative.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that MTG is inferior to chess. I like both games equally well.
Limited is a great format that I'm glad you mentioned. Anything involving a draft is going to be pretty creative.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that MTG is inferior to chess. I like both games equally well.
I usually reply like that because often I see the attitude that Magic is just a game of spending money on cards -- whoever buys the best cards wins. When in reality, card availability is more of a barrier to entry, and all it does is get you to the point where you're on an even field, card-wise, with actual competitive players. From there it's up to you to have the skill to hang in there.
Beyond the decks/openings analogy though, I'm not sure Magic and chess really compare well.
I think the most interesting distinction is in innovators vs. honers; Gerry Thompson is now out of the game at the professional level, but he was one of the greatest honers who ever played the game. Gerry was not known for coming up with new deck ideas, and in fact the few times he tried it he did horribly. But his ability to analyze the tournament landscape week to week, and make the perfect couple of tweaks to existing deck shells, was unmatched.
Beyond the decks/openings analogy though, I'm not sure Magic and chess really compare well.
I think the most interesting distinction is in innovators vs. honers; Gerry Thompson is now out of the game at the professional level, but he was one of the greatest honers who ever played the game. Gerry was not known for coming up with new deck ideas, and in fact the few times he tried it he did horribly. But his ability to analyze the tournament landscape week to week, and make the perfect couple of tweaks to existing deck shells, was unmatched.
In some ways, the internet ruined games like MTG. I still like to play, but the widespread availability of tournament decklists stifles creativity.
In some ways, the printing press ruined games like chess. I still like to play, but the widespread availability of opening books stifles creativity.
(I have a lot of experience with MtG, and a fair bit with chess, and this is my go-to analogy. I could also probably write a lot more on how the "netdeck" attitude signals someone is missing out on an unbelievable amount of strategic depth, but that's for another day)
In some ways, the printing press ruined games like chess. I still like to play, but the widespread availability of opening books stifles creativity.
(I have a lot of experience with MtG, and a fair bit with chess, and this is my go-to analogy. I could also probably write a lot more on how the "netdeck" attitude signals someone is missing out on an unbelievable amount of strategic depth, but that's for another day)
(not the op) I love Magic: the Gathering and played on and off for 18 years now.
It has two big downsides, the main one for me is that it's extremely expensive (a brand new console + collection of titles is equivalent in price to owning a couple of top tier decks).
The other one is that it's seen as uncool or childish or nerdish. I'd rather not mention it in workplaces anymore.
That said, yeah, building decks playing the metagame is very rewarding intellectually :) and having games 24/7 on Magic Online is great.
It has two big downsides, the main one for me is that it's extremely expensive (a brand new console + collection of titles is equivalent in price to owning a couple of top tier decks).
The other one is that it's seen as uncool or childish or nerdish. I'd rather not mention it in workplaces anymore.
That said, yeah, building decks playing the metagame is very rewarding intellectually :) and having games 24/7 on Magic Online is great.
/The other one is that it's seen as uncool or childish or nerdish. I'd rather not mention it in workplaces anymore./
Not like Go, don't you think? (I do, been playing go for 10 years already)
Not like Go, don't you think? (I do, been playing go for 10 years already)
Used to love MTG. Now I play Dominion more - because "building the deck" (which was always the most fun part for me) is part of the game and it's decided more by skill than who can buy the better cards (i.e. at start of every game each player has a statistically equal opportunity to get each card.) It's huge in the "board game geek" scene, so apologies if you already know of it...but if you like MTG, I'd highly recommend it.
Another thing I really love about Dominion (from a purely aesthetic standpoint) is that the cards are, like chess, mostly archtypical. It doesn't have any of the sort of fantasy or sci-fi lore that permeates a lot of tabletop games and which can easily turn people off.
I've played Dominion, it's kind of interesting. Magic has 'Draft' and 'Cube' formats where deckbuilding with whatever you end up with is important, but it is indeed expensive.
Plus - sadly - expensive.
I think Hive is the best chess "alternative". It feels lighter, but plays deeply and is never boring. It has an interesting geometric component. And there are annual championships.
(Get the Hive Carbon edition, it's much nicer looking)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_(game)
(Get the Hive Carbon edition, it's much nicer looking)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_(game)
Yeah Hive is a great game and I love the bakelite pieces.
If you see many, many people getting obsessed with a game, and you think it's boring, it's usually a sign that you're not understanding something.
Go and no limit poker are getting massively popular. They are both like chess, but much less tactical and a lot more strategical games. In other words, computers can't beat the best players in these games yet.
For whatever reasons, the status of games is somewhat related to whether they are "solved" by programs. Chess, like backgammon and checkers, is really on its way down.
I love chess, and play it all the time, and same with many other games. But the allure goes down once it is solved.
maybe all games will be figured out by software... but at the moment, no limit and go seem extremely exciting in terms of their possibilities/strategies.
Go and no limit poker are getting massively popular. They are both like chess, but much less tactical and a lot more strategical games. In other words, computers can't beat the best players in these games yet.
For whatever reasons, the status of games is somewhat related to whether they are "solved" by programs. Chess, like backgammon and checkers, is really on its way down.
I love chess, and play it all the time, and same with many other games. But the allure goes down once it is solved.
maybe all games will be figured out by software... but at the moment, no limit and go seem extremely exciting in terms of their possibilities/strategies.
You can apply your first statement to most things in life. When people think things are boring, most of the time it is because they don't understand the nuances, history etc
Although the best chess players are now computers, chess doesn't seem anywhere close to being solved in the formal game theory sense (where we know how to produce perfect play that can't be beaten even in principle). There was a gap of over a decade between a machine becoming the world checkers champion (1994) and checkers becoming a formally solved game (2007). (Impressively, both of these were achieved by the same person, Johnathan Schaeffer.)
The difference, of course, is between "this machine can beat the best existing human player" and "this machine can beat any conceivable player as long as it's logically possible to do so". And right now we're at the former stage for chess (at least in some abstract sense: I'm not sure that a specific machine exists in operable condition that reflects the state of the art), but nowhere near the latter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess#Predictions_on_w...
The difference, of course, is between "this machine can beat the best existing human player" and "this machine can beat any conceivable player as long as it's logically possible to do so". And right now we're at the former stage for chess (at least in some abstract sense: I'm not sure that a specific machine exists in operable condition that reflects the state of the art), but nowhere near the latter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess#Predictions_on_w...
yes, absolutely agree. that's what i mean by "solved" in quotes. i mean that computers can beat the best humans, not that the games are solved in the absolute sense like tic tac toe.
>If you see many, many people getting obsessed with a game, and you think it's boring, it's usually a sign that you're not understanding something.
I love chess, but this type of thinking is flawed. Using this logic, the Twilight movies are misunderstood masterpieces, Justin Beiber is the millennials' Mozart, and WWE style wrestling should be in the Olympics alongside the decathlon.
I love chess, but this type of thinking is flawed. Using this logic, the Twilight movies are misunderstood masterpieces, Justin Beiber is the millennials' Mozart, and WWE style wrestling should be in the Olympics alongside the decathlon.
I think it's the "game" wording that is wrong. I don't know what would suit better, but finding chess, shogi, go, xiangqi as boring would just mean you don't understand something. I was originally a chess player, but found the depth of go much more inspiring, once I "learnt the language."
you're right. i should clarify that i mean "a life long pursuit" kind of interest and devotion. That something could offer that many stimulating moments to many people intellectually and aesthetically and socially.
and "usually" of course. I concede that there may exist a game that many people devote a lot of time to that is not a "good" game in an objective sense, if there can ever be an objective sense of that kind about games.
> Go and no limit poker are getting massively popular. They are both like chess.
Go is, poker is not. The key difference is that in go and chess, all the information about the game is known by both parties. That's not true in poker, where each player has data that's intentionally hidden from the other players.
Go is, poker is not. The key difference is that in go and chess, all the information about the game is known by both parties. That's not true in poker, where each player has data that's intentionally hidden from the other players.
You've named one difference. There's many, many commonalities.
Not a board game, but Bridge.
Backgammon is also very rich also, although there is a random element there which, depending on your preferences, is either a good or bad thing.
Backgammon is also very rich also, although there is a random element there which, depending on your preferences, is either a good or bad thing.
The random element in backgammon is inconsequential: a good player will always beat inferior players over several games. What makes good players good is not that they know how to win when they have a good roll but the fact that with regular throws, each of their move is optimal, which guarantees a win over the duration of the entire game.
The same could be said of poker, where the element of chance appears to be huge but which doesn't matter over many games.
The same could be said of poker, where the element of chance appears to be huge but which doesn't matter over many games.
+1 for Bridge.
Bridge is a game of short-term and long-term memory, strategy (in long matches), tactics, deduction, induction, risk assessment, hidden information, and finally a strong test of character, and your judgment of the characters of others. Unlike chess it does not seem to have a "limit" where you stop getting smarter and start merely learning more about chess. There's a reason it's the favorite game of some of the world's smartest and richest men.
Bridge is a game of short-term and long-term memory, strategy (in long matches), tactics, deduction, induction, risk assessment, hidden information, and finally a strong test of character, and your judgment of the characters of others. Unlike chess it does not seem to have a "limit" where you stop getting smarter and start merely learning more about chess. There's a reason it's the favorite game of some of the world's smartest and richest men.
Another nice thing about bridge is that most tournaments are open, and even if flighted you're almost always given the option of "playing up". I, as a serious amateur have had the chance to play against probably 3 of the top 10 players in the world, and anther 10-15 that are probably top 100. I'm not talking exhibition games either, like a chess simul, but actual tournament play.
Do you play on BBO? Always looking for good partners, especially those interested in playing weird stuff, which I have a feeling you might...
My BBO name is ckane, but I haven't found much time nowdays. Feel free to add me and maybe we'll catch each other.
Will do... I'm TylerE so should be easy to see. When I'm own it's usually about 7-12PM EST.
And women?
Backgammon: the best way to want to kill yourself. I was playing a 21-game match against someone on the Internet, it was 17-16 for him, but I was in a very good position and I doubled and he (incorrectly) accepted. I was about to build a 5-prime between my 4 and 8 points when he got a lucky roll, hit two of my blots and closed off his home board. He won a gammon and the match. One lucky roll, 1/36 chance and I go from still being in the match to being a 3% dog.
I played a lot of bridge through High School, tournaments, etc. I think it can become very robotic once you are just following conventions and can count cards without difficulty.
I think there is much more depth than your're giving it credit for - you can work on developing your own conventions, and there are many advanced play techniques - ever heard of a mandatory false card?
>Ever heard of a mandatory false card
Nope, what is it? Nothing shows up in my Google searches other than plain old "false cards", which are fairly obvious. I don't remember bothering to name such a thing.
Nope, what is it? Nothing shows up in my Google searches other than plain old "false cards", which are fairly obvious. I don't remember bothering to name such a thing.
Basically the idea is that you assume you have, say, QT doubleton in a suit, dummy has J9x, and declarer is presumed to have the rest of the significant cards in the suit - perhaps the suit opened.
Declarer leads the A, parter plays low, dummy plays low. Do you discard the Q or the T?
Since you have to discard a non-small card declarer will know you have either a singleton, or QT doubleton, because with any other holding you'd play something else. If you have T singleton, there is nothing declarer can do about it except lead small to dummy's J at trick 2. However, if you can convince declarer you have Q singleton, the right play is to hook the 9 in dummy. Thus, playing the Q at trick 1 is a mandatory false card - discarding the ten will never gain, discarding the Q puts declarer on a genuine guess.
At very high levels, this gets further randomized because declarer will pickup on the Q likely being a MFC, and thus work to otherwise resolve the guess and get it right (e.g. play other suits and using deductive reasoning from that. - so at very high levels the winning strategy is actually to make the MFC most - but NOT ALL - the time, at random.
Declarer leads the A, parter plays low, dummy plays low. Do you discard the Q or the T?
Since you have to discard a non-small card declarer will know you have either a singleton, or QT doubleton, because with any other holding you'd play something else. If you have T singleton, there is nothing declarer can do about it except lead small to dummy's J at trick 2. However, if you can convince declarer you have Q singleton, the right play is to hook the 9 in dummy. Thus, playing the Q at trick 1 is a mandatory false card - discarding the ten will never gain, discarding the Q puts declarer on a genuine guess.
At very high levels, this gets further randomized because declarer will pickup on the Q likely being a MFC, and thus work to otherwise resolve the guess and get it right (e.g. play other suits and using deductive reasoning from that. - so at very high levels the winning strategy is actually to make the MFC most - but NOT ALL - the time, at random.
Right, this just seems like basic card tracking and reasoning, which is fun when figuring it out, and then not fun once it becomes routine. When you present a situation with only two options and one is worse than the other, you will have a hard time convincing me there is a lot of depth.
On the other hand, for the declarer it is just business as usual: you try to navigate the tricks making as few guesses as possible. At some point realize that seeing the Queen doesn't always mean a singleton, so you put that in the "guess" category, but the actual process isn't effected.
On the other hand, for the declarer it is just business as usual: you try to navigate the tricks making as few guesses as possible. At some point realize that seeing the Queen doesn't always mean a singleton, so you put that in the "guess" category, but the actual process isn't effected.
If you're doing that routinely, and actually getting it right, you could make a good living playing professionally. Either you were very, very good, or there was a lot of depth you were missing out on.
I take your point, and I'm enjoying discussing this. I was never all that good, although we did find the time for a dozen hands or so a day for months at a time. I just remember being bored by the "deeper" things, which my friends (those who were much better players) found interesting. Which is mainly to say, as the OP was bored by go, he may also be bored by bridge.
Have you heard about Arimaa?
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/
Arimaa is a good choice - it can be played on a chess board, has quite a bit of variety, and is deep as well.
It's also interesting for HN because there is a $11k prize for the first AI to win the annual mixed human-AI tournament.
You should really give No Limit Hold'em or Pot Limit Omaha a try. Poker is a game of astounding complexity once you start taking it seriously and it's quite fun. Combine that with the ability to take a small bankroll, $100 or whatever you're comfortable using as seed money, and turn it into a roll sufficient for high stakes poker (with enough dedication and time) and it truly does become quite an amazing game to play.
I personally play heads-up poker. Unlike 9-handed poker, heads-up poker is constant action. It's more dependent on opponent profiling and maximizing expectation on the fly, using experience and statistics. A game of infinite variety.
Since April I've taken $200 and, playing online and live poker, have profited in the following ways:
+$6458 - online poker heads up matches
+$2900 - rakeback/bonuses from pokerstars
+$12500 - live tournaments and pot limit omaha cash
And that's merely playing recreationally, completely separate from my full time job. You can play a complex, fun game and make money doing it. Who wouldn't enjoy that?
I personally play heads-up poker. Unlike 9-handed poker, heads-up poker is constant action. It's more dependent on opponent profiling and maximizing expectation on the fly, using experience and statistics. A game of infinite variety.
Since April I've taken $200 and, playing online and live poker, have profited in the following ways:
+$6458 - online poker heads up matches
+$2900 - rakeback/bonuses from pokerstars
+$12500 - live tournaments and pot limit omaha cash
And that's merely playing recreationally, completely separate from my full time job. You can play a complex, fun game and make money doing it. Who wouldn't enjoy that?
I used to be a professional poker player, and although I agree that especially in the beginning -- while you're quickly evolving -- it's a lot of fun, after a while you do it for the money.
It's very different from MTG, where me and my friends would play for the thrill of it, spending whatever little money we had to play.
The easy test here is: would you play a poker tournament just for fun, if there was nothing at stake? Few people actually do it. The thrill in both cases actually is (or becomes) the money made/lost.
It's very different from MTG, where me and my friends would play for the thrill of it, spending whatever little money we had to play.
The easy test here is: would you play a poker tournament just for fun, if there was nothing at stake? Few people actually do it. The thrill in both cases actually is (or becomes) the money made/lost.
If you aren't enjoying it anymore, you probably shouldn't be playing any longer.
I didn't advocate playing only for the sake of making money. I suggested it because of how complex a game it is. How much time it takes to master. And because the potential rewards once you do are quite significant, which is a nice added bonus.
And I'm not sure when you stopped playing (pre black friday?) but I don't think there's a single point at which I've ever stopped improving. I know many heads-up professionals as well and not a single one of them ever stops learning and improving their game. Stagnation in poker is death. As such, I don't know why you feel like it was a lot of fun at the start but lost that later on. There is always another level deeper you can go.
The point of any game is to win. The metric that determines the winner of a game is different in every case. In poker, it's how much money you're making. But that doesn't have anything to do with the game itself. It merely depicts how well you're playing.
Learning to maximize expectation with true mathematical finesse while factoring in accurate opponent profiling and gameflow is one of the most challenging things I've ever had to do gamewise. I've played chess since I was 5, Counter-Strike very seriously for five years, WoW for the first 3 years before it went to shit, and have been getting into Go. And in none of those games have I achieved the level of mental satisfaction as I have from poker.
Edit: Was your stars alias RRiccio as well? Were you a cash player? You only have ~750 tournaments recorded on sharkscope.
I didn't advocate playing only for the sake of making money. I suggested it because of how complex a game it is. How much time it takes to master. And because the potential rewards once you do are quite significant, which is a nice added bonus.
And I'm not sure when you stopped playing (pre black friday?) but I don't think there's a single point at which I've ever stopped improving. I know many heads-up professionals as well and not a single one of them ever stops learning and improving their game. Stagnation in poker is death. As such, I don't know why you feel like it was a lot of fun at the start but lost that later on. There is always another level deeper you can go.
The point of any game is to win. The metric that determines the winner of a game is different in every case. In poker, it's how much money you're making. But that doesn't have anything to do with the game itself. It merely depicts how well you're playing.
Learning to maximize expectation with true mathematical finesse while factoring in accurate opponent profiling and gameflow is one of the most challenging things I've ever had to do gamewise. I've played chess since I was 5, Counter-Strike very seriously for five years, WoW for the first 3 years before it went to shit, and have been getting into Go. And in none of those games have I achieved the level of mental satisfaction as I have from poker.
Edit: Was your stars alias RRiccio as well? Were you a cash player? You only have ~750 tournaments recorded on sharkscope.
There is always room for improving. What I'm saying is that going from level 2 to 3 isn't nearly as fun as going from level 9 to 10.
To put in another way: most MtG players I know are still in love with the game 10 years after they started playing competitively, while nearly none of my poker pro friends still play or enjoy poker 5 years after we started.
P.S. Played mostly on PP, pre-BF, diff alias.
To put in another way: most MtG players I know are still in love with the game 10 years after they started playing competitively, while nearly none of my poker pro friends still play or enjoy poker 5 years after we started.
P.S. Played mostly on PP, pre-BF, diff alias.
Edit: Of course I meant the opposite on the first sentence.
FWIW, this is called run-good.
It's unlikely your $200 was a proper bankroll when you started, and it's even more unlikely that you or anyone else could consistently replicate these results (when starting out).
That said, I'm an ex-husng player, and played them professionally for three years, and I don't disagree with your overall message. Poker is a wonderful game, heads-up play is great and has almost no boring parts, and you can conceivably make a living at it if you put in your time and manage your money well.
How are the games these days? When I played it was primarily before superturbos, and I three-tabled $105s on FTP for just under a 60% winrate and 14% ROI.
I imagine the average player has really upped their game, though, and that the regulars these days would crush me on average--I'm rusty and the game has matured.
It's unlikely your $200 was a proper bankroll when you started, and it's even more unlikely that you or anyone else could consistently replicate these results (when starting out).
That said, I'm an ex-husng player, and played them professionally for three years, and I don't disagree with your overall message. Poker is a wonderful game, heads-up play is great and has almost no boring parts, and you can conceivably make a living at it if you put in your time and manage your money well.
How are the games these days? When I played it was primarily before superturbos, and I three-tabled $105s on FTP for just under a 60% winrate and 14% ROI.
I imagine the average player has really upped their game, though, and that the regulars these days would crush me on average--I'm rusty and the game has matured.
Lol, I never said I started out in April, I said I started my bankroll. I've been playing for 5+ years. I just restarted my bankroll in April because I had spent it on bills in February.
Those results are based on the following:
2,615 $3.50 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos
1,605 $7 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos
1,792 $15 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos
16,715 $30 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos
211 $60 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos
I've also played a handful of MTT tournaments which are a miniscule part of sample size but which result for about $7,500 of that $12,500. I played the $880 Fraser Downs Fall Poker Challenge in Vancouver and cashed 3rd for $7,384. I also won $5,000 that weekend in one session playing pot limit omaha cash. So that is, indeed, small sample size, but the rest is not. Read on.
This isn't run good. Once you're up to a sample of around 5000 heads up hyper turbo games, your results begin to accurately depict your actual skill level. I've played 22,938 heads-up hyper-turbo matches since April with a 1.08% ROI, 51.80% winrate, and $6,063.56 net profit before rakeback.
And yes, I practiced perfect bankroll management. If you're not living off your bankroll, using a 35/50 buy-in rule (move up when you have 50 buy-ins, move down when you're at 35 buy-ins) is a good, aggressive system to use. If you are, 100 or 200 buy-ins minimum is best, depending on how comfortable you are with variance. I started with $200 which was ~57 buy-ins for the $3.50s on PokerStars. I'm now playing the $30s and $60s with a bankroll over $6000.
And yes, people can replicate these results. Easily. My results are, honestly, more on the weaker side among regulars. As for a beginning player, they could easily replicate these results if they actually studied. It's really not that hard to crush the $3.50s-$15s on PokerStars. You just have to think. Most people are there to gamble.
The games are excellent these days. Of course the overall player pool took a hit on Black Friday, but there is still tons of action. Hyper-Turbos have only gotten more popular, especially because the best players are booking some of the highest profits among all high stakes players each year.
As for a 60% winrate and 14% ROI at super-turbos, THAT is too small of a sample size. It's highly like you're a winning player with a great ROI, but you were on an upswing. You're ROI was likely in the 2.5%-5% range. The highest ROI I've ever seen was around 6% over 20k games (also someone hit 7.5% over 3k games but thats too small a sample). And yes, the average player is slightly better, and the regs have definitely improved as well, but fish are fish. The games up to $15s are very, very soft. The $30s are as well but you'll start to run into a lot more regs at that stake.
Those results are based on the following:
2,615 $3.50 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos
1,605 $7 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos
1,792 $15 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos
16,715 $30 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos
211 $60 Heads-Up Hyper-Turbos
I've also played a handful of MTT tournaments which are a miniscule part of sample size but which result for about $7,500 of that $12,500. I played the $880 Fraser Downs Fall Poker Challenge in Vancouver and cashed 3rd for $7,384. I also won $5,000 that weekend in one session playing pot limit omaha cash. So that is, indeed, small sample size, but the rest is not. Read on.
This isn't run good. Once you're up to a sample of around 5000 heads up hyper turbo games, your results begin to accurately depict your actual skill level. I've played 22,938 heads-up hyper-turbo matches since April with a 1.08% ROI, 51.80% winrate, and $6,063.56 net profit before rakeback.
And yes, I practiced perfect bankroll management. If you're not living off your bankroll, using a 35/50 buy-in rule (move up when you have 50 buy-ins, move down when you're at 35 buy-ins) is a good, aggressive system to use. If you are, 100 or 200 buy-ins minimum is best, depending on how comfortable you are with variance. I started with $200 which was ~57 buy-ins for the $3.50s on PokerStars. I'm now playing the $30s and $60s with a bankroll over $6000.
And yes, people can replicate these results. Easily. My results are, honestly, more on the weaker side among regulars. As for a beginning player, they could easily replicate these results if they actually studied. It's really not that hard to crush the $3.50s-$15s on PokerStars. You just have to think. Most people are there to gamble.
The games are excellent these days. Of course the overall player pool took a hit on Black Friday, but there is still tons of action. Hyper-Turbos have only gotten more popular, especially because the best players are booking some of the highest profits among all high stakes players each year.
As for a 60% winrate and 14% ROI at super-turbos, THAT is too small of a sample size. It's highly like you're a winning player with a great ROI, but you were on an upswing. You're ROI was likely in the 2.5%-5% range. The highest ROI I've ever seen was around 6% over 20k games (also someone hit 7.5% over 3k games but thats too small a sample). And yes, the average player is slightly better, and the regs have definitely improved as well, but fish are fish. The games up to $15s are very, very soft. The $30s are as well but you'll start to run into a lot more regs at that stake.
Are there any legal or quasi-legal ways to play online poker in the US, currently?
Keep forgetting about Black Friday. You can buy a PokerStars account from people in Bolivia/Germany/etc. and use a VPN to connect. I know a few people doing this. There's a new online site in Nevada right now, only for Nevada residents, but I hear it's a pretty big failure. New Jersey is very close to releasing it's own online poker site as well.
On top of that I think most US players play on iPoker skins (black chip poker, cake poker, etc.) which allow US players.
But yeah, all of them (apart from the Nevada/New Jersey sites) are technically illegal down there. Most professionals who didn't quit poker altogether and didn't transition to live either moved to Canada or some third world country with no taxes and cheap living to grind.
On top of that I think most US players play on iPoker skins (black chip poker, cake poker, etc.) which allow US players.
But yeah, all of them (apart from the Nevada/New Jersey sites) are technically illegal down there. Most professionals who didn't quit poker altogether and didn't transition to live either moved to Canada or some third world country with no taxes and cheap living to grind.
I think "technically illegal" should be defined here.
I played professionally a few years back, so this was my understanding of the law then, and I haven't heard of any changes:
It's perfectly legal, as a player, to play. Laws have been created that prevent banks from transferring money to and from poker sites.
When Black Friday happened, it was primarily because poker sites were committing fraud to work with banks to process payments.
There are still sites operating, however they take very, very long to process payments, limit cashouts to a point where professional play is not possible, and can suffer the same fate as the big three sites did on Black Friday.
I played professionally a few years back, so this was my understanding of the law then, and I haven't heard of any changes:
It's perfectly legal, as a player, to play. Laws have been created that prevent banks from transferring money to and from poker sites.
When Black Friday happened, it was primarily because poker sites were committing fraud to work with banks to process payments.
There are still sites operating, however they take very, very long to process payments, limit cashouts to a point where professional play is not possible, and can suffer the same fate as the big three sites did on Black Friday.
Not any good ones, no.
All of my professional-playing friends quit or moved out of country after Black Friday.
You can bypass location restrictions with VPN, but you also need a foreign bank account and can be caught and have your funds seized.
All of my professional-playing friends quit or moved out of country after Black Friday.
You can bypass location restrictions with VPN, but you also need a foreign bank account and can be caught and have your funds seized.
If you’re looking specifically for an alternative to Go or chess then be sure to have a look at a list of the so-called abstract board games (Go and chess belong to this category too) on the BoardGameGeek: http://boardgamegeek.com/abstracts/browse/boardgame (sorted by popularity by default)
There are a few gems there that you might be interested in.
There are a few gems there that you might be interested in.
I'm not sure exactly what constitutes a viable "chess alternative," but if you're open to going beyond two player and investigating other styles of games, check out the top games on BGG (boardgamegeek.com). Many of these have a great deal of strategic depth and subtlety:
http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame
http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame
What board games have you played? In the last 10-15 years, the U.S. has experienced something of a German-style board game renaissance. Check out Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Agricola, and many other less popular ones.
Kind of irrelevant, but board games seem like a great application of 3D printing. I wonder if there will be another surge in popularity when (if?) 3D printers become household items.
Kind of irrelevant, but board games seem like a great application of 3D printing. I wonder if there will be another surge in popularity when (if?) 3D printers become household items.
Have 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.
You can try Chinese chess (xiang qi) or Japanese chess (shogi). I particularly like shogi because it has the rule that you can reuse the pieces of your opponent you capture.
Both are a bit hard to learn though because the pieces are oriental characters.
Both are a bit hard to learn though because the pieces are oriental characters.
Shogi is derived from xiangqi (same with Korean chess or janggi). And note that the characters are called hanzi or kanji (literally Chinese/Han characters), not oriental characters. It may be hard because the pieces don't have distinct shapes, but it's not after you learn/recognize the characters.
David Foster Wallace wrote (I'm paraphrasing here) that "tennis is a combination of chess and boxing". Maybe try that.
Chess boxing is a thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing
Anyway, every one-on-one sport makes a reference to "human chess."
Anyway, every one-on-one sport makes a reference to "human chess."
Sounds like he thinks very highly of tennis. Most people like to think that the things they like are better than the things everyone else likes.
The truth is, any skill-based game can be extremely intense at the highest levels of play.
The truth is, any skill-based game can be extremely intense at the highest levels of play.
If we're going to start suggesting physical activities I'd say Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and rock climbing are both very chess like in their emphasis on strategic placement/puzzle solving. Your limb placement, your endurance, the way you shift your weight, the current momentum, they're all your pieces and you have to play them appropriately.
I'm a huge fan of both activities because of the combination of mental and physical demands.
I'm a huge fan of both activities because of the combination of mental and physical demands.
Pretty unrelated but you can try online strategy games, personally I've played League of Legends for about two years and I still can't reach Diamond tier.
LoL does require some mechanical skill but once you get it down, it's 90% knowledge.
Another alternative is Magic The Gathering :) or HearthStone.
Another alternative is Magic The Gathering :) or HearthStone.
The discussion around Carlsen has led me to instinctively make comparisons to Starcraft professional play.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/How_to_Improve
If you listen to commentators discussing matches, they can explain why certain decisions are gutsy, what the history of each player is (so-and-so is amazing at Medivac drops, so you expect that going into a game with him; so-and-so prefers the late game, so you'll never see him build proxy pylons), and the long-term ramifications of certain events (it doesn't seem like a big deal to lose 5 workers, just like a pawn sacrifice doesn't seem huge, but at the pro level of play, you'd better get something of equal or greater worth out of that; it doesn't seem like a big deal to know when Zerg builds their first extractor, but scouting that timing can tell you a lot about build order).
> LoL does require some mechanical skill but once you get it down, it's 90% knowledge.
At a certain point, LoL is about having teammates who you've worked with enough to anticipate and account for. There's a world of difference between baiting the carry and hoping your jungler will respond to your ping, and baiting the carry because you know there's three seconds until your jungler's dash is off cooldown.
Personally, I get the shakes when I PvP in LoL so what decent mechanical skill I have kinda fractures. :( I miss watching LoL streams, actually; they stopped working for me.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/How_to_Improve
If you listen to commentators discussing matches, they can explain why certain decisions are gutsy, what the history of each player is (so-and-so is amazing at Medivac drops, so you expect that going into a game with him; so-and-so prefers the late game, so you'll never see him build proxy pylons), and the long-term ramifications of certain events (it doesn't seem like a big deal to lose 5 workers, just like a pawn sacrifice doesn't seem huge, but at the pro level of play, you'd better get something of equal or greater worth out of that; it doesn't seem like a big deal to know when Zerg builds their first extractor, but scouting that timing can tell you a lot about build order).
> LoL does require some mechanical skill but once you get it down, it's 90% knowledge.
At a certain point, LoL is about having teammates who you've worked with enough to anticipate and account for. There's a world of difference between baiting the carry and hoping your jungler will respond to your ping, and baiting the carry because you know there's three seconds until your jungler's dash is off cooldown.
Personally, I get the shakes when I PvP in LoL so what decent mechanical skill I have kinda fractures. :( I miss watching LoL streams, actually; they stopped working for me.
The best thing to do is play like you don't care, so you dont tremble nor doubt to make plays.
I've been playing LoL for more than two years, sitting in Platinum right now, still have a lot to learn, the most interesting thing is that LoL is still 90% strategy and knowledge.
If you're looking for something close to chess, you might enjoy Xiangqi, or Chinese Chess. It has a similar layout, but with a few changes, e.g. rook-like pieces that capture not the closest piece, but the second-closest piece. Two on the same file creates all sort of weird possibilities.
Go is not boring, but what you see in the game evolves a lot with your level. I have stayed a couple of year at 5 kyu with monotonous games. Once I have improved to 3kyu, games were a lot more funny.
Off the top of my head, if you're looking for deep two-player strategy with zero chance element, besides Go there's Othello (Reversi), Hive, Checkers, and Khet. If you're willing to put up with some chance, Backgammon and Battle Line can be very satisfying. For more than two players, take a look at Puerto Rico (finite but negligible chance) and Diplomacy.
Quoridor is a great abstract strategy game that doesn't seem to have beecome very widely known.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoridor
A lot of the subtlety comes in because of the rule that you can never completely obstruct the opponent's path to the goal, but you can try to make it as convoluted as possible. Hence people try to multiply the opponent's options (so that they can be closed off at the last minute) and limit their own options (so that the opponent isn't allowed to block their unique path to the goal).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoridor
A lot of the subtlety comes in because of the rule that you can never completely obstruct the opponent's path to the goal, but you can try to make it as convoluted as possible. Hence people try to multiply the opponent's options (so that they can be closed off at the last minute) and limit their own options (so that the opponent isn't allowed to block their unique path to the goal).
One of the most underrated games I have seen. I rank it as Hex for me: two awesome games, very little known (at least there's a very good Hex strategy book)
Diplomacy is a very good group game that even works by (e)mail. Colonial Diplomacy was also pretty good, but it felt like a sprint compared to Diplomacy.
Have you tried Chess960[0]
0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960
0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960
Arimaa can be played using a chess set: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/. it's specifically designed to be hard for computers to play.
Pente.
What about Chess960?
Poker
StarCraft.
;)
;)
Bridge
It'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.
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.
Cool, 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 ?
But has he played Judah Friedlander?
Honest Question : So now Chess will be more fashionable game?
Congrats 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/). 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.
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/). 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.
Intro to that film (amazing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zCsn-he5Kk
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Of 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.
If 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.
I downvoted you for your terrible bigotry. It's not welcome here.
Viswanathan means lord of the Universe.
Didn't quite help him though.
Helped him for a long time. He was champion since 2007.
Magnus 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!
Anand 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.
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.
What do you mean by mind tricks?
Things such as Emanuel Lasker's cigar: http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/nimzowitsch.html
and other such stuff.
and other such stuff.
So, 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.
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.
You can watch IM Danny Rensch & GM Ben Finegold review the game right now on http://www.chess.com/tv
This 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.
The 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.
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?
>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.
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.
Fischer et al saw it coming decades ago, unfortunately.
I'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.
As 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?
Consider joining ICC (http://chessclub.com). It's the best place online for playing chess, and also comes with an app. Tell 'em gk sent you.
Chess.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.
www.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.
Books.
I 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.
And you're pretty correct there, too, according to the last person I asked this question of.
Is the site down for anyone else?
After 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!
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!
Comparing 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.
>Chess is as balanced as it gets.
It's "balanced" in some respects but both sides use the same features and most games end in a draw, and high level play is less and less interesting. And for that matter it's not even balanced really -- tournaments have players play both white and black because they are so inequal. This is like balancing starcraft by having everyone play mirror matchups or swap races.
>So Anand encountered a "mild surprise" in the opening moves that left him "flying blind" (meaning the board was in a position with which he had not previously studied) and because of that he decided to not keep pursuing the game. He just engineered a draw.
>Most real people are "flying blind" after the first couple moves of the game, and it's the challenge of trying to solve a puzzle against a live opponent (who is also flying blind) that makes the game so fun. At the highest levels, Grandmasters go very deep into the game in positions they have studied exhaustively, and then the moment they feel uncomfortable they search for the emergency brake, and consider themselves happy to escape with half a point.
>Intuitive understanding of the game and moments of brilliant improvisation are the most exciting aspects, and yet memorized lines of play are so deeply entrenched now that when a top player encounters anything outside of memorized, studied lines he heads directly for the draw. It's really the opposite of what you'd hope.
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html
It's "balanced" in some respects but both sides use the same features and most games end in a draw, and high level play is less and less interesting. And for that matter it's not even balanced really -- tournaments have players play both white and black because they are so inequal. This is like balancing starcraft by having everyone play mirror matchups or swap races.
>So Anand encountered a "mild surprise" in the opening moves that left him "flying blind" (meaning the board was in a position with which he had not previously studied) and because of that he decided to not keep pursuing the game. He just engineered a draw.
>Most real people are "flying blind" after the first couple moves of the game, and it's the challenge of trying to solve a puzzle against a live opponent (who is also flying blind) that makes the game so fun. At the highest levels, Grandmasters go very deep into the game in positions they have studied exhaustively, and then the moment they feel uncomfortable they search for the emergency brake, and consider themselves happy to escape with half a point.
>Intuitive understanding of the game and moments of brilliant improvisation are the most exciting aspects, and yet memorized lines of play are so deeply entrenched now that when a top player encounters anything outside of memorized, studied lines he heads directly for the draw. It's really the opposite of what you'd hope.
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html
As much as I recognize and appreciate the limitations of chess, it pains me physically to see the strategic depth of it compared to something like Starcraft. It's not close by orders of magnitude.
I still remember some important match almost 15 years ago between two world class Starcraft players, who also apparently were friends off the board, being settled in 3 minutes by one guy "4 pooling" (basically sucker punching) the other.
I still remember some important match almost 15 years ago between two world class Starcraft players, who also apparently were friends off the board, being settled in 3 minutes by one guy "4 pooling" (basically sucker punching) the other.
A 4 pool isn't a sucker punch. It is a highly risky opening strategy that almost always ends the game very quickly. If your opponent does not scout it quickly, he is very likely to lose. If he does, you are very likely to lose. The existence of this early all-in option does much to "keep players honest" during the opening phases of the game and greatly expands the strategic depth of the beginning minutes. Without this option, each player's optimal strategy would always be to sacrifice defense and scouting early in favor of better late-game economy.
> a highly risky opening strategy that almost always ends the game very quickly
In other words, a sucker punch?
In other words, a sucker punch?
I think parent was reading sucker punch (as I did) as not "risky", but unfair -- as you can't see it coming (by definition).
In SC2, 6pooling is certainly quite powerful (Zerg makes Tassadar cry...) but if it is scouted, the Zerg is now fucked.
The thing is, in the current meta, you never bother drone/probe/scv scouting that early, so you'd have to be able to read your opponent and know that he's a kind of player that loves those "Cheesy" build orders!
In SC2, 6pooling is certainly quite powerful (Zerg makes Tassadar cry...) but if it is scouted, the Zerg is now fucked.
The thing is, in the current meta, you never bother drone/probe/scv scouting that early, so you'd have to be able to read your opponent and know that he's a kind of player that loves those "Cheesy" build orders!
Like girvo said, I meant that it's not unfair. If you think surprise attacks and imperfect information don't add strategic depth to a game, then we have nothing left to discuss.
It's not to say Starcraft isn't a challenging game or there isn't any depth to it, but I am saying if 4 pooling is considered deep stuff, you have to realize that something like chess is on a completely different level.
I'm quite sure you could put all you would ever need to know about Starcraft strategy into a single 300 page volume, whereas there are entire libraries full of chess books, databases of millions of games and 3300-rated computers slugging it out constantly, and the game still hasn't been completely exhausted yet.
I'm quite sure you could put all you would ever need to know about Starcraft strategy into a single 300 page volume, whereas there are entire libraries full of chess books, databases of millions of games and 3300-rated computers slugging it out constantly, and the game still hasn't been completely exhausted yet.
Look, I'm not even disagreeing with you. I never said StarCraft is as deep strategically as Chess is. I think Chess is certainly more strategic. I also happen to think StarCraft is a much more interesting game because it has tactical, psychological, and physical aspects totally absent in Chess. These statements are not incompatible.
The only issue I took with your original post was that you seemed to be claiming that 4 pool openings made the game less strategic when in fact the opposite is true. It's a common mistake made by people who do not understand the game.
The only issue I took with your original post was that you seemed to be claiming that 4 pool openings made the game less strategic when in fact the opposite is true. It's a common mistake made by people who do not understand the game.
Well certainly individual preference is a matter of taste. For me, "4 pooling" and these kind of largely random rock-paper-scissors choices -- which can often be decisive, as is the case here -- put me off Starcraft and a lot of games in general, at least as anything more than casual entertainment. But I do remember enjoying the game before I yelling at kids to get off my lawn.
Tell that to Taeja, the "I'll go 3 command centre before rax if I wanna" Terran player ;)
I love Taeja so much.
I love Taeja so much.
So is it safe to say you consider Go the superior game?
But...he didn't even mention balance. He simply was saying how Starcraft helped him appreciate the "nettlesomeness" aspect of professional chess more. It's just a comment about an interesting observation.
Scriptor! I just wanted to geek out a little and say I love Pharen so much!
Haha, thanks! Glad you like it. I recently got back into toying around with Pharen, the goal being to get accepted to the next Strange Loop.
Nice one! I'm still working on a better web dev framework for it, basically a really nice, functional wrapper for Slim + ORM's -- taking a leaf out of Haskell's book, keeping it all pure except for where IO operations have to happen (and making sure that that is demarcated in the code itself!). It's so much fun to hack on (although I do crash the REPL constantly. I might have to hack around on that actually, see if I can't get a super REPL going that you can use for actual development).
Now I remember you had a build system that came with Pharen, any plans for that in the future? Mainly because I think using it as a build system with a nice functional syntax would be _amazing_ to use even with normal PHP!
Now I remember you had a build system that came with Pharen, any plans for that in the future? Mainly because I think using it as a build system with a nice functional syntax would be _amazing_ to use even with normal PHP!
I've been putting some thought into how I might implement some sort of type system that might at least partially help with separating IO and other side-effects. It's probably impossible to guarantee 100% purity, but I was thinking at the very lease I could use reflection to see if any functions called in a piece of code had arguments of or returned values of PHP's 'Resource' type.
What kinds of things make the repl crash for you? I know that most kinds of errors immediately cause it to exit. I should probably get around to adding an error handler to prevent that...
Phake (the build system) is pretty bare-bones right now and since I'm working on more optimization-related stuff I'm probably not working on it in the near future. However, I do want to work on making deployment in Pharen a lot easier and Phake'll help with that.
If you ever want to discuss this stuff more feel free to shoot an email on the mailing list (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pharen) or drop by #pharen on Freenode.
What kinds of things make the repl crash for you? I know that most kinds of errors immediately cause it to exit. I should probably get around to adding an error handler to prevent that...
Phake (the build system) is pretty bare-bones right now and since I'm working on more optimization-related stuff I'm probably not working on it in the near future. However, I do want to work on making deployment in Pharen a lot easier and Phake'll help with that.
If you ever want to discuss this stuff more feel free to shoot an email on the mailing list (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pharen) or drop by #pharen on Freenode.
Yeah, just various errors make it crash pretty hard. I've attempted to wrap an error handler into it but had no luck, I might try again and send a PR if I can get it to work.
Phake, that's the one. I was curious about it, as I think a nice LISP styled build system that can be bootstrapped with only PHP and the Pharen runtime-lib would be really awesome as a build system for PHP in general. With Composer and a lot of other projects, tooling in PHP is moving forward at a rapid pace, but we're all hacking together shitty build systems from scratch (or using Phing, which is painful in my experience). Phake could be a nice alternative. For now, I'm using Make and calling into Pharen directly :)
Phake, that's the one. I was curious about it, as I think a nice LISP styled build system that can be bootstrapped with only PHP and the Pharen runtime-lib would be really awesome as a build system for PHP in general. With Composer and a lot of other projects, tooling in PHP is moving forward at a rapid pace, but we're all hacking together shitty build systems from scratch (or using Phing, which is painful in my experience). Phake could be a nice alternative. For now, I'm using Make and calling into Pharen directly :)
Well... perfect balance has yet to be proven. But it's certainly better than Starcraft, at any rate.
How do you know?
Well, actually, I don't. At high levels of play, white does win more often than black, which points to an imbalance of sorts [1]. But if the SC2 patches were frozen right now, and the game enjoyed 500 years of popularity, with reams of books written by top minds throughout the ages about analysis of the game, do you really think that there would not be one race that would come out ahead? I find that to be implausible.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess
StarCraft 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!
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!
Chess isn't close to perfectly balanced. White has a significant advantage, both theoretically and statistically. The win rates between races in Starcraft is closer to perfect balance than the white/black divide. Balance is achieved by alternating colors between players, but one player still gets white more in a BoX. You can't switch from zerg to terrain between games in Starcraft.
I 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.
Brilliant! 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?
Where do we go from here?
Highly 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.
V. Korchnoi is (was) a great player. His matches with Karpov were always interesting.
I 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!
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!
I'm always amused by how people tie their pride to things they have absolutely no control over. In case of sports, it's even worse. Most sport outcomes aren't repeatable. When "your" team/person wins it is very likely due to random mistakes others made or you were fortunate to avoid this time. They may very well loose if the game was repeated again. Would your pride wash away then? Even if sport events were repeatable, why you should take pride when you had almost no contribution to their success (may be except buying a ticket or offering your eyeballs for TV ads)? In US, its even worse, considering teams are not even "national", they are actually owned by random zillionairs. I was almost floored to see people spending spending significant portions of lives and money in to cheer leading what is essentially absolute random team where members are pretty much from anywhere, sometimes even opponent teams! Why anyone should be spending their precious Sundays and take monumental amount of pride when some random zillionair's team wins because of what are essentially random non-repeatable events? Sometimes I think sport fans are people who skipped any or all education on probability and statistics.
PS: Before you all get on my case let me tell you I do get the fact that sports does have display of skills value (same as skills of artist) that is worth paying for. I also get that professional sports is hard and money hungry adventure and without fans it won't exist. What I don't get is why is it a matter of pride?
PS: Before you all get on my case let me tell you I do get the fact that sports does have display of skills value (same as skills of artist) that is worth paying for. I also get that professional sports is hard and money hungry adventure and without fans it won't exist. What I don't get is why is it a matter of pride?
If someone loses "he lost".
If someone wins "we won"
If someone wins "we won"
This 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!
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!
Have 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.
Vishwanathan Anand was not the rule but an exception.
To 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.
Were there such a title I'd be happy to see our government/King knight him, though.
I don't understand at all the point to these negative replies to this comment. Magnus Carlsen made Norwegians happy because he accomplished something of great honor to that country. Is this really that absurd?
You 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 :)