GM Gukesh D pressed a slightly better endgame for a long time against GM Ding Liren, who blunder unexpectedly into a losing king and pawn endgame.
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GM Ding Liren once again had to defend a pawn-down endgame against GM Gukesh D after he was slightly better out of the opening. Ding chose to liquidate quickly into the pawn-down endgame and after a long struggle, he blundered abruptly as he allowed a rook trade into a losing king and pawn endgame.
For the second time in the match, Ding tried 1. Nf3, signaling his intention to sidestep major opening theory. After Gukesh’s principled 1...d5 reply, Ding played in the style of the hypermodernists, who eschewed pawn central control in favor of piece central control, by playing a fianchetto. As Gukesh continued to play classically with 2...c5 and 3...Nc6, Ding finally put a pawn in the center with 4. d4, and White found himself playing the Reversed Grünfeld — the Grünfeld Defense but from the White side.
It seemed clear that Gukesh was not at all surprised by Ding’s choice as he kept playing quickly, responding to the Reversed Grünfeld with a very concrete idea: clarifying the central tension with 5...cxd4. Following Ding’s 6. Nxd4, Gukesh once again shocked the world with another opening surprise and near-novelty: 6...Nge7!?. While a very strange-looking move, Gukesh’s idea was clear: to get rid of one pair of knights by playing 1...Nxd4 2. Qxd4 and then 2...Nc6 to gain a tempo on the queen.
Ding allowed Gukesh’s plan and put a pawn in the center, which was Stockfish’s recommended move. Gukesh followed through on his plan and, continuing to play quickly, went for 9...d4, gaining space and again showing that he was in deep preparation.
Ding responded logically with 10. e3, challenging Gukesh’s grip on the center. After the central tension was resolved and Black’s bishop made its home on d4, it became obvious that White had a slight advantage as his light-squared bishop had a wide scope. Meanwhile, Black’s bishop was hemmed in by its own pawns, one of the key positional themes of the match.
Ding then proceeded to develop his dark-squared bishop while also gaining a tempo on Black’s dark-squared bishop. Said tempo did not matter too much as Black could afford to lose a tempo because White was already quite underdeveloped. With Gukesh’s bishop making it way to d4 once more, Gukesh’s central control looked quite powerful and ensured that he would never be significantly worse.
With 16...e5 and Black’s light-squared bishop now having the potential to develop, Ding had to act quickly if he wanted to gain any kind of advantage. 17. Qd2! and 18. Nd5! were two good moves that helped Ding further his goals, but Gukesh was alert and played the momentum-shifting and well-timed 18...b5! pawn break.
A long, almost-forced computer line may have given White a nominal advantage with chances to play on, but at that point, Ding must have felt that there was not much left to play for, so he initiated a sequence of mass liquidation that started with 19. cxb5. Following 22...Rb8, the position looked very equal and the game looked to be heading toward a draw.
However, as is frequently the case in such positions, there are a lot of ways for both sides to falter — and if not outright blunder, there are a lot of ways for one side to make the draw that much more difficult to achieve. Unfortunately for Ding, Gukesh’s rapid activity meant that he had to contend with a strong b4 pawn, which was able to freeze White’s queenside pawn majority.
After Ding’s 26. a4, it was evident that Ding wanted to defend a 3 vs. 2 rook (+bishop) endgame just as he did in yesterday’s round — except that with the addition of bishops, the position becomes slightly tougher to defend. Practically speaking, such a decision cannot be faulted because if one were to keep material parity with a move such as the engine’s 26. Rd3, matters could quickly get out of hand, especially with time trouble looming. Going into a 3 vs. 2, as long as the worse side’s defensive technique is up to par, can be a much better and more pragmatic choice. Having said that, Ding definitely did not want to have to make this decision after he was slightly better just a few moves ago.
Ding was not looking forward to defend such a position.
Photo: Eng Chin An
A few more “pretend” moves were played before the basically inescapable 3 vs. 2 rook + bishop endgame was on the board — there were other possibilities, of course, but the way both sides were playing, it was apparent they were both heading toward that position. On move 32 and with 22 minutes for 8 moves left, it was time to see if Ding would be able to hold the position.
... And hold the position he did not. If one were to replay the game with engine analysis turned on, one would be under the false impression that Ding always had the draw in hand and mere perfunctory moves were being played. Such is surely not the case, though, and we again refer the reader to our broadcast of the event to follow all the twists and turns of this endgame. Indeed, Ding's blunder came about because of the tension, though of course his fellow elite chess players, such as our guest commentator Ivan Cheparinov, were critical of his blunder.
Gukesh's childhood dream of becoming the world champion has been fulfilled!
Photo: Eng Chin An
Some memorable quotes:
GM Ding Liren:
I think I played maybe my best tournament in the year. I could be better but considering yesterday's lucky survive it's a fair result to lose in the end. No regret.
I will continue to play.
GM Gukesh D:
Firstly I would like to say a few words about my opponent. We all know who Ding is and, you know, he has been one of the best players in history for several years. To see him struggling, to see how much pressure he had to face and the kind of fight he gave in this match. It shows what a true champion he is. This match, champions they always step up to the moment. Obviously in the past two years he hasn't been in great shape, but he came here. He was obviously struggling during the games, he was probably not at the best physically. But he fought in all games. He fought like a true champion, and I'm really sorry for Ding and his team. They put on a great show. I would like to thank my opponent first. This couldn't have been the same without my opponent.
I'm just living my dream!
I will have to prepare my speech first. With the kind of emotions I'm feeling right now I'll say something stupid!
I just looked at Vishy Sir and Magnus and thought it would be really cool to be there one day.
> These attributes are what makes chess and its superstars so appealing.
I would say that what you just described is usually called "sportsmanship" and is pretty common in most sports (with exceptions of course, but at least most would agree that it's an ideal worth aspiring to)
I disagree. I think what you're saying are "a lot of exceptions" are primarily going to be in what are historically referred to as "revenue sports" in the US -- football & basketball -- and also in individual sports where personal marketing is key to financial success (e.g. sponsorships).
I don't see it as unexpected for there to be big egos and boisterous personalities in sports where individuals are hugely rewarded for personal success. From an athlete's point of view, creating a commercial persona is almost as important as performing at their best on the field/track/bike/pool/course/etc.
I agree, but some people, that are just 100% driven by success really become cunts that way, even in non-commercial sports.
Never seems to be the best of the best though, more those in 2-3rd place or really narrow 1st place, something about the uncertainty of staying on the top, or never quite reaching it...
Even in the revenue sports it’s mostly great sportsmanship. Actually surprisingly good considering how much punishing physical contact they have between them.
The biggest problem is, unlike most sports, there are lots of under 10s who can easily decimate you and haven't yet learned how difficult wining gracefully is.
In addition to playing chess, I go to the climbing gym – the 10-year-olds there destroy me as well! (But the culture of indoor climbing is vastly more positive than chess culture.)
Gukesh then added: “You can’t hook the rook, you can’t fight the knight, black or white, I am the GREATEST OF ALL TIME! Which one of you punks is NEXT?”
Nepo and Magnus seem to be cut from a different cloth, although Magnus has never had a moment where he could demonstrate whether or not he can be humble, because he has always just crushed.
Anish Giri kind of took a shot at Magnus (with respect to his retiring from classical chess) in his early commentary with Petr Leko a few days ago. People are funny, and one doesn't usually get to be where Ding and Gukesh are without having a bit of an edge to their personality. That's what makes Ding and Gukesh so special to me.
Magnus doesn't usually direct his frustration at others (except in the infamous Hans Niemann game) but he has been known to storm out of interviews after some of his bad losses.
Thanks. My son and I first started watching together for Magnus-Fabi, so it's something we enjoy doing together. I enjoy the sporting aspect of it even though I've never been a particularly good chess player. I'm more interested in the human aspects of it, and I enjoy the commentaries by Leko, Bobby Chess (Robert Hess), Naroditsky, Giri, and Judit. I love learning from people who have achieved greatness.
It was evident to me from the beginning that Ding was struggling physically (he had an occasionally rough-sounding cough throughout) and, perhaps, emotionally. And Gukesh was locked in from go. What a struggle!
Magnus described Ding's abilities as a 4/10 in the lead up to the match. In match commentary he regularly called the games "baffling" (as in baffingly bad) and regularly said they weren't strong grandmaster calibre. He is definitely very conceited and resents not being the world champion, even if it's only because of his absence.
Magnus was just being honest man. You seem to succumb to a common thinking fallacy that people who express criticism or negative opinions about something or someone must be jealous, conceited or just negative people in general. Meanwhile he was just expressing what is obvious to any strong player: Ding's level of play was subpar coming to the match, a league below elite at least. His play during the match was way below his peak level as well. Ding made 3 amateur player level blunders (hanging a bishop, missing basic tactics and missing transposition to a basic lost pawn endgame) in this match. Carlsen himself made 0 of those during 5 matches. Among his opponents Anand made 0 blunders of this caliber, Karjakin made 0, Caruana made 0 and Nepo made 2 (or 3 if you count the last game in which he was already playing for nothing as the match was decided)
Gukesh underperformed massively in comparison to his recent level (at the Candidates and the Olympiad). I am guessing due to nerves. That made the match closer than it should be. At the end of the day much better player won but it was way closer than it would normally be.
Unfortunately Magnus is 100% right. Some of the mistakes and choices that were made by Ding are at chess club level strength. Sad to say but this is the truth. The mistake on the final game is absolutely orrible, something never seen in a WCC before. Another example in game 5, Ding plays brillantly and gains a small initiative and gains a pawn then, instead of trying to press, he gives two pawns back with the intention of entering an opposite color bishop endgame. You are not supposed to play to drawn when you are better. And there are several other instances of this in the match. Gukesh deserved the win for the fighting spirit but honestly the games were not at WCC level. I believe that Gukesh will redeem himself as Karpov did after winning for forfait against Fischer but today it's a sad day for chess.
Magnus is literally ~50 ELO above Gukesh. Do you have any concept of how much that is at the very top?
EDIT: Just to preempt: This is not say that Gukesh doesn't have a very bright future or couldn't surpass Magnus' top rating. Gukesh could definitely do that... but currently neither Gukesh or Ding are even particularly close to Magnus' (current!) level.
Magnus is a stereotype of a prima donna. He’s always condescending and tried to destroy Hans Niemann’s career because Hans had the nerve to beat him once. I think he wants to be crowned World Champion without going through all the trouble of playing the games, and he’s annoyed that it’s not turning out like that.
Ding's was not objective neither thoughful, Ding was completely melted down after the interview and the interview was a reflection of that. Chess is a drawn game and the gist of playing chess is to be more resilient, blunder less and exploit as many of the chances you got in your game. Matches and games are won exactly because the opponent doesn't make the best of his chances. This is the cruel nature of the game. A player like Carlsen, Karpov , Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand, Topalov or any other world champion would have felt entitled to win the last game playing White after Gukesh missed a crucial chance to close the match the game before. But no, Ding played to draw and swap pieces even when he had the initiative in the 14th game. And he lost the game with a club player blunder because he still insisted on exchanging pieces when down a pawn. It's basic knowledge that pawn endgames are decisive and you have always to calculate them exactly when entering one, that when one is down material he has to exchange pawns but not pieces, and that in general rook endgames are slighly easier to play than pawn endgames. Any master would have insisted on shuffling the rook and would have never thinked of exchanging pieces in that situation. The fact that he exchanged the rook is a reflection of Ding's terrible form.
Chess and its superstars are often anything but humble and modest. Magnus Carlsen's commetary for this match was riddled with derogatory statements. since he wanted to sit out this championship he should be gracious and respectful toward the players who fought for the title in his stead but he has been anything but that.
That was a absolutely horrible finish to a really exciting championship if you ask me.
For anyone who doesn't know, there was a lot of drama because Gukesh was playing amazingly coming into this (eg winning the gold medal on board 1 at the olympiad in crushing style) and Ding had been playing terribly. Then there were 13 games of back and forth with stalwart defending and imaginative computer preparation by both sides, playing a lot of fresh chess and both of them going for the most critical and challenging moves in each position. Ding was playing a lot better than a lot of people had expected and the previous game had been one of the best games in a world championship for a long time. Everything was tied going into the last game of the classical portion and the "bar room consensus" was that since Gukesh was so young and doesn't focus at all on the faster forms of chess (rapid and blitz) and is therefore much lower rated than Ding in those formats, that if this game was a draw then Ding would be a substantial favourite in the ensuing tiebreaks.
The final game was a complex struggle, with Ding keeping everything in lockdown with the white pieces so as not to give Gukesh a ghost of a chance. Most of the pieces had been traded and it was the most drawish of drawn endgames. Gukesh was up a pawn, but they both had a rook and bishop and all Ding had to do was hang on to his pieces and keep them well away from the enemy king. On the stream I was watching IM David Pruess had just been asked by someone in chat whether Gukesh could win and he said "1% chance".
Then all of a sudden Ding made 3 bad moves in a row. The first two were just poor endgame technique, putting his rook and bishop both on bad squares too close to the enemy king, then the real blunder. Completely inexplicably he traded off the pieces. Now he was in an endgame that was just dead lost. After 14 games of 4+ hours each It had gone from being a dead draw with him a big favourite in tie breaks to all over in a few seconds.
This really misses the key drama of what happened in the last game.
Ding had a perfectly safe position where he could try to squeeze Gukesh pretty much endlessly with basically 0 risk. He then, completely inexplicably, went down a forced line which led to the final phase of the game.
In this phase the position was drawn with perfect play, but that is completely irrelevant because it is really tough to play. And more importantly in this phase, Gukesh was the side pressing to win with all sorts of interesting ideas. Ding, by contrast, left himself in a position where he's now going to be tortured for hours, has 0 chance of winning, and a single lapse of concentration means you lose. And that's exactly what happened.
Engine evals are really misleading in these sort of positions because it says it's completely equal, which it objectively is, but white/Ding will lose that position with some degree of regularity, while black/Gukesh had 0 losing chances. So in practical terms equality is not really correct.
Yes and I think losing in this way is the most fair result. Ding has gone for a draw in every game where the score was tied, even with white (the first game, which he won as black was just a gift from Gukesh). Today, once again with white he could have pressed the position and played for more. Instead he sacrificed a pawn to play for a draw, and had the more difficult game to play even if it was always 0s. If he'd tried to play for a win today, almost certainly it would have been a draw anyway.
While I was really happy to see Ding's fighting spirit in this match, and to have recovered much of his former strength, I've been rooting for Gukesh since around the half-way point just because Ding has not been playing superior positions for a win. I just don't think thats how a champion plays, even if its a sound strategy to try to win in tie-breaks.
I think this is an unfair characterisation of how Ding played. The issue wasn't lack of ambition, but lack of confidence leading to misevaluation. Judging from the long thinks and how he's played in recent years, it's clear he doesn't fully trust his calculation. But I think he deserves credit for his ambition, actually. If he really wanted to play for draws he wouldn't be playing the French or the English. He'd be aiming for e4 e5 with an early queen trade. He mostly chose interesting openings with a lot of fight in them, often got an advantage, and simply misplayed by underestimating his position. Classic sign of a player with confidence issues.
I watched the press conferences, and I agree that misevaluation was a big part of the problem. But even in game 6 for example, there is no way he could think he was not better after black refused the queen trade, and he just kept pressing for that trade. So yes, call that lack of confidence - but its still not what I want to see in the world champion.
His long thinks is thought to be due to the fact that he simply hasn't been preparing. He stated he prepared for about 3 weeks for the championship match which was considered insanely low amount of time. But Caruana has stated he would be amazed if he even preped that long based on his games, and he always just looked like he was winging it every game.
Is there a metric I can look at in engine evaluations to determine when a situation is "risky" for white or black (e.g., the situation above) even if it looks equal with perfect play?
I've always been interested in understanding situations where this is the case (and the opposite, where the engine favours one side but it seems to require a long, hard-to-find sequence of moves.
Playing out the top lines helps if equality requires perfect play from one side.
You can measure the sharpness of the position, as in this paper section 2.3 "Complexity of a position". They find their metric correlates with human performance.
I think this is something a bit different. That sort of assessment is going to find humans perform poorly in extremely sharp positions with lots of complicated lines that are difficult to evaluate. And that is certainly true. A tactical position that a computer can 'solve' in a few seconds can easily be missed by even very strong humans.
But the position Ding was in was neither sharp nor complex. A good analog to the position there is the rook + bishop v rook endgame. With perfect play that is, in most cases, a draw - and there are even formalized drawing techniques in any endgame text. But in practice it's really quite difficult, to the point that even grandmasters regularly lose it.
In those positions, on most of every move - any move is a draw. But the side with the bishop does have ways to inch up the pressure, and so the difficulty is making sure you recognize when you finally enter one of those moves where you actually need to deal with a concrete threat. The position Ding forced was very similar.
Most of every move, on every move, led to a draw - until it didn't. Gukesh had all sorts of ways to try to prod at Ding's position and make progress - prodding Ding's bishop, penetrating with his king, maneuvering his bishop to a stronger diagonal, cutting off Ding's king, and of course eventually pushing one of the pawns. He was going to be able to play for hours just constantly prodding where Ding would have stay 100% alert to when a critical threat emerges.
And this is all why Ding lost. His final mistake looks (and was) elementary, and he noticed it immediately after moving - but the reason he made that mistake is that he was thinking about how to parry the other countless dangerous threats, and he simply missed one. This is why most of everybody was shocked about Ding going for this endgame. It's just so dangerous in practical play, even if the computer can easily show you a zillion ways to draw it.
This is really interesting because i ran into a pokemon bot the other day were its training led to calibration of 50% winrste at all levels of play on Pokémon showdown. It was a complete accident.
It's not hard to make a chess bot that plays at a 1300 strength, i.e. its rating would converge to 1300 if it were allowed to compete. But it will not play like a 1300-rated human. It would play like a superhuman genius on most moves and then make beginner-level blunders at random moments.
Making one that realistically plays like a human is an unsolved problem.
Of course, you are right. But (the linked site) at least has a bot that plays the opening like a human of chosen rating perfectly. It stops working after the opening-stage (since it just copies moves from humans in the lichess game database), but it is still very impressive. For later game stages, some other method would have to be used (unless we play multiple orders of magnintude more games on lichess).
Now that i think about it, i remember the people in the alphago documentary talking about the bot giving its moves percentage scores in both how high winning % the move had and how high % chance that a human would have made the same move that it just played. I wonder why they never showed what a full game of the most human-like moves from alphago would look like. Maybe it actually worked, by feeding it all the pro games in existence, and training it to play the high human % instead of the higest win probability moves like they did in the end.
I think this can be achieved with some ease with a machine learning model. You will have to train it on games between 1300-rated players and below. A transformer model might work even better in terms of the evenness of play (behaving like a 1300 rated player throughout the game).
Take the computer which beats Magnus and restrain it to never make the best move in a position. Expand this to N best moves as needed to reach 1300 rating.
Even 1300s sometimes make the best move. Sometimes the best move is really easy to see or even mandatory, like if you are in check and MUST take that checking piece. Sometimes the best move is only obvious if you can look 20 moves ahead. Sometimes the best move is only obvious if you can look 5 moves ahead, but the line is so forcing that even 1300s can look that far ahead.
Despite decades of research, nobody has found a good way to make computers play like humans.
Then I can't refrain from asking: and what's the style of LLMs? For example the ChatGPT which is apparently rated around 1800? That should be completely different from that of a classic chess engine.
LLMs can be trained on chess games, but the tree of possible board states branches so fast that for any given position there is simply very little training data available. Even the billions of games played on chess.com and lichess are only a drop in the bucket compared to how many possible board states there are. This would have to be split further by rating range, so the amount of games for any given rating range would be even lower.
This means that the LLM does not actually have a lot of training data available to learn how a 1300 would play, and subsequently does a poor job at imitating it. There is a bunch of papers available online if you want more info.
LLMs already do play at elo ~1400-1800. The question was how does their style feels like to someone who can appreciate the difference between a human player and a chess engine (and the different styles of different human players).
I can’t speak for ChatGPT, but your intuition is correct that LLMs tend to play more like “humans” than Stockfish or other semi-brute force approaches.
You've identified a potential strategy by which a computer can play like a 1300-rated player, but not one where it will "play like a 1300-rated human". Patzers can still find and make moves in your set of N (if only by blind chance).
Yeah, you would have to weigh the moves based on how "obvious" it is, such as how active the piece has been, how many turns until it leads to winning material, or other such 'bad habits' humans fall for.
I think there's a real difference between "a computer"— in this context meaning an algorithm written by a human, possibly calibrated with a small number of parameters but not trained in any meaningful sense, and a "chess model" which works as you describe.
I think the chess model would be successful at producing the desired outcome but it's not as interesting. There's something to be said for being able to write down in precise terms how to play imperfectly in a manner that feels like a single cohesive intelligence strategizing against you.
Yes, the Leela team has worked on a term they call Contempt.
(Negative contempt in this case would make the engine seek out less sharp play from whites perspective)
In the first link the authour talks about using contempt to seek out/avoid sharp lines.
lc0 and nibbler are free, so feel free to try it out if curious.
Humans cannot out-FLOP a computer, so they need to use patterns (like an LLM). To get the human perspective, the engine would need to something similar.
There are several neural network based engines these days, including one that does exclusively what you describe (i.e. "patterns only", no calculation at all), and one that's trained on human games.
Even Stockfish uses a neural network these days by default for its positional evaluation, but it's relatively simple/lightweight in comparison to these, and it gains its strength from being used as part of deep search, rather than using a powerful/heavy neural network in a shallow tree search.
Have you tried Maia? I haven't myself (there isn't one in my ballpark level yet), but supposedly it plays more human due to being trained mostly on human play, not engine evaluations or self-play.
I think that's not quite the point. Leela has an advantage over AB chess engines, where it has multi-PV for "free", meaning it will evaluate multiple lines by default at no cost to performance (traditional engines, like Stockfish, will lose elo with multi-PV). This allows us to know at a glance if a position is "draw/win with perfect play" or if there is margin for error. If Leela shows multiple moves where one side maintains a winning advantage/losing disadvantage/equality, we can use that as a computer-based heuristic to know if a position is "easy" to play or not.
Yes and no – the number of playable lines does not necessarily tell us how "obvious" those lines are to find for a human.
To give a trivial example, if I take your queen, then recapturing my queen is almost always the single playable move. But it's also a line that you will easily find!
Conversely, in a complex tactical position, (even) multiple saving moves could all be very tricky for a human to calculate.
I wonder if there’s a combined metric that could be calculated. Depth of the line certainly would be impactful. A line that only works if you do 5 only moves is harder to find than a single move line. “Quiet” moves are probably harder to find than captures or direct attacks. Backwards moves are famously tricky to spot. Etc
And also, humans vary wildly in their thinking and what's "obvious" to them. I'm about 1950 and am good in openings and tactics (but not tactics for the opponent). Others around the same rating are much worse than that but they understand positional play much better - how to use weak squares, which pieces to exchange and so on. To me that's a kind of magic.
Not really because it’s subjective to the level of player. What’s a blunder to a master player might only be an inaccuracy to a beginner. The same applies for higher levels of chess player. I’ve watched GothamChess say “I’ve no idea why <INSERT GM> made this move but it’s the only move,” then Hikaru Nakamura will rattle off a weird 8-move sequence to explain why it’s a major advantage despite no pieces being lost. Stockfish is a level above even Magnus if given enough depth.
> Stockfish is a level above even Magnus if given enough depth.
"a level" and "if given enough depth" are both underselling it. Stockfish running on a cheap phone with equal time for each side will beat Magnus 100 games in a row.
I believe it’s something like 500 elo points difference at this point between Magnus and Stockfish running on cheap hardware. Computers are so strong the only way to measure their strength is against other, weaker computers, and so on until you get to engines that are mere “grandmaster” strength.
Bear in mind that, beyond the “top” elo ratings, that it’s purely an estimate of relative strength. The gap between a GM and me is far greater than the gap between a GM and Stockfish, even if the stated elo difference is the same.
By this I mean, you can give me a winning position against Magnus and I’ll still lose. Give a winning position to Magnus vs Stockfish and he might draw or even win.
True, what is considered a “winning” position is different at different elo levels. The better someone is, the smaller their mistakes are relative to perfect play.
I wish top players like Magnus would do more exhibition games against top computers. They don’t have to all start with equal material or an equal position.
That’s fair, I was leaving wiggle room for things like being able to force the engine into doing stupid things like sacrifice all its pieces to avoid stalemate.
Maybe the difference between the eval of the best move vs the next one(s)? An "only move" situation would be more risky than when you have a choice between many good moves.
That's it exactly. Engines will often show you at least 3 lines each with their valuation, and you can check the difficulty often just from that delta from 1st to 2nd best move. With some practical chess experience you can also "feel" how natural or exoteric the best move is.
In the WCC match between Caruana and Carlsen, they were at one difficult endgame where Carlsen (the champion) moved and engines calculated it was a "blunder" because there was a theoretical checkmate in like 36(!) moves, but no commentator took it seriously as there was "no way" a human would be able to spot the chance and calculate it correctly under the clock.
Not necessarily. If that "only move" is obvious, then it's not really risky. Like if a queen trade is offered and the opponent accepts, then typically the "only move" that doesn't massively lose is to capture back. But that's extremely obvious, and doesn't represent a sharp or complex position.
Those are tree search techniques, they are not metrics to assess the "human" complexity of a line. They could be used for this purpose but out of the box they just give you winning probability
Not the mention the time trouble that Ding left himself in once again. This time Gukesh ended with almost a full hour over Ding. When you put yourself in a tough position, no matter how drawish it is in theory, you need to have enough time to figure out the ideas of the position and with only 10 minutes left and 30 seconds per move, you might slip up and make a quick move when you really needed to think harder.
Chess engines should come with another metric bar: "The twitchy-ness" of the position aka the gradient of primary eval metric as you pareto the possible moves from best to worst. The stronger this gradient, the more risky it is to play, and more changes to make a mistake.
This ignores the question how hard it is for a human to find the best (or a "good enough") move. It's easy to find games with 10 "only move" 's in a row where even a beginner could easily have played all if them.
Is it? TBH it sounds like "climbing a tree is a start on getting to the moon beyond just jumping up and down". Yes, it does "more". But whether it will actually get you to the desired end state is highly dubious. Nobody knows if that will make chess bots more human-like, despite decades of research into the topic.
This is not a new request; many people, including engine authors, have suggested it throughout the years. The problem is that it's seemingly very hard to reliably quantify something like this and propagate it throughout the game tree.
You don't need to propagate it, you just need to show the gradient of the current position alongside with the classical evaluation, to give more context to the viewers.
Agreed. I always thought of it as 'how close to the cliff edge are you' metric. It'd probably be easy to do, look at all the possible moves and add up the resultant evals. If you're currently tied but you have only one good move to keep it tie while the rest of your moves give mate in 1, well, saying the board is tied is not helpful.
Except a lot of the time there's an obvious threat that needs to be responded to, and a couple of obvious good responses that even terrible players spot.
It's strange/crazy because Ding even purposefully even gave up his B pawn, just so he could exchange queens and be in a 3 and 2 pawn game with a bishop and rook still in the game. Gukesh just tried playing out the game to the last second making easy moves while Ding suffered.
Gukesh took him into the deep water the entire time, putting every possible strain on Ding's energy and reserves. It was the unrelenting pressure of an 18yo badass that cracked Ding, whom I truly feel sorry for. He is a great player and a very, very nice human being.
What is crazy is that Gukesh has only been playing chess for a little more than 11 years.
"only 11 years"... that seems like a lot to me, although reading further down in the thread it seems like it might take twice or three times as long to get to a very high level.
Do people in the chess community measure players by number of years playing? Are there expectations of how long it takes to get to a certain level? (besides world champion)
It's hard to put it in numbers since high level chess players start very young, it's basically considered impossible to become a titled player learning chess as an adult, with a slight exception for high level players from similar games transferring over. So becoming the youngest champ and becoming the champ in the shortest time are very similar. For comparison Magnus started playing chess at 5 and became WC at 22.
It's 100% possible to become a master starting as an adult, but it requires a certain sort of person - you're looking at thousands upon thousands of hours of difficult work paired alongside endless frustrations, obstacles, seriously low emotional lows the game can cause (think about how Ding feels right now, even if it wasn't a game for the title), and more.
The idea of becoming a master, especially as an adult, is far more appealing than the reality of it for most people.
There are a few late bloomer GMs today but what is common with them is that they were already decent just below expert players before 20.
You need 3 things to become a masters and up level player.
1. Grit - conscious mastery everyone agrees on that
2. Some natural talent - certainly to become super GM
3. Start early enough - 6,7 is norm, 10 probably okay, 15 is already almost late.
There is something special going on in the brains of young teenagers learning certain skills - violin, chess, some others. As Fischer said - he "just became good" in one year from around 13 to 14. Of course he was already pretty good at 13 but the magic happens around that time.
Basically, you train hard, maybe you take a little bit of time off and then you gain this amazing "unconscious mastery". This happens around ages 11-16 or so, depending how early you start.
Every good chess player has this "unconscious mastery" - that is they can play pretty well (2200+) even if drunk, dead tired, 1-min blitz, playing simul, etc etc - in other words without "thinking".
For some reason adult starters are unable to develop this unconscious mastery.
Apparently there are certain limits to neuroplasticity in adults. Of course I'd love to be proven wrong.
Disclaimer: I am an aging Fide Master who needed 1 point in 2 games(ie 2 draws) to become IM some years ago. I went out swinging but failed.
I also know many people who took up chess late in life and did not break 1800.
Also I know many people who are full time trainers and live chess full time, but they themselves can not go above 2200.
If pure grit was sufficient at later stages in life, we'd see a lot more progress, but we do not.
I think you are leaving out #4. You need to have basically unbreakable confidence. Dealing with that horrible plateau that we all go through often breaks adult players. This [1] is Magnus' rating chart. It looks like an unstoppable line to the top until you zoom in and actually look.
In April 2004 Magnus was 2552. 15 months and 162 classical games later he was 2528. When a 'normal' adult plays 162 classical games, which is often only done over a period of many years, and only loses rating points, they assume they've hit their peak and their spirit breaks, or they try to 'fix' their training routine and just end up completely breaking it. This is one reason it's so much easier for children to improve - they [usually] don't really think about such things in the same way and just keep grinding away.
Chess improvement is brutal. You don't put in 'x' effort and get some proportional reward back. Chess improvement is very stair-step, you wake up one day and you're suddenly much stronger than you were the day before. But until you hit that next stair-step, you see little to nothing.
In my own case I only learned how the pieces move as an adult, at least in so much as 18 counts as an adult, and feel I've gained at least a moderate level of unconscious mastery - around 2600 bullet and 2500 blitz, with the overwhelming majority of that improvement coming well after 30, and I'm still improving!
We might bicker on the meaning of "starting", but Mikhail Chigorin is definitely the most famous example. He was taught the moves at age 16 by a school teacher but in no way pursued the game until well into his twenties. He would then go on to compete at the highest level, including for the world championship.
While he's the most famous example, many famous older masters also started quite late. And I think one big difference was culture. There's a really great film about chess from 1925 (!!) here [1]. The tournament footage there is real btw - it was the Moscow tournament of 1925, and it even has a cameo by Capablanca!
The image of chess, and chess players, was quite different in the past. It was very much an adult's game. Now a days it has quite a different stereotype, and I think this impacts people's decisions on whether or not to seriously pursue it, with consequent impact on overall outcomes. Because in chess one of the biggest difficulties is when you hit your first serious plateau, which happens to everybody - it even happened to Magnus where his rating only declined for more than a year. If you lose confidence or start working poorly, that plateau will be where your improvement ends. Self belief and confidence is extremely important to keep improving.
Your examples are all people from 100 years ago when the game was completely different. Not a ringing endorsement of the claim that it's 100% possible (present tense). If Chigorin were magically transported to the present day he would not be a professional level player.
I don't know what you mean by "professional level" which is quite the shift from titled player, as you originally proposed. Kramnik, for instance, has estimated Steinitz (in modern times) would be around 2400 and Lasker around 2700. [1] Chigorin was +24−27=8 against Steinitz, and +1 -8 =4 against Lasker. He would definitely be a master.
There are plenty of examples in modern times as well, but the problem we face is you're only going to run into people who publicize themselves unless you just dig through each master level player in the USCF, FIDE or whatever database. For instance I know Rolf Wetzell wrote a book about his journey from class player to becoming a master at the age of 50! Then there was Michael de la Maza who wrote a book about going from 1100 or something to 2000 as an adult, but retired at that point because he didn't want to put in the work to go further. I'm sure if you dig through the databases, you can find far more striking examples than these two - again those two I only know because they both wrote books, and of all people who achieve significant success as adults and write, only a tiny percent will publish books about it!
And in modern times another group you might run into is people like me. I started as an adult, have only played one rated tournament otb, but am around 2500 blitz online and would certainly hit master if I actually bothered to play more rated events, but have never really gotten around to it for a mixture of cost (living outside of major chess events means $$$ for travel + housing + tourney costs) and time, even moreso now a days with children!
It depends on the level. The big early gains to get to let's say 2200+ were basically exclusively tactics. You really have to get your board vision to quite a decent level before the other parts of learning really start kicking in, and that's going to take thousands of hours of tactics. An important part of tactics is to ensure you actually work out the entire line - instead of just playing the obvious tactical idea, like Bxh7 or whatever, and going from there.
This was paired with 'analyzing' games of classical master (Alekhine, Capablanca, and so on) and then comparing my analysis against master analysis in plain English. Older books like Alekhine's best games books, or the various master vs amateur books (Euwe's is amazing) are a great resource here. Chessbase also now has a feature 'replay training' built in that would be really good for this. Load up a game, click on replay training, and you can basically play guess-the-move with automatic feedback in terms of how your move compares to the game as played (without revealing that move), as well as the top computer move.
It's also important to start appreciating typical piece repositioning ideas - for instance the rook lift is something that isn't very intuitive at first but radically reshapes many positions. If that rook on a1 heads to a3 and then on over to g3, a quiet Italian position can go from uninspiring to an unstoppable kingside attack really fast. The same is true of all the other pieces - for instance in the typical Najdorf structure with pawns on e5 and d6, knights on f6/d7, and bishop on e7 - if that bishop can go from e7 to e.g. b6 (so long as d6 remains solid enough), it can suddenly become a monster piece.
A key is to avoid excessive opening study until much later. It's a trap because you can spend an infinite amount of time learning openings, and you will get some wins without ever even leaving book, which feels pretty dang rewarding, but in the longrun it will stunt your growth. I remember at one point, sometime around 1800, delusionally thinking that the main difference between me and Kasparov was his encyclopedic opening knowledge. A quick glance at Hikaru doing puzzle rush will emphasize that's not quite right, of course this was long before GMs streaming was a thing! On the equal but opposite side, I also would recommend avoiding 'system' openings as a means of not having to worry about openings because the ideas and plans you see and learn in classical openings help improve your understanding much more than seeing an e.g. Colle each and every game.
Very good of you to get back to me with such a generous reply.
I'm happy reading it. I'd studied and played (in a club, real tournaments, etc) pretty "seriously" for about six months a couple of years ago, before stopping completely, even though it was going quite well, when some unavoidable life things got in the way.
Progress had been steady, climbing up to almost 1600 classical (before the statistical ratings hike last year, putting me on 1750). I was maybe going to at least temporarily settle around there, or slightly higher, it looked like. I'd played for a few years when I was younger, but didn't have serious coaching, unfortunately, so this was not 6 months from scratch at all.
What I'd come up with when studying tracks with some of your main points above. I was focusing very much on tactics, because I love them and because it seemed unavoidable - even the high-rated players who don't consider themselves "tactical players" still have an extremely solid tactical reading of any position, and spot all the usual patterns with ease.
I'd even mostly ignored heavy opening work! Which, I must say, is not a popular approach. A friend who'd seen a bit of your game would come up to you after a match in a tournament and say: "I can't beleve you played that on move six against the French defence, that's not the best move!", and I'd struggle to convince them that openings were not my main area of concern aha.
Anyway, thanks again, and congrats on your chess accomplishments - the tournaments truly are wonderful to be involved in, I find.
Yeah, exactly on the tactics issue. Computers used to be quite horrible positionally, but were still extremely strong simply because their short-term tactical vision was nearly perfect. And you really need tactics to enable positional play. Petrosian was able to snuff out tactical possibilities so effectively only because he was fully aware of where they were!
Now a days I think the tactics streak offered on Lichess (and probably on chess.com as well) is a really great tactical resource. It's the untimed option, rather than the much more popular tactics rush where you have e.g. 5 minutes to do as many as you can. I think the 'woodpecker' method of tactics is a great idea. Basically you build up on a repeated series of tactical problems, until you're able to complete them all perfectly accurately at an extremely high rate of speed. This seems contradictory, because the sites have massive tactics database, but you will regularly see the same problems due to the birthday paradox. If you're looking for some achievable ballparks, on Lichess I tend to be able to hit around 50 somewhat regularly, with a high of about 90.
I think the fundamental thing with openings is that so long as you make logical moves, even if you make an objectively weak move - you will very rarely reach a losing position because of it. And from that point on both your opponent and you are both out of book, so whoever understands the position better, and plays better, will win. Many people, especially adults, get caught up in obsessive opening study because it's the one form of chess study where results can be immediately felt.
The one very good thing about opening study is seeing ideas and concepts that you may not otherwise be able to come up with on your own. Like in the Najdorf, the pawn structure with d6+e5 and d6 generally firmly blocked and on a semi-open file leaves d6 feeling like a major weakness at first. The fact that it's generally rock solid was a serious eye-opener for me! And that translates strongly to many other positions - backwards pawns are not necessarily dooming one to passive defense, and can even be a great dynamic weapon!
Summaries of these are being added to my chess-learning files :) I will be doing Lichess tactics streak, the forced element of "can't lose" sounds like exactly what I need to be that little bit more hotly engaged.
I love the Woodpecker method! I went all in on that during my six-months of study, and had (anecdotal) positive results. I made flashcards of all the positions, and worked through them all 3 or 4 times, trying to go faster and faster. I also looked up a big list of common checkmating patterns, and put them on flashcards, and gave them names and everything to make them memorable, and drilled them.
This culminated in my last tournament, a rapid 12'3'', and me beating my first ever 1800s and 1900s, and performing well above my I think 13 or 1400 rapid rating of the time. It literally happened in two or three of the games that I'd be looking at the exact pattern I'd drilled, and then looking at the 1700 or whatever opponent and going: aha, the method works, here's the pattern.
What you say about openings tracks with what I was doing, except I went a bit mad at one stage and started learning loads of ridiculous gambits and getting smashed by anyone half-decent. I like violent positions. I'd some spectacular wins, but I think it was a silly strategy. At one stage a frind from the club destroyed me after I played some dubious gambit as black, and he said "yeah, gambits are good fun, but maybe for bullet chess online".
At a certain point too, in the process of "getting good", it's my feeling that everyone must eventually accept the quiet positions, and the slow endgames, and working hard for a draw with no story to tell afterwards. I was getting to the level where I had to accept that, but still struggled... I still would be tempted to do things that I literally knew were unsound, and would say: "oh come on, it makes no sense", but I might do it anyway, or a variant of it. Anyway, my thinking would be heavily clouded and biased by this desire for winning in the middlegame, and avoiding the slowness!
You can easily make a sharp/tactical repertoire of sound openings. As black you can play the Najdorf and King's Indian Defense. As white - open sicilian, winawer french, advance caro kann, be3/qd2/f3/o-o-o stuff against modern/pirc, bd3 bd2 o-o-o against scandi. e4e5 is the toughest nut to crack, but the evan's gambit is generally sound - Kasparov even beat Anand with it. Against the petroff you can play Nc3+o-o-o stuff.
That should just about cover everything!
But yeah, one thing you have to do to really start improving alot is to always assume your opponent will play the best move. Hope chess is how you ruin your own position!
Can you provide a single example of someone who started chess in their 20s who became a grandmaster?
Starting in 20s and getting to 2000 FIDE does happen, with an awful lot of work and dedication. GM, I have never found a single example of. By all means, prove me wrong.
5-22- so 17 years instead of 11. Quite a difference! Can any of that be put down to advances in training tech that wasn't around when Magnus started playing?
In spite of claims to the contrary there is luck in chess. Your form (and your opponents') varies significantly over time, the outcome of competitive opening prep, or even just how well you're sleeping.
The stars really aligned for Gukesh in countless ways, his form and openings hit when and where they needed to, and he was left playing a very out-of-form world champ who wasn't even in the top 20 in the world.
I suspect his record (world champ at 18) will remain intact for many decades yet to come. He attributed much of his success to God, and even as an agnostic - I'm inclined to agree!
Notably he's still nowhere near the strongest player in the world - he's not even the strongest Indian! The world championship in chess can be an odd beast at times.
It's really funny when you think that even among Indians, Pragg was much more in the news with high profile wins & Arjun crossed 2800 but here we have Gukesh WC.
Yes, the luck can be being able to sleep well during this grueling event, or having food that agrees with you, or even which virii are circulating around and whether or not they get you.
As to Gukesh's faith, it brings inner peace and happiness, and if you observe the contestants' faces, the difference was evident. Gukesh isn't making a show of being prayerful, he's really doing it. It means he is doing what he is doing for a greater goal, which is always for a worldwide peace and happiness for all human beings, when really performed in harmony with our Creator. If one's religion's purpose is for dominance over others one can never gain inner peace and happiness from it. It must be for personal harmonization with peace and happiness for all human beings, or it is just more mammalian self-righteous warfare.
That's why Rumi says, "You have no idea how little we care for what people say." What he means by this is that a lot of people talk about religion, but what we do and how we feel as a result of our religiosity is the only proof that is accepted by God. Most people do not understand that such proof is evident on people's faces and in the tone of their voice, but you seem to have noticed the reality that Gukesh has it and, sadly, Ding does not.
Gukesh's victory is a way of demonstrating to folks that there are real gains to be had from seeking the peace and happiness of religion for peace and happiness's sake. No religion is superior to others in this respect. No. There are only true seekers and those who merely seek to justify their oppression of others by their religious affiliation.
I extensively explain how this works in my comments over the past week or two.
There's not much point comparing them. The WCC cycles are inconsistent and Magnus has never liked the format. He played the Candidates in 2007 when he was 16, but there was a four-year gap after that until the next one. By that point he was already the top player and, just like in the cycle Ding won, he decided not to play. The explanation is here: https://www.chess.com/news/view/carlsen-quits-world-champion...
Bobby Fischer was never defeated either, but that doesn't matter. If you can't or won't defend the championship then you stop being champion. (And I don't see how the argument that championship matches would take too much time and prep can coexist with the claim that it wasn't challenging enough for Carlsen - if it's really that easy for him then he shouldn't need all that prep in the first place)
Magnus played 5 world championships, with 3 against players of his generation. In those 3,he only managed a plus score once - against Nepo who was more than holding his own then lost one tough game and went on his notorious monkey tilt. The other two were drawn in classical.
Magnus is, by a landslide, the best tournament player (probably ever) but the world championship for classical is very different than a tournament, and his results there have not been anywhere near the level of his tournament performances.
And Magnus has also stated that he believes he has peaked. Basically - he was going to imminently lose, and I think he wanted to go out undefeated. Notably the one player he was willing to play, Alireza, was the only viable contender who he would expect to have been an overwhelming favourite against.
Also in terms of legacy, the max number of world championship victories is 6. He stopped at 5.
Excuse? You must not follow chess too closely. He is the undisputed GOAT. He is clearly bored - he plays atrocious opening moves these days just to get an interesting game. He's so good he transcended the need to keep proving it. Excuse. Lmao. Gukesh is the WC only because he is not good enough to present an interesting challenge.
Magnus may be better player than Gukesh, but the reason he is not defending WC title is not because Gukesh or any opponent is not good enough, but because it takes too much freaking preparation to defend WC title and he doesn't think it is worth the effort.
A completely unprepared Magnus vs a 100% prepared opponent will go to a better prepared opponent (See Magnus interviews if you don't believe this). 4-6 months spending memorizing lines is not easy. It is too much work. Magnus has already proven he is GOAT, he doesn't have to prove anything.
But - this doesn't take away achievement from other players, if Magnus doesn't want to be bothered doing all the prep.I wonder if we will say the same thing in any other sport.
Ma Long for example - did not participated in Paris Olympic singles, does that mean Fan Zedong or Truls moregard achievement was any less? Nobody would say that.
That's just what he says. He is obviously not going to publicly say that he is scared of competing in the WCC. But in all likelihood, he is. At least Ding could compete in the WCC without 6 months prep, which Magnus clearly cannot.
Disagree. Gukesh was constantly putting pressure on Ding to find defensive moves and Ding finally made a mistake. The fact that it happened when it did just makes it even more dramatic. We know from the other matches that Ding is capable of finding them, and the fact that he didn't just highlights that they're both human, both under extreme pressure and that it's not just mindless computation.
I'm not sure we disagree at all. Gukesh's strategy throughout the match was to constantly ask difficult questions and the surprise really was that Ding didn't fold earlier.
Because as a chess fan and just as a human being my heart goes out to Ding Liren who seems like a genuinely likeable and nice human being who has been open about the tremendous struggle he has had with mental health etc since winning the world championships. To pull himself out of a hole that deep and play really great chess for 13 and 9/10s matches and then lose it with a blunder at the last second is awful.
And I say that as 100% someone who wanted Gukesh to win from the beginning, which is a result I think is great for chess and I think is “objectively correct” in the sense that he has played better chess and has been (apart from Magnus Carlsen and his compatriot Arjun Erigaisi who is also a complete monster) the story of the chess world for the last year.
Because the ending was pretty meh. All this excitement, and then Ding just flubs up an end game that most super gm's should be able to draw against stockfish.
The best finale's are often when two players at their best duke it out, and one comes out on top. This was simply not Ding's best.
I disagree completely. In the eyes of some modern fans, the popularity of engines and eval bars has reduced chess to an intellectual and computational exercise. It's too easy to say "bad moves" and "blunder" when Stockfish is giving you all the answers!
In reality, chess is a fighting contest between two flesh-and-blood humans. And that's what we see throughout this exciting match, and in this final game.
Gukesh won because of his greater fighting spirit throughout the match, which is as it should be. (Similar to how Ding played the daring move ...Rg6 in the final game of his match against Nepo.)
That isn't how most appreciate sports. People are hoping for the contenders to be at the top of their game towards the end of the championships. Nobody says "Hey, at least this has a human touch! I'm sick of basketball video games." if the NBA finals are relatively boring one year.
I think maybe "that was a absolutely horrible finish" got interpreted as saying that the win wasn't well earned. That's not how I saw it at all.
> That isn't how most appreciate sports. People are hoping for the contenders to be at the top of their game towards the end of the championships.
I'm not sure how "hope" plays into it but few of the sports I follow allow for contenders to be at the top of their game towards the end of the championship. People are tired or playing injured, and it never occurred to me to believe that this made their performances less amazing.
You must not follow the NBA or MLB then. One of the major narratives of the most recent NBA postseason was how unfortunate it was that the Eastern Conference was so plagued with injuries that it limited the quality of competition, and it frequently has been a major narrative.
Off the top of my head the recent Milwaukee Bucks championship was noted as happening in a context where their strongest competitor, the Brooklyn Nets, were catastrophically compromised by injuries. The Cleveland Cavaliers were almost laughably compromised by the loss of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love against the Golden State Warriors in 2015 due to injuries. And then in 2019 it was the Golden State Warriors turn to suffer terrible injuries as they lost in the finals to an improbable underdog in the Toronto Raptors, which spilled over into a lost season for Golden State the following year which created an opening for the Lakers to win it all in the covid shortened 2020 season.
Meanwhile in baseball injuries are so pervasive it's almost a question of which team doesn't suffer injuries.
So I think it's a broadly accurate characterization of sports fandom at least in North America, and it's bizarre to venture into a conversation like this to talk broadly about sports fandom excluding such major examples that speak to this point.
On the contrary, the NBA was one of the sports I had in mind when I made my comment. (frankly I'm not clear which part of that comment you found factually incorrect, such that you would write something like this)
> One of the major narratives of the most recent NBA postseason was how unfortunate it was that the Eastern Conference was so plagued with injuries that it limited the quality of competition, and it frequently has been a major narrative.
I am sure that is a thing a human, or sports journalist, might believe, so, point taken. One certainly could view the "quality of competition" as being "compromised" if the athletes and teams are not functioning tip-top at the end of the season. A person could enjoy watching the competition less as a result. I think my original comment makes it clear that I don't view things that way. I find the fact that someone else might view the matter differently as being... not especially noteworthy?
> Meanwhile in baseball injuries are so pervasive it's almost a question of which team doesn't suffer injuries.
What part of few of the sports I follow allow for contenders to be at the top of their game towards the end of the championship. People are tired or playing injured made you believe I needed to be reminded that people get injured playing baseball? Not upset, just baffled.
there's definitely the odd game where a player suffers an injury in practice or early in the game, and a potentially close matchup becomes a disappointing wash as a result.
>In reality, chess is a fighting contest between two flesh-and-blood humans
And they weren't suggesting that the match was boring so far as I can tell, but more generally, they were responding to your idea that high level play is intellectualized in a way that loses the human touch.
Again I don't see them saying that about this match.
They were using that as an example to illustrate that this distinction, between intellectualized high level play on the one hand, in a human touch on the other, is not something that shows up in the context of the NBA. They were not suggesting this was a description of the chess match between Gukesh and Liren.
I was suggesting that this year's chess championship was relatively boring, and that’s OK. However there are multiple dimensions between boring and exciting and in some ways this match was very far from relatively boring. And I wouldn’t say that it is boring without the relatively qualifier, no way.
It was relatively boring on the level of the momentum shifting back and forth. That is, if you sampled the game every hour, you would find more excitement in the median on some other chess championships. That doesn't make it less impressive or the outcome less inspiring, or the story of the players. Momentum shifting a lot makes for an exciting championship. The 2018 championships between Carlsen & Caruana were much more exciting IMO, despite having a more predictable outcome also IMO.
Now, really none of these championships are boring, unless you start comparing them and introduce the term relatively boring. All the players are playing with spirit, or else they wouldn't be playing at this level. Any perceived methodicalness doesn't make some player too much like an AI.
Of course, not everyone is going to agree with me, and I accept that. I also think that it’s totally fine that Magnus Carlsen stopped participating, but another commenter thinks it’s a travesty. I agree to disagree.
The whole time, Ding had failed to seize advantages and been low on time — something criticized by GM Hikaru Nakamura. In this final game, those two things caused him to blunder in a complex endgame seeking a tie against Gukesh who had nearly an hour of advantage on the clock and been relentlessly pressing the whole match (and continued that pressure, into the endgame).
That’s a strategy, not mere misfortune. And personally, I’m glad it was decided in the match rather than tie-breaks.
It felt much more like forced error than unforced error or, thematically, the closest thing I’ve seen to a milling strategy in chess. Just make them keep drawing until they’re out of ideas.
It was a forced error in the sense that Ding forced that exact endgame for no real reason and then fluffed it with 10 minutes on his clock plus increment. What's incredibly sad is that Ding clawed his way back into the match in game 12 by doing exactly what you describe - he created a horribly cramped position, refused to release the tension, and eventually Gukesh ran out of good moves and lost without any egregious blunders.
I'm explicitly not a chess player but this reminds me of Dave Sirlin's "Play To Win" where he starts by explaining that if doing a thing makes you not lose, you do that, and then eventually by definition you win.
That kinda works for fighting games, since draws are rare, as the players need to either double KO or timeout with the same exact amount of health. Chess is very different in theres (at least) 3 ways to draw, and it's very easy to fumble a won position into a draw.
Not in chess, where the (by far) most likely outcome of a world championship classical game is a draw. When Magnus Carlsen played Fabiano Caruana for the world championship, EVERY classical game was a draw and they had to go to tiebreaks, which no longer makes it a classical tournament.
Yes and if all you can do is draw in the world championship then you’ll be in trouble when the faster time controls are brought in to resolve the match.
I have little interest in chess and no real knowledge in its current events beyond mainstream media coverage, but always enjoy lively writeups of the matches like this one.
No, they use chess engines to find interesting lines of play that the opponent presumably is not prepared for. Say, an odd move that looks weak, but a few moves later is back at even, and the player that pushed down this line is now prepared to play on from there (with perhaps further traps laid ahead), while the opponent is somewhat in the dark and has to analyze the situation correctly.
Engines are unbelievable in open positions, so GMs who know that they are up against an engine usually just pawn lock the center and wait for the engine to start sacrificing in order to avoid a draw.
That might have worked once, but modern stockfish has an estimated elo of 3642 compared to Magnus 2882. I don't think any human could get a draw against it these days.
i think theres something interesting for chess engines to cut out a middleman.
the players have "seconds" who are doing things like finding and picking prep for the players to memorize. currently, theyre GMs/super GMs who are somewhat playing against each other, but i think you could train an AI look at lines for ones that the opponent might miss, or that would trip them up
Weirdly enough, that's a thought that I'm having in financial trading as far as using AI for idea generation.
At first glance, charting the future possible moves of a chess game is just a huge branching tree, but humans (and engines that don't have the power to fully brute force the game) use filters to trim the tree. Some lines are dead ends, even though they may play out for a while (sacrifice both rooks and the game is over, no need to follow those branches). There is also a sort of heat map and gravity to some of the lines, in that there are likely directions that players will travel in (paths where you don't give away too many pieces, where the king isn't exposed, etc).
Machines can help highlight specific areas where there are branching points that lead in many viable directions (these are the critical decision-making points in a game of chess), that are deceivingly hidden behind lines that look dead for a while.
It would output a sort of heat map, and the search could even be tweaked for certain variables, such as for number crunching complexity (if the opponent is a bit weak there) or pathways into brutal end-game scenarios (if the opponent is weak there).
This is a microcosm for the real world as well. Lines through time have reflexivity and can reinforce each other. A geopolitical situation can reinforce an economic situation which then feeds back into the political situation. Take something like inflation which tends to do that. But when humans normally look at the world, they see in a sort of normal distribution that is oversimplified. It's commonly understood that humans downplay the left and right tail risks (as explained by Taleb), but it's more nuanced than that. It's more like the chess game, in that there are these hot spots of complexity and interesting situations throughout the forward probability distribution.
Some of these hotspots are deceivingly hidden, because only one multiple possible situations unfold do they feed back into each other and create something emergent.
Back to an arena like trading, participants tend to track each possibility line independently of one another, which makes sense because humans are siloed and specialized to some degree. Technology like machine learning has the ability to synthesize this data and spit back out hot spots, just like in the chess example.
The short-sighted conclusion that most will have is to say "Great! Let it give me a list of trades, and then we can back-test it." when I'm pointing out is that there is a lot of value when it comes to idea generation and efficiently mentally traversing the future probability space. Spending your time focusing on interesting places. Maybe a traitor would look at an implied outcome distribution and realize "Hey, I think that this little part of the curve is underpriced. Maybe I should hedge this specific outcome, because I have exposure to the inputs that feed into this underpriced emergent possibility."
Of course, the trading example is also an abstraction from the raw real world, but it's a bit more close to reality than the chess example. Really, I think that this approach to using machine learning as a tool could be applied to many areas. Even more creative areas could potentially benefit from it.
Normal, regular chess engines are sometimes called AI. Or at least they were back in 1997. And people have certainly made themed variants of these chess engines, which purport to simulate certain famous chess players.
The bots are tuned differently to be a bit more tactical or more positional, and they have an opening book that follows the preference of the chosen player.
If anyone’s interested in what a GM’s thought process on the game looks like there’s a really great recap here which was produced without engines [1] https://youtu.be/97RZHG2rcbc?si=O41BRi2EC8Ryu0v2
[1] With the intention of trying to as honestly as possible replicate the situation for the players where obviously they have to think for themselves and don’t have access to an engine while playing.
My best guess is he started feeling some time pressure and really wanted to trade for a clear draw, but crucially miscalculated the tempo and position of the K vs KP ending.
I'm not a grandmaster though, so I can only vaguely speculate since that's how I would have lost :)
> After 14 games of 4+ hours each It had gone from being a dead draw with him a big favourite in tie breaks to all over in a few seconds.
_Very_ casual chess follower here. Why was Ding a big favorite in the tie breaks? My takeaway from the match was that Ding seemed to always be worse on time, so wouldn't a shorter time control favor Gukesh?
The World Chess Championship uses rapid and blitz matches (much shorter time controls) for tie breaks. Gukesh is 46th in the world in rapid, and 82nd in blitz. Ding is 2nd and 6th.
Ding is rated over 100 points higher in rapid than Gukesh. The choice to spend time early was a choice by Ding and Ding's team. Ding is better at faster time controls than Gukesh, Gukesh was better prepared.
Most of the more sophisticated people I know are completely disinterested in sports. Not that they dislike sports, it just never occupies their mind. Sports is a purposeless activity for kids
Chess is different from sports in only one way: the loss of very intelligent capable people who could be helping to create the future.
I'll take smart people playing chess any day over those people choosing to go into the tech industry where they spend all their time building addictive products that drive ad impressions.
I'd love it if they put their talents to work by going into medical research, chemistry / materials science, or even political science and try to take meaningful steps towards making the world a better place. That route seems to be a lot less popular these days and obviously compensation has a lot to do with it.
Disagree, but I have a funny anecdote in your favor.
My university's top Dota player was a 2.x GPA slacker who did nothing but play games all day. Guy was going to continue wasting-away by going to a mediocre foreign grad school, but he got his admit revoked because of stupid visa reasons.
Life hits him in the face and for 1 year, he quits dota and studies. Goes in, bags 99.99 percentile score in exam with 300k applicants and ends up at my country's HBS. That's the power level dota was holding back.
To be fair, a team of chess grand-masters tried to form a dota team once, and got destroyed. So maybe dota is harder. Speaking from personal experience, I haven't done anything in life that's as all consuming, rewarding or as destructive as dota.
Funnily one of the two times world champion is a doctor who only plays competitively whenever there's world championship (And not the regional tournaments)
> Guy was going to continue wasting-away by going to a mediocre foreign grad school
Wow. Who knows what amazing stuff that guy could have done if he'd escaped to a new place, with new people, in an exciting new culture, rather than the very close-minded one you describe here!
> Chess is different from sports in only one way: the loss of very intelligent capable people who could be helping to create the future.
Being good at chess does not mean you're "very intelligent". Most of the top players are good at chess because they are very good at memorization & pattern recognition, those are the actual abilities of a high level chess player. Does that translate into other intellectual pursuits like theoretical physics or math? Not really.
Grandmasters aren't going to be dumb by any stretch of the imagination, but they aren't super-intelligent geniuses, either.
Okay, let's say we built the future to your satisfaction, and then what? We would probably play games. How much future do you need to build before it's okay to enjoy your time alive immersed in trivialities?
Intelligent people who create the future must choose that path for themselves. Chess isn't preventing people from making that choice. If chess didn't exist, most chess players would probably just be playing some other game instead of STEM careers or whatever your definition of creating the future is. Also plenty of very strong chess players do ultimately wind up pursuing other career paths. And then there's also the fact that a good number of the top chess players have shown themselves to be highly dysfunctional people who are unfit for the professional world such as Bobby Fischer and Vladimir Kramnik.
The stereotype of the absent-minded professor is a great illustration of how norms view the world. What WE see as focus, norms see as .. not conforming?
Focus is crucial. To be great at chess you need to focus on it. To be great at creating the future you need to focus on it. By definition you can’t focus on both
If you aren’t sacrificing, you aren’t focusing. I’m not saying you need to sacrifice everything else. But definitely you need to choose very carefully.
ps. Creating the future is easy to define. Look at OpenAI, Starship, Optimus, mass scale photovoltaic manufacturing in China. Someone had to make those happen and it took focus
We literally had a chemistry Nobel Prize winner crediting chess for making him curious about thinking and intelligence and ultimately to find DeepMind.
Honestly this sounds like a knock-on effect of the US's constant erosion of the glue of community. Church attendance down, sport attendance down, theater attendance with friends down, it's all the same.
Social norms can change this -- the Netherlands has a very similar culture to the US, But one thing people asked me while I was doing my M.Sc. there was just, "what is your sport?" ... and I got asked it enough that I eventually got one, and then for a good period of time I managed to completely kick my obesity, until I moved back to the American Midwest.
The introvert/extrovert axis also plays a role in what sort of "sport" is right for you, of course, and many of your sophisticated friends still hit the gym or jog etc. -- those are just sports for introverts in my view.
Sport time is not, time that could have been better spent elsewhere. It's like how cleaning the sink isn't time that could have been better spent elsewhere -- if you don't have a clean sink, you'll pay the interest in terms of "ugh what's that smell [...] oh it was the standing water in this bowl" and "crap I don't have a clean glass, hm, I wonder if I can just buy compostable cups on Amazon so that I don't have that problem..." etc. So as an extrovert, I can go once a week to play soccer with friends in a small league, or, just hear me out, I can get lonely and then do what I do when I get lonely, which is pop on Physics Stack Exchange and answer physics questions so that I can feel Of Use. You pay the interest either way.
Chess-time also is no great loss for the world. The top-level world chess community is something we have numbers for -- 17k titled players, 2k grandmasters, 4k international masters beneath that. They are pursuing something that exactly fits the nerdy way that their brain works -- memorize openings out to 20 moves deep, obsessively study and re-study their failed games to understand why the computer thinks they lost and how they might make better mistakes in the future, and for them it HAS to be competitive and they HAVE to have that immediate feedback of trying a new idea in the same narrow niche of ideas that they became a super-expert-in, against another top player who can punish their new mistakes.
It's just not a set of transferable world-changing skills. It's like, my brother became single-mindedly obsessed with pool in High School. This persists even though he now runs a small company operating a strip mall. This was just his thing, he loves that there is no upper bound to how much control he can have over the cue and the balls, using the spins of each to control the layout, and precisely planning a course through a 9-ball break and setting himself up for a clean sweep through the game. There was no world in which some "world-changing create-the-future" lifestyle, would have felt as much of a glove fitting his hand to him, as this did. And it is no great loss for the world that he found the glove that fits his hand. It's not like the strip mall would have become an American retail empire rivaling Amazon, if only he had spent his nighttime hours working on the mall instead of on his life passion.
For comparison, probably most of the people in the bottom 10% performance bracket at Google are being told and pressured "you need to do more, more, more, you're gonna get fired if you keep those low numbers up" and at 180k employees, that amounts to 18k people that, unlike top chess players, probably _could_ flourish and do better in some smaller scrappier company, but because America doesn't have a social safety net to speak of, they feel like "well I got the dream 6-figure job, I better hold onto that until my knuckles are white because if I got fired, Bay Area rent and cost-of-living could bankrupt me in 3 months." And that's literally just one megatech company, not even talking about the world of people Graeber argues are doing "bullshit jobs" etc. etc.
Only started following chess due to the covid shutdowns, much for fun from a fans point of view than I had imagined it would be. Having the computer evaluation at the side really helps novices like me to know what's going on, interestingly a case of superior computer players helping as mere mortals to appreciate the game.
I used to watch a lot of Go. I watched live as Lee Sedol beat AlphaGo in one single game in the last match a human could feasibly compete against AI. Against all odds, and knowing AI had overtaken us, Lee Sedol found a move to get one last victory. [1]
But I never saw anything like the crowd hype from the clip you posted, lol. This was next level in terms of the energy in the room. Very fun, thanks for sharing!
Just curious: The comment you're replying to had the link with timestamp 4:01:38 which is basically just before the move happens; is that not enough as it is?
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The transfer of the crown
A tale of ...
... two storms
6...Nge7, where have I seen that before?
Deep preparation
Is every game a French?
The final stand
Time to bail out?
Maybe there's more to play for?
There is definitely more to play for.
Ding was not looking forward to defend such a position.
Ding squeezed and squeezed.
Gukesh could not contain his excitement!
First he paced.
Then he shook hands.
Then he took it in.
And he cried.
And finally he cheered!
Ding remained as gracious as ever in defeat.
Gukesh's childhood dream of becoming the world champion has been fulfilled!
