Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision
deadspin.com
deadspin.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess#Armageddon
fivethirtyeight has been covering the tournament and their rough calculation gives it a 1:5000 chance of making it to the Armageddon game, based on Carlesen's superior Rapid and Blitz rankings.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decisi...
"the players proceed to a single game of Armageddon, where the parameters are set to so far as possible give each side a 50-percent chance of winning—White gets 5 minutes, Black gets 4 minutes, and a draw will make Black the World Champion."
I think given the probabilities in the 538 model Carlsen's decision makes a lot of sense. Why slug it out to a probable draw with the chance to lose out of nowhere when you can move to another format that drastically favors you?
[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decisi...
Blitz is almost an entirely different game from classical chance. Yes, technically the rules are the same, but tactical ability and ability to think under pressure plays a massively more important role than positional ability, which tends to be the deciding factor in top level classical chess.
A 5m to 4m time advantage is the equivalent of a 100-200 point handicap. Think about it... if both players are evenly matched for 30 moves taking the same amount of time, say 3m, then you end up with an interesting middlegame position where White has 2m and Black has 1m. Now you are playing bullet chess with a 2 to 1 time advantage, which is more of like a 300-400 point handicap.
All that to say - blitz chess, even at the world championship level, is characterized not by "slight inaccuracies" but by major mistakes if not outright blunders. You can even have wild swings in the final minute as each player makes critical mistakes.
To get a feel for chess at this speed, I highly recommend watching some bullet chess streaming videos from chess.com or lichess. It is both highly entertaining and very instructive about the time aspect of chess.
Whenever you try to force an outcome in a sport, you get further and further away from the original game.
https://slate.com/culture/2009/01/why-the-nfl-should-replace...
https://slate.com/culture/2016/06/how-to-fix-the-penalty-sho...
That is: you know who will win if all other tiebreakers draw, giving the side which didn't earn this final-tiebreaker the knowledge they have to be more aggressive, much earlier. (In the extreme, you could play this before every other match.)
That said, one of the things I love about NHL playoff hockey is that without compromise, it's first goal wins overtime, where players are willing to do everything and anything to get that win. Block every shot, hustle when they're exhausted... it's truly amazing. One of my favorite quotes about the quintuple overtime game between the Penguins and Flyers in 2000:
> LeClair: After the third overtime … our locker room became a lot more loose. It was pretty comical in the locker room between guys searching for food, some guys getting IVs. It was a little bit of survival mode.
> Primeau: Usually on the road the team orders pizza for the locker room. There's pizza for the guys, power gels, power bars, they were really popular. The trunk of those was gone, the pizza was gone. Trainers are going up to concession stands to see if there's anything there. [The] coaches' popcorn was eaten.
Even without the shoutouts, football is a very random game (compare with something like Tennis). And this is amplified by the tournament format. I like how experts take this game so seriously and come up with deep analysis when there's so much randomness in the result.
The bulk of football is played in "league" format, not "cup" format, where teams all play each other two times in a year. With 34 matches, for example, much of that "randomness" is gone.
It's impressive that they made such an extreme effort, but I'm not sure I would use the word "comical" to describe needing medical treatment. (I mean, lots of athletes receive medical attention and presumably nobody considered it a life-threatening emergency, but that part still doesn't sound quite "comical".)
A soccer player must first of all be a decent mid distance runner: They run an average of 7 miles per game!
In soccer, I think the longer they play, the more tired people get, the more it rewards defense, and you'd just see very few goals after 120 minutes.
You could imagine things like removing the goalies to get a playing result that's not penalties.
They have roughly 2 hours of play, and it's not unknown for players to run over 11 miles a match.
As a Geelong fan I enjoyed neither St Kilda or Collingwood winning for the week before the rematch.
120 interchanges per side for the match
different, but still equally intense as FIFA Football
I'm not sure why but for me at least the short shifts mean I'm flat out when on the ice and never quite get a rhythm like I do in soccer where I eventually settle into a steady pace... like a long distance runner.
Anyway, agree with parent comment that penalties aren't a great way to settle a competition. One option that could be interesting in soccer is to drop to 9 players in overtime and allow a couple extra subs.
But watching "friendship" games between national teams where often there are much relaxed change numbers (these games are the one opportunity for the national trainers to experiment widely with the team setup), they tend to be pretty bad. Changing the compositon of a team strongly has a huge potential to be very disruptive. This shows how much football is actually a team play.
Side note - I appreciate these sports threads, they're very rare in geek circles.
Then it was "downgraded" to Silver Goal. Only both to be abolished later on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_goal
Wiki mentioned "The golden goal and silver goal were widely perceived as failed experiments" but I'm in the opposing camp. Golden Goal is freaking exciting as a spectator.
>In a qualification game for the 1994 Caribbean Cup, Barbados deliberately scored a late own goal in a successful attempt to qualify for the finals by forcing golden-goal extra time against Grenada, as an unusual tournament rule stated that golden goals counted double in calculating goal difference. Needing a two-goal victory to qualify, Barbados found themselves 2–1 up with three minutes left of normal time. After the Barbadians scored an own goal to bring the scoreline level at 2–2, Grenada tried to score in either net while Barbados defended both goals for the final three minutes of normal time.[4] Barbados won the game in extra time and advanced to the next round.[5]
It wasn't. Teams played super safe for extra time, just passing the ball in their own half and so on, because they felt like they'd have a more consistent chance in the penalty shootout.
The big difference to e.g. american football is that football is a low scoring game even at the best of times. Tired attacking players will score even less, since a succesful offense relies on outrunning and outplaying the defense, while the defense typically can deny a lot of goalscoring opportunities by simply being in the correct positions. If no one can score by minute 120, it really doesn't make sense to make the game go on even longer.
I agree that a penalty shootout is close to a coin flip most of time and that this isn't a satisfying way to decide a winner. However there are teams (e.g. the german men'sn ational team) that consistently outperform on penalties. That's because penalties are far less about technique than they are about psychology. It's all about performing under pressure. That pressure is even higher in a penalty shootout at a big turnament. This plus the sheer drama of it make penalty shootouts one of the most thrilling events at a big turnament.
It would end "ripping nil-nil ties" and the ridiculous(!) separate game of tiddlywinks that is penalty shootouts (and nothing like the game you just spent 120 minutes playing). As a bonus you'd have higher scores and more usable stats.
For what it's worth, it does work pretty well, but it helps that the tiebreaker doesn't require physical effort. A long set of PKs followed by an overtime would be a hell of a burden on goaltenders, especially the (would-be) loser.
Our team captain is GM Daniel Naroditsky, one of the top blitz and bullet players in the world, who regularly beats Magnus in the LiChess Titled Arena. And our coach is NM Jordy Mont-Reynaud, a ~2350 bullet player who formerly held the record for youngest master in the US.
We'll be responding to questions and comments from the chat for any HN members who want more context on what's going on. Looking forward to an exciting finale!
Slack group open to Stanford students/alums/faculty: https://stanfordchess.slack.com
FB page for general public: https://www.facebook.com/stanfordchessdotorg/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decisi...
There's been a tournament of top engines playing out the position after the draw -- I think black (Carlsen) won 11 games and white won 2 games, with the rest draws. So this declaration of the lack of advantage just isn't true.
> just take things to the tiebreakers where Carlsen has a significant advantage.
But he had a significant advantage on the board, too. The question is the magnitude of the advantages. Caruana has previously been a world blitz champion too, so it seems unlikely that any advantage would be more than 60%-40% to Carlsen. Which seems smaller than the advantage we see from the computer tournament results.
I'd like to see that same process repeated for all the other draws from the points of highest advantage and right before the draw too if we're going to be using it to evaluate the decision to draw. Not sure how closely the computer tournament reflects the actual progression we've seen from Carlsen and Caruana because if we just look at the pawn equivalent advantage game 12 wasn't the best game that's been fought to a draw in this series. (I know that doesn't take into account positional advantage but we don't have an easy number to sum up that over all the games).
Caruana's potential is probably the same Carlsen. One should never underestimate him.
The chess lovers complain and complain, because everybody's style is starting to mimick closer to the objective best moves.
It is also a psychological move in trolling Caruana (part of the game): "You did not even try to win with white in your last game before the rapids. I'll draw in a superior position because I love my chances there."
There is no drama in this at all, and it’s hardly bad for competitive chess. This title matchhas produced exciting games and creativity, and yes also blunders. It’s been fantastic to watch!
Carlsen stuck to his overall match plan. That’s all that happened. Now it’s up to Caruana to prove he can hold his own in rapid games, and frankly he should feel confident that he can given his overall performances across the 12 matches so far. Carlsen is the favorite for sure, but it looks to be a great set of rapid games.
"There is an equal position on the board, and the opponent thinks: this is dead drawn. I can play almost anything and there is nothing he can do. But Magnus plays on, seeking complications, setting up threats. He is narrowing the margin required to hold the draw. Soon his opponent is thinking: why is he still playing – I can hold a draw with any of these three moves. Then: I can hold with this move and with this move. And then: I still have one clear way to hold a draw. And under the strain of constantly having to solve deep and complex problems, more often than not the opponent will crack. Magnus wins not because it was in the position, he wins because he is Magnus."
You’ve lost me there. I don’t see how disappoint is the conclusion. It seems equivalent to suggesting the player should take risks or chances based on what might stylistically please the audience as opposed to what might win the match overall.
I’ve never understood spectators watching competitors and thinking, why won’t they do what I want them to do instead of what they think is best for the situation?
After the fact, the media will reinterpret the choices to fit the most compelling narrative regarding what gets clicks or views, which is often an intentionally antagonistic or divisive interpretation to stir up controversy.
When you consider that Carlsen was in the last classical match and that a blunder would mean no chance to recover, it makes even more sense. If the same position occurred in Game 5, he probably plays another 30 minutes before deciding if there’s winning potential. If he really blunders, he’s got 7 games to possibly recover.
You’re always going to be way more conservative than that in game 12.
People who follow and participate in competitions passionately don't usually just try to maximize their chances to win, they also want to deliver the best effort they can.
Magnus Carlsen specifically was always respected for his fighting spirit. In his championship game against Anand a few years ago he played out a practically drawn endgame to a win through sheer tenacity, and he once managed to win a game in St Louis where a draw that was offered to him would have won him the tournament on the spot, but he declined and played it out.
This fighting aspect has always made him an especially great player (not just for the game and the audience, but it has also put him above the competition).
Why do soccer players make back passes from offensive positions when tied 0-0? You think the coach gives a shit at that point if the crowd wants someone to give “effort” in a press, leaving exposed chances for a sudden counter-attack? Sometimes playing the back pass is the right “best effort” to be made.
Same with an intentional kneel to run out the clock before halftime instead of risking injury or a turnover on a last second play in American football. Or intentionally walking a home run hitter in baseball if you think you stand a great chance to strike out the next batter.
You seem to be conflating “best effort” with “intentionally disregard the strategy you deem best because a riskier course of action would be more appreciated by spectators.”
They should change the rules of the games. Like time auction suggested where draw is win for black pieces.
tl;dr: In order to fully appreciate how bizarre Carlsen's draw offer was at that moment, you need to take into account the time factor, which (to my knowledge) the chess.com computer analysis ignores completely.
---
The major problem with using the chess.com data is they don't take into account the time factor. When Magnus offered, the draw, Fabi had exactly 15min 42sec time remaining to play the next 10 moves. That's less than 2 minutes per move, versus Magnus having between 2x-3x that amount.
It is hard to understand just how significant of a handicap this is unless you've ever played competitive chess at a national or international level. The human mind starts to break down and freeze up when it is forced to make critical decisions in limited time. This was already starting to happen in the game leading up to the draw offer, as Caruana took more and more time as his positioning was worsening.
The end result of this is one player being forced to make a rapid series of moves in a "time scramble" while the other player has the luxury of checking and rechecking his calculations. This gives the player with more time a massive advantage in practice. We're talking at least 100-200 rating points.
If chess.com wanted to do a fair analysis, they should have handicapped the White computer with 3-4x less compute time. I guarantee the results would have been significantly more favorable for Black then they already were.
If you want us to move a comment to a better context, we're happy to help with such requests at hn@ycombinator.com.
Could you force draws consistently with someone 100 points stronger than you? 200?
> he is ranked No. 1 in all three formats (classical, rapid, and blitz). Caruana is ranked 10th and 18th in rapid and blitz respectively.
Critics are appalled that he didn't fight for the win out of sense of honor. I don't see how this is different than, for instance, fouling at the end of a basketball game. Hard to blame a player for working within the rules to put himself into a position where he feels he has a greater chance of keeping the title.
"It's not the critic who counts...."
The best chess player in the world got there by using good judgment when it comes to selective aggression. We’ll find out tomorrow if this was a brilliant move to fend off a challenger or the beginning of the end...
If he were a narcissist, another option would be to bask a little more in the limelight.
Just throwing these out there, as we really don't know his motivation.
It takes effort to tie 12 straight games between two world champions.
Additionally, it is not in Carlsen's best interest to finish the tournament. During the tournament he is a super star. After the tournament he is just some guy who has a chess trophy (i.e. most people in real life don't care).
Maybe he is just testing himself with some criteria that is harder than "just winning... again"?
Maybe he just wants to prolong his time in the spotlight? Create some drama, have people talk about the year where every game, including Armageddon, ended in a draw!
As a chess fan I admit I’m eager to see a rapid tiebreaks. I just didn’t want to get here like this.
This!
For him to answer the press in short Nos is funny.
For him to want to do more games with Fabiano and crush him in rapid is a great and FUN decision.
Obviously he could win that game but he wants to have more fun. And we all have more fun.
Instead of winning and going home he wants to do something new. It’s been a long match w unprecedented draws. Why end it now?
I would have done the same :)
Think about this... comparing it to taking a draw to win the tournament when you could win the game but risk losing - IS SILLY. THAT is cowardly.
Taking a draw when there would be nothing afterwards and you retain the title - that’s cowardly.
This... IS FUN!!
I am not a chess fan, before today I had read about and forgotten Magnus Carlsen's name. Today, I am talking to you about Magnus Carlsen.
Make of this data point what you will.
The big fame and sponsor money is not in _merely_ being the best in the world, it's in winning while pushing the creative limits of the sport and causing a fair amount of drama and controversy.
Carlsen gets more out of this than winning in the 12th game, both on a personal level and in terms of notoriety and sponsorship interest.
This does not conflict with being bored, or with pushing the boundaries of the format! Like trying to re-play your favorite computer game, but placing artificial limitations on yourself to make it more interesting. If it gets all the fans and observers riled up, all the better! It's well within the rules!
Besides, what if he screws up in the later matches, in spite of the odds? The pressure is still on, which makes the entertainment value even better!0
I used to wonder if the likes of McEnroe (80s tennis player) courted controversy with aggression that ran the boundary of acceptable behaviour in order to - win or lose - be the one everyone was talking about.
It's hard to say why he called off game 12 earlier than usual but in his words he was basically rattled, and proceeding any further may open him up to defeat so he just chose to take the safer route of heading to the blitz match where is the favorite.
And his thrill is the nervousness brought about by not wanting to lose after putting himself into a previously un-winnable situation?
https://www.chess.com/news/view/computer-chess-championship-...
They're running the engines with a 30 minute starting clock plus five-second increment per move.
So far, Ethereal and Stockfish have each managed to win a game as White (Caruana) from the Game 12 position.
Also this site has been running live analysis using Stockfish on 20 CPUs during each game of the championship, and its evaluations frequently have changed with more time to "think":
Not really. The consensus was that Carlsen really cost himself winning chances by taking a draw. In the basketball analogy, it's more like holding onto the ball to force overtime instead of shooting in the last few seconds and risking a turnover. That might be a good strategy in some circumstances, but it's rare.
Carlsen has said he didn't think it was as easy or risk free as the commentators and spectators thought, and despite the fact that they had computer assistance he's as good a judge of that as anyone in the world. Personally I think he got a little nervous here and doesn't like to have everything on the line in one game - which is consistent with his approach in game 12 two years ago where he appeared to intentionally draw with the white pieces.
I haven't seen Carlsen say it was risky to keep playing, the only quote I've seen is:
> “I wasn’t in a mood to find the punch,” Carlsen said by way of explanation after the game[0].
He had an advantage on the board and on the clock, and didn't even try for the win.
[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decisi...
Now, consider what happens if Carlsen crushes Caruana in the rapid or blitz rounds - this sends the message "you will never beat me at rapid or blitz, and no amount of preparation will save you". Caruana will never forget this. This will be in his his head the next time they play, and the pressure to avoid the tiebreaker rounds will be huge.
Note: If it wasn't clear, that stream will not literally be of Carlsen & Caruana. It mirrors the current position in the game and has commentators analyze it. I don't think a free livestream exists that shows Carlsen & Caruana live, making the moves.
Chess24 also has the same with Peter Svidler, Guramishvili, Anish Giri and Grischuk commenting.
Currently streaming is head coach and former World Youth Champs silver medalist NM Jordy Mont-Reynaud. We may be joined later by our team captain, GM Daniel Naroditsky aka RebeccaHarris on LiChess aka "guy who is known to beat Magnus Carlsen at bullet"
Join us for commentary/questions/banter!
Imagine they also tie all their matches; now the world has four reigning chess champions!
The way it works right now, the reigning champion does nothing until a challenger has earned the right to face him by winning a candidates tournament. Then the winner of the candidates tournament faces the reigning champion in a match for the title. Carlsen, as I understand it, would prefer that the champion take part in a tournament.
The women's championship (also played this month) does feature a tournament. 64 players were seeded, and played single-elimination two-game matches (with rapid games as tiebreakers). The final two players then faced each other in a four-game match (again with rapid games as potential tiebreakers). The final did go to tiebreaks, and was won by defending and now repeat champion Ju Wenjun.
Edit: I suppose that makes sense to encourage more women to play if that was an issue. (I'm used to more casual clubs where membership requires only interest and showing up.)
In lieu of such data, a simpler explanation is that boys are more encouraged to play chess from a young age than girls. This results in more teenage boys playing chess, a deeper talent pool, and thus better top ranked players.
This is similar to what is seen in soccer. Even though China has much bigger population than Holland by almost 100x, the number of Chinese kids playing organized soccer is less than Holland by at least 10x.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/study-finds-some-sig...
> “[That previous study] finds no average difference in intelligence, but males were more variable than females,” Ritchie says. “This is why our finding that male participants’ brains were, in most measures, more variable than female participants’ brains is so interesting. It fits with a lot of other evidence that seems to point toward males being more variable physically and mentally.”
So if you’re looking for outliers (such as a chess prodigee), you are more likely to find them in the male population than in the female population.
Your explanation is not simpler by any stretch, it just spares you some cognitive dissonance.
Which naturally raises the question of whether they can be manufactured. And, regardless of how you may feel about the ethics of testing that experimentally, László Polgár tested it in order to explore his idea that "geniuses are made, not born". The result of his experiment:
* Oldest daughter Susan (Zsuzsanna) achieved Grandmaster at age 22. Peak rating 2577.
* Middle daughter Sofia (Zsófia) achieved International Master, peak rating 2505.
* Youngest daughter Judit achieved Grandmaster at age 15 years 4 months, at the time youngest person ever to do so. Peak rating 2735, ranked #8 (not "women's #8", worldwide #8).
His team is currently sitting at 1,341st in the world out of nearly 6,000,000 teams!
Still he's heavily favoured in the tiebreaks, so I don't necessarily fault his strategy.
The engines are playing out the position here: https://www.chess.com/computer-chess-championship
Sounds like this was written by someone with a grudge.