I disagree. Carlsen is the better player under time pressure, but they appear evenly matched in what I'd consider "actual" chess. One of the things I love about the game is that it's a slow, pensive game.
I look at it this way. The main 12 games have already told us who is good given lots of time to deliberate now who has a good enough understanding to make those decisions quickly.
Did they? The primary complaint about Carlsen's game 12 is that he had Caruana dead to rights, but chose not to press the advantage.
Which isn't to say that Caruana didn't do a fantastic job of playing Carlsen to a standstill throughout the tournament, but Carlsen seemed to have more of a clear edge several times (blundering it a bit in games 1, and slightly misplaying similar edges in games 9 and 10) before gaining an absolutely vicious one in game 12.
Caruana never seemed to quite work himself into those kind of serious edges, even if he did an admirable job of defending against them.
You’re also not doing Caruana justice. He worked Carlsen into badly losing positions in two games, but just blundered away the winning continuations allowing Carlsen to save a draw each time.
I think the better player won the match, but that Caruana played toe to toe with Carlsen, including attacking chess that caught Carlsen off guard and caused him to respond poorly. Meanwhile, Carlsen made absolutely the correct choice (best strategic choice) to draw in Game 12.
Very nice championship match, probably my favorite one of Carlsen’s era.
Chess championships sometimes draw the same criticism as boxing, players strategise to win on technicalities and small margins, instead of taking risks and landing hard blows.
As fans, that is boring, but I agree; Carlsen made the correct choice in drawing.
From the analysis Carlsen used his advantage well: to secure continued advantage.
Firstly Starcraft has economics in the form of the resource gathering mechanics. This means if you pursue attack as your only priority the enemy may get ahead economically and, if they survive long enough, just out-build you. No mechanic like that exists in Chess, you can't have more pawns if you invest in a pawn-making machine for one turn rather than moving.
Secondly, Starcraft is a game of deliberately hidden knowledge. You don't know whether those two wounded Marines ran up that ramp hoping your forces won't follow, or if they're just bait to draw your attacking force into range of two waiting Siege Tanks who will do enormous damage. In Chess the game state is entirely open.
You're misstating the results of the Game 12 replays (see: https://www.chess.com/computer-chess-championship, which is pitting numerous engines against each other in the position at Game 12's resignation).
It's currently +3-18=14. That's 3 wins for Caruana's position, 18 wins for Carlsen's, and 14 draws. That's about as decisive a position as you can get in high-level chess. Yes, with perfect play, Caruana might have reached a draw, but Carlsen was in an overwhelmingly strong position. And this isn't even truly accounting for the time pressure Caruana put himself in at that point. He would have been defending from an incredible time deficit.
> Meanwhile, Carlsen made absolutely the correct choice (best strategic choice) to draw in Game 12.
Numerous grandmasters disagree with you, including at least Anand, Nakamura, Hess, Kasparov, and Kramnik. The computer results also suggest he should have at least played on several moves before offering, because he was in a position where his likely worst case result was a draw and his best case was a decisive win.
If this was not the game 12, they would have had a point. However it was the game 12 and upon a draw Carlsen would have enormous advantage in a tie breaker -- he is much stronger in rapid games.
Carlsen is widely recognized to have been in a great, likely winning position in game 12, and arguably got himself into several other, if not cleanly decisive positions, very strong ones in several other games, where Caruana never quite seemed to.
OP suggested they were dead even in play in "what he considers" chess (classical time controls). I'm suggesting that the results may have been even, but that Carlsen seemed to be stronger all along, based on the chances he got himself into, even though it never quite converted until rapid.
Long time ago in a galaxy far away I played at a very high level.
Sometimes when I'm bored or lonely or cranky I play hustlers in the Union Sq in NYC. There's probably one guy (old cranky Russian) that can actually give me a run for my money and he is still going to be a several hundred points below me. Regardless, sometimes I wander into situations that I dont quite like -- no decisive advantage where I have to play carefully. Instead I quickly take it to a draw because the odds of me getting into a bad position multiple times in a row are smaller than the odds of me not tripping in a position that I do not like and since no money changes hands on a draw, drawing is nothing other than kicking a ball down the road.
For Carlsen kicking a ball into a tie breaker comes with a multiple hundred point advantage. It is the advantage that he does not have with classic time controls.
A slight advantage in a complicated position with lots of tension and many ways for the game to continue is wildly different from a slight advantage in a quieter position with many of the pieces traded down. In the latter, a mistake might cause you to draw rather than win. In the former, a mistake might cause you to lose outright.
In the old days a bit of flair and risk might have taken you a long way.
1. or at least the minimisation of mistakes.
Except that +3 would mean three chess engines, supposedly stronger than Carlsen, have managed to lose Carlsen's position. That's eye-opening, and perhaps justifies Carlsen offering a draw than risking being in that +3 column.
Caruana was supposedly without counter-play. +3 is far too high a score to support that claim.
This position hadn't reached that critical of a juncture yet, but that's largely because Magnus just started winging it long before the final position. His position was much stronger earlier on. But even in the final position he was very much the attacker and Fabiano's clock was starting to run low. In practical chess, Fabiano definitely faced an uphill battle to try to draw that position.
Today’s games stand at +3-0=0 or, taking the last game as the draw it would have been if Caruana didn’t have to win, at +2-0=1.
I haven’t done the math, but I’m sure taking a “best of four” sample from the distribution that was taken from gives you better odds than taking a n=1 sample from the distribution that gave you +3-18=14 (about 9% chance of losing, about 50% of winning’, followed by (if that draw is a tied game) that n=4 sample.
And that’s ignoring the fact that that +3-18=14 is from machines that are way different from humans. When given a chess position that’s like a minefield, with a single winning sequence of 40 moves, and all other moves a loss, a computer will happily declare the position a certain win, but chances are no human will find that winning sequence.
That's not what the controversy was about. It was the fact that white had "winning chances" in a completely unclear position with most pieces were still on the board. "Winning chances" isn't winning.
Magnus's reputation is he's a guy who will usually press on in a (seemingly) flat endgame where a lot of GMs will agree to draw and occasionally will squeeze out a win in those circumstances. It's antithetical to that image for him to offer a draw in a position _no_ GM would offer in typical circumstances. He did it for strategic reasons, and given his performance in the tiebreaker today, it looks all the more justifiable for the purposes of winning, but some people don't like that attitude from a champion.
This doesn't show every game, but fivethirtyeight.com shows the games being pretty split up to game 9:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/it-was-finally-fabiano-...
With Carlsen having a strong advantage in game 1, and Caruana in game 6. Caruana having a small advantage in game 2, and Carlsen having a small advantage in game 9. It seems about as split as it could be.
I'd argue that he's better because he has mastered more than just one format. If we have a tie in one category, and one of the players has a strong advantage in another category; then they'll come out as "better".
I wouldn't be surprised if Carlsen would soon again have a comfortable lead on the ELO ladder. He was once at 2882.
I am however happy that he had such a worthy opponent in this tournament!
Imagine two people of equal ability at ice hockey. You wouldn't say that one is better than the other at ice hockey because he's better than the other at field hockey.
Adding my edit to a below comment here:
Probably the best analogy here is association football -- the normal, standard game can end in a draw. During the World Cup and other elimination tournaments, a completely new rule, not part of the normal game, is introduced allowing games to be decided by penalty kicks. Is the fact that Italy beat France in the 2006 World Cup final on penalty kicks evidence that Italy's team was "better at association football" than France's? Many people would argue that it's not.
Rapid and blitz (and armageddon) were part of the meta-rules of this match, but then your argument only works if you say Magnus is better at the meta-sport called "winning the 2018 World Chess Championship" -- which I'd agree with, but it isn't the same thing as being better at chess.
Probably the best analogy here is association football -- the normal, standard game can end in a draw. During the World Cup and other elimination tournaments, a completely new rule, not part of the normal game, is introduced allowing games to be decided by penalty kicks. Is the fact that Italy beat France in the 2006 World Cup final on penalty kicks evidence that Italy's team was "better at association football" than France's? Many people would argue that it's not.
I've competed at a high level in a hobby of mine, and it was well known that the winner of a competition was never "the person who is best", it was "the person who is best in the competition environment that day". No matter what rules you have, that will always be true. And that's okay.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/sport/live/...
Not even classical time controls play that way -- 15 minutes per move would rapidly lose you the match. Prepared openings come quite quickly, obviously, but most moves even beyond that are played within a very few minutes of each other, with time being saved to spend on a "deep-think" of 15-30 minutes on only one or two key moves.
Which makes sense. Classical time controls in this tournament were, counting the per move increments, 120 minutes per player for the first 40 moves. That means you need to average a move every 3 minutes over your first 40 (and in reality, they spend less than that most games, preferring to maintain a healthy cushion).
Rapid (not Blitz, they did not play any Blitz games) only drops that down to 45 seconds per move over the first 40. Since they tend to live closer to the margin in Rapid anyways vs Classical, this is even less of a drop than it might appear.
It's unquestionably less time to think, but not nearly as much as you're suggesting.