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> 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.

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.

There's one important nuance here. Those machines are playing against super human defense. In human chess there are countless positions that computers can easily defend whereas even the best players in the world would lose nearly every time. Finding only moves in very complex positions is not really that hard for most modern programs. Doing this over and over for humans, let alone with limited time and with mental fatigue a very real issue, is just not possible to consistently do.

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.

”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.”

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.

> 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.

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.

Sure, but we're kind of wandering off the point here.

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.

> 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.

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.

Precisely. After eleven games, these guys are mentally exhausted. Having an edge in a complex position isn’t yet a win, and Carlsen obviously decided that the odds that he would make a mistake that loses were higher than the odds that he would lose to Fabi in rapid after two days of mental recovery.

Humans are not computers. And the fact that computers won some of those games is further evidence that, while Carlsen had winning chances, the position was complicated enough that one or two suboptimal moves might be enough for Fabi to capitalize and win.

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.

Agree. The last 50+ years of 1-1 contests (chess, boxing, tennis, mma, ..) have tended towards the defensive(1), for good reason.

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.