Magnus Carlsen might walk away from classical chess | Hacker News Reader

Magnus Carlsen might walk away from classical chess

lichess.org

76 pointsakbarnama60 comments

I think everyone here can probably sympathise when a job stops being about the bits you actually enjoy or are good at. I have no doubt Magnus is the best ever, but the vast majority of the effort in classical chess is spent away from the board. Slogging through an opponent and their team’s computer driven opening prep just isn’t super fun and probably isn’t why most people fall in love with chess. Anyone who has gone from being a programmer to being stuck in meetings and managing other people all day perhaps knows what it’s like to fantasise about packing it in and returning to simpler times.

I believe that to people like Magnus it goes beyond "the job becoming boring" and his stance alludes directly to Fischer's disillusionment with the game – lacking in genuine and human creativity.

I don't play or know anything about Chess so I went to look up your comment, I presume it's about this gent: https://www.chess.com/blog/Mx_Nat/why-bobby-fischer-hated-ch...

I read the above and it made me feel he was annoyed that Chess is a strategic zero sum game? "preparation and memorization than pure skill and innovation" - I think (at least in the zero sum strategy game I love) - prep + data IS the skill and innovation, how do you prep and where do you get your data, that's the joy of the game?

> he was annoyed that Chess is a strategic zero sum game?

No, he's complaining about the depth of the decision tree at the start of the game.

I understand, but isn't the opening decision tree depth IS the zero sum nature playing out?? the depth of the opening decision tree exactly what you'd expect in a zero sum strategic game? In any highly competitive zero sum environment (poker, business, etc.), players will inevitably explore and optimize every available edge, ESPECIALLY preparation? That was the fun of it I thought? Any arms race in opening theory is a natural consequence of the zero sum structure... if memorizing 25 moves gives you an edge over someone who memorized 23, the competitive pressure forces everyone deeper into preparation?

Yes and that's exactly what's happened. It's also happened in various sports as we've optimised strategies there. The argument is just that the sum of all these marginal gains is a worse spectacle and less fun for practitioners. And so those practitioners propose other formats like Fischer Random or shorter time controls to rebalance things.

Less fun for the players who lose because they don't like that way of playing? If you enjoy that way of play, winning would be a lot of fun I'd suspect? He created a new way of playing I read? His strengths (calculation?) matter most, his weakness (willingness to grind opening theory) is neutralized, nobody else can gain the preparation advantages that were starting to threaten his dominance? What is "pure chess"? The more I read about this guy the more I feel he's both... a bit lazy and a sore loser?

Nearly no player enjoys the grind of memorising opening theory. But every high level player has to do months of it because every other player does months of it. It is a negative-sum equilibrium for them. Prep can be neutralised with prep but no chess player got into the game because they enjoy it.

So any variation that eliminates the need for preparation is a gain for both the winner and the loser.

And Magnus Carlsen is not a sore loser, he can both out-prep and out-calculate anyone in the world; hence the credibility of him suggesting that classical is not fun is higher than anyone else’s - because they could be called sore losers…

To be clear: the sore loser guy I was calling was the guy who invented is his own chess style, not Magnus! I would have thought most players got deep into the game because they enjoy winning, I like playing the games I win anyway, but the games I play and win are always zero sum strategy games that require a lot of research. The NBA is like the most research and prep filled strategic zero sum game right now I think, people seem to still love watching and playing basketball.

To be clear myself: I work in sports analytics, I have chosen my side of history and I'm happy with it, but there are plenty of people who _don't_ like modern basketball. There are also plenty of people who don't enjoy the increasingly conservative tactics in the Premier League in soccer etc. I don't think there's any harm in having empathy for those points of view. Either way, perhaps we can agree there are different layers of preparation: one is attending to a specific problem in front of you and putting in the work to solve it. Another is more pure practice so that you can problem solve in the face of emergent situations in-game. Some people find the former very satisfying, some people the latter. Some people are lucky to excel at, and enjoy, both.

What's your game of choice, out of interest? I personally love Magic: the Gathering because it is a brilliant balance of preparation ahead of time, whilst rewarding quick thinking in game (with a fair dose of variance).

I think we CAN agree on that!!! 1000% I was just annoyed at that guy when I read about him because it just seemed like he didn't want to spend the time up front, and I actually get it, but that's what it takes to play at the world class level I think? Business is mine. Love it to death, not for everyone and not everyone likes to play it the way I do, especially not those I play against, but I love to play business as a strategic zero sum game, I spend a lot of time studying it, practicing it, researching my plays etc. And to your point, many many people who like to play business hate modern business as it's all research grind at this point. (outside of HN and some youtube, it's how I spend almost all my time)

It's hard to defend Fischer because he was a massive weirdo. Magnus has had far more skin in the game long term though, so I'm generally willing to hear him out.

I mean, massive weirdo, and maybe not Magnus... but he didn't invent Fischer Random Chess because chess was too hard for him. He dominated for several years, right? The game wasn't as advanced or computer prep dominated as it is now, but he seems like he was arguing from a very similar position and mindset as Magnus.

Sure, this is just cause and effect. Doing months of work for a World Championship cycle or slogging through 20 moves of supercomputer prep is boring _because_ it impoverishes the creative side of the game. I'm just saying a lot of people here probably recognise the same pattern between the magic of computing in their youth and the reality of a lot of enterprise tech jobs.

That's exactly why Magnus is now championing Free Style Chess, originally promoted by Fischer: you randomize the starting position of the pieces, which makes traditional opening theory useless. That cuts away a lot of the memorization and introduces a lot of new creativity.

It's not entirely surprising that both of these world champions saw that as a way to keep the game interesting.

Something else that Magnus sometimes does, even against fellow grandmasters, is play a completely ridiculous opening that's obviously bad. But more importantly, it's different, and all the existing opening theory goes out the window.

Including his recent "Berlin regret" against Caruana (which was more about bringing a position back into boring territory than trying for chaos, admittedly).

Games that start with the Bongcloud attack are fun to watch if only for the facial expressions that follow.

Yeah Gukesh may have broken Magnus and kicked off some serious introspection on Magnus’ part.

As a casual spectator of chess tournament streams, I find speed chess to be much more enjoyable to watch. It isn't fun when the players aren't making mistakes. Classical chess feels like F1 racing where the work is done before the match with very little passing and timed chess feels like a derby rally with a lot of bumping and grinding. Just way more fun to watch.

I remember Michael Schumacher just riding one perfect lap after another. He'd always qualify as first, start ahead, ride his perfect laps, and nobody would ever overtake him. It's impressive, but boring to watch.

Good thing you didn't watch any F1 in 2023. It was the schumi era, but even worse.

It's hard for some of the very best when they're no longer at their peak.

Don't get me wrong, Magnus is still world #1 for a reason, but he used to be at a level where no-one could even scratch him. Now he has to fight much harder for victories, and he's not enjoying that.

It's hard to determine how much is down to that factor, how much is how he feels over not being world champion anymore, and how much is a financial incentive in attempted break aways from FIDE to promote "freestyle chess" ( random chess ).

Lebron has a saying- "Father Time is undefeated."

https://www.chess.com/blog/LionChessLtd/age-vs-elo---your-ba...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277316182...

Magnus is 34, he's just going to have to deal with it like every exceptional person has.

Let's not forget that Magnus didn't lose his world champion title, he gave it up willingly after holding the title from 2013 to 2021. All those years where everyone else is focusing specifically on how to defeat him and still coming short. He's talked about this at length in interviews, mostly it just became incredibly boring.

Only Magnus really knows if it was "incredibly boring" or he feared losing over the board, and even he might not really know himself.

I think it's a shame for the sport that he wasn't willing to risk losing his WC title over the board, but make no mistake, he has lost his WC title regardless.

I'm not really sure this argument makes sense. He held the title for eight years and had numerous serious challengers over that time, so I wouldn't really say he didn't risk it over the board.

Iirc also this new Gukesh champion was only like 15 years old back then, yes he was spotted as an upcoming contender, but at that time there wasn't really any competitor that was close enough, iirc he had soundly beat the same guy twice in a row over in title matches at that point so at that time the competitor pool wasn't really too threatening.

It's pretty obvious that he's genuine for anyone that has been at the top of something for long enough. At some point winning is normalised so you don't feel pleasure but the pain / fear of losing is still here.

It's always about Pleasure / Pain

Wow .. you know how to put a positive spin on him losing

He didn't lose the title by losing. He decided not to defend it and retired from playing WC matches while still being the champion.

> Don't get me wrong, Magnus is still world #1 for a reason, but he used to be at a level where no-one could even scratch him. Now he has to fight much harder for victories, and he's not enjoying that.

I get the sense that it's less he has to fight harder to win, and more he has to grind boring studying just to even play. I don't _think_ he'd care that much if his win rate is going down if just being there didn't require spending all day, every day, memorizing lines.

> Now he has to fight much harder for victories

Did he get worse or did the others get better ?

It's hard to gauge, because ratings between different years (pools) can't really be compared. But I'd say he has declined a bit, but no one else has really stepped up in the meantime. Gukesh and some are on their way, but for the last decade Magnus has been far above everyone else, and now that they're closer to him it's not really any new development from existing players.

> but he used to be at a level where no-one could even scratch him.

As another factor could be that he is not doing the same quantity of prep anymore.

As an amateur player (~2000 ish), classical is where it's at. I love the feeling of deep focus that is so hard to find in the rest of life these days but that I can still get into in a serious, slow over the board game.

The problems of the top players are not those of amateurs.

Chess was far more fun 20+ years ago. Before everyone had a supercomputer-powered chess engine in their hands...

While studying openings was a thing, it still felt like there was room for improvisation and tactics. Now playing feels like a chore and more about rote memorization than actually playing a game.

I wonder if it'd be better or worse to scale timelimits? Say once ratings are over 1500, the lowest ranked players rating is used to calculate the time-limits of the game. A player at or below 1500 still has the same times (to let us amateurs consider a bit) but scale so that once players approach 3000 in ranking the speed basically becomes rapid or blitz.

If even pros make mistakes at that level, it should get rid of much draws and overly long games. And perhaps even appeal to a wider audience in our sped up society.

Isn't speed chess already a thing? Is this a different idea?

Time isn't that much of a handicap. High-level players just have much better pattern recognition and intuition. It's the same reason they adapt faster to weird positions in Fischer Random than lower-rated classical players.

Even with gaps of 200 points the thinking and play speed difference is acute at high levels, for example in Magnus' playful "too weak, too slow" casual blitz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY27lgnPKWI

Chess960/Freestyle Chess is where it's at for me. There, the game feels fresh, it's about creativity and clever positional play. Sometimes when playing classical, it feels like a contest of who can memorize better, without room for creativity or passion. I'm not a particularly good classical player, but the mountain of grinding to get good just seems insurmountable to me.

960 has certainly gained some momentum and I very much hope to see Magnus continue to push it forward -- it's such a natural evolution of chess in the age of engines. Perhaps all it needs to take off is a world champion backing it who's less insane than Fischer!

The grind at the top is still a grind--in fact, it is the worst grind. To top that off, Magnus is in his mid-30s now.

Anyone doing anything at the level of "Elite in the World" is putting in an amount of effort that borders on mania that would be classified as mental illness.

Old news tbh. Why do you think the current classical champion isn't Magnus?

He's long said he's bored with it; the recent Gukesh slam-the-board viral moment has just resurfaced his frustration with it.

Didnt slam the board from what I saw, just the table, like in a cop show. And then nearly immediately stuck his hand out to shake in congratulation.

Yeah I didn't see it as negative either, passion and apology, it was actually a memorable moment overall including Gukesh reaction.

Forget Chess960, abandon castling, abandon symmetry, embrace Transcendental Chess! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_chess

Interesting, but it's too bad the setup is not equal and you need to play twice to make it fair. I prefer Sumochess.

Just my two cents: a very interesting website for playing chess variants — https://greenchess.net/ . It has a simple, efficient, and uncluttered interface with no ads and many variants available. Unfortunately, the number of active players is a bit low.

The core problem is, that chess is essentially a solved game now.

There is no human that can outplay the top chess algorithms. This commodization of top skill, means everyone can afford to play against, and learn from, an entity that is above human skill.

Once this point is achieved, the skill focus dramatically shifts: The better player is the one who can hold and query more data learned from the above-human-skill entity in his human brain. Which, don't get me wrong, is still a beyond-impressive skill at the level of top players, but its not what people really enjoy or mean when they talk about "Chess".

In a very general way, this is a problem that afflicts not just Chess, but all solves games where players have complete information about the game state.

I think this is a wrong take. Sure, opening preparation is important, especially in matches (like the World Championship), but once you're out of prep it's not "just a memory game". Magnus is known for squeezing victories out of dead equal end game positions, not because of memory (they're all new positions) but because of intuition and accuracy.

I would just like to appreciate how good of a picture that is, where Magnus is slamming the desk, Gukesh is looking at him, and the chess pieces are suspended in mid air. You couldn't have staged that picture any better. I'm not sure what annual photo contests there are (sports? history?), but this picture should win an award.

Maybe it's a frame of a video?

Can't blame him. Getting older, the search space being so much clearer than before, razor thin margins, the concentration, the time spent before and during.

I think he plays a bit of poker too, maybe he can shine in that space too.

Unfortunately modern online hold'em is just as robotic and boring as chess.

Live Omaha was fun, but died off post-Covid where I live...

I could imagine people are into chess for the challenge of it, and if you make it to the very top, the challenge goes away as there are no peers to play with.

All the pieces are strangely hovering in the second picture. I thought it might be an AI generated image or something. Nope, Carlsen punched the table: https://x.com/NorwayChess/status/1929257237190443042

This is the main reason I don't like games or sports. It's fun when everyone is new to the game, but the moment you get people practising and studying outside of the game it becomes work. Some people just have a higher threshold for this than others, it seems.

Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of chess, and I don't know much about the different rules or playstyles. However, I’ve come across some of Magnus’s videos before. I admire his confidence in his abilities, but I know some people don’t like him, thinking he has a high ego and can come off as cocky at times. While many may be happy to see his recent loss to Rukesh, there’s no denying he’s been the best for so long. Maybe he hasn’t found someone who excites him in classical chess, someone at his level.

After all, being unbeatable can be a lonely place.

Try chessboxing maybe :-P

Blitz chess is still fun.

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