I’ve been watching the Svidler/Grischuk commentary, and some of Eric Hanson’s. All their commentary is done without engines, except for occasional times where Svidler briefly checks an engine during breaks in the broadcast. I much prefer this to commentary where the engine is running the whole time.
And if you prefer decisive games to all these draws, the women’s world championship is also currently running. It’s a knockout tournament rather than a long match. The final match (only 4 classical games) is ongoing, and today Wenjun Ju won with black in the last game to force tiebreaks.
I joke, but I do think people may be misled by all the draws into thinking that the games are uninteresting or that the players aren’t showing fighting spirit. It seems more that the small mistakes made by the players are somehow lining up to cancel each other out. With the same level of play but with the mistakes grouped differently, there could easily be a 2-2 score or something like that. Today’s game could have been won by either player.
In fact either of these players could probably take today’s position around move 20 and be likely to win with either color against “normal” grandmasters.
Of course, mate in n from a tablebase doesn’t mean the same thing as it does in a live game context. It takes ginormous amounts of time and computing power to find that from a tablebase… but you make it worthwhile to spend that much compute by solving all of the positions in your search space simultaneously.
Game 11 drawn today. This one really was a bit of a non-game. Fabiano was well prepared with black and the game was a dead drawn opposite-colour bishops position quite quickly.
So one game for all the marbles on Monday, with Caruana playing white. He’s probably an underdog in the rapid tiebreaker, so he’s got incentive to go all out in the last classical game. He’s been getting advantages with his white openings in the last couple games.
The perfect match is complete! The twelfth game was drawn today, so the tiebreaks will be on Wednesday.
The draw today was unfortunate. Magnus offered a draw in a very complicated position where he’s probably better, and he was far ahead on the clock as well. Disappointing, since all the other draws were at least played out to a clear conclusion. He must really rate his own chances in the rapid games highly, since he must have been a clear favorite today, especially with the time advantage he had.
I was following the last half hour or so of the game and it was quite a shock when the draw was offered. Kramnik was on one of the feeds I was watching and he seemed quite livid at Magnus for offering the draw in these circumstances and I think with good reason. Magnus has a well-deserved reputation as a fighter who can extract blood out of stone in seemingly drawn positions but this game will certainly dent that reputation.
Tweet from Garry Kasparov: “In light of this shocking draw offer from Magnus in a superior position with more time, I reconsider my evaluation of him being the favorite in rapids. Tiebreaks require tremendous nerves and he seems to be losing his.”
Aside: The one game of Kasparov’s I watched live, he won by offering a draw (albeit in much different circumstances): It was the first bout against Deep Blue, and he had the clock hanging over him. But the computer wasn’t programmed to make decisions on draws; that was left to the human IBM team. And Kasparov, master of psychology that he is, knew that the humans would decline the draw, but that they’d take a long time to come to that decision, thus equalizing the time pressure.
For the moment, throw out the rulebook on how this tournament is structured. The question I have, regardless of who wins, is whether you can call legitimately be called the World Champion of Chess having never won a single game against your opponent and your opponent never losing a single game to you.
Now, putting the rulebook back in place, I tend to believe that this was a strategic move by Magnus and not just because he’s heavily favored in blitz formats. Magnus hasn’t been a fan of how the WCC tournament is structured. Yes, he did this as strategic way to win. But I think he also did this as a way to voice his objection and enact changes in future tournaments. Speed chess to break ties on classical chess matches is a very poor way of doing things. Imagine there was a tie at the Boston Marathon and the way to settle that tiebreak was a best of 3 100-yard dash. That would be insane, wouldn’t it? So is this.
What would be a better way to break a tie?
Presumably, just keep playing regular chess games until someone wins.
Certainly more classical games would be a preferable tiebreaker, but that’s probably impractical. I’d definitely like a longer match in the first place, and I think Magnus has given that opinion as well. Rapid games are a decent tiebreaker, and definitely preferable to the old draw odds to the champion. I kind of like the idea of playing the tiebreaker games at the start of the match rather than the end. Certainly there wouldn’t have been an agreed draw at that point today if somebody knew it meant losing the match.
This is the eighth match of this format (since Kramnik-Topalov), and the fourth to go to tiebreaks*. That’s often enough that I think the classical part of the match should be longer if at all possible.
- Kramnik-Topalov was a special case, with the forfeiture of game 5, but Anand-Topalov sort of compensates for it as Topalov overpressed specifically to avoid the rapids and lost. I thought Caruana was heading the same way today - even his unusual pawn moves on the kingside reminded me of what Topalov did.
Yeah I like the idea of having the tie-break before the classical games. It would not only put pressure on the loser to push for a win, but would also be a fun appetizer before the main event. Other than that, 12 games is too short. 24 used to to be the standard and if that isn’t practical, at least have 16.
This reminds me of suggestions to improve important soccer tournaments by having penalty shootouts take place *before *extra time is played rather than afterward like it is now. I’ve always felt that’d be better for soccer and I think it would be better for chess to do it that way too. Hopefully we will see these changes in the not-to-distant future.
This. Here’s how I’d do it:
- Go back to the old 24-game format from 1972 and earlier.
- Under that format, a 12-12 match went to the defending champ.
I’d change (2) as follows:
2’) A 12-12 match goes to the defending champ, as long as not all the games have been draws. If the first 24 games have all been draws, they keep playing until someone wins a game.
This match sort of reminds me of Rocky.
On one side is the Heavyweight Champion (Carlsen). He’s cocky. Without a doubt the best in the world. But he’s not at his peak. His best fighting days were from a few years ago.
On the other side is the Italian Stallion (Caruana). He’s trained his ass off to get to this tournament and he did it. He went the distance. All 12 rounds against the champ and no one got knocked out.
In Rocky it came to the Judge’s call. In chess it’s going to come down to the rapid portion. But if Magnus wins, I think he’ll end up where Apollo was at the start of Rocky II: Pissed off at letter after letter declaring his opponent the real victor of the match.
I’m not sure who Adrian is in this analogy. Anish Giri?
In mine opinion, the addition of clocks to chess was a mistake. I understand the practicalities for them, but it clutters the purity of the game. It’s like putting a pace count on a foot race and disqualifying any runner who takes more than a particular number of steps.
One problem with that: It’s hypothesized that, with perfect play on both sides, chess is always drawn. If the state of chess play were ever to get to the point of perfect play, then you’d never be able to conclude a match under that rule. Granted, this is mostly just a philosophical matter for the human game, but computers just might be approaching that level (we’re nowhere near being able to prove that a computer plays perfectly, but it just might be good enough that that’s the effect, anyway).
My prediction that the final game would be a barn burner in an effort to produce a positive result proved true, but Carlsen shocked everyone by offering a draw in an obviously superior position. It shows the confidence he has in winning the speed portion of the match.
I researched it, and the calculated statistical probability of Carlsen defeating Caruana in the speed portion is something like 80% to 20%. He obviously feels that way himself.