In the end, Carlsen is the man who knows the best how to win in chess. Regardless of all critics.
He played the 12th game safe knowing he's a huge favourite in rapid and blitz. Like Kasparov and Grischuk pointed out today, every other chess player gets worse playing rapid/blitz but Carlsen is the only one who actually improves.
Under these conditions it's more than sensible to move into the terrain where you have an advantage, if thinking strategically.
I would argue the problem is that most of the fans have become conditioned to expect entertainment, drama and bold moves in sports like we see in overly dramatic movies.
But historically, if you consider generals or even have a look into Sun Tzu's art of war, the strategists and generals that were most regarded were the ones who were able to win in a manner that it seemed easy, unimpressive, without drama or heavy losses or huge risks involved.
That's what a great strategy is about taking battle where the outcome is decided beforehand. And that's what Carlsen did.
The downside is it cost him €50k as the money distribution goes to 550/450 in tiebreak from 600/400 if decided in classical.
So he exchanged a potential loss of €200k at a favourable odds for a sure loss of €50k with potential loss of €150k at a much better odds. Now here's where we could question his decision speculating what the actual odds were, but who knows if he cares about the money.
I can't argue with your first premise. Your following points, however, are less convincing.
"Like Kasparov and Grischuk pointed out today, every other chess player gets worse playing rapid/blitz but Carlsen is the only one who actually improves."
Even if Kasparov and Grischuk said this today (citation please?), it doesn't make it true. There are many players who get better playing rapid and blitz. Look at the trajectory of the Bay Area's own GM Daniel Naroditsky. Nakamura.
I suspect most of the blitz haters are people who simply haven't spent enough time to get good at it.
"Regardless of all critics."
To your main point, the critics weren't saying that Carlsen isn't the best. They were complaining because he is not acting with respect to the purity and beauty of the game. There is simply an aesthetic ugliness to offering a draw with such a crushing time advantage in a better position.
I'm not arguing that this may not have been good strategy, lose the battle, win the war, etc etc.
What I'm saying is that there is a war to be won that is different than a 1 or 0 point. It's the battle for hearts and minds, which is won not just through victory but through integrity and courage. You win hearts by showing hearts.
Magnus didn't win hearts with his mercilessly pragmatic approach to winning the world championship title. I still respect him as the rightful owner of the title of best chess player in the world.
But if we're going to employ the "good by association" logical fallacy with whatever Kasparov and Grischuk may have said today, why not actually just quote the champion Magnus himself?
In the press conference, he came out and told everyone that Fabiano earned the right to share the crown of world's best player in classical chess with him.
Who am I, who are you, who are any of us to disagree with that?
I also enjoyed the final a lot. But the fact remains that the beauty and spectacle 2018 World Championships of the world's most beautiful mind game was marred by a decidedly un-beautiful game in round 12.
You make a good point, but I don't think he's playing for hearts. They play for money and recognition in the first place. Every sportsman who experienced a failure (and we all have) knows very well that while you're applauded at the top the moment you lose many, including your fans will suddenly rejoice ... sometimes you even get some "kicks while on the ground."
About the Grischuk and Kasparov quote, it turns out I did misrepresent ... Grischuk said that Carlsen's URS score gap for rapid and blitz "should" be negative in a live stream on chess24 and Kasparov tweeted a similar thing ... where I misrepresented is that Kasparov didn't say a word "improve" but see "his ratio is smallest ever"
To quote Carlsen himself "Some people think that if their opponent plays a beautiful game, it’s OK to lose. I don’t. You have to be merciless."
It's just the way he is and I not only don't blame him for it I personally respect it.
A good example is boxing. You have someone like Mayweather who is 50:0 a historical record. Yet he's often hated by fans because his boxing isn't exciting. It's also true that most fans would rejoice if he lost ... so why take risks? Many purists enjoy his style including myself.
In the end prize-fighting is about winning. It's their living. If Carlsen loses but plays a beautiful game none of the fans will pay for his livelihood - I am confident in stating this.
I can't argue with your logic here. We do live in a world where people say winning isn't everything. But actually, it is. It's not just happening in chess. This is the same "win at all costs" mentality that gave us the wonders of "growth hacking" i.e. unethical behavior that becomes glorified in Silicon Valley, because it works.
I don't mean to get all Ghandi-like on you, but I do want to ask you sincerely - what kind of world do you want to create? Do you want to help turn Silicon Valley into a culture that values class and heart, not just winning? I certainly do. Nothing wrong with winning, but I gotta believe that winning and sportsmanship/heart aren't mutually exclusive, even in the age of Facebook.
If you feel the same way, then ask yourself what kind of culture you are promoting in your comments. The change doesn't start with the powers that be all of a sudden deciding to pay people for integrity. The guys at the top are all too rich and powerful to advocate such blasphemy. The only way this changes is when the masses start telling each other that things should be different and can be different.
Which starts with holding people accountable when they let us down. Including the legends like Magnus Carlsen, who I consider to be a hero, along with the other chess players who could be worthy of the GOAT moniker. (Including, now, Fabiano. Even more so Fabi if he can get himself into shape playing blitz.)
Not at all, I don't argue for "winning at all costs" not in sports. But I do argue for winning in a fair game. And Carlsen won a fair game.
Chess is a harmless game so boxing would be a better example. Imagine a boxer that uses dirty tactics or uses PEDs ... that's "winning at all costs." But a boxer that has an elusive style that's considered boring by fans because fans like a lot of action ... I applaud this person if the style is superior in getting results.
You can see my point is different fans appreciate different aspects of the game. I loved the way Carlsen took it to rapid. You didn't and I can understand why.
In boxing I see the beauty in elusive tactical style of Mayweather, other want to see a slugfest. Because boxing places your health at risk I look down on that to be honest and I value a victory with minimum risk.
I sympathise with your good intentions but you misrepresented my words.
I never argued for "winning at all cost." I believe ability to win, regardless of how unimpressive (as long as it is ethical) is a virtue.
I do not live in Bay Area nor the US, I wish you all well though :)
If you want to encourage more exciting games then you need to reward those who play them. E.g. have judges subjectively award points like it's done in sports like gymnastics.
> If you want to encourage more exciting games then you need to reward those who play them
And that seems to be exactly what is happening by respecting those who do / looking down on those who don't. Not every reward has to be expressed by the in-game scoring system.
"The legendary former champion Garry Kasparov suggested the draw offer was a sign that Carlsen was losing his nerve, and on Twitter he proclaimed Caruana the favorite in the tiebreakers. “They’re entitled to their stupid opinions,” Carlsen said with a smile of his critics after his victory."
Game 12 was disappointing from a fan perspective, but I think it's important to recognize the difficulty for anyone to change their mindset from "a draw is a win" to "I will win" without putting themselves at great risk.
I'm sure if Magnus had the benefit of the computer valuation he would have made more striking moves, but his reasons for taking safer approach (a4, e4) makes sense especially considering how evenly Caruana fought back in previous winning positions, and his objective going in.
At the point he offered the draw, even the computer suggested it was fairly even. The shocking part for me was that he also had a huge advantage in time, but I suppose he did not have the right mindset to switch gears.
I think if you want the championship to be more about "heart/courage" (and less about cold calculation) they just need shorter time controls. That was my one takeaway. Maybe something in-between rapid and classical. If you want to see robots push marginal advantages in drawish positions, just set up an AI tournament. Leave the humans to demonstrate heart, courage, and intuition!
The fact is that all of the major coverage of this event is going to inevitably mention game 12 as much as the final result.
Perhaps "marred" is a bit too strong. Could we at least agree on "besmirched"?
Here's the first paragraph from LiChess coverage:
'It is not often that the chess world unites to criticise Magnus Carlsen, but on Monday evening in London the World Champion had few supporters after his decision to squander a highly favourable position and offer a draw to his challenger Fabiano Caruana as soon as legally permissible in the final classical game of the world title match in London.
“Cowardly” said Carlsen’s compatriot and former coach Simen Agdestein. “Lazy” was Kramnik’s description of Carlsen’s play leading up to the draw offer. “I think he knows he is not playing the best moves,” the former World Champion added. “Shocking” said Kasparov, declaring that because he seemed to be losing his nerve, Carlsen was no longer his favourite to win the tiebreakers.'
People who make their livelihood on the back of a sport don't really have any incentive to not be overly dramatic during the big game. Any promoter will want people's eyes on the game. Controversy does that. Carlson's draw offer did that, and so did all the criticism of it.
Not that I'm being cynical about it... nobody wants to be a champion that nobody remembers. Especially not in an age where computers consistently outplay humans.
A lot of people's ideas of what purism is in sport depend on whether the act in question helps them to win, or to lose, and whether they are just spectating, and whether they are fans of the person committing the act.
This is a general truth in sport, not just Chess. See also bike racing, baseball, PUBG.
People will tend towards doing what it takes to win. If you don't like those tactics, change the rules.
Carlsen was in a better position in both time and pieces on the board (he had a higher chance of winning). However, he offered a draw to cause all 12 games of classical as a draw.
The point that others here are making is that Carlsen is objectively better at blitz chess, which is what the tiebreakers are formatted in.
Re. the financial calculus. His sponsorship and modelling income is not known precisely but I've seen it estimated at $2 million per year. Losing the title puts all that at risk. A 50k penalty to prizemoney is peanuts.
It's very easy to be always right if you say a thing and the opposite. Kasparov said after the 12th game: "I reconsider my evaluation of him[Carlsen] being the favorite in rapids. Tiebreaks require tremendous nerves and he seems to be losing his."
> So he exchanged a potential loss of €200k at a favourable odds for a sure loss of €50k with potential loss of €150k at a much better odds. Now here's where we could question his decision speculating what the actual odds were, but who knows if he cares about the money.
You’re ignoring the fact that winning also guarantees him a spot in next year’s final, so that would heavily tip this analysis towards playing it safe.
Although I don’t believe Magnus is trying to win this for the money, but that’s besides the point.
Also, the draw guaranteed he held his #1 ranking until the early part of next year at least. And Carlsen has stated in the past that he values the #1 ranking more than the world chess champion title.
I agree he played all the games safe, I believe he said (or implied it) himself in one of the press conferences. I also agree that they should play the classical until somebody wins. As Carlsen said in the post final press conference Caruana has the same right to claim he's the best in the world in classical format.
>>I would argue the problem is that most of the fans have become conditioned to expect entertainment, drama and bold moves in sports like we see in overly dramatic movies.
Sports is entertainment, social interaction, emotions etc. Other wise there is no point in wasting hours and hours of one's life other people's career.
Also likability of a person in sport decreases when you take away these things.
Kasparov did not say Carlsen improves w shorter time formats. He said that the degredation of his play at faster times was smaller than everyone else. This is still impressive, but definitely not an improvement.
Grischuk pointed out that according to universal rating system that measures the gap for each category like rapid or blitz and apparently Carlsen is the only one who sometimes gets a negative number on blitz/rapid. Which is most interesting.•
But I agree even so relative to Caruana, whose gaps are much higher. He must have been aware of this.
This is quite funny thread. I often marvel at folks dissecting sport game outcome for hours retrospectively as if everything was perfectly explainable only after outcome was seen. We don't see this in HN threads much - well, except for chess games :).
In reality, pro games have such strong contenders that each have very thin edge, if at all, and the outcome is usually just same as throwing dice.
Serral for example is the current best StarCraft 2 player in the world. They operate in tournaments where X players face off usually starting with 16+ players doing single elimination. He won 4 regional, and 2 international tournaments in a row. The odds of him pulling that off if the odds of each win where close to 50/50 would be ~1/(2^30) aka 1 billion to 1. Instead, he was heavily favored in most of these match ups.
I think the previous poster was referring to sportsball/handegg type physical team sports, where there are a lot more changing variables (team composition, physical condition, stadium, weather, ...) than in chess or StarCraft.
In the US, the major team sports are not at all "very thin edge". In fact, lack of parity is a real issue facing several leagues.
Between "tanking" (teams that are deliberately bad in order to get better draft picks), massive budget differences (it's not unusual to see large-market teams with payrolls more than double those of small-market teams), and structural issues in the games themselves, parity can be very very difficult to achieve. 538 attempts to use chess-style Elo ratings to track the major sports, and currently they have:
* ~200-point difference between best and worst major-league baseball team
* ~400-point difference between best and worst NFL football team
* ~400-point difference between best and worst NBA basketball team
I was talking about teams in final games in pro sport. In these scenarios, competitors are very well matched. If outcome was predictable with very high degree of confidence in these games then people wouldn’t care much and all the reasoning chains and justifications would be offered before the games.
The top contenders in many sports got there, at least in part, by studying the tactics and strategies and outcomes of the past. Even a casual participant can learn and improve from unpacking classic games from history. This is true of every contest of ability, from chess to soccer. It is not a fruitless exercise.
However I agree that HN is not the most efficient venue for chess strategy analysis
In other sports we have rules against playing to draw/stall (e.g. see delay of game in hockey). Likewise in chess (or this and a number of other tournaments anyways), we have rules against agreeing to draw within the first 30 moves to attempt to discourage this sort of behavior.
Not only did Carlsen not play to win the game, he didn't even play to win the championship. Instead he chose to draw, explicitly deciding to split the prize with his opponent.
He made a sacrifice and "conceded" one game to a draw in order to increase his chances of winning the championship via his superior rapid play. He lost the battle to win the war. That is complely playing to win.
He did not fully "win" the championship. Sure, they had to give the title to somebody, so it's him, but splitting half of the prize is not a complete win.
Even if he had fully won, I don't view it as a sportsmanlike strategy to give up a game to put yourself in an advantageous position. That's why we have a rule against agreeing to a draw to early. That's why in hockey stopping trying to score and just passing the puck in circles at center is against the rules (delay of game) - even when it's the best way to win.
The goal of most title holders is to increase their odds at retaining the title, in whatever way match rules allow. This goal made for some horrible championships generations ago under Soviet rules.
I agree the rules should be "biased" toward rewarding maximum skill, not just maximizing winning odds. But as Caruana said “We work with the match that we have... If the powers that be want to change it, then we’ll work with something else.”
Are you also against sacrificing a piece in a game to gain an advantage? How is this different? He played a sacrifice in the meta game to gain an advantage.
I think you misunderstand how the prize money is allocated. They both got 400k for competing, and the winner would take 200k. Since they went to tiebreaks the winner only got 150k while the loser gets 50k. So in this sense Magnus didn’t really split much of the prize with Caruana.
They both get paid 400k for competing. That's payment, and maybe a prize for reaching the championship, but not a prize for the winner of the championship, so I ignore it.
The winner gets 200k in prize money. In the case of a tie the winner gets 150k, the loser gets 50k. That is to say the winner gets 100k, and they split 100k, which is half the prize, which is what I said.
In any case, Carlsen said he wasn't aware of the prize money difference after reaching tie breakers, so it probably didn't factor into his decision making.
> In the case of a tie the winner gets 150k, the loser gets 50k.
this literally makes no sense. In a tie, there is no winner and no loser. There was a winner and loser in this case, so there was no tie. I don't know why you keep insisting there was.
Huh, that's why that comment is attracting downvotes...
That has to be the least charitable reading ever. Do you seriously need me to spell out "In the case of a tie after the 12 games under the regular time constraints" while defending my math?
Chess is a game that can be played perfectly. There is no perfect Hockey game. If you get two super computers to play chess against one another they will draw a majority of the time, I think it is a testament to the skill of both players that they drew 12 games in a row.
That's a conjecture. Nothing more. Nobody knows whether it is true! It is possible that a perfect player playing White may make you lose every time. It's even possible (though highly doubtful) that this holds for Black instead.
You're right that in theory nobody has proven whether chess is won, lost, or drawn with perfect play. But all available evidence, as well as my personal intuition (and that of almost all top players), screams that it's drawn.
He played the 12th game safe knowing he's a huge favourite in rapid and blitz. Like Kasparov and Grischuk pointed out today, every other chess player gets worse playing rapid/blitz but Carlsen is the only one who actually improves.
Under these conditions it's more than sensible to move into the terrain where you have an advantage, if thinking strategically.
I would argue the problem is that most of the fans have become conditioned to expect entertainment, drama and bold moves in sports like we see in overly dramatic movies.
But historically, if you consider generals or even have a look into Sun Tzu's art of war, the strategists and generals that were most regarded were the ones who were able to win in a manner that it seemed easy, unimpressive, without drama or heavy losses or huge risks involved.
That's what a great strategy is about taking battle where the outcome is decided beforehand. And that's what Carlsen did.
The downside is it cost him €50k as the money distribution goes to 550/450 in tiebreak from 600/400 if decided in classical.
So he exchanged a potential loss of €200k at a favourable odds for a sure loss of €50k with potential loss of €150k at a much better odds. Now here's where we could question his decision speculating what the actual odds were, but who knows if he cares about the money.
I enjoyed this final a lot.