advertisement


Magnus Resigns Move 1!

I think I’d like to kind of follow it from a distance. I’m not a good player, in fact haven’t played for decades.

The recaps are well worth a try as the strategy is explained and you get a much greater insight into the game even for non-experts players like us. I started watching them by accident a few years back despite not having played chess since school and found them oddly addictive.

Although it can be a massive time sink as it's such a *huge* subject.
 
I think Gotham is the best at explaining the “why” of moves. Eric (linked above) is good fun.

Also enjoy John Bartholemew.
 
A good start for those wanting to get into recaps -- Hans' demolition of Levon.

 
Why does anyone play chess any more? It's a solved problem.
Same reason they watch football. That's another solved problem. Kick the ball in the opponents' goal more often in the time allowed than they do, you win. I can kick a ball just like any other able bodied person.
 
Same reason they watch football. That's another solved problem. Kick the ball in the opponents' goal more often in the time allowed than they do, you win. I can kick a ball just like any other able bodied person.
I don't believe anyone has developed an algorithm for winning at football.
 
I don't believe anyone has developed an algorithm for winning at football.

Chess is far from a solved game and some of the top engines literally don't even have an algorithm. It's more correct to say that chess engines are just playing at a level that is so high that a human could in practical terms never match them.

In chess there is also a distinction between strategy and tactics (broadly positional play vs calculating moves) and humans are better at the former and computers are much better at the latter. Indeed so much better at the latter that their tactical advantage outweighs the human strategy advantage and they are much stronger players.

Also note if you want to decide which engine is the better you need to play something like "best of 1000" because the games even algorithm based engines like Stockfish are to some extent non-deterministic. Indeed there is a long series of matches between Stockfish (the top procedural engine) and Alpha Zero (the top neural net engine) where the title for best engine has gone back and forth over the last few years.

Here's Levy with some recaps of the first Alpah Zero vs Stockfish games:


Chess as a human game has also got a lot better and more exciting because of engines. E.g. engines have taught us that material advantage (how many and which type of pieces you have compared to your opponent) is not quite the be all and end all of the game and so human players are now much more willing to play more adventurously than before in pursuit of wins over draws.

PS Football does have an algorithm -- just make sure the person or nation that buys your team is richer than your opponents.
 
Fabi talking about cheating in this podcast. Fascinating stuff. Starts about 30 mins in.

 
YouTube rewards click baity titles and Levy has a nice like in poking fun at this.
Ah, fair play then.

Maybe Tony L should ask us to make pfm threads sound more exciting so the site gets some more 'passing trade': 'Expensive cables changed my life!', 'Barely legal circuit boards uncovered!', 'Amp designer accidentally invents time machine!'
 
I’m not sure it helps him. Surely he has to provide evidence of cheating for the accusation to stand? What was the mechanism?
 
There is not going to a smoking gun and he and other Niemann sceptics are basically relying on statistics and game analysis. There has been a lot of analysis of Niemann games most recently by Yosha here :


Fabi went through a bunch of these games on the latest episode of his podcast as well (although it's quite technical analysis).

What is interesting now though is what Hans is going to do? If he says nothing he allows the widespread suspicion to stand and looks guilty. If he has nothing to hide then he will give Magnus a legal waiver and we will see more details on why people are suspicious.
 
There is not going to a smoking gun and he and other Niemann sceptics are basically relying on statistics and game analysis. There has been a lot of analysis of Niemann games most recently by Yosha here :


Fabi went through a bunch of these games on the latest episode of his podcast as well (although it's quite technical analysis).

What is interesting now though is what Hans is going to do? If he says nothing he allows the widespread suspicion to stand and looks guilty. If he has nothing to hide then he will give Magnus a legal waiver and we will see more details on why people are suspicious.

Nice video. I wonder how common is a 100% score in the "let's check" analysis that was shown here. If it is very rare then that is quite a strong evidence for Hans cheating.

(Edit: Just saw the related discussion, where more info and questioning of the mathematics in the clip are raised)
 
Nice video. I wonder how common is a 100% score in the "let's check" analysis that was shown here. If it is very rare then that is quite a strong evidence for Hans cheating.

The more I read about it the more I feel it's impossible to know and the whole thing just feels like some weird gaslighting experiment! I have to go and watch something with Fabi in to have his ASMR voice calm me down :)

Latest c-squared podcast has Fabi going through some of these games with Chessbase. He's far more circumspect but my gut feel is still a very raised eyebrow.

 


advertisement


Back
Top