
Sinquefield Cup: One of the most amazing feats in chess history - edw519
http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/09/sinquefield_cup_one_of_the_most_amazing_feats_in_chess_history_just_happened.single.html
======
anigbrowl
Jeepers, talk about burying the lede until the _last goddam paragraph_.

tl;dr '[Fabiano] Caruana did show up, drawing his final two games to win the
tournament (and its $100,000 top prize) with a record of 7-0-3, getting 8.5
points out of a possible 10. His victory at the Sinquefield Cup earned Caruana
the _highest tournament performance rating of all time,_ crushing even
Karpov’s legendary result at Linares. Earth’s finest chess players couldn’t
manage to pin Caruana with a single loss.'

~~~
MaysonL
Fabiano's performance rating was 3098. Karpov's Linares was 2985. Carlsen's
top rating (not single tournament performance) was 2882, the highest yet
recorded.

Fabiano's performance rating was more than 200 Elo points higher than the top-
rated player. Karpov's 1997 performance was less than 200 points better than
the then top-rated.

~~~
slm_HN
One thing the raw numbers don't take into account is ratings inflation. Look
at Karpov for example. In 1979 he was the only player in the world rated above
2700. Now there are almost 50 players rated above 2700. So it's much easier to
have a high performance rating now. For most of chess history it was simply
impossible to have a performance rating of 3098.

The article doesn't take into account ratings inflation because it's more
interesting to present your article about the best performance in the
strongest tournament ever rather than a very, very good performance in a very
strong event.

------
pachydermic
Kingscrusher is a user on YouTube who has a ton of great chess videos. He
covered the Sinquefield quite a lot - here's the first encounter between
Carlsen and Caruana:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfgRWM6IfP0&list=UUDUDDmslyp...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfgRWM6IfP0&list=UUDUDDmslypVXYoUsZafHSUQ)

And all of his videos:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/kingscrusher/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/kingscrusher/videos)

I know they're pretty long (often 45 mins or more), but if you're a big chess
fan they're pretty awesome.

The level that these super GMs play at is astounding.

~~~
acak
Just want to mention another great publisher of Chess analysis on Youtube -
Daniel King.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/PowerPlayChess/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/PowerPlayChess/videos)

~~~
legohead
and yet another, Jerry from ChessNetwork

[https://www.youtube.com/user/ChessNetwork](https://www.youtube.com/user/ChessNetwork)

I stumbled across one of his videos, not being much of a chess person, and
have watched probably a hundred since and love chess now. he's a US Master.

~~~
alexjeffrey
it should also be mentioned that Jerry's commentary is _hilarious_ - he's
basically the SeaNanners of chess.

------
aardshark
_But while poker is, at heart, a simple game, easy enough to grok that you can
strategize along with Phil Ivey when he plays on TV, a grandmaster-level chess
match is totally bewildering._

\---

 _Just as my brain is hopelessly puny next to Magnus Carlsen’s, so is
Carlsen’s compared to that of a modern chess-playing machine._

I don't like these rhetorical techniques that debase one thing to show how
great another thing is. There's a certain dishonesty in them, as if the author
were qualified to make these observations.

~~~
grifpete
Maybe. But he's right.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
For certain values of 'right'. The machine doesn't have a brain, making the
metaphor strained at best.

~~~
gamegoblin
Hardly. First, it's not really a metaphor, more of an analogy; it could be
reworded as:

My brain is to Carlsen's as Carlsen's is to the best computer's.

It's pretty obvious he isn't talking about his brain qua a biological organ.
He's referring specifically to chess skills.

In that regard, the best computer chess engine in the world absolutely
dominates the best humans. Even with a pawn or two removed as handicap, the
best humans struggle to get draws.

There was a recent match played between the world #5 human (Nakamura) and the
world #1 computer (Stockfish). Even when Stockfish played black, used a
handicap of removing the b-pawn before beginning, and didn't use any opening
books, Nakamura was still beaten.

The age of Human vs. Computer competition ended pretty conclusively in the mid
2000s, and the gulf has just widened.

------
rafaelfers
This tournament was amazing! I was lucky because I decided to analyse the
tournament through twitter, so every day I was capturing tweets from #sinqcup
hastag and sending to elasticsearch + kibana and monitoring the tweets in real
time. If anyone is interested I can provide the tweets in json raw for
sentiment analyse.

------
nl
It would be interesting if Caruana keeps improving. The one thing Carlsen is
missing is an opponent who is close to his level. Kasparov's reputation was
made by his battles with Karpov.

~~~
jc123
Agree and I think if Caruana has the passion to be the best, he will be better
than Carlsen.

"Caruana is earning a reputation as the most prepared player of his era—a man
who studies everything and forgets nothing."

"If there’s a rap on Carlsen, it’s that he’s the anti-Caruana: He doesn’t
prepare as diligently as he could."

"It’s as though he [Carlsen] serves underhand to just get the point started
because he knows he can beat you in the rally. But Caruana has the booming
serve."

Caruana has been in the top 10 for 2.5 years though [1], and hopefully he can
breakthrough and firmly be someone who can give Carlsen a challenge. As a data
point [2], it took Kasparov 2 years to get in the top 10, another 2 years to
become #2, and another 2 years to become the best.

[1]
[http://ratings.fide.com/top_files.phtml?id=2020009](http://ratings.fide.com/top_files.phtml?id=2020009)
[2]
[http://www.olimpbase.org/Elo/player/Kasparov,%20Garry.html](http://www.olimpbase.org/Elo/player/Kasparov,%20Garry.html)

~~~
nl
Carlsen hasn't had to prepare. It might be that a real challenger is what we
(and he) need to find out just good he can be.

------
delecti
I say this as someone with fairly little experience with chess, and even less
exposure to competitive chess.

This article did a poor job at quickly explaining enough of what feat was
amazing and why to keep me interested.

After skimming the rest of the article (past where it lost my attention), it
seems to jump randomly through both the biographies of the players in the
tournament and of historical players who weren't even present at the
tournament.

Was this amazing because of the high overall ranking of the players? Because
that would strike me as profoundly un-amazing. Pitting the world's best in a
sport against each other is fairly common, is that not the case in chess?

~~~
m_myers
In a tournament featuring six of the top nine chess players, playing a game
heavily geared towards draws, Fabiano Caruana won his first six games and
finished 7-0-3. For perspective, current world champion Magnus Carlsen was
second with a 2-1-7 record; his only loss was to Caruana.

This just doesn't happen. The last time anyone dominated such a high-level
tournament was in 1994 (Anatoly Karpov at Linares).

~~~
delecti
That was an excellent summary, thanks. Even re-skimming the article that point
is thoroughly buried. They barely even mention Caruana until a third of the
way into the article.

~~~
trendoid
He actually won 7 on trot until carlsen drew with him : 'Carlsen, employing an
unexpected Accelerated Dragon defense, fell behind early but then managed to
work a draw. Caruana’s streak of outright victories was over. “It's an amazing
result,” said Carlsen in a post-match interview with Sinquefield Cup
commentators. “Even if he doesn't turn up for the last two games, it would be
one of the greatest of our time.”'

------
thret
"Professional chess requires a level of peak mental alertness that most of us
achieve only in the throes of searing tooth pain."

Whether this is true or not I cannot say, but it is a great line.

~~~
gk1
I've played competitive chess for a short while, and the level of
concentration involved leaves you absolutely exhausted at the end. Imagine
computing hundreds of scenarios, each of them up to a dozen levels deep, for
four hours straight. In other words, you have to get in the flow state and
stay there for a very long time.

------
tomwilde
> Though [Hikaru Nakamura] is ranked seventh in the world, he seems to
> consider himself Magnus Carlsen’s chief rival, as evidenced by this November
> 2013 tweet in which he equates Carlsen with a mythological necromancer.

>> Starting to realize that I am the only person who is going to be able to
stop Sauron in the context of chess history. - @GMHikaru

Mythological necromancer my ass.

~~~
Tloewald
Aside from not being mythological or a necromancer, what problem do you have
with this description?

~~~
ceallen
Describing Sauron as a 'necromancer' is akin to calling Gandalf a 'fireworks
manufacturer'. It's a small part of their skillsets, and not what they've
built their personal brand around.

~~~
Tloewald
I don't think there's really any evidence Sauron was a necromancer at all, so
if you're going to explain these things to me, start with that. Sauron's army
did not contain any undead. The nazgul are called "ringwraiths" but they don't
seem to be any more undead than gollum or bilbo.

Tolkien wrote lord of the rings before the modern (silly) understanding of the
word necromancer had been established, and sauron does't match that
description let alone the more anthropologically accurate version (what today
would be called a medium). Did sauron EVER commune with the dead?

Now Sauron was known as "the Necromancer", but that's a name, not a
description. A serial killer known as "The Butcher" would not be _a_ butcher
(necessarily).

All we really know about Sauron is he was really good at making jewelry which
had weird effects on people, that half his power was invested in "the ring"
(which was also _a_ ring), but his powers never really get displayed. He can
make bad weather and mutate elves into orcs or something. But his awesome bad
weather power was nullified by Gandalf, so that's not terribly impressive. And
Saruman was better at making orcs than Sauron, so again not so impressive.

~~~
duaneb
Actually, The Hobbit (that predates The Lord Of The Rings) firmly establishes
Sauron as a necromancer (before we ever learn his name).

~~~
Tloewald
Read what I said. It establishes him as being referred to as "the
necromancer", but he doesn't actually do anything necromantic. Ever.

There's really no evidence in Lord of the Rings that Sauron is a bad guy at
all. The Nazgul smell bad and their horses are scary looking, but the only
real war crimes we see are committed by the Riders of Rohan and Saruman. So,
it's quite possible that Sauron was simply a victim of bad PR, much as we
might refer to Sarah Palin as "The Moron" whereas she's merely of average
intelligence.

There is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence against Sauron in
Silmarillion. (E.g. the dwarf kings all meeting sticky ends, and of course the
human kings becoming Nazgul -- but maybe that was because they wanted
immortality and thought he was awesome. Which he kind of was. It's not like he
went around telling people that dying of old age was a "gift".) But again, no
necromancy that I can recall. (It's been a long time, and Silmarillion is
mostly very, very boring.)

------
arh68
Wow. I met Fabiano in an elevator once. I watched a couple of his games, too.
Unfortunately he was so far above my level I struggled to comprehend what made
his game work. At a certain point it just looks devoid of even the slightest
mistakes. That was a long time ago.

That Carlsen-Caruana game, Round 3.1, is very interesting. After _15 Bxf7+_ ,
for sure! Most players don't handle kingside pressure so well.

