
World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen Is Now World Fantasy Premier League #1 - thom
https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/status/1205862206946074624
======
room271
People may not understand how big an achievement this is. Yes you need a lot
of good fortune, but there are 7m players of FPL. For most, getting into the
top 100k is seen as a good result for the end of the season.

Magus is clearly a massive football fan though - he talks about it a lot on
his livestreams etc.

~~~
headmelted
Wouldn’t this also infer that Magnus has understood the mechanics of the game
more than almost anyone else?

By which I mean to say couldn’t this translate indirectly to an edge (I
realize FPL and predicting individual match outcomes are very different) in
sports betting?

I’m ordinarily utterly skeptical of any such suggestion, but Magnus thinks at
a level beyond my understanding so what do I know?

~~~
lonelappde
Imply, not infer.

But yes, the people who know a knowledge-based game better are better at
playing it.

------
drcode
Wow, that really obliterates two major assumptions I had about chess (1) that
you can't win without 100% dedication to chess (2) that the skills are highly
domain specific and not transferable.

~~~
milchek
It's impressive.

I suppose you could say there are some skills from chess that are very
transferable to something like managing a fantasy sports team; the ability to
predict or prepare for certain outcomes and the ability to manage and minimize
risk being two that come to mind.

It also helps that Carlsen is a football fan and has domain knowledge there
that assist him in employing these skills.

~~~
abcdef123xyz2
A previous article on this mentioned his superb memory, which is probably also
an asset to both games.

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bdz
This is his account (not updated yet)
[https://fantasy.premierleague.com/entry/1908330/event/17](https://fantasy.premierleague.com/entry/1908330/event/17)

He was climbing really well
[https://fantasy.premierleague.com/entry/1908330/history](https://fantasy.premierleague.com/entry/1908330/history)

~~~
petepete
Salah in midfield? Say what?

~~~
actuator
Although he plays in a wide forward/winger like position for Liverpool they
classify wingers generally as midfielders. Think of this in terms of the
classic 4-2-3-1 position(not something LIV uses a lot). Firmino generally
becomes the No 9 and he would be classified as forward. Even Son is classified
as Mid.

Though in the 4-2-3-1 Liverpool played today Salah was the most forward
player.

~~~
petepete
It's a ridiculous decision, even the stats disagree.[0]

"Salah was the furthest forward in 8 of Liverpool’s last 10 Premier League
games from last season."

I imagine it's done for marketing reasons so more people can fit him into
their team; same with Son.

[0] [https://www.fantasyfootballpundit.com/mohamed-salah-
forward-...](https://www.fantasyfootballpundit.com/mohamed-salah-forward-
fantasy-premier-league/)

~~~
actuator
Yeah, ideally they should be classified as forwards. Though I guess Salah
being the furthest forward is more because of Firmino being a False 9 rather
than a proper No 9, which makes his case for being considered as a FWD even
more valid.

------
thom
Interesting that he mentions a stats-based approach, calling out provider Opta
by name:

[https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/status/1204105872668016642](https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/status/1204105872668016642)

~~~
vages
Sounds like a clever marketing scheme from Opta.

~~~
actuator
I doubt it is. Opta is probably what most publications and broadcasters use as
well. I don't think there is anyone else who collects stats that deep across
so many leagues.

Sometimes even I am surprised the details of those stats, like passes by an
individual player, distance covered etc.

~~~
thom
It's actually a pretty crowded market at this point (I work at a competitor
but have worked professionally with their data). The distance-covered sort of
stats come from tracking data (usually derived optically from multiple
cameras, giving locations of every player and the ball at 20hz or so), which
Opta didn't offer directly until their merger with STATS.

~~~
actuator
Wow, I did not know this. They have special cameras in the grounds or this is
just them having access to raw feed from all regular broadcasting cameras.

I would love to read up on how this is recorded, processed and kept if you
have any source.

~~~
thom
Most of the big providers require special cameras in the stadium (some up to
16). Some can do this from video feeds (even broadcast quality, which
obviously misses some info). You can read about one of the leading providers
here:

[https://chyronhego.com/products/sports-tracking/tracab-
optic...](https://chyronhego.com/products/sports-tracking/tracab-optical-
tracking/)

------
pmoriarty
Can someone explain what this is and the significance of Carlsen's achievement
to someone completely and utterly clueless about football?

~~~
Scarblac
It's a very luck based game, or so it seems. With 7 million players. But last
year the world chess champion was top-100 and now he's (at this particular
moment) first.

~~~
tryptophan
Being good at managing uncertain outcomes is not luck though, although the
difference between that and luck is nuanced and this often gets lost in
discussion.

~~~
Gene_Parmesan
This is very true, which is (for example) where the skill in high level poker
comes from.

------
exogeny
Fantasy sports for money is a huge business here in the states - FanDuel and
DraftKings probably do north of $200 million of revenue each in the vertical
alone - and almost all of the top players have some kind of data science or
math background.

It’s not a coincidence.

------
thom
Updated the title from 'Fantasy Football' to 'Fantasy Premier League' to stave
off continued tedious arguments about international sporting nomenclature.

------
drekembe
I'd love to see him take on Magic: the Gathering, especially formats like
vintage or legacy.

~~~
brianwawok
The top MTG players have mostly gone on to poker, where the prizes are much
more lucrative.

~~~
thom
Of course a lot of those players have in turn gone on to gambling and hedge
funds.

~~~
ZhuanXia
I often wonder about this in the context of musicians and actors. You would
have to be a fool to pick such careers, as the prospects are so dim. Yet
because of this dimness the selection pressure is very high on the pool of
contenders. So our best actors and musicians are fool/geniuses.

Which implies the most innately talented potential musicians and actors are
working at a hedge fund or Google DeepMind. And perhaps the odd personalities
of musicians and actors is more to do with the bottlenecked selection than
some relationship between talent and impulsivity: Only the egotistical and
impulsive would step into such fray.

And so we are left not with the best but with the best of a bad lot!

~~~
diego
That assumes everyone picks their job as a rational economic actor. This is
clearly not the case. Even if it were, if you believe you have a decent change
then you might as well give it one shot, and if it doesn't work then you can
fall back on something else while you're young.

Note that this is the same rational for starting a startup. Would you argue
that all successful startup founders are the best of a bad lot?

------
trynewideas
Hah... just noticed he's in a "Grandmaster League":
[https://fantasy.premierleague.com/leagues/35182/standings/c](https://fantasy.premierleague.com/leagues/35182/standings/c)

Sergej Movsesian (FIDE world #136)

Yúlia Movsesjan (Slovakian female #1)

Radosław Wojtaszek (World #27)

Jon Ludvig Hammer (second to Carlsen in WCC 2013)

etc.

~~~
symplee
For comparison, these are the ranks of the other grandmasters in the group:

    
    
      rank       rank / 7,182,778 players:
      ____________________________________
      1 -------- 0.0000139%
      23,365 --- 0.3252920%
      238,352 -- 3.3183818%
      391,870 -- 5.4556886%
      448,139 -- 6.2390763%
      510,354 -- 7.1052454%
      602,723 -- 8.3912241%
      726,511 -- 10.1146242%
      728,141 -- 10.1373173%
      2,011,481  28.0042207%
      2,258,848  31.4481110%
      3,993,041  55.5918755%
      5,015,777  69.8306004%

~~~
thom
Towering football geniuses, the lot of them:

[https://en.chessbase.com/post/three-million-view-chess-
playe...](https://en.chessbase.com/post/three-million-view-chess-players-
playing-soccer)

------
daxfohl
I wonder how Messi would do on Fantasy Chess League.

~~~
ByThyGrace
Is there even such a thing as a Fantasy Chess league?

~~~
boomboomsubban
Yes, basically every sport now has someone running a fantasy version.

------
traderjane
People who are competitive at one game sometimes jump to another based on
market trends, and although the transition can be rough, enough make it
through that it becomes a visible thing.

This is a mild argument for generality of competence.

------
k2xl
Is there some skill that links chess to this? Seems to improbable for a
coincidence

~~~
maestrokuro
Carlsen isn't a chess genius. He's a genius who plays chess. The guy can
recall chess positions from games he played as a teenager.

(I played a few games of chess today morning and I can barely remember the
openings I played!)

~~~
thom
To be honest, that's a really common ability for most elite chess players, who
by the time they are teenagers are already grandmasters and have been playing
for the best part of 10 years. Not to deny Magnus is a genius, though.

~~~
yesenadam
It seems fairly pointless and meaningless to argue whether someone "is a
genius" or not.

Check out this recent short video of Magnus being shown and recognizing
positions from Vishy Anand games.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acVvkz4MsKc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acVvkz4MsKc)

Common might be recognizing the opponent and next move (I, patzer, got half
right, also that the move against Lautier was h6!), but Magnus also remembers
the year, tournament, most of the game etc. He has a remarkable memory, and
studies a lot of games, past and present – because he loves doing it.

Bobby Fischer was similar, from what I hear. I've read quite a few stories of
people from around the world meeting him and he'd say "I liked your game
against X 10 years ago but you should have played move Y" and they were amazed
he'd even heard of them, let alone studied their obscure games. (This was pre-
internet and pre-computer-analysis)

~~~
thom
Do you have a video of other 2700+ players failing to do this? I've watched
plenty of live tournament coverage, and it doesn't seem a rare skill. Not
claiming they do it as well as the best player in the world, and arguably of
all time, but this honestly just seems like table stakes at this level of the
game. It's literally their job, every day, to study games and understand and
recall new theory.

~~~
crashbunny
I thought they actively study and memorise their own games, games of players
they currently play against, and games of past notable players. Part of that
study and memorising is practising playing the game through from start to
finish.

It's not like they accidentally memorised them after they see the game once.

~~~
thom
Indeed. I'm willing to believe Magnus is one of the best at this (posted this
link because I'm a huge fan!), but it's his job and has been since he was a
boy, it's not really magic. And it's just demonstrably not the case that he
goes into every game knowing every topical line, not does he really need to.

~~~
crashbunny
I'm a big Carlsen fan, he's currently the best chess player in the world, but
not all grandmasters think Carlsen or the other top 10 are the best in
history.

I can't make an informed opinion myself, but I can retell the arguments I've
heard used.

In the past, players like Bobby Fischer dominated their peers, winning
tournaments by 5 games or more. Today, super grandmasters play 20 moves of
prep from memory and agree to a draw. When they get out of prep they don't
play as skillfully as players of the past, pre chess engine era. Today super
grandmasters put all their attention into opening theory. (I'm retelling the
arguments I've heard, these aren't my own opinions)

I will say I much prefer to watch a super grandmaster blitz or rapid game over
a classical game. Not that I watch them live, but I see the occasional video
of a grandmaster analysing them in a 10-30 minute video.

~~~
thom
I don’t think it’s true that studies show players play less skilfully. At the
very least papers like this exist:

[https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-
journal/icg0012](https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg0012)

But I also think that in a metagame with less equality out of the opening and
more blunders, skill was more rewarded in the past - so just look at Magnus’s
blitz rating to compare. Either way, the fact is this year Magnus _did_
regularly dominate his peers, despite them all having big teams with thousands
of CPU/GPU hours of prep behind them. I know Ben Finegold is never going to be
convinced but whatever.

------
yters
So does this mean Deep Blue can beat Magnus Carlsen in fantasy football?

------
sofista
In Argentina, where I come from, a couple of GMs, unable to make ends meet
with their chess earnings, switched to poker, backgammon and/or bridge, games
in which there is a lot of gambling going on, and they made quite a lot of
money.

I understand that these games are much more similar to chess than a fantasy
football game, but it seems that some chess calculation skills are indeed
transferable.

~~~
Scarblac
I think that the chess skills themselves are not, but the training skills
probably are.

Like identifying various aspects of the game, figuring out how they can be
trained, and then spending 10+ hours a day on them for months.

Or getting a database of games played by opponents and analyzing them for
weaknesses in their play, and knowing how to exploit such weaknesses, that can
probably also be done with poker.

------
symplee
Imagine if he starts picking stocks?

Checkmate.

------
lonelappde
I'm a bit confused.

Either chess is harder than fantasy and the top 100K players should all be
bots, or fantasy is harder than chess and so why is Carlsen and others wasting
time on professional chess?

------
aklemm
Would his skill translate to discovering player talent or negotiating player
contracts?

------
foobaw
He must watch a lot of games to really know who to pick. As someone that
dabbled in DFS for the NFL, the #1 team each week always seem like either pure
luck or just someone that submits tons of optimal entries.

Now, EPL is definitely different than the NFL but still amazing regardless.

~~~
nbabitskiy
He's not #1 this week (not even close), he's currently #1 over a 16+ weeks
period[0]. Each week's #1 is usually one of many random teams, picked for that
purpose.

I have no idea how many games he watches, but watching the games isn't
correlated to fantasy football success.

Looking at his team, all the players are in a very hot run of form, or likely
to be picked just by studying e.g. Understat.com, or both.[1] Most of them are
also likeable, and could be suggested by a football fan unaware of fantasy
football specifics.

[0] 17th "gameweek" isn't over yet.

[1] Except for goalkeepers. His goalkeeping choices have been awful.

~~~
abcdef123xyz2
A previous article on this said he watches a huge amount of football.

------
jmartrican
Dumb question here, does he get paid for this or earn prize money?

~~~
bdz
There are some prizes
[https://fantasy.premierleague.com/prizes](https://fantasy.premierleague.com/prizes)

But it's a long season, there are 38 rounds and today was the 17th

------
dikaio
Umm.... can we get back to the football/soccer article?

------
ur-whale
Is this american football or regular football?

~~~
larnmar
I’m confused about what sort of person (a) refers to soccer as “real football”
but (b) doesn’t know what Premier League means.

------
qzx_pierri
This guy’s mind is amazing

------
rsync
Just to clarify, as I myself was confused, this Fantasy Football is _not_
American Football, but ... _actual_ football which Americans refer to as
soccer.

~~~
fgonzag
5.7 billion people refer to it as football, 300 million refer to it as soccer.
Any time you see the word football and any non American person, it's probably
talking about association football.

~~~
JamesBarney
But that doesn't correctly represent the proportions of hacker new readers
that would call it soccer. Since this web site was started in the u.s. and is
almost entirely English speaking that heavily selects users from English
speaking countries, both north America, and in particular the u.s., and
especially silicon valley.

~~~
billfruit
I would't be surprised if majority of HN views are from outside North America
as of now. There are likely more English speakers in Bangalore than in Silicon
Valley.

------
jaywalk
Fantasy Soccer.

~~~
hhmc
It’s known as fantasy football to anyone outside of North America.

~~~
umanwizard
Regardless, the parent comment was useful to me and I assume others. Perhaps I
should have assumed association football was meant, since Magnus is European,
but for whatever reason I didn't.

Fantasy _American_ football is extremely popular in the US, so I think a lot
of people would automatically assume that's what was meant.

And yes, we're aware that people in different countries use different words
for things.

(And no, actually, it's not called "football" everywhere outside North
America. See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_association_football](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_association_football))

~~~
hhmc
Fantastic, if you're aware that people in different countries use different
words for things, then you can also recognize that GP condescendingly
correcting to "fantasy soccer" is unnecessary.

~~~
umanwizard
It didn't read to me like a correction; rather, pointing out what the article
was about to people who might not have immediately realized.

I have absolutely no problem with people calling it football, soccer, calcio,
or anything else.

