
Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana to Win World Chess Championship - tosh
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/sports/magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-world-chess-championship.html
======
michalu
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 enjoyed this final a lot.

~~~
mindgam3
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.

~~~
michalu
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"

[https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067826806823297029](https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067826806823297029)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBvQ36SqgqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBvQ36SqgqM)

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.

~~~
mindgam3
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.)

~~~
david-gpu
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.

~~~
Faark
> 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.

------
dmerrick
I just want to give a mention to ChessNetwork on Twitch[1].

I watched many of the games of this series live via this channel, and it was
great how the commentator had his own board to demonstrate the next few moves
and explain the players' thinking. It was really interesting and relaxing.

[https://www.twitch.tv/chessnetwork](https://www.twitch.tv/chessnetwork)

~~~
chaosmachine
Jerry is a phenomenal chess instructor. His latest video on tactical
awareness[1] explains more in 2 hours than you might learn in a thousand games
at the board.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzGKPxJ5NYI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzGKPxJ5NYI)

~~~
LVB
Wow, you’re not kidding. He’s basically ticking off many of my lingering
questions one by one.

------
RebeccaHarris
You may recognize RebeccaHarris from Lichess, but for those who don't: I'm GM
Daniel Naroditsky, senior at Stanford and - like all of us - still wrapping my
head around the massacre we just witnessed in Rapid.

I had a feeling this would happen, though I have gotten the better of Magnus
in bullet on Lichess with a mix of wild play and lucky tactics.

Speaking of which, I've been involved in beta-testing the killer online bullet
chess interface which is being developed by mindgam3, mentioned here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18554909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18554909)

This software is going to crush it. As someone with little programming
experience myself, I dare to say that we need to bring online chess to the
next level, and I think this guy has what it takes. We are looking for
ambitious and open-minded developers to participate in this chess revolution.
Please respond to this comment, or e-mail me at daniel@stanforchess.org if you
are interested. With enough fire under us, I think we can bring Magnus on
board too!

~~~
carapace
I think you might have dropped a 'd' from your email address, eh?

~~~
tgarv
No no, Stan is a big proponent of chess! He even created an organization about
how pro-chess he is.

------
nevi-me
I was disappointed in Carlsen's 12th game draw. He might have etched something
out of the game, as computers were clearly saying he had some slight
advantage. After seeing the first games from today, I eased down on my
disappointment.

Today's first few games changed my mind. Carlsen remains the better player,
because he does better where it matters; time pressure. Caruana seemed to
battle with time a lot, I observed a few instances where he'd spend a lot of
time on "forced" moves, perhaps an element of self-doubt against his
counterpart.

It's been an interesting time watching the games, but maybe it's time the
classical format is spiced up with something else inbetween. You can't beat a
record 12/12 draws, so I hope that doesn't become the norm, as we might as
well be watching a blitz championship in the end.

~~~
drewrv
> Carlsen remains the better player, because he does better where it matters;
> time pressure.

I disagree. Carlsen is the better player under time pressure, but they appear
evenly matched in what I'd consider "actual" chess. One of the things I love
about the game is that it's a slow, pensive game.

~~~
fipple
Yes, as a non chess player I think of the game as two people each taking about
15 minutes per move. Blitz chess isn’t what the cultural concept of “chess”
is.

~~~
msbarnett
> Yes, as a non chess player I think of the game as two people each taking
> about 15 minutes per move.

Not even classical time controls play that way -- 15 minutes per move would
rapidly lose you the match. Prepared openings come quite quickly, obviously,
but most moves even beyond that are played within a very few minutes of each
other, with time being saved to spend on a "deep-think" of 15-30 minutes on
only one or two key moves.

Which makes sense. Classical time controls in this tournament were, counting
the per move increments, 120 minutes per player for the first 40 moves. That
means you need to average a move every 3 minutes over your first 40 (and in
reality, they spend less than that most games, preferring to maintain a
healthy cushion).

Rapid (not Blitz, they did not play any Blitz games) only drops that down to
45 seconds per move over the first 40. Since they tend to live closer to the
margin in Rapid anyways vs Classical, this is even less of a drop than it
might appear.

It's unquestionably less time to think, but not nearly as much as you're
suggesting.

~~~
fipple
I know, I’m not talking about real chess, but the Hollywood concept of chess.
I also realize that Hollywood chess has the player representing
Amerifreedom(TM) squared against a thickly accented Slav who kicks his dog.

------
vertline3
Strength in faster time controls strongly fits overall strength.

Caruana knew he was the underdog in Tie-breaks, he had 12 chances to avoid
that and he was unable to.

Carlsen could have pressed in game 12 but he knew he was much stronger in
faster controls, why risk anything?

Using computer evals through the match, I felt that Carlsen was slightly
stronger, and their head to head record suggests as much.

~~~
nilkn
The other way of looking at this is that twice in a row Carlsen has been
unable to defend the title in classical controls and has relied on rapid time
controls to win. In both cases, it's unclear if Carlsen could have retained
the title had more classical games been played.

~~~
chongli
Does that say more about Carlsen or the modern classical game?

Classical these days is heavily reliant on technology for preparation. The
world championship match gives both players a huge amount of time to research
strong lines using an engine. When players finally do get out of prep, they
have plenty of time on the clock to make a draw if they're not in a winning
position. In shorter time controls it becomes a lot more difficult to avoid
mistakes out of book. Then it becomes more about vision and calculation and
less about preparation.

~~~
b_tterc_p
Could you explain what this prep entails? I understand that athletes or gamers
will watch opponents’ past plays to see how they should adapt, but I’m having
trouble translating this to chess.

~~~
vertline3
They have a team helping them prepare called seconds, they also keep aware of
opening updates by following games around the world. They have large opening
databases, and will use computers to find new moves (originally just a team of
GMs) known as "novelties" (a surprise). The novelties take the opponent "out
of book" or the prep (preparation) he has developed. This means the opponent
will have to use more time, and find his way out of a tricky situation you are
more familiar with, through computer analysis.

Often old sidelines will come back into fashion in order to avoid prep, or to
lead someone into unfamiliar territory.

If you watch on a video feed, announcers will sometimes say "this position was
played in city (x) in year (n) between player(1) and player(2)" this is to
show that there are few games left in the database, we are entering deep prep.

Hope I helped.

------
maaaats
I'd wager 20% of Norway or more has been actively following these games.
Everyone has been talking about it, the last few weeks the lunch at work has
been mostly discussing the game the night before. All over the media. Biggest
tv channel (NRK) showed the 15 games live, same for the biggest news page (VG)
.

And this is nothing new, ever since the first time Carlsen was in a WC match
Norway has been obsessed with chess. Some joke it's because we're so fond of
slow-tv here. Both NRK and VG has made it like a panel/talk-show with a mix of
chess experts and entertainers. The format works well.

~~~
waterpigcow
I expected it to be the same in America, unfortunately this was not the case.
I don't know what it is but nobody in my social circles seemed to even know
that this was going on.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Wow, that's shocking. How could you expect it to be that way in America? Have
you looked around at actual Americans and what they watch??

~~~
waterpigcow
Just sort of baseless optimism on my part I guess.

------
dang
From yesterday, before this outcome:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18545508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18545508)

------
benatkin
It's funny how both of their last names start with "Car". On chessgames.com
there's a massive dropdown of famous players in the search, and those are the
only two whose names start with "Car". Chess.com did a contest on it, where
they asked what type of car each of them would be.

I was rooting for Caruana but I'm not at all annoyed that Carlsen won. I
really like how each of them rose to greatness with the different styles of
playing chess they have.

~~~
billforsternz
Echoing the epic Kasparov v Karpov rivalry from 30 years ago perhaps. Pity
that 's' and 'r' in the third letter had an off by one error in that case
though.

------
mcqueenjordan
Shoutout to ChessExplained:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd9RHivv7ryAQSS7Q8p1zgA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd9RHivv7ryAQSS7Q8p1zgA)

ChessExplained is high rated German IM working towards becoming a GM and has
tons (literally many thousands of videos) of great content, including self-
commentated blitz, top games, openings, etc.

~~~
tejaswiy
Just to throw it out there in case people are looking for good chess
commentators, my favorite is agadmator:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL5YbN5WLFD8dLIegT5QAbA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL5YbN5WLFD8dLIegT5QAbA)

------
dlbucci
For anyone looking for a simpler recap of the event, there's been a 4-part
series running at Deadspin that has been an awesome read for me. The last part
covering the last 4 matches is here [https://deadspin.com/armageddon-looms-
over-the-world-chess-c...](https://deadspin.com/armageddon-looms-over-the-
world-chess-championship-afte-1830671246) and there are links to earlier parts
in the article. I'm sure there will be a final part covering this victory as
well.

~~~
splonk
I've been skipping through Deadspin in my RSS feed for years now, but I was
really pleasantly surprised at how readable and in depth the chess articles
were when they popped up (speaking as someone who hasn't played a competitive
game of chess in 25+ years). It definitely hit the sweet spot for me in terms
of being both understandable and enlightening.

------
mindgam3
I’d like to offer a few thoughts on this match as a former internationally
competitive player/US Cadet U16 champion, current ~2400 bullet chess addict,
and someone who has played bughouse with Fabiano as my partner at the
Sinquefield Cup in 2017.

First, hats off to both players for a hard fought match. To Magnus for
successfully defending his title, and to Fabiano for pushing Magnus right to
the brink. This was an exciting matchup that was good for chess, especially
American chess thanks to Fabi.

I give Magnus enormous respect for his classy remark in the closing ceremony,
when he stated that Fabiano has as much right to claim the throne of classical
chess as he does. This is 100% true given their drawn match, be didn’t have to
say it, but the fact that he offered that recognition to Fabiano is such a
gentleman’s move. It’s enough to make me forget the disappointment I felt due
to his draw offer in game 12. Magnus not only is the champ, he deserves to be
the champ.

Fabiano talked about taking lessons from this experience. I hope his big
takeaway is to begin incorporating online blitz and bullet into his training
routine. From playing bughouse with him, I know that he is very unsure of
himself when it comes to these faster time controls. I don’t blame him for
this. Most likely it is a result of his coach(es) instructing him not to
“waste his time” or “ruin his chess” with blitz and bullet.

The truth is, blitz chess is not only insanely fun but extremely good training
to develop intuition for slow chess. In case anyone has doubts about whether
it is valuable, we just saw a world championship title awarded based on rapid.

tl;dr: Play more bullet and blitz! It’s good for you.

 __* Shameless plug: I have been developing an online interface to help people
become insanely good at bullet and blitz in a short amount of time.
Essentially I reverse engineered the process of how I became a chess prodigy
and prototyped a web interface to do it faster and at scale. I currently have
an almost-MVP integrated with LiChess API and I’m looking for both beta
testers and full stack devs (web and mobile) to help me launch this thing.
With a little luck we will have Fabi, Magnus, Hikaru and others testing this
in a month or two. I could really use some help on the dev side so anyone
interested, please leave a comment! Can offer some combination of equity
/cash/world-class private chess instruction to the right person or people :-)

~~~
omega3
> The truth is, blitz chess is not only insanely fun but extremely good
> training to develop intuition for slow chess.

I find that actually quite controversial - correlation does not imply
causation. The general sentiment within the community is that the causation
works from the other side i.e being good at slow leads to being good at blitz.

Here are some quotes you might find interesting:

"Playing rapid chess, one can lose the habit of concentrating for several
hours in serious chess. That is why, if a player has big aims, he should limit
his rapidplay in favour of serious chess." – Vladimir Kramnik

"He who analyses blitz is stupid." – Rashid Nezhmetdinov

"Blitz chess kills your ideas." – Bobby Fischer

"To be honest, I consider [bullet chess] a bit moronic, and therefore I never
play it." – Vladimir Kramnik

"I play way too much blitz chess. It rots the brain just as surely as
alcohol." – Nigel Short

"Blitz is simply a waste of time." – Vladimir Malakhov

~~~
mindgam3
I will refute your list of quotes by (again) pointing to the results of the
world championships, just concluded.

The world crown was lost because Fabiano cracked under time pressure and lost
a position in Game 1 of tiebreaks that he easily could have drawn in classical
chess.

Skill in blitz chess does translate to classical, people.

It's not just about developing intuition. It's training your mind to see
clearly under non-optimal situations, like when you are exhausted or, say,
drunk. Not that you would ever play a serious game of chess while drunk, but
still.

Being good at slow 100% does NOT lead to being good at blitz. I mean, yes, a
grandmaster will beat a noob at blitz, but that's obvious.

I know what I'm talking about. I am a lowly national master who "punches above
my weight" by regularly beating strong IMs and GMs at blitz and bullet.

@whatismindgam3 on LiChess, feel free to add me there or challenge me if you
want to put my theories to the test.

~~~
polishTar
I know nothing about chess, but part of your argument in both this post and
the one before seems to be "I'm right because my ranking is higher than
average". That's a bad way to convince people in general (it relies on appeal
to authority, a type of logical fallacy), but since you're insistent on using
it, the people quoted above are much stronger authorities and appear to hold
the opposite view.

~~~
mindgam3
Is there a reason why you’re not calling out the parent comment on appeal to
authority? Because that was the thrust of his entire argument.

It’s not just me who feels that way about blitz though. Look at guys like
Hikaru Nakamura or Daniel Naroditsky. For every grandmaster who thinks blitz
is useless, I can find one who thinks the opposite.

Ultimately the only real way to test theories is to get in and try it on
yourself. Would you like to learn how to improve your chess? Are you open to a
new way of doing it accelerated by technology? If so, I might be able to help.
If not, no worries. There are plenty of other coaches or software tools out
there.

------
DrNuke
Why don’t start with Armageddon next time, to spice things up for the classic
format games?

~~~
drewrv
I've heard similar proposals for soccer games, start with penalty kicks as a
tiebreaker. Now, whomever lost the tiebreaker will have to play extra hard as
they know a draw will be a loss.

~~~
simonh
I think it’s an awful idea, because it encourages the team that won the tie to
play safely and defensively and aim for acdraw. That makes for a tedious game
to watch.

~~~
mcqueenjordan
Completely agree. Drawish behavior would likely _increase_ with this policy,
not decrease. Because it's incredibly hard at this level to beat a player
that's explicitly playing for a draw.

------
nimonian
Carlsen didn't play the games, he played the tournament, and won.

------
aeleos
Anyone know where one can find a vod of the entire match? All I can find are
cut little bits with the most cut out.

~~~
pianowow
The entire tiebreak, which was played today, is this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBvQ36SqgqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBvQ36SqgqM)

The entire match, played over the past weeks, is this playlist:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJlVjicymKI&list=PLAwlxGCJB4...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJlVjicymKI&list=PLAwlxGCJB4NdFt-
UwnS8tATIRJvXhcZxU)

~~~
aeleos
Thanks, but I was looking for a video of them actually playing, not just
people reviewing the moves.

~~~
Murgio
FIDE actually owns the rights to the content. As far as I know there is no way
other than to pay $20 for the video on the their main website.
[https://worldchess.com](https://worldchess.com)

------
Tepix
If only Othello had a community of a similar size to Chess'. At least there
are good video live feeds from the world championship now for a couple of
years.

------
bartcobain
The strategy of Fabiano was better, but the tactics of Carlsen was the real
reason for his victory.

~~~
michalu
Can you elaborate?

I would say it was Carlsen's overall strategy that got him a win. Taking it to
the tie-break where he's a huge favourite. Seems like playing it safe was his
strategy.

I can't evaluate who chose better tactics.

------
throw7
caruana shouldn't have agreed to draw 12th game.

------
waterpigcow
as an american i'm a bit disappointed that Caruana didn't win, that being said
i think Carlsen is definitely a better player.

------
new_guy
And a computer would have beaten either of them.

------
liftbigweights
There are so many better links than a nytimes spam. But all we seem to get is
nytimes spam lately.

How about link the a website dedicated to chess?

[https://www.chess.com/article/view/world-chess-
championship-...](https://www.chess.com/article/view/world-chess-
championship-2018-carlsen-caruana)

~~~
h3throw
NYT spam?

I'll bite. What makes a (generally considered) reputable news outlet such as
the NYT reporting on relatively major news spam?

------
pcnix
Looked drawish.

