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---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
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I thought the article was making excuses for the performance of Carlsen. You would think someone who can think enough moves ahead to calculate and decide complicated chess lines would be able to quickly decide if he was going to defend his world championship title.
If you strip out Caruana and his results, Carlsen ties for first. Caruana dominated that event. The only question now is if that performance was a "one off". I guess we'll find out over the next couple of years.
I thought the article was making excuses for the performance of Carlsen. You would think someone who can think enough moves ahead to calculate and decide complicated chess lines would be able to quickly decide if he was going to defend his world championship title.
If you strip out Caruana and his results, Carlsen ties for first. Caruana dominated that event. The only question now is if that performance was a "one off". I guess we'll find out over the next couple of years.
First of all, thanks Kerry for a decent ChessTalk thread about chess, instead of having to read about friendly Russian long-range bomber flights approaching Canadian airspace and a certain former moderator who thinks these are not threats. Perhaps they were going to drop shipments of free vodka to show just how wonderful and sharing the Russian government is? Well, enough of that crap...
Caruana's performance has to be seen in a proper light. In tennis, a player can win a match by purely being the better player. That is, the opponent might be playing his or her best, but the winner might be playing out of his or her mind. But in chess, no one wins by pure force. It takes mistakes by the opponent.
You could argue that Caruana forced such mistakes by playing aggressively. That is a subjective and debatable point. I would only buy it if all his opponents agreed with that assessment, and even then, I still don't agree that mistakes can be 'guaranteed' in this way. It is only possible they will be made, especially if the opponent is easily flustered or discombobulated... but these are all elite GMs.
In Caruana's interviews during the tournament, he never maintained that he was forcing these kinds of mistakes. In fact, he was saying that he wasn't doing anything especially different or special. He seemed as amazed as everyone else.
So if this is to be a one-off performance, then it is because 5 of the 6 best human players in the world all made (or if you prefer were all 'forced' into making) critical mistakes, and for 2 of them, it happened TWICE against the same opponent. And of course, Caruana himself made no mistakes.
For all those not wanting to read the full article, here are a few select quotes:
"Professional chess requires a level of peak mental alertness that most of us achieve only in the throes of searing tooth pain. And that level of heightened concentration must be sustained over the course of a four- or five-hour game."
Ouch! That's going to make the masses want to take up chess!
"The online broadcast (of the 2014 Sinquefield Cup) drew about 75,000 worldwide viewers per day, which sounds respectable. Until you learn that the stream of a “League of Legends” videogame championship attracted an audience of 32 million."
Holy Marketing Campaign, Batman!
And my favorite,
"Televised poker, another “mindsport,” is all over cable TV and has launched a galaxy of star players. Chess has had no comparable successes.
Is the product the problem? Like poker, chess doesn’t offer up electric visuals. It is a still life of men seated at a table, hands pressed to the sides of their heads. 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. The live stream commentators attempt to explain the thinking behind each move, and after a while you glean a basic understanding of what makes a position strong or weak, the value of developing your bishop here instead of there, and why a particular pawn is so vital to protect. But most of us will never manage even a rudimentary comprehension of the cogitations going on in these analytical geniuses’ brains. I might beat Ivey in a hand or two of poker, but the only way I’d beat a grandmaster in a game of chess is if I managed to swipe his pieces off the board when he wasn’t looking."
Nicely summarized (except it's actually men and women seated at a table, perhaps a bit of sexism there). Anyone with visions of poker-like grandeur for standard chess, such as Maurice Ashley and Amy Lee, should read that section over and over until the reality sinks in.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
What the F*** are you writing about? To me your essay is mostly incoherent. Maybe someone will translate your English into a form of English I can understand.
Regarding the performance of Carlsen, it's consistent with his performance in the Olympiad. There he scored 6 out of 9. Caruana blew the field away.
What the F*** are you writing about? To me your essay is mostly incoherent. Maybe someone will translate your English into a form of English I can understand.
Regarding the performance of Carlsen, it's consistent with his performance in the Olympiad. There he scored 6 out of 9. Caruana blew the field away.
Caruana didn't blow the field away. The field blew itself away. Caruana simply played mistake-free chess.
If you still can't F****** understand it, then show us a CC game you have played in which your opponent didn't make a single mistake and yet you still won.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Caruana didn't blow the field away. The field blew itself away. Caruana simply played mistake-free chess.
If you still can't F****** understand it, ....
Yeah, right. His opponents sacrificed themselves at the alter of kindness for a good result for Caruana. Not to mention pass on the substantial first prize money.
The moderator will likely pick up on your use of the F word.
Caruana's performance has to be seen in a proper light. In tennis, a player can win a match by purely being the better player. That is, the opponent might be playing his or her best, but the winner might be playing out of his or her mind. But in chess, no one wins by pure force. It takes mistakes by the opponent.
You could argue that Caruana forced such mistakes by playing aggressively. That is a subjective and debatable point.
Of course, it is impossible to "force" an opponent to make mistakes. But if your aggressive play consistently force your opponent to solve difficult problems, he is more likely to make mistakes.
Of course, it is impossible to "force" an opponent to make mistakes. But if your aggressive play consistently force your opponent to solve difficult problems, he is more likely to make mistakes.
You make it sound easy, Louis! If it were that simple, every underdog would be doing it and we'd see a lot more underdogs winning tournaments undefeated.
And if you believe it is this simple, why aren't you playing in the Millionaire Chess Open with the big boys? All you have to do is play aggressively and they will be more likely to make mistakes and hand you the games. Even if it only happens a couple of times, that should get you into the prize money. Perhaps this is what Maurice Ashley and Amy Lee are hoping for: that countless middle-of-the-road players will think they can knock off the big guns by something simple like playing aggressively. Hey, it works in poker!
Perhaps all Borislav Ivanov was doing was playing aggressively. But no: another way to get your opponent to make mistakes is to play like a computer. And then you get accused of cheating and booted out of chess.
As for Caruana, here are some quotes from Wayne Komer's excellent thread on the Sinquefield Cup that show Caruana wasn't doing anything particularly special other than making no mistakes. I've underlined the important parts:
Post Round Five Comments
Interview of Fabiano Caruana by Maurice Ashley
----------------------------------------------
MA: Can you ever have imagined that you would have started five and 0 against this gang?
FC: I couldn’t have dreamed I would have started with a perfect score. All the games are going well for me; I have been playing well but there has been some luck involved.
Post Round Six Comments
Interview of Fabiano Caruana by Maurice Ashley
----------------------------------------------
MA: People are comparing your performance with greats such as Karpov in 1994, that’s twenty years ago.
FC: In terms of play I am not even close to Karpov. I didn’t really expect I could do anything like this.
Post Round Seven Comments
Interview of Fabiano Caruana by Maurice Ashley
----------------------------------------------
MA: He played 14. Qa4 and you played Qh4 and then he played 15. g3; would you have expected that just like that these moves would have been on the board and his king started marching to c3, like a lamb to slaughter? Are you hypnotizing people?
FC: I am not sure what he missed. Qa4 was a very strange move. I won a pawn without any struggle and the game soon after.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
You make it sound easy, Louis! If it were that simple, every underdog would be doing it and we'd see a lot more underdogs winning tournaments undefeated.
And if you believe it is this simple, why aren't you playing in the Millionaire Chess Open with the big boys? All you have to do is play aggressively and they will be more likely to make mistakes and hand you the games. Even if it only happens a couple of times, that should get you into the prize money. Perhaps this is what Maurice Ashley and Amy Lee are hoping for: that countless middle-of-the-road players will think they can knock off the big guns by something simple like playing aggressively. Hey, it works in poker!
Actually, it is easy to play aggressively, but quite difficult to do it in such a way that your opponent has consistently to solve new and difficult problems. A beginner stands no chance against an experienced player because his attack will be premature and instead of giving difficult problems to solve, he will make an unsound sacrifice and give the win on a platter.
About the millionnaire tournament, no amateur has to play with the "big boys" since everybody can play in his own section. I will not go because it is quite expensive for me ($1500 for registration and about the same for plane and hotel), and since my USCF rating is just over 2000, chances to win the U2200 section are slim. And even if I would manage to win, there is a catch-22 in this tournament: even finishing with 7 out of 7 does not guarantee a big prize, since this is only what they call the "qualification tournament". After there are matches with rapid time control (active chess, and then 15-minute blitz), and I am particularly inept in these. Also, I learned something very important in my two World Opens (2011 and 2013): at my age, one has to be in very good physical shape to play at his very best for such a long event. Both times I began very well (3½ out of 4) only to collapse thereafter (stupid blunders in better or even winning positions due to fatigue and bad physical shape). Some people don't believe that chess is a sport, but I believe it is for 5-day events, especially with 2 long games a day.
Last edited by Louis Morin; Tuesday, 23rd September, 2014, 02:32 AM.
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