https://www.chess.com/news/view/magn...ss-world-title

I am hoping that he changes his mind and defends his title.

Meh chess needs a shake up and hopefully Magnus is the one who can do it

Why, what's wrong with the world championship?

Main thing wrong with it is Magnus doesn't want to play in it anymore lol.

That the best players aren't allowed to play because they aren't human.

I find this quite surprising. He said that he is only interested in a challenge from the new generation, aka Alireza Firouzja. Alireza didn't win the candidates but I thought Magnus wasn't serious. He's is probably the best player ever. I guess it's a motivation issue.

The counter argument, "runners compete even though a housecat or a car can beat all of them" is not persuasive to me. Neither is a similar argument using poker computers. I can't quite put my finger on why I feel it is different as far as chess goes. Why I feel that computers being the best players in chess make the game less alluring in a way that is not true for track or poker. I'm not a chess player though so unless some chess players have the same feeling, my opinion might not matter.

Edit: On further reflection the differences might simply be that in one case it is physical not mental and in the other case computers are only champs in one specifics subset of poker games and will often lose even at that.

There are fairly weak chess players who play for decades without improvement. The focus of playing chess produces a flow state which is enjoyable for its own sake. Why should knowing there are computer programs that play better ruin the enjoyment in a way that knowing there are people who play better does not?

I should have said les alluring to chess competition fans. Not recreational players.

Note. There is another aspect to computers being clearly the best. Forty years ago many people were arguing that it would never happen or at least not for very many years. I would think those people felt rather deflated when they turned out to be wrong

I think there are still just as many fans of human chess, but there is a definite loss of respect for the players. Even weak spectators watching online can easily see the errors, when pointed out by their computers. Players who couldn't last a handful of moves were calling Nepo an idiot for mistakes he made against Carlsen.

But there is little desire to watch two computers playing nearly perfect chess. And there is always a bit of a crisis when the top human players make too many draws. People want to see wins, and that requires mistakes. Hence the push for shorter time limits.

As for the last point, there were also many saying that computers were 5 years away from beating the world champion since the 1970s.

Before each turn player must announce two different moves and flip a coin to decide which one he uses. The only exception would be if only one move gets him out of check. Guessing that would result in a lot fewer draws and a computer win rate below 75% against grandmasters. Just remember to call it Sklansky chess.

Lol

There are alot more ways to reduce draws of course .

The draw things has been an issue for decades and decades btw. Faster time controls definitely help.

Another thing that could really help since the big issue is in the world championship is to play the candidates maybe 1 month before the match. Or whatever the minimum time would be to allow enough rest for the challenger. That would cut down quite a bit on how airtight the preparation could be.

For tournaments a method like this could be used to "eliminate draws entirely":

Game starts 2 hours or whatever time control. If the players draw then they restart with opposite colors with the remaining time left rinse/repeat until there's a winner.

If they keep drawing then at a certain point/threshold (Maybe let's say 4 draws) decided by the organizers the game would turn into an Armageddon game where Black wins with a draw.

I won't request to call this "McLovin Chess" as this idea is nothing new. It has already been suggested and discussed more than a handful of times already.

I remain forever on the side that you eliminate short boring draws in chess by making draw offers permanent. If I offer you a draw on move 15, you can keep playing, but accept that offer at any point during the game subsequently.

Benefits:
You now have carte blanche to pursue any risky line you want, speculatively sacrifice, whatever, knowing you have the draw in hand. Draw offers as a result now should only be made in absolute dead drawn positions when both players know.

Con:
You may choose to play on in an absolutely dead drawn position just because it's no risk to you, forcing draws to only occur by stalemate or 3x.

Not a bad idea .
It’s a bit like when someone cube too soon in A backgammon game .
If u give it to early it’s the opponent that have the leverage .


Ps: But maybe limiting the right to agree to a draw to 10 or 20 moves might be better tho .
Someone could abuse the draw offer by taking too much risk knowing he could impose a draw if he failed at anytime which imo is a bit too radical .

Absolutely no draw offers, like how it was done in this past US championship.

There were still “3 reps” that supposedly happened in the moment.

I have a feeling at least one game was a pre-arranged draw in that event.

Tal said something to the effect that there’s nothing you can do to make two chess players fight if they don’t want to.

Emphasis is on draw 'offers'.

1. Draw offer
2. Dead position
3. Three fold repetition
4. Stalemate
5. 50 move rule

The draw offer can still be reached, indirectly, in the form of 3-fold. (1 & 3 should've been merged into 3 long ago)

A drawn position in the mind of a super GM may not be a drawn position when using a super engine.

60 years ago things were quite different in chess, they had adjournments after reaching move 40, can there be adjournments now? No.

There is now Chess960, a more combative form of chess, which's been played at the FIDE level and as we speak.

The 2023 World Chess Championship has started in Kazakhstan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_...2023#Results_2

After Nepo's performance in 2021, I don't feel that he would be a worthy champion if he doesn't beat Ding convincingly.

Well, Nepo just won game 2 with black.

Yeah that was a throttle fest Jesus

great ending to Game 6

You guys probably seen this but Magnus rejecting a 1.2M Euro payday and playing $10/25 abc poker at HCL while the chess championship is going on is just mind boggling. He must be very rich? Somewhere in the video he did say that playing classical chess is disenchanting.

This was awesome