Quote:
Originally Posted by Dominic
First time in this forum and I don't play chess, but this is a fantastic article about Magnus playing an amateur who had one month to learn the game and try to beat him. Really entertaining.
This article is so awful that I am legitimately upset after reading it. This dude is a charlatan, and I cannot believe that the WSJ gave him this fawning feature article.
I might be the worst chess player in this thread,* and I would crush this dude. His chess is abhorrent. The article talks about how bad 12. Qf3 is. It even correctly points out that it's not bad because it loses a piece to a tactic, but it's bad because it doesn't accomplish anything even if that tactic isn't there. That discussion was good, though it made it sound like Magnus's 12. ... Qh4 was some very subtle GM move. Even I would find that, seeing the threat of Qxh2#, which is the key threat in the tactic Magnus uses to win the bishop. Anyone who plays chess would see that. Anyone who bothered to try would be able to calculate that simple tactic.
But the article doesn't even mention that after that tactic, the dude just sits back and lets Magnus capture a rook, then walks his king and bishop directly into a fork for no reason whatsoever. In short, he doesn't just lose because he blunders, he blunders while he's just moving pieces around aimlessly, revealing his utter cluelessness.
Basically, I'm pissed at the hubris necessary to even attempt this stunt. Who thinks they can be world class at anything in 30 days? I'm actually offended by the disrespect there. And I am stunned that the damn Wall Street Journal gave it any coverage, let alone the full feature fluffer treatment.
The dude's algorithm idea is truly awful. He's basically trying to invent the kind of chess program that was used in the 50s by Alan Turing, memorize some of its results, and then use that to beat the GOAT. This plan is asinine, and I would laugh in the face of anyone who presented it to me. The fact that he couldn't even pull off this dumbass plan makes me think he's completely full of crap in general.
The other "extreme learning" things he has done are not at all impressive, and some of them aren't even learning.
Basically, this dude seems like a fraud, and the WSJ treated him like a genius. And his chess is truly awful.
*~1300 rating on chess.com