The Match Has Begun: Will an American Finally Reclaim the World Chess Championship?

Game 2 is in the books and was a complete reversal from game 1. Caruana gets an advantage and Carlsen burns massive amounts of time fighting out of the position. Unfortunately, Caruana is unable to convert as Magnus avoids disaster and gets the draw. Caruana has to feel good after the first two games. Surprising to see both guys struggle in their first game with the white pieces. Rest day tomorrow and game 3 on Monday.

The organizers of this event are fucking terrible. The venue is garbage and they oversold tickets. For 70 quid you got a grand total of 30 minutes in the viewing area due to the oversell. That's ridiculous and I'd be demanding a refund. Then take into account they put the player cameras behind a paywall and threatened to sue any chess website broadcasting the moves and what a shit show. For the god damn world championship match no less. There is a lot of press in London trying to cover the event but the venue is so small they cannot accommodate them. Don't know how they expect to grow the game when the press can't even get in and people spend close to $100 USD only to be allowed in there for 30 minutes.
 
Fabiano Caruana might be the man to do it. He is currently playing in (and leading) the Sinquefield Cup here in St. Louis, MO. It's a top event sponsored by billionaire Rex Sinquefield, who has turned St. Louis into something of a chess Mecca in the last decade. All of the best players are duking it out, including World Champion Magnus Carlsen, of Norway.

Caruana will play Magnus for the World Chess Championship this November in London. No American has won the title since Bobby Fischer. Carlsen's form has been in question this year, and many think Caruana is poised to dethrone him.


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Fabiano Caruana is a 26-year-old Italian-American, ranked #2 in the world behind Carlsen. Born in Miami and raised in Brooklyn until his early teens, he moved to Italy, where he attained the title of Grandmaster at age 14. In 2014, also at the Sinquefield Cup, he scored a single-tournament ELO performance rating of 3103, the highest in history.

Today, Caruana and Carlsen played a game that may foreshadow their World Championship match. With Caruana leading the tournament, Magnus played aggressively to push for a win, which would both put him into the lead in the Sinquefield Cup and deliver a psychological blow to his challenger a few months ahead of their title match.

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Carlsen, playing white, managed to pressure Caruana's king safety in a Petrov Defense favored by Caruana. He marched his wing pawns up the board and forced this dangerous position, with a 6-minute advantage on the time clock:

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With massive pawn pressure, misplaced black pieces, and white's pieces ready to close in on the black king, the commentators all thought the game was lost for Caruana. Magnus Carlsen thought so too. In a rare instance of chess trash-talking, Carlsen entered the "confessional booth," where players can drop in and give their thoughts to the camera in the middle of an interesting game.

Carlsen stepped inside the booth but didn't say anything. He simply looked at the camera and held up one finger to his lips, "silencing the haters."

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But Carlsen's confidence did not turn into a victory. He missed a defense available to Caruana, and his time ticked down as he looked for a way to keep his attack alive, leaving himself just over a minute to play several moves until they hit the time controls, where an hour is added at move 40.

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Caruana defended masterfully and forced an equal position at the time controls. Carlsen could only facepalm, and then offer his hand in a draw.

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Grandmasters may play a lot more like computer programs these days, but there remains a critical human element to the game of chess. Just a few years ago, Magnus Carlsen was the young, invincible star who seemed destined to become World Champion, which he achieved in 2013. He has defended his title twice, against Viswanathan Anand and Sergei Karjakin.

But now Carlsen is facing his younger equal- with an ELO rating that nearly matches Carlsen's- a chess star who also seems destined for championship glory. And the psychological advantage going into the match now belongs to American Fabiano Caruana.

You like chess as well as zoos huh. Chess is an amazing game. Never gets boring.
 
Carlsen's response after Fabiano played 10...Rd8 lol

 
How did Magnus even manage to draw game 1? Fabi is awesome but his position was completely busted after a rook sac on g3
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I think Fabiano plays for the win today. Magnus may play for a draw unless he sees a potential blunder.
 
Game 3 ends in a draw. Really disappointed in Caruana here. Instead of trying to go for a win he is content to play for the draw. Magnus did his damndest to try for a win but couldn't break through. I respect Magnus for taking any small inaccuracy and trying to push for a win. Dude smells any sort of blood and he tries to go for the kill. Caruana needs to take chances, being content to take draws like this is not the attitude he needs to have, especially with white. We had a virtual repeat of game 1 but both players were well prepared this time to avoid losing positions. There are nine games left in the match before tie-breaks kick in and Carlsen has the clear advantage of having an extra game with white. Caruana needs to change something up because he has not shown he can outplay Carlsen in even positions. Caruana needs to avoid the tie-breaks at all costs and, hopefully, he plays more ambitiously from this point on. I think everyone is praying this does not turn out like the Karjakin match from 2016.
 
he scored a single-tournament ELO performance rating of 3103, the highest in history.

Meanwhile, you can download a completely free, open source program on your phone that plays 3400+. Seems like an epic waste spending your life learning a board game skill that anyone with a cell phone can exceed.
 
Meanwhile, you can download a completely free, open source program on your phone that plays 3400+. Seems like an epic waste spending your life learning a board game skill that anyone with a cell phone can exceed.
There are a lot of things that people enjoy both recreationally and professionally that machines could do better.
 
Game 3 ends in a draw. Really disappointed in Caruana here. Instead of trying to go for a win he is content to play for the draw.

Everyone fears Magnus. He's got old school fortitude and new school knowledge. Where are you going to beat him? Against opening experts, he derails into a new game early. Against great calculators, he denies everything and frustrates them. Honestly what could Caruana's strategy be, other than to stay even and hope for blunders?
 
Meanwhile, you can download a completely free, open source program on your phone that plays 3400+. Seems like an epic waste spending your life learning a board game skill that anyone with a cell phone can exceed.
is this accurate? Up until recently you needed a massive mainframe to reach that rating. I don't think a smartphone's processor has the computational power to beat a grandmaster.
 
is this accurate? Up until recently you needed a massive mainframe to reach that rating. I don't think a smartphone's processor has the computational power to beat a grandmaster.

Stockfish is the most powerful app I know of, and I think it tops out around 3000.
 
Game 3 ends in a draw. Really disappointed in Caruana here. Instead of trying to go for a win he is content to play for the draw. Magnus did his damndest to try for a win but couldn't break through. I respect Magnus for taking any small inaccuracy and trying to push for a win. Dude smells any sort of blood and he tries to go for the kill. Caruana needs to take chances, being content to take draws like this is not the attitude he needs to have, especially with white. We had a virtual repeat of game 1 but both players were well prepared this time to avoid losing positions. There are nine games left in the match before tie-breaks kick in and Carlsen has the clear advantage of having an extra game with white. Caruana needs to change something up because he has not shown he can outplay Carlsen in even positions. Caruana needs to avoid the tie-breaks at all costs and, hopefully, he plays more ambitiously from this point on. I think everyone is praying this does not turn out like the Karjakin match from 2016.

I was surprised to see Fabiano return to the same opening as game 1.
 
Everyone fears Magnus. He's got old school fortitude and new school knowledge. Where are you going to beat him? Against opening experts, he derails into a new game early. Against great calculators, he denies everything and frustrates them. Honestly what could Caruana's strategy be, other than to stay even and hope for blunders?

That's definitely the issue with facing Magnus. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. He's so god damn strong in every aspect of the game. I don't think trying to stay even is the strategy here as Magnus always grinds those positions out to a draw or a win. I think he has to play aggressive and try to go out of straight theory a bit but that's a difficult ask when Magnus has outplayed Fabi so far. He's gotta play for an advantage right out of the opening or Magnus will grind him down in the middle game. Carlsen knows draws are fine for him as the tie-breaks would be heavily in his favor so the onus is on Fabi to create dynamic positions. Granted, that's much easier said than done.

They had Hou Yifan on the Chess.com live broadcast on Twitch and she talked about how frustrating it is to play Magnus compared to Caruana (whom she's won games against), really great insight into the two players. We still got a long way to go so we'll see if the games get crazier as we go on or if Carlsen just shuts everything down.

If you guys want some kick-ass commentary, Grischuk and Svider on Chess24's streams have been awesome. I love the way Grischuk looks at the game. A match between him and Magnus would be interesting.
 
is this accurate? Up until recently you needed a massive mainframe to reach that rating. I don't think a smartphone's processor has the computational power to beat a grandmaster.
Stockfish is 3400+ now on desktop hardware. I tested Stockfish and Komodo awhile back on smart phones and estimated both are definitely over 3000 elo. There are probably scores somewhere on the net for Stockfish on modern smart phones maybe. Magnus is like 2800 something. No human can compete with pc chess programs in 2018, not even chess programs on cell phones. No point in studying chess. I'll await my neuralink implants.
 
What the fuck! Game 4 is a quick draw. The position seemed to be trending towards a draw but I am really surprised Magnus decided not to continue on and accepted the draw. Looks like neither guy had a concrete plan to proceed and just decided fuck it, we're not gonna sit here for 7 hours again and call it now. There is really not a lot to say about this game. I think if anyone deserves criticism here its Magnus but that just might be because everyone wants blood. Not converting in that first game is really coming back to bite Magnus in the ass here. Very underwhelmed with this 34 move draw.
 
Stockfish is 3400+ now on desktop hardware. I tested Stockfish and Komodo awhile back on smart phones and estimated both are definitely over 3000 elo. There are probably scores somewhere on the net for Stockfish on modern smart phones maybe. Magnus is like 2800 something. No human can compete with pc chess programs in 2018, not even chess programs on cell phones. No point in studying chess. I'll await my neuralink implants.
what about Go? It was only recently that AI could beat the top Go players and that level of power is a long ways off for the retail customer.
 
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Stockfish is 3400+ now on desktop hardware. I tested Stockfish and Komodo awhile back on smart phones and estimated both are definitely over 3000 elo. There are probably scores somewhere on the net for Stockfish on modern smart phones maybe. Magnus is like 2800 something. No human can compete with pc chess programs in 2018, not even chess programs on cell phones. No point in studying chess. I'll await my neuralink implants.
This is a myopic argument, Luba. A computer can do arithmetic, and won't make mistakes. Does that mean your son/daughter shouldn't have to do their math homework? If you think about it from a humorous point of view in the context of human redundancy, in the age of robotics, chess is actually one of the only areas of human interest that has proven immune to machine takeover. Computers are already superior to us in chess, and yet there are still men like Magnus and Fabiano who make a good living playing (& teaching) chess despite that they are already redundant. Nothing more bulletproof than a redundancy-proof occupation.
 
Might have a scandal here as Norwegian press have released video/gifs someone took of Fabi's preparation on his laptop. Maybe this will make things more interesting. Fabi said he does not want to comment on that and Magnus says he will check this video out (lol).
 
Good luck young man.

Is it sad none of them could beat a computer from 1997?

Nevermind. Go Fabiano.
 
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