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Comment by mindgam3 | Hacker News Reader

What I don’t understand is why Carlsen didn’t push for even a few more moves. Fabi was running out time, it was low risk for him to probe a little more and see if he could get something a little more decisive.

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I don't understand either. But Carlsen was in the seat for all 12 games, and he knows what was going on in his own head. Maybe he was simply exhausted and didn't trust his decision. Maybe that particular position gave him difficulty in a match four years ago. For whatever reason, the best chess player in the world decided that offering the draw was his best move in that moment.

I tend to agree. The most plausible reason I can think of is a combination of him being supremely confident in his rapid skills + being a bit afraid of Caruana in classical. But his lack of confidence in himself in classical is not a good sign going into the blitz.

The best chess player in the world got there by using good judgment when it comes to selective aggression. We’ll find out tomorrow if this was a brilliant move to fend off a challenger or the beginning of the end...

Is it possible he gets paid per game by a sponsor and was confident he could push through and win ... just as an alternative option.

If he were a narcissist, another option would be to bask a little more in the limelight.

Just throwing these out there, as we really don't know his motivation.

Has it not occurred to anyone that maybe Carlsen is just bored?

It takes effort to tie 12 straight games between two world champions.

Additionally, it is not in Carlsen's best interest to finish the tournament. During the tournament he is a super star. After the tournament he is just some guy who has a chess trophy (i.e. most people in real life don't care).

Maybe he is just testing himself with some criteria that is harder than "just winning... again"?

Maybe he just wants to prolong his time in the spotlight? Create some drama, have people talk about the year where every game, including Armageddon, ended in a draw!

I heard a story (not sure if it's true) when I was a fencer. At one time in fencing, there was a rule about inactivity. If you refused to fence, the period ended and the next period started. There are three periods. If all three periods ended this way, it went to a one point suddend death matchoff. Well, one individual felt he liked to win with a lot of panache. As I heard it, he would deliberately incur three inactivity penalties to send the match to a one point sudden death where he would try to pull off a daring victory. So I think there is precedent for the idea of really skilled competitors thirsting for something more thrilling.

This is actually somewhat common in epee competitions (i.e. I've seen it multiple times in national level tournaments), because they are high variance and defense is hugely advantaged. It's also a reasonable strategy because a tournament can run up to 9 rounds of single elimination, so committing to this strategy means you expend only 1 minute of effort per round, instead of 9.

I thought it was a baseball player in the ninth inning who watched two strikes sail by before swinging at the last pitch.

As a non-chess-fan but casual observer, I would say that this is what sports showmanship really looks like. This is Petter Northug jr. (a fellow Norwegian; controversial cross-country skier and Olympic champion) playing chess.

The big fame and sponsor money is not in _merely_ being the best in the world, it's in winning while pushing the creative limits of the sport and causing a fair amount of drama and controversy.

Carlsen gets more out of this than winning in the 12th game, both on a personal level and in terms of notoriety and sponsorship interest.

This does not conflict with being bored, or with pushing the boundaries of the format! Like trying to re-play your favorite computer game, but placing artificial limitations on yourself to make it more interesting. If it gets all the fans and observers riled up, all the better! It's well within the rules!

Besides, what if he screws up in the later matches, in spite of the odds? The pressure is still on, which makes the entertainment value even better!0

I love the idea that he's so next-level that he's playing the game of 'playing the game of chess' (sic). That he's playing with a view not only of winning by also of winning at being a chess champion.

I used to wonder if the likes of McEnroe (80s tennis player) courted controversy with aggression that ran the boundary of acceptable behaviour in order to - win or lose - be the one everyone was talking about.

Honestly this seems closest to the truth. His attitude and body language at the press conference communicated utter boredom for the whole proceedings.

As a chess fan I admit I’m eager to see a rapid tiebreaks. I just didn’t want to get here like this.

I don't know if we need to be that meta or cynical about his decision to draw here. He's also just much better than Caruana at rapid and blitz (Elo rating of 2880 and 2939 respectively) while Caruana gets noticeably worse (2789 and 2767 respectively) as the time pressure increases. Ending the game early to avoid surprises and moving to a type of game where you've got a significant advantage over your opponent makes a lot of sense.

I do not think this is the case at all. The games were all very close, with no side gaining more than a +2 ( a 2 pawn equivalent ) advantage. He actually seemed extremely nervous of losing during game 10.

It's hard to say why he called off game 12 earlier than usual but in his words he was basically rattled, and proceeding any further may open him up to defeat so he just chose to take the safer route of heading to the blitz match where is the favorite.

What if his "mistakes" were intentional?

And his thrill is the nervousness brought about by not wanting to lose after putting himself into a previously un-winnable situation?

This!

No, it doesn't make any sense at all. The only people that care about Carlsen during the tournament are the same people who care about Carlsen not during the tournament - chess fans.

I don't agree. Having the focussed attention of those fans is different. Also there's a euphoria associated with being involved ina large event that means when it ends there's a sense of loss, normality is so humdrum it's depressing. I can see someone curtailing that return to normality by all means.

Magnus Carlsen is widely considered to be one of the very best chess players of all time, and it's more than respectable to consider him the Greatest of All Time. World Chess Championships are every two years. It's almost impossibly unlikely that someone like Carlsen (who is also very competitive) would deliberately prolong an event like this.

Carlsen is also temperamental and unorthodox. I really like that about him. He is also a good looking guy who gets girls fawning over him.

For him to answer the press in short Nos is funny.

For him to want to do more games with Fabiano and crush him in rapid is a great and FUN decision.

Obviously he could win that game but he wants to have more fun. And we all have more fun.

Instead of winning and going home he wants to do something new. It’s been a long match w unprecedented draws. Why end it now?

I would have done the same :)

Think about this... comparing it to taking a draw to win the tournament when you could win the game but risk losing - IS SILLY. THAT is cowardly.

Taking a draw when there would be nothing afterwards and you retain the title - that’s cowardly.

This... IS FUN!!

> No, it doesn't make any sense at all. The only people that care about Carlsen during the tournament are the same people who care about Carlsen not during the tournament - chess fans.

I am not a chess fan, before today I had read about and forgotten Magnus Carlsen's name. Today, I am talking to you about Magnus Carlsen.

Make of this data point what you will.

Time pressure and the position being in flux guaranteed that Fabi would accept the draw. If he had waited a few more moves, Fabi might have decided to play on. While Magnus was on the attack, his king position wasn't secure. If Fabi could have secured his position, he might have chosen to play on, considering he knows Magnus is the favorite to win the tie break.

Fabi had no real chances for counterplay any time soon. This is why playing on for at least 5 more moves would have been advantageous. Virtually guaranteed fabi would accept a draw even if Carlsen makes no headway given Fabi having burned a few more minutes on the clock.

Fabi wasn't looking for counterplay, he was looking to secure his king. If he managed to do so in a few moves, he would have less to lose by playing on than Magnus. Giving Fabi a chance to fend off Magnus' attack only increases the chance that Fabi plays on.

chess.com is running a "tournament" of the top computer chess engines to play out the final position of Game 12 and see how it goes:

https://www.chess.com/news/view/computer-chess-championship-...

The score is currently 2 wins for white, 11 draws and 6 wins for black. There is a total of 56 games involving eight engines.

So, roughly 10% chance of disaster for Black. Perhaps Carlsen thinks his odds of losing in the tiebreaks are actually lower than that?

How many milliseconds does that take?

Computer chess isn't instantaneous. While you can go get Stockfish and run it on your phone, the full power of the top engines only comes out when you throw hardware and time at them.

They're running the engines with a 30 minute starting clock plus five-second increment per move.

So far, Ethereal and Stockfish have each managed to win a game as White (Caruana) from the Game 12 position.

Also this site has been running live analysis using Stockfish on 20 CPUs during each game of the championship, and its evaluations frequently have changed with more time to "think":

http://analysis.sesse.net/

Computers are better but they still take a while to process the best moves, more if you're playing out a couple possible moves for each player to try to figure out the possible branches a human might go down that a computer would discard.

Perhaps Carlsen is confident he'll win the blitz games tomorrow? Caruana was low on time, but they are both 9 moves away from getting additional time.

He is pretty significantly favored to win the tiebreakers. His ELO goes up as we move from rapid to blitz while Caruana's goes down so the longer this drags on and the shorter the games get the better off he is.

Lower risk than playing the #10 seed in Rapid for the title?

Rapid and blitz chess rely on trusting one’s intuition. If he doesn’t trust himself enough to play on in such a strong position, his admittedly large advantage in rapid may evaporate.

He trusted in himself that the position was not as strong as it appeared, and decided to let another game decide the outcome of the tournament.

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