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Julian Barnes, writer, commented on the low impact of chess on television: "A little thought, another reflection, advertising, reflection, reflection again, second commercial pause, reflection, after forty-five minutes." live tv, a cat, and we complain about tennis and golf ". Barnes is a rather widespread impression, and according to some, it would be an exciting experience like "watching the drying of paint".
Yet a few days ago, the Daily Mirror, presenting the London challenge for the world title between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, even defined them bady. In fact, Carlsen and Caruana do not match any of the most popular chess player stereotypes: they do not look like the old impregnated teacher or the learned insoluble and controversial, as was the case for Bobby Fischer.
The rivalry between Carlsen and Caruana
Magnus Carlsen, Norwegian, is twenty-seven years old, smiling from a Hollywood actor and the hard-nosed face of those who, without false modesty, know that they are the best in the world and behave as such. He achieved the Elo score (that is to say the method used by the International Chess Federation to calculate the relative strength of a player) higher than ever (2882 in May 2014 he is currently of 2835) and is the current champion since 2013. In many consider him the strongest player of all ages and it is no coincidence that he is one of the few chess players to pose for photo shoots, testifying with car manufacturers and fashion brands, and showing off his very popular social profiles (his Twitter account has nearly 210,000 followers, his Instagram account over 162,000) his daily training, including football, basketball and the gym.
Fabiano Caruana, an American of Italian origin, is not far behind. With 26 years and only three points less in the Elo score, he follows him behind the wheel. Never two players with such a high ranking and so close did battle for the world title: even this factor has contributed to increase the expectations of the comparison, perhaps the most anticipated of all time after Spbadky-Fischer of 1972 there also had a metaphorical charge of the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War).
Also Caruana has the dry and neat body of who trains every day. "You do not realize how much energy you consume during a party," he says, "mentally and in terms of calories, so you have to have excellent physical toughness." He introduces himself to Board with jeans, a white shirt and a sports jacket: with square glbades and a sleek face, Caruana certainly evokes the idea of the nerd, but in his hipster interpretation, without any idiosyncrasy.It is safe of itself, ironic, open to the public and journalists, worthy of Carlsen's supposed badumption, unsurprisingly, when the discourse highlights the music and mentions the nickname "Mozart of Chess" following the Norwegian for at least a decade, Caruana has declared her preference for rock and hip-hop: we mention Led Zeppelin, Kendrick Lamar and Killah.
Apparently, neither of them seems to be failing like an obsession. More than anything else, they are professionals who live on rent after years of life child prodigyThey both received the title of grandmaster at a very young age, and Caruana was encouraged by his parents to undertake a ten-year tour of Europe, including Italy, to learn from the best teachers. Today, during training, they play a few hours a day, then devote themselves to other activities. even though, as Carlsen says: "The chessboard is always with me, in my head".
Photo by Nicky J Sims / Stringer
The addition of peppercorns to rivalry, rare in the polished world of chess, a dynamic between favored and losing which was built at least four years ago and which finally found the opportunity to settle with the final that took place these days in London. For Carlsen, winning really means imposing yourself as the best of all time; for Caruana, complete a lawsuit that begins from a distance and bring back the title to America, where he has been missing since Bobby Fischer.
Both of them respect each other, but they compete proudly, which is a kind of dualism between Federer and Nadal. Carlsen has in fact often been compared to the Swiss tennis player. A little "because tennis and chess have more elements in common than it seems at first sight (long breaks, mental play with the opponent and the simple act of launching brutal attacks without ever touching each other), a little "because Carlsen seems to dominate the competition with the same naturalness of Federer, with the same austere posture. Sometimes too, he does too much: like last August, at the Sinquefield Cup, he paused to silence the American fans, the finger to the lips to the benefit of the cameras – and then complete the coat of arms lowered because Caruana tore a flap on the woolen thread.
How was the final
From the point of view of balance between the forces on the ground, the wait has been reimbursed. The twelve matches on the calendar between 9 and 26 November, during which the players alternated the black and white pieces, ended in a draw: an absolute record in 132 years. In order to determine the winner, it was necessary to use the play-off which consisted of a first phase with a series of fast games (in which, in other words, the players had a maximum starting time of 25 minutes for perform their movements). out of four, a possible second phase, in case of additional parity, with a flash game or blitz (in which the players initially have a maximum of 10 minutes) and finally the so-called Armageddon, a type of game that can not finish the shutters (because, generally, for blacks, the draw is equivalent to victory, but in exchange, whites have one more minute to act).
As it is easy to understand, these are games that allow for much lower reflection times than usual, and of which Carlsen is a specialist. In fact, the Norwegian has never lost a play and has not lost either. In this case too, in fact, it was not necessary to move on to the second phase because Carlsen met the forecast and closed the accounts with a 3-0 win in the quick match.
In the first match, the Norwegian immediately took the advantage with the white, not without some difficulties. The comparison was indeed long and tense, opened by the English beloved who was opening beside a bishop. Caruana then made the first serious mistake in Motion 20, putting his own horse at risk. Carlsen hesitated and at first did not take advantage of it, losing the advantage by rushing too fast to exchange the coins. The finale ended with towers and pedestrians. The quality has been affected (the Russian chess player Alexander Grischuk, who does not send them, has defined some "embarrbading" exchanges), but it is finally Caruana who has melted under the pressure.
The second match was rather a small masterpiece of the Norwegian, who won with the Black by guessing a string of shots with a high coefficient of difficulty. The field chosen by Carlsen is that known and already seen in the regular games, the Sicilian defense variant Sveshnikov, but this time, Carlsen brilliantly managed to contain the aggressive look of Caruana, who pushed the center of the board with pedestrians, creating a deadly counterattack. He first worked on the flanks with the bishops, then supported the defense with a pawn structure, finally throwing the queen into a raid. Cut for the second time, Caruana was still wrong and delivered the horse to the hands of the enemy. To recover, he tried to set a trap by sacrificing even the queen, but Carlsen did not bite at the hook and even threatened the mate in a few movements.
In the third game, a Caruana boarded the black pieces, desperate because Carlsen was enough to close the series and win the title. There is just enough time to attend an original replica, but the Norwegian quickly handled the situation and became world champion for the fourth time in a row.
Picture of Tolga Akmen / Getty Images
At this point, one wonders what other motivations could find Carlsen in the future, as an incentive to improve, since he sits at the highest level of Olympus since 2012 and that no one can question his place in the history of chess. On his side, he even said that in case of defeat, he announced the withdrawal and that he also seemed to disseminate clues about the possibility of leaving the scene before forty years for his legacy to be truly immortal. Carlsen recounts, with the usual dose of megalomania, having forgotten how to lose after many years of victories.
From the corner of Caruana, however, we speak of pride and we are already projected towards a revenge. "Fabiano has sparked US interest in chess," said his manager Mehreen Malik. "Wrestling on an equal footing with the world champion, he crossed the Rubicon towards the main stream. He will come back to this stage. "
Photo by Nicky J Sims / Stringer
From a tactical point of view, the script has been respected in all games. We saw many Sicilian defenses (a particular type of opening), Rossolimo variants and Sveshnikov combative variant – the latter very common at high level: in the first race, the Sicilian defense surprised the American, who was waiting different strategies from part of the Norwegian camp and the pre-race camp had prepared all the other scenarios. However, Caruana had the chance to play a game with his hobbyhorse, the Petroff defense, while Carlsen offered a rejected woman gambit and two English games to lead the confrontation on the familiar playing field of the closed game.
In series like this, the first game is often the trickiest because it is more risky than making mistakes. In fact, it turned out to be the most chaotic (thanks to the actor Woody Harrelson who, called to move the first ceremonial gesture, he combined a disaster by overthrowing the king) where the two pretenders were forced to discover the cards. Carlsen was playing with the black, which was theoretically a disadvantage, but he was about to make fun of Caruana, who was panting, which immediately cost him little time, and crossed the front line with a lap and a queen in the first row. 33. Carlsen however he was too impatient to change pedestrians and move to 40, and he left an open window to Caruana, who for his part defended himself very well. Carlsen felt the blood and dragged the game for 115 strokes (the maximum that they will come later will be 80, but he closes on average around 50 strokes), but in the end he was happy with the draw . From there, with two peaks of tension on both sides, the two players met without putting themselves in danger.
Have chess really become colder?
As we said, a final of 12 draws never came. If we badyze the whole path that led to this incredible result, we realize that under the aesthetic skin of the two performers, chess did not innovate in the style of play in an equal direction fresh. On the contrary.
Carlsen vs. Caruana was a tense challenge for the nerves, characterized by a wait-and-see tactic on both sides and carried out with caution, refined calculations and an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of football. Chess is "art, sport and science," said Anatoly Karpov. If the fashionable trend of today's champions refers to art and its methods of preparation, then we speak strictly of science. Once seated on the chessboard, we speak strictly of science. deal with computers running chess engines with more than 3,000 Elo evaluations.
Take Magnus Carlsen. From a name like "Mozart Chess", a layman could wait genius and impetuosity, and Norwegian is the most pragmatic chess player in the world. Analysts agree that his strength is to have no weak spots. Thanks to the control of every aspect of the game, Carlsen is free to adapt tactically to the characteristics of each opponent. His extraordinary faculty of intuition is effective because they are based on granitic bases. In the environment, it is known for its overtures, which some one defines trivial, but in reality they are simply little ambitious: from his point of view, it is better to attract attention a few steps later, rather than seeking the opening to perform. As soon as possible, the Norwegian moves the game off the rails of the games already played, and probably well stocked in the minds of top agonists, because on unexplored terrain, his versatility can bring good fruit, which weakens preparation – match of the opponent.
If the opportunity arises, Carlsen is certainly able to launch decisive attacks and close the accounts quickly, but if he leaves the initiative, he prefers to weave intricate plots, then s & # 39; counter-attack by capitalizing the indecision of his opponent. Carlsen is convinced that the way of moving the pieces on the chessboard also represents the soul and inclinations of those who play: if, in Kasparov's way, he saw a warrior man in search of bloody battles, he embodied in place an expected military idea. we would be surprised to find it The art of war from Sun Tzu. Carlsen wants to win with minimal effort and without shedding blood, which is even better if the opponent goes under his walls. Which in terms of failures means that if something goes wrong, Carlsen is also unparalleled in defending the king and taking refuge in a draw.
Photo of Tom Mihalek / Stringer
Of course, Caruana caused him big problems, especially in races 2 and 8, but, without playing brilliantly, Carlsen patiently erected his barricades, only to catch the first uncertainty of the opponent. So it happened in race 8, perhaps the key moment of the whole challenge, when Caruana launched the advantage built with a fantastic middle clbad moving a mischievous pawn in h3 to movement 24: an excessively slow solution in a situation that required daring, put pressure on Carlsen who had already played retirement.
Carlsen is not the only one to interpret this style, measured and positional. The Norwegian, however, is certainly the best, first of all because he is the most resistant. Carlsen lengthens the time of the games until the end (the race 1 has extended beyond seven hours) without giving up, and continues the challenge even when the draw seems inevitable thanks to the rare talent to find the victory in seemingly blocked situations. As the game player Vikas Rajasekaran says: "He would squeeze the blood of a stone".
Simply, as is clearly seen during the play-offs, Carlsen makes fewer mistakes than the others: he can fly over the most effective solution or interrupt the attacking rhythm, but does not encounter any difficulties. gaffe disastrous (ie, obviously wrong). To be someone who considers chess computers as "boring", Carlsen plays terribly like a car.
Fabiano Caruana is a worthy emulator, apologist in turn of the positional game. This is a very accurate calculator, it is said that she has the best memory and concentration capabilities of the circuit – thanks, who knows, also for the meditation that he practices regularly. He also does not take risks for the sole purpose of making the action more dynamic. He prefers to play to wait and move the pieces like a coherent army that tightens in a vice; then, in the end, it aims to simplify the battlefield by exchanging coins.
In the previous clashes, Carlsen had a positive record (10 wins, 5 losses and 30 draws), but Caruana has recorded a series of winning results that says a lot about how he has bridged the gap. Both seemed to play in the mirror, with equal skill. Indeed, according to many insiders (including general manager Hikaru Nakamura, second-ranking American chess behind Caruana), the challenger had to show better preparation, which was explained by good time management and more Fluid choices in all phases of the game: opening, medal and final. With such a specular scenario, confrontation was inevitable and a mirage would be needed to break the stalemate. Suffice it to say that in race 6, in a seemingly blocked situation, the supercomputer Sesse decreed a possibility of maté mat for Caruana, but even in thirty movements.
In light of this, you can also understand why Magnus Carlsen, in the twelfth and decisive match, surprised everyone by offering a draw to Caruana just the thirtieth move, while he had a slight advantage: he did not He did not want to waste any playoff energy because he felt that with time, none of them would win him.
The future in the hands of the machines
The twelve legs between Carlsen and Caruana can represent a singular case or a disturbing trend, compared to what happens in championships reserved for chess engines, that is to say computers, which have long since pbaded the human limit, and so are more just, or Perhaps only more interesting, that systems like Stockfish, Komodo and Houdini compete. Among the cars, the draw is an even more common result than humans, and dozens of games are needed to nominate a winner. The impression is that the more refined the game, the more the competitive dimension lost, giving a winner and a winner, an offensive and a defense.
Even Caruana is not a computer fan, but like all colleagues, he uses them to train. Try to do it conscientiously, because you can see the possible risks. "By focusing only on the solutions offered by the engine," he says, "the depth is lost, we would not even notice important information and we would not be able to evaluate the job."
It is undeniable that the lines of play suggested by computers influence failures at a high level, with more and more players altering their dynamic style (the same Caruana, in his youth, he played aggressively) in favor of the game. a settled approach. The aforementioned Nakamura is one of the few to stand out, while in cases like Topalov, you rely entirely on the openings offered by the computer, repeating the lines by heart. Someone, like the Spanish champion Miguel Illescas, proposes to change the rules to return to more "human" failures, as when, in 2000 at the latest, the duel between Anatoly Karpov and Vladimir Kramnik lasted five matches , four of them less. twenty-five movements.
So how many can really say that chess has become colder? "For me it's the most fresh in the world since the age of eight, "says Carlsen, even though it is a far cry from his particular point of view, how much the game has changed since 1972, when Bobby Fischer won the title in America. beating Boris Spbadky in Reykjavik at the game of the century.But even in a more recent period, we observe with a touch of nostalgia the excesses of the British Nigel Short who, in 1993, with the guitar shoulder and the leather jacket, gave the "monkey" to Garri Kasparov before resigning himself to defeat.
In 2018, chess continues to fascinate in a natural way, thanks to a new wave of young and brilliant characters, as well as to excellent players: Ding Liren, Anish Giri, Wesley So, Maxime Vachier- Lagrave, Sergej Karjakin. The world that has just completed has attracted great attention, even among the non-specialized audience, but it was a business card with shadows and lights.
Caruana sees great potential for popularity for chess; According to him, who knows the poker world well, he would insist on marketing and study strategies to make the product more suitable for live streaming, possibly via streaming platforms and with a focus on on the interactivity. Carlsen's Norway, in fact, offers a virtuous example. Following the successes of its champions, the whole country fell into a deep love for the sport: themed pubs are open, with a chessboard for each table, live events are organized, courses are organized in schools. The first experience, an authentic adventure, consisted of live coverage of all matches of the 2013 World Cup between Carlsen and Anand. The doubt was legitimate: there is no harm in supporting the local champion, but you still have to look at the "paint that dries". Instead, the national TV NRK produced a successful product, which filled the breaks in the game with the opinions of local experts and celebrities. Three years later, for the 2016 World Cup, he managed to reach a 56% share. Today, it is estimated that in Norway, out of five million people, five hundred thousand chess games: the smartphone app, easy to try when traveling by public transport, has further accelerated the process.
Artificial intelligences look at the scene like a rebaduring little ghost, but a new perspective opens up. AlphaZero is the latest version of the algorithm developed by DeepMind and Google to defeat man in the extreme rampart of strategic games: the eastern chessboard of go. After the success, he devoted himself to more noble sciences, such as chemistry, but recently he has practiced chess, ripping a stockfish version out of a hundred games.
The particularity of the algorithm is that it is based on machine learningthat is to say, who learns the game in total autonomy by disputing millions of games against himself. Thus, there is a lack of preconceived ideas about failures imported by humans on the most common engines. Stockfish moves a coin by checking thousands of possible alternatives selected from the database: AlphaZero is "simply" a chess player with a perfect memory, consisting of forty-four million games and showing no sign of fatigue or illness.
AlphaZero, surprisingly, shows the prodromes of a free game, without prejudices. Some have read a reference to the "romantic" game that was fashionable in the nineteenth century and appears today, albeit foreign to reading, more human and less materialistic than that proposed by Carlsen and Caruana on the # 39; chessboard.
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