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Why There Shouldn't Be a Chess World Champion
An anonymous reader writes "An article at Slate makes the case that the time has come to stop crowning World Chess Champions. This week, challenger Magnus Carlsen is trying to take the title from reigning champion Viswanathan Anand. Despite currently holding the title, Anand is very much the underdog, which only serves to illustrate why the current system is broken. The article suggests measuring greatness the same way tennis does. Quoting: 'Here's what Carlsen should do: Beat Anand for the title, and then work with FIDE to institutionalize four big tournaments as chess's Grand Slams, simultaneously eliminating the title of world champion. Corporate funding for even major chess tournaments can come and go with frustrating regularity, meaning FIDE itself has to get involved. Perhaps the grand slam tournaments could be located in three cities permanently—Moscow, Amsterdam, and a Spanish locale such as Linares would be natural picks—with a fourth that would rotate from year to year. This would give chess the same clear and predictable yardstick for greatness that golf and tennis have instead of the extremely crude world champion benchmark.'"
I watch chess for the riveting slow-action replays.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
But does he get a teapot and groupies?
#DeleteChrome
Why should all three locations be in Eurasia? Fuck that.
Clearly, the current 3-year cycle makes no sense.
At the same time, people LIKE tournaments. If you want to be the true world champion, why not have regionals, as the author suggests -- but limit them to residents and let them be "open" (single elimination in round 1). We have brackets in other sports. This would allow people to compete regardless of wealth.
Each "continental champion" (think "North American Champion" or even "East Asian Champion") could face off in a tournament with the other regionals. This would let each population cheer for its hometown star from New York to New Dehli. Sure, maybe the two "best" don't face off in the "World Championship" but it also allows underdogs to win more easily and makes it more competitive.
Or we could just crown Deep Blue every year.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
America sucks at chess. Among the top 100 players, only 4 are from the US, and get this - none of the four were actually born in the US.
You may have invented chess but Grande Masterz are from anywhere but.
In tournaments it's about who can pick the most points from the weakest players, of course you'd like to win every time but if you're facing Carlsen I think most players will be more than happy to draw and try to outpace him on the rest. The world championship is intended to be a hardcore duel between the two best players, you have to defeat your opponent to win you can't skirt around it. The issue is twofold, one to get the opportunity to play you must win the candidates tournament meaning you must be pretty damn good in tournaments anyway and second by the time another championship comes around many expect the current champion to fall. Unlike many other sports the chess ranking is far more important than "points" collected from tournaments in other sports, so it's hard to make a single tournament be all that important. There are already several long-standing tournaments that usually have most of the top ten players, they're not going to get bigger even if the world championship went away.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Chess does not need to be a show financed by big money. All sports where money got injected tend to turn into reality shows with media buzzing around searching for dirty stories, with pervasive doping, etc.
Why do they have separate men's and women's? It makes zero sense. In sports they have separate contests because women are at a sever disadvantage in literally every sport involving strength, speed, agility, or endurance.
But why in chess? It's baffling to me.
In Japan, professional shogi (Japanese chess) originally had only one title, Meijin (literally, "the Master of the Game"), which dates from the 1600s. However, the title scene has evolved in the 20th century, so that shogi pros now compete in seven major title games every year. The Meijin title remains the most revered of the seven, due to its history and the fact that years of consistent winning in league play is required to become a challenger, but one other (Ryuo) is almost as prestigious as Meijin, and the other five are also highly respected. The titles differentiate themselves in how they select tournament participants, amount of thinking time given, number of matches played, etc.
That would have been the Indians. Or the Italians and Spanish for the modern game, via the Moors who brought it from Persia.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
I think the problem the author has is that he wants to believe that there is a singular notion of "best chess player". In reality, there are multiple notions of the best chess player. Ratings measure more the ability to stay consistent throughout your career and never let your form dip, tournament wins measure more your ability to take points off weaker players and shift our mindset rapidly to deal with the next style which comes along... and the world championship measures more your ability to present an impregnable wall of defensive ability and be unbeatable.
These are all very valuable things to have, and wanting to take one of them away just because your mind isn't flexible enough to cope with them all existing simultaneously is selfish.
Shhhh, you'll make the Eurotrash and comrades who hang out here mad.
One town's very like another
when your heads down over your pieces brother
He means the country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India
just accept it, and move along. No need to bend the rules just because an Indian is the best in the World. The rules and title have been the same for decades when Karpov and Kasparov were World Champions; so why change them now?
we've always brought in big talent from elsewhere
Einstein
'nuff said
You mean the Moops?
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
The indians are immigrants too.
unless it has a death match.
we've always brought in big talent from elsewhere
Einstein 'nuff said
Arguably, we have a certain talent for importing talent... Scoring all the Jewish physicists when the Nazis drove them out, in order to build a bomb, and then scoring all the Nazi rocket scientists when the Soviets drove them out, in order to build something to deliver it with...
Playing both ends against everybody, awww yeah...
whats wrong with the same method used by boxing?
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
Indians are the only true Americans. Every one else is an immigrant. And if republicans had their way would be kicked out ex post facto haste.
Archeological for any human inhabitation of the Americas is pretty recent. (Some) indian populations did have the distinction of being the only immigrants who didn't need to squish the locals; but all available evidence suggests close to zero chance that any human population originated here.
Is this the start of a 'Sports'-subcategory? I know the number theory behind chess (wrote a decent chess program a few years back), but is this really a topic for slashdot? Don't get me wrong, I like watching and playing chess, as I like watching football (playing not so much, since I'm physically not so fit), but I wouldn't want a rule discussion and similar on slashdot,...
Shouldn't we just have the chess-playing computers in a 24/7/365 competition cycle, with mastery changing hands as often as is computationally feasible, and then just use the time-honored traditions to decide who among us shall bear the title of 'Meatsack Prime' within the chess world?
I've yet to RTFA, but the sentence "Despite currently holding the title, Anand is very much the underdog, which only serves to illustrate why the current system is broken" does nothing to illustrate the point. Rather the opposite: a contender who beats the incumbent happens all the time. The fact that this is possible, is the prime motivator for trying at all, and thus the reason for the existance these tournaments.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Moscow, Amsterdam.... Bangkok? It's a drag, it's a bore, it's really such a pity To be looking at the board, not looking at the city
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
They did squish the other local Indians. All Indians tribes occupy a territory that was previously occupied by a other tribe. The original tribe that first migrated to America was long gone by the time the first European wanted their share of this 'new world'.
LOL. I kid you not, the CAPTCHA is 'reserves'.
If you can't win from the computer, you shouldn't be champion.
We should just name the computer chess champion and move on to a different game.
Chess is done.
The problem with modern chess is that it has been analyzed to death.
To make it more interesting they should make some kind of modifications. One that was suggested a long time ago was the players choosing the positions on the back ranks. Maybe adding more pieces and squares etc.
Also add time to the clocks. Let games last several sessions. etc.
Is this proposal not just how the ELO ranking works ?
-- http://herbert.groot.jebbink.nl
Truly the greatest thing about America is its ability to attract immigrants that then add to its greatness. We should be very careful not to ruin that, either through policy or xenophobia. It's the one thing we can compete in better than anybody else, and that fresh infusion of energy and labor keeps our economy and culture going.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
The extant populations aren't original; but there must have existed a tribe (we'll call them 'Squish-ee Zero') who came first, and thus squished not, until they were squished. In some cases, there may even have been more than one squishless squish-ee (if disease, starvation, cold, or other natural misadventure cleared the stage of tribe N before tribe N+1 showed up); but that isn't logically necessary, just a contingent possibility.
A bit too late for that.
Too late...
Why does chess need a "clear and predictable yardstick for greatness"? It's a game, not engineering.
To be fair, it's because the game is pure cerebral memoization and lacks and true skill component or even the mildest hand-eye coordination. The devs have all but abandoned the game after the queen and bishop patches. IMO, I liked the preivous versions when the queen was no more special than the king. At least it was more accessible to checkers players.
From a game designer perspective the complexity level of chess is painfully low, so much that computer "AI" opponents consists of better ways to organize a tree of known moves, hardly anything like machine learning at all. It's only slightly less boring than checkers to most folks. It's not like other more complex (and fun) turn based strategy games don't exist. Try out one of the flavors of Ogre Battle, or Final Fantasy Tactics -- Hell, even Advance Wars.
If the "digital vs board game" component is throwing you for a loop: It shouldn't. I implement tactics games as paper cutouts and dice to ensure they're fun before spending a bunch of time fleshing out the tedius combat details you'll only concentrate on in rare instances, in favor of the larger game. See? Chess even lacks the levels of complexity an average videogame has. Humans are cybernetic beings, as such they can allocate their attention across a wide ranging field, then bore down into problem spots; A good game provides interesting detail at all levels of play with enough varriation that even without dice you'll never get the exact same game twice -- With chess? There's basically right and wrong moves starting at the 2nd move -- no emergent properties at all, and an environment complexity of precicely ZERO. Whomever can think far enough ahead wins. That's why Chess is a solved game.
Oh sure the game's got history and an over inflated sense of prestige. Look down your nose at other games and play that shitty one. You die-hard elitist chess fans are fucking ridiculous from an information theory and cybernetics vantagepoint. Computers can just help precicely manage more variables and thus allow us to play games with more breadth and depth than a 64 cell grid overlaid with 6 -- COUNT THEM: SIX -- movement patterns. A kid playing halo competively has more shit going on in their brain than a chessmaster. Don't believe me? Whip out the FMRI and see.
Bunch of pompus morons. I'm fine with chess having it's circlejerk. What pisses me off is how folks who tend to like these "ancient" games see everyone else as childish, when their game requires the least cognitive ability to master comparatively. Pokemon would be a step up, though I reccomend Magic: The Gathering instead.
Perhaps it's not America that sucks at chess, but Chess that sucks at America?
and while your at it, let's stop having winners and losers, every game is a draw and these overgrown children can all feel good about themselves no matter how good/bad they do...it's all about their self esteem!
"Truly the greatest thing about America is its ability to attract immigrants that then add to its greatness."
It got you the World Series.
"That would have been the Indians. Or the Italians and Spanish for the modern game, via the Moors ..."
I'm so sorry, but It's the Moops.
gives a shit?
Magic is a great game but it will never be that popular due to the business model. It's about to get demolished by Hearthstone and Hex simply because Wizards of the Coast are fucking retarded. The amount of people playing Hearthstone already dwarfs MTGO and Hearthstone is still in a fairly exclusive beta phase. It's a shame because Hearthstone is an inferior game in almost every respect.
Not just the talents, also the slaves. Africans, Mexicans.
Hmm ... lets see. The author thinks the incumbent - who looks like a worthy champ to my admittedly unenlightened eyes - is useless and that the challenger shits gold.
... it ain't a done deal, mate. That's why they play!
Consequently, he'd like to replace the current system which is subjective but works for other sports (boxing?) and replace it with an equally subjective system so that his favourite challenger will rise to the top sooner than he'd like.
He then goes on to spout nonsense about what the challenger should do *after* he beats the crap out of the incumbent.
Duh
I never understood the fascination with chess.
Go play Go or something.
Chess is just a glorified version of checkers.
Which, ironically, is closed off from the rest of the world.
there doesnt have to be one "best"
Yes, it's only open to U.S. teams like the Toronto Blue Jays.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
We are the Americans. You will be assimilated. Your intellectual distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile.
I wonder what Gary Kasparov thinks about this idea. He is a bit of a thorn or a blackened eye to some Russian politicians.
A post like this in a forum like this would not be out of character for them.
Yes, it is a little bit of a conspiracy theorist idea. Sadly, folks in governments like to conspire. ;)
It is not even a real sport, who cares.....
Humans are false champs.
I thin this one is more pertinent for the Salon article.
the article is one massive ego-trip...the author has spent considerable time researching the history of the "world championship" and lots more selectively presenting facts to suit his theory...he conveniently forgot that Anand has gone through the same wait and frustrations in his road to to be a champion and that is probably why it is such a great story...he is forgetting that the "underdog champion" has won all formats ...tournament, match, knock-out, rapid...heck, he even maxed the advanced chess format touted by Kasparov ... Carlsen is a worthy opponent and his taking on Anand in a duel to unseat him is what would make this so exciting...a lot of people like the notion of someone wearing the crown and being challenged by a worthy opponent every one or two years in an involved battle...rather than the crown shifting rapidly between number of heads based on an algorithm...
Bunch of pompus morons. I'm fine with chess having it's circlejerk. What pisses me off is how folks who tend to like these "ancient" games see everyone else as childish,...
Did you have an actual point to your tirade? Have you even attempted tournament level chess? No, there are no pretty colors, or toons with inflated boobies, only real head to head mental stimulation. And believe it or not, some people are actually capable of playing both chess and video games.
Just another day in Paradise
The article really fails to make a substantial argument. Okay, the every 3 year issue I can see. Make it every two. First year is to pick the top 4 contenders. The next year the tournament.
But I don't see what the issue is with having one champion. It seems there may be an issue with point scoring system. As frankly, I think wins are more substantial than draws.
I just came away from the whole article questioning what the issue is in having a world champion. It seems to me that no harm is there. And the fact that the ranking doesn't equate to champion is not uncommon. Look at baseball. How many times does the top ranked team win the World Series? A lot, but no where near always. The top ranked team makes it to the play off, it doesn't mean they survive to the World Series. And it shouldn't.
I think what the author wants is that "World Champion" is merely a result of the tally of rankings. Not established by an event. But that's dumb. Because the challenge of a championship adds a unique pressure and intensity. It adds a goal. And many top performers are not capable of performing their best if there is no goal.
This seems much more like the typical "Tea Cup" generation. Everyone gets a trophy. We can't have a winner. No more football, someone might get hurt. No more World Tiddlywink Championships cause someone might LOSE!!!!
Is it just me, or did anyone else hear "One Night in Bangkok" playing in their head as they read this?
I don't believe I've seen a Geekier story on Slashdot ever....EVER!
I do now.
Time to offend someone
And then we imported Hitler and Fascism/Socialism. For we have met the enemy and he is us.
Perhaps because in America (historically at least) one had great opportunity and could improve their position in life by applying their talent to something useful. Your prospects become limited if you dedicate the kind of time it takes to become a master of that level.
We are the Americans. You are welcome to assimilate with our culture if you wish. We're far from perfect, but your intellectual distinctiveness can be celebrated and rewarded like in no other nation in no other time on this planet. However, you can also choose to remain a pinko socialist and degrade with the futile effort of the rest of your culture.
FTFY
Chess isn't America's game. All the information is clearly visible and strategy needs to be carefully planned dozens of moves in advance. Poker is more the prototypical American game, where improvization, luck, and bullshitting will get you farther than memorization.
This would give chess the same clear and predictable yardstick for greatness that golf and tennis have instead of the extremely crude world champion benchmark.
Except that golf and tennis are actual sports, while chess is not. Golf and tennis are followed by 100s of millions of people, while chess is not. Now if you want to destroy the tradition and intellectual pursuit known as chess and turn it into something that can be monetized, go ahead. Years ago, they did that to wrestling, so who knows, 25 years from now, we might all be watching All Star Chess on television.
Not to mention the queen is far too op. She needs to be nerfed to balance the game. I'm sick and tired of getting demolished by queen pickers. NoobS!
Arguably, we have a certain talent for importing talent... Scoring all the Jewish physicists when the Nazis drove them out, in order to build a bomb, and then scoring all the Nazi rocket scientists when the Soviets drove them out, in order to build something to deliver it with...
Playing both ends against everybody, awww yeah...
I have mod points, but I don't see the "+1 America Fark Yeah!" option.
There's only one team from a country neighboring the US. It's not a worldwide event. Even the NHL, which has the most teams outside the US of the big 4 (7 teams in Canada), doesn't try to portray itself as a worldwide championship.
I think the reason that baseball gets away with calling it a world championship despite being geographically limited is that baseball is only really popular in a few countries. Obviously the US, with Japan and some South American countries....and that's it. Compounding that, there's a history of getting the best talent from those regions to join the MLB, so what's left in those countries isn't usually their premier talent.
I believe the appropriate colloquialism is "Whoosh!".
Cynical Idealist
Based on just the title, I thought this was going to be about computer chess opponents consistently beating world chess champions, making the title unnecessary.
No points. Participation awards for all!
Most probably, the best chess player of all time was born in Chicago, which is completely irrelevant.
and the world championship measures more your ability to present an impregnable wall of defensive ability and be unbeatable.
That would be Mayweather.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
It's huge in Cuba. Of course we don't let them travel to the US to compete.
From the title, I thought the article was going to discuss why the real World Chess Champion these days is always a computer, and how they should add a qualifier to the sobriquet for the winner of the Carlsen-Anand match: the Human World Chess Champion.
You BASTARD!!!
Damn! I've been out of the country for a long time, and haven't followed baseball, but the Expos moved to Washington D.C.?
Why do I need to learn about things this way? Now it really is the "National" league that it always claimed to be, leaving the "American" league the old "North America" excuse.
Parent does have a point. I spent some time studying chess openings and competitive play, and it is kind of stale. There isn't a lot of variety in openings that won't get your ass kicked all over the board, and to be really competitive you have to spend a lot of time examining openings and positions that haven't changed much in several hundred years. I believe that a few chess masters have advocated changes to the game to mix it up a bit, and chance it from a game of who can memorize more openings and positions and into more of a dynamic strategy game.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
A fifth, while currently playing for Italy, WAS actually born and raised in the US.
Indians didn't really start immigrating to the United States in significant numbers until about 50 years ago. Citation.
I don't know why someone would suggest that a group that only arrived here so recently could be the only "true Americans". This whole thread is idiotic.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Go is a far more ancient game than chess, and lacks many of the problems as cited above with Chess. I mean granted, one day Go will be considered a "solved" game, but that is a long ways off.
the riveting action found in tennis merits Grand Slams in four major continents, not the same as chess where the level of action in chess is not necessarily understood by the general public. thus this idea of abandoning World chess championship has no merits at all.
World Baseball Classic. That's the real global championship tournament for baseball. The United States isn't the world champion.
What you're suggesting is interesting, but I don't really agree. The problem is that everyone can have off days for random reasons, and if your off day happens to be in one match, it can have huge consequences in championship-type systems. I suppose part of what you're arguing is that the people who win the championship have fewer off days, but that's a big assumption: it's not just how many off days someone has, but when they have them, and with whom. You could have two people, both who have a six-match winning streak, and if one streak starts before the other, the other person will lose the championship. Similarly, most people would agree that winning five games against the top five ranked players in the world probably means more than winning seven games against unranked opponents.
This problem isn't unique to chess, and it's one reason why I've always preferred series like in baseball, or even better, the rankings system of college football over the playoffs of professional football. There's always been a call for college playoffs, but that's seemed ridiculous to me, because it terms a relatively reliable index of performance into a system that can be completely thrown off based on how one team does on one day. It may make football more entertaining or suspenseful, but it decreases its validity as an index of team performance, quality, or ability.
This is the same thing in chess. I think the big difference is that there's already a rating system that's presumably very reliable, and then there's a playoff-style championship on top of it. It would be like if college football kept the rankings but then said "oh--here's the championship game too." What do you do when there's a discrepancy?
What the f***k are you babbling about? there have been people in the Americas from about 50,000 and civilization from at least 10,000. All human populations outside of a narrow strip of Ethiopia are "immigrants" according to your logic.
Worst haiku ever!
I can hardly wait for the match to start (the first game is this Saturday). I will be getting up at 4:30AM EST for the duration of the match, to watch the games live on the web. Although I play nowadays only against computers, I used to play for college team (at Brown) and had reached an expert rating (2100 USCF rating), before quitting human play. As a kid back in the old country (ex-Yugoslavia), my brother and I who shared one bedroom, after the lights out would play blindfolded chess games in the dark, each with the chessboard in his mind eye. He never stopped active competition and became a chess master eventually (that's one rank above me). Once you are bitten by the chess bug, it stays with you for life.
The US loses a substantial number of its' best players to the other countries in the WBC, despite them playing in the MLB. For example, the MVPs in 2009 and 2013 were playing in the MLB at the time, despite playing for Japan and Cuba in the WBC. There are also some odd rules that aren't found in the MLB, like a hard pitch count limit (which happens to be stupidly low too - only 65 in the first round, 80 in the second, 85 in qualifiers, 95 in the championships), and 2 runners start on bases in extra innings past the 12th.
By playing blindfold chess as a child you practiced the vital skill of every chess master - the ability to mentally visualize the chess board.
Once you are comfortable with this, it is only one more step to set up mentally stable decision trees (referencing mental visual images) and of a of a depth limited only by your memory for positions
Hi
Of all the posts to happen! For the first time the title is happening in my home city also Vishwanathan Anand's home city and you want Magnus Carlsen to win. Certainly dont appreciate the thought!
The point is that later natives were descended from earlier natives. No Europeans are descended from those who came across the Bering Strait. They were all displacers.
Oh yeah, there was that other thing about competitive chess that I found annoying that I forgot to mention: Pretty much all the serious players are total assholes.
this is a really wonderfully complicated game that most people can't handle, so they try to put it down as "memoization" (sic) or "a solved game".....you shouldn't try to comment on things you don't understand.
I put it down as stale, so that means that I am not 'good enough' to understand it? Your comments call out anyone who disagrees with your opinion as to stupid to have a valid opinion. That is some amazing logic there, poindexter....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!