Anand & Carlsen - press conference


jts

Recommended Posts

According to Houdini (at the moment but not for long, the world computer chess champion), Anand (44 years old) at least in his prime was the greatest of all human world chess champions. And Houdini says Carlsen (23 years old) is the greatest human chess player in history. How is it possible to compare chess players of different times in history? By average deviation from what Houdini thinks is the best move. Houdini of course plays chess better than any human.

Here is the press conference. The first game of the match is on Saturday. Watch the match live at http://livechess.chessdom.com/site/ with Houdini analysis and it will be covered in some serious depth on http://www.chessbase.com/ and http://susanpolgar.blogspot.ca/ and probably on the official website for the match http://chennai2013.fide.com/

Total waste of brain power.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's a bit silly to compare chess players from different time periods because the nature of the game has changed and players today have huge advantages in terms of theory, training, team-based preparation, and computer analysis that players from earlier times did not. The greatest players from a century ago wouldn't even register on a top-100 list today because they played what we now understand were inferior moves, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have been just as competitive if they had been born at a later date.

I stopped playing in tournaments in college because the memorization grind became too time-consuming at the higher levels of play. This was party due to computers and partly because theory builds upon itself over time. It got to the point where the first 10-20 moves of most games weren't my own. I still play for fun, but I don't think computers have been a positive development for the game. Cheating with handheld devices in cash-prize tournaments has also become a major problem that is nearly impossible to prevent in practice, since you can't stop players from using the restrooms during games.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I'm interested to see if Anand will offer an early draw this morning, effectively "resigning" the tournament. If he does, that will speak volumes about Carlsen's domination. It will show that Carlsen didn't just beat Anand, but that Anand wasn't every really in the running.

Personally, I doesn't think result surprised anyone. The only surprise is that Carlsen wasn't there sooner.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now