Magnus Carlsen

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“I Personally Pride Myself In Beating You At 8 Years Old”

March 19, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Videos | Permalink

Were you good at Flappy Birds? Well, fuck you, because Magnus Carlsen, now 23, became the youngest chess player ever to be ranked number one when he was just 19. The king of pawns just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. Nobody asked him if he thought he could beat a nouveau version of Deep Blue, unfortunately, but a few exchanges follow.

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Question:

Do you ever struggle playing yourself age 23 in the Play Magnus app? I personally pride myself in beating you at 8 years old.

Magnus Carlsen:

I always struggle playing against Magnus 23. When playing younger “Magnuses” I’m occasionally successful.

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Question:

Hi Magnus! Even though you were International Master and Grandmaster early on, did you ever feel like you have plateaued with your game, that you did not think you could get better, or did you always know that you could be the best player ever? And if you did think you could not get better, how did you get better?

Magnus Carlsen:

Times when I was struggling, I always kept a very positive mindset. I thought that things would turnaround in the next game, or the next tournament. Eventually it did.

As for plateaued, I still feel that I have plenty to learn. It’s just about translating more knowledge into better play and better results.

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Question:

If you could play any historic chess player in their prime, who would it be?

Magnus Carlsen:

There are many options, but the first that comes to mind is Kasparov & Fischer, as well as Capablanca.

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Question:

Do you ever log onto sites like Chess.com, as an anonymous player, and just crush people for fun?

Magnus Carlsen:

Once in a while I’ve used some of my friends accounts and won a couple of games… or a lot…

Question:

Follow up question; when playing on Chess.com, do you ever run into a particularly tough opponent and run into a particularly tough opponent and think to yourself “I must have at least heard of him” because there are so few people that have even a chance to win against you?

Magnus Carlsen:

You’ll be amazed at the people I’ve lost to while playing online…•

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Carlsen and Liv Tyler for G-Star RAW denim and fashions:

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“Well, That Was Quick”

January 24, 2014 in Science/Tech, Sports, Videos | Permalink

Magnus Carlsen, best chess player in the world, destroys Bill Gates in nine moves.

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“Some Observers Saw That Battle As A Historic Test For Human Intelligence”

November 24, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Garry Kasparov’s defeat at the hands–well, not exactly hands–of Deep Blue was supposed to have delivered a message to humans that we needed to dedicate ourselves to other things–but the coup de grace was ignored. In fact, computers have only enhanced our chess acumen, making it clear that thus far a hybrid is better than either carbon or silicon alone. In the wake of Computer Age child Magnus Carlsen becoming the greatest human player on Earth, Christopher Chabris and David Goodman of the Wall Street Journal look at the surprising resilience of chess in these digital times. The opening:

“In the world chess championship match that ended Friday in India, Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, the cool, charismatic 22-year-old challenger and the highest-rated player in chess history, defeated local hero Viswanathan Anand, the 43-year-old champion. Mr. Carlsen’s winning score of three wins and seven draws will cement his place among the game’s all-time greats. But his success also illustrates a paradoxical development: Chess-playing computers, far from revealing the limits of human ability, have actually pushed it to new heights.

The last chess match to get as much publicity as Mr. Carlsen’s triumph was the 1997 contest between then-champion Garry Kasparov and International Business Machines Corp.’s Deep Blue computer in New York City. Some observers saw that battle as a historic test for human intelligence. The outcome could be seen as an ‘early indication of how well our species might maintain its identity, let alone its superiority, in the years and centuries to come,’ wrote Steven Levy in a Newsweek cover story titled ‘The Brain’s Last Stand.’ 

But after Mr. Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in dramatic fashion, a funny thing happened: nothing.”•

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“In Norway, you’ve got two big sports–chess and sadness”:

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“Just Two Combatants Grapple For The Slenderest Advantage In A Brutal Duel For Supremacy”

November 3, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

Sometimes I think it’s odd that I’m interested in chess even though I have no desire to play the game myself. But I don’t want to play baseball and I like watching that game, too. I guess what I like best about chess is that there seems to be no way for a great player to lose, yet tiny margins exist and are capitalized on. The biggest match in a decade is upon us, as world champion Viswanathan Anand is set to meet Magnus Carlsen. The opening of a portrait of the former by James Crabtree in the Financial Times Magazine:

“Sitting in his modest home in the southern Indian city of Chennai, Viswanathan Anand – five times world chess champion – is describing the psychological pressure that bears down on top-level chess players. ‘What happens to you at the board begins to feel like it’s happening to you in person,’ he says quietly, before pausing and frowning, as if reliving an especially gruelling game. ‘When you lose, you really feel a sense of self … You actually feel that you are being taken apart, rather than just your pieces.’

Such intense feelings creep in during major tournaments, where many elite performers do battle. But at the very pinnacle of the game, in a world championship match, just two combatants grapple for the slenderest advantage in a brutal duel for supremacy. ‘A [world title] match has that feeling much more strongly because it’s the same guy doing it over and over and over … When you play a single person, it becomes narrower because you are so focused on each other. It is a lot more personal.’

Next week, Anand, or ‘Vishy’ as he is known, will walk out on to a stage at Chennai’s Hyatt hotel to defend his world title. It should be a triumphant homecoming. Anand is widely acknowledged as one of the true greats of the modern game, competing to retain his crown in the city where he learnt to play as a child. The match will be front-page news, reflecting his position as one of India’s few world-beating sportsmen. Yet, rather than starting as favourite, their champion will begin as the overwhelming underdog, reflecting the formidable reputation of his youthful opponent – Norway’s 22-year-old prodigy Magnus Carlsen.

The forthcoming contest will be Carlsen’s first stab at the title, making the 12-game match arguably the most anticipated chess event in more than a decade.”

 

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The Sporting Life: Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen Is A Highly Self-Aware Kid

March 23, 2010 in Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Carlsen prepares to move that horsie thingy.

The tremendous kottke.org pointed me in the direction of a great Der Spiegel interview with chess champ Magnus Carlsen. While I’m not very interested in chess as a game, I find great chess players to be fascinating psychologically. You would assume their monomania for the game might make them similar personality types, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

The Norwegian teen Carlsen, currently ranked number one in the world, is as interesting and aware of himself as he is talented. A few quick excerpts from the interview.

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Spiegel: Mr Carlsen, what is your IQ?

Carlsen: I have no idea. I wouldn’t want to know it anyway. It might turn out to be a nasty surprise.

Spiegel: Why? You are 19 years old and ranked the number one chess player in the world. You must be incredibly clever.

Carlsen: And that’s precisely what would be terrible. Of course it is important for a chess player to be able to concentrate well, but being too intelligent can also be a burden. It can get in your way. I am convinced that the reason the Englishman John Nunn never became world champion is that he is too clever for that.

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Spiegel: You are a sloppy genius?

Magnus Carlsen: I’m not a genius. Sloppy? Perhaps. It’s like this: When I am feeling good, I train a lot. When I feel bad, I don’t bother. I don’t enjoy working to a timetable. Systematic learning would kill me.

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Spiegel: Do you win [at online poker]?

Magnum Carlsen: If I take a game seriously, I do. If not, I sometimes lose. But that doesn’t matter. What is important is that I have a life beyond chess.

Spiegel: Why?

Magnum Carlsen: Chess should not become an obsession. Otherwise there’s a danger that you will slide off into a parallel world, that you lose your sense of reality, get lost in the infinite cosmos of the game. You become crazy. I make sure that I have enough time between tournaments to go home in order to do other things. I like hiking and skiing, and I play football in a club.

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Science/Tech: Garry Kasparov Tackles Computers Once Again

February 5, 2010 in Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

In 1997, Garry Kasparov didn't believe Deep Blue had defeated him fairly. See the documentary "Game Over" to learn more.

I can’t claim to be the world’s biggest chess fan, but I’m fascinated by Garry Kasparov’s article “The Chess Master and His Computer” in the New York Review of Books. The legendary champion, who famously lost a match to IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997, looks at the intersection of chess and AI from just about every angle possible–and does so brilliantly. An excerpt about the ramifications of the availability of top-flight chess software:

“There have been many unintended consequences, both positive and negative, of the rapid proliferation of powerful chess software. Kids love computers and take to them naturally, so it’s no surprise that the same is true of the combination of chess and computers. With the introduction of super-powerful software it became possible for a youngster to have a top-level opponent at home instead of need ing a professional trainer from an early age. Countries with little by way of chess tradition and few available coaches can now produce prodigies. I am in fact coaching one of them this year, nineteen-year-old Magnus Carlsen, from Norway, where relatively little chess is played.

The heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn’t care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again. (A computer translates each piece and each positional factor into a value in order to reduce the game to numbers it can crunch.) It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn’t good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn’t been done that way before. It’s simply good if it works and bad if it doesn’t. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.”

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