22-Year-Old Norwegian Magnus Carlsen Is the New World Chess Champion 131
ardmhacha writes "Magnus Carlsen was able to force a draw in the 10th game of the World Chess Championship to claim the title with a 6.5 — 3.5 score (3 wins, 0 losses, 7 draws) over Viswanathan Anand. Carlsen became the youngest ever World No. 1 in 2010, but withdrew from the 2012 championship cycle and so has only now been able to add the World Champion title to his No. 1 ranking. He won three games and lost none. His first two victories came when he was able to convert small advantages in the endgame into wins. The third (in game 9) came after a blunder from Anand."
Why chess? (Score:4, Interesting)
Some time around the seventh century, a new board game appears in India. Its pieces include a counsellor, elephants, chariots, infantrymen, horsemen and a king. Called chaturanga, it's the ancestor of modern chess - and a game of war. But if chess in all its variations has been used historically to illustrate battlefield tactics and probe new strategies, today nothing's changed. Teams at the Swedish national defence college in Stockholm and the defence science and technology organisation in Australia are studying the game afresh in an attempt to understand better how to gain military success. In Sweden, the researchers are using real players. In Australia, the team has run tens of thousands of virtual games - with some clear messages for their military sponsors.
On the face of it, the bloodless, low-tech game of chess might seem to bear little resemblance to modern warfare. "But it resembles real war in many respects," maintains Jan Kuylenstierna, one of the Swedish researchers. "Chess involves a struggle of will, and it contains what has been termed the essentials of fighting - to strike, to move and to protect." By studying chess and other adversarial abstract games such as checkers (draughts), researchers can strip away some of the confusion of the battlefield and identify the factors that are most important for winning, says Jason Scholz, who leads the Australian work. "The strength of this approach is our level of abstraction," Scholz says.
Imagine chess replacing actual war.
Re:News for Nerds (Score:5, Interesting)
And editor Soulskill made some useful edits to my submission as well, adding links to the individual games and changing my "(+3 -0 =7)" results to a more understandable (to non chess players) "(3 wins, 0 losses, 7 draws)"
http://slashdot.org/submission/3137241/22-year-old-norwegian-magnus-carlsen-is-the-new-world-chess-champion [slashdot.org]
Actually it was Anand that forced the draw. (Score:3, Interesting)
In that ending, the only side that had winning chances was the side with the pawns. Magnus was playing for the win.
Norway starts working again (Score:5, Interesting)
(Norwegian source: http://e24.no/media/dnb-maatte-stenge-tilgangen-til-sjakk-vm/22641053 [e24.no])
What was the "huge mistake" by Anand? (Score:4, Interesting)
I read the articles and am kind of a novice chess player but I can't figure out what this "huge blunder" that Vishy made? He was playing white and didn't respond properly to an attack from black? This would be huge, right? Isn't it typically when playing white you play to win and black you play to draw (that one-move advantage is huge)? So the fact that Carlsen got a win as Black was huge, right?
Can someone explain the details of the mistake to me? The commentators and commenters all make it seem obvious but I can't tell what's going on.
I've always wanted to be good at chess (I equate it to being "smart") but I've never been able to be very good at it.
In related news... (Score:2, Interesting)
... TCEC 2013 [wikipedia.org], sort of a computer Chess World Championship has end its 4th round [chessdom.com]. The winner of the previous stages is an open source engine: Stockfish [stockfishchess.org], and it will play the Superfinal (48 games) against the second player: Komodo. The winner of previous years, Houdini, ended in third place.
Re:What was the "huge mistake" by Anand? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm no great shakes as a chess player but we are in good company as Gary Kasparov asked the commentating grandmasters not to call these moves "blunders" as they are made by two of the very best players. Carlsen is famous for exploiting small inaccuarcies by his opponents, so maybe "inaccuracy" rather than "blunder"?
regards, RSleepy.
Re:How does he do against computers? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Vishy will strike back... (Score:2, Interesting)
Anand certainly wasn't on form, and is aging, but I can see him still coming back next year. (And good job Carlsen!)
And what a finish to the Championship, the players actually playing out the reduction to King versus King.
By the way: Wherever you live, it's likely your local chess club would like you to drop in for a game (or to learn.) You don't have to be a Grandmaster to enjoy over the board chess.