23-Year-Old Chess Grandmaster Whips Bill Gates In 71 Seconds 449
MojoKid writes "There's no disputing that Bill Gates is blessed with a brilliant mind. Sure, he dropped out of Harvard College, but he got accepted into the elite institution of higher learning in the first place. Leading into his college career, Gates scored 1,590 out of 1,600 on the SAT. The rest is history — he went on to co-found Microsoft, built a net worth that's in the billions ($76.8 billion at last count), and now spends his time on his philanthropic efforts. Regardless, it took 23-year-old Magnus Carlsen, a "grandmaster" Chess player since the age of 13 and new world Chess champion, just 71 seconds to defeat Gates in a friendly game of Chess on a Norwegian television show. It takes longer to heat up a cup of water in the microwave."
microwave (Score:5, Interesting)
Your microwave sucks
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The microwave in the example does suck, even the very first microwave oven we got in the 80s did boil a glass of water in 60 seconds.
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The microwave in the example does suck, even the very first microwave oven we got in the 80s did boil a glass of water in 60 seconds.
Maybe it's not the microwave, maybe the guy does not keep his dishes clean. See http://www.snopes.com/science/... [snopes.com]
Re:microwave (Score:5, Informative)
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Warming the water would only take seconds, boiling is of course measured with standard coffee cup, thus means 1.25 deciliters of water at sea level :)
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Runtime... (Score:2, Funny)
And about as long as it takes Windows to blue-screen...
Re:Runtime... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, come on. That is such an old cliche. I mean, it's taken them 30 years, but Windows, now, doesn't crash for at LEAST 2 minutes...the time it takes to boot.
Re:Runtime... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you have to hand it to MS, they are consistent. No matter how fast your machine may get, they will adjust their OS to take the same time to boot up...
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And how long does it take before you can actually use it? Maybe the desktop appears after 8 seconds, but the system is still configuring itself and, well, basically finishing the booting process, the antivirus system is still setting itself up, etcetera. Meanwhile you're clicking on icons and nothing happens, or at the very least it's extremely sluggish. At least that's what earlier versions of Windows were like, I haven't actually had the... err... pleasure to try Windows 8, so this is a genuine question.
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Indeed. The last blue screen I got was when I switched my bios to ACPI -- that was quickly resolved and totally my fault. Outside of that, I haven't seen a blue screen since 9x.
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Re:Runtime... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm realize you were trying to be funny (not that you were) but just for the record: my computer boots into Windows 8 to the desktop in 8 seconds - including the time to log in. It takes longer to boot into Linux last I tried.
Windows 8 speeds up boot time by using Hybrid boot / Fast Boot. Basically when you go to shutdown, the computer will reboot, then basically at the login prompt hibrenate to disk. So 8 seconds probably isn't the time for a true cold start.
http://www.howtogeek.com/12902... [howtogeek.com]
http://www.eightforums.com/tut... [eightforums.com]
Because I use legacy boot menu on my Windows 8 machine, it does not use hybrid boot. The boot time for Win8 is about the same as Win7 was, which is about what WinXP was, about 30 seconds. The problems that extend boot times isn't Microsoft, but third party vendors that insist everything must be running all the time, and not even small background daemons. Workplace IT departments seem particularly skilled at loading down the PCs with so much shit that a well specced Core i5 can take 5 minutes to become usable. The other users that suffer from this is home users that don't know how to use a computer and load as much shit as the popups on the internet tell them to.
Bill (Score:2)
Re:Bill (Score:5, Funny)
He should have brought a Chess computer.
But i bet Bill would have won at minesweeper and solitaire.
Re:Bill (Score:5, Funny)
(vote up if you get this reference)
Re:Bill (Score:4)
Are you saying he's deaf, dumb & blind? That's harsh.
Re:Bill (Score:4, Funny)
> He should have brought a Chess computer.
Well, he was confident he could bribe the opponent's king into making a burning platform speech saying the only way out is to scrap all strategies and ask Gates directions, but the pawns did not buy it.
Big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
He lost to someone who spent much of their life practicing the game. That doesn't really mean anything. To be a chess grandmaster requires a great natural aptitude - but it also requires devotion to practice and study within that very narrow field.
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He lost to someone who spent much of their life practicing the game. That doesn't really mean anything.
No-one (except perhaps his closest worshippers) would have expected Gates to win. But 71 seconds ?? Surely most people who had played chess before could have held out that long.
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Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Informative)
No, he's not. Give Fritz a powerful enough CPU and 8GB of RAM to hold opening/endgame tables, and it could beat any human player. The days where humans could beat computers at chess are long gone. Let alone the super-engines like Rybka or Houdini, the ones that GMs use (on extreme hardware) to prepare for matches. The Elo rating of engines has long since passed the 3260, while even the best (Kasparov at his peak) never breached 2860; a 400 Elo rating difference is more or less insurmountable (that rating difference means that statistically, you'll eke out a draw every hundred games, and lose the other ninety-nine).
Don't get me wrong, I think Carlsen will become the greatest human to ever play the game, but chess engines have become (conservatively) over a million times more powerful since the landmark victory of Deep Blue against Kasparov, if you combine hardware and software advances. What then shocked the world is nowadays commonplace.
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The wrench in this narrative is that Carlsen + Fritz would probably beat Fritz by itself. So there's still some "value add" for a computer player from having a human "on your team".
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Computer chess ranking and human ranking are not exactly comparable (even though they use the same basic system), because they don't often play against each other. The tournaments are separate. Also the computers don't play in the same way vs. other machines as vs. human opponents. So the outcome is hard to predict on any particular game. However over enough games, for sure Fritz would win.
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those chess grandmasters study the same books and tables extensively.
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Those chess grandmasters study the same books and tables extensively.
Not while playing.
Re:Big deal. (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess memory is a foreign concept to you. Tell me, what do you think studying does, exactly?
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Computers do not actively study while playing. That would involve updating their databases. It would be rather pointless, but actually in a past computer chess scandal, a team was accused of having had humans update the computer during the match. So that is the actual situation where the computer is "studying" during the game. But no, the computers finish building their databases long before a game starts. All they do after the game starts is the same thing the human does; recall various patterns, past gam
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Yeah, Carlsen is very impressive in this regard. But remember, while this might seem an insane feat of memory, it's made possible primarily because the moves (and the discussion of the moves) makes profound sense to the top level chess players. It's not like memorizing
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Actually, yes, they do. Memorization (particularly of opening variations) is very much a part of chess mastery.
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Informative)
Those chess grandmasters study the same books and tables extensively.
Yes but they don't memorize them. Human chess players use pattern recognition and the ability to think stategically. Chess programs don't.
Serious chess player memorize quite a few openers. That's probably why Carlsen used so little clock time - he was still in his opening library and booking up time for the middle game (which is really the only place that serious players spend time). Or, if they did wander out of the library it was only because Gates made a questionable move, and the reason they're questionable is that the book of stats show that they usually lead to losses.
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm at better than the 90% percentile in rated chess (in the US), and I'd get mated in 71 seconds too, or else more likely just flag after 2 minutes. The format is a joke; even with 5 minutes, it is well known that a club player like me needs more time than that just to walk through the basics and not blunder. With a rating difference, less time hurts the lower rated player. And 2 minutes is the fastest possible to play, and is much faster than most players ever play, including in casual games. 3 minutes is the fastest you'll normally see at a chess club, and even that is too fast for most of the players who like blitz. Normally at a chess club there will be people playing 5 minute, and others playing much longer time controls.
In computer chess people play as fast as 1 minute, but only because clicking is faster than moving a piece with your hand and pressing the button on a clock.
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Chess programs only got to around 2600 rating by just brute-forcing analysis of lines. Magnus can crush a 2600 without much effort. They last longer than Gates, of course.
The reason chess computers are so strong is that there are a large number of human GrandMasters who work with the chess computer companies in order to identify and program the patterns that human players use. They also use various statistical techniques for the computer to identify known patterns and themes. Without all these advanced patt
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Re: Big deal. (Score:2)
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Interesting)
It was a Rapid game where Carlsen only had half the time to make his moves than Gates had, but neither had very much time at all. Gates was under no illusions as to his chances either - he considered the result to be a forgone conclusion.
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
He lost to someone who spent much of their life practicing the game. That doesn't really mean anything.
No-one (except perhaps his closest worshippers) would have expected Gates to win. But 71 seconds ?? Surely most people who had played chess before could have held out that long.
You chastise Bill for playing quickly...when in reality, he knew his fate before he even touched a single chess piece.
Why is it that you assume speed was a sign of unintelligent game play in his part? What exactly would have been the point of sitting there thinking about it?
It's like standing there on the court taking your time serving a tennis ball to Roger Federer. Speed was realistically the most effective way to him to play this game, for the outcome was already known.
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Of course Gates would be expected to lose, and it would be a shocker if he didn't lose.
But he lost in only 9 moves. He should have been able to last longer than that.
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Speed chess is like that. Playing it against someone with the "feel" that a grandmaster has would make lasting 9 moves be an achievement...
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
My SAT score (1510) was almost as high as Mr. Bill's. I scored similarly on the GREs (general and comp-sci), and hit the 90th percentile when I took the LSAT cold (having no idea what kinds of questions would be on it) on a dare. Yet I absolutely suck at chess, and other exercises in tactical or strategic thinking. Despite the literary/cinematic cliché of using "plays chess" to show that someone is really, really smart, it actually reflects only a very specific kind of intelligence, to say nothing of developing the skills and experience to play it well. This match-up was about as meaningful as putting a pro basketball player in a half-pipe competition with a skateboarding whiz.
Much of his life (Score:3)
Much of his 23 year long life. Still couldn't have been very long. I've spent more time taking a crap than he's been alive.
Thank you! (Score:3)
Let's also consider that the attack Magnus used on Bill was a class speed chess method. He sacrificed his front row, took a small gamble that Bill would play regular chess and be protective of his front row. As a result, Magnus came out fast and hard with his knights and queen. I have seen this precise game played (move for move) many time growing up by the old jewish men in the park in Brooklyn. In fact, I'm almost sure I played it against other peop
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He didn't lose. (Score:2)
He didn't lose--presumably they both won, just different things. The result was a foregone conclusion, so Gates would not have agreed if he hadn't gotten something else out of it. He presumably accomplished his goal.
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If his facts are true as stated, he appears to have an unassailable case. Are disputing them? You have yet to state any evidence for your side of the argument.
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry my friend, I am not a fan of Microsoft at all but I lived through this period and there definitely a time before the deal between Microsoft and IBM and a time after. The deal was a watershed. It changed everything.
The area before that deal was one of fragmentation and hobbyists on the personal computer front, and very expensive minis and mainframes on the business front. The only capable personal computer was the Apple ][ which was a significant business success. It had a modicum of business software, one of which was VisiCalc [wikipedia.org]. This software package alone, the first spreadsheet for PCs, probably motivated IBM to build their own PC.
In 1981, Apple were so sure of themselves that they ran adverts Welcoming IBM to the world of Personal Computers [historyvshollywood.com]. Apart from the Apple ][ there were a plethora of 8-bit hobbyist computers, often based on the Z-80 or one of its variants like the Sinclair. These were cheap. Apple ][ were expensive. Apple was not interested in licensing their software or hardware.
Normally IBM should have simply paid for an OS outright or developed one themselves. They made that deal with Microsoft which ensured that MS would retain the most important property rights, which allowed them to sell MS-DOS to compatible PC builders. Nobody at IBM had foreseen the rise of compatible PC makers. Bill Gates had. By 1986 or so, capable PCs were everywhere. The hardware was simple, they were all compatible to a high degree to the business-friendly IBM PC, they could all run the same software, and they were cheap. Nobody bought an Apple ][ anymore. The 8-bit hobbyist computers had all but disappeared.
Without that deal compatible PCs would simply not have existed. I completely concur with the notion that this is the most important *deal* in the history of software.
Please come up with an alternative *deal* with an higher significance if you do not agree (and not a mere link to google.com)
Cheers.
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So What??? (Score:5, Insightful)
chess skill != raw intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminds me of the story of world-class poker player Tom Dwan (who has won millions at poker and is likely very intelligent) losing > $50k in misjudging his chances of beating chess International Master Greg Shahade [twoplustwo.com], who was starting the game down a rook (an insurmountable difference when players have remotely similar skill).
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The most intelligent person in the world would not stand a chance versus an experienced, serious chess aficionado. Being good at chess not only requires raw intelligence, but also strategic and tactical insights that just can't be developed on the fly no matter how intelligent you are, and especially not during a speed chess match.
I've never lost a game of chess (thank you, thank you) but I pick my games as it takes a lot out of me. Forced into a game by the "barracks chess master" I beat em in two games back to back - left em muttering it's not possible and me with a bad headache.
trying to lose? (Score:2)
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My thoughts exactly. Maybe Bill just wanted to get out of this gig as fast as he could.
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My thoughts exactly. Maybe Bill just wanted to get out of this gig as fast as he could.
a me too.
"The Justin Bieber of chess" ?! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but first off - Magnus Carlsen has been an extremely well known chess player since 2004. Justin Bieber was discovered when? 2008?
Secondly, while Bieber is famous for being famous.. Carlsen is famous for using his brain and becoming the world champion of chess. He built his career around his brain. Yes, some fashion agency also discovered his good looks and started sponsoring him and using him as a model - but that's not his main work. It's a hobby thing on the side. Good for him.
For those slightly interested in chess, but not interested enough to normally follow ratings and such - take a look at: http://2700chess.com/ [2700chess.com] for the up to date live ratings.
Aronian is doing a massive jump these days due to Tata Steel. I'm guessing the next WCC match will be between Carlsen and Aronian. They're typically rather evenly matched.
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Bieber is famous for singing. Ok, so I don't particularly enjoy his music, but his fame is at least based on a talent - as opposed to people like Paris Hilton, or Kim Kardashion, who never really showed any particular talent, except for self-promotion.
Re:"The Justin Bieber of chess" ?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Carlsen plays the best chess in the world and happens to be attractive. That's the difference.
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Aronian is doing a massive jump these days due to Tata Steel.
Huh? How does a company make the guy better at chess?
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You emphasize how this guy made a career out of using his brain. So what ??
Having and/or using a brain is same as having nice voice or being handsome. Something none of us individually wished for. You're born that way - therefore nothing to be proud of.
Your post is assuming that having a brain and building a career out of it is better or more ... whatever .. than people having a nice body/voice .. talent for music.
I know this is a nerd web site.. and nerds are same as other groups of people.. biased, but c'
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Maybe you are thinking of Paris Hilton or something (and maybe someone will refute me on her, idk), but JB is famous because he has talent, he appeared in youtube vids that had apparently enough draw for multiple people wanting to sign him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J... [wikipedia.org]
You and I may think his music sucks, I don't think he has the talent near, say, some of the Jacksons at his
News? (Score:2)
Not
and also not stuff that matters
Anyway you don't measure the length of a chess game by time, you measure it by the number of moves
He was only whipped? (Score:2, Funny)
I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off the head of Bill Gates and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some software comes with too high a price. I would look up into his lifeless eyes and wave, like this. Can you and your Utilities arrange that for me, Mr Norton?
Not much of a story ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Annotated game record (Score:5, Informative)
An annotated game record is available here:
http://en.chessbase.com/post/carlsen-mates-bill-gates-in-79-seconds [chessbase.com]
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6.0-0 - This move was done WAY to early. For one to castle is (usually) a passive move, which allows your opponent to gain an extra move
8.hxg4 - This is a clear mistake. This opens his right side rank for the queen to enter
9.Kxe5?? - This was the final nail.
IMHO, if Bill hadn't have
Reminds me (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminds me of an old saying:
Every person you meet is always better at something then you are...
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Microwave induces more entropy in cup of water (Score:2)
...than a chess game with Bill Gates, as even a Microsoft Surface tablet will behave in a wildly different manner between the two:
* Surface placed in front of Bill Gates and switched on = Very low levels of molecular, audio and visual excitation
* Microwave loaded with a Surface and switched on = Very high excitation and dynamic visual displays
Not a 4 move checkmate (Score:2)
but all of the pieces required were in play - both play horses, hate those people!!!
Can take them just takes longer.
Bill Gates is impressive steal code or whatever he did it. but Chess isn't his game. Leading with a knight sigh was after a quick win but
prevented all his other pieces from moving; able to castle, had em on the run from the start. kinda think e castled to show he knew a bit about chess.
How many Libraries of Congress is that? (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for that helpful comparison---without it, I would have had no clue how long 71 seconds actually is.
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Thanks for that helpful comparison---without it, I would have had no clue how long 71 seconds actually is.
Really? I didn't find it helpful at all. I had to look it up myself. 71 seconds is about 81.5 miles (~ 131.3 km) long. Given approximately 69 miles (or 111 km) per degree of longitude or latitude (longitudinal degrees vary widely, covering less distance approaching the poles).
I'm still confused about their thermal coefficient as related the distance or how exactly that relates to 8oz of water microwaved -- Seems it would depend on at least the pressure, starting temperature, destination temperature, and
Bill Gates? Brilliant mind? (Score:2)
i.e. writing DOS just as IBM entered the PC market. The rest is history.
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They bought MS-DOS and re-sold it to IBM, six years after being in business. Their main product, which Gates wrote and was incredibly involved with, was Basic. They started in the right place, by moving to Albuquerque where the 1975 Altair was made and putting their Basic on it, along with every other microcomputer for a decade. He is a smart person and master code monkey; maybe the next challenge in Gates vs Magnus Carlsen will be an 8086 assembly coding competition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
Game on chessgames.com (Score:2)
Game on chessgames.com [chessgames.com].
1. e4 Nc6 2. Nf3 is unusual but not crazy.
2. ... d4 seems suitably aggressive; the black queen backs her pawn up, the white king can't.
3. Bd3? Gates is trying to protect his pawn (and preparing to castle), but ends up blocking in his black bishop; better is 3. d3.
3. ... Nf6
4. exd5? Qxd5 lets the black queen out of her hidey-hole.
5. Nc3 Qh5 White tries to play queen-be-gone, but the queen is happy to be on her way.
6. 0-0? Dude, with the queen sitting on h5? 6. ... Bg4 after the knight
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My takeaway is that if you're playing one of these grandmasters in a show game, go for an early exchange of queens. He'll probably pull it back, but you can make him dance around.
I don't thk so. A GM can happily play without a queen, meanwhile you've lost your best piece.
I'm not being snarky here, I've played against GMs and had my ass handed to me each and every time. So I speak with authority :)
Oh, wow, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Guy who is really really good at chess beats quite smart guy of unknown chess-playing ability at chess.
This is news?
Regardless, it took 23-year-old Magnus Carlsen, a "grandmaster" Chess player since the age of 13 and new world Chess champion, just 71 seconds to defeat Gates in a friendly game of Chess
What do you mean, "regardless"? There's no "regardless" about it. It's like comparing a guy who won a gajillion dollars on a scratchcard to Warren Buffett (except for the fact that you could never get richer than Warren Buffett with any scratchcard). There is no comparison.
Or are we really now meant to re-appraise Bill Gates's intelligence and business acumen in light of this spectacular failure to hold out against a chess grandmaster?
Link with video and moves (Score:2)
http://en.chessbase.com/post/c... [chessbase.com]
If nine moves is in the TL;DR range for you, it was a bishop sacrifice to open up the h-file for a queen and knight attack. Poor Bill missed a mate in one, but I suspect most would do the same under those conditions.
chess? (Score:3, Insightful)
Chess is a very specialized skill, unrelated to pretty much everything that matters in life. Yeah, it's not surprising that an expert level chess player can win against a business tycoon. He'd probably also win against a Nobel prize winner or mathematician.
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you are right that it is unsurprising — as is the result of a game between a tennis champ and an amateur — but you are wrong in saying that the skills one squires in chess are unrelated to everything that matters in life.
you obviously have never taken up the sport, or you would soon see how it disciplines and trains the mind to meet everything else in life with more and better discrimination — just like science enables one to cut out a lot of the crap that people superstitiously believe
71 vs 79 seconds (Score:2)
Barf (Score:2, Insightful)
>"There's no disputing that Bill Gates is blessed with a brilliant mind."
I think I shall barf now.
Pretty meaningless (Score:3)
There's no disputing? (Score:3)
There's no disputing that Bill Gates is blessed with a brilliant mind.
Sure there is.
How suprising! (Score:3)
A young chess grandmaster, who has being practicing chess every single day for 10 years, quickly defeats Bill Gates, who is now an old man with little chess experience.
I wonder why this is a news.
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Succeeding in business is about being in the right place at the right time. Some do it buy luck others do it by maneuvering into position. Bill did the latter as did Jobs, they had a gift of vision knowing where they needed to be with what product offering. Sure he made some missteps latter but nobody has a perfect record if they play they game for long, overall though it's real clear Bill has a strong business sense, If anyone could do it today, and now that the industry has matured I am not so sure the
Re:71 seconds.. (Score:5, Informative)
Clearly someone who suggests "scholars mate" here such as yourself would not understand that these GM's actually play extremely strongly even with so little time on the clock. While this speed of chess was popularized by computer interfaces and online chess servers, its actually played OTB as well [youtube.com]
Magnus Carlsen is the highest rated chess player ever. The standard ELO chess rating system is set up such that a +200 point difference in ELO equals a 3:1 advantage (a games score is 1.0 for a win, 0.5 for a draw, or 0.0 for a loss
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Someone please call this, ahem, "Carlsen" guy, and set up a series of matches against me. It should take no more than 6500 matches, but I WILL become the new chess grand champion!
Re:71 seconds.. (Score:5, Informative)
It was not. It was an attack using two knights and the queen, while busily sacrificing material as a smokescreen. Very elegantly done.
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Gates played in a 'think only of one move' mode, he has no strategy and doesn't even try to look at the board from POV of his opponent, so this was childs game.
Well, nobody really can strategize in the first few moves - that's why all the serious players memorize books full of opening positions. Any intuition they do have usually just is the result of having studied. There are some strategies that can be employed like steering towards more open/closed play and such, but again it all goes back to the book. Everything is empirical.
Disclaimer - I'm not all that seriously into chess, so I'm certainly open to enlightenment by somebody who is.
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The chess franchise is still very successful, but I lost interest after ChessVII - Pawn's Castle. Lame story, too many quicktime events.
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I'm not Bill, but I accept the challenge. :D
I would write a flood fill function like this: take a starting point (from a mouse click, for example). Expand recursively in all directions (pass the image data as a pointer to the children, also pass the color of the starting point pixel) but do not expand if the color is different than the starting point pixel. In every iteration, change the color of the current pixel to the one which we have selected from the palette.
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Could you do it in 71 swconds though?
(and have the patient live afterward)
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An idiot that also does not understand chess one bit....