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."
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
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]
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.
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.
Re:microwave (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Big deal. (Score:1, Informative)
What opportunity cost? He doesn't actively earn most of his money, it is continually acquired as a result of past efforts and other people working on his behalf.
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.