Chess Champ Carlsen Delights Silicon Valley With Dry Wit
1/17/2014 @ 2:07AM
Forbes.com
Among Carlsen’s observations:
* He briefly took martial arts lessons a few years ago but says “it didn’t do much for me.” Other people may be impressed by the example of Josh Waitzkin, a one-time chess prodigy who has largely walked away from chess in favor of becoming a black belt in jiujitsu. Carlsen demurs, explaining: “Josh didn’t have enough of a killer instinct to be successful in chess. That’s probably why he switched to something more peaceful.”
* Chess has been Carlsen’s main focus since age eight, but he says he did enjoy other interests earlier in life, including Legos and cars. “My parents had brainwashed me to pursue higher education after high school. I thought that was reasonable. But then I was doing well enough at chess to be making some money.” (He became a grandmaster at age 13 and kept improving.}
* Diet matters. “Earlier today I had a burger. It made me feel awful. If I tried to play serious chess tonight, I’d play awful.”
* “I think in 15 to 20 years, you will see India and China as the greatest chess powers in the world.”
* Playing ultra-fast, or blitz, chess “can help you develop as a young chess player.” Carlsen says that when he plays blitz, he relies mostly on intuition. In a standard, slower match, he can check his hunches with detailed calculations. But in blitz, “you don’t have that luxury. Usually I do whatever comes to my mind first.”
* “In chess training, I do the things I enjoy. I don’t particularly enjoy playing against computers, so I don’t do that.”
* “Chess I think will never be fully solved by computers.” There are databases already for all possible moves with six pieces on the board, Carlsen says. “But I don’t think we’ll see seven pieces resolved in our lifetime. And as for all 32 pieces, that’s probably never going to happen.”
Full article here.
What a disgrace!
You’d expect a serious player, let alone the world champion, to have heard about and thoroughly studied the 7piece bases that have been available for a year now.
I am gonna have to side with Magnus on this one. Although it seems that his insights may seem to go outdated in the near future, we still have to consider that he is making his observations as a chess player, and not as a computer scientist/engineer.
7-piece table bases are available but still far from perfect, as you have to consider the time it takes to solve every position. Right now computer hardware is still trying to catch up with the software so that the amount of time it takes to calculate the position would be
completely satisfactory (around 1 minute) for serious chess players (i.e. Magnus Carlsen).
Further, the number of possible moves astronomically increases as you add more chess pieces on the board. Thus, it is still impossible for computers to perfect chess at this time. And I also believe that the possibility of achieving this in the future would be similar to how hacking software crack long passwords.
But then, not so long ago people believe that the world is flat, so who knows what will people will figure out in the future?
I am gonna have to side with Magnus on this one. Although it seems that his insights may seem to go outdated in the near future, we still have to consider that he is making his observations as a chess player, and not as a computer scientist/engineer.
7-piece table bases are available but still far from perfect, as you have to consider the time it takes to solve every position. Right now computer hardware is still trying to catch up with the software so that the amount of time it takes to calculate the position would be
completely satisfactory (around 1 minute) for serious chess players (i.e. Magnus Carlsen).
Further, the number of possible moves astronomically increases as you add more chess pieces on the board. Thus, it is still impossible for computers to perfect chess at this time. And I also believe that the possibility of achieving this in the future would be similar to how hacking software crack long passwords.
But then, not so long ago people believe that the world is flat, so who knows what people will figure out in the future?
Not only in chess both the countries are the next superpowers in terms of economy. science & IT. Currently India & China continued to be the fastest growing economies in the world. China might overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2028 followed by US, India, Japan, Brazil, Germany, the UK, Russia, Mexico and Canada. But after China becomes the world’s largest economy around 2028, it will itself be overtaken by India around 2030, according to leading economist Douglas McWilliams, chief executive of the Centre for Economics and Business Research think-tank and from a US intelligence report.
It will benefit Mr. Anonymous to check up the term tablebase. He will learn then that an imperfect one would be an oxymoron.
It’s easy to google the term tablebase and I really do not need it as I have a Tablebase (purchased from Chessbase) at home. And I know how it performs when the position reaches 6-7 pieces.
It does not make sense to argue about it just by the mere definition of the term.
You’re totally clueless. Carlsen at least understood the concept but was not up to date on the state of solving chess. (TB7 is available online via Aquarium)
Stop assuming you know better. The only reason it is working is because it is managed by the Lomonosov super-computer which currently is the only one who can handle its 140 TB database. Do you have any idea as to how many years it will take for a 140 TB database to be able to be handled by a desktop computer?
Now you’re making stuff up. Very funny. For your information, anybody with enough storage and a 64-bit processor could have the whole fileset at home even today. The university supercomputer was only used to generate the files which are privately owned. In short, kindly refrain from posting any more nonsense.
Making stuff up? Nonsense? Could have the whole fileset at home? Do you understand how big 140 Terabytes is? Do you know your current desktop CPU at home cannot take it? Do you really understand computer hardware/software at all? Or do you at least understand how the database grows astronomically everytime you add 7, (eventually 8, 9, 10, etc.) piece endgames to the tablebase?
This is the link of where it says the 7-piece endgame database can be accessed via Aquarium:
http://chessok.com/?page_id=27966
And this is the part where it says a desktop computer cannot handle it, due to the size of the endgame database which grew up when the 7-piece endgames were added (140 Terabytes):
“Lomonosov Tablebases
As a result, we now have 525 tablebases of the 4 vs. 3 type and 350 tablebases of the 5 vs. 2 type. The calculations for 6 pieces playing against a lone king weren’t done because the outcome is rather obvious.
The total volume of all tablebases is 140 000 gigabytes, which is obviously too much for personal computers. Lomonosov Tablebases will be accessible online from the Aquarium interface and on the chessok.com website. All users of ChessOK Aquarium, Houdini Aquarium and Chess Assistant products get free access to the service for the period specified in their product description.”
In addition, below is the link that shows how 140 TB (rough estimate, it is actually 136.71875 TB if you divide it exactly by 1024 instead of 1000) fits in to some of the available hardwares to date:
http://www.afrl.hpc.mil/consolidated/hardware.php
I rest my case.
Your reading comprehension sucks. I’ll conclude by explaining to you that your mythical
140TB (requiring the Lomonosov supercomputer, lol!) is equivalent to a mere 40 hardrives which means with enough cash you could set up a rack in your basement and use your 64bit desktop computer to access/probe the files.
Gamarti!
Well good luck with that, waste as much money until you set up your cheap server just to set up a 7-piece Tablebase which is really just a waste, at least for your case anyway. You don’t deserve any respect with that kind of attitude.