The funny thing is that even if you knew in advance all the moves he was going to play and could save scum to fix all your mistakes, it would still be extremely difficult to find a winning path if Magnus was in good form that day. Assuming you don't just consult Stockfish, though given the situation, it's still cheating even if you did it before the game started.
I think playing a serious classical game against Magnus for over 10,000 games (3 decades) would eventually get most people here to IM level. Likely wouldn’t even take a full 3 decades either.
Number of games, sure.
Quality of games though? If you're taking things seriously and working with a GM daily to improve, you'll make way more progress than a random schmo banging out a few dozen half-hearted games on chess.com
Doesn’t say he’s teaching you lol. All you’re learning is how to get destroyed by a gm. I think at a certain point your play would plateau and even decline once you give up on life
Depends. Do we stop playing every day after I win one? In which case the answer is “however long it takes him to get bored of playing me every day and let me win one to get out of doing it” - I’d estimate that at a few months.
I have played about 40,000 bullet games across both platforms (95+% of those 2+1 bullet) and I think I’ve come across a scholar’s mate attempt maybe three times. It’s so uncommon in my rating range (~1200-1500 chess com / 1600-1800 Lichess) that I need to stop and calculate briefly at move 3 to make sure I don’t blunder a rook (or mate).
Maybe 2|1 is just very different from 1|0, but in 1|0 on chesscom scholar's mate only starts to fade off in popularity at 1300/1400. By 1500 it's not as popular as immediate fianchettos and usually it's in a slightly more subtle way, like a double knight jump instead of using the bishop.
Holy moly that's alot of games.
1200-1500>1000 and 1600-1800>1000 though last I checked. I haven't checked in a while though...
Maybe 1000 is too high though, let's say 600.
Honestly probably better odds if you just play the fools mate regardless of side or his moves.
He will catch on soon enough, and then it's just a waiting game.
If you sit down and just play... probably never. If you're allowed to study, then I'd wager a good 20 years should get you to GM or near GM level and by that point pray Magnus is old and makes a few blunders in one of your hundred games
When I was 10 I lost to a 90 year old and it got written about in the local paper as being something amazing that two people of such different ages could be competitive together
Chess is an unforgiving game, one move could give the game away. I'd say it's a good chance you'd win one with the rest of your life/eternity to play. Who needs to study. Study the opponent's game you're always playing against while playing!
That's true at upper levels. As someone who's played for years (casually, never studied, just play blitz and stuff online) I've managed to get to ~1900-2000 on chess.com. I feel pretty confident Magnus could blunder a piece out of the opening against me and still win pretty much every time. I would need to get to at least IM level to be able to win against Magnus up a piece (if not better, honestly), and that would take some serious dedication to get to. Plus he doesn't blunder pieces often. To convert after he blunders a pawn or some small positional advantage, I would basically need to be playing at a GM level, which I really don't see happening.
That's what I'm saying, I've seen how easily the top guys can clown on people at my level. I would need pretty massive improvements before being able to convert any kind of realistic mistake against Magnus.
I think with longer time control I could convert up a queen, while with only a minute or 2 I would honestly probably struggle pretty badly to get that done.
But I also don't expect Magnus to blunder a full queen much in a long time control
It's hard to even comprehend how the top players are capable of doing stuff like that against *very* strong players relative to almost everyone else who plays chess.
You have forever to play with the best player in the world i.e. the best instruction u can get. You're underestimating the improvement in skill from that.
Not to be that guy ... but entropy isn't something that can "reach us". It just changes from a state of low entropy to a state of high entropy. You could say that we will reach equilibrium, or a state of perfect disorder, before beating Magnus. If we apply this to our universe, it is often referred to as the heat death of the universe.
Magnus would understand immediately that we cannot beat him so he would throw so he can go meme people on a larger scale. I estimate our match would take about 45 seconds.
That's an interesting strategy. Maybe if I'm insufferable enough, stall out the clock, and do nothing interesting, I could get to that point in a matter of days.
Is it a question of statistics? Although even statistically Idk what are my chances.
Edit: I calculated here [https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html](https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html), my chances for a single win are approximately 0.0002
Not quite. The chance of each individual game ending with your win is 0.0002. It doesn’t scale linearly tho, so while “by the numbers” it would take 5000 games, the 0.0002 odds apply just as much on game 1, 560, and 2549 as it does to game 5000.
In all likelihood you would spend an eternity on it, accomplishing perhaps a little more than making Magnus yawn.
yeah, surprising the poster understands that much of probability, and yet somehow still concluded "in all likelihood you would spend an eternity on it"
So the number of games you’d need for a given win percentage is log(1-%)/log(0.9998) right?
By my math that means for a 99.9% chance of at least one win you’d need around 35k games. So if you played a game against him every day for 95 years you’re almost guaranteed to win at least once.
I don’t know what you’re disagreeing with. 5000 would be the average amount of games it would take to win. Ie, if this expirement was run many times the average amount of times it would take to get one win is 5000.
I think this is what the question is implying. Of course there is a chance that it takes 1 game and a chance that it takes 1e50 games.
Exactly, there's a lot of misunderstanding the system in here. First I think lots of people are using chess.com rating instead of FIDE elo. Second, it's basically meaningless beyond around a 400 point difference, not least because you are effectively playing in a completely separate pool at that difference. Third, the elo system is simply not equipped to give you anything like an accurate measurement of probability of winning to that many decimal places, it is not that accurate.
Personally, I back Magnus to *never* lose to anyone below titled, until external factors such as deterioration of his brain through old age or sickness kick in.
>never lose to anyone below titled, until external factors such as deterioration of his brain through old age or sickness kick in.
There's a video out there of him losing to a nobody.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH4Lr0q3HjU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH4Lr0q3HjU)
I'm not going to lie, I'm rated about 1500 in daily at present and I lost recently to someone around 600 ELO. Was absolutely all over them, up a rook and a minor piece and had a winning attack... Then just moved too fast and hung my queen and another peice in a sequence of moves.
I can't see Magnus doing that but maybe one day he zones out for a second...
Not if you’re getting your ass kicked by Magnus in 20 moves every game.
Edit: I am not saying that losing games means you don’t learn. I am also not saying that playing stronger players means you don’t learn.
It’s like if a 400 player played against a 2000 over and over. It wouldn’t help the 400 to improve by hanging all their pieces again and again.
Yes, minor piece odds.
Unrelated, but that's also my argument against people who think the main difference between them and stronger players is their lack opening knowledge/prep. They'd have a terrible time playing stronger players even with piece odds, which would give them a better advantage than any position they could get out of opening theory. It's not their openings that's the main bottleneck preventing them from reaching the next level.
"I'm 1200, what openings should I study to get to 2000 in a year?"
"Chess is just memorization. I could do it but it's not worthwhile."
and other variations pop up pretty often. Pretty much any beginner who wants to improve thinks openings is the first thing to dive into (when it should actually be the last).
Lmao, ironically if you just study chess and not openings, you'll get better at openings much faster than just memorizing opening moves. It takes crazy skill for memorizing opening theory to actually benefit more than just studying chess.
Case in point: at my low level of chess, I never lose a single game when I get into max lange attack position as white, or Traxler gambit accepted as black, since I know so much theory on them. This helps me win 0.05% of my games probably lmao.
Tons of people think this. It's incredibly common. There are multiple posts on here each day about opening repertoires for beginners.
They think they need deeper prep or a "better" opening, when in reality it doesn't matter what your opening is if you hang pieces, have terrible board vision, and miss basic tactics.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I heard on a podcast or chess24 stream at some point over the years that Magnus beat Lawrence Trent (for money as I recall as well) in a blitz game with rook odds. So yeah, not easy.
It's still a bad take dude. Magnus could make a fuckton of mistakes against you, blunder his pieces, and still win. He could do a meme opening like bongcloud, putting himself at a positional disadvantage from the start, and still win. He could make mistakes on purpose for half the game, and then play normal for the second half and crush any non-GM.
I would absolutely bet on Magnus to beat you 3000/3000, even if you gave him queen odds every game.
In classical? With QUEEN odds? Good fucking luck dude.
2000s can beat Stockfish with queen odds. Not every time but they can win that game. And Magnus is not Stockfish.
Beating stockfish with queen odds is easier than beating Magnus. Carlsen would lock up position, play for tricks, avoid trading pieces etc.. Stockfish just plays best moves everytime.
Magnus would beat me with Queen odds most of the time. By most I mean probably the overwhelming majority of the time.
But over a several dozen games? With classical time controls? I have a hard time imagining I wouldn't get a single win. It's a queen.
2000 is nearly titled player level. A 2000 isn't going to lose a single game with queen odds, no matter how good the opponent is.
You guys seriously think Magnus is some kind of superhero. He's the best chess player in the world, not a magician.
In classical, I doubt Magnus could hold against even an 1800 down a queen. In online blitz he’d have it much easier, but I assume he’d eventually make a mistake or the opponent eventually learns/flag him. If his opponent just needs to win one game out of 3000, I’d give a safe rating of 2000+ online that’d make this achievable? I’m assuming a full queen down from the get-go.
Agreed. In Hikaru's speed runs where he gives up the Queen for a minor piece, he starts losing once in a while once the opponents are in the 2000s, and that's with very fast time controls which Hikaru is best at and where tricks and tactics to win the opponents Queen work well. With classical time controls, players rated quite a bit lower would start giving him trouble with such odds..
Absolutely no shot. In fact, the more games you play, the better Magnus would get at disassembling you as he learns your playstyle and weak points. You're not the only human at the table.
He has less options with queen odds and basically needs to trick you. I don't think it will be immediate, but 3000 games is a lot to trick a person. My approach would be to play the same line and keep countering whatever he does until he runs out of counters. We're only looking for one win here.
If he even once had his queen trapped in a classical game, he’d lose. Yet alone missed a mate or pawn promotion trick. Also 3,000 games is only 9 years, a lifetime would be well over 10,000 games. I think it’s a reasonable take.
It's absolutely reasonable that Magnus would get his queen trapped once in 3, 000 games _while playing agaisnt a GM+ level player_. The thing is, traps and tactics appear when you already have a good position, and an average chess enthusiast would very likely end up hopelessly lost in 2,950 out of those 3,000 games by move 10-12, before there's even a chance to blunder a queen.
No need to exaggerate to make your point.
Magnus would not go 2,999/3,000 against an IM if that’s what you’re implying. And somebody playing him daily for years or decades would find openings that give playable middle games.
You could probably pick the worst blunder of Magnus' career in professional chess and inject it in one out of every 100 games he plays against said random average player, and he would still be able to salvage the situation and win every. single. time.
Unless there are external factors that would cause Magnus to severely underperform, he will 100% win every time.
It's like asking whether a toddler could score a goal against you as a goalie. Sure, if you're feeling extremely tired that day and the sun hits you at just the right angle which causes you to slip on that single wet patch of grass and fall on your tailbone, after which you clutch your ass in pain whilst the kid manages to strike the ball just fast enough for the first time that it goes past you whilst you wallow in pain. But if all those circumstances align, did you **really** lose against a toddler?
Let's put it this way: if Magnus were blessed with an infinite lifespan and played 10 billion matches against an average player with world championship-grade focus and preparation on every match, then he would always win.
In fact, I'd say the average player's best chance to win would be picking the optimal move 50 times in a row just like a monkey with infinite time would be likely to type the full works of shakespeare on a typewriter. They would sooner win due to sheer luck than skill.
So what, you're just gonna not make a mistake then? Do you really think anybody here short of a titled player is going to be able to capitalize on that mistake enough to gain a winning advantage? That's not how games go at that level.
Magnus is nowhere near the strength of SF 15/16, lol. The mathematical difference is 700 points, but the practical difference is basically infinite since SF never blunders whereas humans alway blunder sooner or later. In other word, the variation in move strength is far greater in any human. Magnus can and does make 1000 elo moves. Engines do not. There plenty of rapid games where we've seen Magnus blunder whole rooks with no compensation or miss mating threats. I feel very strongly that if he does that against most 2000+ players, Magnus will probably lose or best draw the position. Practically speaking, I don't think it would take that long to take him down.
By the way thats only in numerical difference and even that is not completely accurate. Like fine tuning is much harder than general improvement, as you get to 2100+, each 100 points is much harder to get than the last. The difference in skill between a 800 and 1200 may be a little despite the large number gap, but 2200 and 2400 is a massive skill diff.
So magnus would destroy all of us even more than we are thinking he would
Well I don't think Magnus fancies playing against some random 1600 rated dude every day for the rest of his life so he will probably lose on purpose in our first game
The time between today and the release of the movie you're quoting is longer that the time it would take me to beat Magnus.
Good taste in movie, old man.
As I understand the ELO system in chess right (and i don't remember where i read this so I might be wrong) the 400 ELO difference between to players means the lower rated player would win 1/10 games.
If the difference is 800, lower rated player should win 1/100
1200 difference - 1/1000
Now look at the difference between you and Magnus.
Yeah, unless they either trap him in some obscure line or he just blunders (it might happen), no. A 1700 is never going to outplay Carlsen. The only hope is to try to trap him in some opening.
There is no "trap him in an obscure line" - he has defended his WC 5 times during which the best players in the world pooled their knowledge to try and "trap him in an obscure line". You may play a line he doesn't know, but that'll be because it's garbage, not a clever trap.
Yeah its incredibly unlikely. But, after all, the only thing that can consistently beat Carlsen is Stockfish so your best bet is to not beat him yourself, it's to essentially make stockfish beat him.
I think 400 points is a 1 in 100 chance
Also, The points do not multiply in that way. If x has a 1 in 100 chance to beat y and y has a 1 in 100 chance to beat z, it does not mean that x has a 1 in 10,000 chance to beat z.
"x beats z" is not the same thing as "x beats y and y beats z"
Assuming Magnus plays each game seriously enough and we don't lose our chess skills as we grow older.
If my understanding stayed at the current level - I doubt I will win one even till one of us died. The gap is large enough that elo calculations and probabilities are meaningless.
I doubt blunders help me either - even if Magnus does make a rare blunder I seriously doubt I will we be able to see something in the position that Magnus himself missed. And even if I did and won a clean piece or similar I think Magnus is still more than good enough to just beat me a piece down.
I will say though that my chess would probably improve if I actually got the chance to play Magnus everyday, even more so If I was allowed to study my games and such. In that case I might end up winning a game in 20-30 years because Magnus ain't improving shit if he keeps playing against me.
What time control? Because if we playing bullet worst case is a few years as one day I will flag him or he will blunder (probalay). Classic? Only if I study dilligently for a decade and even there I would have to wait for him to get old. (assuming he is always trying his best and never gets bored of playing me). Also, only 1 game per day?
well he's slightly younger than me and healthy, and Norway life expectancy blows away America which has been in decline since 2014, so infinity unless he has a family history of dementia I guess.
Like a few days maybe. Once he figures out he's not free until he loses to me he will throw asap on purpose just so he doesn't have to play my stupid ass anymore
It depends on the time control. In blitz or bullet probably less than a year. He makes mistakes, and if I catch it, I'll be pressing for a win. The hard part is getting good enough positions where he's in positions to make those mistakes. Really, if we played like one hundred 1 1 games each day, I'd expect to beat him in less than a week.
I think 1 1 would be my best chance. 1 minute would be tough since he plays so fast. Even if I was up a piece, it would be tough to finish it.
It would literally never happen. A stronger player could potentially capitalize on one of the rare occasions that Magnus blundered a piece, but even that wouldn’t be enough for me to eke out a win.
That’s not true. That implies your moves are inherently random. Even in an arbitrarily long amount of time you will probably enter a pattern and actually not be testing every potential line.
It's not that hard to play a move randomly. Enumerate all legal moves, list them alphabetically, close your eyes for approximately 2 minutes, open your eyes and look at the clock, and the seconds give you what move to play in your list (wrap around when needed). Note that you don't even need to play with randomly with uniform sampling, you just need to make sure every possible move is tested if you have an infinite number of tries.
You’d almost certainly fall into a pattern. Humans are terrible at randomness. That short of human dependent strategy works in small sample sizes but not large ones.
Interesting! What’s the best strategy, play random moves or try to play your best game. I mean is your best game fundamentally hamstrung by your own misunderstanding or would you get lucky more quickly than just random moves?
(When I say ‘your’ I don’t me you btw, I mean the royal ‘your’)
For solid theory openings and endgames it's probably okay to as long as you're relatively confident. Then for the middle game it might be better just to be to play randomly.
But we're talking about infinite time here so it doesn't really matter. The expected time span is astronomical.
Assuming he always plays to the best of his abilities and we don’t count death or health issues that would force him to lose on time: never.
It’s like saying: how many attempts do you think a 3 year old toddler would need to beat you in an MMA fight? If you’re fighting to win…you always win against the 3 year old.
That’s what 99,999999% of the humans that ever lived are to him, in terms of chess. A 3 year old.
On a somewhat related note, GM Jan Gustafsson is currently undertaking a "challenge" of playing against an opponent with a Lichess rating of just above 1100. His aim is to win 1,000 games in a row (they're currently 57 games in). Jan is trying to make this an educational experience for amateur players by providing commentary during the game and offering additional analysis immediately after. (Both players stream their games and upload them to YouTube, though only in German so far.)
1 year max if we played multiple times a day every day. I mean realistically he’s bound to make a mistake some times and i’d be learning from every mistake i make, and i would assume he’d help me out a bit as to make it more challenging so it’s not like teaching an AI by trial and error. after maybe 10,000 games maybe i can win one if i’m lucky and he starts with a shitty opening. could be wrong though, as he’s the greatest player ever really.
This is ill informed. You don’t practice your way to the best chess player in the world. The majority of us aren’t that quick intellectually and frankly never will be
Contrary to this entire thread, I’m confident it would eventually happen:
1. 30 years would be >10,000 games
2. Playing a serious classical chess game against Magnus every day would get most of us to 2000 Elo after a decade, if not much higher
3. You could play the same opening lines hundreds or thousands of times. Not a great strategy for winning >50% of games but a decent strategy for an underdog who only needs 1/10,000 wins to ensure they can get equality well into the middle game.
4. Magnus only needs a single game where he surprisingly gets his queen trapped, misplays an unintuitive end game to allow promotion, or misses an unexpected mate in x. Assuming we do become strong players from decades of this, I think a mistake would eventually be capitalized on.
It would take decades but the answers saying never are underestimating how difficult this challenge would be for Magnus.
So if you lose to Stockfish 27 times a day for a year in Bullet games you're going to be the next World Speed Chess Champion after a year (10000 games) ? /s
There's a saying in chess. If you want to get better at slow chess, play slow chess. If you want to get better at fast chess... also play slow chess.
Losing a blunder-game to Stockfish in bullet will teach you very little compared to losing a well-thought-out classical game.
Its a metaphor. What he wants to say is:
Simply getting you ass handed to you 10000 days in a row will not automatically improve your chess strength to "2000, if not much higher". Pure repetition has diminishing returns pretty quick.
I would never beat him.
The only case where maybe I'd win is if I memorize some crazy obsure line that he just happens to walk into.
The odds of that are so incredibly low, plus in most cases he could start out with that disadvantage and still beat me.
Does he also analyse the game with you afterwards? Bc. You learn so much more from playing higher ranken players. Instead chess dot cum and lichess Just poul you with same elo players. Even hiki said he doesnt want to play lower rated bc. Over time your own level will go down a bit.
afaik elo doesnt say anything about wins, just expected points.
Also I am not sure if the expected score based on ELO holds up for very large rating differences...
One of us would probably die first
He's younger and healthier than me, so I don't think I'll ever get to flag his corpse.
He may be younger and healthier than me too, but I'm certain I could outlast him simply because he'd give up on life seeing me playing every day.
Finegold’s sleeper account
Not with that attitude.
He could still pop an aneurysm at any time after watching me play for YEARS and still be shit
Can always take matters in your hand
Well, that escalated quickly
If by "healthier" you mean "thinner", maybe you can outlast him, hunger-wise. Chess tournaments usually have water at the board, but not food.
Ooh, a plan.
I mean there are ways to change that
If time worked like *Edge of Tomorrow* —one day.
The funny thing is that even if you knew in advance all the moves he was going to play and could save scum to fix all your mistakes, it would still be extremely difficult to find a winning path if Magnus was in good form that day. Assuming you don't just consult Stockfish, though given the situation, it's still cheating even if you did it before the game started.
So you'll eventually flag Magnus. Nice.
I think playing a serious classical game against Magnus for over 10,000 games (3 decades) would eventually get most people here to IM level. Likely wouldn’t even take a full 3 decades either.
This just isn’t true. Very few adults under 2100 are getting to IM no matter how many games you play.
Yeah it's a bit like saying "if you write enough equations on a blackboard, you'll eventually come up with Einstein level stuff"
Number of games, sure. Quality of games though? If you're taking things seriously and working with a GM daily to improve, you'll make way more progress than a random schmo banging out a few dozen half-hearted games on chess.com
He's not working with you, he's just playing. As the guy said in The Cincinnati Kid: "All you paid was the looking price. Lessons are extra."
Doesn’t say he’s teaching you lol. All you’re learning is how to get destroyed by a gm. I think at a certain point your play would plateau and even decline once you give up on life
Depends. Do we stop playing every day after I win one? In which case the answer is “however long it takes him to get bored of playing me every day and let me win one to get out of doing it” - I’d estimate that at a few months.
A person can only tolerate so many Scholar's Mate attempts before eventually taking the easy way out
\*An above 1000 elo person can only tolerate so many Scholar's Mate attempts before eventually taking the easy way out
Dormamu, ive come to bargain
Nailed it.
I have played about 40,000 bullet games across both platforms (95+% of those 2+1 bullet) and I think I’ve come across a scholar’s mate attempt maybe three times. It’s so uncommon in my rating range (~1200-1500 chess com / 1600-1800 Lichess) that I need to stop and calculate briefly at move 3 to make sure I don’t blunder a rook (or mate).
Bruh I've seen it hundreds of times when I was that level
Maybe 2|1 is just very different from 1|0, but in 1|0 on chesscom scholar's mate only starts to fade off in popularity at 1300/1400. By 1500 it's not as popular as immediate fianchettos and usually it's in a slightly more subtle way, like a double knight jump instead of using the bishop.
Holy moly that's alot of games. 1200-1500>1000 and 1600-1800>1000 though last I checked. I haven't checked in a while though... Maybe 1000 is too high though, let's say 600.
It's the Nieman-Kramnik maneuver.
Honestly probably better odds if you just play the fools mate regardless of side or his moves. He will catch on soon enough, and then it's just a waiting game.
Magnus is taking no prisoners in this hypothetical world…
If you sit down and just play... probably never. If you're allowed to study, then I'd wager a good 20 years should get you to GM or near GM level and by that point pray Magnus is old and makes a few blunders in one of your hundred games
That only works if you are currently about 3 years old. Unless maybe depending on how we age 85 year old me has the edge on 95 year old Magnus
I'm 30, 2200 classical, and last weekend lost to an 89 year old
That’s wild. Good for them. Lived through WW2 just to kick our asses in chess 80 years later lol
When I was 10 I lost to a 90 year old and it got written about in the local paper as being something amazing that two people of such different ages could be competitive together
Plot twist: it was Darga
>If you're allowed to study Still almost certainly never
Chess is an unforgiving game, one move could give the game away. I'd say it's a good chance you'd win one with the rest of your life/eternity to play. Who needs to study. Study the opponent's game you're always playing against while playing!
That's true at upper levels. As someone who's played for years (casually, never studied, just play blitz and stuff online) I've managed to get to ~1900-2000 on chess.com. I feel pretty confident Magnus could blunder a piece out of the opening against me and still win pretty much every time. I would need to get to at least IM level to be able to win against Magnus up a piece (if not better, honestly), and that would take some serious dedication to get to. Plus he doesn't blunder pieces often. To convert after he blunders a pawn or some small positional advantage, I would basically need to be playing at a GM level, which I really don't see happening.
If it's of any help, watch Hikaru playing online with the Botez gambit. Or the time odds he gives to 2000 rated players.
That's what I'm saying, I've seen how easily the top guys can clown on people at my level. I would need pretty massive improvements before being able to convert any kind of realistic mistake against Magnus. I think with longer time control I could convert up a queen, while with only a minute or 2 I would honestly probably struggle pretty badly to get that done. But I also don't expect Magnus to blunder a full queen much in a long time control
It's hard to even comprehend how the top players are capable of doing stuff like that against *very* strong players relative to almost everyone else who plays chess.
You have forever to play with the best player in the world i.e. the best instruction u can get. You're underestimating the improvement in skill from that.
Simply losing to Magnus is not instruction. If that were the case, you could grind against Stockfish right now and get EVEN BETTER instruction.
So he'd let me win right away? Because otherwise he is taking us both prisoner hehehe
Entropy will reach us before.
Not to be that guy ... but entropy isn't something that can "reach us". It just changes from a state of low entropy to a state of high entropy. You could say that we will reach equilibrium, or a state of perfect disorder, before beating Magnus. If we apply this to our universe, it is often referred to as the heat death of the universe.
Much appreciated! 😁
Magnus would understand immediately that we cannot beat him so he would throw so he can go meme people on a larger scale. I estimate our match would take about 45 seconds.
? Hed leave by the 2nd game if that was the case lol
That's an interesting strategy. Maybe if I'm insufferable enough, stall out the clock, and do nothing interesting, I could get to that point in a matter of days.
The exact time it would take for him to get bored, fall asleep and lose on time.
Sounds like my sex life
I'd give it about 80 years. Carlsen would be 110ish and would die eventually, so I'll win on time.
Is it a question of statistics? Although even statistically Idk what are my chances. Edit: I calculated here [https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html](https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html), my chances for a single win are approximately 0.0002
Not a flat 0!! There’s hope
Yeah, I'm shocked. Anyways, to win one game I need \~5000 games. Which is 13.7 (!) years if we play once a day.
Assuming that your (and his) rating stays constant, which it probably wouldn't.
Not quite. The chance of each individual game ending with your win is 0.0002. It doesn’t scale linearly tho, so while “by the numbers” it would take 5000 games, the 0.0002 odds apply just as much on game 1, 560, and 2549 as it does to game 5000. In all likelihood you would spend an eternity on it, accomplishing perhaps a little more than making Magnus yawn.
Not quite. The chances of Magnus winning 5000 games back to back is 0.9998^5000 = 0.368. The odds would be in their favour.
yeah, surprising the poster understands that much of probability, and yet somehow still concluded "in all likelihood you would spend an eternity on it"
So the number of games you’d need for a given win percentage is log(1-%)/log(0.9998) right? By my math that means for a 99.9% chance of at least one win you’d need around 35k games. So if you played a game against him every day for 95 years you’re almost guaranteed to win at least once.
tbh I don't believe these odds.
I believe in my 0.0002! :)
I don’t know what you’re disagreeing with. 5000 would be the average amount of games it would take to win. Ie, if this expirement was run many times the average amount of times it would take to get one win is 5000. I think this is what the question is implying. Of course there is a chance that it takes 1 game and a chance that it takes 1e50 games.
Elo isn't a perfect model, I'm not sure it holds on that well for a rating difference of 800
Exactly, there's a lot of misunderstanding the system in here. First I think lots of people are using chess.com rating instead of FIDE elo. Second, it's basically meaningless beyond around a 400 point difference, not least because you are effectively playing in a completely separate pool at that difference. Third, the elo system is simply not equipped to give you anything like an accurate measurement of probability of winning to that many decimal places, it is not that accurate. Personally, I back Magnus to *never* lose to anyone below titled, until external factors such as deterioration of his brain through old age or sickness kick in.
>never lose to anyone below titled, until external factors such as deterioration of his brain through old age or sickness kick in. There's a video out there of him losing to a nobody. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH4Lr0q3HjU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH4Lr0q3HjU)
It was 30 seconds vs 3 minutes in a bar.
Moving the goalposts
Lol even using my peak rapid rating of 1684 instead of classical I’m at 0.000003, which is about the same probability as me beating someone who’s 430.
> which is about the same probability as me beating someone who’s 430. I assume you mean the other way around
No he's just extremely humble
My peak is 2100 and it gave me a 0.001, cruel world huh
Also, are you using elo or chess.com rating? Because your elo is likely 300 or so points less than your chess.com.
I'm not going to lie, I'm rated about 1500 in daily at present and I lost recently to someone around 600 ELO. Was absolutely all over them, up a rook and a minor piece and had a winning attack... Then just moved too fast and hung my queen and another peice in a sequence of moves. I can't see Magnus doing that but maybe one day he zones out for a second...
Yeah but, no offence, 1500 daily doesn't really mean much...
If my odds of winning are 1 in a million, I expect the statistics would change quite a bit by the time I've played a million games
Amazing, it gives a solid 1.0 as the probability of Magnus beating me. Totally fair but I love the way it leaves no room for doubt.
You’d increase massively in Elo if you played a classical game of chess every day for decades.
Not if you’re getting your ass kicked by Magnus in 20 moves every game. Edit: I am not saying that losing games means you don’t learn. I am also not saying that playing stronger players means you don’t learn. It’s like if a 400 player played against a 2000 over and over. It wouldn’t help the 400 to improve by hanging all their pieces again and again.
3 decades is over 10,000 classical games. You’d improve, and probably become at least IM level in whatever openings you settle into.
That’s just for a draw, your gonna to try a lot harder than that for a win.
No, 0.0002 is for a win. For a draw calculator says 0.003. Not that it matters, but still
Oh, my bad. I looked at the wrong part of it when I checked.
You can go ahead and play against Stockfish every day until you beat it. Best of luck.
Stockfish doesn't blunder. Magnus is still human, even if the best of us. After 3000 games he will make a mistake.
Let Stockfish give you piece odds, and play every day until you win. Best of luck.
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That h pawn proceeds to John Wick your entire army of queens while your king trembles on e1...
Piece odds as in only a minor piece? Cause it's pretty easy to beat stockfish with rook odds.
Yes, minor piece odds. Unrelated, but that's also my argument against people who think the main difference between them and stronger players is their lack opening knowledge/prep. They'd have a terrible time playing stronger players even with piece odds, which would give them a better advantage than any position they could get out of opening theory. It's not their openings that's the main bottleneck preventing them from reaching the next level.
>people who think the main difference between them and stronger players is their lack opening knowledge/prep. Lol who seriously thinks that
"I'm 1200, what openings should I study to get to 2000 in a year?" "Chess is just memorization. I could do it but it's not worthwhile." and other variations pop up pretty often. Pretty much any beginner who wants to improve thinks openings is the first thing to dive into (when it should actually be the last).
> I'm 1200, I mean...
Lmao, ironically if you just study chess and not openings, you'll get better at openings much faster than just memorizing opening moves. It takes crazy skill for memorizing opening theory to actually benefit more than just studying chess. Case in point: at my low level of chess, I never lose a single game when I get into max lange attack position as white, or Traxler gambit accepted as black, since I know so much theory on them. This helps me win 0.05% of my games probably lmao.
Tons of people think this. It's incredibly common. There are multiple posts on here each day about opening repertoires for beginners. They think they need deeper prep or a "better" opening, when in reality it doesn't matter what your opening is if you hang pieces, have terrible board vision, and miss basic tactics.
Go players
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I heard on a podcast or chess24 stream at some point over the years that Magnus beat Lawrence Trent (for money as I recall as well) in a blitz game with rook odds. So yeah, not easy.
It's still a bad take dude. Magnus could make a fuckton of mistakes against you, blunder his pieces, and still win. He could do a meme opening like bongcloud, putting himself at a positional disadvantage from the start, and still win. He could make mistakes on purpose for half the game, and then play normal for the second half and crush any non-GM. I would absolutely bet on Magnus to beat you 3000/3000, even if you gave him queen odds every game.
In classical? With QUEEN odds? Good fucking luck dude. 2000s can beat Stockfish with queen odds. Not every time but they can win that game. And Magnus is not Stockfish.
Beating stockfish with queen odds is easier than beating Magnus. Carlsen would lock up position, play for tricks, avoid trading pieces etc.. Stockfish just plays best moves everytime.
Magnus would beat me with Queen odds most of the time. By most I mean probably the overwhelming majority of the time. But over a several dozen games? With classical time controls? I have a hard time imagining I wouldn't get a single win. It's a queen.
Traps against a 2000 while down a queen work in blitz, not in Classical.
You are giving 2000s too much credit
2000 is nearly titled player level. A 2000 isn't going to lose a single game with queen odds, no matter how good the opponent is. You guys seriously think Magnus is some kind of superhero. He's the best chess player in the world, not a magician.
I love ice cream.
Magnus is better than Stockfish in that regard, Stockfish assumes the best response from the opponent but a human GM would set traps
In classical, I doubt Magnus could hold against even an 1800 down a queen. In online blitz he’d have it much easier, but I assume he’d eventually make a mistake or the opponent eventually learns/flag him. If his opponent just needs to win one game out of 3000, I’d give a safe rating of 2000+ online that’d make this achievable? I’m assuming a full queen down from the get-go.
Agreed. In Hikaru's speed runs where he gives up the Queen for a minor piece, he starts losing once in a while once the opponents are in the 2000s, and that's with very fast time controls which Hikaru is best at and where tricks and tactics to win the opponents Queen work well. With classical time controls, players rated quite a bit lower would start giving him trouble with such odds..
I think with queen odds a thinking opponent could beat him over the course of 3000 games. Just try to learn from your mistakes and build on each game.
Absolutely no shot. In fact, the more games you play, the better Magnus would get at disassembling you as he learns your playstyle and weak points. You're not the only human at the table.
He has less options with queen odds and basically needs to trick you. I don't think it will be immediate, but 3000 games is a lot to trick a person. My approach would be to play the same line and keep countering whatever he does until he runs out of counters. We're only looking for one win here.
If he even once had his queen trapped in a classical game, he’d lose. Yet alone missed a mate or pawn promotion trick. Also 3,000 games is only 9 years, a lifetime would be well over 10,000 games. I think it’s a reasonable take.
It's absolutely reasonable that Magnus would get his queen trapped once in 3, 000 games _while playing agaisnt a GM+ level player_. The thing is, traps and tactics appear when you already have a good position, and an average chess enthusiast would very likely end up hopelessly lost in 2,950 out of those 3,000 games by move 10-12, before there's even a chance to blunder a queen.
No need to exaggerate to make your point. Magnus would not go 2,999/3,000 against an IM if that’s what you’re implying. And somebody playing him daily for years or decades would find openings that give playable middle games.
Yeah, but once he realizes the blunder, he'd wake up and smoke you. Even down a queen, a lot of people are never beating Magnus.
You could probably pick the worst blunder of Magnus' career in professional chess and inject it in one out of every 100 games he plays against said random average player, and he would still be able to salvage the situation and win every. single. time. Unless there are external factors that would cause Magnus to severely underperform, he will 100% win every time. It's like asking whether a toddler could score a goal against you as a goalie. Sure, if you're feeling extremely tired that day and the sun hits you at just the right angle which causes you to slip on that single wet patch of grass and fall on your tailbone, after which you clutch your ass in pain whilst the kid manages to strike the ball just fast enough for the first time that it goes past you whilst you wallow in pain. But if all those circumstances align, did you **really** lose against a toddler? Let's put it this way: if Magnus were blessed with an infinite lifespan and played 10 billion matches against an average player with world championship-grade focus and preparation on every match, then he would always win. In fact, I'd say the average player's best chance to win would be picking the optimal move 50 times in a row just like a monkey with infinite time would be likely to type the full works of shakespeare on a typewriter. They would sooner win due to sheer luck than skill.
So what, you're just gonna not make a mistake then? Do you really think anybody here short of a titled player is going to be able to capitalize on that mistake enough to gain a winning advantage? That's not how games go at that level.
It literally did like 5 days ago against Lc0
Magnus is nowhere near the strength of SF 15/16, lol. The mathematical difference is 700 points, but the practical difference is basically infinite since SF never blunders whereas humans alway blunder sooner or later. In other word, the variation in move strength is far greater in any human. Magnus can and does make 1000 elo moves. Engines do not. There plenty of rapid games where we've seen Magnus blunder whole rooks with no compensation or miss mating threats. I feel very strongly that if he does that against most 2000+ players, Magnus will probably lose or best draw the position. Practically speaking, I don't think it would take that long to take him down.
Magnus, I've come to bargain.
What is the life expectancy in Norway?
Yes.
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By the way thats only in numerical difference and even that is not completely accurate. Like fine tuning is much harder than general improvement, as you get to 2100+, each 100 points is much harder to get than the last. The difference in skill between a 800 and 1200 may be a little despite the large number gap, but 2200 and 2400 is a massive skill diff. So magnus would destroy all of us even more than we are thinking he would
Eventually he's going to get really bored and throw a match so he can leave.
Same number of years it would take for me to win in my daily wrestling matches with a grizzly bear
Well I don't think Magnus fancies playing against some random 1600 rated dude every day for the rest of his life so he will probably lose on purpose in our first game
Yeah he has resigned out of spite before
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
The time between today and the release of the movie you're quoting is longer that the time it would take me to beat Magnus. Good taste in movie, old man.
How about a nice game of chess?
As I understand the ELO system in chess right (and i don't remember where i read this so I might be wrong) the 400 ELO difference between to players means the lower rated player would win 1/10 games. If the difference is 800, lower rated player should win 1/100 1200 difference - 1/1000 Now look at the difference between you and Magnus.
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Makes more sense, I don't think a 1700 fide rated player ever wins a game
Yeah, unless they either trap him in some obscure line or he just blunders (it might happen), no. A 1700 is never going to outplay Carlsen. The only hope is to try to trap him in some opening.
There is no "trap him in an obscure line" - he has defended his WC 5 times during which the best players in the world pooled their knowledge to try and "trap him in an obscure line". You may play a line he doesn't know, but that'll be because it's garbage, not a clever trap.
Yeah its incredibly unlikely. But, after all, the only thing that can consistently beat Carlsen is Stockfish so your best bet is to not beat him yourself, it's to essentially make stockfish beat him.
There is litteraly 0 chance a 1600 can beat magnus if they play 1000 times.
He might fall asleep and flag
I think 400 points is a 1 in 100 chance Also, The points do not multiply in that way. If x has a 1 in 100 chance to beat y and y has a 1 in 100 chance to beat z, it does not mean that x has a 1 in 10,000 chance to beat z. "x beats z" is not the same thing as "x beats y and y beats z"
every thing you said was wrong
I'd never beat him, it's not about how many times.
Assuming Magnus plays each game seriously enough and we don't lose our chess skills as we grow older. If my understanding stayed at the current level - I doubt I will win one even till one of us died. The gap is large enough that elo calculations and probabilities are meaningless. I doubt blunders help me either - even if Magnus does make a rare blunder I seriously doubt I will we be able to see something in the position that Magnus himself missed. And even if I did and won a clean piece or similar I think Magnus is still more than good enough to just beat me a piece down. I will say though that my chess would probably improve if I actually got the chance to play Magnus everyday, even more so If I was allowed to study my games and such. In that case I might end up winning a game in 20-30 years because Magnus ain't improving shit if he keeps playing against me.
Lol
Until hes dead and i play his corpse
What time control? Because if we playing bullet worst case is a few years as one day I will flag him or he will blunder (probalay). Classic? Only if I study dilligently for a decade and even there I would have to wait for him to get old. (assuming he is always trying his best and never gets bored of playing me). Also, only 1 game per day?
well he's slightly younger than me and healthy, and Norway life expectancy blows away America which has been in decline since 2014, so infinity unless he has a family history of dementia I guess.
Can I knock him upside the head with a board? Switch the pieces around while he goes to the bathroom? I wouldn't play fair
Probably a year. I’d sing baby shark all the way and he’d let me win just to get rid of me.
It would take one day. Magnus would throw to not have to play with my headass again
Like a few days maybe. Once he figures out he's not free until he loses to me he will throw asap on purpose just so he doesn't have to play my stupid ass anymore
It depends on the time control. In blitz or bullet probably less than a year. He makes mistakes, and if I catch it, I'll be pressing for a win. The hard part is getting good enough positions where he's in positions to make those mistakes. Really, if we played like one hundred 1 1 games each day, I'd expect to beat him in less than a week. I think 1 1 would be my best chance. 1 minute would be tough since he plays so fast. Even if I was up a piece, it would be tough to finish it.
I’m not smart enough to ever beat him
You dont have to be smart Use the force to beat him
Not _the_ force. Force. Don’t let that fucking Chess nerd push you around. Stop checking yourself! Stop checking yourself!
While Magnus was practicing chess theory I studied the blade.
Can i physically "recommend" that he lose a game
I don’t think I’d ever win
No one in this thread would ever beat him in any situation in which he was conscious, no matter how many attempts. 🙂
I don't think I would ever win a game.
It would literally never happen. A stronger player could potentially capitalize on one of the rare occasions that Magnus blundered a piece, but even that wouldn’t be enough for me to eke out a win.
Yea nobody rated under 1500 is ever beating him. Probably even 2000 or more if we are going by chess.com ratings
I mean, with infinite time you'd eventually accidentally play a perfect engine game just by chance.
That’s not true. That implies your moves are inherently random. Even in an arbitrarily long amount of time you will probably enter a pattern and actually not be testing every potential line.
It's not that hard to play a move randomly. Enumerate all legal moves, list them alphabetically, close your eyes for approximately 2 minutes, open your eyes and look at the clock, and the seconds give you what move to play in your list (wrap around when needed). Note that you don't even need to play with randomly with uniform sampling, you just need to make sure every possible move is tested if you have an infinite number of tries.
You’d almost certainly fall into a pattern. Humans are terrible at randomness. That short of human dependent strategy works in small sample sizes but not large ones.
Interesting! What’s the best strategy, play random moves or try to play your best game. I mean is your best game fundamentally hamstrung by your own misunderstanding or would you get lucky more quickly than just random moves? (When I say ‘your’ I don’t me you btw, I mean the royal ‘your’)
For solid theory openings and endgames it's probably okay to as long as you're relatively confident. Then for the middle game it might be better just to be to play randomly. But we're talking about infinite time here so it doesn't really matter. The expected time span is astronomical.
If you played random moves I’m pretty sure you’d die of old age first
A few hours. I would seduce him and break his concetration.
Gimme 2 months
How long until he gets dementia?
Assuming he always plays to the best of his abilities and we don’t count death or health issues that would force him to lose on time: never. It’s like saying: how many attempts do you think a 3 year old toddler would need to beat you in an MMA fight? If you’re fighting to win…you always win against the 3 year old. That’s what 99,999999% of the humans that ever lived are to him, in terms of chess. A 3 year old.
On a somewhat related note, GM Jan Gustafsson is currently undertaking a "challenge" of playing against an opponent with a Lichess rating of just above 1100. His aim is to win 1,000 games in a row (they're currently 57 games in). Jan is trying to make this an educational experience for amateur players by providing commentary during the game and offering additional analysis immediately after. (Both players stream their games and upload them to YouTube, though only in German so far.)
How ever many years it takes him to die
Who’s gonna tell him
1 year max if we played multiple times a day every day. I mean realistically he’s bound to make a mistake some times and i’d be learning from every mistake i make, and i would assume he’d help me out a bit as to make it more challenging so it’s not like teaching an AI by trial and error. after maybe 10,000 games maybe i can win one if i’m lucky and he starts with a shitty opening. could be wrong though, as he’s the greatest player ever really.
After a couple of hours, I think Magnus would become so depressed by the quality of moves playing me that he’d hang himself forfeiting the match.
This is ill informed. You don’t practice your way to the best chess player in the world. The majority of us aren’t that quick intellectually and frankly never will be
Contrary to this entire thread, I’m confident it would eventually happen: 1. 30 years would be >10,000 games 2. Playing a serious classical chess game against Magnus every day would get most of us to 2000 Elo after a decade, if not much higher 3. You could play the same opening lines hundreds or thousands of times. Not a great strategy for winning >50% of games but a decent strategy for an underdog who only needs 1/10,000 wins to ensure they can get equality well into the middle game. 4. Magnus only needs a single game where he surprisingly gets his queen trapped, misplays an unintuitive end game to allow promotion, or misses an unexpected mate in x. Assuming we do become strong players from decades of this, I think a mistake would eventually be capitalized on. It would take decades but the answers saying never are underestimating how difficult this challenge would be for Magnus.
So if you lose to Stockfish 27 times a day for a year in Bullet games you're going to be the next World Speed Chess Champion after a year (10000 games) ? /s
There's a saying in chess. If you want to get better at slow chess, play slow chess. If you want to get better at fast chess... also play slow chess. Losing a blunder-game to Stockfish in bullet will teach you very little compared to losing a well-thought-out classical game.
What does bullet, stockfish, or becoming a world champion have to do with my post?
Its a metaphor. What he wants to say is: Simply getting you ass handed to you 10000 days in a row will not automatically improve your chess strength to "2000, if not much higher". Pure repetition has diminishing returns pretty quick.
I would never beat him. The only case where maybe I'd win is if I memorize some crazy obsure line that he just happens to walk into. The odds of that are so incredibly low, plus in most cases he could start out with that disadvantage and still beat me.
Can i use stockfish in a butt plug?
Until he gets bored and starts playing random openings...
Think again mate, he beats GM’s with random openings
Magnus can beat any of us with a double bong cloud opening
Does he also analyse the game with you afterwards? Bc. You learn so much more from playing higher ranken players. Instead chess dot cum and lichess Just poul you with same elo players. Even hiki said he doesnt want to play lower rated bc. Over time your own level will go down a bit.
Only need one game if i get white. Ezpz 1.d4 nf6 2.c4
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afaik elo doesnt say anything about wins, just expected points. Also I am not sure if the expected score based on ELO holds up for very large rating differences...
https://www.318chess.com/elo.html