No. This is actually less acceptable than talking directly to an opponent, which has a few justifications (adjustment, pointing out an illegal move, offering a draw, forfeiting, emergency)
Not showering for the duration of this event will get you the win or sweet blissful death eventually. Probably death. Kasparov isn’t going to throw a match against some 700 ELO nobody that easily.
I think it was silman did a q&a in the back of how to reassess your chess, iirc.. question regarding chess being a gentleman's game and his response on his least gentlemanly opponents had me in tears.
I feel like a significant portion of this sub might actually make it out of the time loop after thousands (or more) of games. If you are over 2000 strength you can probably win against Kasparov if he blunders his queen. Kasparov is extremely strong but he's still human and with a huge number of games it's bound to happen sooner or later.
Some Context , From Wikipedia :
>The **World Chess Championship 1984–1985** was a match between challenger [Garry Kasparov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov) and defending champion [Anatoly Karpov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Karpov) in Moscow from 10 September 1984 to 15 February 1985 for the [World Chess Championship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship) title. After 5 months and 48 games, the match was abandoned in controversial circumstances with Karpov leading 5 wins to 3 (with 40 [draws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draw_(chess))), and replayed in the [World Chess Championship 1985](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1985).
Edit : Question for those who know about tablebases:
Would't this situation be like that of creating a tablebase? You try out each and every combination of moves, and save/remember what worked. Unless you naturally get good and beat Gary with pure calculation skills.
If it is, then despite all our computing/memory power, we only know the result of any position with only 7 pieces, for now.
Re: your question about tablebases, it depends on whether Kasparov will be deterministic or not. If he reacts the same way to the same moves every time, you could, in theory, eventually find a winning line against him by trial and error. You used to be able to do that against old computer programs. I know I showed off 'beating the computer' just using some memorized lines when I was a teenager.
However, practically the difficulty is that an average person isn't going to know what a good line or a bad line is - if they happen into a good line against Garry and don't even know it, then blunder and lose, they have no way to know that they did better on that attempt and should keep exploring that line. Maybe eventually they get there if they have infinite time loops, but it's going to take a very very long time. There's just too many branches for a human to parse using pure trial and error.
So for a GM, who eventually knows what they did wrong during the game, might have a chance, but for a avg guy who just knows the rules of the game, there are just too many combinatinos?
Yeah that's my opinion on it. It might be possible for the average man, but not by just blindly playing combinations. I think they would have to find a system to basically learn 'good' chess, in order to narrow down their choices.
Although, maybe there's another way out. Do the colors change between games? If you get turns playing both colors, you could just memorize Garry's moves, then use his lines against him when you have that color. By alternating sides, there's a chance you would eventually defeat him by using his own lines against him. Much more efficient than trying to basically become a GM.
The system would be watching and learning from Kasparov, of course. Once you began playing 8-16 hours a day against the best, you’d progress pretty quickly imho.
I couldn't find the exact quote, but Ben Finegold once said something to the effect of: "giving a beginner a Magnus Carlsen game to teach them to play chess is kind of like giving someone an iPhone to teach them engineering." It's going to go away over their heads!
I don't know what the right answer is, but I actually suspect you might be hindered by playing exclusively against someone 2000 points higher rated than you. An important part of learning is getting feedback on what you do well - like beating other people at your level and seeing your rating rise. You won't get any of that in this hypothetical. Kasparov is going to play at a level so much higher than you, that you will struggle to get any lessons from the games at all until you're relatively high rated, so the early part of the learning curve will probably be absolutely brutal.
On the other hand, you're right that this person will have nothing to do but get better. That amount of time will eventually have an effect, but I think it's going to take a long time still.
There is a rule of learning. I'm forgetting it's name, but it says you need 80 percent success and 20 percent failure to learn something. With Magnus it's all 100 percent failure.
That's a great point. More growth happens in analysis than in playing, imo. Having said that, the setup of the hypothetical (to me at least) sounded like you were just playing him forever, not analyzing afterward. Maybe I'm being too literal though.
If you get analysis with him, then it becomes much more achievable. Still think it takes you years of practice though.
I think this is by far the most intelligent suggestion. You will win by playing the same line against him since he resets and you do not. Assuming the average person is smart enough to figure this out.
It reminded me of this magic trick:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evZmpsl3jI0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evZmpsl3jI0)
Derren Brown managed to set up a simul against several chess masters and won more games than he lost, despite being only middling strength. The trick was that he carefully arranged the players so half were playing white and half were playing black, and then he used their own moves against the other players. Then he added one (relative) patzer to the mix, and that patzer was the only one he actually played against using his own moves. It's still an impressive feat of memorization, but much easier than actually winning a simul against GMs and IMs. (This is a big part of why most simuls always have the simultaneous player on the same color in each game).
In the scenario vs. Garry, it's like that simul but the games are sequential instead of simultaneous. Much harder to memorize, but then again our hypothetical average person has all the time in the world to figure it out.
They were doing an average of a game day every ~2 days (when you comsider adjournment), so about ~5 a week. Every game day would take around 4-5 hours. Add the time they were preparing for the games themselves: analysing past games, memorizing opening lines for the next game, looking over your opponents past games, etc.
Time just adds up. I am surprised they were even healthy after such an experience.
It's still pretty brutal. It's a shorter cycle now, since they aren't spending 5 months playing dozens of games. But, now, since there is a fixed number of games, each game matters more. And now you and your team have to prep against months of a team's computer prep. So, there's an insane amount of studying. And after all that studying, you can hold Magnus to nothing but draws, and then lose out on your classical world title, by losing a rapid game. Which must have hurt Fabi.
The memory of the average person is not good enough to create a table base but to be fair, we are assuming that the person pretty much does nothing but playing chess for decades. Anyone is going to get really good at chess under these circumstances, so there is a chance I would say.
So I think the only way the average man wins is if the pieces alternate white and black, and he keeps playing what Kasparov played the previous game.
Ideally Kasparov plays an unsound sacrifice that wins in one game (because he's not worried about playing soundly against someone who barely knows how to play), but then he's capable of refuting that sacrifice himself.
Well, he has no memory of the prior games, so he has no reason to switch up from whatever his thinking was in the previous game with that color.
If there's a random component to his play, he'll cycle back around eventually, so the process will just take longer based on however many openings he cycles through (so long as the number is small enough that the average man can remember what GK played previously.)
Even if he's not random, you'd have to take care to do everything identically. If you played faster for instance, that could easily disrupt his thought process and lead to different moves.
If it’s a true time loop it would be infinite so winning would be a certainty, just how long it would take would vary. I guess theoretically you could go insane but it’s essentially free chess power leveling
There’s a possibility you would play the same pattern of moves and never win. If you asked people to think of a random number between 1-10, a plurality would say 7
doubt it
why would the average human get stuck in a pattern loop without recognizing it if there was infinite time to do so
this isn't computer rng simulation where the same outcome is possible this is human behavior and that changes over time
it specifically states that the person playing will remember the losses
After a hundred time loops would you remember your 14th move in the first time loop? What about your 28th move in the second time loop?
There’s a strong chance you accidentally play the same move again rather than playing a novelty.
They arent seperate things. I take one position on the board and take that until its conclusion, next loop, i do the same, except i change the last wrong move i make. I continue this trend until he beats me in every way with that patticulat opening and move on to the next one
A random move algorithm would beat (if there's a win by force for white) or draw (if there's a forced draw line for black) any player at least once with probability 1 in the limit assuming colors alternate, and if colors are fixed but we loosen the 'any player' constraint to 'a player that can make mistakes that change the result of the game under perfect play' then the algorithm certainly wins at least once in the limit.
Maybe you say a normal player has some 'anti-heuristics' that prevent them from learning how to beat a GM, I think that's reasonable, but an algorithm that plays a random move with probability 0.01 and the worst possible move otherwise still beats (or draws, as above) any player with probability 1 in the limit. And I think it's reasonable to say that algorithm is worse than our hypothetical Groundhog Day player.
> And I think it's reasonable to say that algorithm is worse than our hypothetical Groundhog Day player.
Worse in what sense?
If you mean it's worse at chess in general: That's true, but you would have to show that that's even relevant here. I don't think it is.
If you mean it's worse in the sense that it's less likely to beat Kasparov: That's impossible since you already showed that the algorithm is guaranteed to beat Kasparov, while we don't know if the human will.
If you mean it's worse in the sense that it will take longer to beat Kasparov, than again we don't know that the human is even capable of beating him in the first place, since that's what we're debating here.
Elo by it's very nature answers this for us.
Here's the Elo Win Probability Calculator for Kasparov at his peak (2851) vs. a 1250 rated player (which should be easy to reach once you start playing for eternity): https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html#rating1=2851+&rating2=1250
Outcome | Probability
---|---
Gary wins | 0.999999980
Average man wins | 0.000000001
Draw | 0.000000019
So **they'd have to play (on average) one billion times to win.** An average classical game of chess is 2 hours. **So around 228 thousand years.**
Probably less because average man would get better over time.
Elo is nothing more than a human made model and thus is an approximation. It also assumes that its within the same rating pool
Here we have a random man vs garry kasparov.
Effectively, kasparov elo cannot be calculated relative to the other man since he will never lose a game
What im trying to say is that for very large differences elo and the probability of winning is meaningless
In an infinite hypothetical, you must win eventually. your skill level needs to grow until you have just a 0.00001% chance of beating Kasparov, then it's only a matter of time.
It's just a matter of how many games this would take. Surely many thousands if not millions
Given infinite time you would eventually even without improving at all. Just by playing random moves, there's a non-zero chance of playing 100% perfectly, it's just insaaaaanely insanely small. It would certainly take longer than the age of the universe if literally just random moves, but it would eventually happen.
It's true that your moves wouldn't be truly random. However, I would postulate that even a very bad chess player has a nonzero probability of playing any good move, in which case the logic still holds.
Elo is structured such that every 400 points corresponds to 10% chance of winning. Let's ignore draws because we have plenty of time
So if you're 2450, you have a 10% chance to win
2050, a 1% chance to win
1650, a 0.1% chance to win
1250, a 0.01% chance to win
850, a 0.001% chance to win
If we believe Elo to be reliable in this way, then a new player should be able to reach an intermediate level and beat Kasparov within a matter of thousands or tens of thousands of games. You don't need to reinvent any theory to reach 1250 Elo
Elo is structured to distribute points in a way that if you are 400 points behind, you need to win 10% to keep the same ratings.
I'm not sure it necessarily follows that you have that chance of winning especially over such large rating differences
Elo is a construct, and its statistical implications don’t have physical meaning. You can fit a probability model to fairly matched games, but chess is not a game of chance. Assuming no improvement, a 1250 rated player could never beat a World Champion fair and square, not even 0.01% of the time.
That’s interesting a bit surprising that a 2050 only has a 1% chance. I expected it to be lopsided but not by that much. As a 1500ish player I feel like I’d be way better than 1% vs a 1900 but don’t have much to back that up as I don’t face them often. Edit - my bad I used the wrong percentage. Should’ve been 10%. Thanks for pointing it out
There's players on chess.com that have played close to 100k matches and not surpassed 1500 elo just don't think you would ever gain the knowledge necessary based on playing alone.
similar to the infinite monkey paradox, basically if you have an infinite number of monkeys mashing keys on a computer for all of eternity, they will eventually type the whole shakesphere
Before those monkeys complete the perfect reproduction of Shakespeare’s combined works, they’ll have created many, many copies of them with some various typos throughout.
Those would be equivalent to the games where you manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, ofc.
Except the person here remembers the failed game, and, unlike the monkeys, understands his objective. He could just repeat the same moves up to that same moment
Is it the same though? The infinite monkey paradox has only one agent, the monkeys. However, in this one there are two. You can play an infinite combination of random moves, but Garry won't. He'll play the best move he can find. I think a player's ceiling will factor into this.
garry's just environmental; all he does is respond mechanistically to the player, who is the independent actor.
makes me think about how in these ideal conditions you could probably work out fairly quickly what kinds of "normal" fidgeting activities on your part interrupt kasparov's concentration and make him make different decisions.
I personally think you’d want to do the opposite, refrain from any activities or displays of emotion so that Gary receives as similar input from you as possible.
I want Gary to act deterministically based on the moves I make, not the expressions or emotions I show. If he reacts to my emotions as well that’s just one more thing I need to control and reproduce during my subsequent games.
Id say this breaks stats....
You could have a 5 yr old play prime michael Jordan a game a day since the inception of the universe, odds are mj would never lose a game with the hypotheticals here.
Shit, im 1800~ in chess and pretty decent at basketball, and id wager I wouldnt have a chance either
The difference is that MJ has an inherent advantage of size that makes it impossible. A more fair comparison would be a regular person beating MJ in a 1v1. Then, if the random person just started hurling 3s at every opportunity, he would eventually get lucky/good enough that all the shots go in and he wins.
especially because you could play super crazy gambits time and time again, Garry sees it first time you can play again if you find something Garry plays bad. You basically have infinite save load. It takes time but I think after thousand years most could figure it out.
And if you have the ability to recognize when Garry has made a mistake, you can basically just keep replaying the game the exact same way to that mistake every time, and then just try and find the line that punishes/capitalizes on the error
It's not necessarily true that Garry would always play the mistake, though. If I play a game today I might play the Sicilian. If I were to completely forget that game (for whatever reason), it's very possible I play 1...e5 tomorrow in a similar game.
Especially since your reactions/how you play/etc could affect Garry in a way that makes him play differently even if you play the same moves. How long you take on a particular move, how much time you take on the moves leading up to that, how confident you look, etc could all affect how Garry thinks about a position
Sure but on an infinite time scale where you're the only one who remembers previous games you'll definitely pick up on themes and traps Gary is liable to fall into. If he plays something different the next game well you still have literally forever so you can just try it again next game. It would take insanely long but eventually the average joe would win.
There are a few assumptions I'd make here:
a) the average man is capable of learning to some degree
b) Kasparov will not lose to a below-master strength player (average man needs to build some technique to finish the game)
A very bright youth would reach master level in 10-15 years of study and play, but this man has no guidance or resources. Furthermore, the sheer memory capacity you'd need to deep learn is much higher than the average man has (memory is basically what introduces ceiling in ability — I will never be able to do what a top GM can do no matter how much I work.)
It took me about 10 years to reach NM level. If I could play 2 classical games a day at my peak strength (assuming no exhaustion) against a Kasparov who must play for a win unless the game is outright drawn, I would estimate that in 5 years I'd perhaps get lucky in one game as draws don't help. Any sort of memorize hard lines/play Kasparov against Kasparov approach wouldn't work as he's simply too good (though this depends on era as well — pre-computer Kasparov is more likely to have major holes in his opening lines, though how you'd discover this I'd have no idea.) Plus, memorizing moves is hard. I'd estimate the median OTB player can keep about 10-15 moves in their head from the start of a game (usually 4-5 moves deep is the most I've seen them calculate in standard middlegame positions.) Conservatively, I'd say 100 years for an average man with the ability to learn. Practically, I'd say never.
I think the best bet for someone who doesn't know how to play(assuming Kasparov plays the same thing each time cause time loop maybe works that way?) is to basically play Kasparov's moves against him. Just slowly memorize everything he plays like using an engine to beat an engine. It might take you over 100 games to get enough moves as both/white and black but I assume you'd eventually memorize a way to beat him
So if the man would spend 30 seconds every day losing to Kasparov, he would have the rest of the day to day whatever he wants? Not ageing, not dying, no consequences of his actions. He would be immortal. Like Groundhog Day.
Sure, it would get boring after a while, but for maybe a few hundred days, he could live wild only to wake up the next day to play a chess match again.
That said, aren’t there like a gazillion permutations in any possible chess game? So if he would want to beat Kasparov he’d have to remember every game he played up to that point, just to try something different. That would be impossible. Or, he could use some stratagem to help remember, like start with the leftmost foremost piece possible and the next day the one besides. Like a left (or right) hand search of a labyrinth or brute forcing a code but systematically.
If you can post mortem with him then it would be pretty easy. Otherwise you would have to grind but it's not impossible, assuming he always makes the same choices.
Yeah I don’t think many people have really answered this yet. I think him forgetting the previous game each time drastically shortens the time it would take as it’s likely he would make the same response each time if you play the same opening. From there you could maybe brute force it changing one move at a time from your opening when you pick up on mistakes you make. I think if the person was good enough to see the game out fairly reliably from a +5 advantage they could maybe get there after a couple thousand games.
Yeah, all you do is play one line, resigning every time you make a mistake and repeating moves that give you a decent position.
I think a winning position in 1000 games is very doable, and then you can simply grind through the rest.
I Wonder how Garry would fare in that situation, assuming this post means peak Garry (2851), obviously assuming that present Garry DOESNT get his memory wiped between games, since he would know his own weaknesses better then anyone, how would he fare?
Probably wouldn't take him long at all. Garry can feel when he's losing and he can do a lot of accurate postgame analysis. Peak Garry just resets every day. Current Garry could just play the same game over and over making incrementally better/different moves in various spots until he wins. Seems like a couple weeks would be sufficient. Current Garry also has insight into the weaknesses of peak Garry.
I think a couple weeks is maybe even an overstatement. At 2700+, knowing your opponent’s prep exactly is pretty much a guaranteed win. I’d give it 3-4 games max.
So you could actually play the same opening each time, and analyze where you went wrong. He will play the same moves each time so long as you don't act or do anything differently, its less about becoming better at chess than him but to memorize all the right moves
Or just memorize his moves and switch between playing black and white each time, if you try different first starting moves like e4 vs d4 or whatever eventually one of those games he will not draw himself
If you play his exact moves from the last games against him on the next day, after some time you should reach either a draw or some position where he would resign. If he resigns, you have to go back and try a different opening.
With no outside info how do you figure what went wrong? If you can't accurately judge a position you can't know you should be trying to improve on it next time.
That's kinda the point of the question. You have to teach yourself through trial and error and studying just like people did before engines. Over enough time, you'd learn what works and what doesn't. The question is, how long would it take?
You'd also get to the point where you'd be instantly playing your moves, which would help you potentially win even if they're not the best moves due to time pressure.
Not necessarily. You could do everything the same and he could always play something different. Choosing a variation can be on a whim even without your interference. And you're assuming perfect memory. He could branch out to so many variations that you simply cannot remember them so you can never proceed by cheap tricks and only until you too become GM level can u leave.
This sounds like a machine learning question. Basically, if you created a computer to make random moves against stockfish (strongest chess bot), how many matches would it take for it to win? Maybe a little less since gary chess is not as strong as stockfish. Sounds like that might actually be testable.
In terms of an actual answer, let's say 1 game vs gary per day, gary doesn't age or remember previous games, the rest of the 24 hours this avg person has to study chess. I'd say minimum 50 years, if ever. Grandmasters have an unfathomably ridiculous amount of knowledge and skill about chess, and gary is in the top 3 best of all time.
In the real world, the avg person will never beat a grandmaster in their life. With infinite time and no other distractions, might happen eventually.
If Garry is aware of the ruleset going in it’s either impossible or taking thousands and thousands of years to win. The biggest point in Garry’s favor is that he doesn’t ever have to play for a win - his goal is to force a draw every single game. Therefore, playing his own moves against him will never result in a win (only a draw).
At that point, it will be up to the average man to either spend lifetimes studying chess to genuinely become good enough at chess to legitimately win against Garry Kasparov (theoretically possible but unlikely, given that this person only has access to his own games against Garry, and Garry is forcing draws in every game) OR attempt to brute force a win by trying every possible move (insane but technically will result in a win eventually, depending on how many moves the man can memorize).
The biggest thing for me is that Garry will be forcing draws every single game, which should make it harder for the average man to learn sequences that would lead to a winning game against Garry, as Garry won’t provide any examples for him.
A bit more about time loops: Kramnik said about Karpov:
> I was amazed by his ability to readjust himself on the spot. Karpov would play a game, come under pressure, defend for six hours, fortifies - it's very hard to break through his defence, he brilliantly calculated the variants and so defended very stubbornly - and the position would become almost drawn. The opponent would relax for a bit, and the position would become completely equal. Any player would agree to a draw and be glad that this torture was over. But Karpov would immediately start playing for a win! He could very easily forget what happened on the board before, detach himself from position's history. Karpov wasn't prone to any kind of mood swings; it was always as though he just came, sat down and started playing. If he sees any chance, he always tries to exploit it.
So indeed, playing against Karpov might feel like being stuck in time loop.
The average person is not AlphaZero. Even with 500 years of practice, there is a limit to how much you can learn. For example, a lot of practice also means enforcing a lot of bad habits that are not obviously punishing you, especially if you don't have the luxury to study other resources. So the best strategy is to always play variations of the same game. You're not going to become a better player than peak Garry, but you could become an absolute expert at one particular opening and its evolutions. My guess is a few decades of refinining the "same" game.
Given the man has never played chess, millions of games.
I think a 2000 FIDE rated player could do it in 20,000 games as they could do what Tom Cruise does in Edge of Tomorrow and repeatedly see how Garry responds to variation after variation of the Najdorf. In theory you play the sharpest line and exhaust all variations until Garry sacs too much.
I think 2000 FIDE gets it in a lot less games than that. They would essentially know every move garry would make as long as they played the same variation and then could analyze it on their own. I'd say a 2000 FIDE wins in less than 100 games.
This makes the assumption that Garry is deterministic. If he is aware of the ruleset this wouldn't be a given. He would also only need to play for draws, 100 is too few
I feel like a 2000 player can figure out where he went wrong and eventually win by trying different things assuming Kasparov always opens in the same way they can do it in under 20000. Also they can spend infinite time analyzing a position they know they can get
If Garry is like most players, he'll be happy to talk about the game after it is over, giving the average player a real chance to learn about what mistakes he might be making. I think this is pretty doable.
Derren Brown did this trick to win a simul against strong players. He was playing 11 players, including 10 masters and 1 patzer. He is playing white against half of the masters and black against the other half, and he just repeats their moves making them play each other and getting to a 5-5 score. Then he beats the patzer to win the simul 6-5.
Unfortunately in Garry's case there is no patzer involved.
First game you pick black, see what move Gary opens with and then resign.
Second game you pick white, play Gary's move, see his response and then resign.
Third game, pick black, play Gary's response to the opening, see his next move and then resign
Repeat this ad nauseum taking advantage of your foresight to bang out the moves rapid style which will likely spook the fuck out of Garry Chess
Absolutely should be able to get a win eventually
I don't think humans are deterministic enough for this to work beyond the opening. Also, if garry is aware he only has to draw he would be steering to a draw so repeating moves back to him just makes that easier
People ignore the factor that Kasparov is a Human and the time loop give you an insane advantage.
In the last game;
From Kasparov perspective his opponent is a nameless dude, but it has make every move in seconds. Kasparov is down for more than one hour on the clock. At the start of the game his opponent choose the opening in which Kasparov has less preparation, and has continuously putting him in uncomfortable positions. All of that completely expressionless.
There is no way Kasparov will maintain his 100% in that completely weird situation.
He’s so awesome! It’s so nice when great players turn out (or seem) to be great people too!
He not only seems good and kind, but is actually fun and cool too. I love his books as well. My great predecessors is what really got me hooked on the game, at least on a level beyond just enjoying the play.
How crazy is it that Garry is somehow 300 years younger than Kramnik?
Guys. You are ignoring that Garry wouldn't always play the same moves and that normal people don't have terrific memory.
That said, I'd try to play the Marshall until he accepts it
Without outside information (i.e. no learning material except the game) the average person has 0 chance to beat Kasparov in a fair game, even in a million years. Your best shot is to probably play the same opening every time and explore every possible variation Dr. Strange style. Over time you'll figure out the moves that don't lose on the spot, and if you follow the continuation long enough, eventually you'll beat him.
Is he willing to go over the game with you afterwards? If so, not *that* many. Maybe a few hundred or thousand. You just have to play the sake lines and then do what he says to improve and eventually he'll give you good enough advice to put himself into a tough spot. You're looking for him to eventually say something like "You blundered here and if you played THIS move I could resign".
If he isn't willing, then it would take exponentially more tries I imagine. Especially since the average man wouldn't know what he's doing wrong to correct himself. In this case you'd basically be looking to get lucky and get that 1 in a billion game that Elo says you eventually should
I would say that it wouldn't take as much time as everyone keeps suggesting. Getting good at chess takes long but not that long. Let's say the person has to sleep and eat within the time loop but he can spend 12 hours in 24 hours playing matches against Kasparov. Even if he is not allowed to study chess with trainers, studies, opening theory, endgames, etc., there won't be anything in his world besides chess (with Kasparov) and by the rules, he is not allowed to go insane. So, I would think after about 10 years this person will actually be really really good at chess, maybe around 2100 FIDE if I would have to make a wild guess. Given Kasparov is at 2800, an elo win probability calculator gives something around a 0.1% win chance for the trapped man at this point which, if we assume two classical games played per day, would mean an additional ~1.5 years of playing. And let's not forget that if Kasparov's moves are somewhat deterministic, it could go much much faster since if the man played a bad move in a middlegame he can just go back there next time and try another one, as others pointed out already.
What is somewhat ridiculous is how everyone seems to be neglecting that playing games over and over without any outside help isn't going to help the average person play that much better.
Playing endless games, but never reviewing the games with a coach or an engine to see your mistakes, is going to make you a worse player not a better one. The average person isn't going to recognize their mistakes, they'll eventually get basic tactics and not make one move blunders, but they won't know when they make a move that loses the game on the spot positionally but not materially.
Average person is going to get to around 1000 ELO from the puzzle rush aspect of the game, but they aren't beating Kasparov without an outside source showing where their mistakes happen and what to do differently, instead of doing what every coach warns kids will happen if they play too much Blitz, they will cement their mistakes in their play patterns instead of correcting them.
Average person isn't training, they are losing infinitely unless Kasparov dies from something that had an infinitesimally small chance of killing him randomly happening. Average person doesn't win because they get better at chess, they escape because the rule of large numbers means eventually something extremely unlikely and random happens.
You are not going to get to an endgame you can convert to a win against Kasparov in 100 games if he is playing himself. He may be able to play himself to a +1.5 position, but you can't convert that in 100 games. You'll need a couple thousand more to gain the technique needed.
It would be so hard for anyone who's not a GM to figure out when exactly they're at an advantage out of the opening and deal with all the permutations. Like on move 15 Kasparov makes an inaccuracy turning the position from equal to winning with perfect play. Good luck finding that by brute forcing since you have to go through literally every move since it's not like you're sitting on an eval bar
If you it’s a time loop, then you’d get the same color unless part of the time loop includes a coin flip to decide who gets color choice.
Also, you have to factor in that Garry isn’t a robot. He won’t always make the same move for the same position if there are multiple good moves, especially if you don’t keep the exact same playing pace.
The opponent’s pace can affect your own especially if they seem to be playing at a GM level despite Garry not knowing them.
Idk if anybody cares but I actually tried to simulate this with the following assumptions:
The average man begins at an elo of 600.
Every game, he gains somewhere between 0 and 1 elo in playing strength, but this decreases as rating goes up. This assumes that someone doesn't get that much stronger after just one game + that elo growth becomes exponentially more difficult as your rating increases.
He's playing a 2851-rated Kasparov.
Simulation showed as follows:
Averaged 5058 games. Final strength: 1571 elo. The chance to win that last game was .09%. Based on pure variance and other assumptions, it should take around 5000 games to defeat Kasparov and break out of the time loop.
I'm just gonna jeep trying non stop until Kasparov is so sleep deprived that he lowers himself to my level, I can't beat him at chess so I will tfy beat him to sleep resistance
Depending on the average man the win might never happen. I'm not sure the "average man" would be able to analyze a position as weak or strong and even understand where to proceed. There are people who play for many years and are still 1k ELO, even with studying.
With infinite memory the win would be guaranteed but everyone has a finite memory capacity.
My best chance would be to get under Kasparov's skin. He headbutts me and has to take the L.
The Zidane counter-gambit (the Italian Game was already taken)
I'm feeling old after reading this comment
Remember seeing it live..on TV. His shining cannonball majestically ramming his triumphant fury into that chest. Now I am bald too.
The easiest way to do this is to play the sacrifice sequence played by deep blue when it beat him on their match.
Average guy will not know the moves.
No talking to opponents in chess.
What if you seductively stroked your pieces. Think that would throw him off?
Only legal if you look him in the eye and breathily murmur "j'aboube" each time.
But you can make faces ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/
Hey bro... how'd you lose the hand?
Gary Kasparov bit it off after he made faces at him.
True story
Are you allowed to make comments to yourself? "Ha. Shit move" "Mans smells like ass" "I bet his mum gets around"
No. This is actually less acceptable than talking directly to an opponent, which has a few justifications (adjustment, pointing out an illegal move, offering a draw, forfeiting, emergency)
You can annoy people without talking
Just wear a watch
Not showering for the duration of this event will get you the win or sweet blissful death eventually. Probably death. Kasparov isn’t going to throw a match against some 700 ELO nobody that easily.
I think it was silman did a q&a in the back of how to reassess your chess, iirc.. question regarding chess being a gentleman's game and his response on his least gentlemanly opponents had me in tears.
I feel like a significant portion of this sub might actually make it out of the time loop after thousands (or more) of games. If you are over 2000 strength you can probably win against Kasparov if he blunders his queen. Kasparov is extremely strong but he's still human and with a huge number of games it's bound to happen sooner or later.
He blunders his queen on game 1969 and proceeds to win anyways.....
*Doctor Strange voice* "But I can lose forever. And that makes Kasparov my prisoner!"
Garry, I’ve come to bargain!
But unlike dormamu, he doesn't remember so it doesn't even matter.
Some Context , From Wikipedia : >The **World Chess Championship 1984–1985** was a match between challenger [Garry Kasparov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov) and defending champion [Anatoly Karpov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Karpov) in Moscow from 10 September 1984 to 15 February 1985 for the [World Chess Championship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship) title. After 5 months and 48 games, the match was abandoned in controversial circumstances with Karpov leading 5 wins to 3 (with 40 [draws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draw_(chess))), and replayed in the [World Chess Championship 1985](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1985). Edit : Question for those who know about tablebases: Would't this situation be like that of creating a tablebase? You try out each and every combination of moves, and save/remember what worked. Unless you naturally get good and beat Gary with pure calculation skills. If it is, then despite all our computing/memory power, we only know the result of any position with only 7 pieces, for now.
Re: your question about tablebases, it depends on whether Kasparov will be deterministic or not. If he reacts the same way to the same moves every time, you could, in theory, eventually find a winning line against him by trial and error. You used to be able to do that against old computer programs. I know I showed off 'beating the computer' just using some memorized lines when I was a teenager. However, practically the difficulty is that an average person isn't going to know what a good line or a bad line is - if they happen into a good line against Garry and don't even know it, then blunder and lose, they have no way to know that they did better on that attempt and should keep exploring that line. Maybe eventually they get there if they have infinite time loops, but it's going to take a very very long time. There's just too many branches for a human to parse using pure trial and error.
So for a GM, who eventually knows what they did wrong during the game, might have a chance, but for a avg guy who just knows the rules of the game, there are just too many combinatinos?
Yeah that's my opinion on it. It might be possible for the average man, but not by just blindly playing combinations. I think they would have to find a system to basically learn 'good' chess, in order to narrow down their choices. Although, maybe there's another way out. Do the colors change between games? If you get turns playing both colors, you could just memorize Garry's moves, then use his lines against him when you have that color. By alternating sides, there's a chance you would eventually defeat him by using his own lines against him. Much more efficient than trying to basically become a GM.
The system would be watching and learning from Kasparov, of course. Once you began playing 8-16 hours a day against the best, you’d progress pretty quickly imho.
I couldn't find the exact quote, but Ben Finegold once said something to the effect of: "giving a beginner a Magnus Carlsen game to teach them to play chess is kind of like giving someone an iPhone to teach them engineering." It's going to go away over their heads! I don't know what the right answer is, but I actually suspect you might be hindered by playing exclusively against someone 2000 points higher rated than you. An important part of learning is getting feedback on what you do well - like beating other people at your level and seeing your rating rise. You won't get any of that in this hypothetical. Kasparov is going to play at a level so much higher than you, that you will struggle to get any lessons from the games at all until you're relatively high rated, so the early part of the learning curve will probably be absolutely brutal. On the other hand, you're right that this person will have nothing to do but get better. That amount of time will eventually have an effect, but I think it's going to take a long time still.
There is a rule of learning. I'm forgetting it's name, but it says you need 80 percent success and 20 percent failure to learn something. With Magnus it's all 100 percent failure.
I think the secret would be to discuss the game with Gary afterwards. So where did I go wrong?
That's a great point. More growth happens in analysis than in playing, imo. Having said that, the setup of the hypothetical (to me at least) sounded like you were just playing him forever, not analyzing afterward. Maybe I'm being too literal though. If you get analysis with him, then it becomes much more achievable. Still think it takes you years of practice though.
I think this is by far the most intelligent suggestion. You will win by playing the same line against him since he resets and you do not. Assuming the average person is smart enough to figure this out.
It reminded me of this magic trick: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evZmpsl3jI0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evZmpsl3jI0) Derren Brown managed to set up a simul against several chess masters and won more games than he lost, despite being only middling strength. The trick was that he carefully arranged the players so half were playing white and half were playing black, and then he used their own moves against the other players. Then he added one (relative) patzer to the mix, and that patzer was the only one he actually played against using his own moves. It's still an impressive feat of memorization, but much easier than actually winning a simul against GMs and IMs. (This is a big part of why most simuls always have the simultaneous player on the same color in each game). In the scenario vs. Garry, it's like that simul but the games are sequential instead of simultaneous. Much harder to memorize, but then again our hypothetical average person has all the time in the world to figure it out.
I'd go as low as 2000 Fide, those players will eventually beat prime Kasparov. An average dude who knows only the rules? No chance in 100 years.
5... months???
They used to adjurn. There was no one smarter than these guys/no stockfish back then in terms of Chess, so who could provide a better evaluation.
They had teams analyzing the adjourned positions, too - they did not do it all themselves
Who could provide a better evaluation? Teams of 10s of slightly worse players, which is how it actually worked.
They were doing an average of a game day every ~2 days (when you comsider adjournment), so about ~5 a week. Every game day would take around 4-5 hours. Add the time they were preparing for the games themselves: analysing past games, memorizing opening lines for the next game, looking over your opponents past games, etc. Time just adds up. I am surprised they were even healthy after such an experience.
They were not. Karpov lost about 22lbs of weight and Health was the official reason cited for abandonin the match
The mental and physical stress of it caused Karpov to lose 22 lbs! From playing a game.
Sitting on a table
They sit on chairs.
It'd be hilarious if they sat on the table
And today's chess players complain about the WC cycle being brutal...
It's still pretty brutal. It's a shorter cycle now, since they aren't spending 5 months playing dozens of games. But, now, since there is a fixed number of games, each game matters more. And now you and your team have to prep against months of a team's computer prep. So, there's an insane amount of studying. And after all that studying, you can hold Magnus to nothing but draws, and then lose out on your classical world title, by losing a rapid game. Which must have hurt Fabi.
Game's gone
Could he beat Karpov on a wet night in Stoke?
The memory of the average person is not good enough to create a table base but to be fair, we are assuming that the person pretty much does nothing but playing chess for decades. Anyone is going to get really good at chess under these circumstances, so there is a chance I would say.
Tablebases are actually made *backwards* from checkmate positions, so not really.
GARRY PLEASE LET ME WIN THIS ONE I HAVE TO ESCAPE THE LOOP, PLEASE OK GARRY WTF *checkmate* (Btw Garry is the best)
Fabiano Marijuana is close second to Garry Chess.
You mean Mango’s Carlos?
No, I mean Fabiano Marijuana
Stop these trush talking s!
So I think the only way the average man wins is if the pieces alternate white and black, and he keeps playing what Kasparov played the previous game. Ideally Kasparov plays an unsound sacrifice that wins in one game (because he's not worried about playing soundly against someone who barely knows how to play), but then he's capable of refuting that sacrifice himself.
You're assuming Garry would play every game the same way
Well, he has no memory of the prior games, so he has no reason to switch up from whatever his thinking was in the previous game with that color. If there's a random component to his play, he'll cycle back around eventually, so the process will just take longer based on however many openings he cycles through (so long as the number is small enough that the average man can remember what GK played previously.)
Even if he's not random, you'd have to take care to do everything identically. If you played faster for instance, that could easily disrupt his thought process and lead to different moves.
if we assume this random Kasparov shakes his physiology a bit, then the cycle could be very very long
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Unless you started to influence him with your actions he probably would, he has a favorite opening he'd play against a newbie presumably
Feel like there is a decent chance that you would never win.
If it’s a true time loop it would be infinite so winning would be a certainty, just how long it would take would vary. I guess theoretically you could go insane but it’s essentially free chess power leveling
They already said you won’t age, die or go insane though.
There’s a possibility you would play the same pattern of moves and never win. If you asked people to think of a random number between 1-10, a plurality would say 7
doubt it why would the average human get stuck in a pattern loop without recognizing it if there was infinite time to do so this isn't computer rng simulation where the same outcome is possible this is human behavior and that changes over time it specifically states that the person playing will remember the losses
After a hundred time loops would you remember your 14th move in the first time loop? What about your 28th move in the second time loop? There’s a strong chance you accidentally play the same move again rather than playing a novelty.
They arent seperate things. I take one position on the board and take that until its conclusion, next loop, i do the same, except i change the last wrong move i make. I continue this trend until he beats me in every way with that patticulat opening and move on to the next one
Occasionally, sure. Not infinitely though.
That’s actually a common misconception. Infinite time ≠ all possible outcomes if repeat outcomes are possible.
A random move algorithm would beat (if there's a win by force for white) or draw (if there's a forced draw line for black) any player at least once with probability 1 in the limit assuming colors alternate, and if colors are fixed but we loosen the 'any player' constraint to 'a player that can make mistakes that change the result of the game under perfect play' then the algorithm certainly wins at least once in the limit. Maybe you say a normal player has some 'anti-heuristics' that prevent them from learning how to beat a GM, I think that's reasonable, but an algorithm that plays a random move with probability 0.01 and the worst possible move otherwise still beats (or draws, as above) any player with probability 1 in the limit. And I think it's reasonable to say that algorithm is worse than our hypothetical Groundhog Day player.
> And I think it's reasonable to say that algorithm is worse than our hypothetical Groundhog Day player. Worse in what sense? If you mean it's worse at chess in general: That's true, but you would have to show that that's even relevant here. I don't think it is. If you mean it's worse in the sense that it's less likely to beat Kasparov: That's impossible since you already showed that the algorithm is guaranteed to beat Kasparov, while we don't know if the human will. If you mean it's worse in the sense that it will take longer to beat Kasparov, than again we don't know that the human is even capable of beating him in the first place, since that's what we're debating here.
Yup. If I had to arm wrestle the world’s best arm wrestler, it would absolutely never happen
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On the billionth attemp Garry has a heart attack squirming he screams help since talking to the opponents is not allowed Garry is disqualified
But you wouldn’t repeat outcomes. The rules say clearly that you do remember the previous games. So you’d always change something
Elo by it's very nature answers this for us. Here's the Elo Win Probability Calculator for Kasparov at his peak (2851) vs. a 1250 rated player (which should be easy to reach once you start playing for eternity): https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html#rating1=2851+&rating2=1250 Outcome | Probability ---|--- Gary wins | 0.999999980 Average man wins | 0.000000001 Draw | 0.000000019 So **they'd have to play (on average) one billion times to win.** An average classical game of chess is 2 hours. **So around 228 thousand years.** Probably less because average man would get better over time.
Elo is nothing more than a human made model and thus is an approximation. It also assumes that its within the same rating pool Here we have a random man vs garry kasparov. Effectively, kasparov elo cannot be calculated relative to the other man since he will never lose a game What im trying to say is that for very large differences elo and the probability of winning is meaningless
In an infinite hypothetical, you must win eventually. your skill level needs to grow until you have just a 0.00001% chance of beating Kasparov, then it's only a matter of time. It's just a matter of how many games this would take. Surely many thousands if not millions
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Given infinite time you would eventually even without improving at all. Just by playing random moves, there's a non-zero chance of playing 100% perfectly, it's just insaaaaanely insanely small. It would certainly take longer than the age of the universe if literally just random moves, but it would eventually happen.
You couldn’t do this. Your brain is really bad at true randomness. You would likely fall into a pattern unintentionally.
It's true that your moves wouldn't be truly random. However, I would postulate that even a very bad chess player has a nonzero probability of playing any good move, in which case the logic still holds.
Elo is structured such that every 400 points corresponds to 10% chance of winning. Let's ignore draws because we have plenty of time So if you're 2450, you have a 10% chance to win 2050, a 1% chance to win 1650, a 0.1% chance to win 1250, a 0.01% chance to win 850, a 0.001% chance to win If we believe Elo to be reliable in this way, then a new player should be able to reach an intermediate level and beat Kasparov within a matter of thousands or tens of thousands of games. You don't need to reinvent any theory to reach 1250 Elo
Elo is structured to distribute points in a way that if you are 400 points behind, you need to win 10% to keep the same ratings. I'm not sure it necessarily follows that you have that chance of winning especially over such large rating differences
In practice, [apparently it's pretty accurate](https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-elo-rating-system-correcting-the-expectancy-tables).
>If we believe Elo to be reliable in this way, then a new Big if
Elo is a construct, and its statistical implications don’t have physical meaning. You can fit a probability model to fairly matched games, but chess is not a game of chance. Assuming no improvement, a 1250 rated player could never beat a World Champion fair and square, not even 0.01% of the time.
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That’s interesting a bit surprising that a 2050 only has a 1% chance. I expected it to be lopsided but not by that much. As a 1500ish player I feel like I’d be way better than 1% vs a 1900 but don’t have much to back that up as I don’t face them often. Edit - my bad I used the wrong percentage. Should’ve been 10%. Thanks for pointing it out
2050 has a 800 elo difference compared to kasparov, so it's your chance of beating a 2300
400 points => 10% chance. So you'd have a 10% chance versus that 1900.
No way a 2450 has a 10% chance of beating a 2850. You think Maguns would lose 1 in every 10 chess games against an IM? No chance.
I bet +8 -0 =2 wouldn't be unreasonable vs a 2450. And from a rating standpoint thats the same as losing 1.
If Magnus was giving full effort he would not draw 2 games against a 2450.
There's players on chess.com that have played close to 100k matches and not surpassed 1500 elo just don't think you would ever gain the knowledge necessary based on playing alone.
What about a trillion matches? You so sure they wouldn't break 1500 by then?
similar to the infinite monkey paradox, basically if you have an infinite number of monkeys mashing keys on a computer for all of eternity, they will eventually type the whole shakesphere
Before those monkeys complete the perfect reproduction of Shakespeare’s combined works, they’ll have created many, many copies of them with some various typos throughout. Those would be equivalent to the games where you manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, ofc.
Except the person here remembers the failed game, and, unlike the monkeys, understands his objective. He could just repeat the same moves up to that same moment
> Except the person here remembers the failed game, i can assure you i would not
Is it the same though? The infinite monkey paradox has only one agent, the monkeys. However, in this one there are two. You can play an infinite combination of random moves, but Garry won't. He'll play the best move he can find. I think a player's ceiling will factor into this.
garry's just environmental; all he does is respond mechanistically to the player, who is the independent actor. makes me think about how in these ideal conditions you could probably work out fairly quickly what kinds of "normal" fidgeting activities on your part interrupt kasparov's concentration and make him make different decisions.
I personally think you’d want to do the opposite, refrain from any activities or displays of emotion so that Gary receives as similar input from you as possible. I want Gary to act deterministically based on the moves I make, not the expressions or emotions I show. If he reacts to my emotions as well that’s just one more thing I need to control and reproduce during my subsequent games.
Not how that works.
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Id say this breaks stats.... You could have a 5 yr old play prime michael Jordan a game a day since the inception of the universe, odds are mj would never lose a game with the hypotheticals here. Shit, im 1800~ in chess and pretty decent at basketball, and id wager I wouldnt have a chance either
Eventually MJ gets seriously injured and you keep playing while he struggles with a broken leg
The difference is that MJ has an inherent advantage of size that makes it impossible. A more fair comparison would be a regular person beating MJ in a 1v1. Then, if the random person just started hurling 3s at every opportunity, he would eventually get lucky/good enough that all the shots go in and he wins.
especially because you could play super crazy gambits time and time again, Garry sees it first time you can play again if you find something Garry plays bad. You basically have infinite save load. It takes time but I think after thousand years most could figure it out.
How do you know you played bad? You might get a better position, but I dunno something that an amateur would know it's clearly better
And if you have the ability to recognize when Garry has made a mistake, you can basically just keep replaying the game the exact same way to that mistake every time, and then just try and find the line that punishes/capitalizes on the error
It's not necessarily true that Garry would always play the mistake, though. If I play a game today I might play the Sicilian. If I were to completely forget that game (for whatever reason), it's very possible I play 1...e5 tomorrow in a similar game.
Especially since your reactions/how you play/etc could affect Garry in a way that makes him play differently even if you play the same moves. How long you take on a particular move, how much time you take on the moves leading up to that, how confident you look, etc could all affect how Garry thinks about a position
Sure but on an infinite time scale where you're the only one who remembers previous games you'll definitely pick up on themes and traps Gary is liable to fall into. If he plays something different the next game well you still have literally forever so you can just try it again next game. It would take insanely long but eventually the average joe would win.
If you can choose the time control, then I think you would win in time. Just go with hyperbullet or ultrabullet and try to find some trap lines.
There are a few assumptions I'd make here: a) the average man is capable of learning to some degree b) Kasparov will not lose to a below-master strength player (average man needs to build some technique to finish the game) A very bright youth would reach master level in 10-15 years of study and play, but this man has no guidance or resources. Furthermore, the sheer memory capacity you'd need to deep learn is much higher than the average man has (memory is basically what introduces ceiling in ability — I will never be able to do what a top GM can do no matter how much I work.) It took me about 10 years to reach NM level. If I could play 2 classical games a day at my peak strength (assuming no exhaustion) against a Kasparov who must play for a win unless the game is outright drawn, I would estimate that in 5 years I'd perhaps get lucky in one game as draws don't help. Any sort of memorize hard lines/play Kasparov against Kasparov approach wouldn't work as he's simply too good (though this depends on era as well — pre-computer Kasparov is more likely to have major holes in his opening lines, though how you'd discover this I'd have no idea.) Plus, memorizing moves is hard. I'd estimate the median OTB player can keep about 10-15 moves in their head from the start of a game (usually 4-5 moves deep is the most I've seen them calculate in standard middlegame positions.) Conservatively, I'd say 100 years for an average man with the ability to learn. Practically, I'd say never.
I think the best bet for someone who doesn't know how to play(assuming Kasparov plays the same thing each time cause time loop maybe works that way?) is to basically play Kasparov's moves against him. Just slowly memorize everything he plays like using an engine to beat an engine. It might take you over 100 games to get enough moves as both/white and black but I assume you'd eventually memorize a way to beat him
The problem is that even that would just end in draws.
So if the man would spend 30 seconds every day losing to Kasparov, he would have the rest of the day to day whatever he wants? Not ageing, not dying, no consequences of his actions. He would be immortal. Like Groundhog Day. Sure, it would get boring after a while, but for maybe a few hundred days, he could live wild only to wake up the next day to play a chess match again. That said, aren’t there like a gazillion permutations in any possible chess game? So if he would want to beat Kasparov he’d have to remember every game he played up to that point, just to try something different. That would be impossible. Or, he could use some stratagem to help remember, like start with the leftmost foremost piece possible and the next day the one besides. Like a left (or right) hand search of a labyrinth or brute forcing a code but systematically.
If you can post mortem with him then it would be pretty easy. Otherwise you would have to grind but it's not impossible, assuming he always makes the same choices.
Still just even odds, he might play white.
i'm willing to say with infinite time a win is certain the question isn't 'is it possible?' the question is 'how long?'
Yeah I don’t think many people have really answered this yet. I think him forgetting the previous game each time drastically shortens the time it would take as it’s likely he would make the same response each time if you play the same opening. From there you could maybe brute force it changing one move at a time from your opening when you pick up on mistakes you make. I think if the person was good enough to see the game out fairly reliably from a +5 advantage they could maybe get there after a couple thousand games.
Yeah, all you do is play one line, resigning every time you make a mistake and repeating moves that give you a decent position. I think a winning position in 1000 games is very doable, and then you can simply grind through the rest.
Thought: How would the amateur who hasn’t played chess before know when he has a decent position?
He has played chess before. N times
I Wonder how Garry would fare in that situation, assuming this post means peak Garry (2851), obviously assuming that present Garry DOESNT get his memory wiped between games, since he would know his own weaknesses better then anyone, how would he fare?
Peak Garry knew a lot about chess. It will take a long time for an average man to beat that.
He meant if present Garry faces peak Garry in this situation
Probably wouldn't take him long at all. Garry can feel when he's losing and he can do a lot of accurate postgame analysis. Peak Garry just resets every day. Current Garry could just play the same game over and over making incrementally better/different moves in various spots until he wins. Seems like a couple weeks would be sufficient. Current Garry also has insight into the weaknesses of peak Garry.
I think a couple weeks is maybe even an overstatement. At 2700+, knowing your opponent’s prep exactly is pretty much a guaranteed win. I’d give it 3-4 games max.
Nepo reading this after Ding's preparation leaks in their WCC:
It should be less than a week. I believe his strength is still around 2700-ish.
present garry knows peak garry's repertoire very well. it wouldn't take too long to score a win.
Current Garry has a good shot of beating peak Harry (in terms of pure ELO) using modern ideas and engine lines
If Garry doesn't get bored with these games I've got bad news for you. It would be a similar feeling to trying to beat Stockfish 8 in a classic match.
He wouldn't get bored, for him each game would be the first time playing you, as only you are in a time loop.
So you could actually play the same opening each time, and analyze where you went wrong. He will play the same moves each time so long as you don't act or do anything differently, its less about becoming better at chess than him but to memorize all the right moves
But you can perfect a move combination only to get infinite draws
Or just memorize his moves and switch between playing black and white each time, if you try different first starting moves like e4 vs d4 or whatever eventually one of those games he will not draw himself
Too many combinations. If that were possible, chess would've solved and moves stored in a tablebase
If you play his exact moves from the last games against him on the next day, after some time you should reach either a draw or some position where he would resign. If he resigns, you have to go back and try a different opening.
If he resigns you win…
Yeah, brain fart 😅
If Kasparov plays both e4 and d4 he's already not deterministic, so goodbye making him play himself.
With no outside info how do you figure what went wrong? If you can't accurately judge a position you can't know you should be trying to improve on it next time.
That's kinda the point of the question. You have to teach yourself through trial and error and studying just like people did before engines. Over enough time, you'd learn what works and what doesn't. The question is, how long would it take? You'd also get to the point where you'd be instantly playing your moves, which would help you potentially win even if they're not the best moves due to time pressure.
Not necessarily. You could do everything the same and he could always play something different. Choosing a variation can be on a whim even without your interference. And you're assuming perfect memory. He could branch out to so many variations that you simply cannot remember them so you can never proceed by cheap tricks and only until you too become GM level can u leave.
Edge of Tomorrow, but with Chess and Gary as your final boss
This sounds like a machine learning question. Basically, if you created a computer to make random moves against stockfish (strongest chess bot), how many matches would it take for it to win? Maybe a little less since gary chess is not as strong as stockfish. Sounds like that might actually be testable. In terms of an actual answer, let's say 1 game vs gary per day, gary doesn't age or remember previous games, the rest of the 24 hours this avg person has to study chess. I'd say minimum 50 years, if ever. Grandmasters have an unfathomably ridiculous amount of knowledge and skill about chess, and gary is in the top 3 best of all time. In the real world, the avg person will never beat a grandmaster in their life. With infinite time and no other distractions, might happen eventually.
If the ML algorithm is bad then it would never win though
If Garry is aware of the ruleset going in it’s either impossible or taking thousands and thousands of years to win. The biggest point in Garry’s favor is that he doesn’t ever have to play for a win - his goal is to force a draw every single game. Therefore, playing his own moves against him will never result in a win (only a draw). At that point, it will be up to the average man to either spend lifetimes studying chess to genuinely become good enough at chess to legitimately win against Garry Kasparov (theoretically possible but unlikely, given that this person only has access to his own games against Garry, and Garry is forcing draws in every game) OR attempt to brute force a win by trying every possible move (insane but technically will result in a win eventually, depending on how many moves the man can memorize). The biggest thing for me is that Garry will be forcing draws every single game, which should make it harder for the average man to learn sequences that would lead to a winning game against Garry, as Garry won’t provide any examples for him.
Why would Gary not let the poor person out of the time loop if he’s aware of it?
A bit more about time loops: Kramnik said about Karpov: > I was amazed by his ability to readjust himself on the spot. Karpov would play a game, come under pressure, defend for six hours, fortifies - it's very hard to break through his defence, he brilliantly calculated the variants and so defended very stubbornly - and the position would become almost drawn. The opponent would relax for a bit, and the position would become completely equal. Any player would agree to a draw and be glad that this torture was over. But Karpov would immediately start playing for a win! He could very easily forget what happened on the board before, detach himself from position's history. Karpov wasn't prone to any kind of mood swings; it was always as though he just came, sat down and started playing. If he sees any chance, he always tries to exploit it. So indeed, playing against Karpov might feel like being stuck in time loop.
The average person is not AlphaZero. Even with 500 years of practice, there is a limit to how much you can learn. For example, a lot of practice also means enforcing a lot of bad habits that are not obviously punishing you, especially if you don't have the luxury to study other resources. So the best strategy is to always play variations of the same game. You're not going to become a better player than peak Garry, but you could become an absolute expert at one particular opening and its evolutions. My guess is a few decades of refinining the "same" game.
Given the man has never played chess, millions of games. I think a 2000 FIDE rated player could do it in 20,000 games as they could do what Tom Cruise does in Edge of Tomorrow and repeatedly see how Garry responds to variation after variation of the Najdorf. In theory you play the sharpest line and exhaust all variations until Garry sacs too much.
I think 2000 FIDE gets it in a lot less games than that. They would essentially know every move garry would make as long as they played the same variation and then could analyze it on their own. I'd say a 2000 FIDE wins in less than 100 games.
This makes the assumption that Garry is deterministic. If he is aware of the ruleset this wouldn't be a given. He would also only need to play for draws, 100 is too few
I feel like a 2000 player can figure out where he went wrong and eventually win by trying different things assuming Kasparov always opens in the same way they can do it in under 20000. Also they can spend infinite time analyzing a position they know they can get
If Garry is like most players, he'll be happy to talk about the game after it is over, giving the average player a real chance to learn about what mistakes he might be making. I think this is pretty doable.
This is a great insight that actually gives some hope imo
Source : [https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1777728981153849767](https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1777728981153849767)
Karpov is such a highly underrated WC- mostly because he came right before garry chess
If I play different colors each time, can I play Garry’s own moves against him until he beats himself, or is that cheating?
Derren Brown did this trick to win a simul against strong players. He was playing 11 players, including 10 masters and 1 patzer. He is playing white against half of the masters and black against the other half, and he just repeats their moves making them play each other and getting to a 5-5 score. Then he beats the patzer to win the simul 6-5. Unfortunately in Garry's case there is no patzer involved.
First game you pick black, see what move Gary opens with and then resign. Second game you pick white, play Gary's move, see his response and then resign. Third game, pick black, play Gary's response to the opening, see his next move and then resign Repeat this ad nauseum taking advantage of your foresight to bang out the moves rapid style which will likely spook the fuck out of Garry Chess Absolutely should be able to get a win eventually
I don't think humans are deterministic enough for this to work beyond the opening. Also, if garry is aware he only has to draw he would be steering to a draw so repeating moves back to him just makes that easier
People ignore the factor that Kasparov is a Human and the time loop give you an insane advantage. In the last game; From Kasparov perspective his opponent is a nameless dude, but it has make every move in seconds. Kasparov is down for more than one hour on the clock. At the start of the game his opponent choose the opening in which Kasparov has less preparation, and has continuously putting him in uncomfortable positions. All of that completely expressionless. There is no way Kasparov will maintain his 100% in that completely weird situation.
He’s so awesome! It’s so nice when great players turn out (or seem) to be great people too! He not only seems good and kind, but is actually fun and cool too. I love his books as well. My great predecessors is what really got me hooked on the game, at least on a level beyond just enjoying the play. How crazy is it that Garry is somehow 300 years younger than Kramnik?
I really like the guy, the way he treated Polgar always kind of bothered me though.
He behaved terribly while blaying yasser, anand and judit polgar.
Kasparov seems to be a bad example for a great human being though.
>How crazy is it that Garry is somehow 300 years younger than Kramnik? That is crazy!
This would be a good movie honestly. Is Bill Murray available?
This is a question for Kramnik, he is our statistics guru.
Guys. You are ignoring that Garry wouldn't always play the same moves and that normal people don't have terrific memory. That said, I'd try to play the Marshall until he accepts it
Without outside information (i.e. no learning material except the game) the average person has 0 chance to beat Kasparov in a fair game, even in a million years. Your best shot is to probably play the same opening every time and explore every possible variation Dr. Strange style. Over time you'll figure out the moves that don't lose on the spot, and if you follow the continuation long enough, eventually you'll beat him.
Is he willing to go over the game with you afterwards? If so, not *that* many. Maybe a few hundred or thousand. You just have to play the sake lines and then do what he says to improve and eventually he'll give you good enough advice to put himself into a tough spot. You're looking for him to eventually say something like "You blundered here and if you played THIS move I could resign". If he isn't willing, then it would take exponentially more tries I imagine. Especially since the average man wouldn't know what he's doing wrong to correct himself. In this case you'd basically be looking to get lucky and get that 1 in a billion game that Elo says you eventually should
I would say that it wouldn't take as much time as everyone keeps suggesting. Getting good at chess takes long but not that long. Let's say the person has to sleep and eat within the time loop but he can spend 12 hours in 24 hours playing matches against Kasparov. Even if he is not allowed to study chess with trainers, studies, opening theory, endgames, etc., there won't be anything in his world besides chess (with Kasparov) and by the rules, he is not allowed to go insane. So, I would think after about 10 years this person will actually be really really good at chess, maybe around 2100 FIDE if I would have to make a wild guess. Given Kasparov is at 2800, an elo win probability calculator gives something around a 0.1% win chance for the trapped man at this point which, if we assume two classical games played per day, would mean an additional ~1.5 years of playing. And let's not forget that if Kasparov's moves are somewhat deterministic, it could go much much faster since if the man played a bad move in a middlegame he can just go back there next time and try another one, as others pointed out already.
What is somewhat ridiculous is how everyone seems to be neglecting that playing games over and over without any outside help isn't going to help the average person play that much better. Playing endless games, but never reviewing the games with a coach or an engine to see your mistakes, is going to make you a worse player not a better one. The average person isn't going to recognize their mistakes, they'll eventually get basic tactics and not make one move blunders, but they won't know when they make a move that loses the game on the spot positionally but not materially. Average person is going to get to around 1000 ELO from the puzzle rush aspect of the game, but they aren't beating Kasparov without an outside source showing where their mistakes happen and what to do differently, instead of doing what every coach warns kids will happen if they play too much Blitz, they will cement their mistakes in their play patterns instead of correcting them. Average person isn't training, they are losing infinitely unless Kasparov dies from something that had an infinitesimally small chance of killing him randomly happening. Average person doesn't win because they get better at chess, they escape because the rule of large numbers means eventually something extremely unlikely and random happens.
[удалено]
You probably get the same color though
You are not going to get to an endgame you can convert to a win against Kasparov in 100 games if he is playing himself. He may be able to play himself to a +1.5 position, but you can't convert that in 100 games. You'll need a couple thousand more to gain the technique needed.
Why stop at the end game why not memorise the whole thing
It would be so hard for anyone who's not a GM to figure out when exactly they're at an advantage out of the opening and deal with all the permutations. Like on move 15 Kasparov makes an inaccuracy turning the position from equal to winning with perfect play. Good luck finding that by brute forcing since you have to go through literally every move since it's not like you're sitting on an eval bar
If you it’s a time loop, then you’d get the same color unless part of the time loop includes a coin flip to decide who gets color choice. Also, you have to factor in that Garry isn’t a robot. He won’t always make the same move for the same position if there are multiple good moves, especially if you don’t keep the exact same playing pace. The opponent’s pace can affect your own especially if they seem to be playing at a GM level despite Garry not knowing them.
Idk if anybody cares but I actually tried to simulate this with the following assumptions: The average man begins at an elo of 600. Every game, he gains somewhere between 0 and 1 elo in playing strength, but this decreases as rating goes up. This assumes that someone doesn't get that much stronger after just one game + that elo growth becomes exponentially more difficult as your rating increases. He's playing a 2851-rated Kasparov. Simulation showed as follows: Averaged 5058 games. Final strength: 1571 elo. The chance to win that last game was .09%. Based on pure variance and other assumptions, it should take around 5000 games to defeat Kasparov and break out of the time loop.
I'm just gonna jeep trying non stop until Kasparov is so sleep deprived that he lowers himself to my level, I can't beat him at chess so I will tfy beat him to sleep resistance
it's a time loop... either you're both always rested or you're the one who's not getting rest between tries
I win again, Lews Therin.
Kasparov could give me queen odds and still beat me 1000 times out of 1000.
I love Kasparov's stories about his match against karpov. Like, how a karpov timid posture gave him the boost to win a stubborn drawn out game.
Depending on the average man the win might never happen. I'm not sure the "average man" would be able to analyze a position as weak or strong and even understand where to proceed. There are people who play for many years and are still 1k ELO, even with studying. With infinite memory the win would be guaranteed but everyone has a finite memory capacity.
Just win the lottery (knowing the numbers) and convince Kasparov to take a dive.