Will a human ever make 2900?

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Strangely enough, Carlsen started playing better, when he introduced so-called novelties on move 3,4,5,8, that early on.

In his early career, his openings very much followed the theoretical rut, with significantly worse play and results.

I look at Carlsen games from his early career, there he follows theory, and he hardly achieves any advantage against anyone.

I also look at his games from his last period, last 5 or 6 years, and I see that with the novelties introduced on moves 3,4 and 5 he gets much superior positions than otherwise, and he wins a lot of games!

Also, he broke the 2850 elo barrier precisely with those untheoretical moves!
And with those untheoretical moves he became world champion.

So forget all about theory: theory brings you nothing, it only handicaps you intellectually. What a game is this that you should memorise thouroughly?

Where is the fun, creative part of it?

You might say that Carlsen does not know openings, but, believe me, he plays the best openings around...

[Uri Blass]

Strangely enough, Carlsen started playing better, when he introduced so-called novelties on move 3,4,5,8, that early on.

In his early career, his openings very much followed the theoretical rut, with significantly worse play and results.

I look at Carlsen games from his early career, there he follows theory, and he hardly achieves any advantage against anyone.

I also look at his games from his last period, last 5 or 6 years, and I see that with the novelties introduced on moves 3,4 and 5 he gets much superior positions than otherwise, and he wins a lot of games!

Also, he broke the 2850 elo barrier precisely with those untheoretical moves!
And with those untheoretical moves he became world champion.

So forget all about theory: theory brings you nothing, it only handicaps you intellectually. What a game is this that you should memorise thouroughly?

Where is the fun, creative part of it?

You might say that Carlsen does not know openings, but, believe me, he plays the best openings around...

I looked at all the games that carlsen won in 2015 and I see no novelties by carlsen in moves 3-5 and even not in the first 10 moves.

[Uri Blass]

Note that it is hard to find novelties in moves 3-5 and even a strange move like Bb4 after
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5(carlsen played it in blitz) is not a novelty and Simon Alapin already played Bb4 in 1900 against Adolf albin

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Note that it is hard to find novelties in moves 3-5 and even a strange move like Bb4 after
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5(carlsen played it in blitz) is not a novelty and Simon Alapin already played Bb4 in 1900 against Adolf albin

Take it like that: moves that are not considered best by the current state of theory.

It is obvious that all the options at move 3 have already been tried one way or another by stronger or weaker players in different tournament formats or casual games.

Do not have the time to look now, but it is certain most of the games he wins with lines that are not considered best by theory.

Probably because theory is at fault.

You should also understand, that when theory says that certain move is bad, and Carlsen plays it, there are fair chances that the move is good anyhow, as it is Carlsen who creates theory.

[jefk]

[quote="Lyudmil Tsvetkov"]
So forget all about theory: theory brings you nothing, it only handicaps you intellectually. [/quote]

that's a rather bold statement; would you also say 'forget about
all endgame theory'?

Indeed humans cannot calculate an endgame as eg a syzygy tablebase
can do, but there are other ways of mastering endgame theory.

In a similar way there is still scope of finding new ways in opening theory,
which btw is also what i have been doing with the help of comp evaluation (although not perfect,i admit, as you often are pointing out here, but still gradualy improving in fact partly as result of people like you who suggest possible improvements) and playing games. For me that's the creative part even although its not on the board, but in the preparation stage.

If Carlsen is that good in your opinion, ask him to play some standard
games on ICC against a few stockfish accounts, including mine (currently nr 1 again in standard at 2880), i bet he will not come further than about
2750 or so, because those ratings are inaccurate; on playchess the top comp ratings also have decreased, and i bet Carlsen in the engine room would not get further than 2650 or so.

So summarizing i do *not* mean/advise memorizing 'current' theory, as eg indicated by these percentages in the typical chess base .ctg books, but more looking at eg top accounts in playchess, or bbuilders games on ICC, listening to advise by seconds who also are good in computer chess. Take eg these boring Berlin games, imho you first play Rd1+ to prevent the black king escaping to c8, and only later moves as h3! followed by a later Nc3.
When Carlsen played against Anand he did not know such things.
And there certainly is scope for improvement, provided such a human
indeed wants to exceed the 2900 barrier. If a bloke as MC wouldnt like it,
well then maybe younger guys as Wesley So, Anish Giri, or others will later do it anyway, and become a new generation of world champions.

Not creative ? Well if a person is very creative then maybe chess is not the right game, and becoming an artist in eg painting would be more appropriate and more fun. Eg after my first book, about chess , i now am thinking of becoming a writer about futuristic thrillers, a mix of Sf and crime.
Chess is not the only intellectual occupation out there, you know.

jef

[reflectionofpower]

So forget all about theory: theory brings you nothing, it only handicaps you intellectually.

that's a rather bold statement; would you also say 'forget about
all endgame theory'?

jef

I am going to assume Lyudmil was saying not to be so structured in missing the essense of going beyond the norm,finding new ideas,exploring yourself?

Theory in chess is meant to be enhanced and usually it is grounded in a logical framework whereas if you have the field of science,physics and they mention theory in the minority of cases it is not. The majority of sciences,etc are grounded on logic so don't get me wrong there.

[jefk]

[quote="RoadWarrior"]
Nobody should be surprised when our creations surpass us in many areas. It's just a psychological quirk that defeat in intellectual activities such as chess tracks the human ego down to its lair.[/quote]

well spoken and i fully agree. Somehow some strong human
chess players find it hard to believe that the machines have
surpassed humanity in this game. You always get remarks like
'yes but they play stupid chess, they cannot understand the game' and so on.

Similar with this topic, how to surpass 2900; comments as 'you should not memorize openings, and so on' . Well ofcourse not, but nowadays many young GM's and IMS are using engines like crazy trying to find improvements to lines previously considered to be 'theory' by most GM's. Something which i already have done btw up to the point of perfection, at least with the method of trying to preserve the initial White 'advantage' (*). Ofcourse there are still many sharp sidelines, including sidelines of those sidelines to be explored; unless you simply choose a positional and playable line, in the Carlsen style; then you only have to look what sort of game you can expect in such a line.

Easier sure, but probably not enough to cross the 2900 barrier..
(so also agree with the comment by Uri Blass, given somewhere
else in this thread)

jef

(*) why most of them (besides two American IM's i know, one of them now studying, not playing competitively) don't look at this work which i've done ? Well, although this shouldnt matter, the reason apparently is coz i'm not a strong human player myself (although i play correspondence chess at IM level); and because 'they'(**) don't look at it, the human GM games don't improve that much in quality as they could do, which again for me is the reason to prefer own analysis/preparation rather than looking at percentages of past/played games; a real 'Catch 22' situation, but i don't care, in fact i don't give a d. it gives me ample opportunity to steadily, although a bit slowly, advance in the ICCF correspondence chess ranks. For me its not much fun wasting my brain in things as serious, competitive otb chess which a computer can do a lot better; although still playing now and then for fun.
(**) except the amateurs who buy my book for basic opening theory, thus having to spend considerably less time on other opening books)
www.superchess.blogspot.com

[reflectionofpower]

Nobody should be surprised when our creations surpass us in many areas. It's just a psychological quirk that defeat in intellectual activities such as chess tracks the human ego down to its lair.

well spoken and i fully agree. Somehow some strong human
chess players find it hard to believe that the machines have
surpassed humanity in this game. You always get remarks like
'yes but they play stupid chess, they cannot understand the game' and so on.

That is true with computer programs dominating human players. "He who is convinced against his will is of the same opinion still" so they so.

[jefk]

[quote="reflectionofpower"]
I am going to assume Lyudmil was saying not to be so structured in missing the essense of going beyond the norm,finding new ideas,exploring yourself?
[/quote]

maybe, but if you do that while playing a game it costs you lots of time.
So, besides, knowing strong lines, a good preparation and opening knowledge of the 'best' lines can save a player quite some -imporant - time in the opening stage; which then can be utilized during the middle/endgame, and when they have chosen a line -depending on Blacks play- which gives them a better game with White, then winning is ofcourse much easier then when you start of with a simple 'equal' line as eg the Berlin.

Some may argue that this ie memorizing current advanced (computer assisited) opening theory- is not possible because of the huge tree of possible opening variations. Which is only true up to a certain point, my current 'top' book which i use (with interface ChessPartnr) on ICC is only about 23 Mb. When the engine can handle the position itself, there's not much need to store it in the book.

So when looking at the book variations, a player can get a reasonable good idea about which lines to play without needing excessive stuyding time or a photographic memory. Ofcourse you need some motivation to do so, just as studying eg endgame theory, and the player needs a reasonably good memory, but we know of Magnus C that he has an excellent memory, so this can't be the bottleneck. Maybe it's just a matter of motivation, but certainly a player as eg -besides those i already mentioned- Caruana might have such desires.

Unfortunately however, for them, my opening book is not for sale. But if they wait a few years, they can see my correspondence games also in the large Chessbase database
NB i did think of writing a new book with a super-GM repertoire, but now it seems that Black always can equalize completely(*), i cannot determine a best first move for White, c4, Nf3, d4, g3, and e4 they all are good. So
my enthusiasm for such a project has been decreased. Maybe just an article about solving chess (a draw with best play) with some examples would do.


jef
(*) occasionally, only when looking much deeper, i still manage to find a little improvement, eg against the Slav, but then again later Black can nullify it again. An endless process, for sure. Also with the Catalan, contrary to what Avrukh was suggesting in his books, i do not think W can maintain advantage against Black best play. Also sometimes, when an engine eval is changing, some 'best' lines are changing a little, but then again Black can equalize.

PS if i write having analyzed openings up till 'perfection', i mean
up till drawing point; so to be more realistic, it's *almost* up till perfection, ofcourse it also depends on the engine eval, which is not always perfect (although i also often used Komodo8), ie subject to possible adjustments in future, but i'm ahead of current 'theory' eg in the Najdorf.
Last important point is that not only the objective of maintaning a slight positional advantage for White is important, depending on the opponent a GM also should be able (and often is) to choose a sharper line when mastering such a variation, sometimes even at the expense of a little positional advantage; which i wrote sometime ago that a good book should not only have parameters as statistics, or -as in Aquarium- end(minimaxed)eval
but ídeally also 'sharpness, eg such as the indicator in Fritz14. An idea for the developers of Aquarium maybe (example, against e4 imho both e6 and c5 are equalizing, but obviously most Sicilian variations are more double edged)

[reflectionofpower]

I am going to assume Lyudmil was saying not to be so structured in missing the essense of going beyond the norm,finding new ideas,exploring yourself?

maybe, but if you do that while playing a game it costs you lots of time.
So, besides, knowing strong lines, a good preparation and opening knowledge of the 'best' lines can save a player quite some -imporant - time in the opening stage; which then can be utilized during the middle/endgame, and when they have chosen a line -depending on Blacks play- which gives them a better game with White, then winning is ofcourse much easier then when you start of with a simple 'equal' line as eg the Berlin.

I agree. I do this when I am not playing the game or reflecting on a dubious move I made in the opening or a concept that needs replacing in my game.