Chess

Time machine GOAT arguments are the worst and utterly pointless.

Yeah, I donā€™t entirely disagree with that. Thatā€™s why my favorite player of all time is Morphy. Also have no doubt that any modern super-GM would mop the floor with peak Morphy.

Fair comment.

On that subject and despite having said itā€™s pointless I found it interesting that in a recentish video analysis of Kaspyā€™s immortal game vs Topalov, Hikaru described Kaspy as the GOAT because he felt that Carlsen wouldnā€™t have the intuition to play such an unclear and highly sacrificial line.

Itā€™s funny because true or not he repeated this on his stream something like 10 times. Itā€™s like ok we get it, you hate Magnus, but he probably doesnā€™t care nearly as much about you as you do him.

In an interview Austrian GM Markus Ragger said that Ding didnā€˜t have a second for the candidates tournament which is incredible to me.

One thing with Carlsen too why he may fall a bit short of Kasparov and Fischer in goat status to me is the lack of memorable games. It may be unfair to him given the era he played in and the style he uses but I can think of 10 Fischer and Kasparov legendary games, whereas Carlsenā€™s top game according to chessgames.com is https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1272702 which is excellent but I donā€™t think it would crack anybodyā€™s top 100 games ever played list.

1 Like

I feel like Lichess is overly critical here:

image

1 Like

Lichess just wanted to show you its ā€œOā€ face.

morphy would just be IM somewhere I think but still to be that good in that era with no tools and nobody in the entire country being close to his level and then going to europe and having such a rep that their best completely ducked him and beat whoever dgaf and played him and then quit entirely at like 23. I canā€™t think of anything that compares in any competitive venture.

editā€“guess bobby fischer disagreed at the time, thought morphy wouldā€™ve decked all of them. Many people think heā€™d still be a GM. I just think his openings would be so far off it wouldnā€™t work out in this era.

morphy/fischer are quite the what ifā€™s though just say f it and basically quit cold turkey, at least magnus is still gonna play

Iā€™m willing to put him as GOAT but this is a good point, he doesnā€™t have a signature game near the others.

That said, Magnus was twelve years old when that happened. and here Iā€™m still trying to figure out how the horsies move

If you just imported Morphy into the modern era as-is there is no way he could survive against modern GMs. I think Fischerā€™s point was more innate talent at the game.

If Newton in his prime showed up today he wouldnā€™t be winning any physics competitions. Give him a few years to catch up and itā€™s a different story. Heā€™d still be a very weird dude though.

Morphy who knows

Yeah, I think no one would disagree with that. If we imported an 8 yo Morphy and he got standard modern chess prodigy training, Iā€™d bet heā€™d be a super GM in a very reasonable amount of time, because of the innate talent that you mention.

https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1551253025712443392?t=UOfJPnwT6vbtE76CdW-82g&s=19

Olympiad spoiler, but hereā€™s a link to the live OTB feed of something Gotham mentions in his recap Shankland goes to move his K to the 2nd rank b/c he was expecting Qh1+, but Qg2 gets played and he is stuck still having to move his K, but moving it anywhere loses on the spot so he resigns.

lol touch move. lol OTB

stare at board for 30+ minutes before a moveā€“also move before your opponent does assuming heā€™s going to make a specific move to save two seconds

high level chess

I played some chess hustlers tonight on Bourbon St. Deal was 20 if I lose, no action if we draw or I win. First game I lost, I played against a guy who I thought was roughly as good as me. I had a better position at one point but couldnā€™t pull things together. I came back after another drink and played a different guy and got into a super tactical position which didnā€™t work out for me and I lost again, but thought I was better than this guy. He offered me double or nothing with me getting White this time and I snap accepted. Opening went 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Bc5 2. Bc4 f5

Uh yeah you canā€™t do that. 3. Bxg8 Rxg8 4. Qh5+ g6 5. Qxh7 Kf8 (which is lol as he could have played Kf8 on the previous move and saved a tempo and not created weakness) and now I play 6. d4ā€¦

Game over. He played exd4 which loses the rook and queen and he got mated a few moves later. So yeah this guy not great. I stopped at that point as I canā€™t win any money. Was fun to play some hustlers.

Dafuq kind of deal is that? Iā€™ve been hustled at chess before (not really hustled, as I was pretty sure I as going to lose and I just wanted to take a -EV shot). Generally the hook is that you can win something.

OK idk I thought that was just the deal and that you were paying for having a game basically. Who cares I donā€™t really mind about the money and even if it had been 20 wagered each way each game result would have been the same.