WC Match 2016 - New York 10-30 November

[Roger Lancaster]

I'm very prepared to concede that I might lose this ending, whether playing white or black, against a top GM but I really find it hard to see how any top GM could lose with either colour short of a complete brainstorm. How about agreeing a draw, guys?

[Mick Norris]

You might want to wait for the time control

[Roger Lancaster]

LOL, not even the players waited for that!

[Mick Norris]

Fair enough lol

[Jonathan Bryant]

I find prospects of a Q+P ending really, really exciting. I'm so excited, I've broken off my webcam viewing of cars circulating around a nearby roundabout because I'm so excited. I bet I'm even more excited than Jonathan Bryant who is the most excited person I know for these things.

I’m afraid Queen endings make my brain explode, David. Too much going on. I just can’t fit them into my head. Mind you, after a Q+p disaster at Gatwick recently (during which I seem to have missed about a gazzilion chances to trade into a drawn K+p ending) I could do with a free lesson.

Or did you mean I’m excited about roundabouts? They’ve recently changed the traffic flow at the double roundabout at Elephant & Castle. That’s Quite Interesting, I must admit.

I must admit I don’t really understand the popularity of the early d3 set-ups in the Spanish. I suppose it’s lack of satisfaction with the over-analysed mainlines. Such is modern chess.

[John McKenna]

I think that the Prof does protest a bit too much in this instance. It is not just modern chess, Jon...

From Pi in the Sky by John D. Barrow -

... there were some mathematicians who were deeply disappointed by the computer-aided proof [the Haken-Appel one that I'd rather call a human-aided computer proof - JM] of the Four-Colour [Map] Conjecture... Martin Davis and Reuben Hirsch wrote -

When I heard that... [it] had been proved, my first reaction was, "Wonderful! How did they do it?" I expected some brilliant new insight... an idea whose beauty would transform my day. But when I received the answer, "They did it by breaking it down into thousands of cases, and then running them all on a computer... I felt disheartened...

What... [they] are getting at is that mathematicians are usually more interested in the chase than the kill. They are keen to find some novel type of argument... or some unexpected link between different problems... that reveals their solutions to be linked in some deep and subtle way. The Haken-Appel proof possessed none of those inspiring ingredients. It was a demonstration of technique rather than insight, of patience rather than inspiration...

[Mick Norris]

Funny really, if you had told me that Karjakin would fail to win any of his 6 games with white, I'd have assumed there wouldn't be a game 12 as Magnus would have already won

[Brian Towers]

I think that the Prof does protest a bit too much in this instance. It is not just modern chess, Jon...

From Pi in the Sky by John D. Barrow -

... there were some mathematicians who were deeply disappointed by the computer-aided proof [the Haken-Appel one that I'd rather call a human-aided computer proof - JM] of the Four-Colour [Map] Conjecture... Martin Davis and Reuben Hirsch wrote -

When I heard that... [it] had been proved, my first reaction was, "Wonderful! How did they do it?" I expected some brilliant new insight... an idea whose beauty would transform my day. But when I received the answer, "They did it by breaking it down into thousands of cases, and then running them all on a computer... I felt disheartened...

What... [they] are getting at is that mathematicians are usually more interested in the chase than the kill. They are keen to find some novel type of argument... or some unexpected link between different problems... that reveals their solutions to be linked in some deep and subtle way. The Haken-Appel proof possessed none of those inspiring ingredients. It was a demonstration of technique rather than insight, of patience rather than inspiration...

As a chess playing mathematician I think I take issue with that. I would say that the relationship between the 5 colour theorem and the 4 colour theorem is akin to the relationship between, say, Capablanca's pawn endgame and endgame tablebases.

I remember in summer 1974 one of the maths dons at the Oxford college I was shortly to go up to, along with a short reading list advised me to go and visit my predecessor as school chess captain who had just finished the first year for advice. When I did so he was wildly enthusiastic about the 4 colour conjecture as it was then. He explained the proof of the 5 colour theorem (which had been proved in the late 19th century and is accessible to bright A level students).

He then went on to explain that he was looking to try and prove the 4 colour conjecture using similar techniques and explained what current literature was saying on the subject and how far he had got. He explained that a simple extension wouldn't work and that several different cases would have to be considered. He showed me proofs for 4 or 5 cases and then suggested that probably 30 or 40 separate cases would have to be considered at which point he lost my interest (perhaps explains why he was a better chess player than me).

A year or two later it was announced that the full 4 colour theorem had been proved and that somewhere in the region of 10,000 separate cases had been crunched through computers. Somebody called Robin Wilson (for some reason I want to say "Kevin B" but that is somebody else), a former Oxford don and by then OU don, came to Oxford to give a seminar. Thanks to that visit to my old school chum I knew better than to attend.

Seriously though, Q+P endgames aren't that bad. There are, presumably, GMs and possibly even IMs around who understand them well enough to play them properly.

[John McKenna]

Thanks for those colourful memories, Brian, but it's turned into a bit of a perplexing Sunday evening and night for me, so forgive me for asking what exactly it is that you have an issue with?

Is it my statement that modern chess isn't the only field in which computers are having a growing impact on the human approach to many activities - to the chagrin of some?

Or is it my John D. Barrow quote that's the problem?

Are you saying that there's no need for human chessplayers and mathematicians to become 'disheartened' because the existence of computer-generated endgame tablebases and the Haken-Appel 'computer-aided' proof are only extensions of the 'Capablanca pawn endgame' and the human proof of the 5-Colour Conjecture?

Or it something else, I wonder?

[Chris Rice]

Back in the UK and all set for the last round. Just received an email from those good people at AGON allowing me a ticket to watch the final round 12 game. Those, like me, who thought they didn't care about normal chess players and are just cashing in have been proved completely wrong as I can get a ticket starting at an incredibly low price of $200. Such a shame I won't be able to attend but good luck to those who do, fingers crossed its not a short draw.

http://www.ticketfly.com/event/1337843- ... -new-york/

[MartinCarpenter]

What joys in the opening. Still Magnus did quite well with this last time round.

[Carl Hibbard]

Another dry position as Svidler would call it although I can think of other words.

[NickFaulks]

Larry & Yasser dream team on ICC.

[JustinHorton]

Another dry position as Svidler would call it although I can think of other words.

Although if there's one thing Magnus has taught us, it's how much can be squeezed out of a dry position.

[Carl Hibbard]

Another dry position as Svidler would call it although I can think of other words.

Although if there's one thing Magnus has taught us, it's how much can be squeezed out of a dry position.

Won't last long this.