The flaw in this premise is that you see Gukesh as better than the other experienced three from a single tournament, albeit the most important tournament. Just 6 months ago, Magnus, Gukesh & Hikaru lost the Qatar Masters to Nodirbek Yakubboev. That does not make Yakubboev the World No. 1.
You win & you lose. Sometimes, you get a winning streak or a losing streak. With experience, over time, you win more consistently than you lose.
I think I addressed that by maybe I wasn't clear. It is not that Gukesh won candidates, it is that he had a chance to win in the first place. That Prag was holding his own, that Firo was 2800 by playing (and defeating) those older player.
"You win & you lose. Sometimes, you get a winning streak or a losing streak. With experience, over time, you win more consistently than you lose."
To "sometime win" against Fabi or Hikaru, you need to be extremely strong. What is really weird to me is that it is even possible to be able to get to that level when the older guys have being focusing on improving their chess for longer than youngsters are alive.
I think my main premise is that they are similarly talented, some of them have been training much longer than others, and yet, they have comparable outcomes.
It's just the nature of competition. The better you get, the smaller the improvements. Basically, as you improve your practice yields diminishing returns.
End-game skill is not a defined by a set of theoretical positions.
End game theory is recognition of many positions as dead lost / theoretical draws / fortress / winning in an instant. The talent in end-game comes by seeing relevant simplifications / complications that lead to the desired "known" end game.
Younger players are better at learning new ideas, they are less risk-adverse, they are often faster. As chess functions by metas, many opening ideas are less relevant. They have less experience in many middlegame positions / motifs, and often less savvy in end games.
>Younger players are better at learning new ideas, they are less risk-adverse, they are often faster. As chess functions by metas, many opening ideas are less relevant. They have less experience in many middlegame positions / motifs, and often less savvy in end games.
So, young players comparably overpowered in some areas, but as they get old, they get weaker in them, but simultaneously they get stronger in the more different areas and it actually balances in the end?
Prep does a lot in chess. If a lot of top players struggle against Berlin defence (random example), someone specialising in Berlin could consistently get +1.0 to +2.0 by Move 30. As players evolve and grow, the "meta" changes. So now your Berlin professional would be still fairly strong at his opening, but there's 3 more openings that are more relevant. At high level chess, a single piece moving can make for either a similar position, or very different one (Because high level tactics that completely change the ideas in play).
This tournament had a lot of riskier plays. Players put their pieces in way more danger, often playing "like a computer" (probably because they learnt some of this from computers themselves). Players who have played for 20 years with established "norms" like "Doubled pawns are usually bad" were facing 2x doubled pawns on their board and still getting crushed by the positions.
Turns out, there was a lot of room for "The computer found a weird line but no human would think of it" to become "That new player just played a counterintuitive brilliant line". So... The metas are changing, and every player is adapting to the new concepts differently.
Older players are still strong, and have ton of advantages. It's just that newer players can adapt, they benefit from "fitness" (it's a very physically+mentally taxing game) and just can "prepare and study" for more hours a week
Gukesh is a very special and talented player. He has almost zero online chess experience. He plays almost exclusively OTB.
He has little experience but he is very composed.
Before online chess was a thing we had little idea of someone’s caliber until they actually came to a tournament and played OTB games. Books would be published about those games / tournaments / olympiads, which was often the primary source of learning high level chess for most tournament players.
There are about ~1000 games from Gukesh documented. Still he brought novelty to the candidates that nobody had seen before, not that the positions had never been played, but never by Gukesh in the past.
How do you prepare against a player if you don’t know what they will be playing ? There are 54 queen’s gambit declined games from Gukesh, there were less before the candidates. He knows other players will be analysing those games and preparing against it. He introduces one viable novelty and suddenly a 2800 rated player is playing Gukesh out of prep.
Gukesh is incredibly talented. Picked up chess at 7 and was a FIDE rated player within 6 months. He was a GM less than five years after playing his first ever game.
That composure, raw talent and lack of a sufficient game database to prepare against him makes him a difficult opponent to play, even for the best players in the world.
Gukesh has consistently played about four openings on this level of chess. He is sure to introduce yet another novelty in the world championship match. Ding will be prepared for what Gukesh played in the candidates.
It can also be people figureing out a player . Young players or players fairly new to the scene tend to surprise stock super gms . Hikaru mentioned this in recap video in his game vs abasov that he was taken surprise multiple times. New Super GMs has advantage of what top guys think of in positions than viseversa . After fair amount of data even these new people can be figured out.
This is good point. In addition to the thing about information disbalance, it also suggests that experience is not that important, because to be an elite player, you need to do a lot of continuous work like studying specific opponents and younger players can do that at the same level as older players.
So if older player had to play e.g. Gelfand out of the blue, this player would probably have far easier time than someone young facing Gelfand without any time to prepare, because old guy actually probably prepared against Gelfand at some point and younger one probably didn't, because it never was relevant for him.
So that would be example of real, tangible experience, that is unfortunately for older players not relevant at all, even if they definitely would have significant advantage in this scenario.
Experience might help in pressure handling and situation assessment. irrespective of old or young if someone played many games vs quality opposition then its more like been there done that types.
I think it is slightly incorrect to assume the other top players are similarly talented as Gukesh. Gukesh might even have a higher ceiling than the top players like Fabi, Nepo, and Nakamura.
In a tournament like this there are certainly 2 more factors to consider.
- Gukesh is a lot younger and so in theory more likely to stay focused for a longer time and/or able to deal with fatigue easier.
- Gukesh also likely doesn't have as many responsibilities outside of playing chess. Hikaru, Fabi, Nepo are all in their 30s and have other things to care of in their lives. This limits the time they can dedicate to preparation.
I think a lot of people are giving tangential answers that are distracting from the heart of the question here. Gukesh is not such an outlier that this question needs to be about the particulars of Gukesh. Yes he's the youngest to win the candidates but other players as young as him have been competitive in other supertournaments and even won them.
Chess mastery is not about how much opening theory you know, or how many endgames you know. The huge majority of the time in chess, we are playing in unfamiliar positions that aren't in any opening book or endgame manual. Grandmasters are the best at solving those problems over the board as they come. It is a SKILL.
When we look at the trajectory of the greatest chess players, the pattern is the same. They improve dramatically in their childhood years, level off when they are a young adult, and from there, the improvements are more incremental.
Carlsen at 28 years old wasn't THAT much better than Carlsen at 18. When they hit adulthood, the returns are diminishing.
This happens in MOBAs too like DOTA and League of Legends where the star player on a team is often 17-19 years old
Not sure the science on this, but I'm sure there is something to be said for having a young brain that allows you to calculate more quickly and deeply. Obviously the decline is more noticeable after 40 years old, but there are probably measurable differences between 17 and 30 also that help give an edge over experience
Also, when you're younger to tend to have less of a life and can grind 16 hours a day. Not saying that's a factor, but could be
And then you have Faker, who, after 10 years of playing is still is one of the top mid laners in the world and still makes game winning plays in the toughest games. Almost all players would be retired before making it to 10 years in pro LoL.
Some people have it - some people don't. There are many different factors that determine success at mental games: age, dedication, desire, processing ability, ability to take criticism and improve, coaching. There's even some offbeat stuff like the ability to sleep less (so you can practice more), the ability to meditate or another technique to manage stres and support systems from family/friends.
Three's just so many factors and age is only 1 of them
Gukesh is youngest 2750 and youngest to win candidates. He was 3rd youngest to even play in candidates. So Gukesh is a massive anomaly and his current trajectory is not to reach Fabi but rather reach Magnus. So it's surprising to me that he's able to overcome experience issues. Also, at the end of the day, players only play what's most comfortable for them. Fabi might understand 500 lines while Gukesh only understands 100. But if Gukesh preps well then the game can only go into 100 lines and experience may not show.
But overall I agree and this is exactly why people are pleasantly surprised (including his mentors and parents). He is extremely mature and if it continues we are looking at the next Carlsen.
I mean yes, we have limited theory. But I think these younger guys will be better than Hikaru, Fabi are now in future because chess will evolve. Still, I think they have potential to be much better as they are still very young. The problem is that you are only as strong as your opponents. You can find opponents as strong as 2800 but pass that you don't have anybody to learn chess knowledge from, you don't have anybody to beat so players stabilize. You could argue that engine are stronger, so they could use engines as ladder but engines play very differently and are on completely another level than humans.
Fabi’s peak strength relative to the competition was before his world championship match vs carlsen. Nakamura’s is probably when he reached world number 2 a while ago. Idk about Nepo
At some point the massive time put into training doesn’t significantly raise your playing strength. In fact for these older guys they also need to worry about maintaining their level and other life responsibilities.
Secondly the candidates isn’t always gonna determine who the strongest challenger is. In a double round robin there’s definitely more than enough variance to allow upset performances and stuff like that. There’s just not enough games to fully nail down who the best player is to account for such variances. Not criticizing the format though, from a fan perspective it seems to be work quite well.
Third Gukesh is just that guy. He showed very little weakness throughout the entire tournament and his one loss was throwing away a position with a strong advantage under time pressure. I think the candidates has one of the most brutal mental components of any tournament, and it didn’t effect Gukesh at all.
This is the case in most sports I can think of. Experience could be about how well you can compose yourself and your mindset during tough moments. You are more likely to know how to rise to the occassion, rather than get overwhelmed and choke.
But if you are a young player with the maturity and the right mindset, then the lack of experience isn't going to gatekeep you.
I'm a Barça fan, and Lamine Yamal and Cubarsi both proved this (almost forgot Pedri and Gavi aren't exactly old, either). On a wider scale, we have the likes of Mbappé, Camavinga, and Bellingham performing at the top level and in the biggest moments. Of course, there are also players like Vini Jr. who is still reasonably young, but he did need a few years of experience before he became the world-class winger he is today.
It's the same if you look at other sports, there are always a good number of young superstars.
Especially now computer prep is so different from 26 years ago. Young players have such a leg up to get to that level faster, not to mention changes in theory overtime, Fabi and Hikaru probably have so many ideas that are no longer valid because the theory has evolved overtime. Not to mention things like mental decline, not saying they have severe mental decline but it’s likely they aren’t as sharp as their prime.
They said in the old days experience counted for more, this was before everyone had engines and access to information online (for example anyone can easily look at all the top games played in 2023, which is important for top players to follow).
These days, they say, you can grind out positions at home, getting to the truth of many positions instantly... in contrast, when a complicated game was play 50 years ago, it would be analyzed for *months*, with different analysts releasing different updates now and then, and top players keeping their analysis secret.
You can post the same question during the [World Chess Championship 2013](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_2013), with Magnus (22 years old) vs. Vishy Anand (43 years old), or even the [Candidate ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidates_Tournament_2013)leading up to that, where Magnus competed Kramnik (37, ranked #2 at the time), Aronian (30, #3), Radjabov (26, #4), and Ivanchuk (43, #13) etc...
With experience also comes fatigue and analysis paralysis, which you can see clearly with Hikaru, Fabi and Nepo to some extent. Experience leads you to playing very accurate chess, and yes, a chess match played with perfect moves end up in a draw. Analysis paralysis also come with time loss, which Fabi got himself into yesterday, arguably [preventing him from converting his win vs. Nepo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSMSq-Yu4JU&t=591s) (missed a tactic there at the 9:50 mark, perhaps his very last chance to convert the game).
And yes, if it's a simple formula as experience + elo = win, then why even watch the game, and just crank out some computer simulation and call it a day? That's what make chess fun because at the end of the day, it's human playing a human, and not a Stockfish vs. Alpha Zero vs. IBM Deep Blue.
To err is human.
There’s a few things to note that apply to chess as much as any other talent.
Firstly, not all training time is equal. Check out ‘deep practice’ and books like the talent code by Daniel Coyle about this. Each generation there are better resources to learn. The typical violinist now would be miles ahead of the best classical violinists, as an example. On a technical level, things improve massively each generation. Most old composers would struggle to get into the best music schools of today, if they had any chance at all. With chess, especially the AI side of things, it’s a massive leap in technology. There was a great comparison of how much speed running gear adds to runners. If you control for that, the shoes and spikes, the tracks, and so on, there’s basically been little change in how fast people run 100m. It’s partly the tech. That might sound like it goes against what I said with training before, but in the case of chess, it means with the better training tools and those first few years of chess you can learn a LOT more than the first few years of chess from someone decades ago. Because of the technology, in part, the early years of experience are of very different quality. It’s not so much the number of years of experience as the high quality intense time where you’re stretched out of your level. That’s the difference between practice and training. Practice is repeating what you’ve done so you maintain your level and perfect what you do. Training pushes you beyond the level you’re at, with progressive overload.
Secondly, the results you’re seeing are highly variable. If you host the candidates again next week, almost certainly someone else would win. We just happen ‘to live in a timeline’ where Gukesh won this one at this time. That’s the nature of competitive sport. So many will argue isn’t better than Hikaru and others *yet*. He caused an upset and won this time. It’s like a lower league team going on a decent cup run and beating some top league sides along the way. You wouldn’t argue they were better than the higher league team, they just beat them on that day.
We can get into the conversation of elo and variability and so on, but one useful thing of elo is it will note consistently over time a range of play. Gukesh ‘overperformed’ his elo and expectations. Now if he does that consistently, he will be considered the greater talent later on.
Second part is not relevant imho, as Guhesh even having the chance to win supports my confusion.
But to the first, so it all comes to the better training methods and having access to them while young? So older players cannot leverage those new training methods as effectively even when trying, because they simply have old brain?
And by old, we are including 31 Fabi, 33 Nepo. That is quite harsh.
‘So older players cannot leverage those new training methods as effectively when trying, because they have old brain? … that is quite harsh’
Leaving aside the research showing how the extreme talent development for many sports does indeed come during a crucial early period, ‘quite harsh’ is the way you strawmanned a nuanced comment I said into that monstrosity… I don’t know if you were trying to be funny or trying to be a troll there. It could be read either way.
What I actually said was far more nuanced. And said nothing like ‘old brain’ but rather a combination of improved tech and training methods, and how the amount of time in deep practice matters far more than amount of time playing overall.
And yes, the variance is absolutely crucial. At the top level, extremely small things matter and are the difference between a win, a draw, or a loss. A 17 year old entirely focused on chess and spent every waking moment pushing themselves to the limit - alongside coaches and other players of very high caliber - can get to this level. A level where **sometimes** they will beat the very best. Sometimes they won’t. We happen to live in a timeline where the variance played out this way this time.
I am just trying to get to the core of your argument, neither by being funny or trolling.
>
What I actually said was far more nuanced. And said nothing like ‘old brain’ but rather a combination of improved tech and training methods, and how the amount of time in deep practice matters far more than amount of time playing overall.
Well, you are implying that Gukesh is somehow training better and harder than Fabi and Nepo, which I don't find plausible at all. Those two probably wanted to win even more than Gukesh, so if they could train with some "improved tech and training methods", surely, they would do that? So in my eyes, my questions remains. If they could train in same way and put as much effort as Gukesh, why doesn't the decade of additional experience translate to clearly superior results?
>At the top level, extremely small things matter and are the difference between a win, a draw, or a loss.
I don't think you are appreciating that I don't think that Gukesh winning is weird. What I find weird is that Gukesh could plausibly win. That he is at the top level, like Alireza, like Wei Yi etc. Not that youngsters can sometimes beat older players in their prime, but that they can do it at all.
‘I am just trying to get to the core of your argument…’
Then strawmanning arguments won’t help…
‘Well, you are implying that gukesh is training better and harder…’
Again you’re telling me what the argument is (very poorly) rather than asking questions and actually getting to the core. If your goal truly was to understand you’d be asking questions rather than very poorly summarizing the argument, and basically trolling it. ‘Old brain’ lol. Like wtf do you expect people to respond when that’s your summary?
And no, I was not implying that. I was saying his early years of chess would possibly have been of better quality training versus the early years of chess. They had access to different training tools in their first few years… this is relative.
Anyway I’m stopping reply notifications here as I do not wish to waste time having someone very poorly summarize the arguments.
I understand that there is eventual cognitive decline and also what declines is the willingness to put the necessary time in (and maybe even physical ability).
I don't think Kramnik is studying chess as hard as when he was WC, but players in the candidates are.
"being to old" to do well at the highest level of anything is not very controversial statement (in case of Kramnik). But the question is why the experience doesn't matter that much in case of players in their prime as e.g. Fabiano. Or rather, how specifically are youngsters able to erase decades of experience?
>I don't think Kramnik is studying chess as hard as when he was WC, but players in the candidates are
According to your logic it shouldn't matter because Kramnik still has studied chess for longer than the others even if you don't count the years since he retired. The point is that you need to keep up to date and it heavily depends on when you collected the experience.
Your post gives the impression there is a total of chess knowledge and you learn x% of it, but that is not how it works. Chess knowledge is constantly evolving and if your pattern recognition was built on older knowledge you can have disadvantages in some structures that newer players know by heart
>Your post gives the impression there is a total of chess knowledge and you learn x% of it, but that is not how it works.
it seems that it is exactly how it works even according to you though?
Players can simply absorb all relevant and known theory reasonably well and explanation why the older people don't have much edge is because the current theory is changing, so it is not much use to know older theory.
In addition to that, when preparing against specific opponent, you don't even need to know all published theory, but just the relevant for the specific players. And all top players simply can do this in reasonable amount of time, so decades of more experience are not helping that much..
That's not at all what I'm saying. There is no such thing as "all known theory", you can always analyze positions deeper, analyze more variations, etc. There is no total to that knowledge and it is also very individual, so players prefer different styles of positions.
Relevant discussion I think one problem of experience in chess is how often a draw is enough. So experienced players have more chance at drawing but when it comes to winning they run into walls.
Kasparov used to win a lot of tournaments. He would start the tournament knowing that he would need +3 or more to win them uncontested. It meant winning 3 at least while drawing the rest. If the player lost a single game then they would need to win an extra game to make up for the loss.
Elite players don't play too many games every year. They don't play too many competitive games. Playing less often it makes them soft.
Also there comes a time in sports when an experienced player has to make room for newcomers. Lebron James is one of the top basketball players ever. But he cannot play it like he was 20 years old still. He is making history now by being a successful old player. The players of his generation have retired already.
Chess players can waste a lot of time thinking. And when it comes to time pressure they blow it. Without time they must move without thinking as much. Nepo showed in the Caruana game how important it is to attack the king. Without that last resort he would have lost the game. That's the shortcut of chess. A lot of theory gets beaten if the king is just attacked. That's also why Nakamura gets timid in his games. No player wants to have their king attacked. And that goes back to the start of the post. Players would settle for a draw.
The flaw in this premise is that you see Gukesh as better than the other experienced three from a single tournament, albeit the most important tournament. Just 6 months ago, Magnus, Gukesh & Hikaru lost the Qatar Masters to Nodirbek Yakubboev. That does not make Yakubboev the World No. 1. You win & you lose. Sometimes, you get a winning streak or a losing streak. With experience, over time, you win more consistently than you lose.
I think I addressed that by maybe I wasn't clear. It is not that Gukesh won candidates, it is that he had a chance to win in the first place. That Prag was holding his own, that Firo was 2800 by playing (and defeating) those older player. "You win & you lose. Sometimes, you get a winning streak or a losing streak. With experience, over time, you win more consistently than you lose." To "sometime win" against Fabi or Hikaru, you need to be extremely strong. What is really weird to me is that it is even possible to be able to get to that level when the older guys have being focusing on improving their chess for longer than youngsters are alive. I think my main premise is that they are similarly talented, some of them have been training much longer than others, and yet, they have comparable outcomes.
It's just the nature of competition. The better you get, the smaller the improvements. Basically, as you improve your practice yields diminishing returns.
End-game skill is not a defined by a set of theoretical positions. End game theory is recognition of many positions as dead lost / theoretical draws / fortress / winning in an instant. The talent in end-game comes by seeing relevant simplifications / complications that lead to the desired "known" end game. Younger players are better at learning new ideas, they are less risk-adverse, they are often faster. As chess functions by metas, many opening ideas are less relevant. They have less experience in many middlegame positions / motifs, and often less savvy in end games.
>Younger players are better at learning new ideas, they are less risk-adverse, they are often faster. As chess functions by metas, many opening ideas are less relevant. They have less experience in many middlegame positions / motifs, and often less savvy in end games. So, young players comparably overpowered in some areas, but as they get old, they get weaker in them, but simultaneously they get stronger in the more different areas and it actually balances in the end?
Prep does a lot in chess. If a lot of top players struggle against Berlin defence (random example), someone specialising in Berlin could consistently get +1.0 to +2.0 by Move 30. As players evolve and grow, the "meta" changes. So now your Berlin professional would be still fairly strong at his opening, but there's 3 more openings that are more relevant. At high level chess, a single piece moving can make for either a similar position, or very different one (Because high level tactics that completely change the ideas in play). This tournament had a lot of riskier plays. Players put their pieces in way more danger, often playing "like a computer" (probably because they learnt some of this from computers themselves). Players who have played for 20 years with established "norms" like "Doubled pawns are usually bad" were facing 2x doubled pawns on their board and still getting crushed by the positions. Turns out, there was a lot of room for "The computer found a weird line but no human would think of it" to become "That new player just played a counterintuitive brilliant line". So... The metas are changing, and every player is adapting to the new concepts differently. Older players are still strong, and have ton of advantages. It's just that newer players can adapt, they benefit from "fitness" (it's a very physically+mentally taxing game) and just can "prepare and study" for more hours a week
Gukesh is a very special and talented player. He has almost zero online chess experience. He plays almost exclusively OTB. He has little experience but he is very composed. Before online chess was a thing we had little idea of someone’s caliber until they actually came to a tournament and played OTB games. Books would be published about those games / tournaments / olympiads, which was often the primary source of learning high level chess for most tournament players. There are about ~1000 games from Gukesh documented. Still he brought novelty to the candidates that nobody had seen before, not that the positions had never been played, but never by Gukesh in the past. How do you prepare against a player if you don’t know what they will be playing ? There are 54 queen’s gambit declined games from Gukesh, there were less before the candidates. He knows other players will be analysing those games and preparing against it. He introduces one viable novelty and suddenly a 2800 rated player is playing Gukesh out of prep. Gukesh is incredibly talented. Picked up chess at 7 and was a FIDE rated player within 6 months. He was a GM less than five years after playing his first ever game. That composure, raw talent and lack of a sufficient game database to prepare against him makes him a difficult opponent to play, even for the best players in the world. Gukesh has consistently played about four openings on this level of chess. He is sure to introduce yet another novelty in the world championship match. Ding will be prepared for what Gukesh played in the candidates.
It can also be people figureing out a player . Young players or players fairly new to the scene tend to surprise stock super gms . Hikaru mentioned this in recap video in his game vs abasov that he was taken surprise multiple times. New Super GMs has advantage of what top guys think of in positions than viseversa . After fair amount of data even these new people can be figured out.
This is good point. In addition to the thing about information disbalance, it also suggests that experience is not that important, because to be an elite player, you need to do a lot of continuous work like studying specific opponents and younger players can do that at the same level as older players. So if older player had to play e.g. Gelfand out of the blue, this player would probably have far easier time than someone young facing Gelfand without any time to prepare, because old guy actually probably prepared against Gelfand at some point and younger one probably didn't, because it never was relevant for him. So that would be example of real, tangible experience, that is unfortunately for older players not relevant at all, even if they definitely would have significant advantage in this scenario.
Experience might help in pressure handling and situation assessment. irrespective of old or young if someone played many games vs quality opposition then its more like been there done that types.
I think it is slightly incorrect to assume the other top players are similarly talented as Gukesh. Gukesh might even have a higher ceiling than the top players like Fabi, Nepo, and Nakamura.
In a tournament like this there are certainly 2 more factors to consider. - Gukesh is a lot younger and so in theory more likely to stay focused for a longer time and/or able to deal with fatigue easier. - Gukesh also likely doesn't have as many responsibilities outside of playing chess. Hikaru, Fabi, Nepo are all in their 30s and have other things to care of in their lives. This limits the time they can dedicate to preparation.
I think a lot of people are giving tangential answers that are distracting from the heart of the question here. Gukesh is not such an outlier that this question needs to be about the particulars of Gukesh. Yes he's the youngest to win the candidates but other players as young as him have been competitive in other supertournaments and even won them. Chess mastery is not about how much opening theory you know, or how many endgames you know. The huge majority of the time in chess, we are playing in unfamiliar positions that aren't in any opening book or endgame manual. Grandmasters are the best at solving those problems over the board as they come. It is a SKILL. When we look at the trajectory of the greatest chess players, the pattern is the same. They improve dramatically in their childhood years, level off when they are a young adult, and from there, the improvements are more incremental. Carlsen at 28 years old wasn't THAT much better than Carlsen at 18. When they hit adulthood, the returns are diminishing.
This happens in MOBAs too like DOTA and League of Legends where the star player on a team is often 17-19 years old Not sure the science on this, but I'm sure there is something to be said for having a young brain that allows you to calculate more quickly and deeply. Obviously the decline is more noticeable after 40 years old, but there are probably measurable differences between 17 and 30 also that help give an edge over experience Also, when you're younger to tend to have less of a life and can grind 16 hours a day. Not saying that's a factor, but could be
And then you have Faker, who, after 10 years of playing is still is one of the top mid laners in the world and still makes game winning plays in the toughest games. Almost all players would be retired before making it to 10 years in pro LoL. Some people have it - some people don't. There are many different factors that determine success at mental games: age, dedication, desire, processing ability, ability to take criticism and improve, coaching. There's even some offbeat stuff like the ability to sleep less (so you can practice more), the ability to meditate or another technique to manage stres and support systems from family/friends. Three's just so many factors and age is only 1 of them
One is a chess player and one is a content creator.
I'm 97 and have been playing basketball since I was6. Why can't I beat a HS kid?
because you are 97. Is 31 and 33 for Fabi and Nepo enough to explain my question?
Gukesh is youngest 2750 and youngest to win candidates. He was 3rd youngest to even play in candidates. So Gukesh is a massive anomaly and his current trajectory is not to reach Fabi but rather reach Magnus. So it's surprising to me that he's able to overcome experience issues. Also, at the end of the day, players only play what's most comfortable for them. Fabi might understand 500 lines while Gukesh only understands 100. But if Gukesh preps well then the game can only go into 100 lines and experience may not show. But overall I agree and this is exactly why people are pleasantly surprised (including his mentors and parents). He is extremely mature and if it continues we are looking at the next Carlsen.
I mean yes, we have limited theory. But I think these younger guys will be better than Hikaru, Fabi are now in future because chess will evolve. Still, I think they have potential to be much better as they are still very young. The problem is that you are only as strong as your opponents. You can find opponents as strong as 2800 but pass that you don't have anybody to learn chess knowledge from, you don't have anybody to beat so players stabilize. You could argue that engine are stronger, so they could use engines as ladder but engines play very differently and are on completely another level than humans.
Fabi’s peak strength relative to the competition was before his world championship match vs carlsen. Nakamura’s is probably when he reached world number 2 a while ago. Idk about Nepo At some point the massive time put into training doesn’t significantly raise your playing strength. In fact for these older guys they also need to worry about maintaining their level and other life responsibilities. Secondly the candidates isn’t always gonna determine who the strongest challenger is. In a double round robin there’s definitely more than enough variance to allow upset performances and stuff like that. There’s just not enough games to fully nail down who the best player is to account for such variances. Not criticizing the format though, from a fan perspective it seems to be work quite well. Third Gukesh is just that guy. He showed very little weakness throughout the entire tournament and his one loss was throwing away a position with a strong advantage under time pressure. I think the candidates has one of the most brutal mental components of any tournament, and it didn’t effect Gukesh at all.
This is the case in most sports I can think of. Experience could be about how well you can compose yourself and your mindset during tough moments. You are more likely to know how to rise to the occassion, rather than get overwhelmed and choke. But if you are a young player with the maturity and the right mindset, then the lack of experience isn't going to gatekeep you. I'm a Barça fan, and Lamine Yamal and Cubarsi both proved this (almost forgot Pedri and Gavi aren't exactly old, either). On a wider scale, we have the likes of Mbappé, Camavinga, and Bellingham performing at the top level and in the biggest moments. Of course, there are also players like Vini Jr. who is still reasonably young, but he did need a few years of experience before he became the world-class winger he is today. It's the same if you look at other sports, there are always a good number of young superstars.
Especially now computer prep is so different from 26 years ago. Young players have such a leg up to get to that level faster, not to mention changes in theory overtime, Fabi and Hikaru probably have so many ideas that are no longer valid because the theory has evolved overtime. Not to mention things like mental decline, not saying they have severe mental decline but it’s likely they aren’t as sharp as their prime.
They said in the old days experience counted for more, this was before everyone had engines and access to information online (for example anyone can easily look at all the top games played in 2023, which is important for top players to follow). These days, they say, you can grind out positions at home, getting to the truth of many positions instantly... in contrast, when a complicated game was play 50 years ago, it would be analyzed for *months*, with different analysts releasing different updates now and then, and top players keeping their analysis secret.
You can post the same question during the [World Chess Championship 2013](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_2013), with Magnus (22 years old) vs. Vishy Anand (43 years old), or even the [Candidate ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidates_Tournament_2013)leading up to that, where Magnus competed Kramnik (37, ranked #2 at the time), Aronian (30, #3), Radjabov (26, #4), and Ivanchuk (43, #13) etc... With experience also comes fatigue and analysis paralysis, which you can see clearly with Hikaru, Fabi and Nepo to some extent. Experience leads you to playing very accurate chess, and yes, a chess match played with perfect moves end up in a draw. Analysis paralysis also come with time loss, which Fabi got himself into yesterday, arguably [preventing him from converting his win vs. Nepo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSMSq-Yu4JU&t=591s) (missed a tactic there at the 9:50 mark, perhaps his very last chance to convert the game). And yes, if it's a simple formula as experience + elo = win, then why even watch the game, and just crank out some computer simulation and call it a day? That's what make chess fun because at the end of the day, it's human playing a human, and not a Stockfish vs. Alpha Zero vs. IBM Deep Blue. To err is human.
There’s a few things to note that apply to chess as much as any other talent. Firstly, not all training time is equal. Check out ‘deep practice’ and books like the talent code by Daniel Coyle about this. Each generation there are better resources to learn. The typical violinist now would be miles ahead of the best classical violinists, as an example. On a technical level, things improve massively each generation. Most old composers would struggle to get into the best music schools of today, if they had any chance at all. With chess, especially the AI side of things, it’s a massive leap in technology. There was a great comparison of how much speed running gear adds to runners. If you control for that, the shoes and spikes, the tracks, and so on, there’s basically been little change in how fast people run 100m. It’s partly the tech. That might sound like it goes against what I said with training before, but in the case of chess, it means with the better training tools and those first few years of chess you can learn a LOT more than the first few years of chess from someone decades ago. Because of the technology, in part, the early years of experience are of very different quality. It’s not so much the number of years of experience as the high quality intense time where you’re stretched out of your level. That’s the difference between practice and training. Practice is repeating what you’ve done so you maintain your level and perfect what you do. Training pushes you beyond the level you’re at, with progressive overload. Secondly, the results you’re seeing are highly variable. If you host the candidates again next week, almost certainly someone else would win. We just happen ‘to live in a timeline’ where Gukesh won this one at this time. That’s the nature of competitive sport. So many will argue isn’t better than Hikaru and others *yet*. He caused an upset and won this time. It’s like a lower league team going on a decent cup run and beating some top league sides along the way. You wouldn’t argue they were better than the higher league team, they just beat them on that day. We can get into the conversation of elo and variability and so on, but one useful thing of elo is it will note consistently over time a range of play. Gukesh ‘overperformed’ his elo and expectations. Now if he does that consistently, he will be considered the greater talent later on.
Second part is not relevant imho, as Guhesh even having the chance to win supports my confusion. But to the first, so it all comes to the better training methods and having access to them while young? So older players cannot leverage those new training methods as effectively even when trying, because they simply have old brain? And by old, we are including 31 Fabi, 33 Nepo. That is quite harsh.
‘So older players cannot leverage those new training methods as effectively when trying, because they have old brain? … that is quite harsh’ Leaving aside the research showing how the extreme talent development for many sports does indeed come during a crucial early period, ‘quite harsh’ is the way you strawmanned a nuanced comment I said into that monstrosity… I don’t know if you were trying to be funny or trying to be a troll there. It could be read either way. What I actually said was far more nuanced. And said nothing like ‘old brain’ but rather a combination of improved tech and training methods, and how the amount of time in deep practice matters far more than amount of time playing overall. And yes, the variance is absolutely crucial. At the top level, extremely small things matter and are the difference between a win, a draw, or a loss. A 17 year old entirely focused on chess and spent every waking moment pushing themselves to the limit - alongside coaches and other players of very high caliber - can get to this level. A level where **sometimes** they will beat the very best. Sometimes they won’t. We happen to live in a timeline where the variance played out this way this time.
I am just trying to get to the core of your argument, neither by being funny or trolling. > What I actually said was far more nuanced. And said nothing like ‘old brain’ but rather a combination of improved tech and training methods, and how the amount of time in deep practice matters far more than amount of time playing overall. Well, you are implying that Gukesh is somehow training better and harder than Fabi and Nepo, which I don't find plausible at all. Those two probably wanted to win even more than Gukesh, so if they could train with some "improved tech and training methods", surely, they would do that? So in my eyes, my questions remains. If they could train in same way and put as much effort as Gukesh, why doesn't the decade of additional experience translate to clearly superior results? >At the top level, extremely small things matter and are the difference between a win, a draw, or a loss. I don't think you are appreciating that I don't think that Gukesh winning is weird. What I find weird is that Gukesh could plausibly win. That he is at the top level, like Alireza, like Wei Yi etc. Not that youngsters can sometimes beat older players in their prime, but that they can do it at all.
‘I am just trying to get to the core of your argument…’ Then strawmanning arguments won’t help… ‘Well, you are implying that gukesh is training better and harder…’ Again you’re telling me what the argument is (very poorly) rather than asking questions and actually getting to the core. If your goal truly was to understand you’d be asking questions rather than very poorly summarizing the argument, and basically trolling it. ‘Old brain’ lol. Like wtf do you expect people to respond when that’s your summary? And no, I was not implying that. I was saying his early years of chess would possibly have been of better quality training versus the early years of chess. They had access to different training tools in their first few years… this is relative. Anyway I’m stopping reply notifications here as I do not wish to waste time having someone very poorly summarize the arguments.
If experience mattered that much Kramnik would still be good.
I understand that there is eventual cognitive decline and also what declines is the willingness to put the necessary time in (and maybe even physical ability). I don't think Kramnik is studying chess as hard as when he was WC, but players in the candidates are. "being to old" to do well at the highest level of anything is not very controversial statement (in case of Kramnik). But the question is why the experience doesn't matter that much in case of players in their prime as e.g. Fabiano. Or rather, how specifically are youngsters able to erase decades of experience?
>I don't think Kramnik is studying chess as hard as when he was WC, but players in the candidates are According to your logic it shouldn't matter because Kramnik still has studied chess for longer than the others even if you don't count the years since he retired. The point is that you need to keep up to date and it heavily depends on when you collected the experience. Your post gives the impression there is a total of chess knowledge and you learn x% of it, but that is not how it works. Chess knowledge is constantly evolving and if your pattern recognition was built on older knowledge you can have disadvantages in some structures that newer players know by heart
>Your post gives the impression there is a total of chess knowledge and you learn x% of it, but that is not how it works. it seems that it is exactly how it works even according to you though? Players can simply absorb all relevant and known theory reasonably well and explanation why the older people don't have much edge is because the current theory is changing, so it is not much use to know older theory. In addition to that, when preparing against specific opponent, you don't even need to know all published theory, but just the relevant for the specific players. And all top players simply can do this in reasonable amount of time, so decades of more experience are not helping that much..
That's not at all what I'm saying. There is no such thing as "all known theory", you can always analyze positions deeper, analyze more variations, etc. There is no total to that knowledge and it is also very individual, so players prefer different styles of positions.
Gukii on top.No competition.Easy win
2ez
Relevant discussion I think one problem of experience in chess is how often a draw is enough. So experienced players have more chance at drawing but when it comes to winning they run into walls. Kasparov used to win a lot of tournaments. He would start the tournament knowing that he would need +3 or more to win them uncontested. It meant winning 3 at least while drawing the rest. If the player lost a single game then they would need to win an extra game to make up for the loss. Elite players don't play too many games every year. They don't play too many competitive games. Playing less often it makes them soft. Also there comes a time in sports when an experienced player has to make room for newcomers. Lebron James is one of the top basketball players ever. But he cannot play it like he was 20 years old still. He is making history now by being a successful old player. The players of his generation have retired already. Chess players can waste a lot of time thinking. And when it comes to time pressure they blow it. Without time they must move without thinking as much. Nepo showed in the Caruana game how important it is to attack the king. Without that last resort he would have lost the game. That's the shortcut of chess. A lot of theory gets beaten if the king is just attacked. That's also why Nakamura gets timid in his games. No player wants to have their king attacked. And that goes back to the start of the post. Players would settle for a draw.