Magnus ‘DrDrunkenstein’ Carlsen

DrDrunkenstein’s Reign of Terror

Magnus Carlsen, the best chess player alive, has been slipping into online speed tournaments behind pseudonyms to crack jokes, let loose, and destroy the competition.

By Joe Holmes
Feb 21, 20204:11 PM

Magnus Carlsen smirks and holds his hand up to his face. Behind him are screenshots of his face from livestreams.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Agon Limited and Magnus Carlsen/YouTube.

It was the final game of the 2018 World Chess Championship, and reigning champ Magnus Carlsen was about to piss off almost every commentator in the chess world. In a clearly favorable position, with a 30-minute time advantage over opponent Fabiano Caruana, Carlsen offered his hand for the 12th straight draw of the 12-game series. Neither side had won a single game—a first in the history of the world championship.

Commentators saw the move as heretical to the spirit of competition, “cowardly” even. Former champ Garry Kasparov suggested Carlsen was losing his nerve. The crown would have to be determined in tiebreaks: rapid games, more similar in time controls to a casual match in the park than the hours-long marathons that preceded them. Each side would get 25 minutes to make all his moves, with a 10 second bonus added each time he punched his clock.

It was Carlsen’s bread and butter. He was the World Blitz Chess champion as well and bet on his quick intuition to close the match out decisively. He bet right—bulldozing Caruana with three consecutive wins to retain the world title. When asked about his critics at the press conference, a grinning Carlsen said, “They are entitled to their stupid opinions.”

Though some fans were still irked that he played it safe in the classical games, a new narrative started emerging: Carlsen, the supremely gifted natural, brought Caruana out of the memorized computer analysis that defines so much of the contemporary circuit. Far from losing his nerve, Carlsen was ushering the match into a rawer, more competitive form. He put the clock on Caruana, and Caruana couldn’t keep up.

In the commentary on the tiebreaks from popular YouTube channel ChessNetwork, the most liked post under the channel’s game analysis echoed many chess fans’ sense of celebration. It read, “This World Chess Championship is a tale of two people. For two weeks, we saw [Carlsen]. Today, we saw Dr. Drunkenstein.” The comment was liked almost 600 times.

“DrDrunkenstein” is one of many aliases Magnus Carlsen has played under during the past two years, when he went on a killing spree across the speed chess tournaments of the internet. Since winter 2017, Carlsen has taken to livestreaming his games on a variety of platforms, which has provided a surprisingly entertaining window into the mind of an all-time great.

The story continues…

https://slate.com/culture/2020/02/magnus-carlsen-speed-chess-drdrunkenstein-pseudonyms-twitch-youtube.html

The Computer: A Phantom Specter Haunting Chess

Computers Are Haunting The World Chess Championship (Which, Yes, Is Still Tied)

By Oliver Roeder

Game 3 of the World Chess Championship in London, like the two games that came before it, ended in a draw — 49 moves and a touch more than four hours. The best-of-12 championship is currently level at 1.5 points apiece in a race to 6.5 points and the game’s most important prize.

On Monday, Caruana controlled the white pieces and Carlsen the black.

The pair began Game 3 with an opening called the Sicilian Defence, specifically its Rossolimo Variation. It was the same opening they played in Game 1 — which ended in an epic seven-hour draw — and the first five moves exactly matched those from that earlier game. But they deviated dramatically from this familiar ground on move 6, when Carlsen moved his queen to the c7 square. Caruana glanced around the soundproof glass room in which they played, looking slightly befuddled.

A quick word on this opening’s eponymous Rossolimo himself seems warranted, given that Monday’s game was lacking in fireworks and Rossolimo’s name has figured more prominently thus far in this world championship than any but Caruana and Carlsen. He was Nicolas Rossolimo, Renaissance man:

one of the U.S.’s 12 grandmasters at the time, fluent in Russian, Greek, French and English, and the “proprietor of a chess studio,” which became a second home to some players. He was also a judo master and a New York City cab driver and recorded an album of Russian folk songs, according to The New York Times. He died in 1975 after a fall near the storied Marshall Chess Club in Manhattan.

Fabiano Caruana at the Marshall Chess Club

http://www.marshallchessclub.org/

Magnus Carlsen at the Marshall Chess Club

https://www.chess-site.com/chess-clubs/marshall-chess-club/

There is another figure, aside from the colorful Rossolimo, casting its shadow over this championship: The Computer. Most livestreams of the match feature instant computer engine analyses, whose cold numbers instantly assess the humans’ tiniest inaccuracies down to hundredths of a pawn. Those judgments ripple through the commentary. Full disclosure, I rely heavily on a chess engine running on my laptop to aid my understanding as I watch the games. One popular site during recent world championships features live analysis showing arrows pointing out a supercomputer’s favored moves. (http://analysis.sesse.net/)

The principals in the match have also commented on The Computer’s somewhat spooky influence.

“I’m facing not only Fabiano and his helpers, but also his computer help,” Carlsen said in a press conference after Game 2. (He was referring to Caruana’s deep preparation for the game, although Carlsen surely uses a computer to prep, too.)

“It’s like you’re playing against a phantom,” Judit Polgar,

a grandmaster providing official commentary on the match, said today.

The Computer can often seem like a phantom, a specter haunting the games. It can seem like an overlord that has rendered the human game obsolete and small. But it’s important to remember that man made the machines. Garry Kasparov lost to the supercomputer Deep Blue,

World Chess champion Garry Kasparov barely acknowledges the handshake from Dr. C.J. Tan head of the IBM Deep Blue computer team which defeated Kasparov in the six-game series that ended on May 11, 1997.
Credit: Roger Celestin/Newscom

but a team of humans sweated and bled to built it. In these technological gaming battles, man plays two roles: builder and performer.

At the world championship in London, we are witnessing the performance of two of the best players in the history of the game. That stronger computers exist, and have helped Caruana and Carlsen get to London, does not detract from their feat.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/computers-are-haunting-the-world-chess-championship-which-yes-is-still-tied/