maximamel (u/maximamel)

maximamel commented on Analyzing the World Chess Championship 2024: Empirical synthesized approach medium.com/@maxamel2002/2... · Posted by u/maximamel

gradstudent · a year ago

The analysis mentions the correlation with the played moves vs. engines is ~95% for both players. But I recall a credible-seeming youtube analysis from last year's Hans Niemann cheating scandal which said the best players only have a ~70-75% correlation on average.

https://youtu.be/jfPzUgzrOcQ?t=222

I'm trying to cohere these two "facts". Does anyone know if the 2024 championship games simply played out along very well established lines?

maximamel · a year ago

I think those are two different definitions. In the video, the engine correlation represents the amount of moves that matched the top move of a chess engine, as defined here: https://en.chessbase.com/post/let-s-check-engine-correlation... The accuracy metric in the article is defined a bit differently according to how Lichess computes it: https://lichess.org/page/accuracy

maximamel commented on Analyzing the World Chess Championship 2024: Empirical synthesized approach medium.com/@maxamel2002/2... · Posted by u/maximamel

fatso784 · a year ago

Wow. This actually disproves a key subtext of the match mentioned by some commentators: that Ding failed to convert winning positions to wins. Instead, it shows that Ding converted more often than Gukesh. The fact that Gukesh won seems more a statistical anomaly in light of this evidence. We are indeed probably post-hoc rationalizing the winner.

maximamel · a year ago

Yes. To be honest, when the match was over, I was also left with the feeling that Ding did not capitalize enough on his opportunities. But later after crunching the data I saw that it was actually the other way around.

maximamel commented on Analyzing the World Chess Championship 2024: Empirical synthesized approach medium.com/@maxamel2002/2... · Posted by u/maximamel

Certhas · a year ago

What is the added insight though?

maximamel · a year ago

I believe it offers a neutral perspective on the game, without any bias that could exist in any analysis that is not data-driven. Sometimes when a chess commentator dislikes a particular player's style, it could be reflected in his commentary. For me personally, analyzing the match this way changed my view on it, but I completely understand if you do not feel that way.

maximamel commented on Analyzing the World Chess Championship 2024: Empirical synthesized approach medium.com/@maxamel2002/2... · Posted by u/maximamel

Certhas · a year ago

With all due respect, I don't think this is a very interesting analysis. It misses context, and the categories chosen are too arbitrary to carry much insight.

If you gradually misplay a position, but then your opponent makes one suboptimal move, your opponent has an inaccuracy while you don't. Low ACPL can indicate that players played well but also that they chose very safe, boring positions/opennings.

Further, engine evaluations can be misleading or useless in human chess. A position might be objectively winning/defensible, but only if you find a sequence of inhuman engine moves that are practically hard to find. Simply grouping together "evaluation > 1" as winning advantage to get a "conversion rate" is pretty uninformative.

The final blunder did not occur out of nowhere. Ding missed a much safer way to draw the game and went into a position that Nakamura judged as 50/50 between a draw and a Gukesh win [1].

I think it is much more informative to actually watch top players comment on the games and match overall. Keep in mind that Carlsen and Nakamura, who comment on the game in [1], are actually stronger players by ELO than the two finalists of the world championship [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXc7Bc3zd0M

[2] https://2700chess.com/

maximamel · a year ago

Thanks for sharing your opinion. I actually addressed many of the points you raised in the conclusions section of my article. I acknowledged the limitations of analyzing a chess match purely through numerical metrics. However, I still believe that looking at the match through this analytical lens offers a valuable perspective, complementing other types of analysis, such as commentary from players and bloggers. It provides a unique angle that, while imperfect, can uncover insights that might otherwise be overlooked. Ultimately, I see this as an additional tool in understanding the match, rather than a replacement for more traditional forms of analysis.

maximamel commented on Analyzing the World Chess Championship 2024: Empirical synthesized approach medium.com/@maxamel2002/2... · Posted by u/maximamel

pncnmnp · a year ago

> The average centipawn loss shows a very slight advantage (less than 1 centipawn) for Gukesh. This connects well with the accuracy metric we got, which showed a negligible advantage for Gukesh.

As I understand, for average centipawn loss, lower is better. It kind of measures how much worse a player’s average moves are compared to the best moves suggested by the engine. Based on your data, Ding has a very slight advantage, not Gukesh. Here is an article from chess.com (https://www.chess.com/blog/raync910/average-centipawn-loss-c...):

> The term average centipawn loss (ACPL) represents how much “value” a player drops by making incorrect moves during a chess game. ..... The lower an ACPL that player has, the more perfectly they played (at least in the eyes of the engine assessing the game).

maximamel · a year ago

Thank you, you're right, I corrected this mistake. As the difference in acpl is negligible anyway, it does not affect the overall conclusions and insights.

maximamel commented on Analyzing the World Chess Championship 2024: Empirical synthesized approach medium.com/@maxamel2002/2... · Posted by u/maximamel

maximamel · a year ago

I analyzed the 2024 World Chess Championship match using empirical and synthesized approach. I focused on metrics like conversion rates, resilience rates, and the impact of errors on the match outcome. The analysis concentrates on providing a more overall outlook on the match, without doing a game-by-game breakdown. Let me know your thoughts!

maximamel commented on Show HN: JavaFX app recreating the Omegle chat service experience with ChatGPT github.com/maxamel/Omegle... · Posted by u/maximamel

__m · a year ago

You removed the misconduct but also the whole appeal of talking to a stranger, you don't get that by talking to ChatGPT. Maybe focus on removing the misconduct using AI while still having real humans talk to each other.

maximamel · a year ago

Interesting point.