Chess.com novice tries to think like a computer but (surprise) still can't beat Magnus

Where do you live that you'd want to put snow chains on your car in March, but not January or February?

Just another reason to hate WSJ if you ask me. They have absolutely no morals, they don't do serious journalism at all.

I am really fascinated by the concept of learning a new thing each month. That sounds like a cool thing to do. But the whole hype they built up, that's a fraud. They said these challenges were "ridiculously difficult" to quote Max himself. Now that's not technically true.

The memorization technique is a technique you can learn to memorize a deck of cards, anyone can do it in a month. But instead of being inspirational and show that anyone could do it, they tried to make it out like this guy was some kind of genius.

Solving a Rubik's cube is hard, first time I tried I had to sit all night before I got it. But then I discovered there's actually a pattern you can learn to "solve it", you just have to read the notations on how to solve it. Anyone who solves it in 20 seconds really have just memorized a pattern, they do not solve it at all. If you sit for 2-4 hours every night repeating the pattern until it goes into your muscle memory you'll be able to solve it in less than 20 seconds too in a month, believe me.

Now I couldn't build a self-driving car, hold a speech about tech in my second language or make a chess algorithm in a month. But then again I don't work with technology for a living. He does. Not saying these things aren't impressive and inspirational, but I am criticizing the way he package it trying to hype it up.

He's just another American with big words. He took a good concept, of learning a new skill and applying dedication in your every day life, and turned it into a gimmickish publicity stunt. When he says these things are ridiculously difficult he's not being frank. And then when he fools WSJ and Magnus Carlsen to be in on it, he's a fraud. Nothing more than a fraud.

The self-portrait is pretty good though.

It was fun and interesting.

Yeah, it was good. But it's not incredible. I went to art school and we learned to draw realistic like that, it's just a matter of practice. Realistic drawing is basically just copying what you see. If you learn the right technique and practice a couple of hours every day, you'll do that in a month too. Trust me, anyone can learn how to copy what they see, if they dedicate a month to it.

There's a reason why master artists like van Gogh and Munch didn't draw realistic like that. It's not because they couldn't, you look at their art at art school and you'll find they could - it's because it's trite and tiresome. It's about as trite as learning to memorize a card deck, solving a rubik's cube or losing a game of chess.

I think the real reason why he chose to play Magnus, was so he didn't expose how bad he was. If his goal was to get as good as he could at chess in a month and challenge an average player at his local chess club, he would still lose and look like a douche. Now he can always excuse himself by saying it was the world champion. What a joke. Perhaps he should have mastered Ludo instead.

Looking at his game against Magnus I feel pretty confident he couldn't even beat me in chess. I started playing chess 3 years ago, but I'd say it only took me a couple of months before I was at his level, and I didn't dedicate the whole month on learning it. He looks to be below 1200 at least. Just how someone that bad at chess managed to get to play the world champion, is beyond my comprehension. And the lack of respect he had towards the world champion when he didn't resign a piece down in a 20 min match, so Magnus had to sit there staring at a completely winning board and a stupid American with a high ego for ages, the guy is just a time waster. His real talent is fraud.

I would have liked his idea and his dedication if he hadn't called it "ridiculously difficult" and if he hadn't pretended like he could beat Magnus Carlsen when he can't even beat the 10 year olds at his local chess club.

His whole idea of mastering something new each month is really interesting and inspiring. I am impressed by him dedicating a month to each skill, that is really good. But, the problem arise when he labels it as something you couldn't do. Is that suppose to be inspirational? His packaging of it is a fraud. He called challenges we all could do as "ridiculously difficult". That's the opposite of trying to inspire people, that's someone with a big ego who wants to get attention. But you Americans would never be able to recognize that, you even elected a big attention seeking ego as your president.

WSJ has already exposed itself as an unserious newspaper this winter when they brought down commercial support of youtubers by lying and manufacture evidence. Any newspaper that has such a clear agenda and are willing to blatantly lie to their audience just to take down competition should not be respected.

But then again, if you live in the US you won't have access to any serious newspaper without an agenda. You wouldn't know any better. You Americans are all brainwashed by your biased media, whether you're a leftie or a rightie. America is less of a democracy every year. I would be okay with that if it hadn't been for the corrupting influence you have over the part of the world that is still functioning.

In about a year, he'll probably be getting paid to give inspirational speeches titled "How I Almost Beat Magnus Carlsen" or something like that.

Ah, so obviously there isn't much of a difference between Carlsen and you either.

Based on the comments section of that article, apparently they do.

I have to wonder, though--why on earth did Carlsen decide to play Max? Did he just read about this guy on the Internet or something and decide "Sure, why the heck not?" Or did he maybe just want to have fun destroying some novice who thought he could beat him?

WSJ buying into the naive idea that writing your own algorithm means you must be a clever chess player. 

The moral of the story is to be as arrogant as possible and maybe Magnus will donate his personal coach to help you, too!

#13: to find an even uglier chess set for the rematch.

I can more or less imagine the motivations for this, but I'm genuinely curious about one point: it is possible he actually believed he could make a decent opposition, let alone win the game? I don't think so.

Apparently so, it didn't seem like he really did any research on the subject.

His blog gives a day by day account of how he tackled the problem. http://www.monthtomaster.com/

At the end, he believed he was close to the solution.

@AmbroseWinters

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"His peak rating is higher than that of anyone else who has ever played chess, but his career winning percentage in competition is only 62.5%."

Only 62.5%?"

Well, Assuming that to be correct it's not like it means he lost the other 37.5%. There's a lot of draws in professional chess so 62.5% winning percentage is actually incredible.

This 62.5% statistic is very interesting. Does anyone have win loss stats on other chess players to compare?

Right, and the WSJ is like "that means he's not that that good". Nonsense.

Lookup Dunning-Kruger effect, you're a good candidate. No offense, just the way you wrote about beating high rated players and beating computers "often", made me think about that  .