Reaching the limits of chess skill

I have nothing but the highest level of respect for the top chess players of today, but noticed in the last 3 world chess championships for men well over 80% of the games were drawn. With all due respect to the world's top players, it seems we're slowly reaching the limits of chess skill humans are capable of.

Thoughts?

@mchill
Bobby would have sweapt the carpet with them all. You’re sayin’?

That could be it but I think it's from people playing safe and well known openings.
Also too much time on the clock.
One hour each for the whole game is plenty of time for good chess and decisive tactical combinations due to time pressure.

@chessturd
One hour, really. You flip a coin to win or lose. I am of the opinion that the vast majority of amature players would hate that. Why not one minute for each move then? No timebank. Really. The formate we have today is because the vast majority of chess players think it’s a good formate. Sure, rapid matches for tv. Chess instead of soccer on eurosport. What has become of this forum? Meaning. In my humble opinion you seem to be.

You’re a troll. And should be treated as such. Our oppinions differ. I dont know you, well well.

Hasn't the last 2 or 3 world championships come down to rapid games to decide who wins?
The classical time controls lead to boring chess.
The best players in the world were groaning when Magnus and Carauna went 12 straight draws.
1 hour is plenty of time.
People want to see combinations not draws.
You probably think watching 90 minutes of football/soccer with a 0-0 score is fun.

I think part of the problem is todays society where everything is expected to be instant, especially with the younger generation.
It's not just chess but most things.
No-one saves up to buy anything anymore.
If a web page takes more than a microsecond to load people swear at the screen.
The most popular form of cricket now seems to be 20:20.
Also I don't think you can compare a 0-0 draw in football to a draw in chess.
Totally different scenario
Also

I'm not comparing them.
I was making a point that people don't want to invest their time and nothing happens.
Time is valuable.
Watching a scoreless soccer game is possibly the most boring thing in the world.
Watching a world chess championship with 12 straight draws is bad.
That's why they made some changes.
We will see next year if those changes make the WC more interesting.

@chessturd said
I'm not comparing them.
I was making a point that people don't want to invest their time and nothing happens.
Time is valuable.
Watching a scoreless soccer game is possibly the most boring thing in the world.
Watching a world chess championship with 12 straight draws is bad.
That's why they made some changes.
We will see next year if those changes make the WC more interesting.

I know that in American sports there always has to be a winner and a loser.
That is part of your culture.
The UK is different.
I am no football fan, but I know from others that a hard fought 0-0 draw can be much more interesting than say a 120- 75 result in Basketball where the winners are a foregone conclusion

The games don't have to be fast, but let's get rid of that increment. Time pressure induces mistakes, which allows for victories.

Agreed.
I don't think a two hour game is fast though.
1 hour each is best. That's two hours! 😉
Long enough but quick enough for action.

@bigdoggproblem said
The games don't have to be fast, but let's get rid of that increment. Time pressure induces mistakes, which allows for victories.

I second the motion.

@bigdoggproblem said
The games don't have to be fast, but let's get rid of that increment. Time pressure induces mistakes, which allows for victories.

The increment has a useful purpose. It evens the playing field between a 60 year old man and a dexterous young man. Dexterity shouldn't make the difference between winning or losing in a standard rated chess game. With an increment, being dexterous gives you a slight bit more time to think, a slight advantage at best. Nobody should ever lose a serious game because they can't physically move the pieces and hit the clock fast enough to finish an obviously won position.

@mchill

Kasparov makes the point that no one who reaches GM level today will have done so without having trained against an engine. This has two effects on human-to-human GM play.

Suppose that all candidate GMs had learned from the same human GM above them; the candidates' play would tend to resemble the other candidates' play, with only very minor differences, right? Same here, with GMs all having trained against the same engines.

Secondly, engines exploit material advantages with extraordinary efficiency, and therefore to prevail against an engine requires a certain style of play which avoids risk. Human GMs who have trained against engines have developed the same cautiousness about getting into tactically risky positions against other humans.

The result is that there is a group of players at the top with nearly identical skill sets. This is very different to the days when someone, such as Rubinstein or Reti for example, could lock himself into a room with a stack of chess books, play himself the necessary ten-thousand times to get the skills, and emerge onto the world stage at GM level with a very distinctive style all his own.

@knightstalker47 said
The increment has a useful purpose. It evens the playing field between a 60 year old man and a dexterous young man. Dexterity shouldn't make the difference between winning or losing in a standard rated chess game. With an increment, being dexterous gives you a slight bit more time to think, a slight advantage at best. Nobody should ever lose a serious game because the ...[text shortened]... can't physically move the pieces and hit the clock fast enough to finish an obviously won position.

But I don't want to level the playing field.

If the 60 year old cannot calculate as fast as a 20-year old, I want the 20 year old to win.

I call this performance by a 20-year old "being better at chess than an old man".

@bigdoggproblem said
The games don't have to be fast, but let's get rid of that increment. Time pressure induces mistakes, which allows for victories.

In our local league, most games have some sort of increment - either an extra hour after 36 moves, or an extra 10 seconds on each move. Only one club plays without an increment as their venue closes early, and it is a little odd playing there.

The main point of the increment is to avoid situations where a player has a completely won position, but cannot physically move the pieces fast enough to avoid losing on time. That is fine in blitz/rapid, an indeed is part of the fun, but the clock should not be quite so harsh in standard.

I would not want to play standard without an increment now. Oh, and 10 seconds certainly feels plenty fast enough to induce mistakes. I could post several games to prove this 😞