The first game between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren was today. It was a pretty good battle that ended in a draw. The games can be watched live or delayed at the Chess.com YouTube website, with Daniel Naroditsky and Anish Giri commentating, or at the FIDE World Championship site with Vishwanathan Anand and Irina Krush as hosts. Links for each site are shown below. Chess.com: FIDE:
The match is on game 9 of 14 total and Nepo is ahead 5 to 4. It has had a remarkable number of decisive games (very few draws). In case anyone is interested, a few chess personalities are providing video summaries of each game. The most detailed analyses I have seen are on the C-squared podcasts with GMs Caruana and Chirila. Two other post-game summaries that are more brief, and probably more entertaining, are presented by Hikaru Nakamura and by Levy Rozman (GothamChess). Links below: https://www.youtube.com/@csqpod https://www.youtube.com/@GMHikaru/videos https://www.youtube.com/@GothamChess/videos
It's funny to see Nakamura streaming commentary. He opens the stream with Levy sort of happy "good morning everyone" style. Chess is fun to play, but not so much fun to watch for many, so they have to make the stream funny. Some chess players are making more money by streaming than playing. Interesting fact about Nakamura is that he is a trader too. He has an interview with Lex Friedman, and he talks about his morning routine, his trading style, mentions the use of options too, which is not surprising for one of the top chess players in the world.
Very interesting... didn't know that about Hikaru. Magnus Carlsen has been seen playing poker a lot recently. I'm not surprised that extraordinary chess players like these guys would be drawn to probability-based competitions like poker and trading.
Well, this is unprecedented. Well done Ding! He looks like an humble kid, and the first Chinese to win the world championship of chess. Without the goat... but still... chapeau!
1/2 disagree. Trading, yes. Poker, no. There aren't enough cards revealed to do any "probability" evaluation. That is... "opponent needs Ace-Jack in hole cards.. what is the probability of that"? Likely always low. But if that's what he has, you're hosed. Poker and trading have very little in common.
You may be right, though it seems like recognition of patterns and calculation of probabilities have some commonalities in poker and trading, and perhaps a bit in chess too. Even GMs calculate only so far ahead in chess middle games and have to make probabilistic decisions at several points in each game. News just came out that a poker legend, Doyle Brunson, died this week. He won the World Series of Poker 10 times. Another legend, Phil Helmuth, was champion 16 times. I wonder what mental characteristics they had that most people do not have... Link to Doyle Brunson story below: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/godfather-of-poker-doyle-brunson-dies-aged-89/ar-AA1bcZxP
Unfortunately Shelby Lyman is no longer around. He was the commentator of the Fischer- Spassky match. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/obituaries/shelby-lyman-dead.html He was responsible for a revival of chess playing in the US/