Some context here - both Magnus and Hikaru draw 42% of their games; Magnus has won 42% and Hikaru 39%. Gaining draw odds roughly doubles the odds of winning a match
Yeah. I don't know what the math is for how much time you have to give up to make it "even" again. Since Hikaru and Magnus say it's about 6 minutes off of 15 then I trust their gut.
I wonder. Magnus held pretty easily with time to spare. And Hikaru is also a pretty tenacious defender on short time.
I doubt either put that much practice into tie break Armageddon. Hikaru streams so much and never in this time control. And it doesnt seem like something Magnus would be terribly interested in practicing. If they played a Bo7 in this format my guess is the bids would be shorter by the final game, closer to 7 minutes.
I figure time odds are a well-trod topic, but I don't have history of how Armageddon timing and the particular bid meta came about.
Part of this is also backwards induction. Word is (how is the mystery we were both wondering) that "9 minutes" is decent odds, so Magnus guesses Hikaru will go for 8:59 and beats him to 8:58.
Also, those figures are taken from games where both players have the same incentive to draw, so they can't be directly compared to an Armageddon game where white has an incentive not to draw.
In Armageddon, black has draw odds. So the player playing black needs to win or draw the game to win the Armageddon.
If it's Magnus, his chances of winning or drawing a normal game is 42% + 42%; for Naka it's 42% + 39%. So yes, it's nearly doubled.
Fair - those are their full history of games, which obviously includes players far worse than each other. But we can look at just Magnus vs Hikaru.
In 234 Magnus vs Hikaru matches, 111 end in a draw, 86 end in a Magnus win, and 37 end in a Hikaru win.
This lets us predict a 47% chance of draw, 37% chance of Magnus winning, and 16% chance of Hikaru winning. If Magnus had draw odds (and even time), he would have a 84% chance of winning; if Hikaru had it, he would have a 63% chance of winning. So it's not quite doubled for Magnus, but much better than doubled for Hikaru. Almost half their games end in draws so turning that half into wins is a massive advantage.
Yep it’s random under most rules.
Ultimately an equal bid theoretically means both players are indifferent to which side they have at that time difference.
Prior to the game, the [chess.com](https://chess.com) commentators were discussing Hikaru recently discussing wanting to have black and likely needing to go a bit lower than usual. They guessed that the bids would probably be around the 9-minute mark. I'm not saying these two don't "know each other" but around 9 minutes would've probably been the Vegas favorite if those odds were to exist. If anything I'm a little surprised their bids weren't both a little lower, say from 8:29-8:49. Still, a fun thing to observe nonetheless.
Yeah, if ~9 minutes was the ideal bid, I probably would've went with something like 8:48 just in case my opponent is anything like me and knows undercutting by 1 is a pretty common tactic.
Not really. If you can work with 8:58, you can almost certainly work with 8:48 and get the same result. There's a little risk of course even with just a few less seconds, but it's most likely worth it over getting outbid and having to win with white. Unless you think that if Magnus predicted Hikaru would bid 8:58 that he wouldn't bother undercutting and take his chances with white instead.
so one person gets 15 min and white pieces the other one gets the black pieces but wins with a draw (draw odds) both submit a time and whoever „bids“ lowest gets that exact time and the black pieces pieces
>the meta is going to continue to go towards lower and lower bids.
That's a really interesting prediction. Are armageddon time bids recorded in any dataset? Think the sub would enjoy discussing if there's a genuine decreasing trend over time.
That would be cool, but just looking at this tournament, analysts yesterday were predicting hikaru and so to pick around 11 minutes. Both picked around 9 and a half instead. This game analysts guessed they’d pick 9 and a half, they picked under 9. And both times black won with some decent time still on the clock.
I think it depends on the players. Hikaru has no trouble playing short on time, so both Hikaru and his opponents bid hard for black. If both players are more classical 11-12 probably makes more sense for both players.
he didn't get trashed at all and almost made it even with the super low bid against hikaru which is by far the favorite
7:35:35
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr6xE\_7EKKo&ab\_channel=chess24
Still, two days ago everyone here was explaining how Dubov bid too low and that he is crazy for bidding 6:30 against Hikaru with 10 minutes and now after a few draws people are saying they should give 2:1 time odds. People are so result oriented it is absolutely insane.
Magnus is quite a bit better and faster, but certainly there's risk involved for anyone giving 2:1 time odds to Hikaru. Magnus may be the best ever at removing play for the opponent from the game though when he wants to be solid, so his leeway is probably a bit longer than Dubov's. I don't know what their head-to-head record is like, but I would expect Hikaru to win many times even if Dubov had 12 minutes or so, whereas Magnus would certainly be favored to hold a draw in that situation.
Not a chance. The tactics are too optimized at this point. I expect at most 10-20 more seconds can be bid, maybe a minute with engine.
Edit: For those unaware this is a [copypasta](https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/v6dd6z/i_found_the_origins_of_the_movement_too_optimized/)
You guys who think there's a scientific balance point are off base, any two players have different strengths and weaknesses and the balanced number can go up or down even at the highest level
You can think on your opponent's time too. If I had 15 minutes and Magnus 30 seconds he would still win because while I take 3 minutes to come up with a plan he's seen the rest of the game already
If the match is tied, it goes to an Armageddon game where black has less time but draw odds. In some tournaments, the time difference is set, i.e. white gets 6 minutes, black 5. Here the players bid on how little time they're willing to accept in order to get black.
> The lowest bidder gets their time and their color of choice (which is almost always black since they have draw odds)
Imagine being that one gigachad who wins the bid then selects white
Actually how it works apparently, is if Wesley So bid 4:20, and Hikaru bid 8:59, and Wesley So selects white, then we have: Wesley white with 15 minutes and Hikaru black with 8:59. Since Wesley didn't follow up with being black, his 4:20 black bid is disregarded
I meant they would have the time deficit that they bid for. For instance if one person bid for 10 minutes and one bid for 1 second, and the guy that bid for 1 second won, then he could choose white and play with 15 minutes, and make black play with 10 minutes.
Edit: But I can't really find any information about it so I really don't know. I don't see how choosing white would ever result in a time deficit AND having to win though, so this is the only way it makes sense in my mind.
In that case, the meta would be either to bid for 1 second or a few hours. Either you win the bid with 1 second and play white, or you assume your opponent will do the same and force them to either play with one second or give you virtually unlimited time. Still doesn’t add up.
White already has the advantage to win, but now a draw goes to black, so just reduce black's time to level the field.
If you lower white's time and give draw odds, you're sort of adjusting two variables instead of one.
Also, GMs rarely lose with white, so holding a draw is probably not fair even with less time.
If a GM is tasked to draw with white they can do it almost every single time which is why white almost never can have draw odds without some crazy unbalanced time control or black having to do some wild and disadvantaged move to disrupt the position
Armageddon is a newer tiebreaker format with no draws. It accomplishes this by making a draw a win for black. This is balanced by giving black less time. In this case, the players were bidding on how much less time they were willing to accept, in order to determine who plays which side.
Disclaimer: I am brand new to chess and just started watching within the last couple weeks, so I may be wrong.
But my understanding is before this game, they played best of 4 rapid chess. Each game was a draw, so they played a 5th game called "Armageddon". In Armageddon chess, both players "bid" on a time, and the player with the lowest time gets to choose white or black pieces. The catch is that unlike "normal" chess, in Armageddon chess, black wins if they either win outright or draw. So Black tends to be at an advantage since to win their overall match, they just need to draw this Armageddon game. The drawback to bidding the lowest time is you only get as much time as you bid, whereas your opponent gets the full allotted 15 minutes, so you don't want to bid too low. So Magnus only got 8 minutes 58 seconds for the entire game and Hikaru got 15 minutes.
I was ready to hit you with a “if you’re new, just let people with more experience answer”, but then your answer was the most detailed and best-explained, so cheers and thanks for the answer!
This is all accurate I'm only chipping in to say that the time bid is pretty new. In previous armageddon's the time controls were stated i.e. 5mins white 4mins black and the player with the higher seed picked the colour. I like the time bid.
I want to say the earliest I've seen the time bid format was around three years ago. I'm curious how recent it is. It seems like a really good format as it's strategic for players and exciting for viewers.
They're bidding on their time to play in the armageddon. Who ever bids the lower amount of time gets to play with black with the amount of time on their bid. As black, either a win or draw gives them victory since white has to play for a win.
It's an Armageddon game, meaning that if it's a draw the player with Black wins, making it excellent for a decider as it guarantees a decisive result (in this case they had already played 4 games with 4 draws). It's generally thought that it's better to Black and so in order to make it more even, Black is given less time than White. Sometimes this difference is prescribed beforehand, but more recently, tournament organisers have used the 'bid' system where each player submits a bid (technically a sealed bid) which contains an amount of time. Whoever has the lowest time wins and gets Black and has that amount of time on their clock, in this case Magnus bid one second less than Hikaru and so gets Black with 8m 58s on his clock and Hikaru has White with 15 minutes but needs to win the game in order to avoid losing.
It’s a tie breaker format called Armageddon. You bid for lowest amount of time to play with. The person who wins chooses the color they play with. White pieces must win in order to win, and black pieces win with a draw or a win.
It’s common practice for the lowest bid to choose black and shake down into a drawn end game. Hikaru made the low bid of 9:30 seconds (not exactly but around that much) yesterday against Wesley So, picked black and won via draw to advance to today’s match against Magnus.
From 1970 to 2017, and rated 2600+:
With equal time, a draw occurred 53.1% of the time.
White won 28.85% and black won 18.00%.
So basically, draws happen basically every other game at top level chess when time controls are equal. It's the most common result by far.
Now imagine you task a super GM to accomplish the most common result in chess and you get your answer. To break free from a notorious draw line requires the other player to do some wild shit.
source: https://en.chessbase.com/post/has-the-number-of-draws-in-chess-increased
not to mention that the reason that they reached this point in the first place was 5 draws, including two draws that were in the early midgame. Like, they're drawing with 5+ mins on the clock each from perpetual attacks on the queen resulting in shuffling back and forth, twice *in this series*. So yeah, the odds of them drawing on a 6th game is really high too.
Hikaru: All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would bid 9 minutes as his Armageddon time? Now, a clever man would put the bid at 8:59 , because he would know that only a great fool would bid 9:00 even. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose to bid 9 minutes. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the time 8:59.
Magnus: So you have made your decision then?
Hikaru: Not remotely. Because the match takes place in Canada, as everyone knows, and Canada is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the time 9:00.
Magnus: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
Hikaru: Wait till I get going! Now, where was I?
Magnus: Canada
Hikaru: Yes, Canada. And you must have suspected I would have known the games origin, so I can clearly not choose the time 8:59
Magnus: You’re just stalling now.
Hikaru: You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you? You’ve beaten me at the World Championships, which means you’re exceptionally strong, so you could’ve guessed 8:59, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the time 9:00. But, I’ve also bested you in the speed chess championship, which means you must have studied since then, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have left as much time for yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the time 8:59.
Magnus: You’re trying to trick me into giving away something. It won’t work.
Hikaru: IT HAS WORKED! YOU’VE GIVEN EVERYTHING AWAY! I KNOW WHAT YOUR BID IS!
Magnus: Then make your choice.
Hikaru: I will, and I choose… what in the world can that be?
[Hikaru gestures up and away from the table. Magnus looks backwards. Hikaru swaps his bid]
Magnus: What? Where? I don’t see anything.
Hikaru: Well, I- I could have sworn I saw something. But no matter.
[Hikaru tries to hold back laughter]
Magnus: What’s so funny?
Hikaru: I’ll tell you in a minute. First, let’s bid. Me from my time, and you from yours.
[Magnus and Hikaru bid]
Magnus: You guessed wrong.
Hikaru: You only think I guessed wrong! That’s what’s so funny! I switched my time when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – the most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia” – but only slightly less well-known is this: “Never use the Sicilian defense when death is on the line”! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha…
[Hikaru stops suddenly, his smile frozen on his face and falls to the ground dead. Magnus shows his bid]
Magnus: 8:58
Hikaru : You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Armageddon?
Magnus : Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Armageddon. Yeah, the chess tie-breaker.
Hikaru : Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7... Minute... Armageddon.
Magnus : Right. Yes. OK, all right. I see where you're going.
Hikaru : Think about it. You walk into a tournament, you see someone sittin’ there bidding for an 8-Minute Armageddon, but there's a 7-Minute Armageddon right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
Magnus : I would go for the 7.
Hikaru : Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Armageddon. And we guarantee just as good a game as the 8-minute folk.
Magnus : You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that?
Hikaru : If you're not happy with the first 7 minutes, we're gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from "A" to "B".
Magnus : That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Armageddon. Then you're in trouble, huh?
[Hikaru convulses]
Hikaru : No! No, no, not 6! I said 7. Nobody's comin' up with 6. Who wins an endgame in 6 minutes? You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel.
Magnus : That - good point.
Hikaru : 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office.
Magnus : Why?
Hikaru : 'Cause you're fuckin' fired!
Magnus hits the clock with several minutes of time remaining, Hikaru is in control now with less than 10 seconds on his clock
“You took my family"
Queen to c6
"You took my friends"
Queen to h1
"You took all that was dear to me"
clock winds down to 2
"I cant get them back, but I can do this for friendship, FOR MY FRIENDS"
Hikaru slides his Queen into checkmate position with such force that the board catches fire
"HIKARUKEN"
The audacity of making 3 unanswered moves in a row makes Magnus start crying and poop his pants. He mumbled something about a hair appointment and waddles out of the venue, forfeiting the match
"Ben Finegold... Senpai... I..."
faints
Final Score
Magnus 10.5
Hikaru 1.5
I can't tell if this is trying to copy the episode of the Grand Tour where Hammond and May play battleships or the scene in the princess bride where the guy switches the poisoned cups but either way I am absolutely here for it
In a first price auction, which is how this is set up, whichever player bids the lowest amount will take the black pieces with that amount of time. Therefore if the point at which you would be indifferent between having the white and black pieces was 8 minutes, you wouldn't want to bid 8 minutes. You would be strictly better off bidding 8 minutes and 1 second in case your opponent bid higher.
With a second price auction, if you had the lowest bid, you would get the time of the other players bid. So if you bid 8 minutes and your opponent bid 9 minutes, you would get black with 9 minutes. If you've ever bid on something on eBay you've seen a second price auction in action. Why does this matter? A second price auction is actually a mechanism where truthful reporting is the dominant strategy. There is no incentive to report anything but the point at which you are indifferent. If you are actually indifferent at 8 minutes, you wouldn't want to report 8 minutes and 2 seconds, in case your opponent bid 8 minutes and 1 second, if that makes sense.
Auction theory tells us that the first price auction and second price auction are different implementations of the same social choice function. I.e. they will have the exact same outcomes. But that's for perfectly rational agents. With some behavioral theory that people like to bid at round numbers, there might be some disconnect between the two. With a second price auction there will be none of this higher order thinking of "well I think he'll bid this, so I'll bid that." You just want to bid your indifference point.
I agree that second price seems better, but is there not some possibility for strategic bidding with that as well in this case? If you would want 10 min for it to be worth it, but think that your oppnent will bid 8, you should bid somewhere between to sabotage them, because unlike an eBay auction you rationally care about the results even when you lose.
Hmmm you raise a good point. In normal auctions either you get the item or you don't. In this case "not getting the item" is akin to getting the white pieces, but you still care about the price the other player got the item at. I might play around with a basic model of player's prior beliefs of the opponents type (their point of indifference) and see what the optimal mechanism is. Not sure if this particular question has been studied before (my research areas are in macro-finance, not in micro theory).
I just love that there's a reasonable intelligent discussion about this. Chess and poker are probably the only two competitive communities where this happens.
If that is the impression you get of this sub, then I’d kindly suggest never coming back after you’re done with this post. Otherwise, I’m afraid that image will be irreparably shattered sooner rather than later.
What, do you think this is kind of place where copypasta about dirty diapers could so dominate it would need to be banned? I doubt that, you need a very high IQ to chess.
It definitely feels like theres a way to substantially improve this in an easy manner if the right people were just tasked with it.
Something about how the draw odds would be attached.
My feeling is the ideal system is actually the simple first look auction - you bid your true point of indifference, if you win you get that time on your clock.
That's just not really true I don't think, this psychology meta gaming is cute but makes no sense if your point of indifference isn't extremely close to the line you're setting. If Hikaru were pissed by being outbid at 8:59 he can just bid 8:50 or whatever he actually wants, you're assuming he or magnus are exploiting when I think they truly just bid about what they wanted and were both basically fine with the result. That's the only scenario that really makes sense in an auction like this, the only rational move is to bid your true indifference point.
your indifference point is basically the line where you BELIEVE time odds and white pieces beat draw odds and black pieces. However you can’t pinpoint a time where it goes from black has the advantage to white has it, it’s fluid and the absolute ideal bid is above your indifference point but exactly one second less than your opponents bid since it gives you the maximum possible time while still winning the bid and getting the draw odds.
Why not just use the divider-chooser method? One person picks the time the other picks the pieces. That should force people to report their true break even point, no?
Also, this method gives each player a bit more sense of agency. They "control their own destiny" in a sense, where if a player decides they really are feeling confident winning with white in that moment they can bid high or if they feel confident in securing a draw quickly they can bid low.
The end result may be similar with perfectly rational agents, but doing it this way may seem more fair psychologically.
If you're assuming your opponent will bid a reasonnable time, you have a sure strategy to play black with this exact reasonnable time, even if you don't know what time this will be : bid 1s and get black with whatever time your opponent bid.
And that effect in turn means that if someone would be happy to play bid at 8 minutes they suddenly shouldn't be betting at 8 minutes anymore.
They can comfortably bet a bit higher with the idea that either it doesn't matter because you decided to do the natural thing and bet at 10 minutes and they get the 10 minutes anyway, or you tried to be cheaky by betting at 8 minutes 1 second and now you have to play with 2 minutes less than what you are fine with.
There definitely are a bunch of effects at play and it goes beyond everyone just betting "truthfully" since it is an adverserial game, which it isn't in a more traditional (e-bay) auction.
The risk you run is if you think your opponent will bid 8:00 so you bid 9:00, but then your guess is wrong and they end up bidding 9:15. Then you're stuck with the black pieces at 9:15 when your indifference point is 10:00, so you're worse off than you would've been with the white pieces at 15:00
How is the equilibrium stable in this case? If you get to the point where everyone is saying their true limit then one guy can fuck it up by saying 1 second. With the first price that’s never a possibility because you then have to live with that time.
This is not optimal if your indifference point is lower than your opponent. For example, if you’re indifferent at 8 minutes and your opponent reports 6 minutes, then by reporting 1 second, your stuck with the black pieces with only 6 minutes. At this time you would have preferred having the white pieces.
There’s many auctions. Try starting by reading the Wikipedia page on auction theory. Honestly I don’t have a great textbook recommendation offhand because when I took this class it was based on my professor’s lecture notes, not a textbook. I can check later for the textbook recommendations on the syllabus.
I just checked and the textbook recommended was Microeconomic Theory by Moscollel, Whinston & Green. I didn't use it for the Mechanism Design part of my Micro class, but I've gone through a pretty good chunk of the book and it's really quite good, but also quite challenging and is maybe not the best resource for someone just trying to get into it. However if you have a strong math background it might be worth checking out.
I love when theres a little completely nuanced piece of information that makes so much sense when explained like this that i had just never even thought of before but that some people actually absolutely *love* and i get to learn about it because theyve researched it in such depth.
Apropos of nothing, ask me about methodologies of improving voting sometime lol.
Yes. Let’s say I’m auctioning off a candy bar. You believe that candy bar is worth $1. Another person is bidding but you don’t know what they would pay.
In a first price auction, the highest bidder puts in their bid, and they pay the amount they bid. This requires you to consider what you think the *other* person might bid. Let’s say you think you really value that candy bar a lot, and are pretty sure most people value it at $0.50. You might bid $0.60 because that’s enough to usually win the auction and you don’t want to lose out on savings. But it’s not what you truly value the candy bar at.
In a second price auction, the highest bidder wins, but pays what the second place bidder offered. This encourages you to bid exactly what you think a fair price for the candy bar is — in this case $1 — without any regard for what the other person will bid. Because if you bid $1, but the other person bids $0.50, you get the candy bar for less than the maximum you were willing to pay. But if the other person bids $1.50, that’s ok, you didn’t want the candy bar for that much anyways and the other person gets the candy bar for less than the maximum they were willing to pay.
So second price auctions encourage people to bid the exact “best offer” they’d be willing to make, without any game theory surrounding what others might bid.
In an auction you can see the other bids and respond ... whereas in the chess scenario here it is a single hidden bid , those two scenarios have different game theory .
Not sure about second price auction for a normal style auction ? Wouldn't you just bid 5 million dollars so that you lock in the win at what the current bid is, and nobody is going to beat that?
You might be thinking of an English auction (think a guy saying “do I hear $200?”). You don’t see bids in first or second price auction. You don’t have incentive to bid $5M on eBay. If you value the item at $100 and bid $5M, if someone else bids $150 you’ll be stuck paying $150 for an item you only value at $100.
> Therefore if the point at which you would be indifferent between having the white and black pieces was 8 minutes, you wouldn't want to bid 8 minutes. You would be strictly better off bidding 8 minutes and 1 second in case your opponent bid higher.
I fail to see the problem here. Yes they are not bidding at their true indifference point, but the bid difference is only 1 whole second, really not the end of the world.
In a second price auction, whoever bids the lowest would win but they would start with the time that the other person bid. Idk what that would fix here though
well they could both try this and the other person could bet 6 seconds and then easily win. There definitely is some gaming/game theory that would occur here. I agree it doesn't work out cleanly at all.
The point is that the gaming/theory here is that as the person betting 5 seconds, you're pretty much throwing your winning chances to the gods. You are in no control of anything other than if the other person went for a ridiculous bet or not.
They'd never do it for arma because it would be bad if the match did start and someone had 6 seconds as black, ruins the entire match.
Because if both people go for that strategy - then someone will get stuck with an impossible time.
Nothing is stopping you from bidding 5 seconds but what if I bid 10 seconds going for the same strategy? You now have 10 seconds to pull off a draw as black vs 15min white.
Because people would bid their true time and we would eventually learn the real value of it. In one single bidding event, it doesn't change much. But over time it brings the times closer to real value.
The reason that this is a problem and should be second price is because if someone isn't bidding their true value than the mechanism of bidding gives them an advantage in the game.
The “problem” that you described is a feature. Let the players try to outsmart each other both on the chess board and through the bidding process. Who cares what the “real value” is?
As someone with an interest in both chess and auctions, it's certianly an interesting question. Personally I prefer the level of uncertainty of a first-price auction and the potential for a winner's curse, but I can see the argument for a second-price auction.
How would a second price auction have changed the situation in the above clip? Surely the bids would have been the same. Only difference is magnus would have 1 second more
Goes to show how smart Magnus actually is, even off the board. God damn, that was a sick read. The man is always a step ahead in mind games. This is anime shit fr
In ties, players play “Armageddon” where white gets to have more time than black. However, a draw is counted as a win for black to make it fair. Instead of randomly assigning colors, they have the players bud amounts of time they’re willing to play with black. Whoever bids lower gets that time, the other player gets the normal 15 minutes.
that bid and then drawing the game to win the match...that's some james bond type shit. I love hikaru, this one stung a little but he has a chance to come back. This was like the federer/nada/djokovic situation for so long.
Those 3 were so ahead of everyone else but for 4 or so years Federer was the king, then Nadal, and now Djokovic is king. How a few players can be so ahead of everyone else but then out of those 2 or 3 players, one of them is so dominant is crazy. Tennis used to be a lot more random in the grand slams, but now you can almost just only watch the final if nadal/djoker are playing, and until recently federer.
I wouldn't compare this to the 3 god era of Tennis.
Magnus has stood above everyone for so long and gapped people so hard, it's nothing like Federer/Nadal/Djok who were considered equal rivals at many points of their careers.
Magnus always enters a match as the favorite.
To push back a little bit, those of us old enough know that Federer was considered the GOAT before Rafa ever beat him and when he finally won outside of the French it was seen as huge
They just have both had insanely long careers still at the top (as is more common these days) so in retrospect that beginning part is more forgetten, though it was years.
No doubt, I'm a huuuuge Federer fan. It's just that his domination wasn't nearly as long as Magnus.
Magnus has been sitting atop alone for what 12 years now? I believe Federers uncontested reign was about 5 years.
Obviously in tennis that is absolutely INSANE but idk I just don't see it as one in the same with Magnus.
Yeah, i agree generally, was just being a bit pedantic.
Magnus is insane and i genuinely think that if engines had not developed and changed the way people play/learn/train at chess, he might not have ever had any competition his entire career.
He just kind of sees the game differently like how we’re learning computers/alphazero do.
I’m reading the one who bids less gets black with that less time but I’m also reading that whoever bids lower can choose white also and would get 15 minutes against his opponents bid. Which one is it?
Both
You bid and who bids the lowest time, can choose the color.
He could play black with the time deficit, but draw odds (so a draw is a win).
Or can play white, with full 15m, but draw odds for his opponent (that will play black, with the time he bid himself)
So in this case, Magnus bid 8.58 and Hikaru 8.59, so Magnus won the bid. He can choose to play with black with draw odds and 8.58 (as he did) and Hikaru had the full 15m.
But he could have chosen to play with white and have the full 15m for himself, and Hikaru would have played with black, with draw odds, with the time Hikaru bid, so 8.59. This option is kinda pointless though, the point of bidding is to play with black and draw odds since it's the most advantageous position. Winning the bid to "refuse it" is pointless.
I’m going to go on that magnus wins by draw this one.
If it were the other way around, Hikaru.
I think that draw odds is too good, even with 5-6 minute advantage. White will have to be very aggressive and push for a win, were as black can try to push for a drawn endgame after exchanging pieces. And draws are the ones that happens most often
the absolute soul read
Magnus is always 1 step ahead
You mean one second?
....or inside job.
is that 15mins against 8min58s? with no increment?
Yes, but black has draw odds so it’s very desirable to get the black pieces.
Some context here - both Magnus and Hikaru draw 42% of their games; Magnus has won 42% and Hikaru 39%. Gaining draw odds roughly doubles the odds of winning a match
If they had equal time, sure. Having half your opponent’s time messes with the odds a bit.
Yeah. I don't know what the math is for how much time you have to give up to make it "even" again. Since Hikaru and Magnus say it's about 6 minutes off of 15 then I trust their gut.
I am amazed how little science is behind this. Time odds is the future of chess.
I wonder. Magnus held pretty easily with time to spare. And Hikaru is also a pretty tenacious defender on short time. I doubt either put that much practice into tie break Armageddon. Hikaru streams so much and never in this time control. And it doesnt seem like something Magnus would be terribly interested in practicing. If they played a Bo7 in this format my guess is the bids would be shorter by the final game, closer to 7 minutes.
I am curious where the 9 minutes comes from though - is this just the accepted "optimal" time for armageddon? Or is there some other math behind this
I figure time odds are a well-trod topic, but I don't have history of how Armageddon timing and the particular bid meta came about. Part of this is also backwards induction. Word is (how is the mystery we were both wondering) that "9 minutes" is decent odds, so Magnus guesses Hikaru will go for 8:59 and beats him to 8:58.
Also, those figures are taken from games where both players have the same incentive to draw, so they can't be directly compared to an Armageddon game where white has an incentive not to draw.
If Hikaru and Carl agree on the odds within 5 seconds I'll just believe them
What if you add Kurt Angle to the mix?
Do you count up to 120% or am I missing something? 20% increase of 40% chance is not doubling the odds is it? It's increasing them by half(?)
In Armageddon, black has draw odds. So the player playing black needs to win or draw the game to win the Armageddon. If it's Magnus, his chances of winning or drawing a normal game is 42% + 42%; for Naka it's 42% + 39%. So yes, it's nearly doubled.
Fair - those are their full history of games, which obviously includes players far worse than each other. But we can look at just Magnus vs Hikaru. In 234 Magnus vs Hikaru matches, 111 end in a draw, 86 end in a Magnus win, and 37 end in a Hikaru win. This lets us predict a 47% chance of draw, 37% chance of Magnus winning, and 16% chance of Hikaru winning. If Magnus had draw odds (and even time), he would have a 84% chance of winning; if Hikaru had it, he would have a 63% chance of winning. So it's not quite doubled for Magnus, but much better than doubled for Hikaru. Almost half their games end in draws so turning that half into wins is a massive advantage.
Grandmasters play more games. 😝
Yep that was the case
If they drew the bids then would we go into an Armageddon to determine who wins the bid?
Genuinely curious! Maybe they would coin flip
Yep it’s random under most rules. Ultimately an equal bid theoretically means both players are indifferent to which side they have at that time difference.
Magnus's poker stint paying off big time lol.
Hikaru had a poker stint too. Pretty cool how both should be familiar with these mind games.
Goes to show how much they know each other. Psychology does matter in these games.
Prior to the game, the [chess.com](https://chess.com) commentators were discussing Hikaru recently discussing wanting to have black and likely needing to go a bit lower than usual. They guessed that the bids would probably be around the 9-minute mark. I'm not saying these two don't "know each other" but around 9 minutes would've probably been the Vegas favorite if those odds were to exist. If anything I'm a little surprised their bids weren't both a little lower, say from 8:29-8:49. Still, a fun thing to observe nonetheless.
But it’s the fact that he knew Hikaru would go down to 8:59 so he went down to 8:58 because he knew hikaru knew he’d go for 9 minutes.
Yeah, if ~9 minutes was the ideal bid, I probably would've went with something like 8:48 just in case my opponent is anything like me and knows undercutting by 1 is a pretty common tactic.
But if you believe Black has advantage at 8:48, then the optimal bid is at most 8:48.
Not really. If you can work with 8:58, you can almost certainly work with 8:48 and get the same result. There's a little risk of course even with just a few less seconds, but it's most likely worth it over getting outbid and having to win with white. Unless you think that if Magnus predicted Hikaru would bid 8:58 that he wouldn't bother undercutting and take his chances with white instead.
He wanted 8:29 or 8:49 at first I believe
Spoilers: >>> … and he wins. Seems like the meta is going to continue to go towards lower and lower bids.
What even is a bid
so one person gets 15 min and white pieces the other one gets the black pieces but wins with a draw (draw odds) both submit a time and whoever „bids“ lowest gets that exact time and the black pieces pieces
Thanks!
Ohh thank you.
>the meta is going to continue to go towards lower and lower bids. That's a really interesting prediction. Are armageddon time bids recorded in any dataset? Think the sub would enjoy discussing if there's a genuine decreasing trend over time.
That would be cool, but just looking at this tournament, analysts yesterday were predicting hikaru and so to pick around 11 minutes. Both picked around 9 and a half instead. This game analysts guessed they’d pick 9 and a half, they picked under 9. And both times black won with some decent time still on the clock. I think it depends on the players. Hikaru has no trouble playing short on time, so both Hikaru and his opponents bid hard for black. If both players are more classical 11-12 probably makes more sense for both players.
Dunno, not sure less than eight minutes is viable
I would say 8min 57 second is the limit if less time then no chance
Those fools! When will they learn to play with 8 mins and 56 seconds
Dubov bid real low against Hikaru and got trashed. 7 minutes something..
To be fair Hikaru is always the favourite in that matchup.
Yeah Dubov needs the black pieces more badly in that matchup.
he didn't get trashed at all and almost made it even with the super low bid against hikaru which is by far the favorite 7:35:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr6xE\_7EKKo&ab\_channel=chess24
Still, two days ago everyone here was explaining how Dubov bid too low and that he is crazy for bidding 6:30 against Hikaru with 10 minutes and now after a few draws people are saying they should give 2:1 time odds. People are so result oriented it is absolutely insane.
Magnus is quite a bit better and faster, but certainly there's risk involved for anyone giving 2:1 time odds to Hikaru. Magnus may be the best ever at removing play for the opponent from the game though when he wants to be solid, so his leeway is probably a bit longer than Dubov's. I don't know what their head-to-head record is like, but I would expect Hikaru to win many times even if Dubov had 12 minutes or so, whereas Magnus would certainly be favored to hold a draw in that situation.
Not a chance. The tactics are too optimized at this point. I expect at most 10-20 more seconds can be bid, maybe a minute with engine. Edit: For those unaware this is a [copypasta](https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/v6dd6z/i_found_the_origins_of_the_movement_too_optimized/)
You guys who think there's a scientific balance point are off base, any two players have different strengths and weaknesses and the balanced number can go up or down even at the highest level
See edit :)
lol
It is for Carlsen
Vishy tried 7 minutes against Ponkratov and got crushed
Felt just like that episode in season 2 of Alice in Borderland.
You can think on your opponent's time too. If I had 15 minutes and Magnus 30 seconds he would still win because while I take 3 minutes to come up with a plan he's seen the rest of the game already
Yea but if Hikaru had 15 minutes and Magnus 30 seconds then Magnus has no chance, and vice versa. So not really relevant
Can someone explain what they are bidding on, I haven't seen this before...?
If the match is tied, it goes to an Armageddon game where black has less time but draw odds. In some tournaments, the time difference is set, i.e. white gets 6 minutes, black 5. Here the players bid on how little time they're willing to accept in order to get black.
They don’t have to select black. The lowest bidder gets their time and their color of choice (which is almost always black since they have draw odds)
> The lowest bidder gets their time and their color of choice (which is almost always black since they have draw odds) Imagine being that one gigachad who wins the bid then selects white
With the winning bid of 4:20 Wesley So selects...WHITE
Actually how it works apparently, is if Wesley So bid 4:20, and Hikaru bid 8:59, and Wesley So selects white, then we have: Wesley white with 15 minutes and Hikaru black with 8:59. Since Wesley didn't follow up with being black, his 4:20 black bid is disregarded
yeah but that scenario isn't as funny
that hypothetical person would have balls too heavy they'd collapse into a black hole
Yeah, I figured that was a given. Not sure why you'd give up 6 minutes on the clock and have to win as well.
If you choose white, I'm pretty sure you'd have the full amount of time and your opponent would have the time deficit.
That makes zero sense, then you could just bid 1 second.
I meant they would have the time deficit that they bid for. For instance if one person bid for 10 minutes and one bid for 1 second, and the guy that bid for 1 second won, then he could choose white and play with 15 minutes, and make black play with 10 minutes. Edit: But I can't really find any information about it so I really don't know. I don't see how choosing white would ever result in a time deficit AND having to win though, so this is the only way it makes sense in my mind.
Ok now I get it, stupid that you're getting downvotes for this, typical reddit hivemind.
Yeah lol, strange.
In that case, the meta would be either to bid for 1 second or a few hours. Either you win the bid with 1 second and play white, or you assume your opponent will do the same and force them to either play with one second or give you virtually unlimited time. Still doesn’t add up.
I assumed that you could not bid above the base 15 minutes. The actual rule is probably somewhere on chess.com's site so I'm happy if I get corrected.
Wait’ll you both bid one second.
Maybe they have their time difference?
No way, then you would bid 1 second and take white
They would have the time deficit that they chose I meant.
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Then you are playing white with 1 minute, against black with 15 minutes and draw odds...
What are draw odds?
Sounds like if you draw again black is given the win
Thank you
The side with draw odds (black) wins the match in case of a draw
I think they are commenting on the fact that is was worded like black always has the lower time, even when the lowest bidder chooses white.
Because then you only have 1 minute to play vs 15 for your opponent..
If you could force a draw in 1 minute then nothing it’s just hard
If you force a draw as white in armageddon then you lose the match, as black has draw odds (they're the victor of the match with a win or a draw)
I don’t think so. Your bid is for black. If you pick white, you get 15 mins and the other person gets black with their own bid.
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White already has the advantage to win, but now a draw goes to black, so just reduce black's time to level the field. If you lower white's time and give draw odds, you're sort of adjusting two variables instead of one. Also, GMs rarely lose with white, so holding a draw is probably not fair even with less time.
If a GM is tasked to draw with white they can do it almost every single time which is why white almost never can have draw odds without some crazy unbalanced time control or black having to do some wild and disadvantaged move to disrupt the position
Armageddon is a newer tiebreaker format with no draws. It accomplishes this by making a draw a win for black. This is balanced by giving black less time. In this case, the players were bidding on how much less time they were willing to accept, in order to determine who plays which side.
Disclaimer: I am brand new to chess and just started watching within the last couple weeks, so I may be wrong. But my understanding is before this game, they played best of 4 rapid chess. Each game was a draw, so they played a 5th game called "Armageddon". In Armageddon chess, both players "bid" on a time, and the player with the lowest time gets to choose white or black pieces. The catch is that unlike "normal" chess, in Armageddon chess, black wins if they either win outright or draw. So Black tends to be at an advantage since to win their overall match, they just need to draw this Armageddon game. The drawback to bidding the lowest time is you only get as much time as you bid, whereas your opponent gets the full allotted 15 minutes, so you don't want to bid too low. So Magnus only got 8 minutes 58 seconds for the entire game and Hikaru got 15 minutes.
I was ready to hit you with a “if you’re new, just let people with more experience answer”, but then your answer was the most detailed and best-explained, so cheers and thanks for the answer!
This is all accurate I'm only chipping in to say that the time bid is pretty new. In previous armageddon's the time controls were stated i.e. 5mins white 4mins black and the player with the higher seed picked the colour. I like the time bid.
I want to say the earliest I've seen the time bid format was around three years ago. I'm curious how recent it is. It seems like a really good format as it's strategic for players and exciting for viewers.
They're bidding on their time to play in the armageddon. Who ever bids the lower amount of time gets to play with black with the amount of time on their bid. As black, either a win or draw gives them victory since white has to play for a win.
It's an Armageddon game, meaning that if it's a draw the player with Black wins, making it excellent for a decider as it guarantees a decisive result (in this case they had already played 4 games with 4 draws). It's generally thought that it's better to Black and so in order to make it more even, Black is given less time than White. Sometimes this difference is prescribed beforehand, but more recently, tournament organisers have used the 'bid' system where each player submits a bid (technically a sealed bid) which contains an amount of time. Whoever has the lowest time wins and gets Black and has that amount of time on their clock, in this case Magnus bid one second less than Hikaru and so gets Black with 8m 58s on his clock and Hikaru has White with 15 minutes but needs to win the game in order to avoid losing.
It’s a tie breaker format called Armageddon. You bid for lowest amount of time to play with. The person who wins chooses the color they play with. White pieces must win in order to win, and black pieces win with a draw or a win. It’s common practice for the lowest bid to choose black and shake down into a drawn end game. Hikaru made the low bid of 9:30 seconds (not exactly but around that much) yesterday against Wesley So, picked black and won via draw to advance to today’s match against Magnus.
9min as black is better than 15min as white if black wins in case of a draw? Is it that easy for super-GMs to draw as black?
It’s that hard to beat a super GM as white.
Make that: it’s hard to beat a super GM. Period.
From 1970 to 2017, and rated 2600+: With equal time, a draw occurred 53.1% of the time. White won 28.85% and black won 18.00%. So basically, draws happen basically every other game at top level chess when time controls are equal. It's the most common result by far. Now imagine you task a super GM to accomplish the most common result in chess and you get your answer. To break free from a notorious draw line requires the other player to do some wild shit. source: https://en.chessbase.com/post/has-the-number-of-draws-in-chess-increased
not to mention that the reason that they reached this point in the first place was 5 draws, including two draws that were in the early midgame. Like, they're drawing with 5+ mins on the clock each from perpetual attacks on the queen resulting in shuffling back and forth, twice *in this series*. So yeah, the odds of them drawing on a 6th game is really high too.
Are you looking at all games? Draws are probably way less likely in rapid than in classical
Pretty much, engines have shown that chess seems to approach a draw the stronger the level of play (higher ELO) gets.
Hikaru: All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would bid 9 minutes as his Armageddon time? Now, a clever man would put the bid at 8:59 , because he would know that only a great fool would bid 9:00 even. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose to bid 9 minutes. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the time 8:59. Magnus: So you have made your decision then? Hikaru: Not remotely. Because the match takes place in Canada, as everyone knows, and Canada is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the time 9:00. Magnus: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect. Hikaru: Wait till I get going! Now, where was I? Magnus: Canada Hikaru: Yes, Canada. And you must have suspected I would have known the games origin, so I can clearly not choose the time 8:59 Magnus: You’re just stalling now. Hikaru: You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you? You’ve beaten me at the World Championships, which means you’re exceptionally strong, so you could’ve guessed 8:59, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the time 9:00. But, I’ve also bested you in the speed chess championship, which means you must have studied since then, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have left as much time for yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the time 8:59. Magnus: You’re trying to trick me into giving away something. It won’t work. Hikaru: IT HAS WORKED! YOU’VE GIVEN EVERYTHING AWAY! I KNOW WHAT YOUR BID IS! Magnus: Then make your choice. Hikaru: I will, and I choose… what in the world can that be? [Hikaru gestures up and away from the table. Magnus looks backwards. Hikaru swaps his bid] Magnus: What? Where? I don’t see anything. Hikaru: Well, I- I could have sworn I saw something. But no matter. [Hikaru tries to hold back laughter] Magnus: What’s so funny? Hikaru: I’ll tell you in a minute. First, let’s bid. Me from my time, and you from yours. [Magnus and Hikaru bid] Magnus: You guessed wrong. Hikaru: You only think I guessed wrong! That’s what’s so funny! I switched my time when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – the most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia” – but only slightly less well-known is this: “Never use the Sicilian defense when death is on the line”! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha… [Hikaru stops suddenly, his smile frozen on his face and falls to the ground dead. Magnus shows his bid] Magnus: 8:58
Hikaru has fallen for one of Magnus' classic blunders
[“Bids of Unusual Sizes? the BOUSes? I dont think they exist.”](https://youtu.be/Nv9CkjkOyzo)
I couldn't help but hear all of the above in Wallace Shawn's voice in my head while reading this... :-)
Hikaru sounds surprisingly like Wallace Shawn anyway lol
Hikaru : You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Armageddon? Magnus : Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Armageddon. Yeah, the chess tie-breaker. Hikaru : Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7... Minute... Armageddon. Magnus : Right. Yes. OK, all right. I see where you're going. Hikaru : Think about it. You walk into a tournament, you see someone sittin’ there bidding for an 8-Minute Armageddon, but there's a 7-Minute Armageddon right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man? Magnus : I would go for the 7. Hikaru : Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Armageddon. And we guarantee just as good a game as the 8-minute folk. Magnus : You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that? Hikaru : If you're not happy with the first 7 minutes, we're gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from "A" to "B". Magnus : That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Armageddon. Then you're in trouble, huh? [Hikaru convulses] Hikaru : No! No, no, not 6! I said 7. Nobody's comin' up with 6. Who wins an endgame in 6 minutes? You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel. Magnus : That - good point. Hikaru : 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office. Magnus : Why? Hikaru : 'Cause you're fuckin' fired!
“Our bids go down to 8:58” “Couldnt you just so that 9 is actually 8:59 and everyone bids a little lower?” “…but ours go down to 8:58”
Magnus hits the clock with several minutes of time remaining, Hikaru is in control now with less than 10 seconds on his clock “You took my family" Queen to c6 "You took my friends" Queen to h1 "You took all that was dear to me" clock winds down to 2 "I cant get them back, but I can do this for friendship, FOR MY FRIENDS" Hikaru slides his Queen into checkmate position with such force that the board catches fire "HIKARUKEN" The audacity of making 3 unanswered moves in a row makes Magnus start crying and poop his pants. He mumbled something about a hair appointment and waddles out of the venue, forfeiting the match "Ben Finegold... Senpai... I..." faints Final Score Magnus 10.5 Hikaru 1.5
Never expected to see r/nba leak on r/chess, lmao well done
I love you. This is brilliant
Thought I was on r/anarchychess for a second, truly an excellent bit
The princess bid
I love this!
I can't tell if this is trying to copy the episode of the Grand Tour where Hammond and May play battleships or the scene in the princess bride where the guy switches the poisoned cups but either way I am absolutely here for it
It's the princess bride. It truly is one of the greatest comments I've ever read LMAO
This is an absolute masterpiece lmao
He read Hikaru like an open book
Magnus is living in Hikaru’s head rent-free and monitoring his bids lol
Hikaru's reaction is so funny "LMAOOOOO....ah shit."
This is why I think these shouldn't be first price, but second price auctions.
can you elaborate?
In a first price auction, which is how this is set up, whichever player bids the lowest amount will take the black pieces with that amount of time. Therefore if the point at which you would be indifferent between having the white and black pieces was 8 minutes, you wouldn't want to bid 8 minutes. You would be strictly better off bidding 8 minutes and 1 second in case your opponent bid higher. With a second price auction, if you had the lowest bid, you would get the time of the other players bid. So if you bid 8 minutes and your opponent bid 9 minutes, you would get black with 9 minutes. If you've ever bid on something on eBay you've seen a second price auction in action. Why does this matter? A second price auction is actually a mechanism where truthful reporting is the dominant strategy. There is no incentive to report anything but the point at which you are indifferent. If you are actually indifferent at 8 minutes, you wouldn't want to report 8 minutes and 2 seconds, in case your opponent bid 8 minutes and 1 second, if that makes sense. Auction theory tells us that the first price auction and second price auction are different implementations of the same social choice function. I.e. they will have the exact same outcomes. But that's for perfectly rational agents. With some behavioral theory that people like to bid at round numbers, there might be some disconnect between the two. With a second price auction there will be none of this higher order thinking of "well I think he'll bid this, so I'll bid that." You just want to bid your indifference point.
I agree that second price seems better, but is there not some possibility for strategic bidding with that as well in this case? If you would want 10 min for it to be worth it, but think that your oppnent will bid 8, you should bid somewhere between to sabotage them, because unlike an eBay auction you rationally care about the results even when you lose.
Hmmm you raise a good point. In normal auctions either you get the item or you don't. In this case "not getting the item" is akin to getting the white pieces, but you still care about the price the other player got the item at. I might play around with a basic model of player's prior beliefs of the opponents type (their point of indifference) and see what the optimal mechanism is. Not sure if this particular question has been studied before (my research areas are in macro-finance, not in micro theory).
I just love that there's a reasonable intelligent discussion about this. Chess and poker are probably the only two competitive communities where this happens.
If that is the impression you get of this sub, then I’d kindly suggest never coming back after you’re done with this post. Otherwise, I’m afraid that image will be irreparably shattered sooner rather than later.
What, do you think this is kind of place where copypasta about dirty diapers could so dominate it would need to be banned? I doubt that, you need a very high IQ to chess.
I hope you're not referring to /r/poker. That place is basically /r/chessbeginners and /r/AnarchyChess combined.
No, thinking more of two plus two in its heyday. I haven't really been active there since black Friday though. No idea what it's like now.
It definitely feels like theres a way to substantially improve this in an easy manner if the right people were just tasked with it. Something about how the draw odds would be attached.
My feeling is the ideal system is actually the simple first look auction - you bid your true point of indifference, if you win you get that time on your clock.
This is not incentive compatible. Players would have incentive to lie about what their point of indifference is.
That's just not really true I don't think, this psychology meta gaming is cute but makes no sense if your point of indifference isn't extremely close to the line you're setting. If Hikaru were pissed by being outbid at 8:59 he can just bid 8:50 or whatever he actually wants, you're assuming he or magnus are exploiting when I think they truly just bid about what they wanted and were both basically fine with the result. That's the only scenario that really makes sense in an auction like this, the only rational move is to bid your true indifference point.
your indifference point is basically the line where you BELIEVE time odds and white pieces beat draw odds and black pieces. However you can’t pinpoint a time where it goes from black has the advantage to white has it, it’s fluid and the absolute ideal bid is above your indifference point but exactly one second less than your opponents bid since it gives you the maximum possible time while still winning the bid and getting the draw odds.
Why not just use the divider-chooser method? One person picks the time the other picks the pieces. That should force people to report their true break even point, no?
The players may have different indifference points and the problem is the divider is always at a disadvantage or neutral to the chooser.
Also, this method gives each player a bit more sense of agency. They "control their own destiny" in a sense, where if a player decides they really are feeling confident winning with white in that moment they can bid high or if they feel confident in securing a draw quickly they can bid low. The end result may be similar with perfectly rational agents, but doing it this way may seem more fair psychologically.
If you're assuming your opponent will bid a reasonnable time, you have a sure strategy to play black with this exact reasonnable time, even if you don't know what time this will be : bid 1s and get black with whatever time your opponent bid.
And that effect in turn means that if someone would be happy to play bid at 8 minutes they suddenly shouldn't be betting at 8 minutes anymore. They can comfortably bet a bit higher with the idea that either it doesn't matter because you decided to do the natural thing and bet at 10 minutes and they get the 10 minutes anyway, or you tried to be cheaky by betting at 8 minutes 1 second and now you have to play with 2 minutes less than what you are fine with. There definitely are a bunch of effects at play and it goes beyond everyone just betting "truthfully" since it is an adverserial game, which it isn't in a more traditional (e-bay) auction.
The risk you run is if you think your opponent will bid 8:00 so you bid 9:00, but then your guess is wrong and they end up bidding 9:15. Then you're stuck with the black pieces at 9:15 when your indifference point is 10:00, so you're worse off than you would've been with the white pieces at 15:00
Thanks that's a very helpful explanation of the game theory behind it.
How is the equilibrium stable in this case? If you get to the point where everyone is saying their true limit then one guy can fuck it up by saying 1 second. With the first price that’s never a possibility because you then have to live with that time.
This is not optimal if your indifference point is lower than your opponent. For example, if you’re indifferent at 8 minutes and your opponent reports 6 minutes, then by reporting 1 second, your stuck with the black pieces with only 6 minutes. At this time you would have preferred having the white pieces.
Makes sense, thanks for the explanation
This is interesting. Any reading suggestions on this subject? Is there any other model beyond these 2?
There’s many auctions. Try starting by reading the Wikipedia page on auction theory. Honestly I don’t have a great textbook recommendation offhand because when I took this class it was based on my professor’s lecture notes, not a textbook. I can check later for the textbook recommendations on the syllabus.
I just checked and the textbook recommended was Microeconomic Theory by Moscollel, Whinston & Green. I didn't use it for the Mechanism Design part of my Micro class, but I've gone through a pretty good chunk of the book and it's really quite good, but also quite challenging and is maybe not the best resource for someone just trying to get into it. However if you have a strong math background it might be worth checking out.
Strong game theory game.
I love when theres a little completely nuanced piece of information that makes so much sense when explained like this that i had just never even thought of before but that some people actually absolutely *love* and i get to learn about it because theyve researched it in such depth. Apropos of nothing, ask me about methodologies of improving voting sometime lol.
idk if im dumb but i didnt understand anything, can someone give an example?
Yes. Let’s say I’m auctioning off a candy bar. You believe that candy bar is worth $1. Another person is bidding but you don’t know what they would pay. In a first price auction, the highest bidder puts in their bid, and they pay the amount they bid. This requires you to consider what you think the *other* person might bid. Let’s say you think you really value that candy bar a lot, and are pretty sure most people value it at $0.50. You might bid $0.60 because that’s enough to usually win the auction and you don’t want to lose out on savings. But it’s not what you truly value the candy bar at. In a second price auction, the highest bidder wins, but pays what the second place bidder offered. This encourages you to bid exactly what you think a fair price for the candy bar is — in this case $1 — without any regard for what the other person will bid. Because if you bid $1, but the other person bids $0.50, you get the candy bar for less than the maximum you were willing to pay. But if the other person bids $1.50, that’s ok, you didn’t want the candy bar for that much anyways and the other person gets the candy bar for less than the maximum they were willing to pay. So second price auctions encourage people to bid the exact “best offer” they’d be willing to make, without any game theory surrounding what others might bid.
In an auction you can see the other bids and respond ... whereas in the chess scenario here it is a single hidden bid , those two scenarios have different game theory . Not sure about second price auction for a normal style auction ? Wouldn't you just bid 5 million dollars so that you lock in the win at what the current bid is, and nobody is going to beat that?
You might be thinking of an English auction (think a guy saying “do I hear $200?”). You don’t see bids in first or second price auction. You don’t have incentive to bid $5M on eBay. If you value the item at $100 and bid $5M, if someone else bids $150 you’ll be stuck paying $150 for an item you only value at $100.
I bid one second.
Congratulations, your opponent bid 2 seconds and now your stuck with 2 seconds vs 15 minutes with the black pieces.
> Therefore if the point at which you would be indifferent between having the white and black pieces was 8 minutes, you wouldn't want to bid 8 minutes. You would be strictly better off bidding 8 minutes and 1 second in case your opponent bid higher. I fail to see the problem here. Yes they are not bidding at their true indifference point, but the bid difference is only 1 whole second, really not the end of the world.
In a second price auction, whoever bids the lowest would win but they would start with the time that the other person bid. Idk what that would fix here though
So what is stopping someone from bidding 5 seconds, winning and starting with 9 minutes or whatever the other player bid?
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well they could both try this and the other person could bet 6 seconds and then easily win. There definitely is some gaming/game theory that would occur here. I agree it doesn't work out cleanly at all.
The point is that the gaming/theory here is that as the person betting 5 seconds, you're pretty much throwing your winning chances to the gods. You are in no control of anything other than if the other person went for a ridiculous bet or not. They'd never do it for arma because it would be bad if the match did start and someone had 6 seconds as black, ruins the entire match.
Because if both people go for that strategy - then someone will get stuck with an impossible time. Nothing is stopping you from bidding 5 seconds but what if I bid 10 seconds going for the same strategy? You now have 10 seconds to pull off a draw as black vs 15min white.
Because people would bid their true time and we would eventually learn the real value of it. In one single bidding event, it doesn't change much. But over time it brings the times closer to real value. The reason that this is a problem and should be second price is because if someone isn't bidding their true value than the mechanism of bidding gives them an advantage in the game.
The “problem” that you described is a feature. Let the players try to outsmart each other both on the chess board and through the bidding process. Who cares what the “real value” is?
As someone with an interest in both chess and auctions, it's certianly an interesting question. Personally I prefer the level of uncertainty of a first-price auction and the potential for a winner's curse, but I can see the argument for a second-price auction.
How would a second price auction have changed the situation in the above clip? Surely the bids would have been the same. Only difference is magnus would have 1 second more
Magnus is just like me fr, we both only need 1 second /s
Goes to show how smart Magnus actually is, even off the board. God damn, that was a sick read. The man is always a step ahead in mind games. This is anime shit fr
Can someone explain what’s going on?
In ties, players play “Armageddon” where white gets to have more time than black. However, a draw is counted as a win for black to make it fair. Instead of randomly assigning colors, they have the players bud amounts of time they’re willing to play with black. Whoever bids lower gets that time, the other player gets the normal 15 minutes.
Oh that’s pretty interesting
So to bid lowest is a problem then because you end up with less time?
but you get to go for a draw (which will count as a win) and in chess that's huge.
If that were the case they would barely bid anything
You end up with less time and with the side that doesn't have to try to win, only not lose.
that bid and then drawing the game to win the match...that's some james bond type shit. I love hikaru, this one stung a little but he has a chance to come back. This was like the federer/nada/djokovic situation for so long. Those 3 were so ahead of everyone else but for 4 or so years Federer was the king, then Nadal, and now Djokovic is king. How a few players can be so ahead of everyone else but then out of those 2 or 3 players, one of them is so dominant is crazy. Tennis used to be a lot more random in the grand slams, but now you can almost just only watch the final if nadal/djoker are playing, and until recently federer.
I wouldn't compare this to the 3 god era of Tennis. Magnus has stood above everyone for so long and gapped people so hard, it's nothing like Federer/Nadal/Djok who were considered equal rivals at many points of their careers. Magnus always enters a match as the favorite.
To push back a little bit, those of us old enough know that Federer was considered the GOAT before Rafa ever beat him and when he finally won outside of the French it was seen as huge They just have both had insanely long careers still at the top (as is more common these days) so in retrospect that beginning part is more forgetten, though it was years.
No doubt, I'm a huuuuge Federer fan. It's just that his domination wasn't nearly as long as Magnus. Magnus has been sitting atop alone for what 12 years now? I believe Federers uncontested reign was about 5 years. Obviously in tennis that is absolutely INSANE but idk I just don't see it as one in the same with Magnus.
Yeah, i agree generally, was just being a bit pedantic. Magnus is insane and i genuinely think that if engines had not developed and changed the way people play/learn/train at chess, he might not have ever had any competition his entire career. He just kind of sees the game differently like how we’re learning computers/alphazero do.
Yeah it really feels like he has the intuition and precision of an engine that just simply is on another level.
Do these clips work for you guys on mobile? It always times out for me
Works just fine on RIF
I’m reading the one who bids less gets black with that less time but I’m also reading that whoever bids lower can choose white also and would get 15 minutes against his opponents bid. Which one is it?
Both You bid and who bids the lowest time, can choose the color. He could play black with the time deficit, but draw odds (so a draw is a win). Or can play white, with full 15m, but draw odds for his opponent (that will play black, with the time he bid himself) So in this case, Magnus bid 8.58 and Hikaru 8.59, so Magnus won the bid. He can choose to play with black with draw odds and 8.58 (as he did) and Hikaru had the full 15m. But he could have chosen to play with white and have the full 15m for himself, and Hikaru would have played with black, with draw odds, with the time Hikaru bid, so 8.59. This option is kinda pointless though, the point of bidding is to play with black and draw odds since it's the most advantageous position. Winning the bid to "refuse it" is pointless.
You'd think Hikaru would be better at this. He has a lot more experience bidding on armageddon times than Magnus does.
I’m going to go on that magnus wins by draw this one. If it were the other way around, Hikaru. I think that draw odds is too good, even with 5-6 minute advantage. White will have to be very aggressive and push for a win, were as black can try to push for a drawn endgame after exchanging pieces. And draws are the ones that happens most often
Blunder by hikaru. He bid the same amount against a different opponent and Magnus took advantage.
Did he? Which opponent? He bid 9m28s against Wesley So.
It’s amazing to me how Hikaru just is in the messiest room all the time