Garry Kasparov

[OrangeKing]

I seriously doubt poker is in Garry's future, but I'm sure he could beat some pretty serious games if he worked at it.

We'll miss him in the chess world; the top levels of chess need as many people actually playing for wins as possible. God help us if we need to sit through another Kramnik-Leko match (though to be fair, there were a couple interesting games played).

Anyway, rather than Fischer-Byrne...since this thread is about Kasparov, let's discuss Kasparov-Topalov from Corus 1999! http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1011478

24. Rxd4! and 25. Re7+! are just beautiful. Granted, analysis seems to show that Topalov could have drawn with 24. ... Rb6; but still, just a wonferful game, and Kasparov at his best.

[Kenrick]

[ QUOTE ]

Please stop comparing Chess to poker! Jesus, chess is a game of full knowledge, everything is revealed to you on the board. Poker is a game of concealed knowledge. Kasparov's 4 positions/second won't give him any advantage in poker. The cards are hidden, once again poker is nothing like chess.

[/ QUOTE ]

In Sklansky's recent post about his TV tournament, he mentioned he and Chris Fergusen being better at game theory than others. He then said how if you play against players who are unreadable, the value of reading skills goes way down, and could even backfire.

I wouldn't be surprised if at the highest level of play against unreadable players that a more math/probability game would win more than what might be considered a more typical world-class player's game. Calculations per second might give a surprising advantage, at least if there's a time-limit when making a play.

[greygoo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I always thought Anatoly Karpov was the epitome of the book-knowledge automaton at the chess board.

[/ QUOTE ]

Karpov was remarkably creative but not in an exciting tactical way. Karpov's style of "active prophalaxis" was innovative but difficult even for his top rivals in the late '70s and early '80s to get a handle on.

Remember, Karpov had the best tournament record of any world champion. I also think the competition with Karpov is the #1 reason Kasparov became so great. Karpov completely outclass Kasparov for most of their first World Championship clash. It took months of Kasparov playing drawish chess before he could get a handle on Kaprov.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nothing much to add here. Karpov was an exceptional player, notoriously known for sqeezing out small advantages in almost even positions. He was prepared for the openings better than anybody though. Karpov had almost unlimited support of the Kremlin, so he had quite a few opening experts working on improving Karpov repertoire. Most important one was his trainer Semen "Walking ECO" Furman, whos handle speaks for himself.

[greygoo]

Man, that game is ridiculous. I can't remember the page with GK own analysis of that game, but GK said about it something like "after this game it would be hard for me to think that my best game is ahead of me."

[LargeCents]

[ QUOTE ]
Memory was hazy, but here's the game:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008419


[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for the link! I looked at this game for a good half hour just baffled! I found some decent analysis if anyone's interested:
http://www.angelfire.com/games3/AJs0...yrfisrpg0.html

Just when I start to forget about Fischer, a game like this reminds me that he is simply an alien.

[3rdEye]

I'd say that extremely intelligent, motivated people are more than capable of becoming winning poker players. Kasparov would certainly be a good player if he put his mind to it, but whether he'd be expert, let alone great, who can say?

If I had to guess, though, I'd imagine he could easily beat a 20/40 limit HE game.

[TransientR]

I agree, this is another superstar 'retirement' like we have seen numerous times in sports, music, etc. that will turn out to be no retirement at all.

Frank

[pokerponcho]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyway the point is, Kasparov dominates at chess because he has memorized every possible variation at any position in the game. Chess is a game of repetition, almost every board position has been studied it's a game of waiting for your opponent to make one mistake.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really, your ignorance in the game of chess is astounding. I think I speak for all chess fans when I say, "stay in your own league".

Also, in 5 Card Stud, almost all the information is concealed. And that's still considered poker last time I checked.

Many of the traits of a chess player transfer well into poker. This is true of bridge, and of backgammon. People make these switches all the time (Harrington, Lederer, Brunson). Why not Kasparov? I'm sure someone as brilliant as Kasparov could accelerate his mind to the top of the poker universe within half a year, if that's what his heart desired.

pokerponcho

[Hold'me]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Anyway the point is, Kasparov dominates at chess because he has memorized every possible variation at any position in the game. Chess is a game of repetition, almost every board position has been studied it's a game of waiting for your opponent to make one mistake.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really, your ignorance in the game of chess is astounding. I think I speak for all chess fans when I say, "stay in your own league".

Also, in 5 Card Stud, almost all the information is concealed. And that's still considered poker last time I checked.

Many of the traits of a chess player transfer well into poker. This is true of bridge, and of backgammon. People make these switches all the time (Harrington, Lederer, Brunson). Why not Kasparov? I'm sure someone as brilliant as Kasparov could accelerate his mind to the top of the poker universe within half a year, if that's what his heart desired.

pokerponcho

[/ QUOTE ]
I guarantee you I will dominate you in Chess. Your ignorance is appalling. Why can't Michael Jordan dominate at poker, it has the same qualities as basketball too. Patience, Shot selection, reading opponents. Yeah let's generalize poker with any sport shall we. God you're ridicilously ignorant.

[OrianasDaad]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Anyway the point is, Kasparov dominates at chess because he has memorized every possible variation at any position in the game. Chess is a game of repetition, almost every board position has been studied it's a game of waiting for your opponent to make one mistake.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really, your ignorance in the game of chess is astounding. I think I speak for all chess fans when I say, "stay in your own league".

Also, in 5 Card Stud, almost all the information is concealed. And that's still considered poker last time I checked.

Many of the traits of a chess player transfer well into poker. This is true of bridge, and of backgammon. People make these switches all the time (Harrington, Lederer, Brunson). Why not Kasparov? I'm sure someone as brilliant as Kasparov could accelerate his mind to the top of the poker universe within half a year, if that's what his heart desired.

pokerponcho

[/ QUOTE ]
I guarantee you I will dominate you in Chess. Your ignorance is appalling. Why can't Michael Jordan dominate at poker, it has the same qualities as basketball too. Patience, Shot selection, reading opponents. Yeah let's generalize poker with any sport shall we. God you're ridicilously ignorant.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, no. Basketball relies much on muscle memory, as someone else pointed out in another chess related thread.

People aren't computers. While all the information is out there, it's knowing which information is most useful and which is not as relavent that allows a player to make more correct decisions. What I'm getting at is even though you can see the whole board, no single player can possibly process all the information in a limited amount of time. Effectively, the information isn't completely available due to the inherent complexity of the game. You also have to be able to look ahead some. Knowing the tendancies/plans of your opponent would correlate strongly with poker. These are just two, I can think of many more.

Kasparov would likely be a fantastic poker player. It's too bad he's retiring, and so young too. Hasn't been the same since Kramnik beat him down with the Berlin Defense.

I think Bent Larsen was more creative than Fischer. Bobby had a very limited opening repitoire, and had great skill in the positions that arose from those openings. Ivanchuk is also very creative.

Again, I have to disagree with the assumption that a top chessplayer would have trouble getting beat when the odds were in their favor. If a patzer like me can realize it, then why can't they? A 5-hour game of chess has a much larger emotional investment than any single hand of limit poker.

I've read that if you put every 60 move permutation of a chess game down on separate peices of paper and stacked them up, then the stack would easily reach out of our solar system. It takes the fastest computers with huge hashtables DAYS to see accurately all positions from a non-tactical/non-forcing middlegame just 17 ply away. That's 8 moves for each side plus one. It would take longer than any reasonable amount of time to map out every possible legal position and continuations from those positions. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years.

As far as Kasparov knowing every position... no. But he does know exactly what the tendancies of his opponents are, and he is superiorly versed in opening theory, which will get him to a familiar position in the middlegame/endgame. He's got good book on all his opponents. This cuts down signifigantly the number of positions he does need to know, though.