Young Russian beats AlphaGo

[John Fairbairn]

Yes - the title's a bit of a con. But I was so impressed by little Mikhail Osipov that I thought his achievement excelled that of AlphaGo. In his mere three years Misha has had to learn to talk, walk and chew food. with a tiny programming team - mainly Mummy Kseniya. Despite that he has found time to play astounding chess. See him on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTSfq9V3rZw

It helps to know Russian and chess, but even without those I think any games player will enjoy Misha, much to his surprise, taking on world champ Anatoliy Karpov. The tv show is called "Best of Them All" and is about prodigies.

He played a blitz game with clocks and dealt with all the distracting chat. After the game he sliced through several hard problems (well, one was too hard for me), and incidentally showed that he's mastered chess notation as well.

For me (who gave up chess mainly because of chess players) it was nice to see a nice chess guy again in Karpov. I've met him and have always thought he's a really pleasant guy. This show confirms that. But note from his eyes how he stays on pro alert - e.g. keeping an eye on the clock. Misha, for his part, reminded me also of Liao Xingwen, who hasn't made it to the top yet - but Misha still has a couple of years head-start on him.

Spoiler safe-deposit box for after the video:

Misha declined the offer of a draw and then lost (i.e. was talked out) on time. His prize was an autographed book. His reaction to that seemed to suggest he can read already as well.

Incidentally, where does this leave the 10,000 hours theory?

[dfan]

Looking at the game, I'd guess he's around the equivalent of 10k (say 1200?), not 1d or something.

I also assume the problems at the end were learned in advance, because if he could really solve them all instantly he'd be much, much stronger than was demonstrated by the game. I'd be more impressed if he took 30 seconds to think first, because then there would be a chance that he really was solving them on the fly! Still: 1) he certainly may have solved them all on his own on the way to memorizing them, and 2) just being able to recall the moves is something.

I'm mostly impressed that he is able to play a reasonable game of chess without tactical blunders at the age of 3. I was playing at 3 but I'm sure he's significantly better! There are certainly plenty of casual-playing adults he could beat now.

As far as his future goes, I would happily bet even odds that he will eventually be an IM (analogous to 1p I guess), but I wouldn't want to predict anything more yet. For one thing, there's a not insignificant chance he will lose interest at some point.

[Joaz Banbeck]

This was on reddit a few weeks back.

For those who don't speak Russian, a little funny part:
Host: Be honest, are you sandbagging?
Karpov: Me? I would never
Host: No, I'm asking Misha

[EdLee]

For those who don't speak Russian, a little funny part:
Host: Be honest, are you sandbagging?
Karpov: Me? I would never
Host: No, I'm asking Misha

Maybe 06:11 - 06:17.

Beginner chess question (spoiler):

3p.jpg (55.86 KiB) Viewed 9967 times

Considering the (momentarily) triple-pawn shape, how's the situation for W ?

( Look forward to high quality machine translation of all human dialogues. )

[DrStraw]

For those who don't speak Russian, a little funny part:
Host: Be honest, are you sandbagging?
Karpov: Me? I would never
Host: No, I'm asking Misha

Maybe 06:11 - 06:17.

Beginner chess question (spoiler):

3p.jpg

Considering the (momentarily) triple-pawn shape, how's the situation for W ?

( Look forward to high quality machine translation of all human dialogues. )

I know almost nothing about chess, but I thought pawns could only change column by capturing. So how come there are three of them in a column if only one black piece has been captured?

[EdLee]

So how come there are three of them in a column if only one black piece has been captured?

Misha captured a knight (04:57 ; bishop-knight exchange), and then a pawn (05:06).

[hyperpape]

I am roughly 1000 in chess (aka weaker than the boy), and I know that doubled pawns are a classical bad shape (they can't defend each other). I have never seen tripled ones.

[dfan]

Beginner chess question (spoiler):

Considering the (momentarily) triple-pawn shape, how's the situation for W ?

6.d4xc5 was a very bad move from a strategical perspective and White has probably already lost the first-move advantage.

White has many alternatives on move 6 but the simplest good moves are e3 or Nf3, continuing to develop.

White wants Black to play ...c5xd4 to which he would respond c3xd4. White now has a strong pawn center that controls all the center squares. (Of course Black is not likely to be so generous any time soon...)

Instead, d4xc5 leaves White with "doubled isolated pawns" on the c-file (after the c5 pawn is captured), which cannot defend any other pawns (or be defended by pawns themselves), and will be a weakness for the rest of the game.

I am roughly 1000 in chess (aka weaker than the boy), and I know that doubled pawns are a classical bad shape (they can't defend each other). I have never seen tripled ones.

Doubled pawns are "bad shape", and as in go, they are not so great all other things being equal, but in many situations their benefits outweigh their shortcomings. I think many beginning players have an irrational fear of doubled pawns because it is an easy-to-remember rule. Tripled pawns are uncommon but not incredibly rare.

[gowan]

Given that the boy is only three years old it is amazing that he can even play at all, let alone play with a clock in the stressful environment of the show. No surprise that he lost it and called for his mother at one point. I was also impressed with his articulate spoken Russian at an age when many children can hardly speak grammatically.

[schawipp]

Beginner chess question (spoiler):

Considering the (momentarily) triple-pawn shape, how's the situation for W ?

In this position white has several strategic flaws:
- Obviously he moved his b1 knight two times early in the opening and let it get exchanged by the bishop f8. Moving one piece two times early in the opening is usually bad because it does not contribute to a quick and balanced development of all pieces. Further, the exposed piece is likely to get attacked and may need to move away a third time (needless to say - in gote ).
- In the current game, the pawn got exchanged by a black bishop thereby contributing to the triple pawn. Meanwhile, black got his g8 knight developed, and his king is ready to castle. White has developed nothing except for this triple-pawn. He still needs three more moves before he can castle his king (e2-e3, Bd3, Nf3).

Of course all these "rules-of-thumb" are to be treated similarly as proverbs in go. There are always exceptions possible and there might be even positions, where a triple-pawn is really great.

In summary,
- black is ready to castle (= equivalent of three tempos), has developed a piece (Nf6 = another tempo) and has an intact pawn structure
- white needs still three moves before being ready to castle, has no piece developed and has a very weak pawn structure.

White is about 4 tempos behind and has a defective pawn structure. If playing against a medium strong black player I would say white is already on a losing path.

Edit:

I looked up the whole sequence, and of course the white knight didn't move two times but got exchanged on c3. Therefore I agree with dfan that 6 d4xc5 was more or less the losing move

[dfan]

I don't think that 6.d4xc5 was the losing move! I just think that it was bad. My criteria for losing moves are much stricter

White was playing a perfectly normal opening until then, so it's not plausible that he lost 4 tempi in one move.

Anyway, I'm sure that by age 4 young Mikhail will have left such moves behind

[Charlie]

After watching it in Russian, I now really want a version with subtitles that I can read - English or German, that is, not Russian or YouTube-auto-translate. It was a great watch, anyway, but I fear that 102% of the humour was in the dialogue.

[ohyou]

I'm 90% sure this is fake. Showing "prodigy kids" is a mainstream in Russia. Recently a 9yo kid won "Who wants to be a millionaire" without even thinking about questions for longer than 30 seconds. Also recently another ~12yo kid won some singing competition.

Everything you see on this show is almost always fake. I'd be surprised if this kid at least knows all the chess pieces, let alone knowing how to play. Also please note how they cut the camera shot for every single move, somebody was probably saying the kid what to do inbetween the moves.

Source: I'm Russian and my parents watch this bs TV show every now and then, and we can't help ourselves but wonder how much effort they put into faking everything in the show.