from Hacker News

Magnus Carlsen forced into a draw by more than 143000 people playing against him

by namanyayg on 5/21/25, 2:29 AM with 39 comments

• by sfblah on 5/21/25, 3:13 AM

  Presumably "the world" used enough engine help to do this.

• by drewbitt on 5/21/25, 3:27 AM

  95 percent accuracy by the world. They traded most everything and played 99 percent accurate in the second half.

• by gcbill on 5/21/25, 6:49 AM

  Perhaps it is worth considering that this was Freestyle chess and not classical chess. Which means the traditional book moves with which chess engines are trained goes out of window. I am not saying Stockfish cant beat Magnus in Freestyle chess but it makes sense to believe that Chess engines are better at classical chess when compared to freestyle.

  But then again, with 24 hour time to brute force every possible combination, I guess chess engines may be better at freestyle when compared to classical chess, due to the sheer amount of creativity and calculation involved.

• by nurettin on 5/21/25, 3:54 AM

  This means the world (or most of it) was not cheating!

  What makes it funny is: when 143000 chess players merge, they basically become Anish Giri.

• by gangelov on 5/21/25, 6:28 AM

  There is the full game with some more details here: https://www.chess.com/news/view/the-world-forces-draw-in-his...

• by selcuka on 5/21/25, 4:12 AM

  It's impressive that Magnus might have won if The World hadn't forced a stalemate.

  > In the Chess.com virtual chat this week, players appeared split on whether to force the draw — and claim the glory — or to keep playing against Carlsen, even if it ultimately meant a loss.

• by hnposter on 5/21/25, 3:42 AM

  Reminds me of Gary Kasparov vs. The World on MSN Gaming Zone.

• by tedunangst on 5/21/25, 3:53 AM

  How many people voted in complete accordance?

• by darepublic on 5/21/25, 2:12 PM

  Some irritating aspects to this story. It's a chess.com fluff piece and frankly it would have been disastrous to their bottom line if Magnus would have lost as of course it would mean a significant percent of the world was cheating. I would not be at all surprised if they had measures in place to stop that if it arose.

  Freestyle chess has been almost universally known as Fischer random. But of course Fischer being who he was history needs to be sanitized. The ap story is also wrong in its description of how it works since pieces are only randomized along the back rank not "all over the board"

  Then you have so called experts racing into this thread to pronounce that cheating had nothing to do with the outcome. On the contrary the accuracy of the world is suspicious and I don't believe chess.com would ever permit Magnus to lose this match so it makes sense that, despite strengthening its position a strong "draw by repetition" faction magically appeared to prevent that possibility.

• by EnPissant on 5/21/25, 3:31 AM

  Magnus Carlsen would get crushed by an engine running on an iPhone 1. Meanwhile the world has access to iPhone 16s. The entire concept is flawed. I'm guessing someone made money off it, though.

• by sceptic123 on 5/21/25, 11:57 AM

  Isn't this the promise of LLM, that with enough data the best answer will surface. The problem is that it needs training against a Magnus Carlsen which is definitely not going to happen.