I’ve recently been distracting myself with the new Magnus Carlsen “app,” a free chess app for the iPhone whose distinguishing feature is that it tries to play “like” Magnus did at various ages. It does seem like a very tricky problem to make a computer “play like a human,” and this app does not entirely succeed in this endeavor. I’ve spent most of my time playing Magnus “aged 10.” My record against Magnus aged 10 is decidedly in the negative (although I definitely have a few wins), in part because I play fairly quickly, and in part because Magnus aged 10 is pretty tricky. One can get a good sense of exactly how tricky from the following videos:
(Does this mean my Magnus Carlsen number is two? Hmmm, probably not.) At this age, Magnus does not resign. He is also is not very inclined to accept draw offers, as the following screenshot indicates:
I haven’t yet attempted to play Magnus aged 11, but apparently Vlad won against Magnus 11 on either the very first or second try, which suggests that he may have been going easy on me when we played blitz at Northwestern.