卡尔森 战胜电脑的国象大师大纲

Magnus Carlsen’s triumph over Viswanathan Anand on Sunday allowed the 23-year-old Norwegian to retain his crown as world chess champion.

周日，23岁的挪威人马格努斯•卡尔森(Magnus Carlsen)大胜维斯瓦纳坦•阿南德(Viswanathan Anand)，成功卫冕国际象棋世界冠军。

Yet it was the remarkable way in which Mr Carlsen defeated his Indian opponent that has reinforced the view in fiercely competitive, top-level chess that he is simply the best the game has ever seen.

然而，最令人印象深刻的，是卡尔森打败其印度对手的方式。在竞争激烈的国际象棋顶级赛事中，他的取胜方式再次证明，他是国际象棋比赛有史以来的最佳选手。

He won without a huge team of seconds, or assistants, to feed him new ideas and without a room stuffed with supercomputers to prepare game plans in advance.

在比赛过程中，没有庞大的助手团队为他提供新的思路，事先也没有一屋子超级电脑为他筹备竞赛计划。

His victory was, as Frederic Friedel, co-founder of the Chessbase chess software company, put it, “like a tennis player turning up to Wimbledon with an ancient wooden racket – and winning”.

正如Chessbase国际象棋软件公司的共同创始人弗雷德里克•弗里德尔(Frederic Friedel)所说，卡尔森的胜利，“就像一名网球选手带着老式木质球拍出现在温布尔顿并取得了胜利”。

Computers and the number-crunching analysis they provide have become a regular feature of the highest levels of chess for more than a decade. Top players rely on them to generate the theoretical novelty that can provide a telling advantage in the opening.

十多年来，提供计算机和大批量数据分析，已成为国际象棋顶级赛事的常规服务。最高水平的选手依赖这些服务提供创意，从而在开局中取得有效的优势地位。

In 2010, as he prepared to fight for the world chess crown against Anand, the Bulgarian grandmaster Veselin Topalov revealed that he was using IBM’s Blue Gene/P supercomputer, decked with 8,192-processors, to help prepare some tailor-made openings.

2010年，在筹备与阿南德的国际象棋世界冠军争夺战时，保加利亚特级大师维塞林•托帕洛夫(Veselin Topalov)曾透露，他正在使用IBM生产的拥有8192个处理器的蓝色基因/P(Blue Gene/P)超级计算机，帮助他准备某些量身定制的开局。

Anand, meanwhile, admitted that the desktop of one of his main seconds looked “like a pilot’s cockpit”.

与此同时，阿南德也承认，他一名主要助手的桌面看起来“就像飞行员的驾驶舱”。

Such an approach is logical in a game so complex that players arrive at one of 9m possible positions after just three moves each – and one in which there are more possible unique chess games than neutrons in the physical universe.

对国际象棋这样复杂的比赛而言，这种应对方式有其道理。据统计，在仅仅走过三步之后，每位选手就面临900万种可能的棋局。国际象棋中的可能棋局数，超过了宇宙中的中子数。

As Mr Carlsen said with some understatement following one of last week’s games, “chess, in general, is more difficult than other things”.

正如卡尔森上周在一场比赛后略为谦虚的说法：“总体上说，国际象棋比其他事情都难一些。”

But the man who regularly plays in ripped jeans and has a reputation for slouching in his chair during matches does not rely on computer analysis nearly as much as his opponents and pays relatively little attention to opening theory.

不过，这位惯于在打比赛时身着乞丐装牛仔裤、并以懒洋洋靠在椅上而闻名的选手，并不像他的对手那样依赖计算机分析。他对开局理论的关注几乎为零。

“With the modern computer age, there are some new ideas,” he said a couple of years ago. “But the principles are basically the same . . . I try not to over-focus on preparation.”

几年前，他曾表示：“在当代这个计算机时代，确实存在某些新的想法。不过其中的原理从根本上说是一样的……我努力不去把过多注意力放在筹备方面。”

The result of this old-school approach has turned modern chess on its head. Whereas computer analysis has raised the relative importance of the opening for most players, Mr Carlsen has relegated it. He looks instead to win a game later on via the steady and patient accumulation of sometimes almost imperceptible advantages.

这一旧的学院派方法取得的战果令当代国际象棋十分尴尬。尽管对多数选手来说，计算机分析提高了开局的相对重要性，卡尔森却不那么看重开局。相反，他关注的是如何稳定而耐心地积累优势——有时候这种优势甚至难以察觉，在后面的比赛过程中取得胜利。

“The space that chess occupies is so gigantic that in spite of all the computer work done today, you can get out of it,” says Mr Friedel, who occasionally chaperoned Mr Carlsen at tournaments when he was a teenager. “Magnus goes off into sidelines . . . then he just outplays people. It is extraordinary and amazing.”

少年时代曾偶尔在锦标赛中陪伴卡尔森的弗里德尔表示：“国际象棋的博弈空间太过巨大，尽管今天计算机能完成许多判断，你仍可跳出它的思路。马格努斯跳了出来……并在之后的比赛中大获全胜。这是非比寻常而让人惊叹的。”

That he is able to do so is evidence of his raw talent. A grandmaster at 13, he became the world’s strongest player at just 19 and has remained there. In May, he reached an “Elo” rating of 2,882 – the highest a human being has ever achieved.

他能做到这一点，证明了他天生的天分。这位13岁当上特级大师的选手在仅仅19岁时就成为全球最强的国际象棋选手，并一直保持在这种高水平状态。今年5月，他的“Elo”等级分达到2882分，这是人类选手曾获得的最高分。

Asked in 2012 how he played so well, he replied modestly, “I don’t know . . . the game somehow comes naturally”.

2012年，在被问到为何他棋艺如此高超时，他回答得十分谦虚：“我不知道……我就是自然而然地想到了应手。”