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Ask HN: Do you play Chess?

41 points by airframeng 11y ago

if so, do you think chess skills translate into good programming skills?

emerongi 11y ago
I do play. No, I don't think chess skills translate into anything - the only "real" skill I've learned is how to practice efficiently. It's a fun game and I play it for what it is.
sebg 11y ago
from the first google result for "chess programming skills", this article (http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-can-chess-teach-us-about.html http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-can-chess-tea...) gives a few thoughts on why chess skills can translate into good programming skills.
kele 11y ago
Why would you think that chess skills should translate into good programming skills?
- joaorj 11y ago
  I don't think he thought it through very well.. But if being generous because in chess you have to memorize lots of openings and if you want to know lots of languages there's a bit of memorization aswell.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
I play Chess and Go. I also write programs to play.
calebm 11y ago
I enjoy chess (though I haven't played much recently). I definitely see similar skills in both cases (lining up multiple steps to achieve my desired goal). But it's hard to tell whether or not playing chess makes me a better programmer.
deutronium 11y ago
Yup, I love playing chess, I play most weeks against a friend. I guess chess involves visualising moves and developing tactics to force checkmate. I'm not sure how much cross-over there is with programming skills though. I once tried to write a simple chess bot, which was enjoyable, despite not getting very far, learning how to represent the board as a sequence of bits etc.
jordigh 11y ago
I do, but I don't think chess translates into programming. I recently found lichess.org, which I heartily endorse because it's free software: https://github.com/ornicar/lila https://github.com/ornicar/lila
pawn 11y ago
I play chess. Bet that's a shocker when you look at my user name... I don't think that chess skills transfer to programming skills - I wouldn't recommend someone play chess as a way to get better at programming or vice versa. Do I think being good at one indicates possible proficiency at the other? Maybe, but probably not. They can be approached the same way, at least below the grand master level - you can see each one as a series of small tactical problems to be solved. However, some of the best programmers I've known weren't good at chess and the best chess player I've personally known was a mediocre programmer. So, anecdotal evidence is that the two don't correlate.
- zwischenzug 11y ago
  See also my name :)
moron4hire 11y ago
I like the idea of playing chess a lot more than the reality of it. I usually go through a period with games where I don't understand them, find them bewildering, spend a short time on my own to learn the rules, then I'm good to go and can quite enjoy the game. Even with watching pro sports, if I at least know the rules, I can follow the progression of play and know when good plays happen. With chess, I've tried to read about it and learn how to play more than just the basics of moving pieces and still, I still don't "see" the game. I guess it's the memorization needed for the opening and end games. I memorize by exercise. The things I can rattle of the top of my head are usually facts and figures and formulas I've had to use frequently. With chess, it seems to require a significant amount of pre-memorization, the broader, the better. I have always resisted such memorization tasks, even as a little kid. I prefer understanding core principles and reasoning my way to the details on the fly. Most people who know my work think of me as an excellent programmer, so if chess has an impact on programmer skill, it's at the very least not required.
valarauca1 11y ago
Yes and No. Chess is a lot of memorization once you understand the game. End Game/Open Game have to both be played prefectly at high end, or your opponenet will literally know how to defeat you. I find Go translates more to programming since it forces you think about more abstract concepts like influence, when to/to not act. There aren't as many hard and fast rules in the meta-game like chess which allow more creativity and self expression. --- The idea a programmer has to play Chess/Go is lot like the idea a programmer has to study advanced math. Really you are just learning logical problem solving, and rational ways of analyzing the state of a system.
- jayturley 11y ago
  Agreed. I was into Chess in high school and college, but once I discovered Go, I never looked back.
- ccvannorman 11y ago
  Another Go [1] enthusiast here, I never really got into Chess (here and there it was a bit of fun) but it never captivated me like Go. Chess is like a toy, Go is like an object of beauty. [1] Go (disambiguation - the game, not the lang) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)
dsr_ 11y ago
Directly? No. Indirectly? Yes. Learning to think through the steps of an operation in terms of available and unavailable options is probably highly correlated to thinking about code flow. The major difference between a competent programmer and a non-programmer is that the programmer is used to specifying what is going on in a restrictive, typo-sensitive written language. Would I advocate learning chess as a specific method to learn programming skills? No, not particularly.
Yenrabbit 11y ago
I occasionally play, and I'd like to play more. I don't think it specifically helps programming, but it does get me to concentrate on one thing only for an extended period of time (or lose!). Plus, you never know when you'll need to beat someone at chess to prove that you're the alpha nerd :P
internic555d 11y ago
The most interesting I've gotten out of chess is to learn that analysis creates its own vocabulary: flight square, pivot square, backward pawn, dark-squared weaknesses, etc. I think the best programmers get more enjoyment from programming than playing chess.
javanix 11y ago
I'd consider myself a good programmer but an absolutely terrible chess player, so no, I don't think they really have much bearing.
- amag 11y ago
  I second that. I never had much interest in learning to play chess well. In my case I guess it's about when programming I work towards a specific outcome I find interesting for some reason. Winning/losing isn't an interesting outcome for me.
  - javanix 11y ago
    I cannot for the life of me make it through a game of chess without making some catastrophic blunder. If programming was that unforgiving I'd have to buy a new system every time I wrote a function.
Kenji 11y ago
Only when I implement the n-queens problem in Haskell ;) That being said, I would probably be around 1000 elo (that is, absolutely terrible) but I am a halfway decent programmer so I think there's barely any correlation, if any at all.
platz 11y ago
No. https://medium.com/message/why-chess-will-destroy-your-mind-78ad1034521f https://medium.com/message/why-chess-will-destroy-your-mind-... Nice piece about "chess sickness" and Duchamp (and he created less art and became more consumed with Chess) that echoes this post: http://thepointmag.com/2014/examined-life/exiles-game http://thepointmag.com/2014/examined-life/exiles-game “Much of an exile’s life is taken up with compensating for disorienting loss by creating a new world to rule,” wrote Edward Said. “It is not surprising that so many exiles seem to be novelists [and] chess players.” Additionally, I don't see the connection to programming.
kohanz 11y ago
Translatable skills? No. Improved brain function? Yes, I believe so. It has been shown in various studies that learning and excelling at chess changes the way that your brain is wired in a way that improves your analytical thinking and problem solving abilities [0]. Kids who learn chess at an early age, do better at math, for example. Personally, I played competitive chess at a young age (achieved Master level at age 17, which is good but not spectacular, before quitting to focus on engineering studies) and I do believe that my above-average analytical thinking skills to this day can partially be credited to the changes in my brain from those years in my youth spent studying and playing chess for hours. [0] http://mic.com/articles/119332/how-chess-players-brains-are-different-from-everybody-else-s http://mic.com/articles/119332/how-chess-players-brains-are-...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
stephengillie 11y ago
I stopped playing chess years ago. It's an interesting game but newer games are more interesting. It's essentially an ancient form of the "Tactics" game type. Other games, like Robo Rally, translate to computer programming much more directly. Create a set of instructions to do what you want, sure. Then watch as chaos from others causes those instructions to do something totally unexpected. Then you have to figure out how to recover from it. Or the Collectible Card Game model created by Magic: The Gathering. Each player takes turns having their instructions loaded and processed. And each player puts instructions on the stack, which are processed in order and can be interrupted.
TheCowboy 11y ago
If you're asking this as a hardcore chess player interested in getting into programming, then you should just jump in and give it a try. If you are trying to play chess to increase your "programmer's IQ" then I would recommend passing. I think the honest way to think of this is that: Playing chess is a really good way of figuring out who is good at playing chess. But, the abilities and aptitudes that often help aid being good at chess can be valuable assets in becoming a good programmer. Strong sense of logic. Able to think multiple steps in advance and the consequences. A strong memory can be useful. Where it might frustrate a chess player, is that chess lacks an element of imperfect information. Real world programming isn't a perfect self-contained world where everything is known. It is impossible to know every aspect of programming as well as the rules of chess. You'll write bugs, and bugs in other software will create unpredictable problems. Users will add a random element into how your software breaks. Malicious attackers will find holes in what you've written. Things will just break.
- gavazzy 11y ago
  > chess lacks an element of imperfect information To airframeng: if you are interested in games with imperfect information, consider: * bridge * poker * Twilight Struggle board game These games hide competitor's positions and force you to reason about what your opponent's position could be, and not just what it is.
- zwischenzug 11y ago
  I've never understood the 'imperfect information' thing when discussing chess. Chess _as played by people_ is full of hunches, uncertainty, prejudice, intimidation. Just look at how Kasparov played or Lasker, to see how important psychology is to chess. Or go down to Washington Square Gardens and play under the glare of dozens of people tutting at your every move. It's so much more than an abstract problem.
  - EvilPopsicleDog 11y ago
    Yes, but the possible input to a chess game is strictly limited - one player cannot just change the way a piece moves or introduce a new piece, and thus, it is not taken into account in any strategy. These sorts things must be taken into account when programming.
dwc 11y ago
I do play, though not as much in the past year or so. I think there's intersection between chess and programming skill sets, but not significantly more or less than anything else using logic and attention to detail.
neilh23 11y ago
I play Go a lot, and chess occasionally. I think it's about mindset not skillset - games like these are about solving local problems ('tactics') to achieve a greater aim ('strategy'); people who are attracted to them are generally people who like the sort of problem solving that comes up in programming, hence the cross-over. Your question, however was whether or not the skills translate - I don't think that solving daily chess problems or tsumego will do as much for your programming than solving programming puzzles (e.g. codewars), but the discipline of thinking through all possible paths ('reading') definitely helps.
- ccvannorman 11y ago
  neil, are you on OGS?
  - neilh23 11y ago
    Yeah :-)
a3n 11y ago
Maybe indirectly, in that you probably get better at Hard Activity A if you get out of it often and focus on Hard Activity B. Sort of like dreaming to sort out your brain for the next day.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
No, not really.
Apreche 11y ago
No, I play Android: Netrunner.
onion2k 11y ago
Yes, but it doesn't help me code better. How it does help is using chess as a problem space. Chess is such a beautiful game to write code for because it's tightly constrained and strategically flexible. For example, one of my side projects is a chess game where each player is actually a team of players who're all playing the same game - everyone on Team White enters a move, and the most commonly entered move is the one that actually gets played, then Team Black do the same, and so on. There is so much you can do to mix coding and chess.
rectang 11y ago
I play online. There are worse vices. I hack the game by playing crappy openings to get people off-book. If I could play nothing but Chess960[1], I'd be happier. Chess is buggy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960 "... The random setup renders the prospect of obtaining an advantage through the memorization of opening lines impracticable, compelling players to rely on their talent and creativity."
franzpeterstein 11y ago
I'am programmer, no time for games.
noir_lord 11y ago
Yes and No. I'm a fairly terrible player, I played for a local team when I was younger and had the time (bottom series, sub). I'm certainly a better programmer than a chess player. That said I follow the game, love to play and the surrounding community of players so there is that aspect to it.
S4M 11y ago
I used to play chess competitively (rating 1900+ fide), and play on internet sometimes. I think playing chess will not help to improve someone's programming skills (except if he specializes in building chess engines), but chess tends to attract the same kind of persons who go into programming.
kushti 11y ago
I've 1841 Elo in Blitz on Lichess, would be happy to play with dear HNers there: http://en.lichess.org/@/kushti http://en.lichess.org/@/kushti
anthony_romeo 11y ago
I do enjoy chess: http://www.chess.com/members/view/play2draw http://www.chess.com/members/view/play2draw There really isn't much overlap between chess and programming. Programming is closer to an artisan craft than a sport. I mean, sure, you can probably find a few strands which connect the two somehow, but really you could probably draw other weak connections to things like swimming or football or weight lifting, or for that matter even other unrelated subjects like painting or singing.
johnloeber 11y ago
I used to play chess somewhat seriously, though I focused on the Chess960 variant (I think it's a much more interesting game). My opinion is that the only real predictor of how good someone is at chess is how much they have practiced, and conversely, the only thing that playing chess makes you better at is playing chess. I've sunk a few hundred hours into playing chess, and the conclusion I arrived at was that the skills and mode of thinking cultivated by playing chess are largely non-transferable. Granted, playing chess has given me a few analogies for thinking about certain real-life situations, but I learned those in my first few hours of play. Ultimately, I stopped playing chess. Perhaps this is an unorthodox opinion, but chess ended up being something I don't want to be extremely good at, simply because that requires a great deal of time investment, and I view the time I spent playing chess as largely wasted. I grew bored with the limited and mechanical nature of the game and quit. Haven't looked back. I think the reputation of chess as one of the greatest "thinking games" is severely undeserved. The vast majority of the game is about routine and mechanical/technical formalisms. If you wish to practice your thinking or programming skills, there are much better ways for you to use your time (programming is one).
- aerovistae 11y ago
  I could not possibly agree more. I have always been confused by the bold assertions to the value of chess as the greatest game of all time. Yes, it's over 1500 years old and continues to amuse, but checkers is even older, and there's card games, and then Monopoly is basically just real life, so, that counts as eldest. What I mean to say is that chess is just another game, and just happens to be one of the old ones. It's a great game! But it's not like the holy incarnation of everything a game should be. For people who defend chess's value by pointing to the enormous game complexity, the number of possible games / moves / etc, the same exact thing can be said of Super Smash Brothers and countless other multiplayer video games. Is Super Smash Brothers the greatest game in history?? (yes)
- moron4hire 11y ago
  I felt the same way about poker. I can see the mechanics of poker a lot easier than I can see them with chess. But if I'm going to spend the time, effort, and money to become very proficient at poker, then why don't I spend a similar amount of time, effort, and money on starting a software company? That revelation was the beginning of end of me regularly playing games of any kind. I still occasionally play video games, but I treat it more like watching a movie on Netflix. I usually only play through once on the medium setting, whereas in my early 20s I was very much a completionist, even for games I didn't much care for.
amenghra 11y ago
In general no. Learning/playing chess however requires being able to focus on a specific problem for long periods of time (2-4 hours), which is a good skill to have. I remember spending entire mornings studying the game as a kid. I'm unsure if chess gave me the skill or if having be ability to focus made me enjoy the game.
olympus 11y ago
To answer your question, some of the higher level skills may translate, but it isn't like a direct mapping of skills (i.e., a person who is good at TIG welding will almost definitely be good at soldering with little effort - it's all about heat management and metal flow). Memorizing openings could mean that you will have an easier time learning standard libraries and syntax. Realizing that some pieces can move certain ways that others cannot could make it easier to learn object-oriented programming. Thinking several steps ahead and avoiding endgame stalemates could help you with loop-writing (or at least avoiding infinite loops). But a lot of this is dependent on a particular language. I don't see chess being a lot of help with a functional language like Haskell. But an imperative language like C or an object oriented language like Java, sure. A good chess player will still have to study and learn like the rest of the world, but I'd put their chances of becoming a competent programmer above the middle of the general population.
napolux 11y ago
What about poker, then?
threatofrain 11y ago
I suspect that the factors which would bias some people toward chess might also predict better programming ability, so I doubt a chess intervention would be useful, at least no more useful than some other activity like basketball or drawing. Math might be different.
joehilton 11y ago
I play chess regularly, and while I don't think chess skills translate into programming skills, I do think there is a moderately high incidence of good chess players being good programmers. However, I believe this to be because you've got thorough minds that "see" lots of possibilities, and those minds are good at both chess and programming. From my experience in coding as well as hiring coders, I've actually found that the best programmers are those that can make deductive arguments quickly. Most argumentative people argue inductively with anecdotes, references to studies, analogies, etc. But when you find someone who argues deductively by slipping in premises for tacit or explicit agreement and then lowering the boom with an axiomatic conclusion, this person usually creates good code for me. For computers, chess games are deductive problems where all (or almost all) possible moves (arguments) are examined to choose the best one, which is only made possible by binary brains. For humans, chess is extremely inductive - analogies, patterns, general underlying strategies albeit with changing particulars, etc. The best human chess players deductively analyze multiple possibilities of these inductive patterns (read Bobby Fischer - who I have not played, Tal Shaked - who I have played, and others on the amazing way they do this). So while the skill is not transferable, there are some similar aptitudes in good programmers and good chess players. I know there's a holy grail out there of the ultimate programming skills assessment test, and I don't have it. But what I do is this: I give two programming problems (no language or syntax required at all, just the problem basically in comments). They have to solve it in a robust way (and every now and then someone comes up with a brilliant solution I haven't seen yet, although most people suggest the same stuff over and over again), and then they have to defend why the solution is good while I time them. Most people can learn to think (and argue) deductively, but very, very few that I have found do this instinctively (and can thereby do it 10x faster than the average person). When I find someone who can even do it 2x faster than the average bear, I hire that person. It's just so rare. I know that's not a perfect test, but as someone who both plays chess and also is constantly looking for a good indicators for programming skills, this is what I do. I've had pretty decent success this way. So who knows, according to my methods, maybe the best lawyers and philosphers are actually the best programmers.

41 points by airframeng 11y ago

if so, do you think chess skills translate into good programming skills?

I do play. No, I don't think chess skills translate into anything - the only "real" skill I've learned is how to practice efficiently. It's a fun game and I play it for what it is.

sebg 11y ago

from the first google result for "chess programming skills", this article (http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-can-chess-teach-us-about.html http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-can-chess-tea...) gives a few thoughts on why chess skills can translate into good programming skills.

kele 11y ago

Why would you think that chess skills should translate into good programming skills?

joaorj 11y ago
I don't think he thought it through very well.. But if being generous because in chess you have to memorize lots of openings and if you want to know lots of languages there's a bit of memorization aswell.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

I play Chess and Go. I also write programs to play.

calebm 11y ago

I enjoy chess (though I haven't played much recently). I definitely see similar skills in both cases (lining up multiple steps to achieve my desired goal). But it's hard to tell whether or not playing chess makes me a better programmer.

deutronium 11y ago

Yup, I love playing chess, I play most weeks against a friend. I guess chess involves visualising moves and developing tactics to force checkmate. I'm not sure how much cross-over there is with programming skills though. I once tried to write a simple chess bot, which was enjoyable, despite not getting very far, learning how to represent the board as a sequence of bits etc.

jordigh 11y ago

I do, but I don't think chess translates into programming. I recently found lichess.org, which I heartily endorse because it's free software: https://github.com/ornicar/lila https://github.com/ornicar/lila

pawn 11y ago

I play chess. Bet that's a shocker when you look at my user name... I don't think that chess skills transfer to programming skills - I wouldn't recommend someone play chess as a way to get better at programming or vice versa. Do I think being good at one indicates possible proficiency at the other? Maybe, but probably not. They can be approached the same way, at least below the grand master level - you can see each one as a series of small tactical problems to be solved. However, some of the best programmers I've known weren't good at chess and the best chess player I've personally known was a mediocre programmer. So, anecdotal evidence is that the two don't correlate.

zwischenzug 11y ago
See also my name :)

moron4hire 11y ago

I like the idea of playing chess a lot more than the reality of it. I usually go through a period with games where I don't understand them, find them bewildering, spend a short time on my own to learn the rules, then I'm good to go and can quite enjoy the game. Even with watching pro sports, if I at least know the rules, I can follow the progression of play and know when good plays happen. With chess, I've tried to read about it and learn how to play more than just the basics of moving pieces and still, I still don't "see" the game. I guess it's the memorization needed for the opening and end games. I memorize by exercise. The things I can rattle of the top of my head are usually facts and figures and formulas I've had to use frequently. With chess, it seems to require a significant amount of pre-memorization, the broader, the better. I have always resisted such memorization tasks, even as a little kid. I prefer understanding core principles and reasoning my way to the details on the fly. Most people who know my work think of me as an excellent programmer, so if chess has an impact on programmer skill, it's at the very least not required.

valarauca1 11y ago

Yes and No. Chess is a lot of memorization once you understand the game. End Game/Open Game have to both be played prefectly at high end, or your opponenet will literally know how to defeat you. I find Go translates more to programming since it forces you think about more abstract concepts like influence, when to/to not act. There aren't as many hard and fast rules in the meta-game like chess which allow more creativity and self expression. --- The idea a programmer has to play Chess/Go is lot like the idea a programmer has to study advanced math. Really you are just learning logical problem solving, and rational ways of analyzing the state of a system.

jayturley 11y ago
Agreed. I was into Chess in high school and college, but once I discovered Go, I never looked back.
ccvannorman 11y ago
Another Go [1] enthusiast here, I never really got into Chess (here and there it was a bit of fun) but it never captivated me like Go. Chess is like a toy, Go is like an object of beauty. [1] Go (disambiguation - the game, not the lang) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)

dsr_ 11y ago

Directly? No. Indirectly? Yes. Learning to think through the steps of an operation in terms of available and unavailable options is probably highly correlated to thinking about code flow. The major difference between a competent programmer and a non-programmer is that the programmer is used to specifying what is going on in a restrictive, typo-sensitive written language. Would I advocate learning chess as a specific method to learn programming skills? No, not particularly.

Yenrabbit 11y ago

I occasionally play, and I'd like to play more. I don't think it specifically helps programming, but it does get me to concentrate on one thing only for an extended period of time (or lose!). Plus, you never know when you'll need to beat someone at chess to prove that you're the alpha nerd :P

internic555d 11y ago

The most interesting I've gotten out of chess is to learn that analysis creates its own vocabulary: flight square, pivot square, backward pawn, dark-squared weaknesses, etc. I think the best programmers get more enjoyment from programming than playing chess.

javanix 11y ago

I'd consider myself a good programmer but an absolutely terrible chess player, so no, I don't think they really have much bearing.

amag 11y ago
I second that. I never had much interest in learning to play chess well. In my case I guess it's about when programming I work towards a specific outcome I find interesting for some reason. Winning/losing isn't an interesting outcome for me.
- javanix 11y ago
  I cannot for the life of me make it through a game of chess without making some catastrophic blunder. If programming was that unforgiving I'd have to buy a new system every time I wrote a function.

Kenji 11y ago

Only when I implement the n-queens problem in Haskell ;) That being said, I would probably be around 1000 elo (that is, absolutely terrible) but I am a halfway decent programmer so I think there's barely any correlation, if any at all.

platz 11y ago

No. https://medium.com/message/why-chess-will-destroy-your-mind-78ad1034521f https://medium.com/message/why-chess-will-destroy-your-mind-... Nice piece about "chess sickness" and Duchamp (and he created less art and became more consumed with Chess) that echoes this post: http://thepointmag.com/2014/examined-life/exiles-game http://thepointmag.com/2014/examined-life/exiles-game “Much of an exile’s life is taken up with compensating for disorienting loss by creating a new world to rule,” wrote Edward Said. “It is not surprising that so many exiles seem to be novelists [and] chess players.” Additionally, I don't see the connection to programming.

kohanz 11y ago

Translatable skills? No. Improved brain function? Yes, I believe so. It has been shown in various studies that learning and excelling at chess changes the way that your brain is wired in a way that improves your analytical thinking and problem solving abilities [0]. Kids who learn chess at an early age, do better at math, for example. Personally, I played competitive chess at a young age (achieved Master level at age 17, which is good but not spectacular, before quitting to focus on engineering studies) and I do believe that my above-average analytical thinking skills to this day can partially be credited to the changes in my brain from those years in my youth spent studying and playing chess for hours. [0] http://mic.com/articles/119332/how-chess-players-brains-are-different-from-everybody-else-s http://mic.com/articles/119332/how-chess-players-brains-are-...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

stephengillie 11y ago

I stopped playing chess years ago. It's an interesting game but newer games are more interesting. It's essentially an ancient form of the "Tactics" game type. Other games, like Robo Rally, translate to computer programming much more directly. Create a set of instructions to do what you want, sure. Then watch as chaos from others causes those instructions to do something totally unexpected. Then you have to figure out how to recover from it. Or the Collectible Card Game model created by Magic: The Gathering. Each player takes turns having their instructions loaded and processed. And each player puts instructions on the stack, which are processed in order and can be interrupted.

TheCowboy 11y ago

If you're asking this as a hardcore chess player interested in getting into programming, then you should just jump in and give it a try. If you are trying to play chess to increase your "programmer's IQ" then I would recommend passing. I think the honest way to think of this is that: Playing chess is a really good way of figuring out who is good at playing chess. But, the abilities and aptitudes that often help aid being good at chess can be valuable assets in becoming a good programmer. Strong sense of logic. Able to think multiple steps in advance and the consequences. A strong memory can be useful. Where it might frustrate a chess player, is that chess lacks an element of imperfect information. Real world programming isn't a perfect self-contained world where everything is known. It is impossible to know every aspect of programming as well as the rules of chess. You'll write bugs, and bugs in other software will create unpredictable problems. Users will add a random element into how your software breaks. Malicious attackers will find holes in what you've written. Things will just break.

gavazzy 11y ago
> chess lacks an element of imperfect information To airframeng: if you are interested in games with imperfect information, consider: * bridge * poker * Twilight Struggle board game These games hide competitor's positions and force you to reason about what your opponent's position could be, and not just what it is.
zwischenzug 11y ago
I've never understood the 'imperfect information' thing when discussing chess. Chess _as played by people_ is full of hunches, uncertainty, prejudice, intimidation. Just look at how Kasparov played or Lasker, to see how important psychology is to chess. Or go down to Washington Square Gardens and play under the glare of dozens of people tutting at your every move. It's so much more than an abstract problem.
- EvilPopsicleDog 11y ago
  Yes, but the possible input to a chess game is strictly limited - one player cannot just change the way a piece moves or introduce a new piece, and thus, it is not taken into account in any strategy. These sorts things must be taken into account when programming.

dwc 11y ago

I do play, though not as much in the past year or so. I think there's intersection between chess and programming skill sets, but not significantly more or less than anything else using logic and attention to detail.

neilh23 11y ago

I play Go a lot, and chess occasionally. I think it's about mindset not skillset - games like these are about solving local problems ('tactics') to achieve a greater aim ('strategy'); people who are attracted to them are generally people who like the sort of problem solving that comes up in programming, hence the cross-over. Your question, however was whether or not the skills translate - I don't think that solving daily chess problems or tsumego will do as much for your programming than solving programming puzzles (e.g. codewars), but the discipline of thinking through all possible paths ('reading') definitely helps.

ccvannorman 11y ago
neil, are you on OGS?
- neilh23 11y ago
  Yeah :-)

a3n 11y ago

Maybe indirectly, in that you probably get better at Hard Activity A if you get out of it often and focus on Hard Activity B. Sort of like dreaming to sort out your brain for the next day.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

No, not really.

Apreche 11y ago

No, I play Android: Netrunner.

onion2k 11y ago

Yes, but it doesn't help me code better. How it does help is using chess as a problem space. Chess is such a beautiful game to write code for because it's tightly constrained and strategically flexible. For example, one of my side projects is a chess game where each player is actually a team of players who're all playing the same game - everyone on Team White enters a move, and the most commonly entered move is the one that actually gets played, then Team Black do the same, and so on. There is so much you can do to mix coding and chess.

rectang 11y ago

I play online. There are worse vices. I hack the game by playing crappy openings to get people off-book. If I could play nothing but Chess960[1], I'd be happier. Chess is buggy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960 "... The random setup renders the prospect of obtaining an advantage through the memorization of opening lines impracticable, compelling players to rely on their talent and creativity."

franzpeterstein 11y ago

I'am programmer, no time for games.

noir_lord 11y ago

Yes and No. I'm a fairly terrible player, I played for a local team when I was younger and had the time (bottom series, sub). I'm certainly a better programmer than a chess player. That said I follow the game, love to play and the surrounding community of players so there is that aspect to it.

S4M 11y ago

I used to play chess competitively (rating 1900+ fide), and play on internet sometimes. I think playing chess will not help to improve someone's programming skills (except if he specializes in building chess engines), but chess tends to attract the same kind of persons who go into programming.

kushti 11y ago

I've 1841 Elo in Blitz on Lichess, would be happy to play with dear HNers there: http://en.lichess.org/@/kushti http://en.lichess.org/@/kushti

anthony_romeo 11y ago

I do enjoy chess: http://www.chess.com/members/view/play2draw http://www.chess.com/members/view/play2draw There really isn't much overlap between chess and programming. Programming is closer to an artisan craft than a sport. I mean, sure, you can probably find a few strands which connect the two somehow, but really you could probably draw other weak connections to things like swimming or football or weight lifting, or for that matter even other unrelated subjects like painting or singing.

johnloeber 11y ago

I used to play chess somewhat seriously, though I focused on the Chess960 variant (I think it's a much more interesting game). My opinion is that the only real predictor of how good someone is at chess is how much they have practiced, and conversely, the only thing that playing chess makes you better at is playing chess. I've sunk a few hundred hours into playing chess, and the conclusion I arrived at was that the skills and mode of thinking cultivated by playing chess are largely non-transferable. Granted, playing chess has given me a few analogies for thinking about certain real-life situations, but I learned those in my first few hours of play. Ultimately, I stopped playing chess. Perhaps this is an unorthodox opinion, but chess ended up being something I don't want to be extremely good at, simply because that requires a great deal of time investment, and I view the time I spent playing chess as largely wasted. I grew bored with the limited and mechanical nature of the game and quit. Haven't looked back. I think the reputation of chess as one of the greatest "thinking games" is severely undeserved. The vast majority of the game is about routine and mechanical/technical formalisms. If you wish to practice your thinking or programming skills, there are much better ways for you to use your time (programming is one).

aerovistae 11y ago
I could not possibly agree more. I have always been confused by the bold assertions to the value of chess as the greatest game of all time. Yes, it's over 1500 years old and continues to amuse, but checkers is even older, and there's card games, and then Monopoly is basically just real life, so, that counts as eldest. What I mean to say is that chess is just another game, and just happens to be one of the old ones. It's a great game! But it's not like the holy incarnation of everything a game should be. For people who defend chess's value by pointing to the enormous game complexity, the number of possible games / moves / etc, the same exact thing can be said of Super Smash Brothers and countless other multiplayer video games. Is Super Smash Brothers the greatest game in history?? (yes)
moron4hire 11y ago
I felt the same way about poker. I can see the mechanics of poker a lot easier than I can see them with chess. But if I'm going to spend the time, effort, and money to become very proficient at poker, then why don't I spend a similar amount of time, effort, and money on starting a software company? That revelation was the beginning of end of me regularly playing games of any kind. I still occasionally play video games, but I treat it more like watching a movie on Netflix. I usually only play through once on the medium setting, whereas in my early 20s I was very much a completionist, even for games I didn't much care for.

amenghra 11y ago

In general no. Learning/playing chess however requires being able to focus on a specific problem for long periods of time (2-4 hours), which is a good skill to have. I remember spending entire mornings studying the game as a kid. I'm unsure if chess gave me the skill or if having be ability to focus made me enjoy the game.

olympus 11y ago

To answer your question, some of the higher level skills may translate, but it isn't like a direct mapping of skills (i.e., a person who is good at TIG welding will almost definitely be good at soldering with little effort - it's all about heat management and metal flow). Memorizing openings could mean that you will have an easier time learning standard libraries and syntax. Realizing that some pieces can move certain ways that others cannot could make it easier to learn object-oriented programming. Thinking several steps ahead and avoiding endgame stalemates could help you with loop-writing (or at least avoiding infinite loops). But a lot of this is dependent on a particular language. I don't see chess being a lot of help with a functional language like Haskell. But an imperative language like C or an object oriented language like Java, sure. A good chess player will still have to study and learn like the rest of the world, but I'd put their chances of becoming a competent programmer above the middle of the general population.

napolux 11y ago

What about poker, then?

threatofrain 11y ago

I suspect that the factors which would bias some people toward chess might also predict better programming ability, so I doubt a chess intervention would be useful, at least no more useful than some other activity like basketball or drawing. Math might be different.

joehilton 11y ago

I play chess regularly, and while I don't think chess skills translate into programming skills, I do think there is a moderately high incidence of good chess players being good programmers. However, I believe this to be because you've got thorough minds that "see" lots of possibilities, and those minds are good at both chess and programming. From my experience in coding as well as hiring coders, I've actually found that the best programmers are those that can make deductive arguments quickly. Most argumentative people argue inductively with anecdotes, references to studies, analogies, etc. But when you find someone who argues deductively by slipping in premises for tacit or explicit agreement and then lowering the boom with an axiomatic conclusion, this person usually creates good code for me. For computers, chess games are deductive problems where all (or almost all) possible moves (arguments) are examined to choose the best one, which is only made possible by binary brains. For humans, chess is extremely inductive - analogies, patterns, general underlying strategies albeit with changing particulars, etc. The best human chess players deductively analyze multiple possibilities of these inductive patterns (read Bobby Fischer - who I have not played, Tal Shaked - who I have played, and others on the amazing way they do this). So while the skill is not transferable, there are some similar aptitudes in good programmers and good chess players. I know there's a holy grail out there of the ultimate programming skills assessment test, and I don't have it. But what I do is this: I give two programming problems (no language or syntax required at all, just the problem basically in comments). They have to solve it in a robust way (and every now and then someone comes up with a brilliant solution I haven't seen yet, although most people suggest the same stuff over and over again), and then they have to defend why the solution is good while I time them. Most people can learn to think (and argue) deductively, but very, very few that I have found do this instinctively (and can thereby do it 10x faster than the average person). When I find someone who can even do it 2x faster than the average bear, I hire that person. It's just so rare. I know that's not a perfect test, but as someone who both plays chess and also is constantly looking for a good indicators for programming skills, this is what I do. I've had pretty decent success this way. So who knows, according to my methods, maybe the best lawyers and philosphers are actually the best programmers.