9 ms·
I once studied the expected remaining length of a game of chess, as a function of moves played: https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/2506/what-is-the-avera
by thomasahle 9y ago
I once studied the expected remaining length of a game of chess, as a function of moves played: https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/2506/what-is-the-average-length-of-a-game-of-chess/4899#4899 https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/2506/what-is-the-a...
What was interesting is that for the first 20 moves (40 half moves) the expected remaining length will decrease at a near linear rate, but then it levels off at about 25 remaining moves, and after 45 moves every move played will _increase_ the expected remaining length.
At the time it surprised me, but of course it is natural to expect long games to be long.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sevenfive 9y agoThe threshold at 45 probably corresponds to endgames where the kings have to walk around the board to take care of pawns.
- stouset 9y agoNot only that, but endgames frequently involve long periods of positional maneuvering that can take dozens of moves before one side realizes an edge, or before it becomes clear that it's heading toward a draw.
- buzzybee 9y agoThe longest possible chess game: https://www.chess.com/blog/kurtgodden/the-longest-possible-chess-game https://www.chess.com/blog/kurtgodden/the-longest-possible-c... Chess AIs, perhaps needless to say, are very good at computing at the depth necessary to win drawn-out endgames.
- xerophyte12932 9y agoHow did you control for player level? I imagine novice games show a different pattern than grand master games
- grkvlt 9y agoLooks like he chose only games where the players had ELO rating > 2000
- xerophyte12932 9y agoHow did you control for player level? I imagine novice games show a different pattern than grand master games
- mannykannot 9y ago> At the time it surprised me, but of course it is natural to expect long games to be long. Indeed, which is why I am skeptical of purely anecdotal claims of the Lindy effect, as they may be skewed by survivorship bias. In this case, however, you have the numbers to back up the observation.
- debacle 9y agoThe Lindy effect and survivorship bias are one in the same. That's kind of the idea. Take programming languages for example. If I asked you to bet on 30 different programming languages which would still be in use in 10 years, and all you knew about them was how long they had already been in use, you'd probably correlate your bets to some degree with their age.
- repsilat 9y agoNo, they're not at all the same thing. Consider radioactive decay. An isotope has a half-life that remains constant over time. After one half-life, the remaining material of that isotope isn't there because it's "special" or robust or less likely to decay, it just got lucky. Its half-life from this point remains unchanged, so it does not display the Lindy effect. Similarly, old humans give us plenty of opportunity to talk about survivorship bias, but we out lifetimes do not display the Lindy effect -- older humans are not expected to have longer remaining lives than young humans.