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Chess is taking over the online video game streaming world and it will change
- mellosouls 6y agoFabulous time for chess. Recent discussion on the same subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23537774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23537774 Btw this article is lifted from a less addy site here: https://theconversation.com/chess-is-taking-over-the-online-video-game-world-and-both-are-changing-from-this-unlikely-pairing-143790 https://theconversation.com/chess-is-taking-over-the-online-...
- searchableguy 6y agoOof, I came across this just few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24384797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24384797 I should have been more careful.
- searchableguy 6y agoIt's good time to mention that there is a lichess HN chess group: https://lichess.org/team/hacker-news https://lichess.org/team/hacker-news Although it's been a little dead since last time. I have been thinking of reviving it but lichess notifications aren't very good at least the forum system. Many people don't login to their account on a regular basis so it's easy to miss them. An an email based invitation system seems better. What do you guys think? Is anyone interested in maintaining a sort of a club for HN members so we could include everything like open source experimentation and streaming place [0] from a few days ago? 0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24333474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24333474 Edit: Started a substack. I will head out now! https://hnclub.substack.com https://hnclub.substack.com https://hnclub.substack.com/p/lichess-tournament-next-weekend-12 https://hnclub.substack.com/p/lichess-tournament-next-weeken...
- yogrish 6y agoMy son and his online class teacher uses lichess extensively. He is learning a lot with it.
- jjcm 6y agoHeadline is almost certainly clickbait. While yes chess is increasing in viewership, 4,313 average viewers is hardly taking over Twitch’s 15 million daily viewers. Chess is currently the 29th most popular game on Twitch: https://sullygnome.com/games/30/watched https://sullygnome.com/games/30/watched
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y agoIt doesn't get high viewership, but as a cultural moment for the site, it was huge. Chess posts regularly topped LSF for several weeks, and they remain strong. It was popular enough that it drew a strong reactionary movement of people complaining about chess posts. You can argue about clickbait, but the view counts (not that #30 is shabby at all) don't do it justice.
- gnaman 6y agoAlthough the article only talks about Twitch chess streamers, Chess on YouTube is booming with streamers like GM Vidit Gujarathi, Samay Raina and Chessbase India channel pulling in an average of 30k concurrent viewers. GM Anish Giri also streams on YouTube with respectable concurrent viewers.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoI just watched Nakamura play chess blindfolded yesterday while holding up a lively conversation. I know that blindfolded chess has been a thing for a long time, but it is always so impressive to me. Any hope that I'd have of keeping positions in my head would be gone as soon as someone talked to me.
- throwawayiionqz 6y agoWhat's the point of slowly moving pieces of wood when everything fits in RAM
- mlyle 6y agoIt's an networking mechanism to send state changes to the other agent and broadcast them to nearby subscribers. It has the side effect of semi-durably persisting the state, too.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoThe range is terrible. Lower than Bluetooth and mugch tighter line of sight too. And it's less durable than a smartphone which is great as saving to SSD at shutdown.
- addandsubtract 6y agoEven more impressive were the scrambled games, where the back line pieces were out of order. So he first had to figure out where on the board the pieces actually are – blindfolded.
- II2II 6y agoTaking over is probably a bit of an overstatement, but I would be thrilled if it grew in popularity. Not only is it a game of thought, but it is a game that I have taught children using nothing more than scraps of paper (to make the board and pieces). The article mentions a cultural clash. That isn't so unusual for the game. The history of chess can be traced back centuries, with both variations in rules and its place in society. The game survived regardless.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- smusamashah 6y agoIs there a chess game which teaches you well known openings as well? I use to have a java game on my old Nokia phone once. Never found it again. If I made a certain opening, or did a certain move, it use to tell me that I played that particular move.
- jlongr 6y agoLichess will tell you the what opening is being played. It also suggests the 'best move' using arrows. https://lichess.org/ https://lichess.org/
- russellbeattie 6y agoI know this sounds like I'm missing the point, but I'd love to see enhanced clients for chess which graphically pointed out long and short term options for those of us who play casually. That way we could be more like generals choosing among battlefield options, rather than having to memorize openings. As a somewhat odd example, this would be like the Nintendo DS version of Street Fighter - which allowed you to assign on-screen buttons for common attacks. Rather than having to master a series of button presses and execute perfectly, you could just tap the button and fire off a Hadoken. Would I ever compete at EVO playing the game like that? No, of course not. But it was fun! I still lost a lot, but it was just a deeper game. I think the same could be done for Chess. Let those of us with mediocre knowledge and skills play the game at the level the masters play at with the help of some AI. Rather than handicapping with time or giving up a piece, let the other player have options to get help from the AI once in a while - say 3 times during the game. Or have it set to not allow blunders without confirmation. There's a lot that could be done to add pleasure to the game.
- GreedCtrl 6y ago> Let those of us with mediocre knowledge and skills play the game at the level the masters play at with the help of some AI. Correspondance games on lichess.org give you an opening explorer which shows you what masters have played before. (Click on the microscope, then on the book icon.) Here's what it looks like: https://i.imgur.com/Hj5Rt0b.png https://i.imgur.com/Hj5Rt0b.png If you really want to play with AI assistance, look for cyborg/centaur/advanced chess. It looks like there's a lichess group for that, but it doesn't seem active anymore: https://lichess.org/team/cyborg https://lichess.org/team/cyborg
- yesenadam 6y ago> rather than having to memorize openings. > those of us with mediocre knowledge and skills Don't worry about openings yet, at all. Practise basic tactics (pins, forks, skewers, discovered attack, overloading, interference etc) until you almost never fall victim to them, and can spot it quickly when others do.
- rraghur 6y ago
- awb 6y agoChess.com has excellent commentary and coverage of popular chess events. Not affiliated, but just impressed with the quality of their commentary, making it informative and exciting.
- chris-orgmenta 6y agoIt's also worth noting that, in general, Twitch chat is less toxic for Chess than other games/categories. I do peruse Twitch fairly regularly looking for streams that resonate. I'm always repulsed by a "LET'S GO BOYS" mentality which meanders between homophobia, sexism, bullying, hate speech. Chess is a very good thing for Twitch.
- eterm 6y agoActually most of the pogchamps players have commented how their chat is more toxic when they're playing chess than other games because of the backseating.
- mlyle 6y agoDifferent kinds of toxicity-- mocking people for missing a mate or hanging a piece is tempting (and perhaps stings more than some random's judgment call about whether you played a round well in some non-perfect-knowledge, reflex-drive game). So more of that type of problem, but a bit less of other types like sexism.
- tsbinz 6y agoWe must be looking at different chess streams. Bullying is super common in a lot of the popular ones, and some of the mods take part in it.
- woutr_be 6y agoI honestly can't stand Twitch chat, nor do I understand it. Where do all these random made up words come from, and how are you supposed to know what they stand for, I simply don't get it. There's a few streamers I watch semi-regularly, but I always turn off the chat.
- newen 6y agoMemes, jokes, culture. You’ll find it in pretty much any internet community to varying degrees.
- dkural 6y agoMarc Esserman is an entertaining streamer of chess in twitch, with music, tennis and world class chess.
- Barrin92 6y agoAlthough probably an unpopular position I agree with Finegold who is quoted in the article. Ever since chess became big on twitch, online communities are increasingly filled with drama around Nakamura's persona, other twitch related drama, or just general gamer-community style content that was largely absent before. The popularity largely focusses on a few twitch celebrities rather than talented players, it does very little to promote chess players who deserve to get more attention for the quality of their play, or just genuinely players who have played for a long time. I think it does little to foster growth of chess as a sport and is just an opportunity to milk whatever commercial value anyone can out of the attention which I wager will be short-lived, as the twitch crowd moves on to the next thing.
- mlyle 6y agoEh. I completely disagree. I don't find all of Nakamura's content equally interesting: I don't care so much about PogChamps (I think it's good for chess, but I don't enjoy watching it much). I have enjoyed watching 4 strong players muddle their way through learning 4 way chess, etc. I've enjoyed watching him play odds games with lots of knights and talk about what he'd discovered about these unusual games. I'm playing more than I used to, and I know a whole bunch of people are picking up the game or playing more as a result of the attention. Yes, some of the attention may be episodic. Bobby Fischer permanently boosted chess in the US, but the remnants of the boost felt today was nowhere near what it was at peak. Still, things compound: some fraction of those who get interested by chess streams will become people who consume chess content that you personally approve of.
- tashi 6y agoIt's worth noting that Ben Finegold is also a streamer and 99% of everything he says is a joke. There's some educational content on his streams, but mostly he hangs out, plays casual games, and insults the audience. It's fun.
- mdoms 6y agoThat sounds truly awful.
- disown 6y agoIt's growing in popularity for sure. Nakamura's streaming, Magnus's tournament and everything moving online due to covid helped. But I wouldn't call it "taking over" and I doubt it has staying power. How long will the casual fans stick around?
- llarsson 6y agoThink of it as a sales funnel. They don't all have to stick around. A percentage of them will, and they might never have come across cheers without this current popularity.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- OG_BME 6y agoChess-related software is certainly booming as well. My favorite recent addition is OpeningTree[0], a platform that lets you input anyone's Lichess or chess.com username and load a tree of their opening moves. I play in the Lichess4545[1] league and its an incredible tool. My contributions to the chess community are much smaller. I wrote u/relevant_post_bot[2] for /r/anarchychess and stylochess[3] in an attempt to solve the identity of mysterious super grandmasters[4]. [0] https://www.openingtree.com https://www.openingtree.com [1] https://www.lichess4545.com/team4545/ https://www.lichess4545.com/team4545/ [2] https://github.com/fmhall/relevant-post-bot https://github.com/fmhall/relevant-post-bot [3] https://github.com/fmhall/stylochess https://github.com/fmhall/stylochess [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/gqlqlz/the_identity_of_gm_konevlad_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/gqlqlz/the_identity_...
- mark_l_watson 6y agoMy own contributions are modest. I wrote the shitty little Chess program that Apple gave away on their early Apple II demo game cassette tape and a few years later wrote and sold a Go playing program for the Apple II. I am going to check out the Twitch Chess ‘show’ mentioned in the article, looks very cool. I enjoy Go webcasts supported by the American Go Association. I use a very strong Go playing program for practice. I have it rate all of my game moves and for each move show the best alternative. It really helps, and has replaced expensive lessons from a South Korean Go professional I took a few years ago. I need to find something similar for Chess. I played in the US Chess Open in 1978, and have not played very many serious games since then.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoLichess has free analysis. Chess.com has limited free analysis.
- cmwelsh 6y agoI did a Ctrl+F and no one so far has posted about cheating! How can we trust a Twitch experience of chess when actual video game streamers have been caught cheating on Call of Duty et all? This seems rife for abuse. I love chess but I wouldn’t play electronically against random folks since the past 15 years.
- dreamer7 6y agoI've been playing fairly regularly on lichess and I can assure you that I have not yet met players that were using computers to cheat. Firstly, lichess may have some simple checks for move strength relative to the player's rating. Secondly, I mostly play 5+0 blitz and it's really hard to cheat as the time goes low with no increments
- cmwelsh 6y agoReal-time fuzzed data isn’t hard to come by when people are hacking memory cheats and DirectX for mainstream games. I hate to be the one to say it, but will we see a 2400 MMR player post his “hack” on HN one day?
- watwut 6y agoPeople on lichess forums complain about cheating fairly regularly and lichess is locking accounts for cheating often and quickly.
- birken 6y agoIn my thousands of games on lichess I've run into a couple of cheaters, but they are very easy to spot. You also get the rating points refunded once they are caught and removed. A standard engine is probably somewhere around 3000 strength (better than any human), and the average person who cheats is probably 1000-1800 strength. Within 1-2 games you can easily tell if a 1500 player is magically playing above super-gm strength all the sudden. The player also isn't going to be good enough to not play the computer moves that give them away, because they won't understand them!
- 6y ago
- 0-_-0 6y agoChess is a good game but the queen is OP. Hope they nerf it in the next patch.
- throwaway5938 6y agoJust passing by to signal-boost the creator of Lichess, a single person who, out of frustration with FICS et al., made an amazing product out of the blue, released it under an open source license and delivered an UX that blew its competitors right out of the water. All it takes one person with skill and generosity to completely change a community for the better. I hope to become one day this kind of person.
- noir_lord 6y agoHe did it with virtually no resources and kept it as simple as possible - that he did it alone is astounding. He has a good talk about how he did it here : - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZgyVadkgmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZgyVadkgmI
- hlth 6y agoA couple friends and I started a Chess Puzzle app (Chess Puzzle Blitz) and chess.com + COVID-19 is a big reason there has been a massive rally in Twitch. Most players you see on Twitch and that have been talked about in this thread are signed to exclusive twitch streaming agreements by chess.com - Chess.com is very profitable. Downside is it solidifies their position as the dominant online player. Upside is it does make chess more known and watched worldwide.
- addandsubtract 6y agoHow come it's not on the Play Store? And I can't download the APK on my desktop. I just get redirected to the Apple App Store.
- dang 6y agoUrl changed from https://scroll.in/field/972176/game-theory-chess-is-taking-over-the-online-video-game-streaming-world-and-that-will-change-it-too https://scroll.in/field/972176/game-theory-chess-is-taking-o..., which points to this.