9 ms·
> They have also become less entertaining. The classical World Championship matches have never been entertaining to watch live. In fact they used to take 2 da
by sgjohnson 4y ago
> They have also become less entertaining.
The classical World Championship matches have never been entertaining to watch live.
In fact they used to take 2 days for one game.
> No one dares to take any risks. Caruana was just defensive and all games ended in a draw.
Chess, in theory, with absolutely perfect play, is a draw. It's not a game of "risk" in classical time format. You can take risks in blitz and rapid, but in classical you have (almost) all the time in the world to calculate the line you're playing.
- matsemann 4y agoI've found them entertaining to watch. But Norwegians are master of slow-TV, so I guess that's why. They have good experts that manage to explain it to normal people. Interesting guests in the studio between moves. Interact with audience through questions from chat etc. > Chess, in theory, with absolutely perfect play, is a draw. I don't think that's solved, actually.
- qw 4y ago> I've found them entertaining to watch. But Norwegians are master of slow-TV, so I guess that's why. They have good experts that manage to explain it to normal people. Interesting guests in the studio between moves. Interact with audience through questions from chat etc. I usually don't follow chess, but I still end up watching the WC matches on Norwegian TV. They manage to make it interesting and exciting.
- sgjohnson 4y agoI do watch the WC matches myself, but definitely not live.
- dhosek 4y agoI love the idea of being somewhere that (a) what the world chess champion does is big news and (2) there are resources dedicated like this to the broadcast of chess matches. American culture is just so ostentatiously mauvais ton in comparison with so many other countries (my other point of comparison was being in England in ’93 and watching a game show where it was clearly a competition of intellectual skills and the winner’s prize was a dictionary—I just cannot imagine that being on American television).
- KingOfCoders 4y agoIf find it suspicious calling a match interesting when people need to have "Interesting guests in the studio between moves. Interact with audience through questions from chat etc." - I always found that suspicious with the NFL too.
- magicalhippo 4y agoThe overall match can be interesting, while still having some periods of lower intensity. The guests are typically celebrities which also has some relation to chess, for example a famous actress being an avid amateur chess player as well. The guests will typically join in on the discussion of the positions, and as such often serves as a proxy for the viewers by asking questions like "but why doesn't he just do X now" and similar. It doesn't always work but overall I think it's been a positive addition to their broadcasts.
- __s 4y agoIt isn't solved but it's pretty obvious. There's enough drawn endgames where material advantage is insufficient to win Antichess at least is a solved win for White
- fijiaarone 4y agoTrips to Spain between moves.
- fouronnes3 4y ago> Chess, in theory, with absolutely perfect play, is a draw. While this is highly likely and essentially agreed upon by all experts on the matter, it's not proven yet.
- nhumrich 4y agoChess is still no-hard, so "proving this" will be near impossible. The closest we have is statistics. I remember watching a "bot battle." A chess tournament for bots only, algorithms playing eachother. Nearly 70% of these games ended in draw.
- adrianN 4y agoChess on an infinite board is asymptotically difficult in the worst case. Chess on an 8x8 board can be solved in constant time.
- scaredginger 4y agoI invite you to sit down and solve it then
- simiones 4y agoA hundred billion years is still constant time. That doesn't mean it's doable.
- sweezyjeezy 4y agoNot sure if this was sarcasm, but that's like saying NP-hardness is no big deal because we only care about finite problems.
- dskloet 4y agoChess on an 8x8 board is not NP-hard. That doesn't mean it's easy but invoking NP-hardness is kind of meaningless.
- TomGullen 4y agoIn theory, wouldn't the player who takes the first move have a tiny tiny edge? Or is the second mover always able to guarantee a draw if they play perfectly?
- philipswood 4y agoStill an open problem. Unlike tic-tac-toe we're not certain if it is a win or a draw for perfect players.
- dane-pgp 4y agoTo give an example from a game more complicated than tic-tac-toe, it is known that the player who goes first in Connect 4 can always win with perfect play if (and only if) they play in the middle column on their first turn. The chess analogue to this would be that there is a single opening move for white that a perfect player can guarantee a win from, or maybe a limited set of opening moves. In fact, there is a variant of chess where this the case, namely "pawns-only chess", where 1.b4, 1.c4, 1.f4, and 1.g4 are winning for white, whereas all other first moves are a win for black with perfect play. https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/8755/is-the-result-in-mini-chess-known-with-perfect-play https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/8755/is-the-result...
- Synaesthesia 4y agoAFAIK it's not a solved game so we cannot say with certainty.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pred_ 4y agoUnless I missed something recent, it is not known whether any player has a winning strategy (or a drawing strategy, for that matter). It would be quite the discovery as well.
- usrusr 4y ago
- sweezyjeezy 4y ago> Chess, in theory, with absolutely perfect play, is a draw. True, but that doesn't mean that you can't treat chess like other sports and try to incentivize wins - for example giving win/loss/draw a 3:1:0 point ratio. The world championship is not a good format to decide "who's the best at chess", and anyway we already know who that is right now. Might as well treat it as a spectator sport and add some drama in my opinion.
- dwighttk 4y agoHow would point ratio help if every game is a draw? Maybe if it was a round robin tournament that would help top two players competing for wins against less highly rated people and then drawing against each other. Like Liverpool and Man City
- arbitrage 4y agoMy feel is that from a game theoretical approach, a 3:1:0 scoring ratio would encourage enough players to at least try for a win sometimes that it would restore some of the interest and competitiveness to the sport.
- franknstein 4y agoWould you play tic-tac-toe for a win with that scoring ratio?
- somenameforme 4y agoThis is an inappropriate analogy. Chess at the highest levels is not drawish because the game is inherently drawish but because the meta of it is. The easiest way to illustrate this is with openings, though it applies throughout the game in different ways. Against e4 the Najdorf defense was once the opening of champions, being a major part of the repertoire of players like Kasparov and Fischer. In modern times it's an increasingly rare guest at the highest level. It's not because it's considered unsound or even slightly dubious - it's a rock solid opening that gives black real winning chances. But the problem is it also gives him real losing chances. It's complex, difficult to play, and if you get outprepared by your opponent you may lose without him even having to make a single move himself, which is really one of the worst feelings in the world. So instead the meta has largely shifted to openings that are more about minimizing risk where black, more or less, aims for a draw - and usually gets it. Changing the risk:reward ratios in a sufficiently extreme way is most certainly capable of changing the meta.
- tobiasvl 4y ago> The classical World Championship matches have never been entertaining to watch live. > In fact they used to take 2 days for one game. Come now. The WCC matches were entertaining to watch for chess enthusiasts. Even when games took two days, people would sit and analyze each position, and that was without computers. They still do that, of course. Although chess computers have taken some of the fun out of the analysis, I've been to several live viewings of the recent WCCs at chess clubs and bars, where a local GM would sit and comment on the position and take questions and suggestions from the crowd. But the WCC matches have become less entertaining for chess enthusiasts, since there is so much defensive play. There isn't too much to analyze in yet another Berlin game. It's entertaining when someone makes a horrible blunder, but not in the same way – there's little to analyze in a position that's blundered. So I'd argue the classical WCC used to be entertaining to watch live for chess enthusiasts, but now they're less entertaining for chess enthusiasts. For "regular people", they've never been very entertaining, except when there's a spectacular blunder, which has never been very entertaining for chess enthusiasts.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago> Chess, in theory, with absolutely perfect play, is a draw. Even the best human players are nowhere near perfect play. Chess engines have proven that even players that are 1000 Elo stronger than the best players alive today can lose. Just look at how each new version of Stockfish absolutely trounces the previous version. Stockfish 7, released 6 years ago, is nearly 500 Elo weaker than the newest version, Stockfish 15.[0] That's the difference between Carlsen and the weakest grandmasters. 0. https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/64992190/179047597-62d5051f-ffa8-47e0-bb10-71c1bbb5fe75.png https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/64992190/179047597...