15 ms·

Chess is just poker now

284 points by imartin2k 4y ago

smm11 4y ago
Chess is just automatic now. Every move is known by nearly everyone who's ever played, to the point where it's basically the coin flip in NFL overtime.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
… I see where they’re going with this, but I don’t agree. All you have to do is look back at Bobby Fisher who rarely if ever even looked at his opponent. Poker is about chance, chess is actual skill.
- samatman 4y ago
  The main difference between chess and poker is perfect and imperfect information. It is decidedly not skill.
- nortlov 4y ago
  Bobby Fischer seems to disagree with you: https://youtube.com/watch?v=P349BdHUxlc&t=11s https://youtube.com/watch?v=P349BdHUxlc&t=11s
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mellosouls 4y ago
  Poker is certainly not just about chance; skill, particularly aptitude for maths and psychology are important at high levels. Chance does play a role though, which is generally not the case in chess. In the highest levels of chess, psychological fortitude and physical fitness are also important.
  - me_me_me 4y ago
    Poker is absolutely about a chance, you can play your hand perfectly make right calls and loose. Because someone got lucky on a last card. The whole idea in poker is to make the most right plays that on average should get you the win. Its management to chances. There are no hidden information in chess, if you play better moves you will win. And while there are factors that affect selection of best chess moves, you can hardly claim that the other guy got lucky.
    - mellosouls 4y ago
      Perhaps you misread. It's not just about chance.
- colanderman 4y ago
  One could equally say "chess is about memorization, poker is actual skill".
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    This is also unfair. Both chess and poker now have top players performing strategy based on computer prep and the best players have memorized shitloads of computer prep.
    - colanderman 4y ago
      (I agree with you, to be clear -- my comment was facetious.)
- antasvara 4y ago
  That's a misunderstanding of poker at a high level. While poker does have a significant element of chance in a given hand, it's no accident that top players consistently make more money over the long run. Knowing how much to bet based on your odds of winning a hand, figuring out what your opponent's hands could be based on how they're betting, etc. all take skill. There's a reason poker AI can consistently beat humans over the long run, a feat that would be impossible if poker was all about chance. In fact, poker AI was a difficult area to create software in precisely because the game is one of imperfect information.
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    > While poker does have a significant element of chance in a given hand, it's no accident that top players consistently make more money over the long run. That's a good point about the cash game format. But tournament format often forces players into multiple all-ins over the course of the tournament. This leads to a much more luck based outcome.
    - confidantlake 4y ago
      But over the long run it is still about skill, just the variance is much higher. Any single tournament the result will be dominated by luck but over 10s or 100,000s of thousands skill will dominate. Even the all in situations, you need to know when to go all in and when to call an all in vs when to fold. Better players are going to have a much better handle on this.
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    > top players consistently make more money over the long run Has this actually been verified, at least in the modern era (last 10 or so years)? Yes, you see the same guys on TV and to a lesser extent, final-tabling multiple tournaments. But these guys are often on TV because they are entertaining, not necessarily great (or consistently-winning) players. They typically all have external sources of income (sponsorships, poker training, commentary, casino ambassador, company owners, etc) and most reduce volatility by buying and trading pieces of each others' action. In addition, for tournaments, some guys are able to simply enter way more events, which naturally leads to more final tables, but you're not seeing all the losses and bust outs. All I'm saying is that it's not the same as the 70s through 90s where the skill gap was so huge that yes, certain players could (especially by going on the road and playing private games) absolutely dominate. I think winning consistently today is more of an illusion and some short-term luck.
- josefresco 4y ago
  > Poker is about chance, chess is actual skill. Maybe you missed it. Humans are now using deceit to trick opponents trained by AI. While they may not "look at" their opponent, they are using similar strategies deployed in poker such as bluffing/misdirection/cloaking etc.
- invisiblerobot 4y ago
  If poker was "about" chance you wouldn't see the same top players every year in the finals of every major competition. The chance aspect is why poker is so interesting. But in the long run (ie, 100 games played with the same players), a great poker player will beat an average one 95% of the time.
- Zealotux 4y ago
  >Poker is about chance If this were true, then the recurrent Pocker champions must be the luckiest persons in the world, luck is undoubtedly an element, but there are many ways to influence other variables of the game.
- jerf 4y ago
  Actually, the title is essentially clickbait, at least versus what you naturally read it as, and is all a setup for the final paragraph: "In that context, cheating scandals may be nothing less than a natural step in chess’s evolution. Poker, after all, has been rocked by allegations of foul play for years, including cases where players are accused of getting help from artificial intelligence. When the highest form of creativity is outfoxing your opponent—as has always been true of poker—breaking rules seems only natural." I'm ruling this "clickbait" because while the core idea is reasonable, that is clearly a very weak way of phrasing it solely done to be in service of a clickbait title. Without the need for clickbait it's trivial to phrase that in a better way.
- im3w1l 4y ago
  The interesting thing is that it is actually the opposite. It's been conjectured that with optimal play Chess ends in a draw (and if it's instead a win for white/black basically the same argument applies). So for two sufficiently smart players the best you can do is avoid blundering your draw away. Winning against a weaker opponent is impossible without psychology and subterfuge. You have to put your opponent in tricky spots where you know he is weak. Poker on the other hand, by being random, means that you can mindlessly play the mathematically optimal strategy. Eventually your opponent will be put in a tough spot by pure randomness.
  - robot_no_419 4y ago
    It's not the opposite either. Chess is a game of skill, poker is also a game of skill. The difference is that chess is deterministic and poker is not. Chess skill means being able to forcefully convert a winning or drawing position. Poker skill means optimizing your chances of winning. Not only is it possible to beat weaker opponents in chess by playing the best moves (contrary to your assertion), it happens all the time over the board. Weaker players are more likely to play moves that transforms the chess game from a win/draw to a draw/loss for them. There isn't a single human or engine alive that can consistently secure a draw against every opponent. And it's possible for a poker player to mindlessly play the mathematically optimal move and still lose. Poker IS a game a chance, so they could just get unlucky.
    - im3w1l 4y ago
      If we define optimal play as never turning a win into a draw or a draw into a loss, then I think it's possible to play a passive-but-optimal style, with few traps for weak players to fall into. Also if a position is "lost" but it's very very non-trivial to see why, a stupid-but-optimal strategy is to resign or move pieces randomly. You need psychology to win from a lost position.
- banannaise 4y ago
  > All you have to do is look back at Bobby Fisher who rarely if ever even looked at his opponent. Physical "tells" are largely a myth in poker, particularly in high-level poker. Please don't speculate wildly on things with at most a novice-level understanding.
me_me_me 4y ago
Strange article, fyi poker gets mentioned in last paragraph and is barely even connected to chess. ie, you can use AI to cheat in chess and poker, and there have been cheating scandals in both... therefore chess is poker now <question mark>
11235813213455 4y ago
In poker you hide your cards, in chess you hide your engine?
- nimbix 4y ago
  Butt where would you hide a chess engine? /s
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - yboris 4y ago
    In your shoes ;) -- it's called "Sockfish" https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html
  - adampk 4y ago
    Somewhere you can easily analize the results /s
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
Someone should probably break it out to The Atlantic that preparation was a thing far before engines existed, whole books have been written analysing openings and positions which best players have been memorising for as long as the game exists and players have always worked with a whole team to best plan before facing a serious adversary. The article is a bit silly. I had the feeling reading it that the writer has little understanding of how classical chess is played, nor of poker for what it’s worth.
- golemotron 4y ago
  Remember Gell-Mann Amnesia.
- chongli 4y ago
  Preparation has been a thing for a long long time. What hasn't been a thing is the combination of databases and engines. Top players even use supercomputers. The amount of pure grinding has shot up dramatically. Instead of a team of people rattling off lines verbally and debating back and forth, a player can sit at the computer and just hammer out the variations with the computer and see the best engine lines in mere seconds (using a supercomputer). This is so much more efficient that the only limitation is on how much energy and capacity the player has for rote memorization, rather than how much time it takes for the team of humans to work out the best lines.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    Objectively the limits have always been players memory. Sure, computer analysis has marginally changed how some openings are viewed and sure you can now get an engine evaluation of all the variations of some obscure line in a matter of seconds but novelties remain rare at the top level. Stockfisch is extremely strong because it can play near perfect positional play and can establish micro-advantage through deep calculation not because it fundamentally changed how chess theory is viewed. AlphaZero might be the sole exception to my point. It did indeed show that modern chess was neglecting some strategical concept but to be honest it was more a rehabilitation of old ideas than a pure novelty.
mellosouls 4y ago
TL;DR: The dominance of computers has made human creativity redundant; optimal strategies for beating other humans ironically involve suboptimal moves that may have a psychological dimension, similar to poker. [This isn't actually a remotely new strategy though computers have influenced human play.] Although the article doesn't directly reference it, Hans Niemann in his emotional interview reacting to the unevidenced accusations of him cheating against Carlsen pointed out that one "weak" move against another opponent in the tournament had been chosen by him specifically because of it's psychological pressure. Update: Niemann interview link, as requested: https://youtu.be/8NQF60RT0b4&t=3m48s https://youtu.be/8NQF60RT0b4&t=3m48s
- elicash 4y ago
  Which interview was this? Link/timestamp?
  - dmurray 4y ago
    I don't have those details, but Niemann said something like this about Qg3 in his game against Firouzja. "The way to beat Alireza is to attack him"
    - mellosouls 4y ago
      Yes, that's the one: https://youtu.be/8NQF60RT0b4&t=3m48s https://youtu.be/8NQF60RT0b4&t=3m48s
      - elicash 4y ago
        Thanks, and for those looking for an explanation of the position and game it appears to be this move: https://youtu.be/QStXMuzVAyk?t=258 https://youtu.be/QStXMuzVAyk?t=258
    - baobabKoodaa 4y ago
      > "The way to beat Alireza is to attack him" Is this the level of analysis expected from a grandmaster?
tennisflyi 4y ago
Seems like a natural evolution to me.
Aqueous 4y ago
'In other words, chess engines have redefined creativity in chess, leading to a situation where the game’s top players can no longer get away with simply playing the strongest chess they can, but must also engage in subterfuge, misdirection, and other psychological techniques.' - this sentence doesn't follow from the premise and discredits the whole article. Author thinks training with a chess engine means that players must engage in deceptive playing tactics. This is not even true in the slightest. Players use chess engines to learn how to act in more situations. They must still recognize the position, and compute the move themselves. The computer just adds to the library of experiences they can draw upon for deciding the move.
- evrydayhustling 4y ago
  Yeah, I was disappointed that the analogy to poker was so weak ("both make people worry about cheating"). I think there's a more interesting argument to make, that folks grinding their way through middle levels of chess expertise have to wade through a noisy metagame of opponents playing out canned strategies that depend on whether their opponent recognizes the weird trick or not. Fool's mate is as old as chess, but the availability of computers to find deeper tricks and new suckers to play them against is new!
  - alehlopeh 4y ago
    Honestly in my reading, that is the point the article is making. Chess engines are changing the nature of creativity by making people recognize weird tricks as such, where presumably they used to be less common. It’s very possible I was too charitable in my interpretation, though. I don’t know a lot about competitive chess at any level.
- davisoneee 4y ago
  Magnus Carlsen has himself commented a sentiment similar to the article , on the Lex Fridman podcast (although not the exact same terms, I think if you _try_ to give the article a favourable interpretation, you can understand what they're trying to say). You need 'subterfuge and misdirection' in the sense that (as the world no-1 puts it), it's a semi-bluff...a weird/not-really-analysed position, but that will still end up in a draw if the opponent responds appropriately. Lex: "Is there a sense in which it's ok to make sub-optimal moves?" Magnus: "You HAVE to, because the best moves have been analysed to death, mostly." https://youtu.be/0ZO28NtkwwQ?t=1450 https://youtu.be/0ZO28NtkwwQ?t=1450
ChicagoBoy11 4y ago
Is the entire article just... the last sentence? I feel long-form clickbaited by this article; there's no novel information in it!
revolvingocelot 4y ago
I always enjoyed chess when I was young. I, like many here, enjoyed a fairly intellectual circle in my youth, so most everyone was familiar with the game and its rules, and so I got to play a lot. I wasn't terribly interested in the rote memorization of propitious move and traditional countermove; once my opponents began to make comments like "ah, the Tanzanian salchow" upon my innocently moving a rook forward or whatever, I turned to other pursuits. It's possible to return chess to that realm of pure thought over memorization -- chess variants! I suggest Duck Chess [0], whose inclusion of an invulnerable shared piece which each player moves on their turn (the "duck") renders most chess strategies incoherent. A less formal alternative coalesced in university -- get a bunch of (inebriated) people together to watch the (inebriated) chess match. Their role is to loudly count down from 5. It is in this time that you must make your move, or your opponent will make it for you. The combination of time-crunch and looseheadedness prevents the recall of how castling works, let alone more complex gambits. [0] https://duckchess.com/ https://duckchess.com/
- triyambakam 4y ago
  > "ah, the Tanzanian salchow" Well done parody. I'm laughing
mbauman 4y ago
The article here is fairly anemic, and left me wanting for a better description of the match instead of a poor rehash of the history of computers in Chess. This is more what I wanted from the article: https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-carlsen-niemann-affair https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-carlsen-niemann-affair
robot_no_419 4y ago
I think the author needs to come up with a different title because it's highly misleading. The author's premises are also highly exaggerated. For starters, the game of chess has not stopped evolving, because our chess engines continue to get stronger and stronger. The strongest engines of today can crush the older engines from a few years ago. This goes to show that even the elite machines haven't completely figured out chess; the smarter engines are going to continue to push the chess meta forward. In that sense, chess creativity and intuition hasn't stalled. We've just reached the point of collective knowledge that only machines can improve on chess theory. Second, it's not like GMs are playing bad or losing moves to bluff the opponent. In most opening positions, there are at least 3 or 4 moves that could be played to still maintain winning or drawing positions. When GMs pick "suboptimal lines", they're picking maybe the 3rd or 4th best option that's still objectively a good and viable move from an engine's POV. Nobody is playing bad or losing moves on purpose, that simply does not work in chess.
pocketsand 4y ago
The article misses how poker went through a similar transformation with solvers. Up until a few years ago, the best players used theory and principles to devise their own personal strategies. Those whose strategies were theoretically the strongest, and who executed them the best, rose to the top. Aggression always seemed to be crucial to the best strategies. Nowadays, solvers have basically removed decisions from preflop play, but include randomization of certain moves (E.g., raise 1/3 of the time, call 50% of the time, fold 17% of the time). Then, on certain boards, you can tell the solver which sizes you want it to be available to it (e.g., 1/3 pot, 1/2 pot, 2/3 pot, full pot, 2x, etc.) and it will give you an unbeatable play style under those conditions. And so on. The game isn't solved and no human without real-time assistance would be able to play perfectly, but solvers have fundamentally changed how people prepare and play, and those who haven't studied the solutions get destroyed. An old guard has been left behind, and nerdy people who can work sims have risen to the top. The article here explains how a similar thing has happened to chess. Like the article states, some have whined that this "removes creativity" from chess. Poker players have argued the same thing: what it takes to become the best is simply now different. You must study hard, and if you can execute what you study, you can be a great player without having a great "poker mind." In reality, the game is so complex that you still need a great poker mind to navigate the parts of the game tree which you haven't studied, just like in chess. Undoubtedly this will change WHO decides to invest their time into becoming great chess players, and the personalities of the best players will be different. But it always struck me as sour grapes to whine that you can no longer be the best without studying the game more scientifically. Basically every game has been "moneyballed," including Chess, and people are leagues better at every game than they ever have been. We should welcome that.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > what it takes to become the best is simply now different. Which makes it a different game. Whether that's good or bad depends on what about the games you find appealing. Personally, these changes make the affected games boring to me.
- stonemetal12 4y ago
  To me it just changes the source and amount of data that is backing up a strategy. Before computers if you thought a move was good you could only try it out in games with others to see if it was good or not. With computers you can run a move through thousands of games and get a better understanding of the pros and cons of a move.
theknocker 4y ago
confidantlake 4y ago
The author is right that poker is like chess, but for the wrong reasons. Poker like chess, at the top levels is dominated by machines. Certain variants of poker, namely heads up limit poker have been "solved" for a long time. Other games such as no limit heads up are increasingly moving in that direction. It has zero to do with physical tells, instead it is mathematics. Ironically there have been accusations of cheating in live poker because a good player did NOT play like the solver suggested in a particular situation. The accusation was since they were a good player and they deviated from what the solver suggested, they must have marked the cards.
blackbrokkoli 4y ago
What exactly is the point of this article except the author flexing with (honestly kinda shallow) knowledge of chess engines? Yes, the game is evolving. Two hundred years ago the queen could sometimes hop like a knight, depending where you played. Somewhere around hundred years before that, game description went from beautiful prose like "The white king commands his owne knight into the third house before his owne bishop" to much drier abbreviated form. And some decades ago computers began to become serious players. All of these changes are interesting, worthy of discourse and not always for the better, but what is the authors actual point? Vague moral panic? You are telling me single-minded, rote-learning based play is something that came about with engines and not with say, chess being used as a proxy fight in the Cold War or during the rise of the idea of actually treating chess players like athletes instead of calling them gamblers (like in Morphy's time)? And how is chess like poker because of that? Because you can cheat and computers are good at it? I mean I can also use a modern tech to cheat at football, F1 racing, solitaire or coin-flipping.. Maybe someone can enlighten me what I am supposed to take away from this...
fay59 4y ago
The “battle of preparedness” for grandmasters looks miserable. My experience being bad at chess is pretty cool, though. If anyone’s looking to pick up chess, it’s a pretty good time to do it even if the people making a living out if it aren’t enjoying it anymore. It used to be that computers would only crush you without helping, but now they’re able to point at your mistakes and show you where the game shifted from one player to the other.
andrewla 4y ago
Chess definitely needs a shakeup, but it's unclear where it can come from. Chess960 (Fischer Random) has never really taken off. Maybe what we need is to run it like duplicate bridge -- have tournaments where you face off against an opponent starting from a random position, that may be a winning or losing position, and see how you do against other players faced with the same setup.
- runarberg 4y ago
  This might be true for spectators and top players, but for your average player, it is fine. In fact a chess puzzle starts from a seemingly random position and your task is to find the best move. And most amateurs still play the game with such inaccuracy that there are ample opportunities for dynamic play. I do admit though that watching top level chess is often times really boring. The moves are really predictable and at the same time really hard to understand. Blitz and Bullet games are actually far more enjoyable (when replayed on slower mode), because if a player makes an inaccuracy I can understand the punishing move (or it can be explained to me rather). If you want a more dynamic board game though, I do recommend Go. I at least still enjoy watching top level go in a way that I don’t with chess.
- matai_kolila 4y ago
  Rapid and blitz chess online is what gives the Twitch streamers their views, is my understanding.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- bnralt 4y ago
  If people wanted to see someone's skill at games like chess, it wouldn't be too difficult. There are plenty of historical pre-cursors to modern chess (like courier chess) or regional variations (Chinese chess). All of these are/were pretty well regarded. And that's not even getting into modern, intentionally created chess variants (like Chess960 that you mentioned). Picking a random version of chess would shake things up and force players to think on the fly. But people who enjoy modern Western international chess seem to want to see that one single version of the game optimized. Which is fine, I suppose. Though it would be nice if we saw more alternatives (granted, there are currently some popular alternatives like blitz chess).
swaggyBoatswain 4y ago
This was so poorly written and misleading that I couldn't finish reading it
citizenpaul 4y ago
Bobby Fischer solved this long ago (Fischer Random). He suggested that the back row should be randomized per game due to the increasing prevalence of computerized chess tactics.
- jstx1 4y ago
  It's not a solution, it's a different game altogether.
  - timbit42 4y ago
    The traditional piece starting positions are just one subset of chess.
todd8 4y ago
Back in the 1970s, I was very interested in chess. When I should have been doing my topology homework, I'd instead waste time pouring over MCO (Modern Chess Openings) studying the hundreds of variations that worked or didn't worked based on historical games. It was really no fun trying to memorize these variations. It took so long setting up boards, following lines, and trying to figure out how the game strategy would change depending on an opponents moves. For a mediocre player like myself, the advent of chess software that understands the game at a deep GM level has made studying chess fun. I can play computer opponents over and over, rapidly trying out the variations and seeing the outcome. I can ask for help, I can see what I'm doing wrong. I can easily spend an hour solving chess puzzles that improve my tactics. To me, really not a good player, I enjoy chess more than ever; the article seems not to understand how chess software impacts the game.
- taftster 4y ago
  What you're describing is an interesting outcome of chess engines. I assume that the game at the top of the heap, at the grandmaster level, has certainly become dull and void of creativity, as the article describes. But for us mere mortals, I wonder if the game of chess has become more exciting, as the concepts you can reach now were just not achievable for amateurs studying from books, as in the old days. The game of chess has no doubt changed because of chess engines. And maybe for the negative at the top end. But I think you're right, it's probably a lot more positive change in the middle. I have long since known that I am not capable of beating a chess engine in regular play, but that doesn't mean I don't benefit from the loss.
- croes 4y ago
  I don't know. Must be hard for a professional if you not only compete against human creativity but sheer computing power. Just like Dall-E, it's fun if you can't paint not so much if it's your source of income.
the_arcadian 4y ago
This is one of those articles that treats computers as if they were hyperintelligent entities that programmed themselves rather than just simple computational machines following rules created by teams of people that have studied the game for decades. Also it sounds like should replace all of my servers with powerful shoe computers to take advantage of the "upgrades in commercial hardware" that they mentioned.
- hackinthebochs 4y ago
  This misses the key property of such systems that make them remarkable. The computation involved begets new behavioral patterns that weren't enumerated by the initial program statements. The behavior is not just a representation of the human knowledge imparted to the system, but an emergent dynamic that is unpredictable from an analysis of the initial rules. It is a common mistake to dismiss the computational part of a system as carrying no informative or meaningful content. Just bracketing `the computation` as transparent and explanatorily insignificant is to miss a large part of the substance of the system.
  - graderjs 4y ago
    Exactly, dynamics and algorithm is content as well. 1 example: the heuristics you pick for something can be more powerful than the explicit knowledge required to create the heuristic.
radarsat1 4y ago
Despite varying opinions on the article, most seem to be agreeing here that one thing that is making chess more boring is the memorization of moves and tricks. I'd like to offer a counter-point. This doesn't seem to take into account that many people enjoy learning and memorizing sequences and tricks. It's actually fun to learn patterns and sequences that have clever underpinnings and lead to surprising results. As another commenter said, there exist many variants exactly for the purpose of getting back to pure logic-level reasoning about positions. If that's what you want, go for it. Chess 960 for example is explicitly designed for that. But despite the existence of all these variants and other games, people still predominantly continue to play 'Chess', with its classic starting position and rules, and I would suggest that one of the things that keeps drawing people back is that there is sufficient "space" in the game for life-long learning, while providing a common and stable "interface" that allows everyone to exchange knowledge and build up a shared experience of learning and mastery. That on top of this there still most definitely exists a layer of strategy and "principles", not just memorization, is another aspect that will always draw people back to the game. A lot of these principles that have been developed and taught for hundreds of years go out the window with variants -- which is fine, it's fun to discover new games too, but sometimes you want to benefit from the knowledge and wisdom of experts, and the only way to do that is to play the same game as them.
- triyambakam 4y ago
  > But despite the existence of all these variants and other games, people still predominantly continue to play 'Chess', with its classic starting position and rules, and I would suggest that one of the things that keeps drawing people back is that there is sufficient "space" in the game for life-long learning, while providing a common and stable "interface" that allows everyone to exchange knowledge and build up a shared experience of learning and mastery. Very well said. This is exactly why I prefer traditional Chess. I really enjoy the rich platform I can dig into for years and years. I'm not likely to ever pursue becoming a GM and I don't mind.
NickC25 4y ago
What's fascinating to me as someone who has followed the game for a while is the evolution of engines and how their play has influenced human play. Stockfish versus AlphaZero was fascinating only because it showed that at the highest of highest levels of chess (3000+ ELO) - there are ways to trick engines and employ "human" strategies (for example, there was a game where Alpha "blundered": it sacrificed 2 pawns and ceded the center of the board to push a wing pawn that 25 moves later ended up blocking Stockfish's kingside development entirely). Incredible, but the flip side of this is realizing that traditional chess is essentially a solved problem to some degree. From what I can understand, chess at the highest of human levels is just using an engine to find tricks and traps 30+ moves into a given match. Anywhere about 2000+ rating or above, most people will play a relatively fixed number of openings that have been explored to death time and time again. It's now about psychological hacks that can be be backed up by deep engine analysis. "If at move 45 in a Sicilian Dragon game I play sub-optimal move X instead of optimal move Y, my opponent might make a sub-optimal response which will open up a specific square or hang a piece 10 turns later according to AlphaZero or Stockfish". I can see why Magnus is kind of bored by it. To me, Fisher Random (Chess960) solves this by eliminating opening theory almost entirely. Crazyhouse Chess is also a blast, but it too is hampered by theory as there are fewer competent opening moves than standard chess and there's even less room for creativity. Crazyhouse960 is by far my favorite variation of chess, because there's no endgame to solve towards and little to none opening theory to draw from. Shame nobody plays it these days - if you're so inclined, come join over at PyChess.org and play a few rounds!
darepublic 4y ago
When I think about it, chess is a game where accusations of cheating are regular. Most recently there is the Neimann scandal. There was a lot of cheating accusations for Kramnik vs Topalov as I recall. Kramnik was accused of using Fritz (predecessor to today's stronger engines), and Topalov's manager was doing statistical analysis of Kramnik's move choice and the engine's. When Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, he was very salty and accused IBM of cheating. And those are only a sampling of modern examples. It's hardly a game of cold objective analysis. They've got a lot of emotions these chess players, which makes sense. It gives me solace when I get overly wrought / emotional around my own intellectual pursuits.
- treis 4y ago
  >When Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, he was very salty and accused IBM of cheating The accusation was that IBM made modifications to Deep Blue between games. That's not cheating but then it's not exactly Deep Blue vs Kasparov anymore.
  - darepublic 4y ago
    There was a somewhat veiled accusation that there was human intervention in game 2 (as in, a strong human player interceded to influence or outright override the computer's move). Funny that in those days the cheating accusation involved a human behind the scenes instead of a computer.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  Chess grandmasters are not the most balanced human beings. It’s a very small amount of people who have decided to consecrate an inordinate amount of time completely mastering a game and whose main focus in life is playing it competitively against each other. It’s a lot like elite athletes but more nerdy and with longer career.
  - triyambakam 4y ago
    Many top players seem pretty unhinged. Hikaru or Magnus don't seem like they would be a good friend.
groffee 4y ago
Relevant Star Trek clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIRT6xRQkf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIRT6xRQkf8 Generally both sides play to win, but if you play to draw instead (by playing 'sub-optimal' moves etc) you paradoxically have a better chance of winning.
awb 4y ago
Bobby Fischer attempted to solve the rote memorization problem by creating Fischer Random Chess: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess With 960 possible starting positions, opening line memorization is far beyond current human capacity. There have been some recent Random Chess tournaments with high level GMs like Magnus and they’re pretty fun and entertaining. Chess.com has some great live coverage and analysis of these events as well as classical chess tournaments.
- Tepix 4y ago
  Othello has gone a similar route with XOT start position games.
- jstx1 4y ago
  The history and well-studied lines add a lot to the game though, both for players and for spectators. 960 can be fun but it's not a replacement for classical chess, it's a different game altogether. To stick to the poker comparison (which the article barely makes), it's like saying that the fix for NLH bots and solvers is to switch to PLO - you haven't fixed anything, you've just decided to play a different game.
  - Cd00d 4y ago
    NLH and PLO?
    - nohuck13 4y ago
      No-Limit Hold'em and Pot-Limit Omaha
  - H8crilA 4y ago
    Yes, to a game where you can no longer memorize openings. Which fixed that thing (memorizing openings).
    - jstx1 4y ago
svnt 4y ago
It seems to me that one of the biggest related problems with chess is that the quality of the player rating system has not kept pace with the development of the game. If I am an ok player and memorize a complex line and a handful of tricks I can beat enough players to raise my rating. If I leave that line my rating will fall. Am I a better player? The player rating systems might benefit from a “play style diversity” or “flexibility of approach” indicator to expose players that rely on one-weird-trick traps.
- astrobe_ 4y ago
  The trick you describe reminds me of "first order optimal strategies" [1], a.k.a. "noob strat" or "chesse" in online gaming lingo. The thing is, as your rating rises, you meet more and more player that know those strategies, and your rating will reach a plateau - typically in the equivalent of low gold league (slightly above average). As for the rating system, ELO is very practical for matchmaking and numerous games have adopted it (including MOBAs, RTS, FPS games). [1] https://thethoughtfulgamer.com/2017/03/09/first-order-optimal-strategies-narrative-inspired-heuristics/ https://thethoughtfulgamer.com/2017/03/09/first-order-optima...
- wbc 4y ago
  This happens across many competitive games, where you can raise your Elo/MMR by playing gimmicky stuff instead of working on fundamentals. E.g. ling rush in Starcraft, 1-tricking in League, etc etc. Sure you can score based on flexibility, but the people who work hard on staying competitive knows at heart all ratings are just an approximation anyways. Just work on fundamentals, get good, and don't sweat the numbers. Not a problem worth fixing imo.
bcassedy 4y ago
I don't know enough about chess mid-game and end-game to know whether chess is the same as poker in this regard, but poker is absolutely not a game of memorization deeper into the game tree even at the highest levels. tl;dr the author knows nothing about the state of high level poker play and I suspect they don't know much about high level chess either. Chess and poker both require memorization or at least very strong understanding of the early game. In chess this is openings and has been required for as long as I can remember. In poker this is preflop play. Poker extends this a bit into flop play, but already on the flop there is a lot of opportunity for creativity because there are countless strategies that are indistinguishable from one another within reasonable precision targets. As you descend deeper into the game tree for turn and river play we enter into territory that cannot be memorized due to number of possibilities and the increasing impossibility of having perfectly executed all the way to the current decision point. This opens up a lot of room for creativity and exploitation.
m4jor 4y ago
non-paywall: https://archive.ph/mf7iW https://archive.ph/mf7iW
scrapcode 4y ago
Having any skill at chess outside of just knowing the rules of the game has piqued my interest multiple times, but it seems like a daunting undertaking and dedication just to become mediocre in the game.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  It will bring you little apart from a new pastime but for historical reasons it’s more socially acceptable than getting good at Fortnight. Still you should definitely go for it if you find playing chess enjoyable.
hosh 4y ago
If the goal of playing and winning chess is to rank and see who is the best at playing chess, then yeah, we'll get cheating. This can happen in any competitive sport. If the goal of playing chess is to develop, refine, and challenge one's own decision-making process in which someone can apply those principles elsewhere in life off-the-board, then cheating like this is cheating yourself. If the goal of sports, like chess, is to inspire others in the human civilization on what's possible, to uplift everyone, to reflect the best of humankind, then cheating like this cheats all of us. We're basically saying the best of humankind cheats rather than demonstrating virtue and character through sportsmanship. And lastly, in the domain of war and warfare, there's a proverb that, if you are not cheating, you're not trying hard enough.
- r0b05 4y ago
  Well said.
adolph 4y ago
"Just poker" says The Atlantic. Chess is not a game. Chess is a well-defined form of computation. You may not be able to work out the answers, but in theory, there must be a solution, a right procedure in any position. Now real games... are not like that at all. Real life is not like that. Real life consists of bluffing, of little tactics of deception, of asking yourself what is the other man going to think I mean to do. And that is what games are about in my theory. ~ John von Neumann https://newsletter.altdeep.ai/p/how-poker-and-a-spaceship-imposter https://newsletter.altdeep.ai/p/how-poker-and-a-spaceship-im... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24589842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24589842
draw_down 4y ago
c3534l 4y ago
I feel bad for this guy. He managed to beat someone way better than himself and now everyone is accusing him of cheating with absolutely zero evidence. What chess engines have done is make everyone paraniod.
- exogeny 4y ago
  This is analogous to track and field or pro cycling, and it robs us of the ability to believe in the underdog. I don't know a single person who believes that Marcell Jacobs won the 100m dash in Tokyo legitimately, and that's a sad thing.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  Magnus' reaction in the last tournament where he made 2 moves and left is not helping either. If he has credible information, he should come out with it, otherwise he is putting in jeopardy the career and mental health of another player.
- mkagenius 4y ago
  Well, it's not like he has not cheated before. The doubts in other's minds is his own mistake from the past.
- danrocks 4y ago
  There is very clear evidence he has cheated before. He then admitted to it. Then chess.com says that he admitted to a very small portion of the actual cheating. So there is a LOT of evidence he is a cheater.
lizardactivist 4y ago
A lot of the analysis on whether Niemann cheated bring up the same things and irregularities: His peculiarly nervous and odd body language Having jumped over 200 points in a few months, which is a world of difference up at ~2500 Fluttering and nonsense in post-interview trying to explain his moves and train of thought when playing And the fact that he has been caught cheating twice recently
Iolaum 4y ago
Chess is a full information game while in poker you don't have access to full information. I really dislike the analogy.
purpleblue 4y ago
How on earth did the anal bead cheating theory ever take hold? The idea you can slander someone with such a ridiculous notion is incredible. How would the accomplice be able to see the board so quickly and be able to input what the opponent has, and then be able to send a signal through Bluetooth (presumably) fast and reliably enough for him to defeat Magnus? How could you encode that with vibrations (presumably) that would be easily detectable enough to discern? Don't these games have time limits?
Barrin92 4y ago
Tying the Niemann scandal or changing practices into the chess engine discussion is I think wrong. As the article itself points out, chess engine use became ubiquitous and cheating as a concern emerged almost 20 years back. The article also vastly overstates the importance of NN chess models. Conventional Stockfish already played at levels so far beyond human capacity a few years back it makes no practical difference. (chess GM's literally would draw or lose with pawn odds many years ago), and professional players have been using engines extensively for well over a decade. What's starting to shift in chess isn't tech but the culture, largely driven by the social media around it, the livestreaming medium where now much of it takes place in real time, and so on. Chess isn't becoming like poker, it's just becoming like any other sport that gets the entertainment sector treatment, including increasing amounts of drama. It reminds me a little bit of a recent thread on how Substack allegedly revolutionized writing. There also it wasn't substack, which is basically a blog generator with a payment button, but the social networks around it that create all of the new dynamics. I expect a lot more cheating allegations, personal feuds, played up controversy not because of technology that affects the game itself but because of tech that changes how the game is broadcast and how people participate in it.
mattmaroon 4y ago
Couldn't you just have them play in a faraday cage? Surely there's enough money in the world championships of chess to arrange that. A metal detector and a room that can't be penetrated by wireless anal beads (pun intended) can't be that hard to arrange with a little budget right?
- thehappypm 4y ago
  What if the computer is on his person? And he can send it inputs?
  - mattmaroon 4y ago
    Metal detector on the way in?
pif 4y ago
Chess was born with an unknown, yet well defined, maximum lifetime. Lack of any random element implies that the number of scenarios is finite; huge, very huge, but finite. When matches were played by mail (mail as in postal service, not email), and the most passionate players subscribed to specialised paper magazines, it was a kind of huge that you could be excused for confusing with infinity. But internet and computers have changed the playing field enormously, and now that huge has showed for what it always was: huge, but finite. Chess is dead.
SilverBirch 4y ago
Every single time I see someone mention anal beads in this story I get more angry. For fucks sake. The anal beads suggestion was an anonymous shit-post on reddit about how Magnus has been using anal beads his entire career to win. Now you've got The Atlantic dropping in stuff about anal beads. Here's a message- you get to be a serious authoritative news source, or you get to post unsubstantiated jokes about anal beads. You don't get to do both. Every single word in this article is untrustworthy now, because I don't know if it's serious, or just a reddit shitpost that The Atlantic decided to repeat.
- inimino 4y ago
  It's a pretty low-effort article, combining speculation with zero evidence, some boring old gripes about how chess has changed, and wrapping it all up with some crazy stretched analogy to poker and a conclusion that doesn't make sense for either poker or chess. An editor really should have canned this whole piece.
jeanloolz 4y ago
Anecdote: the creator of the biggest poker site ever made (Pokerstars) is also the creator of the chess.com platform.

284 points by imartin2k 4y ago

Chess is just automatic now. Every move is known by nearly everyone who's ever played, to the point where it's basically the coin flip in NFL overtime.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

… I see where they’re going with this, but I don’t agree. All you have to do is look back at Bobby Fisher who rarely if ever even looked at his opponent. Poker is about chance, chess is actual skill.

samatman 4y ago
The main difference between chess and poker is perfect and imperfect information. It is decidedly not skill.
nortlov 4y ago
Bobby Fischer seems to disagree with you: https://youtube.com/watch?v=P349BdHUxlc&t=11s https://youtube.com/watch?v=P349BdHUxlc&t=11s
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mellosouls 4y ago
Poker is certainly not just about chance; skill, particularly aptitude for maths and psychology are important at high levels. Chance does play a role though, which is generally not the case in chess. In the highest levels of chess, psychological fortitude and physical fitness are also important.
- me_me_me 4y ago
  Poker is absolutely about a chance, you can play your hand perfectly make right calls and loose. Because someone got lucky on a last card. The whole idea in poker is to make the most right plays that on average should get you the win. Its management to chances. There are no hidden information in chess, if you play better moves you will win. And while there are factors that affect selection of best chess moves, you can hardly claim that the other guy got lucky.
  - mellosouls 4y ago
    Perhaps you misread. It's not just about chance.
colanderman 4y ago
One could equally say "chess is about memorization, poker is actual skill".
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  This is also unfair. Both chess and poker now have top players performing strategy based on computer prep and the best players have memorized shitloads of computer prep.
  - colanderman 4y ago
    (I agree with you, to be clear -- my comment was facetious.)
antasvara 4y ago
That's a misunderstanding of poker at a high level. While poker does have a significant element of chance in a given hand, it's no accident that top players consistently make more money over the long run. Knowing how much to bet based on your odds of winning a hand, figuring out what your opponent's hands could be based on how they're betting, etc. all take skill. There's a reason poker AI can consistently beat humans over the long run, a feat that would be impossible if poker was all about chance. In fact, poker AI was a difficult area to create software in precisely because the game is one of imperfect information.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > While poker does have a significant element of chance in a given hand, it's no accident that top players consistently make more money over the long run. That's a good point about the cash game format. But tournament format often forces players into multiple all-ins over the course of the tournament. This leads to a much more luck based outcome.
  - confidantlake 4y ago
    But over the long run it is still about skill, just the variance is much higher. Any single tournament the result will be dominated by luck but over 10s or 100,000s of thousands skill will dominate. Even the all in situations, you need to know when to go all in and when to call an all in vs when to fold. Better players are going to have a much better handle on this.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  > top players consistently make more money over the long run Has this actually been verified, at least in the modern era (last 10 or so years)? Yes, you see the same guys on TV and to a lesser extent, final-tabling multiple tournaments. But these guys are often on TV because they are entertaining, not necessarily great (or consistently-winning) players. They typically all have external sources of income (sponsorships, poker training, commentary, casino ambassador, company owners, etc) and most reduce volatility by buying and trading pieces of each others' action. In addition, for tournaments, some guys are able to simply enter way more events, which naturally leads to more final tables, but you're not seeing all the losses and bust outs. All I'm saying is that it's not the same as the 70s through 90s where the skill gap was so huge that yes, certain players could (especially by going on the road and playing private games) absolutely dominate. I think winning consistently today is more of an illusion and some short-term luck.
josefresco 4y ago
> Poker is about chance, chess is actual skill. Maybe you missed it. Humans are now using deceit to trick opponents trained by AI. While they may not "look at" their opponent, they are using similar strategies deployed in poker such as bluffing/misdirection/cloaking etc.
invisiblerobot 4y ago
If poker was "about" chance you wouldn't see the same top players every year in the finals of every major competition. The chance aspect is why poker is so interesting. But in the long run (ie, 100 games played with the same players), a great poker player will beat an average one 95% of the time.
Zealotux 4y ago
>Poker is about chance If this were true, then the recurrent Pocker champions must be the luckiest persons in the world, luck is undoubtedly an element, but there are many ways to influence other variables of the game.
jerf 4y ago
Actually, the title is essentially clickbait, at least versus what you naturally read it as, and is all a setup for the final paragraph: "In that context, cheating scandals may be nothing less than a natural step in chess’s evolution. Poker, after all, has been rocked by allegations of foul play for years, including cases where players are accused of getting help from artificial intelligence. When the highest form of creativity is outfoxing your opponent—as has always been true of poker—breaking rules seems only natural." I'm ruling this "clickbait" because while the core idea is reasonable, that is clearly a very weak way of phrasing it solely done to be in service of a clickbait title. Without the need for clickbait it's trivial to phrase that in a better way.
im3w1l 4y ago
The interesting thing is that it is actually the opposite. It's been conjectured that with optimal play Chess ends in a draw (and if it's instead a win for white/black basically the same argument applies). So for two sufficiently smart players the best you can do is avoid blundering your draw away. Winning against a weaker opponent is impossible without psychology and subterfuge. You have to put your opponent in tricky spots where you know he is weak. Poker on the other hand, by being random, means that you can mindlessly play the mathematically optimal strategy. Eventually your opponent will be put in a tough spot by pure randomness.
- robot_no_419 4y ago
  It's not the opposite either. Chess is a game of skill, poker is also a game of skill. The difference is that chess is deterministic and poker is not. Chess skill means being able to forcefully convert a winning or drawing position. Poker skill means optimizing your chances of winning. Not only is it possible to beat weaker opponents in chess by playing the best moves (contrary to your assertion), it happens all the time over the board. Weaker players are more likely to play moves that transforms the chess game from a win/draw to a draw/loss for them. There isn't a single human or engine alive that can consistently secure a draw against every opponent. And it's possible for a poker player to mindlessly play the mathematically optimal move and still lose. Poker IS a game a chance, so they could just get unlucky.
  - im3w1l 4y ago
    If we define optimal play as never turning a win into a draw or a draw into a loss, then I think it's possible to play a passive-but-optimal style, with few traps for weak players to fall into. Also if a position is "lost" but it's very very non-trivial to see why, a stupid-but-optimal strategy is to resign or move pieces randomly. You need psychology to win from a lost position.
banannaise 4y ago
> All you have to do is look back at Bobby Fisher who rarely if ever even looked at his opponent. Physical "tells" are largely a myth in poker, particularly in high-level poker. Please don't speculate wildly on things with at most a novice-level understanding.

me_me_me 4y ago

Strange article, fyi poker gets mentioned in last paragraph and is barely even connected to chess. ie, you can use AI to cheat in chess and poker, and there have been cheating scandals in both... therefore chess is poker now <question mark>

11235813213455 4y ago

In poker you hide your cards, in chess you hide your engine?

nimbix 4y ago
Butt where would you hide a chess engine? /s
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- yboris 4y ago
  In your shoes ;) -- it's called "Sockfish" https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html
- adampk 4y ago
  Somewhere you can easily analize the results /s

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

Someone should probably break it out to The Atlantic that preparation was a thing far before engines existed, whole books have been written analysing openings and positions which best players have been memorising for as long as the game exists and players have always worked with a whole team to best plan before facing a serious adversary. The article is a bit silly. I had the feeling reading it that the writer has little understanding of how classical chess is played, nor of poker for what it’s worth.

golemotron 4y ago
Remember Gell-Mann Amnesia.
chongli 4y ago
Preparation has been a thing for a long long time. What hasn't been a thing is the combination of databases and engines. Top players even use supercomputers. The amount of pure grinding has shot up dramatically. Instead of a team of people rattling off lines verbally and debating back and forth, a player can sit at the computer and just hammer out the variations with the computer and see the best engine lines in mere seconds (using a supercomputer). This is so much more efficient that the only limitation is on how much energy and capacity the player has for rote memorization, rather than how much time it takes for the team of humans to work out the best lines.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  Objectively the limits have always been players memory. Sure, computer analysis has marginally changed how some openings are viewed and sure you can now get an engine evaluation of all the variations of some obscure line in a matter of seconds but novelties remain rare at the top level. Stockfisch is extremely strong because it can play near perfect positional play and can establish micro-advantage through deep calculation not because it fundamentally changed how chess theory is viewed. AlphaZero might be the sole exception to my point. It did indeed show that modern chess was neglecting some strategical concept but to be honest it was more a rehabilitation of old ideas than a pure novelty.

mellosouls 4y ago

TL;DR: The dominance of computers has made human creativity redundant; optimal strategies for beating other humans ironically involve suboptimal moves that may have a psychological dimension, similar to poker. [This isn't actually a remotely new strategy though computers have influenced human play.] Although the article doesn't directly reference it, Hans Niemann in his emotional interview reacting to the unevidenced accusations of him cheating against Carlsen pointed out that one "weak" move against another opponent in the tournament had been chosen by him specifically because of it's psychological pressure. Update: Niemann interview link, as requested: https://youtu.be/8NQF60RT0b4&t=3m48s https://youtu.be/8NQF60RT0b4&t=3m48s

elicash 4y ago
Which interview was this? Link/timestamp?
- dmurray 4y ago
  I don't have those details, but Niemann said something like this about Qg3 in his game against Firouzja. "The way to beat Alireza is to attack him"
  - mellosouls 4y ago
    Yes, that's the one: https://youtu.be/8NQF60RT0b4&t=3m48s https://youtu.be/8NQF60RT0b4&t=3m48s
    - elicash 4y ago
      Thanks, and for those looking for an explanation of the position and game it appears to be this move: https://youtu.be/QStXMuzVAyk?t=258 https://youtu.be/QStXMuzVAyk?t=258
  - baobabKoodaa 4y ago
    > "The way to beat Alireza is to attack him" Is this the level of analysis expected from a grandmaster?

tennisflyi 4y ago

Seems like a natural evolution to me.

Aqueous 4y ago

'In other words, chess engines have redefined creativity in chess, leading to a situation where the game’s top players can no longer get away with simply playing the strongest chess they can, but must also engage in subterfuge, misdirection, and other psychological techniques.' - this sentence doesn't follow from the premise and discredits the whole article. Author thinks training with a chess engine means that players must engage in deceptive playing tactics. This is not even true in the slightest. Players use chess engines to learn how to act in more situations. They must still recognize the position, and compute the move themselves. The computer just adds to the library of experiences they can draw upon for deciding the move.

evrydayhustling 4y ago
Yeah, I was disappointed that the analogy to poker was so weak ("both make people worry about cheating"). I think there's a more interesting argument to make, that folks grinding their way through middle levels of chess expertise have to wade through a noisy metagame of opponents playing out canned strategies that depend on whether their opponent recognizes the weird trick or not. Fool's mate is as old as chess, but the availability of computers to find deeper tricks and new suckers to play them against is new!
- alehlopeh 4y ago
  Honestly in my reading, that is the point the article is making. Chess engines are changing the nature of creativity by making people recognize weird tricks as such, where presumably they used to be less common. It’s very possible I was too charitable in my interpretation, though. I don’t know a lot about competitive chess at any level.
davisoneee 4y ago
Magnus Carlsen has himself commented a sentiment similar to the article , on the Lex Fridman podcast (although not the exact same terms, I think if you _try_ to give the article a favourable interpretation, you can understand what they're trying to say). You need 'subterfuge and misdirection' in the sense that (as the world no-1 puts it), it's a semi-bluff...a weird/not-really-analysed position, but that will still end up in a draw if the opponent responds appropriately. Lex: "Is there a sense in which it's ok to make sub-optimal moves?" Magnus: "You HAVE to, because the best moves have been analysed to death, mostly." https://youtu.be/0ZO28NtkwwQ?t=1450 https://youtu.be/0ZO28NtkwwQ?t=1450

ChicagoBoy11 4y ago

Is the entire article just... the last sentence? I feel long-form clickbaited by this article; there's no novel information in it!

revolvingocelot 4y ago

I always enjoyed chess when I was young. I, like many here, enjoyed a fairly intellectual circle in my youth, so most everyone was familiar with the game and its rules, and so I got to play a lot. I wasn't terribly interested in the rote memorization of propitious move and traditional countermove; once my opponents began to make comments like "ah, the Tanzanian salchow" upon my innocently moving a rook forward or whatever, I turned to other pursuits. It's possible to return chess to that realm of pure thought over memorization -- chess variants! I suggest Duck Chess [0], whose inclusion of an invulnerable shared piece which each player moves on their turn (the "duck") renders most chess strategies incoherent. A less formal alternative coalesced in university -- get a bunch of (inebriated) people together to watch the (inebriated) chess match. Their role is to loudly count down from 5. It is in this time that you must make your move, or your opponent will make it for you. The combination of time-crunch and looseheadedness prevents the recall of how castling works, let alone more complex gambits. [0] https://duckchess.com/ https://duckchess.com/

triyambakam 4y ago
> "ah, the Tanzanian salchow" Well done parody. I'm laughing

mbauman 4y ago

The article here is fairly anemic, and left me wanting for a better description of the match instead of a poor rehash of the history of computers in Chess. This is more what I wanted from the article: https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-carlsen-niemann-affair https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-carlsen-niemann-affair

robot_no_419 4y ago

I think the author needs to come up with a different title because it's highly misleading. The author's premises are also highly exaggerated. For starters, the game of chess has not stopped evolving, because our chess engines continue to get stronger and stronger. The strongest engines of today can crush the older engines from a few years ago. This goes to show that even the elite machines haven't completely figured out chess; the smarter engines are going to continue to push the chess meta forward. In that sense, chess creativity and intuition hasn't stalled. We've just reached the point of collective knowledge that only machines can improve on chess theory. Second, it's not like GMs are playing bad or losing moves to bluff the opponent. In most opening positions, there are at least 3 or 4 moves that could be played to still maintain winning or drawing positions. When GMs pick "suboptimal lines", they're picking maybe the 3rd or 4th best option that's still objectively a good and viable move from an engine's POV. Nobody is playing bad or losing moves on purpose, that simply does not work in chess.

pocketsand 4y ago

The article misses how poker went through a similar transformation with solvers. Up until a few years ago, the best players used theory and principles to devise their own personal strategies. Those whose strategies were theoretically the strongest, and who executed them the best, rose to the top. Aggression always seemed to be crucial to the best strategies. Nowadays, solvers have basically removed decisions from preflop play, but include randomization of certain moves (E.g., raise 1/3 of the time, call 50% of the time, fold 17% of the time). Then, on certain boards, you can tell the solver which sizes you want it to be available to it (e.g., 1/3 pot, 1/2 pot, 2/3 pot, full pot, 2x, etc.) and it will give you an unbeatable play style under those conditions. And so on. The game isn't solved and no human without real-time assistance would be able to play perfectly, but solvers have fundamentally changed how people prepare and play, and those who haven't studied the solutions get destroyed. An old guard has been left behind, and nerdy people who can work sims have risen to the top. The article here explains how a similar thing has happened to chess. Like the article states, some have whined that this "removes creativity" from chess. Poker players have argued the same thing: what it takes to become the best is simply now different. You must study hard, and if you can execute what you study, you can be a great player without having a great "poker mind." In reality, the game is so complex that you still need a great poker mind to navigate the parts of the game tree which you haven't studied, just like in chess. Undoubtedly this will change WHO decides to invest their time into becoming great chess players, and the personalities of the best players will be different. But it always struck me as sour grapes to whine that you can no longer be the best without studying the game more scientifically. Basically every game has been "moneyballed," including Chess, and people are leagues better at every game than they ever have been. We should welcome that.

JohnFen 4y ago
> what it takes to become the best is simply now different. Which makes it a different game. Whether that's good or bad depends on what about the games you find appealing. Personally, these changes make the affected games boring to me.
stonemetal12 4y ago
To me it just changes the source and amount of data that is backing up a strategy. Before computers if you thought a move was good you could only try it out in games with others to see if it was good or not. With computers you can run a move through thousands of games and get a better understanding of the pros and cons of a move.

theknocker 4y ago

confidantlake 4y ago

The author is right that poker is like chess, but for the wrong reasons. Poker like chess, at the top levels is dominated by machines. Certain variants of poker, namely heads up limit poker have been "solved" for a long time. Other games such as no limit heads up are increasingly moving in that direction. It has zero to do with physical tells, instead it is mathematics. Ironically there have been accusations of cheating in live poker because a good player did NOT play like the solver suggested in a particular situation. The accusation was since they were a good player and they deviated from what the solver suggested, they must have marked the cards.

blackbrokkoli 4y ago

What exactly is the point of this article except the author flexing with (honestly kinda shallow) knowledge of chess engines? Yes, the game is evolving. Two hundred years ago the queen could sometimes hop like a knight, depending where you played. Somewhere around hundred years before that, game description went from beautiful prose like "The white king commands his owne knight into the third house before his owne bishop" to much drier abbreviated form. And some decades ago computers began to become serious players. All of these changes are interesting, worthy of discourse and not always for the better, but what is the authors actual point? Vague moral panic? You are telling me single-minded, rote-learning based play is something that came about with engines and not with say, chess being used as a proxy fight in the Cold War or during the rise of the idea of actually treating chess players like athletes instead of calling them gamblers (like in Morphy's time)? And how is chess like poker because of that? Because you can cheat and computers are good at it? I mean I can also use a modern tech to cheat at football, F1 racing, solitaire or coin-flipping.. Maybe someone can enlighten me what I am supposed to take away from this...

fay59 4y ago

The “battle of preparedness” for grandmasters looks miserable. My experience being bad at chess is pretty cool, though. If anyone’s looking to pick up chess, it’s a pretty good time to do it even if the people making a living out if it aren’t enjoying it anymore. It used to be that computers would only crush you without helping, but now they’re able to point at your mistakes and show you where the game shifted from one player to the other.

andrewla 4y ago

Chess definitely needs a shakeup, but it's unclear where it can come from. Chess960 (Fischer Random) has never really taken off. Maybe what we need is to run it like duplicate bridge -- have tournaments where you face off against an opponent starting from a random position, that may be a winning or losing position, and see how you do against other players faced with the same setup.

runarberg 4y ago
This might be true for spectators and top players, but for your average player, it is fine. In fact a chess puzzle starts from a seemingly random position and your task is to find the best move. And most amateurs still play the game with such inaccuracy that there are ample opportunities for dynamic play. I do admit though that watching top level chess is often times really boring. The moves are really predictable and at the same time really hard to understand. Blitz and Bullet games are actually far more enjoyable (when replayed on slower mode), because if a player makes an inaccuracy I can understand the punishing move (or it can be explained to me rather). If you want a more dynamic board game though, I do recommend Go. I at least still enjoy watching top level go in a way that I don’t with chess.
matai_kolila 4y ago
Rapid and blitz chess online is what gives the Twitch streamers their views, is my understanding.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bnralt 4y ago
If people wanted to see someone's skill at games like chess, it wouldn't be too difficult. There are plenty of historical pre-cursors to modern chess (like courier chess) or regional variations (Chinese chess). All of these are/were pretty well regarded. And that's not even getting into modern, intentionally created chess variants (like Chess960 that you mentioned). Picking a random version of chess would shake things up and force players to think on the fly. But people who enjoy modern Western international chess seem to want to see that one single version of the game optimized. Which is fine, I suppose. Though it would be nice if we saw more alternatives (granted, there are currently some popular alternatives like blitz chess).

swaggyBoatswain 4y ago

This was so poorly written and misleading that I couldn't finish reading it

citizenpaul 4y ago

Bobby Fischer solved this long ago (Fischer Random). He suggested that the back row should be randomized per game due to the increasing prevalence of computerized chess tactics.

jstx1 4y ago
It's not a solution, it's a different game altogether.
- timbit42 4y ago
  The traditional piece starting positions are just one subset of chess.

todd8 4y ago

Back in the 1970s, I was very interested in chess. When I should have been doing my topology homework, I'd instead waste time pouring over MCO (Modern Chess Openings) studying the hundreds of variations that worked or didn't worked based on historical games. It was really no fun trying to memorize these variations. It took so long setting up boards, following lines, and trying to figure out how the game strategy would change depending on an opponents moves. For a mediocre player like myself, the advent of chess software that understands the game at a deep GM level has made studying chess fun. I can play computer opponents over and over, rapidly trying out the variations and seeing the outcome. I can ask for help, I can see what I'm doing wrong. I can easily spend an hour solving chess puzzles that improve my tactics. To me, really not a good player, I enjoy chess more than ever; the article seems not to understand how chess software impacts the game.

taftster 4y ago
What you're describing is an interesting outcome of chess engines. I assume that the game at the top of the heap, at the grandmaster level, has certainly become dull and void of creativity, as the article describes. But for us mere mortals, I wonder if the game of chess has become more exciting, as the concepts you can reach now were just not achievable for amateurs studying from books, as in the old days. The game of chess has no doubt changed because of chess engines. And maybe for the negative at the top end. But I think you're right, it's probably a lot more positive change in the middle. I have long since known that I am not capable of beating a chess engine in regular play, but that doesn't mean I don't benefit from the loss.
croes 4y ago
I don't know. Must be hard for a professional if you not only compete against human creativity but sheer computing power. Just like Dall-E, it's fun if you can't paint not so much if it's your source of income.

the_arcadian 4y ago

This is one of those articles that treats computers as if they were hyperintelligent entities that programmed themselves rather than just simple computational machines following rules created by teams of people that have studied the game for decades. Also it sounds like should replace all of my servers with powerful shoe computers to take advantage of the "upgrades in commercial hardware" that they mentioned.

hackinthebochs 4y ago
This misses the key property of such systems that make them remarkable. The computation involved begets new behavioral patterns that weren't enumerated by the initial program statements. The behavior is not just a representation of the human knowledge imparted to the system, but an emergent dynamic that is unpredictable from an analysis of the initial rules. It is a common mistake to dismiss the computational part of a system as carrying no informative or meaningful content. Just bracketing `the computation` as transparent and explanatorily insignificant is to miss a large part of the substance of the system.
- graderjs 4y ago
  Exactly, dynamics and algorithm is content as well. 1 example: the heuristics you pick for something can be more powerful than the explicit knowledge required to create the heuristic.

radarsat1 4y ago

Despite varying opinions on the article, most seem to be agreeing here that one thing that is making chess more boring is the memorization of moves and tricks. I'd like to offer a counter-point. This doesn't seem to take into account that many people enjoy learning and memorizing sequences and tricks. It's actually fun to learn patterns and sequences that have clever underpinnings and lead to surprising results. As another commenter said, there exist many variants exactly for the purpose of getting back to pure logic-level reasoning about positions. If that's what you want, go for it. Chess 960 for example is explicitly designed for that. But despite the existence of all these variants and other games, people still predominantly continue to play 'Chess', with its classic starting position and rules, and I would suggest that one of the things that keeps drawing people back is that there is sufficient "space" in the game for life-long learning, while providing a common and stable "interface" that allows everyone to exchange knowledge and build up a shared experience of learning and mastery. That on top of this there still most definitely exists a layer of strategy and "principles", not just memorization, is another aspect that will always draw people back to the game. A lot of these principles that have been developed and taught for hundreds of years go out the window with variants -- which is fine, it's fun to discover new games too, but sometimes you want to benefit from the knowledge and wisdom of experts, and the only way to do that is to play the same game as them.

triyambakam 4y ago
> But despite the existence of all these variants and other games, people still predominantly continue to play 'Chess', with its classic starting position and rules, and I would suggest that one of the things that keeps drawing people back is that there is sufficient "space" in the game for life-long learning, while providing a common and stable "interface" that allows everyone to exchange knowledge and build up a shared experience of learning and mastery. Very well said. This is exactly why I prefer traditional Chess. I really enjoy the rich platform I can dig into for years and years. I'm not likely to ever pursue becoming a GM and I don't mind.

NickC25 4y ago

What's fascinating to me as someone who has followed the game for a while is the evolution of engines and how their play has influenced human play. Stockfish versus AlphaZero was fascinating only because it showed that at the highest of highest levels of chess (3000+ ELO) - there are ways to trick engines and employ "human" strategies (for example, there was a game where Alpha "blundered": it sacrificed 2 pawns and ceded the center of the board to push a wing pawn that 25 moves later ended up blocking Stockfish's kingside development entirely). Incredible, but the flip side of this is realizing that traditional chess is essentially a solved problem to some degree. From what I can understand, chess at the highest of human levels is just using an engine to find tricks and traps 30+ moves into a given match. Anywhere about 2000+ rating or above, most people will play a relatively fixed number of openings that have been explored to death time and time again. It's now about psychological hacks that can be be backed up by deep engine analysis. "If at move 45 in a Sicilian Dragon game I play sub-optimal move X instead of optimal move Y, my opponent might make a sub-optimal response which will open up a specific square or hang a piece 10 turns later according to AlphaZero or Stockfish". I can see why Magnus is kind of bored by it. To me, Fisher Random (Chess960) solves this by eliminating opening theory almost entirely. Crazyhouse Chess is also a blast, but it too is hampered by theory as there are fewer competent opening moves than standard chess and there's even less room for creativity. Crazyhouse960 is by far my favorite variation of chess, because there's no endgame to solve towards and little to none opening theory to draw from. Shame nobody plays it these days - if you're so inclined, come join over at PyChess.org and play a few rounds!

darepublic 4y ago

When I think about it, chess is a game where accusations of cheating are regular. Most recently there is the Neimann scandal. There was a lot of cheating accusations for Kramnik vs Topalov as I recall. Kramnik was accused of using Fritz (predecessor to today's stronger engines), and Topalov's manager was doing statistical analysis of Kramnik's move choice and the engine's. When Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, he was very salty and accused IBM of cheating. And those are only a sampling of modern examples. It's hardly a game of cold objective analysis. They've got a lot of emotions these chess players, which makes sense. It gives me solace when I get overly wrought / emotional around my own intellectual pursuits.

treis 4y ago
>When Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, he was very salty and accused IBM of cheating The accusation was that IBM made modifications to Deep Blue between games. That's not cheating but then it's not exactly Deep Blue vs Kasparov anymore.
- darepublic 4y ago
  There was a somewhat veiled accusation that there was human intervention in game 2 (as in, a strong human player interceded to influence or outright override the computer's move). Funny that in those days the cheating accusation involved a human behind the scenes instead of a computer.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
Chess grandmasters are not the most balanced human beings. It’s a very small amount of people who have decided to consecrate an inordinate amount of time completely mastering a game and whose main focus in life is playing it competitively against each other. It’s a lot like elite athletes but more nerdy and with longer career.
- triyambakam 4y ago
  Many top players seem pretty unhinged. Hikaru or Magnus don't seem like they would be a good friend.

groffee 4y ago

Relevant Star Trek clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIRT6xRQkf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIRT6xRQkf8 Generally both sides play to win, but if you play to draw instead (by playing 'sub-optimal' moves etc) you paradoxically have a better chance of winning.

awb 4y ago

Bobby Fischer attempted to solve the rote memorization problem by creating Fischer Random Chess: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess With 960 possible starting positions, opening line memorization is far beyond current human capacity. There have been some recent Random Chess tournaments with high level GMs like Magnus and they’re pretty fun and entertaining. Chess.com has some great live coverage and analysis of these events as well as classical chess tournaments.

Tepix 4y ago
Othello has gone a similar route with XOT start position games.
jstx1 4y ago
The history and well-studied lines add a lot to the game though, both for players and for spectators. 960 can be fun but it's not a replacement for classical chess, it's a different game altogether. To stick to the poker comparison (which the article barely makes), it's like saying that the fix for NLH bots and solvers is to switch to PLO - you haven't fixed anything, you've just decided to play a different game.
- Cd00d 4y ago
  NLH and PLO?
  - nohuck13 4y ago
    No-Limit Hold'em and Pot-Limit Omaha
- H8crilA 4y ago
  Yes, to a game where you can no longer memorize openings. Which fixed that thing (memorizing openings).
  - jstx1 4y ago

svnt 4y ago

It seems to me that one of the biggest related problems with chess is that the quality of the player rating system has not kept pace with the development of the game. If I am an ok player and memorize a complex line and a handful of tricks I can beat enough players to raise my rating. If I leave that line my rating will fall. Am I a better player? The player rating systems might benefit from a “play style diversity” or “flexibility of approach” indicator to expose players that rely on one-weird-trick traps.

astrobe_ 4y ago
The trick you describe reminds me of "first order optimal strategies" [1], a.k.a. "noob strat" or "chesse" in online gaming lingo. The thing is, as your rating rises, you meet more and more player that know those strategies, and your rating will reach a plateau - typically in the equivalent of low gold league (slightly above average). As for the rating system, ELO is very practical for matchmaking and numerous games have adopted it (including MOBAs, RTS, FPS games). [1] https://thethoughtfulgamer.com/2017/03/09/first-order-optimal-strategies-narrative-inspired-heuristics/ https://thethoughtfulgamer.com/2017/03/09/first-order-optima...
wbc 4y ago
This happens across many competitive games, where you can raise your Elo/MMR by playing gimmicky stuff instead of working on fundamentals. E.g. ling rush in Starcraft, 1-tricking in League, etc etc. Sure you can score based on flexibility, but the people who work hard on staying competitive knows at heart all ratings are just an approximation anyways. Just work on fundamentals, get good, and don't sweat the numbers. Not a problem worth fixing imo.

bcassedy 4y ago

I don't know enough about chess mid-game and end-game to know whether chess is the same as poker in this regard, but poker is absolutely not a game of memorization deeper into the game tree even at the highest levels. tl;dr the author knows nothing about the state of high level poker play and I suspect they don't know much about high level chess either. Chess and poker both require memorization or at least very strong understanding of the early game. In chess this is openings and has been required for as long as I can remember. In poker this is preflop play. Poker extends this a bit into flop play, but already on the flop there is a lot of opportunity for creativity because there are countless strategies that are indistinguishable from one another within reasonable precision targets. As you descend deeper into the game tree for turn and river play we enter into territory that cannot be memorized due to number of possibilities and the increasing impossibility of having perfectly executed all the way to the current decision point. This opens up a lot of room for creativity and exploitation.

m4jor 4y ago

non-paywall: https://archive.ph/mf7iW https://archive.ph/mf7iW

scrapcode 4y ago

Having any skill at chess outside of just knowing the rules of the game has piqued my interest multiple times, but it seems like a daunting undertaking and dedication just to become mediocre in the game.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
It will bring you little apart from a new pastime but for historical reasons it’s more socially acceptable than getting good at Fortnight. Still you should definitely go for it if you find playing chess enjoyable.

hosh 4y ago

If the goal of playing and winning chess is to rank and see who is the best at playing chess, then yeah, we'll get cheating. This can happen in any competitive sport. If the goal of playing chess is to develop, refine, and challenge one's own decision-making process in which someone can apply those principles elsewhere in life off-the-board, then cheating like this is cheating yourself. If the goal of sports, like chess, is to inspire others in the human civilization on what's possible, to uplift everyone, to reflect the best of humankind, then cheating like this cheats all of us. We're basically saying the best of humankind cheats rather than demonstrating virtue and character through sportsmanship. And lastly, in the domain of war and warfare, there's a proverb that, if you are not cheating, you're not trying hard enough.

r0b05 4y ago
Well said.

adolph 4y ago

"Just poker" says The Atlantic. Chess is not a game. Chess is a well-defined form of computation. You may not be able to work out the answers, but in theory, there must be a solution, a right procedure in any position. Now real games... are not like that at all. Real life is not like that. Real life consists of bluffing, of little tactics of deception, of asking yourself what is the other man going to think I mean to do. And that is what games are about in my theory. ~ John von Neumann https://newsletter.altdeep.ai/p/how-poker-and-a-spaceship-imposter https://newsletter.altdeep.ai/p/how-poker-and-a-spaceship-im... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24589842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24589842

draw_down 4y ago

c3534l 4y ago

I feel bad for this guy. He managed to beat someone way better than himself and now everyone is accusing him of cheating with absolutely zero evidence. What chess engines have done is make everyone paraniod.

exogeny 4y ago
This is analogous to track and field or pro cycling, and it robs us of the ability to believe in the underdog. I don't know a single person who believes that Marcell Jacobs won the 100m dash in Tokyo legitimately, and that's a sad thing.
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
Magnus' reaction in the last tournament where he made 2 moves and left is not helping either. If he has credible information, he should come out with it, otherwise he is putting in jeopardy the career and mental health of another player.
mkagenius 4y ago
Well, it's not like he has not cheated before. The doubts in other's minds is his own mistake from the past.
danrocks 4y ago
There is very clear evidence he has cheated before. He then admitted to it. Then chess.com says that he admitted to a very small portion of the actual cheating. So there is a LOT of evidence he is a cheater.

lizardactivist 4y ago

A lot of the analysis on whether Niemann cheated bring up the same things and irregularities: His peculiarly nervous and odd body language Having jumped over 200 points in a few months, which is a world of difference up at ~2500 Fluttering and nonsense in post-interview trying to explain his moves and train of thought when playing And the fact that he has been caught cheating twice recently

Iolaum 4y ago

Chess is a full information game while in poker you don't have access to full information. I really dislike the analogy.

purpleblue 4y ago

How on earth did the anal bead cheating theory ever take hold? The idea you can slander someone with such a ridiculous notion is incredible. How would the accomplice be able to see the board so quickly and be able to input what the opponent has, and then be able to send a signal through Bluetooth (presumably) fast and reliably enough for him to defeat Magnus? How could you encode that with vibrations (presumably) that would be easily detectable enough to discern? Don't these games have time limits?

Barrin92 4y ago

Tying the Niemann scandal or changing practices into the chess engine discussion is I think wrong. As the article itself points out, chess engine use became ubiquitous and cheating as a concern emerged almost 20 years back. The article also vastly overstates the importance of NN chess models. Conventional Stockfish already played at levels so far beyond human capacity a few years back it makes no practical difference. (chess GM's literally would draw or lose with pawn odds many years ago), and professional players have been using engines extensively for well over a decade. What's starting to shift in chess isn't tech but the culture, largely driven by the social media around it, the livestreaming medium where now much of it takes place in real time, and so on. Chess isn't becoming like poker, it's just becoming like any other sport that gets the entertainment sector treatment, including increasing amounts of drama. It reminds me a little bit of a recent thread on how Substack allegedly revolutionized writing. There also it wasn't substack, which is basically a blog generator with a payment button, but the social networks around it that create all of the new dynamics. I expect a lot more cheating allegations, personal feuds, played up controversy not because of technology that affects the game itself but because of tech that changes how the game is broadcast and how people participate in it.

mattmaroon 4y ago

Couldn't you just have them play in a faraday cage? Surely there's enough money in the world championships of chess to arrange that. A metal detector and a room that can't be penetrated by wireless anal beads (pun intended) can't be that hard to arrange with a little budget right?

thehappypm 4y ago
What if the computer is on his person? And he can send it inputs?
- mattmaroon 4y ago
  Metal detector on the way in?

pif 4y ago

Chess was born with an unknown, yet well defined, maximum lifetime. Lack of any random element implies that the number of scenarios is finite; huge, very huge, but finite. When matches were played by mail (mail as in postal service, not email), and the most passionate players subscribed to specialised paper magazines, it was a kind of huge that you could be excused for confusing with infinity. But internet and computers have changed the playing field enormously, and now that huge has showed for what it always was: huge, but finite. Chess is dead.

SilverBirch 4y ago

Every single time I see someone mention anal beads in this story I get more angry. For fucks sake. The anal beads suggestion was an anonymous shit-post on reddit about how Magnus has been using anal beads his entire career to win. Now you've got The Atlantic dropping in stuff about anal beads. Here's a message- you get to be a serious authoritative news source, or you get to post unsubstantiated jokes about anal beads. You don't get to do both. Every single word in this article is untrustworthy now, because I don't know if it's serious, or just a reddit shitpost that The Atlantic decided to repeat.

inimino 4y ago
It's a pretty low-effort article, combining speculation with zero evidence, some boring old gripes about how chess has changed, and wrapping it all up with some crazy stretched analogy to poker and a conclusion that doesn't make sense for either poker or chess. An editor really should have canned this whole piece.

jeanloolz 4y ago

Anecdote: the creator of the biggest poker site ever made (Pokerstars) is also the creator of the chess.com platform.