4 ms·

Complexity physics finds crucial tipping points in chess games

73 points by pseudolus 2y ago

dentemple 2y ago
Okay, but will this research help me get above 700 ELO rapid on chess.com?
- skulk 2y ago
  No, but 1) don't hang pieces 2) notice when your opponent hangs pieces 3) win endgames where you're up material should be enough to get you to 1500.
  - BalinKing 2y ago
    As a ~900 Elo player, I feel like point #3 is doing the heavy lifting here—kinda reminds me of that "rest of the owl" meme (not that you're wrong, of course!) :-P
    - svachalek 2y ago
      When you're up material? Assuming your opponent is in a tier to leave pieces hanging, we should be talking more than a pawn here, and following the first two rules should hold/build that advantage. At least, as someone not even 900, closing an endgame when I'm already winning sounds like the easier part. But it's hard to believe that's all it takes to get to 1500, it is not my impression that 1300+ players are losing to big "whoops" moments.
      - thethirdone 2y ago
        I would agree the "don't blunder" and "punish opponents blunders" are harder than endgame knowledge. However, knowing the basics of endgames is actually important to closing out games. Specifically, knowing KQvK, KRvK, and the "ladder technique" is important. Without any tactics "take free pieces" probably only gets you to around 1200 (chess.com), but if it includes knight and pawn forks, skewers, pins, and discovered attacks it can get you to 1500. Playing perfectly every game is hard though. I would recommend having more chess knowledge than just those 3 rules before you really try for 1500.
      - BalinKing 2y ago
        Maybe it's just me, but in an endgame where (for example) it's just kings and a bunch of pawns, even a two pawn advantage is easy for me to lose—I pick the wrong pawn island to support with my king, and I've already lost. Knowing good heuristics in these sorts of situations is something that takes active study IME—"don't blunder pieces" is not sufficient, at least for me.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Not hanging pieces is definitely the hard one!
  - rozim 2y ago
    practice tactics..don't study openings..
    - oyster143 2y ago
      Learning basic variations of even one opening for white and for black can be extremely useful. There's not much tactics in first moves, but knowing how to set up a solid position will help a lot. Just learn basic stuff, no need to go into the weeds too much. Also the names of the openings are pretty cool
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    A huge one is also to assume your opponent will make the best move. Don't just make one move threats hoping your opponent will miss them. This seems like it should be somewhat more advanced, because players at a low level often will miss one move threats. But it is basically the first principle from which nearly all other good habits directly derive. Why develop all your pieces, not bring your queen out early, etc. Why do all those things when you know your opponent will often just miss something anyhow if you start pecking him with one move threats? It's because if your opponent does not miss those threats, then you've likely just made your own position even weaker. And as a corollary a one-move threat which improves your position is perfectly fine of course, but in that case you're not hoping your opponent misses it. I mean you probably are, but you expect him to see it. But it doesn't matter - because your position has improved regardless.
  - YZF 2y ago
    4) Develop your pieces first. 5) Castle. 6) Don't move the queen prematurely. 7) Analyze all your games.
- irjustin 2y ago
  At our ELO, games tip back and forth like a metronome, almost move to move. Confuses the AI - never can tell who the winner is!
- throwaway81523 2y ago
  Stop playing rapid until you're well above 700. Play classical so you can think about each move long enough to not hang pieces.
rozim 2y ago
https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02333 https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02333
somenameforme 2y ago
This sounds like an extremely convoluted way of demonstrating a very basic fact, that the authors of the study probably knew beforehand. And that's when a player's position has many weaknesses (or a high 'fragility score') they're probably going to be losing soon. And determining how quickly many pieces can attack a given point versus defend it is, more or less, exactly how you determine if that point is weak. Publish or perish reigns supreme. A lot of science feels like it's becoming much closer to art where you splash a canvas with a few splotches, and then spend an hour describing how it's an insightful representation of the isolation of the modern world and the struggle against depersonalization. At least there you get to then sell it for a few hundred thousand dollars, rather than just live to renew your contract.
- dmurray 2y ago
  One thing chess engines are still bad at is determining which positions are difficult for humans to play. If there is a sequence of moves where Black has to make the right choice every time from several plausible alternatives to reach a drawn endgame, but White has plenty of margin for error at every turn to keep that situation, the computer will happily evaluate this as "0.0" - a draw. Solving this would allow handicapped computers to play interesting games against humans, and it would also be hugely useful for strong players preparing opening surprises, but no one seems to have figured it out. Note that this isn't a simple graph theory question of looking for how narrow a path through the graph is: the word "plausible" is very important above, and a narrow path where most moves can quickly be eliminated is one of the easier things for humans to calculate. Anyway, I was hoping this was a step towards solving that, but they don't seem to have even tried to apply it there.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    For sure, but I think this is really quite difficult even with the wildest of hand-waving. Take, for instance, take the R+B v R ending. The weaker side has literally two pieces, including the king, to move. There are many well studied drawing plans, and in most positions literally any move would lead to a draw (short of absurd things like hanging your rook). Yet this ending is extremely difficult to the point that GMs lose it with some regularity. That stat about 40% of the possible positions being forced wins is useless, because it includes mostly very weird positions that nobody would voluntarily walk into. The overwhelming majority of times this ending is entered into, as well as normal moves from such, are all textbook draws.
billforsternz 2y ago
It's really difficult to pick my least favourite part of this article. Could be this; "But the game is about more than algorithms, according to Marc Barthelemy, a physicist at the Paris-Saclay University in France, with layers of depth arising from the psychological complexity conferred by player strategies. Now, Barthelmey has taken things one step further..." At least AI systems can write slop fairly well. Why do I hate this so much? It just feels lazy, underdone, superficial, vaguely nonsensical. The magic of chess has little or nothing todo with the "psychological complexity conferred by player strategies". It has much more to do with aesthetic beauty, and many a great writer has illuminated that. It's utterly unsurprising that you can model the game as nodes interacting in a network graph (I mean essentially that's what it is), and even more unsurprising that the complexity of the interactions is higher in the tense and complicated positions that do indeed often decide the fate of individual games. Note, games not matches. If you can't get even the most basic domain terminology correct, you don't deserve anyone's attention. I'll probably calm down in an hour or two.

73 points by pseudolus 2y ago

dentemple 2y ago

Okay, but will this research help me get above 700 ELO rapid on chess.com?

skulk 2y ago
No, but 1) don't hang pieces 2) notice when your opponent hangs pieces 3) win endgames where you're up material should be enough to get you to 1500.
- BalinKing 2y ago
  As a ~900 Elo player, I feel like point #3 is doing the heavy lifting here—kinda reminds me of that "rest of the owl" meme (not that you're wrong, of course!) :-P
  - svachalek 2y ago
    When you're up material? Assuming your opponent is in a tier to leave pieces hanging, we should be talking more than a pawn here, and following the first two rules should hold/build that advantage. At least, as someone not even 900, closing an endgame when I'm already winning sounds like the easier part. But it's hard to believe that's all it takes to get to 1500, it is not my impression that 1300+ players are losing to big "whoops" moments.
    - thethirdone 2y ago
      I would agree the "don't blunder" and "punish opponents blunders" are harder than endgame knowledge. However, knowing the basics of endgames is actually important to closing out games. Specifically, knowing KQvK, KRvK, and the "ladder technique" is important. Without any tactics "take free pieces" probably only gets you to around 1200 (chess.com), but if it includes knight and pawn forks, skewers, pins, and discovered attacks it can get you to 1500. Playing perfectly every game is hard though. I would recommend having more chess knowledge than just those 3 rules before you really try for 1500.
    - BalinKing 2y ago
      Maybe it's just me, but in an endgame where (for example) it's just kings and a bunch of pawns, even a two pawn advantage is easy for me to lose—I pick the wrong pawn island to support with my king, and I've already lost. Knowing good heuristics in these sorts of situations is something that takes active study IME—"don't blunder pieces" is not sufficient, at least for me.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Not hanging pieces is definitely the hard one!
- rozim 2y ago
  practice tactics..don't study openings..
  - oyster143 2y ago
    Learning basic variations of even one opening for white and for black can be extremely useful. There's not much tactics in first moves, but knowing how to set up a solid position will help a lot. Just learn basic stuff, no need to go into the weeds too much. Also the names of the openings are pretty cool
- somenameforme 2y ago
  A huge one is also to assume your opponent will make the best move. Don't just make one move threats hoping your opponent will miss them. This seems like it should be somewhat more advanced, because players at a low level often will miss one move threats. But it is basically the first principle from which nearly all other good habits directly derive. Why develop all your pieces, not bring your queen out early, etc. Why do all those things when you know your opponent will often just miss something anyhow if you start pecking him with one move threats? It's because if your opponent does not miss those threats, then you've likely just made your own position even weaker. And as a corollary a one-move threat which improves your position is perfectly fine of course, but in that case you're not hoping your opponent misses it. I mean you probably are, but you expect him to see it. But it doesn't matter - because your position has improved regardless.
- YZF 2y ago
  4) Develop your pieces first. 5) Castle. 6) Don't move the queen prematurely. 7) Analyze all your games.
irjustin 2y ago
At our ELO, games tip back and forth like a metronome, almost move to move. Confuses the AI - never can tell who the winner is!
throwaway81523 2y ago
Stop playing rapid until you're well above 700. Play classical so you can think about each move long enough to not hang pieces.

rozim 2y ago

https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02333 https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02333

somenameforme 2y ago

This sounds like an extremely convoluted way of demonstrating a very basic fact, that the authors of the study probably knew beforehand. And that's when a player's position has many weaknesses (or a high 'fragility score') they're probably going to be losing soon. And determining how quickly many pieces can attack a given point versus defend it is, more or less, exactly how you determine if that point is weak. Publish or perish reigns supreme. A lot of science feels like it's becoming much closer to art where you splash a canvas with a few splotches, and then spend an hour describing how it's an insightful representation of the isolation of the modern world and the struggle against depersonalization. At least there you get to then sell it for a few hundred thousand dollars, rather than just live to renew your contract.

dmurray 2y ago
One thing chess engines are still bad at is determining which positions are difficult for humans to play. If there is a sequence of moves where Black has to make the right choice every time from several plausible alternatives to reach a drawn endgame, but White has plenty of margin for error at every turn to keep that situation, the computer will happily evaluate this as "0.0" - a draw. Solving this would allow handicapped computers to play interesting games against humans, and it would also be hugely useful for strong players preparing opening surprises, but no one seems to have figured it out. Note that this isn't a simple graph theory question of looking for how narrow a path through the graph is: the word "plausible" is very important above, and a narrow path where most moves can quickly be eliminated is one of the easier things for humans to calculate. Anyway, I was hoping this was a step towards solving that, but they don't seem to have even tried to apply it there.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  For sure, but I think this is really quite difficult even with the wildest of hand-waving. Take, for instance, take the R+B v R ending. The weaker side has literally two pieces, including the king, to move. There are many well studied drawing plans, and in most positions literally any move would lead to a draw (short of absurd things like hanging your rook). Yet this ending is extremely difficult to the point that GMs lose it with some regularity. That stat about 40% of the possible positions being forced wins is useless, because it includes mostly very weird positions that nobody would voluntarily walk into. The overwhelming majority of times this ending is entered into, as well as normal moves from such, are all textbook draws.

billforsternz 2y ago

It's really difficult to pick my least favourite part of this article. Could be this; "But the game is about more than algorithms, according to Marc Barthelemy, a physicist at the Paris-Saclay University in France, with layers of depth arising from the psychological complexity conferred by player strategies. Now, Barthelmey has taken things one step further..." At least AI systems can write slop fairly well. Why do I hate this so much? It just feels lazy, underdone, superficial, vaguely nonsensical. The magic of chess has little or nothing todo with the "psychological complexity conferred by player strategies". It has much more to do with aesthetic beauty, and many a great writer has illuminated that. It's utterly unsurprising that you can model the game as nodes interacting in a network graph (I mean essentially that's what it is), and even more unsurprising that the complexity of the interactions is higher in the tense and complicated positions that do indeed often decide the fate of individual games. Note, games not matches. If you can't get even the most basic domain terminology correct, you don't deserve anyone's attention. I'll probably calm down in an hour or two.