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>Chess is as balanced as it gets. It's "balanced" in some respects but both sides use the same features and most games end in a draw, and high level play is le
by KVFinn 13y ago
>Chess is as balanced as it gets.
It's "balanced" in some respects but both sides use the same features and most games end in a draw, and high level play is less and less interesting. And for that matter it's not even balanced really -- tournaments have players play both white and black because they are so inequal. This is like balancing starcraft by having everyone play mirror matchups or swap races.
>So Anand encountered a "mild surprise" in the opening moves that left him "flying blind" (meaning the board was in a position with which he had not previously studied) and because of that he decided to not keep pursuing the game. He just engineered a draw.
>Most real people are "flying blind" after the first couple moves of the game, and it's the challenge of trying to solve a puzzle against a live opponent (who is also flying blind) that makes the game so fun. At the highest levels, Grandmasters go very deep into the game in positions they have studied exhaustively, and then the moment they feel uncomfortable they search for the emergency brake, and consider themselves happy to escape with half a point.
>Intuitive understanding of the game and moments of brilliant improvisation are the most exciting aspects, and yet memorized lines of play are so deeply entrenched now that when a top player encounters anything outside of memorized, studied lines he heads directly for the draw. It's really the opposite of what you'd hope.
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html
- dasil003 13y agoSo is it safe to say you consider Go the superior game?
- smky80 13y agoAs much as I recognize and appreciate the limitations of chess, it pains me physically to see the strategic depth of it compared to something like Starcraft. It's not close by orders of magnitude. I still remember some important match almost 15 years ago between two world class Starcraft players, who also apparently were friends off the board, being settled in 3 minutes by one guy "4 pooling" (basically sucker punching) the other.
- omni 13y agoA 4 pool isn't a sucker punch. It is a highly risky opening strategy that almost always ends the game very quickly. If your opponent does not scout it quickly, he is very likely to lose. If he does, you are very likely to lose. The existence of this early all-in option does much to "keep players honest" during the opening phases of the game and greatly expands the strategic depth of the beginning minutes. Without this option, each player's optimal strategy would always be to sacrifice defense and scouting early in favor of better late-game economy.
- smky80 13y ago> a highly risky opening strategy that almost always ends the game very quickly In other words, a sucker punch?
- girvo 13y agoI think parent was reading sucker punch (as I did) as not "risky", but unfair -- as you can't see it coming (by definition). In SC2, 6pooling is certainly quite powerful (Zerg makes Tassadar cry...) but if it is scouted, the Zerg is now fucked. The thing is, in the current meta, you never bother drone/probe/scv scouting that early, so you'd have to be able to read your opponent and know that he's a kind of player that loves those "Cheesy" build orders!
- omni 13y agoLike girvo said, I meant that it's not unfair. If you think surprise attacks and imperfect information don't add strategic depth to a game, then we have nothing left to discuss.
- smky80 13y agoIt's not to say Starcraft isn't a challenging game or there isn't any depth to it, but I am saying if 4 pooling is considered deep stuff, you have to realize that something like chess is on a completely different level. I'm quite sure you could put all you would ever need to know about Starcraft strategy into a single 300 page volume, whereas there are entire libraries full of chess books, databases of millions of games and 3300-rated computers slugging it out constantly, and the game still hasn't been completely exhausted yet.