Teaching Children To Play Chess Found To Decrease Risk Aversion (phys.org) 132
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A trio of researchers from Monash University and Deakin University has found that teaching children to play chess can reduce their aversion to risk. In their paper published in Journal of Development Economics, Asad Islam, Wang-Sheng Lee and Aaron Nicholas describe studying the impact of learning chess on 400 children in the U.K. The researchers found that most of the children experienced a decrease in risk aversion in a variety of game playing scenarios. They also noticed that playing chess also led to better math scores for some of the students and improvements in logic or rational thinking.
The researchers note that the game of chess is very well suited to building confidence in risk taking when there is reason to believe it might improve an outcome. In contrast, students also learned to avoid taking risks haphazardly, finding that such risks rarely lead to a positive outcome. They [...] line between good and poor risk-taking is especially evident in chess, which means that the more a person plays, the sharper their skills become. The researchers also found that the skills learned during chess playing appeared to be long lasting -- most of the children retained their decrease in risk aversion a full year after the end of their participation in the study. The researchers [...] did not find any evidence of changes in other cognitive skills, such as improvements in grades other than math or general creativity.
The researchers note that the game of chess is very well suited to building confidence in risk taking when there is reason to believe it might improve an outcome. In contrast, students also learned to avoid taking risks haphazardly, finding that such risks rarely lead to a positive outcome. They [...] line between good and poor risk-taking is especially evident in chess, which means that the more a person plays, the sharper their skills become. The researchers also found that the skills learned during chess playing appeared to be long lasting -- most of the children retained their decrease in risk aversion a full year after the end of their participation in the study. The researchers [...] did not find any evidence of changes in other cognitive skills, such as improvements in grades other than math or general creativity.
Games teach life. (Score:2)
So what do games of WoW teach if not strategy and risk management?
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Chess ends. It has no grind. You get better by being better, not by getting more powerful pieces.
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With strategy and tactics combined, probably more complex, partly due to the number of variables involved. While some people repeatedly throw failure at the wall until RNG deals them a winning hand, there are people who play Nethack and DCSS and register staggering amounts of consecutive wins. In the last tournament, somebody had 22 consecutive wins with unique starting combinations, with the streak terminated due to the end of the tournament period, not a loss. In comparison, the over-all tournament win ra
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The lottery isn't complex in this case, because there's no participant decision that can impact the win/loss rate once a round has begun, making it tantamount to a very large coin flip.
The ability to transform an average win rate of ~3% (which is already well above average, as most casual players don't bother with the tournament) into something approaching 100% sounds like player skill (which, admittedly, is related to, but still different from strategy) is a major factor.
RNG is a consideration-- but the RN
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The lottery isn't complex in this case, because there's no participant decision that can impact the win/loss rate once a round has begun, making it tantamount to a very large coin flip.
Which is my point. It has a large number of variables, but that doesn't make it complex in terms of game play. I mean, it's very complex if you want to model the airflow of the ball machine and the initial position of each ball, but the surface level complexity devolves into a small number of actual factors - decision.
The value of a variable is part of the decision tree, regardless of it being changed... just like the value of a pawn is much greater when it's actively defending the king, than when it's by it's lonesome.
The value of the pawn also changes depending on the position of the other pieces on the board. A player must look at that pawn and judge whether its importance can be justified in the next X n
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Chess pieces don't get new items to help them
* pawn promotion happens *
* morphs into queen with massive powers *
* swivels head and snaps fingers *
"Excuuuuse me?!?"
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Yeah, let's see you hinge a whole game on getting a pawn promotion. You might as well play the bongcloud.
"Chess pieces don't get new items to help them"
You made a move. I merely countered, as I feel there are lowly moths on the board that can be reborn, gifted with the item of deadly movement that helps them considerably.
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WoW teaches people management.
Re:Games teach life. (Score:4, Insightful)
WoW teaches people management.
Specifically, dysfunctional team management.
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WoW teaches people management.
Specifically, dysfunctional team management.
That's what office work is for.
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If team management is dysfunctional, you don't get to kill the boss. The team has to function to do it.
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If team management is dysfunctional, you don't get to kill the boss. The team has to function to do it.
As someone who has witnessed a group of people fail a boss 5 times in a night and then disband for the night, only to come back with the exact same group a week later and do it on the first try, yes, managing dysfunctional teams is a real thing you have to (had to? It's been years since I played so I don't know if things got easier) learn in WoW.
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and I thought that *I* had worked in some rough office environments . . . .
Is this Klingon office politics, where you advance by assassination?
Or perhaps Terran Empire?
hawk
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Very are very few "office environments" where signal for success or failure is as strong and as immediate as in games like WoW.
And that is generally what is the driving force in "office environments". The more you can obfuscate the outcome of leadership actions, the less responsible leader is held for failures.
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killing the boss is about as clear a signal as an office group can make , , ,
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So what do games of WoW teach if not strategy and risk management?
Oh, I can think of a few titles from the WoW library...
Bastard Camping for Dummies
Yoga for Teabagging
How to Fuck over Friends and Manipulate Complete Strangers
And finally, there's the South Park take on strategy...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Not so much.
I have found that Gamer of WoW and other similar games often develop false confidence in their skills.
1. Game Over isn't Game Over. In chess if you loose you have to start the game from the Start. In WoW you have most of your stats, and you might need to hunt for your inventory. Or even in older games you just get a new live while keeping your level, and sometime progress on that level is restored. WoW rewards you for success and the risk of failure is minor. This doesn't teach risk manageme
Highly complex game have correlation with IQ logic (Score:5, Interesting)
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That was my first thought. Why chess? We have millions of other games now. Not a lot of kids are drawn to chess.
If you want to do something useful, pick the game du jour and use that. You're going to get a lot more kids playing Fortnite or Minecraft (IDK, I'm old. Those are at least recent popular games.) than chess.
Re:Highly complex game have correlation with IQ lo (Score:5, Interesting)
Why chess? We have millions of other games now. Not a lot of kids are drawn to chess.
That shows that chess is that much more complicated than those other games. Chess is a limited game. You don't get more things - you don't get pieces back, you don't get new items. The lack of ability to cover your arse in chess makes it easier to isolate behaviours you want to study.
Re: Highly complex game have correlation with IQ l (Score:2)
No imperfect information though, poor educational too. They should all play Starcraft.
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Limitations is what brings about creativity. Like I said, chess doesn't give you the ability to cover your arse. You have to make do with what you got. In Starcraft, if you make a blunder, you have a less challenging escape if you are st
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That shows that chess is that much more complicated than those other games.
Lol, what? Chess is not complicated. It has a finite number of pieces on a tiny board that move in simple, prescribed patterns.
Yes, you can get some emergent complexity out of it, but to say it's more complicated than other games shows you have not played many games. Nor have the people modding you up.
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Lol, what? Chess is not complicated. It has a finite number of pieces on a tiny board that move in simple, prescribed patterns.
And the fact that you claim that's what makes chess simple shows you have not played chess. The Game of Life has simple rules, and yet you can make all sorts of self-perpetuating machines within it.
That also makes me think your analysis of modern games is very surface level (eg "so many variables!") and not understanding in those games the surface level complexity quickly devolves into just a handful of simple factors.
Re: Highly complex game have correlation with IQ l (Score:2)
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That shows that chess is that much more complicated than those other games. Chess is a limited game. You don't get more things - you don't get pieces back, you don't get new items. The lack of ability to cover your arse in chess makes it easier to isolate behaviours you want to study.
Not sure what version of chess you are referring to. In my version of chess, you *can* get pieces back. And in my version of chess, you can certainly get new powers, by getting those pieces back and giving them more power. Your version of chess would seem to be lacking pawn promotion.
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The right to publicly perform chess (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm guessing one reason is that the researchers had the rights to chess and might not have had the rights to post-1925 games. See "Why Nintendo can legally shut down any Smash Bros. tournament it wants" by Kyle Orland [arstechnica.com].
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Just curious...what part of teenage life mandates a cell phone much less a smart phone?
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Factorio teaches you that asking a question results in a moderator making snarky and snide comments and immediately lashing out when you tell them to knock it off.
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Like studies that look at benefits of learning an instrument, I don't think these benefits are unique to any particular activity or game. There are plenty of board games today I would argue provide all the benefits of playing chess. Many/most of games classified as "euro-games" provide far more complexity than chess. Chess does seem to lend itself well to mastery, though, as its level of complexity seems to be in a sweet spot of not too high and not too low. For the human brain anyway.
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Chess has been around centuries and will remain for centuries.
You can play without a subscription, power supply, or internet connection.
You can play across language and cultural barriers.
You can make a functional board with some paper and a pen.
What does that really mean? (Score:2)
The article is pay-walled, so all I could read was the abstract. It was published in an economics journal, not psychology journal, and it was done ". . . in a developing country context", so I don't know what it was, or how they measured risk aversion.
But, what does "less risk aversion" mean here? Does the headline or abstract mean that chess training made kids "less risk averse" in the sense of more confident and assured, perhaps more emboldened? Or does it go too far, making them more brazen or impuls
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The article is pay-walled
I was afraid of that. Good thing I didn't click on it.
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It does seem like it's a bit of a leap to say that lower risk aversion is necessarily a good thing. Also worth considering is the widely held belief that chess players experience more depression and mental illness. I know people who enjoy a game of chess and are generally fine, but the only person I've actually known who competed in tournaments and was highly ranked committed suicide in his late twenties. That's anecdotal, of course. Beyond that, it's always hard to tell if it's correlation or causation, an
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Second sentence, paragraph two of summary,
It's not about doing "whatever" without considering negative consequences; rather, it's about not being paralyzed by abject fear.
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It is not merely the ability to understand risk, but to go on to also understanding its relation to the reward.
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Right, but it also noted that the line between good and bad risks is particularly evident in chess. In any case, that was really just an aside. My main concern there was if there's a link between chess and depression.
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In an economic sense, risk-aversion (and risk-loving, and risk-neutral) are terms of art. They categorize, literally how people compare playing a game of chance vs. the sure thing of the expected value of the game.
Consider when you offer someone a coin flip that pays $1 on heads and $0 on tails. A risk-loving individual would pay more than $0.50 for that chance, a risk-adverse individual would only be willing to pay less than $0.50 for that change and a risk-neutral individual is ambivalent at $0.50 takin
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Your coin flip calculus is actually terrible, because it misses the fact that all people, even the most risk loving ones react to loss much harder than to a win.
This is because once you "fall to zero" after a coin flip, you lose not just the game of coin flip, but ability to participate in future games of coin flip, but no matter how much you win, all you get is a couple of extra coin flips. It's why gambling addicts who lose everything are as rare in overall population as they are. Almost all humans unders
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You're partially correct, in the same way that if you said "the sky is blue; this is because leprechaun farts dye it blue as they ride rainbows" is partially correct. In economics it's recognized that people react more strongly to a loss than a win. Therefore, a 100% conformant explanation would have been someone offering a sure amount of money vs. a coin flip. That's how I could have phrased it. However, the effect typically is negligible at the $1 level, and including it would be akin to accounting fo
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>Economics does not recognize your "knocked out of the game" vs "extra flips" reasoning as valid.
One of the main ways of looking into mechanics of poverty from view of economics is the exact analysis I conduct. "Poor people are risk averse because they have a risk of going to zero, where they can no longer afford (literally, not figuratively) to take new risk if this risk taking endeavour fails.
The thing you're missing is the common problem with many "deep, narrow" specialists in specific parts of econom
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What you're saying is totally true - poorer people are more risk-adverse. But you're trying to correct my post about the definition of "risk-adverse" by explaining not risking a dollar doesn't make someone risk adverse because they have a good reason to be risk adverse. It's nonsense. The term is descriptive not judgemental.
While it's true that poor people might be risk-adverse for the reason I listed, that's a special case.
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It's not. It's simply a core descriptor to all "games" played in real life, be they work, purchase decisions or social interactions. The ultimate goal is to win "the maximum amount of games possible" which in turn requires "being able to play in as many reasonably winnable games possible".
And once you can no longer bring enough value to be invited to the game, be it investment, date or task at work, you will no longer be invited to play. This is the core aspect of the entire concept when applied to real lif
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You completely miss the point. I'm responding to someone confused about words that describe your behavior within a game. You're trying to explain why that behavior is being performed. It's like if someone asked what red, green and blue were, I showed them colored fonts, and you came in bitching about exciting the associated color cones, emissive vs. absobative color space and wouldn't shut up about it.
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Do you believe that two can be cleanly separated in human psychology? If so, why?
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Do I believe that describing someone's behavior and describing the underlying cause for it are two different conversations? Yes.
I have been describing how terms of art describe behavior. You are trying to explain why that behavior is rational. Two different discussions.
I cannot tell if you're honestly confused (continue to engage) or your just a dull troll.
Will be trying a chess school for my 4 year olds (Score:1)
Before you say so, yes of c
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Teach them 3D modeling, computer graphics/animation, robotics, coding, biology, and mathematics. Most important are 3D modeling and mathematics.
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3D modelling as the most important, meh. Kids are better off learning how to make physical things.
Re: Will be trying a chess school for my 4 year ol (Score:2)
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Really? Why not? Maybe you shouldn't butt in when others are doing something they want to do?
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Re: Will be trying a chess school for my 4 year ol (Score:2)
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I personally think you should go for something without rules for 4 yo, something in which they can be themselves without restrictions. Goofing off in a garden is definitely better than chess, IMHO.
If I were looking for a class at that age level, I would look for a good suzuki teacher and try to pick up some violin or piano skills. Playing skillful, expressive music can be a life-long friend. But I still think that's very early.
I'm sorry for jumping in like this. I definitely don't think it will hurt them go
Re: Will be trying a chess school for my 4 year ol (Score:2)
Re: Will be trying a chess school for my 4 year ol (Score:2)
Does it work the other way? (Score:5, Funny)
Does teaching kids to play Risk [wikipedia.org] also reduce their aversion to chess?
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I had the same thought, which can only mean one thing. We're both old.
Re:Risk (Score:2)
Playing Risk with my brother reduces my aversion to beating his cheating dice tail. I have total army superiority and he wins on dice rolls.
Forcing children to play chess while putting a gun (Score:2)
at their heads trains their risk aversion.
what is risk? it's Subjective (Score:2)
In an interview (Charlie Rose) Magn
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Max Payne Is My Life Coach (Score:2)
Gaming
Max Payne Is My Life Coach
How a monstrously hard video game made me a better person.
By James Carmichael
July 10, 20126:13 AM
If the game were not close to impossible at times, the story would not land. An easier version of Max Payne would have allowed for quicker progression through stages and narrative. But slowing a game down with tough challenges arms a unique storytelling asset. Instead of
Chess is a national sport, you know... (Score:2)
So do Russians grow up being less risk-averse than other ethnicities?
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Have you watched any Russian dash cams?
NEWSFLASH! Training the look ahead ... (Score:2)
... improves your look ahead! Who would've thunk?
smart kids learn to take risks ! oh no ! (Score:2)
Just like not getting out of bed in the morning ensures defeat.
Yup-math. (Score:2)
So games teach...statistics?
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Like all games of chance, you can win with a few Hail Mary clueless random moves thereby making you realize taking a risk can pay off.
No dice, dear. We're talking about chess, not backgammon. Chess is not even slightly a game of chance.
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Yeah...it is a little. If it weren't, every game would be the same. You have no idea what random ass idea your opponent has or what random ass opening you happen to spot before your opponent sees it. It's not random like rolling a die each time but you can play the same guy at the same time of day every day for years and never have a repeat.
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Yeah...it is a little.
No. Not even a little.
If it weren't, every game would be the same.
Sorry, that is not the definition of a "game of chance".
You have no idea ...
YOU have no idea what constitutes a "game of chance". Here, let me help you. [google.com]
Re: Yup (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you ever played chess?
Yes.
When you make the first move, you know you see the very last move? You are always taking a chance when you play chess, the chance that your opponent won't make a lucky move or isn't a grandmaster.
Not knowing the skill level of your opponent does not make chess is a "game of chance". Neither does knowing or not knowing the last move after the first move.
By your pedantic definition
You're hallucinating. I made no definition, pedantic or otherwise. I provided links of definitions for "game of chance" from authoritative sources. If you read a few, you just might learn something.
The fact is, it is YOUR pedantry that defines chess as a "game of chance". You're too fucking stupid to realize that by your definition, ALL games are "games of chance".
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Re: Yup (Score:2)
Actually, any skill used in rolling a dice to get a number is typically considered cheating.
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No game is 100% luck
Candyland.
Re: Yup (Score:5, Interesting)
No game is 100% luck or 100% skill.
The card game War [wikipedia.org]. Once you shuffle the deck, the outcome is completely deterministic. Though the Wikipedia article does say, "Game designer Greg Costikyan has observed that since there are no choices in the game, and all outcomes are random, it cannot be considered a game by some definitions."
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Yes, a little.
eg. You can make moves that rely on your opponent failing to see what you're up to.
Damn, the morons are out in full force tonight.
If your opponent fails to see what up to, that means your skill is at a higher level than your opponent's skill, not that there's some element of chance involved. It's really astonishing that this has to be explained to someone on this site.
Chess is an archetypical GAME OF SKILL. You know, the OPPOSITE of a "game of chance". Shit, here's Merriam fucking Webster: [merriam-webster.com]
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I don't know what you're reading or who you're arguing with.
But except for the initial poster, all people are saying is that there is some luck involved in chess. Not that chess is a game of chance.
If there weren't any luck involved, Magnus Carlsen would never lose a game as he's the best player at the moment. However he still loses from time to time since skill doesn't 100% translate to winning, just 99% skill and 1% luck at the highest level, and quite a bit more at casual levels of chess.
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No, there is no luck involved, as the game of chess is totally determined by the intentional choices of the opponents. It would be really a stretch to argue that "having the right ideas before the choice" is depending on luck (e.g. the random firing of a brain cell causing the right synapses to react and thus finding a strong move).
That assumes nobody ever has a bad day or makes a mistake, which isn't true.
eg. If I play 1000 games against a grandmaster then the odds are I might win one of them even though he's much better at chess than me.
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Lets say, an average game of chess has 40 moves. In each move, you have an 1:1 to do better than your opponent. In the end, the one with less bad moves wins. A chess player who wins 25 of those 40 moves on average will have a 1024 higher chance to win that game than the one who on average wins 15 of those moves. And you would have to play at least a million games against an opponent who regularly beats you
Re: Yup (Score:2)
Darling, nothing in the past is random in retrospect, even rolls of a die.
The point is that random distractions and and inspirations and insights and oversights to affect the outcome of the game. Otherwise almost every game between the same two players would be almost identical to the previous one.
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If there was "luck" involved in a game of chess, you'd see humans beating supercomputers. But you don't. Not anymore.
That's a fair point.
Playing against a machine is very different from playing against a human though. Machines don't get distracted or have bad days, it remove the element of 'luck' that I was referring to.
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Chess is not even slightly a game of chance.
Yeah...it is a little. If it weren't, every game would be the same.
While I see what you are getting at, a "game of chance" does have a precise definition which clearly does not include chess. Not knowing what your opponent will do with certainty does not qualify a game as nondeterministic. In chess, every time you move your piece you are 100% sure how the game state will change after taking your action. Unlike in a game of chance, where at least some of your actions will be affected by a random element such as dice or cards, or by a physical element such as your ability to
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Yeah...it is a little. If it weren't, every game would be the same. You have no idea what random ass idea your opponent has or what random ass opening you happen to spot before your opponent sees it. It's not random like rolling a die each time but you can play the same guy at the same time of day every day for years and never have a repeat.
The last World Championships resulted in the two same guys battling each other across a dozen chess games, with every damn one of them resulting in a draw.
Technically, you are correct. Billions of possible moves. And yet the end result still creates quite the repeatable problem.
Re: Yup (Score:2)
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I suck at Chess, because I don't play it too often. While for people who don't play it feels more like a game of chance, for the people who play the game more seriously. they avoid the problems of exponential outcomes over time, by finding patterns and focusing on few spots. For example if you see that your opponent has moved their knight and bishop early on, chances are they are going to try to castle their king. Or a bunch of other set of moves that people learn as patterns and learn counter actions fo
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Right.
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you can win with a few Hail Mary clueless random moves
I don't think you can win in chess like that. At worst you have to be making educated guesses.
Re: Of chess (Score:2)
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