Is Professional Chess Becoming More Like Poker? (theatlantic.com) 56
"Chess engines have redefined creativity in chess," argues the Atlantic, "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."
The article's title? "Chess is just poker now." And it starts by noting one inconvenient truth about still-unresolved allegations that Hans Niemann cheated to defeat world chess champion Magnus Carlsen: Whatever really happened here, everyone agrees that for Niemann, or anyone else, to cheat at chess in 2022 would be conceptually simple. In the past 15 years, widely available AI software packages, known as "chess engines," have been developed to the point where they can easily demolish the world's best chess players — so all a cheater has to do to win is figure out a way to channel a machine's advice....
What once seemed magical became calculable; where one could rely on intuition came to require rigorous memorization and training with a machine. Chess, once poetic and philosophical, was acquiring elements of a spelling bee: a battle of preparation, a measure of hours invested. "The thrill used to be about using your mind creatively and working out unique and difficult solutions to strategical problems," the grandmaster Wesley So, the fifth-ranked player in the world, told me via email. "Not testing each other to see who has the better memorization plan...."
The advent of neural-net engines thrills many chess players and coaches... Carlsen said he was "inspired" the first time he saw AlphaZero play. Engines have made it easier for amateurs to improve, while unlocking new dimensions of the game for experts. In this view, chess engines have not eliminated creativity but instead redefined what it means to be creative.
Yet if computers set the gold standard of play, and top players can only try to mimic them, then it's not clear what, exactly, humans are creating. "Due to the predominance of engine use today," the grandmaster So explained, "we are being encouraged to halt all creative thought and play like mechanical bots. It's so boring. So beneath us." And if elite players stand no chance against machines, instead settling for outsmarting their human opponents by playing subtle, unexpected, or suboptimal moves that weaponize "human frailty," then modern-era chess looks more and more like a game of psychological warfare: not so much a spelling bee as a round of poker.
The article's title? "Chess is just poker now." And it starts by noting one inconvenient truth about still-unresolved allegations that Hans Niemann cheated to defeat world chess champion Magnus Carlsen: Whatever really happened here, everyone agrees that for Niemann, or anyone else, to cheat at chess in 2022 would be conceptually simple. In the past 15 years, widely available AI software packages, known as "chess engines," have been developed to the point where they can easily demolish the world's best chess players — so all a cheater has to do to win is figure out a way to channel a machine's advice....
What once seemed magical became calculable; where one could rely on intuition came to require rigorous memorization and training with a machine. Chess, once poetic and philosophical, was acquiring elements of a spelling bee: a battle of preparation, a measure of hours invested. "The thrill used to be about using your mind creatively and working out unique and difficult solutions to strategical problems," the grandmaster Wesley So, the fifth-ranked player in the world, told me via email. "Not testing each other to see who has the better memorization plan...."
The advent of neural-net engines thrills many chess players and coaches... Carlsen said he was "inspired" the first time he saw AlphaZero play. Engines have made it easier for amateurs to improve, while unlocking new dimensions of the game for experts. In this view, chess engines have not eliminated creativity but instead redefined what it means to be creative.
Yet if computers set the gold standard of play, and top players can only try to mimic them, then it's not clear what, exactly, humans are creating. "Due to the predominance of engine use today," the grandmaster So explained, "we are being encouraged to halt all creative thought and play like mechanical bots. It's so boring. So beneath us." And if elite players stand no chance against machines, instead settling for outsmarting their human opponents by playing subtle, unexpected, or suboptimal moves that weaponize "human frailty," then modern-era chess looks more and more like a game of psychological warfare: not so much a spelling bee as a round of poker.
The problem is...chess (Score:5, Insightful)
Chess, at the grandmaster level, is chess reduced to a neural net. It's been that way for the past 30-40 years already. With the ready availability of past games, record by move, or on film/video( the best players in the world memorize every single high end game, or at least the major position and sequences after that.
They took the "game" out of chess ages ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Name one professional sport where it ain't that way.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The problem is...chess (Score:5, Interesting)
Most physical professional sports aren't that way.
Because the physical acumen of the players provides an element to the games that chess cannot recreate without making some fundamental changes. A football (soccer) game has endurance as a heavy modifier. A team may be able to make a particular play work in the first half of the game, but it's less effective when players are tired later on. An American Football team might have a particular play that works primarily because their quarterback can accurately throw a 60 yard pass whereas their opposing team is unable to recreate it because their QB can only throw 45 reliably. A team may choose riskier plays if they are losing, while a winning team's best move is to run out the clock. An injured player being replaced with a less skilled player will limit the options available to the team in a way that chess has no analogue.
In chess, every piece moves exactly the same way, every time. Eventually, that's going to get minmaxed into memorizing what to do in enough situations where it's a matter of choosing from one of those sets in a way that limits the opponent's means of countering the play. If, for example, the game were changed so that bishops and rooks were variably limited in their reach, for example limiting so that they can only move one space plus as many additional spaces as there are remaining pawns, the strategy changes and becomes that much harder to mimic - 'best possible move' has to account for the total number of pawns on the table, including the opponent's.
So yes, they are not equivocal due to the fact that chess has very little in the way of random variables. Consequently, the skill is going to ultimately devolve into memorizing consistently-viable solutions.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I find American football boring, but I also find it brutal. The head injuries are myriad and terrible. Baseball is more fun, especially while eating and drinking junk food.
Re: (Score:3)
I find American football boring, but I also find it brutal. The head injuries are myriad and terrible. Baseball is more fun, especially while eating and drinking junk food.
A particular sport (or just about anything in life) is boring due to a lack of understanding of that one sport. I love (American) football and baseball because I understand not only the rules but also the strategy, the probabilities, the impact of execution, and the specific challenges in executing certain moves. In contrast, I can't stand soccer. It's not that soccer isn't a beautiful game to me. Rather, I only see the ball moving around the field and not having any noticeable results. Someone who und
Re: (Score:2)
It's great that you love the game. Don't make it a personal failing of understanding that other people don't.
That kind of point of view has been such a nasty thing in this world. People who don't like the same shit are less intelligent and lack the understanding to enjoy it.
If I pass on my understanding they will like it the way I do. If they don't, it's because they don't understand.
I MUST m
Re: (Score:2)
Understanding something and finding it interesting have little to do with each other.
I have played football, played football video games, and can throw a decent spiral. I've been to college bowl games and professional games. I've watched too many super bowls. I find the game boring, especially at lower levels of skill, but still boring. Also, the fans are assholes, by and large.
Baseball is far more leisurely and beautiful a game. Less violent. More interactive. I can sit in the bleachers and scream t
Re: (Score:2)
To refute "you don't like it because you don't understand it," I don't have a fucking clue about what the hell is going on in Aussie Rules football, but I think it's an absolutely fantastic sport to watch. Conversely, I understand baseball quite well, and find it to be pretty damned boring unless I'm actually playing it or watching it in the stadium (and the latter has more to do with the experience than the game)
Suggesting "you don't like it because you're not sufficiently educated in the topic" is bullsh
Re: (Score:2)
MLB is working on it. But all that dick tugging gives me a chance to buy some nachos. If the crowd cheers, I run and look out at the game while the play is still going.
Re: Baseball. (Score:2)
What would that be, about 10 minutes?
Grandmaster chess is also physically demanding (Score:2)
Because the physical acumen of the players provides an element to the games that chess cannot recreate without making some fundamental changes. A football (soccer) game has endurance as a heavy modifier. A team may be able to make a particular play work in the first half of the game, but it's less effective when players are tired later on.
Even "mental" games get tiring. So the comparison with "physical" sports isn't entirely inappropriate. There's a good reason why the top grandmasters look fitter than your typical couch potato. They also do "physical" training.
Re: (Score:2)
Name one professional sport where it ain't that way.
UFC.
Where everyone's got a philosophy, a mantra, and a plan...right up until they get kicked in the face.
Maybe we should add a swift kick to the groin when the Queen is taken. You know, spice things up a little.
Re: (Score:2)
UFC has evolved to the next new thing, over and over. It was super fun for the first 2-3 PPVs. Then it got into an arms race.
Re: (Score:2)
UFC has evolved to the next new thing, over and over. It was super fun for the first 2-3 PPVs. Then it got into an arms race.
Arms race? What exactly do you mean by that? Sure the first few events were quite different than we have today in the sense of no weight classes and damn near no rules, with fighters engaging in multiple matches. But had the sport not evolved, it would have been dead because that is exactly what you would have eventually ended up with in the octagon; death.
Hell, if ALL fighting sports never "evolved" we'd be killing our prisoners with lions every Sunday instead of cheering for touchdowns.
Re: (Score:3)
It's almost as if nobody here has heard of chess boxing.
eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Chess, at the grandmaster level, is chess reduced to a neural net. It's been that way for the past 30-40 years already.
40 years ago the best computer engine played at about a 1700 level. Any good club player could beat it. I know. I did it. Some top players were still claiming that a computer would *never* beat the best human. Laughable now, but some serious players really thought that, while on the other side the program's authors gave it about 10 years. That turned out to be overly optimistic, but not by too much.
Timely chess literature in that era was sparse, with one monthly publication collecting the top games of the
Re: (Score:2)
Was Chess not already solved, in books, by then tho?
Humanity had already calculated the optimum move in every single situation, they just had not programmed that into a bot yet. OR when did that happen?
It does not feel like that hard of a problem. Something a computer 1000-1M times faster than a human could just crunch out into large-ish database in a couple months.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a solved game in the informal sense that a wholly unspectacular computer running one of the widely available chess engines will curb stomp a human quite reliably; but remains(and is suspected at least by some to be l
Re: (Score:2)
No, chess is not "solved". It's solvable, but it hasn't been solved.
The reason is the move space explodes rapidly - after 3-4 moves, the number
Re: (Score:2)
So far, chess is solved for 7 pieces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
We start with 32. There are common tactics. The challenge is to get to the point you can apply those tactics before the opponent does.
The problem is whiny toy-enthusiasts... (Score:2)
Cause that's what it is - a toy.
Chess, poker, StarCraft, all them ball games... Those are all TOYS.
Hint: One PLAYS a GAME of whatever. One doesn't "create" or "express" a game, nor was that ever so.
What that whiny overgrown boy in the summary is ACTUALLY complaining about, is the fact that the toy he invested most of his life in, like all toys - can be played in such a way that the only goal is to win, not to have fun or to be entertained.
Insert "Always has been" meme here.
Well, whoopdeefuckindoo! What did
Re: (Score:2)
Don't think so.
First '...reduced to a neural net....' doesn't have any clear meaning.
Problem also is that even if you memorize every high end game and the major position and moves after that, it will not, if that is all you do, help much. You could have a machine that just did that and it would lose every time against a strong player. The reason is, the positions don't recur.
To win a game, except for those in which one player falls into an opening mating trap, which are a tiny percentage, and will not occ
Psychological Warfare has been a part of Chess. (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Clock management is always fun. I occasionally throw in some time-wasting move and make the opponent calculate what it might foreshadow.
Re: (Score:2)
I inadvertently did some Psych warfare on the chessboard back in middle school. The advanced class put on a chess tournament (for second place basically - we had one really really good chess player, who bowed out of the tournament.
So, last game, me and another kid and I move my Queen. And realize, one millisecond after I let go of it, that I made a colossal blunder. She had no support, and could get taken about 5 different ways. Well, that freaked out the other kid something fierce - he looked at it eve
Have grandmasters start playing chess 960 (Score:3, Insightful)
That way they can't prep anymore.
Re:Have grandmasters start playing chess 960 (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. Fischer was ahead of his time in this regard. A 960 event with top players just finished in St. Louis, and it seemed like all of them were having more fun than they do at regular tournaments.
The winner, somewhat ironically, was Fabiano Caruana, who has been known in the past as monster of opening prep in regular chess, memorizing more and longer lines than anyone else could. Turns out he's really good at figuring out strategy on the fly, too.
Not really (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah... Morse code + anal beads? This is clearly a legitimate theory! There's no WAY this is a weird subreddit, QAnon-level conspiracy from a 17 year old 4chan type's wet dream...
Like any other deterministic game (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Chess is a computational puzzle (Score:2)
Chess is not an expression of human creativity, or some abstract measure of the human soul. It's a computational task. Computational tasks are the domain of computers not humans.
psychological warfare (Score:2)
> then modern-era chess looks more and more like a game of psychological warfare
I found this to be a very insightful statement. That statement seems to apply to many uses of AI, particularly in the areas of advertising and user engagement.
AI is not sentient and won't be taking over the world any time soon. But AI can be weaponized against humans in some areas and already is.
Re: (Score:3)
AI is not sentient and won't be taking over the world any time soon. But AI can be weaponized against humans in some areas and already is.
Definitely. Especially as we are finding out that many things we though required (A)GI do not actually require General Intelligence at all, with chess one example of that. The killing off of white-collar jobs (customer support, sales for insurances, etc.) using "AI" is also well underway. These are jobs that will not come back and replacing 100 workers with 5 AI experts will not replace the jobs that went away.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah. Psychological warfare was when my grandfather was playing chess with my father and kept humming, annoying my father and reducing his concentration.
Probably (Score:2)
It seems there are quite a few players that do well in both games as well. And as soon as money is involved, people will "optimize" and some will step over the line.
Personally, I find chess boring and never tried to become any good at it. Far too limited branching in the decision tree and far to discrete. I like strategy games with lots of possible moves each turn. I find poker even more boring.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, so? Any relation to my comment, because I do not see one. Memorizing what you opponent does is perfectly legitimate.
Hidden information (Score:3)
Chess IS calculated. (Score:2)
"What once seemed magical became calculable; where one could rely on intuition came to require rigorous memorization and training with a machine. Chess, once poetic and philosophical..."
Chess engines are not new. Neither are books and guides containing hundreds of openings, which were quite often memorized by the best players for both effectiveness and skill building. Magnus Carlsen has certainly demonstrated the power of memorization, and he didn't invent that strategy. It's been this way for decades if not centuries.
Sure, I felt the "magical" nature of chess. When I was playing other 3rd graders and the only thing we all cared about was getting ice cream after the tournament. Beyond
So Zapp was right!? (Score:2)
Zapp Brannigan famously said, In the game of chess,Âyou can never let your adversary see your pieces. Insightful for a dummy
Too many ties (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Is Professional Chess Becoming More Like Poker (Score:2)
In that it will, eventually, be another channel I'll block on our TV, yes.
Maybe stop taking games so seriously? (Score:2)
Pitching machine is way stronger and more consistant than a human pitcher, does it mean we have to use that for every game? How about just finding another team of simular strength and enjoying the challenge. And if someone cheats, well they are runing their own fun more than anything.
Does the Atlantic author play? (Score:2)
This is just wrong. There is almost no role for these very vaguely specified techniques. Chess is a game between two people, so psychology does enter into it. Famous examples are when Capablanca felt morally obliged to a