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Comment by tudorconstantin | Hacker News Reader

I think chess is an appealing game because it's touted as the sport of the brain. Once one knows the rules they imagine they have the same chance of winning as anyone.

The truth is chess performance depends tremendously on training, practice and number of games played. At my first job as a software developer they had an internal chess championship which I joined expecting to be beaten badly (there were programmers who were participating afterall), even though I spent most of the previous summer playing chess in the local park. I won that championship, positioning myself as a "smart guy" within the company. I don't think I was actually smarter than them. I barely had more exercise.

I think that these chess variants can cancel most of the training one has and level the playing field, making that chess game a brain game again.

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At the very very low level at which I have played, it is more of a waiting game, waiting for the opponent to make a mistake, perhaps from paying inadequate attention and then trying to capitalize on it.

On the higher levels of play it is rarely a swashbuckling affair, with almost no possibility for a player to win, if they by chance fall behind. There are no glorious fightbacks, come from behind wins in chess( at least none famous that I have heard of).

Perhaps, having something like the 'doubling cube' in backgammon will add more excitement to tournaments.

Fischer Random / Chess960 is my favourite variant because it negates the rote learning of opening sequences, but still captures the rest of the game. It’s really fun.

> The truth is chess performance depends tremendously on training, practice and number of games played.

As does every other human activity. (Even defecation; just ask any parent.)

> there were programmers who were participating afterall

Programmers vs mathematicians, I'd bet on the latter.

Programmers aren't all that good at chess as a rule. They universally think they are.

That's a ridiculous stereotype. Mathematicians as a group would tend to be better at chess, given similar level interest, because it takes a lot more memory and pattern recognition to pass the filter of getting to be a professional mathematician than a programmer. Meanwhile programming is much more broadly accessible to all ranges.

I started to win consistently at chess against my father (who was very passionate about math, even reaching national Olympics in highschool) in my 9th grade, after one semester of learning programming doing logic schemes. So, programming might help in advancing one's chess play a bit.

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