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Comment by EL_Loco | Hacker News Reader

Off topic, but you know the person doesn't play chess when (this is very common) they think that a chess master can spot a mate-in-1 and nobody else can. Mate in 1s are fairly easy to spot if you've been playing chess for, let's say, 2 years. In reality, a chess master would spot something like "bishop to queen whatever, rook takes bishop, pawn to whatever, rook takes pawn, queen to whatever and then you have mate in 2" I'm only whining about this because it's too common a cliché in popular culture.

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Yes, yes a thousand times yes. In fact just the fact that mate is invariably imminent in movies and TV is annoying. Also the board seems to have the wrong orientation more than 50% of the time which basically violates not only statistics and probability basics but fundamental principles of the universe.

You would think there wasn't chess clubs all over the world where you can walk in and find people who know something about chess and copy their game. Just copy a game two ~1700s play in a friendly match and have your characters play that exact game - you will have your choice of games so you can choose who wins. Get the best player in the club to advise you if you want the characters to talk about something - it isn't hard to get this right with a little expert help.

And when they finally hired a real chess master to setup the board for their film, they decided not to adequately show it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7RIDfDG8wY

(And then there's also the no acknowledgement drama. A shame really.)

Really off topic, but missing mate in 1 is not unheard of under time pressure even at the GM level. Nail-biting stuff - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ix69sCFahw

The term I think is important to mention with your example is “forced mate” wherein the moves force the opponents next move with absolutely no choice except to play the rest of the game down a significant number of points.

The first time I saw grandmaster level play in person was a queen sacrifice which led to bishops mating the king in short order.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_sacrifice

A forced mate is _forced_. There are no options except to be mated.

If there was a way to not be mated it'd be referred to as "Tactics" or just "A Combination".

And further annoying pedantry: there's no points in chess outside of match or tournament score. Pieces have _possible_ pawn-equated values that someone can use for evaluation, but those are very loose. It's possible to have a naive material evaluation that is not in your favour and still be in a significantly winning position. Better players think in terms of a pieces ability to control squares, how soon it might control squares, the importance of those squares, the potential value of reducing another player's board control, the ability to create tactical threats etc... there's a couple dozen potential evaluative concepts that are often more important than piece value.

Funny enough, your example of a queen sacrifice demonstrates this ;)

Here's my understanding: a piece's value is dynamic, and it depends on the type of piece and its position on the board. Positioning leads to all other aspects you listed: controlled squares, to-be controlled squares, tactical threats, and so on... (hence the popularity of "positional" chess where there's no concrete threat or plan behind a move, only improving the position of your piece, which may create opportunities later). I believe this is also how Stockfish chess engine evaluates a position, and it has higher elo rating than any human player.

Having all those said, the type of piece is still the bigger factor in deciding the value of the piece. You don't often see a queen-knight trade for example. Queen sac is definitely something you don't see every game.

You aren't wrong, but there's a nuance that I was trying to clarify on.

Regarding the idea that you rarely see trades of uneven values: that is largely because positions where such complications are likely tend to be avoided by most players. There are notable examples of players that make/made such trades disproportionately often. Morozevich, Tal, Shirov, Tate, Shabalov, Speelman, etc..

Playing in that manner is largely unusual because it is mentally fatiguing, risky and easily avoided with modern theory.

To go a step further, no chess player younger than their 60s would use descriptive notation. Algebraic notation is the norm for anyone in the chess world.

Bishop-D4 (bd4), Rook takes C5 (rxc5), h3 etc... would be used.

Even older players that are still active use algebraic notation. You'd have to find someone out of the chess world for quite a while before you ended up with someone that used descriptive notation as a hard default.

You know, this is true even in countries where (my luck) old editions of chess books are printed without updating the notation to algebraic. Turns out people buy and read the books, but when they talk about chess, they use algebraic.

PS. it's changed a bit in the past few years, since the older books aren't being reprinted as much.

Yeah, when I was playing as a teen (with a lot of free time) I on occasion would plan up to say 12 moves ahead (with pruning on less promising paths), and I was definitely far away from being a grandmaster.

Against me, a chess master can call "mate in X" before the first move.

;) Mate-in-___ means given the best possible response.

Any master against me can call mate in 40 and be right.

I did remove grandmaster though. Grandmaster is a lifetime title, while master is something earned and taken away. Thus former great can earn grandmaster and then go senile and play at a level below me - well at least in theory, I don't know if any exist but I'd love to play one just so I can say I beat a grandmaster.

That's not correct if utilizing terms that are common chess parlance.

"Mate in..." implies that a mate will occur, with a forcing sequence, with the longest branch being the announced number of moves.

Given that chess is not solved, nobody can claim "Mate in..." from the starting position.

I doubt any grandmaster will have any problem in forcing mate in less than 40 against me. Many real games don't get beyond 40 against opponents who are not nearly at that level.

You are still ignoring what multiple people have tried to explain to you.

"Mate in X" is not a show of bravado about how quickly a grandmaster things he can beat _you_ specifically. It's a mathematical property about a position. It doesn't matter if Carlsen or a chimp are sitting on the opposite side of the board, "Mate in X" means the same thing.

I'm intentionally ignoring it.

Well, that's helpful and a good use of everyone's time.

We have the lingo because while chess is not solved, "mate in ___" are situations where there is a definitive, provably optimal solution all the way through the end of the game. Calling "mate in 40" at the beginning is not one of them, no matter the relative strengths of the players involved.

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