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Comment by selcuka | Hacker News Reader

That's a bit unfair though. I wouldn't take "great proficiency with chess" on a resume as grandmaster level.

But how Dunning Kruger are you to put that down? Like chess has a pretty well known rating system that even a moderately interested player would know about. So in the case of chess you can’t even claim that you didn’t know you are not that great.

You can put down you’re decent at Java or C++ or Python and actually be not that great at it because you have nothing to measure against. But in chess there is a rating system. So you ought to know if you are truly remarkable or not. If you think you are remarkable enough to put it down and then suck at it, how ignorant must you be?! And more importantly, that ignorance is not at all tempered by humility.

This is a good take. I like to play chess recreationally; I also know I'm terrible at chess. Never in a thousand years would I put it on my resume.

It depends where. Under skills seems silly, but under interests seems reasonable.

I have a single line on my resume with interests. I don’t list chess, but list cryptography. Because I’m interested in it.

I just have that line to help with chitchat during the interview. If some interviewer interpreted that to mean I was a professional cryptographer and that I sucked at it, that would be dumb of them.

I also list an interest in kayaking, even though I suck at it.

Yes, interests is for chit-chat. If the interviewer assumes special qualities based on the interests of the interviewee, it is on the interviewer.

Good point!

It's becoming less socially acceptable to be bad at a hobby. I kind of like football but wouldn't dream of calling myself a football fan in more knowledgable company.

I suppose we run in different social circles. I’m not sure what “bad at a hobby” means as the reason I hobbies is because they are fun to me.

I list kayaking as a hobby not because I’m competitive and awesome but because I think it’s fun to float down a river. I suppose if a company expected me to be good at my hobby and judged me because of it, I wouldn’t want to work with them because their culture probably has other stupid parts to it too.

I agree. I don't think what I described is a good feature of my social circle.

Context. If you're applying as a securities trader, you're great at chess... for a securities trader.

If you were great as chess for a human, you probably wouldn't be applying for a securities job.

Conversely, there was a period of my life where people would hear me talk through a few problems and later confess their surprise/disappointment upon finding out I'm rubbish at chess. I found more lucrative and/or entertaining puzzles to plow my ample free time into, is all.

To be fair, lots of people colloquially claim to be good at chess but can’t even stumble though a proper opening. The difference between say a class-a player and a rando is massive and easy to tell.

Memorising openings is also a crutch for players who aren’t that good so I’m not sure if I would use that as a benchmark for good players.

I feel personally attacked. But I didn't downvote you because you're not wrong.

Memorizing openings is not a crutch. It's the only path upward past a certain point. It is impossible to play competitively at, say, the 2000 level if you haven't mastered a few openings.

If you want to play 800-level chess, you can have fun without knowing any set openings. Well, almost. You'd better be able to recognize and defend scholar's mate at a bare minimum.

But that is a bit like being an amateur programmer who never learns what a function is. You can still enjoy programming at that level, but it's odd to describe functions as crutches.

I doubt if you can play competitively at the 1600 level without knowing some opening theory. That'd be like playing against a 3200 for the first six moves and then hoping you are not worse. GP has no idea what he is talking about; it is stronger players who study theory. Weak players may/learn a few tricks/gambits, but you have to learn at least enough of those to avoid them.

Memorising openings is also good for avoiding well known traps like the fried liver, fishing pole or Eric Rosen's favourite the Stafford gambit. Most strong players have a variety of book openings memorised.

I wouldn’t agree with that. Memorising openings is something you do so that you don’t have to repeatedly calculate every tactic in a position, and to help you reach a favourable mid game

Besides, once you get into the middlegame, you still need the tactical and positional skills that I suspect you consider opening knowledge a crutch for

In chess (and life) it’s far easier to pattern match a solution for a position rather than coming up with a brand new solution every time

In my opinion, this makes memory and experience far more important than intellect in chess, especially in the faster time formats

There are bad players who know openings, but there an no good players who don’t know openings.

Without opening theory you will just get worse middle game against any competent opponent. Furthermore, if you could just calculate everything ab inito your play would be identical to “memorized opening,” alpha zero did learn a lot of standard openings from self-play (without being shown these opening explicitly). If someone plays a “bad” opening in a serious game it’s because not only they don’t know theory but they also can’t calculate well enough.

The GM would easily figure out at what chess level he is though. No one expecting him to beat the GM of course.

The point is that that still is pretty meaningless. You can enjoy a game of chess even if you are not very good at it, much like you can enjoy a game of golf for the aspect of walking around in a well-kept park and having a chat, and see some improvement in your handicap over time.

I would not expect someone who puts chess on a resume to play competitively, which is a whole different beast.

Sure, only like 100 top GMs can play competitively, but there are over 1000 GMs who do it as a hobby while they work at Google, Microsoft or any other company.

But it's impossible to play chess or golf at even the most leisurely level without improving at least a little, as you say with handicap. I'm sure an expert can tell the difference between an earnest hobbyist and someone who learnt the rules as a child but hasn't played since.

Nobody would think that though, a GM would be able to tell how bad you are lying.

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