What is Chess? What to think and for how long

It would be a lengthy business to mention all the different people who have spent their lives engaged in chess-playing or exercise with ball or the practice of roasting their bodies in the sun. They are not unoccupied when their pleasure form such a busy occupation. No one will doubt that those men are energetic triflers who devote their hours to the study of useless literature - On the Shortness of Life

— Hans Ree

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chess_Players_(film)

(unknown attribution but I got it from a scotsman)

But why? I can understand that for a small number of people who has the ambition to become the best player, having an unbeatable figure looming over you is disheartening.

Most players are never going to become even close to that, and they know it. The fact that AI has beaten the best of human players should be, theoretically, irrelevant to their interest in chess, other than having a novel teacher to learn from. They are playing against the same pool of players who are on the same level, with or without the the AI advancement.

So I’m genuinely curious, does the chess community see a large number of discouraged average players?

Examples of time asymmetry:

-recorded media (TV, movies, books) are incredibly time-asymmetric, have 100x / 1000x time spent on creation vs consumption

-legal systems built on examples + exceptions, have mapped out and tested entire decision trees that defendents traverse once

Anyway, I can only speak for my past self and a few people I've known, but it's usually simple why people don't play.

It can be socially unappealing if there's no tradition of playing chess within their circle or that the people that do play might be snobs about it.

It can be difficult to feel encouraged to play since the game itself is complex enough to require more attention than expected and the jargon is confusing. The names of openings, tactics, etc. are not necessarily literal enough, and even when expressed in notation are still vague due to the nature of the game (many variations). For many people there's also a lack of motivation and it just seems unproductive, especially when it becomes clear that winning, even against the weakest AI, isn't common when starting out. Like any game, chess can help improve analytical thinking, but it's abstract enough to not be obvious how. If it's not made a pleasant enough experience, it's just easier to do something else.

People spend time lifting heavy weights, despite the existence of forklifts.

People spend time climbing mountains, despite the existence of helicopters.

That a machine can do something better than a human, is no reason to pretend that human to human competition is no longer worthwhile. A pleasant game of chess against a friend is as much a psychological battle as it is a tactical one.

I never played against computers, they could always beat me every single time. What would be the point? I play against humans, for the same reason I have conversations with humans and not with computers - even as they become capable of even that.

I do think that building an AI that does play like a human would be interesting, it's certainly never really been done. But it's interesting because it's an interesting problem to solve, not because playing against such a machine would be any fun.

But

This is one of my favorites. On extreme short time controls, humans can handle some really good engines some of the time! Here you have Andrew Tang beating Leela in hyperbullet: https://youtu.be/Wf-wFXRpwgo

Another approach that sometimes works is to be really booked up in dubious lines with an engine that does not have too much time, something Jonathan Schrantz manages from time to time https://youtu.be/FC2P6VUYu78

That said, 24x is not even close to enough advantage there -- that probably removes less than one ply of depth. Stockfish can read far deeper than any human; you'd need a dramatically larger reduction to compensate for this.

You could probably put Stockfish on a desktop computer from the mid 90's, and expect the team of GMs to win.

The more recent chess engines (LeelaChess, and the latest versions of Stockfish) use neural nets to allow for more shallow calculations without decreasing game quality. In this case the engine is better because it's just "more intelligent" (and nobody understands how).

Of course conventional wisdom isn’t always right, but that is the conventional wisdom.

Correct play in longer TCs translate much better to blitz than vice versa.

It might be beneficial to spice things up, but this is in general not a good advice.

This is about helping new players figure this out. Or about helping players with poor time management figure out how to build that feeling and unlock the next level for themselves. “Play by feel” is unhelpful advice for those people and sometimes people are unable to get to the next level by themselves and need formal structures like this to figure out how to get better

This "feel right" ability goes by different names unconscious mastery, intuition, GM-RAM, drunken chess, Blink, pattern recognition and so on.

How to develop it is another question.

Sadly I fear it is almost impossible to develop it past teenage years.

There is something magical that happens around age 13-15(Fischer said he just got good when he made this "jump", of course he was around 2300 before that). Suddenly everything just clicks.

I was a lowly A level player when it just clicked around the age of 15 and I was a master. Sadly/luckily I did not progress past FM. The "click" is a required but not sufficient condition for GM at an OTB play.

Sure for some it happens at a bit later stage for some at a bit younger stage. You have to do some work before that and to become a super GM you have to do work afterwards. (as Anand famously said you read a bunch of Informators afterwards)

As Tal said to young Kasparov - Garry you have to sac first and calculate afterwards.

I don't recommend puzzles that much. They give you mental satisfaction. However, it is one thing to think of a good move knowing before hand that there's such a move possible but entirely different to recognise that you are in such a situation in the middle of a game.

* puzzles for tactics & mates

* learn 1 “easy to execute” opening for each color

This is why I don't recommend bullet to anyone.

And so it continues. Here's the full playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8pZbhjL-fQ&list=PL8N8j2e7Rp...

A level up, studying openings.

Always go into a position with a plan (which generally means, which squares you want your pieces to occupy). A bad plan is better than no plan at all.

The plan must be continually checked with calculation (and here is where tactics is useful), and you must be ready to change plans if things don't go well.

You need also to study strategic concepts like weak squares, pawn structure, pawn majorities. This helps you to quickly identify what should be your plan even in a unfamiliar position.

If you have trouble winning a game that you should have won, study endgames. Specially, if you are ahead of material, try to simplify the position (trade pieces to give your opponent less chances to come back), and specially simplify into an endgame where you're sure you will win.

* Tactics - I did thousands of tactics puzzles using a program called CT-ART while under a time limit. I would have to complete 25 puzzles within 5 minutes while making 0 mistakes. If I made a mistake I would have to start from the beginning.

* Core positional concepts - Understanding pawn structure (double pawns, isolated pawns, passed pawns, pawn majorities, etc.), control of central squares, open files, king safety, and so on.

* Endgames - Many players neglect endgames. Master the basics: common rook-and-pawn and pawn-only endgames, how to checkmate with 2 bishops and bishop + knight, etc. Read Silman's Complete Endgame Course, Basic Chess Endings, and Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual (for advanced players) to improve your endgame play.

* Openings - Many people have mentioned learning openings, but it is generally a mistake for beginners and intermediate players to focus on this aspect of their game. It is not especially useful for a ~1000-rated OTB player to learn 15+ moves of theory in the King's Indian Defense only to end up in a position where there are slightly better according to theory but have no understanding of their position. It is better to center your opening repertoire around easy-to-learn openings and focus on improving other aspects of your game until you are strong enough to handle positions outside of opening theory.

It takes a ton of time and brainpower, and doesn't make you a better player once you're outside your memorized moves..

The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed, resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract --Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherche movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.

Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed the calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind. When I say proficiency, I mean that perfection in the game which includes a comprehension of all the sources whence legitimate advantage may be derived. These are not only manifold but multiform, and lie frequently among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible to the ordinary understanding. To observe attentively is to remember distinctly; and, so far, the concentrative chess-player will do very well at whist; while the rules of Hoyle (themselves based upon the mere mechanism of the game) are sufficiently and generally comprehensible. Thus to have a retentive memory, and to proceed by "the book," are points commonly regarded as the sum total of good playing. But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe. Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game. He examines the countenance of his partner, comparing it carefully with that of each of his opponents. He considers the mode of assorting the cards in each hand; often counting trump by trump, and honor by honor, through the glances bestowed by their holders upon each. He notes every variation of face as the play progresses, gathering a fund of thought from the differences in the expression of certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or of chagrin. From the manner of gathering up a trick he judges whether the person taking it can make another in the suit. He recognises what is played through feint, by the air with which it is thrown upon the table. A casual or inadvertent word; the accidental dropping or turning of a card, with the accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to its concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the order of their arrangement; embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness or trepidation --all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of the true state of affairs. The first two or three rounds having been played, he is in full possession of the contents of each hand, and thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision of purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the faces of their own.

In chess, the pieces are intrinsically different. Their role in the game depends on the kind of piece they are, which doesn't change (unless a pawn promotes, I guess), instead of their position or relation with other pieces, which changes constantly. In go, all stones are identical, and their differences arise from their relationships with other stones around them.

In chess, you play to kill the opponent's pieces. In go, you play to claim territory. It's possible to win without ever taking an opposing stone. Although what's territory can be very fluid, because stones can be placed anywhere, and thereby kill a group that was thought to be alive, save a group that seemed dead, destroy or claim territory. But it all depends on the stone's relation to other stones. Chess depends much more on what a single piece is capable of. Even a poorly positioned queen is worth more than a very active bishop, because the queen can move to a better position, but the bishop can't turn into a queen.

I'm sure a missed a lot of nuance. I have no idea what they mean by nomos and polis, and parts of the second paragraph sound like I disagree with it. Maybe my translation is more my own opinion than a translation of theirs.