Hacker News Reader

Comment by dtnewman | Hacker News Reader

Just look to Chess. The top players today are way better than any of the greats before, because they can train against computers and know exactly where they failed. That said, because they've gotten so good, chess at the top levels is pretty boring... it's hard to come up with a unique strategy so players tend to be defensive. Lots of ties.

On the other hand, chess is more popular than ever. It's huge in high schools. I see people playing it everywhere. I know that for me, I love being able to play a game and then view the computer analysis afterwards and see exactly what I did wrong (granted, sometimes a move can be good for a computer who will know how to follow through on the next 10 moves, but not necessarily good for me... but most of the time I can see where I made a mistake when the computer points it out).

Side note: I play on LIChess and it's great. Is there an equivalent app for Go?

View on HN

The defensiveness has absolutely nothing to do with better computers and the improvements in play that came with it, but with tournaments where risk taking is an economic disaster. As others have said, there aren't massive numbers of ties in the candidates tournament, because the difference in value between being first and second is so massive that if you aren't first, you are last.

Compare this to regular high level chess in the Grand Chess Tour: It's where most of your money is going to come from if you are a top player. Invitation to the tour as a regular is by rating, and there's enough money at the bottom of the tour than the difference between qualifying or not is massive. Therefore, the most important thing is to stay in the tour train. Lose 20 points of rating, and barring Rex Sinquefield deciding to sponsor your life out of the goodness of his heart, you might as well spend time coaching, because there are so few tournaments where there's a lot of money.

This also shows in the big difficulties for youngsters that reach 2650 or so: They are only going to find good enough opponents to move up quickly in a handful of events a year where people with higher rating end up risking their rating against them. See how something like the US championship is a big risk for the top US professionals, because all the young players that show are at least 50 points underrated, if not more.

This is what causes draws, not computer prep. Anand was better at just drawing every game in every tournament back when he was still on the tour, and yet computers were far worse than today, especially with opening theory.

And it simply doesn’t have to be this way. The top tournaments could just use a prior qualification tournament with an open Swiss. Then invite the top finishers from the open Swiss to participate in the round robin. Can reserve an invitational wildcard or two but the rest should have to earn their place.

I think that tennis solved the problem by not using an ELO based score but giving points by the number of turns a player wins in a tournament. The most important tournaments give more points. All points are lost after one year. Of course tennis and chess differ in a fundamental way: there is no draw in tennis and tournaments are basically never round robins. The ATP finals have a couple of round robins before the semi finals. They give points for the wins.

So maybe in chess they could give points for each win, less than half of those points for a draw, zero for a loss.

Tradition is very important so they should keep the ELO and keep updating it according to who wins against whom, but qualifications to tournaments and seeding (if that's a thing in chess) would be based on the other score. There could be wild cards to let some strong or popular players play even if they don't have a good score. Tennis pro associations have provisions in place for players that are forced to miss tournaments because of injuries, etc.

So they need to mandate a promotion and relegation system for the top levels. Force players in the top flight to beat at least some of their opponents, or get replaced by top players in the next lower tiers.

I think that would increase spectator interest even more. In football, relegation battles can be almost as compelling as the title race..

Another thing that was done in football, and could be done in chess as well to reduce the number of draws, was to grant 1 point for a draw, but 3 points for a win, up from 2 points in the 90s (earlier in England)

Very insightful!

FWIW, I find the classical chess tournaments with the super GMs to be fairly interesting, if only because the focus of the games is more about the metagame than about the game itself.

The article linked at the bottom of the source is a WSJ piece about how Magnus beats the best players because of the "human element".

A lot about the games today are about opening preparation, where the goal is to out-prepare and surprise your opponent by studying opening lines and esoteric responses (somewhere computer play has drastically opened up new fields). Similarly, during the middle/end-games, the best players will try to force uncomfortable decisions on their opponents, knowing what positions their opponents tend to not prefer. For example, in the candidates game round 1, Fabiano took Hikari into a position that had very little in the way of aggressive counter-play, effectively taking away a big advantage that Hikaru would otherwise have had.

Watching these games feels somewhat akin to watching generals develop strategies trying to out maneuver their counterparts on the other side, taking into consideration their strengths and weaknesses as much as the tactics/deployment of troops/etc.

On the other hand, a game like Praggnanandhaa vs Vidit 2 days ago feels like Russian roulette.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/2024-fide-candidates-tournam...

Mistakes on both sides, including the side that presumably prepared this line with help from computers.

Have they considered metagaming like pirates fight in The Secret of Monkey Island (1)?

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a4HF3dIcuo

I think you would see fewer ties if players got 0.2 points each for draws instead of 0.5 points each for draws.

It makes the risk of going for a risky strategy lower (you only drop 0.2 pts instead of 0.5 vs getting an easy draw) and it makes the rewards much greater... a single win and 4 losses scores the same as 5 draws.

you wont see players doing intentional draws anymore either

One issue with this is that it encourages collusion. If you're a top GM playing someone of equal skill, it's +EV to agree to flip a coin beforehand to determine who will win (and then play a fake game) rather than playing it for real.

Some chess tournaments have experimented with giving 1/3 point for draws instead of 1/2 and it didn't really change much. Mostly it acted as a tiebreaker, which you could have done by just using "most wins" as a tiebreaker anyway.

My favorite idea (not mine) for creating decisive results in chess is that when a draw is agreed, you switch sides and start a new game, but don't reset the clocks.

But most tournaments don't have players playing each other an even number of times.

Any sport can have a thrown match. A la Rocky.

The difference here is you are not throwing a match for outside money. You are actually doing something in your interest and probably not against the rules (??) so you are just playing the game (the new game) as intended.

Might be an interesting variant of chess where 2 players just decide how much of the point they get each via negotiation, and if they disagree, they go to "court" by playing the chess game.

Why would it be in your interest to intentionally lose and get 0 points?

Because it averages out. If it's a true coin flip, half the time you'll get 1 point and half you'll get 0. So it averages to an expected value of 0.5 points. 2 draws (at 0.2 points per draw) would only yield you 0.4 points. So if there's a good chance you'd draw twice anyway, it's a higher payout.

It only makes sense if you are playing multiple games against the same opponent. Let's say you get 2 points for a win, 0.5 points for a draw, and 0 points for a loss. If you draw both games you both get 1 point. But if you win one and lose the other, you'd each earn 2 points instead.

“Some chess tournaments” doesn’t change habitual logic, if players are training for and in the mindset of drawing for safety they’re not going ton flip on a dime unless the incentives are massive.

Football (Soccer) did something similar.

Before that is was 2 points for a win, 1 point each for a draw.

In 1981 they made it 3 points for a win, and the sport has had substantially more offensive play since.

Another possible solution would be to simply... remove draws from the game. Instead of checkmating the goal becomes to capture the opponent's king.

Needless to say, no one likes this idea because it throws out of the window centuries of game theory. Endgames would be completely different. I'm not convinced it would be a less interesting game, though.

If you have insufficient material how can you capture the king? Checkmate is by definition one move before forced capture of the king, the game doesn’t change by making it end one move later.

And what happens if you wind up with king and rook vs king and rook?

Some positions simply do not allow for a win. Yes, you could say do it on time. But then it becomes about mechanical dexterity as people try to be faster than their opponent in a pointless piece shuffle.

Yeah, I didn't think it through. I'd imagine such a rule change would still make draws significantly less likely though, right?

The proposed rule change doesn't make sense, so I can't say what the ramifications would be. Charitably - you're now suggesting that others invent and propose a rule-change which makes draws significantly less likely.

There are no "on-board" rule changes you can make which won't destroy the game of chess. Any rule-changes have to be "meta" changes affecting points in a tournament, the ELO system, or ways to encourage players to play a wider variety of opponents. That's why everyone's talking about what it might look like to modify the points system in tournaments, because it's the most practical thing to actually change.

Can you provide an example of a draw/stalemate that would result in a winner with your rule change?

There are many situations when this is for all practical purposes impossible.

For example a King vs King endgame. Even really weak players will never accidentally put their king next to the opponent.

Even worse, it's an illegal move to leave your own king in check, if I recall correctly, so that simply can't happen, not even by accident. The only possible outcome for king vs king is a draw. Unless we were to modify even more rules, of course.

Well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTS9XaoQ6mg

> Instead of checkmating the goal becomes to capture the opponent's king.

These are the same.

They are not – if the goal becomes to capture the king, and check-related rules are removed from the game, stalemates become impossible.

Im not sure stalemate accounts for most draws at the highest level.

Getting rid of check does make for a better game at beginner levels.

It's both easier to teach and leads to exciting finishes ss noobs hang their king.

Trying to force or avoid stalemate is a huge motive in top level endgames though regardless of whether they actually end in stalemate or not.

There are a lot of endgames that are drawn because of stalemate though. Many pawn endgames ( e.g. pawn and king against lone king) are drawn because of stalemate, but would be a win in most cases if stalemate didn't exist.

You likely didn't mean to imply all king+pawn vs king endgames are drawn, but to clarify for the layman reading, many are winnable.

It depends on the locations of the kings relative to the pawn ( you generally want it in-front of your own pawn ), and the concept of opposition.

How can there be a win when you hit a stalemate? The players keep repeating the same cycle of moves for years until one dies of old age?

Stalemate in chess is when a player is not in check but has no legal moves that wouldn't result in a check.

So essentially it's a lost position for one player, but due to stalemate rule it will count as a draw.

at least as described, would not be sufficient to remove draws from the game - but would remove stalemates

I think you’re arguing for the abolition of stalemate (and certain kinds of pins), and that’s totally reasonable. This doesn’t solve drawisness in general though.

Capturing the king changes nothing, except stalemate.

(Which affects some draws but not most.)

think it is somewhat intrinsic to chess that it makes sense to go for ties as black in top tier play

https://online-go.com/ is the easiest place to get started as a western beginner. The far more active go servers are Asian and have a higher barrier to entry in terms of registration, downloading the client, and dealing with poor localization. (Fox Weiqi, Tygem, etc.)

OGS is great. There's an android app as well.

KGS is where I used to play, this is the homepage:

https://www.gokgs.com/

and this is the web client:

https://shin.gokgs.com/

The homepage hasn't had a redesign since at the latest 2007, but the community is great an there are top players on there.

I wish Chess960 was more popular for this exact reason. It’s super fun to watch and play compared to normal Chess… basically all I do with my friends

Second round of the Candidates tournament played Friday had 4/4 decisive games[1]. In general, a tie might be the most common result but even at the highest level there tend to be chances for both sides.

[1]: https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-candidates-2024--open/rou...

It's really up to the players. SuperGMs these days are somewhat addicted to draws because it's a very safe result in a tournament setting and in terms of rating. Therefore these players tend to favour less risky and more calculable openings. They care more about avoiding a loss than they do about winning.

The idea that the large amount of draws is because players are so strong now, is mostly a myth. It's really just psychology and game theory at work.

For a perfect illustration of all my points, look at Aronian vs Grischuk from the 2018 candidates tournament. Here both players chose to play into complications, and the resulting game was wildly complex, with both players making several suboptimal moves simply because the position was just too complex even for two of the strongest calculators in the game at the time.

And in the end, they still ended up constructing a draw by repetition when all 3 results were still possible. Both players had good winning chances, yet the fear of losing finally overtook them and they collectively bailed out of the game.

It's not that players are now so strong it's almost impossible to win, the players just aren't as willing to seek out the necessary positions.

OGS is the closest thing I’ve found to lichess but it’s quite good! https://online-go.com/

One nice thing about Go is there are no ties. This is offset by how boring the end games are though and having to count. Chess has explosive and exciting endings, Go just kind of fizzles out at some point.

>Is there an equivalent app for Go?

https://senseis.xmp.net/?GoServers

I used to play on KGS[0] via GoUniverse Chrome plugin [1]. Not sure if there are enough players there today. Fox and Tygem are huge.

[0] http://www.gokgs.com/

[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gouniverse/iejedhnb...

Don't know about go, but Lishogi is Lichess for shogi (Japanese chess)

I recommend goQuest (mobile app), and playing 9x9 go. I used to play on KGS, but it is less crowded now (the problem is that there are too many servers: OGS, IGS, Tygem, Wbadul, etc and no one dominates, therefore you wait for the game, you need a rating, etc. Most are not very modern, mobile unfriendly, etc.). Also 19x19 takes too much time for me when comparing to chess, 9x9 is perfect, and goQuest has many active players, after a few seconds you get a match (they offer 13x13 and 19x19, but those are less active I suppose).

> Just look to Chess. The top players today are way better than any of the greats before, because they can train against computers and know exactly where they failed.

AlphaGo isn't available for anyone to train against like Stockfish is though, what are Go players using? Has another powerful Go engine been developed since then?

KataGo is an open-source algorithm derived from AlphaGo, but with a number of tricks so that it trained faster: https://katagotraining.org/

It likely surpasses AlphaGo, and just like Stockfish, it delivers a protocol that can hook into many user interface apps: https://github.com/lightvector/KataGo?tab=readme-ov-file#gui...

From those technologies, also came an interesting visualisation of how human players changed their habits following AlphaGo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16-ntvk3D1_pgjJ7u64t4jMYMh0z...

> It likely surpasses AlphaGo

If I remember correctly, a recent estimation is around +1000 Elo compared to AlphaGo.

That also matches my estimation which places AlphaGo Zero 40-blocks 40-days at 5185, and KataGo at 6262: https://thefiletree.com/espadrine/%E2%9A%92/elo.html

(Details of the estimation in the source code.)

Lovely! That's a nice summary.

We use KataGo and sometimes LeelaZero (which is a replication of the AlphZero paper). KataGo was trained with more knowledge of the game (feature engineering and loss engineering), so it trained faster. It was also trained on different board sizes and to play to get a good result when it's already behind or ahead.

KaTrain is a good frontend.

> KataGo was trained with more knowledge of the game (feature engineering and loss engineering), so it trained faster.

Not really important to your point, but it's not really just that it uses more game knowledge. Mostly it's that a small but dedicated community (especially lightvector) worked hard to build on what AlphaGo and LeelaZero did.

Lightvector is a genius and put a lot of effort into KataGo. It wasn't just add some game knowledge and that's it. https://github.com/lightvector/KataGo?tab=readme-ov-file#tra... has a bunch of info if you're interested.

I wasn't at all trying to say his work was simple. I was trying to say "deepmind were trying to build an AI that gets good at games without anything in their structures being specialized for the game, lightvector asked what if we did specialize the model on Go". And he did some wonderfully clever things.

> The Queens Gambit turned quite a few of my daughter's friends on to chess

The ability to train against powerful computer programs have indeed elevated the level of play in many games

https://katagui.baduk.club/

https://www.gokgs.com/

online-go.com

OGS is definitely the best server in the West. Deserves all patronage it gets and more. I wish the AGA was more supportive of it rather than KGS.

KGS is still pretty great.

OGS might be more accessible to new players with one click sign in and a better web app, but I think KGS has a higher population of true dan+ strength players, and has a stronger "culture" around community reviews and studying.

It used to be even better, but there are less total people playing on KGS than the previous peak.

I found the culture on OGS, particularly wrt moderation, to be pretty great (as a newcomer, and I exclusively play 9x9).

I've read about KGS but I've never figured out how to engage with it. (I know it to be the OG, srs bzns venue, though).

> I've read about KGS but I've never figured out how to engage with it.

Just download CGoban, here is the website:

https://www.gokgs.com/

Most of us started who are still active on the server have been playing there 20+ years at this point. E.g. I myself (and many others) started playing after reading this article:

https://tromp.github.io/gostory.html

For KGS you had to bring your own client, like cgoban, if memory serves. They have a web client now, but the Java client was what I played on for while.

> I wish the AGA was more supportive of it rather than KGS.

Out of curiosity, why do you like OGS more? I find the UX of KGS to be way more intuitive.

I find everything about OGS superior to KGS except for the quantity of strong players. In particular, its active development, community involvement, and modern tooling all make it more appealing. KGS is very closed source, running ancient software on ancient hardware, very static, very DIY and individual. It's about the game of go and little else. That is admirable in some regards, but not suitable for a growing niche community that is Western go.

> That said, because they've gotten so good, chess at the top levels is pretty boring

Yeah, I feel the same thing about Magic formats when the pros play. When a format is new and people are discovering, and they have to rely on their gut, and make educated guesses. That's when it's fun to play and watch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com