Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Do you play Chess?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 64 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do you play Chess?

#51

Post by zwischenzug »

EvilPopsicleDog wrote: post #43
zwischenzug wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood the 'imperfect information' thing when discussing chess. Chess _as played by people_ is full of hunches, uncertainty, prejudice, intimidation. Just look at how Kasparov played or Lasker, to see how important psychology is to chess. Or go down to Washington Square Gardens and play under the glare of dozens of people tutting at your every move. It's so much more than an abstract problem.

Yes, but the possible input to a chess game is strictly limited - one player cannot just change the way a piece moves or introduce a new piece, and thus, it is not taken into account in any strategy. These sorts things must be taken into account when programming.

This is how a chess player thinks. "Jesus, why did she play that? She must have seen something I've missed. Shit, if I had more time I'd be able to figure it out. Damnit, I'll just move my knight back, that way my king'll be safer. I'm sure there's a better move but I can't find it now, and I think my ass went to sleep."

Change a few words, and it's pretty much a typical thought process when coding for me.

Re: Ask HN: Do you play Chess?

#52

Post by moron4hire »

johnloeber wrote: post #42

I used to play chess somewhat seriously, though I focused on the Chess960 variant (I think it's a much more interesting game). My opinion is that the only real predictor of how good someone is at chess is how much they have practiced, and conversely, the only thing that playing chess makes you better at is playing chess. I've sunk a few hundred hours into playing chess, and the conclusion I arrived at was that the sk…

I felt the same way about poker. I can see the mechanics of poker a lot easier than I can see them with chess. But if I'm going to spend the time, effort, and money to become very proficient at poker, then why don't I spend a similar amount of time, effort, and money on starting a software company? That revelation was the beginning of end of me regularly playing games of any kind.

I still occasionally play video games, but I treat it more like watching a movie on Netflix. I usually only play through once on the medium setting, whereas in my early 20s I was very much a completionist, even for games I didn't much care for.

Re: Ask HN: Do you play Chess?

#54

Post by profinger »

stonemetal wrote: post #45
profinger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the imperfect information thing. The whole game is assuming what the other player is attempting to do. Can't the other player not acting how you predicted be considered a bug? Or is this more formally defined than I'm aware of?

Information in this instance is the current (and past) state of the game. Poker is an imperfect information game because you can't see your opponents cards, and you can't see the cards in the deck. Chess is a perfect information game because you know where every piece is, nothing is hidden.

Aaah, alright. Thank you!

Re: Ask HN: Do you play Chess?

#55

Post by ccvannorman »

valarauca1 wrote: post #11

Yes and No. Chess is a lot of memorization once you understand the game. End Game/Open Game have to both be played prefectly at high end, or your opponenet will literally know how to defeat you. I find Go translates more to programming since it forces you think about more abstract concepts like influence, when to/to not act. There aren't as many hard and fast rules in the meta-game like chess which allow more creativ…

Another Go [1] enthusiast here, I never really got into Chess (here and there it was a bit of fun) but it never captivated me like Go. Chess is like a toy, Go is like an object of beauty.

[1] Go (disambiguation - the game, not the lang) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)

Re: Ask HN: Do you play Chess?

#56

Post by ccvannorman »

neilh23 wrote: post #25

I play Go a lot, and chess occasionally. I think it's about mindset not skillset - games like these are about solving local problems ('tactics') to achieve a greater aim ('strategy'); people who are attracted to them are generally people who like the sort of problem solving that comes up in programming, hence the cross-over. Your question, however was whether or not the skills translate - I don't think that solving d…

neil, are you on OGS?

Re: Ask HN: Do you play Chess?

#57

Post by threatofrain »

I suspect that the factors which would bias some people toward chess might also predict better programming ability, so I doubt a chess intervention would be useful, at least no more useful than some other activity like basketball or drawing.

Math might be different.

Re: Ask HN: Do you play Chess?

#58

Post by airframeng »

olympus wrote: post #46
kohanz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe that "everything is known" when playing the game of chess, I suggest you challenge Magnus Carlsen for the title of best player in the world right now! edit #2 Just thought of the perfect (pardon the pun) analogy. Chess has perfect information in the same way that a large code-base with 500k lines of code has perfect information. When I ask you how much time it will take to implement or refactor feature…

I don't think this is quite what was meant by the "everything is known" comment. I may not know what Carlsen is going to do for his next move, but I could certainly come up with a list of every possible move. The rules of chess won't change in the middle of the game and he won't suddenly be able to castle twice. Chess is a game of perfect information where nothing is hidden from either side. Theoretically the white p…

"Chess is a game of perfect information" - perfect but almost infinite/impossible to calculate even for the most powerful computers, within a finite timeframe. The number of legal chess positions is 10^40, the number of different possible games, 10^120. As a comparison, the number of atoms in the observable universe is estimated to be between 4×10^79 and 4×10^81.

Re: Ask HN: Do you play Chess?

#59

Post by couchand »

zwischenzug wrote: post #50
couchand wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect information doesn't preclude the human element. It is a technical designation: each player has the entire knowledge of the game history up to and including the current state.

The original quote was: "Where it might frustrate a chess player, is that chess lacks an element of imperfect information." Any chess player worth their salt deals with imperfect information, and has to manage risk, make kludges, pick imperfect paths, deal with the clock etc etc.

Right, however none of that has to do with perfect/imperfect information.

To quote Wikipedia: "In game theory, an extensive-form game has perfect information if each player, when making any decision, is perfectly informed of all the events that have previously occurred."

This is a technical designation, it has nothing to do with the future, only the past and current state.

Yes, to be a good chess player you need to be able to evaluate your opponent and make subjective determinations. Yes, your strategy is probably imperfect. But the fact remains that you can see the entirety of the game board and you can write down the history of moves, so you have perfect information.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information

Re: Ask HN: Do you play Chess?

#60

Post by javanix »

amag wrote: post #27
javanix wrote: post #15

I'd consider myself a good programmer but an absolutely terrible chess player, so no, I don't think they really have much bearing.

I second that. I never had much interest in learning to play chess well. In my case I guess it's about when programming I work towards a specific outcome I find interesting for some reason. Winning/losing isn't an interesting outcome for me.

I cannot for the life of me make it through a game of chess without making some catastrophic blunder.

If programming was that unforgiving I'd have to buy a new system every time I wrote a function.

Post reply on HN