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Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

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Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#71

Post by mdorazio »

matsemann wrote: post #35
ddxxdd wrote: post #29

This reminds me of a question posed by an online user of a message board I frequent: Will the likes of Deep Blue and Alpha Zero kill competitive chess? My initial thoughts were, "No, of course not! Cars and trains didn't kill track-and-field competitions!". But now that I think about it, I really do feel a slight aversion towards getting back into chess. Although practiced concentration is a side-benefit of playing c…

I don't get this line of thinking at all . It seems like such a random goalpoast. Why does it matter if the computer is better? If you're an 1800 rated player, you're still so far behind the best humans that it's irrelevant. Or why care if a computer has examined some similar positions before? As an amateur the positions won't be novel in qny way anyway. No more human innovation is blatantly false. If anything, compu…

For me, AlphaZero was the overwhelming proof that a game with a fixed board and a limited set of rules is fundamentally an exercise in pattern recognition and response, not of actual innovation or creativity. This applies every bit as much to chess and go as it does to checkers. I realized that I really didn't want to try to be a better pattern recognizer (aka computer) than other humans, so I stopped playing and put that time toward endeavors that humans actually excel at: creating entirely new things.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#73

Post by PartiallyTyped »

billfruit wrote: post #72

Ultimately after several attempts at trying to like chess, I find its determinism bit boring. Games with random elements have gameplay elements like evaluation of risk and rewards, so I gravitated towards them(like Scrabble).

But is it really random though? Are they anything more than deterministic in the expectation?

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#74

Post by dylanfw »

billfruit wrote: post #72

Ultimately after several attempts at trying to like chess, I find its determinism bit boring. Games with random elements have gameplay elements like evaluation of risk and rewards, so I gravitated towards them(like Scrabble).

You might enjoy "Chess960" (or Fischer Random Chess): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess

The order of the back-rank pieces is randomized (but identical for both players).

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#75

Post by alteriority »

adenozine wrote: post #39

So, as someone with ADHD-C, and someone who's been playing a lot of chess recently in the wake of its resurgence online, can I expect some important insight or self-realization from practicing the art of concentrating? I can concentrate for hours and hours on certain things, I just don't always get to choose the things. Will chess and its nature of honing concentration force me to enhance that? I listened to this art…

Highly recommend HealthyGamerGG's videos "How to Deal with Your ADHD ft. Mizkif" and "Solving Laziness with Asmongold". (Her's a Harvard psychology professor who has surprisingly-wholesome live therapy sessions with famous streamers). The presentation is a tad corny in some areas--like awkwardly phrasing psychological phenomena in terms of RPG mechanics--but that doesn't make up the bulk of it, promise. I'd be lying if I claimed to be coming from a place of any more expertise than you, but I suspect that some of the framings he discusses will resonate.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#76

Post by noknownsender »

pmoriarty wrote: post #2

Once one has learned how to concentrate, the next thing to learn is to be able to concentrate on the right thing. Chess taught me to concentrate, but I've always had trouble concentrating on what I should be concentrating on, and instead wasted too much time concentrating on chess and other diversions. The real trick is being able to focus on something even when it gets frustrating, painful, or boring, and being able…

Yeah, I finally got all of my medications dialed in, so I am a ninja at concentration.

And my Elo in chess has skyrocketed, while my job performance has stayed flat.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#77

Post by tomcam »

We nerd types have made this mistake for the last 75 years or so. This mystique about chess has been completely misplaced in my humble opinion. At first the claim was that Smart people played chess, therefore if you made a computer that played chess well it would be Smart. That turned out to be hilariously untrue, but durable: nerds were finally relieved of their arrogance after about 5 decades only when it became clear even to them that the game-winning systems required brute force methods.

Thoughtful people absorb life lessons from almost everything they care to study deeply. You can make virtually all of his claims about martial arts, child rearing, studying and playing music, competitive video gaming, gardening, playing golf, meditation, religious study, farming, marksmanship, other board games, programming—the list is endless.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#78

Post by _urga »

KineticLensman wrote: post #65
_urga wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this comes down to realizing that everything in life is eventually hard. Provided you're doing something worthwhile [1], when the going gets hard, don't look for easier pastures. They're all difficult. Just keep plowing away. And don't doubt. Where there is no doubt, the wind is your companion. [1] Ecclesiastes is a pretty great book to help figure out for yourself what exactly this is. It's not for nothing t…

(disclosure: I am not religious). Yes. Ecclesiastes has some great and often quoted lines: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die…” “…There is nothing new under the sun”. It’s not a typical old testament book, which I think is why I finished it. (going really off topic here) I was inspired to look at the Biblical version after reading the aweso…

Thanks for the pointer to “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#79

Post by Enginerrrd »

billfruit wrote: post #72

Ultimately after several attempts at trying to like chess, I find its determinism bit boring. Games with random elements have gameplay elements like evaluation of risk and rewards, so I gravitated towards them(like Scrabble).

Strange, because chess definitely has elements of risk calculation based on your uncertainty. Without a computer, you cannot calculate all the lines ahead, so many decisions come down to trade-offs involving uncertainty. Colloquially, this usually is called "strategy", which involve decisions that are much longer term than calculated tactics, and therefore involve a great deal of uncertainty.

Tactics still dominate, but strategy leads to tactics.

You're often left making decisions on the basis of, well, maybe if I do this I'll be able to poke my rook through later, but maybe they'll win counterattacking the file I'm leaving.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#80

Post by jamesblonde »

pmoriarty wrote: post #2

Once one has learned how to concentrate, the next thing to learn is to be able to concentrate on the right thing. Chess taught me to concentrate, but I've always had trouble concentrating on what I should be concentrating on, and instead wasted too much time concentrating on chess and other diversions. The real trick is being able to focus on something even when it gets frustrating, painful, or boring, and being able…

Words of wisdom here that I try to impart to my kids.
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