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Chess is booming among teens

polygon.com

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Re: Chess is booming among teens

#61

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

bsder wrote: post #45
raincole wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question about online chess is: why aren't people feeling that their opponents are cheating? I don't play chess. But in other online games, like FPS, the players always complain about cheaters. Then why isn't it a problem with chess.com? It's much easier to cheat with online chess than an FPS game, no?

1) A lot of "cheating complaints" in multiplayer games are simply people that suck. There was an article a while ago that examined several of these kinds of games and most people made the most absolutely basic blunders. 2) FPS games have a lot more degrees of freedom to cheat. There is network lag, hidden information, aimbots, etc. Chess, by contrast, has no hidden state and everything is contained on the server. The…

>Jerk behavior tends to be far more problematic than cheating. For example, if you get a winning position, it's not uncommon for an opponent to stop playing but make you wait the rest of the time to count the win. You will bump into this, and it will annoy you way more often than cheaters.

When people do this on Lichess, I spamclick the button that adds 15 seconds to the opponent clock and write "move or resign". Sometimes people resign, sometimes they keep playing, sometimes they just close the app then you can claim the victory almost immediately.

This behaviour probably pisses me off so much because I grew up playing real tournaments, where politeness is highly valued. Getting up and walking away, or letting your time run out on purpose, is considered extremely rude to where it could get you disqualified.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#62

Post by szopa »

visarga wrote: post #55
olkingcole wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main reason, besides chess being fundamentally a great and timeless game, is streaming. Popular streamers picked it up and many top level players also started streaming online chess, which can be very entertaining. Often they are playing fast, exciting time controls like 1 or 2 minutes. Chess.com and others brought flavorful tournament coverage and hosted events with guests from outside the chess world. C…

> Chess is born anew for the 21st century. Where are the doomers who said chess was over after being solved by AI?

Those were simply people with not enough imagination. Eg. AlphaGo beating Lee Sedol brought a true renaissance in Go, with papers showing that now humans play objectively better than they did before AI. While we have comfortably superhuman AIs, they are still far from godlike. The doomers were confused about where the ceiling was (and in Go it is much further than we thought).

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#63

Post by eterm »

yarg wrote: post #17
sdwr wrote: post #3

This is wild. Chess feels old-school and boring to me. Don't understand how it's competing with modern sources of entertainment.

I kinda agree with Bobby on that front: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P349BdHUxlc&t=0s There's too much that's simply memorisation over skills, deep lines leading you down well traversed paths. Creativity and ingenuity suffer. The only real option* if you want interesting games is to make intentionally bad moves so that theory falls apart, and that's only an option against weaker players. You can play with the more…

> There's too much that's simply memorisation over skills, deep lines leading you down well traversed paths.

And yet, game 2 of the world championship there was a novelty on move 4.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#64

Post by chongli »

yarg wrote: post #17
sdwr wrote: post #3

This is wild. Chess feels old-school and boring to me. Don't understand how it's competing with modern sources of entertainment.

I kinda agree with Bobby on that front: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P349BdHUxlc&t=0s There's too much that's simply memorisation over skills, deep lines leading you down well traversed paths. Creativity and ingenuity suffer. The only real option* if you want interesting games is to make intentionally bad moves so that theory falls apart, and that's only an option against weaker players. You can play with the more…

There's too much that's simply memorisation over skills, deep lines leading you down well traversed paths.

Creativity and ingenuity suffer.

The only real option if you want interesting games is to make intentionally bad moves so that theory falls apart, and that's only an option against weaker players.

Did you watch the world championship this year? It did not at all fit your narrative. The games were very exciting. The players were out of prep early and often. There were a lot of chances being taken, blunders, and mistakes. All this from 2800-level players.

I think people may soon realize that computers can be used for more than just preparing deep lines on well-trodden ground. They can also be used to find the shortest path off the beaten track and into a jungle of a midgame where you and your opponent can just play some chess. I love it!

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#65

Post by 10000truths »

danmaz74 wrote: post #59
hannob wrote: post #37

I've recently started playing chess again a bit (after doing it a bit when I was a teen), and there's an interesting aspect of online chess that I began to realize: When I was young you needed a local opponent to play chess, and that wasn't always easy. Why? Because most people around you were either significantly better (you always loose) or worse (you always win). It's not an interesting game if the outcome is almo…

Yes, the rating system is fundamental to be able to enjoy the game, and also to lower the impact of cheating: if my rating is 1500 and I play against other players around 1500, I don't care if they are at that level thanks to cheating or not. I only care about being competitive with them and trying to do my best. -- Shameless plug: I recently released a platform to improve tactically with puzzles and spaced repetitio…

You're assuming a steady-state equilibrium. It takes several games for a player to settle into their Elo, and a cheater will have ruined the experience of their opponents in the meantime. You're also discounting the fact that griefers will deliberately create new accounts to continue playing against novice opponents.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#66

Post by xyst »

It’s a good ole time tested game of strategy. I suspect the recent rise in players has largely been due to the pandemic, a group of dedicated streamers, and chess being an easy game people can pick up (mastering it is another beast).

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#67

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

jrpt wrote: post #32
BurningFrog wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest thing is that now you can find someone of similar strength to play with in 20 seconds!!

You could do that 10-15 years ago too though. Chess.com has been around a long time.

And ICC(Internet Chess Club) was around even in the 90s!

Chess video lectures have existed since the eaely 00s too, though they cost money and you'd buy them on a DVD filled with a mixture of video files and PGN files along with some metadata to be viewed through Chessbase.

It was basically the same thing as Chessable is today. Probably competitive in price too; Chessable is pretty fucking expensive if you actually want the video lectures.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#68

Post by yarg »

chongli wrote: post #64
yarg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda agree with Bobby on that front: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P349BdHUxlc&t=0s There's too much that's simply memorisation over skills, deep lines leading you down well traversed paths. Creativity and ingenuity suffer. The only real option* if you want interesting games is to make intentionally bad moves so that theory falls apart, and that's only an option against weaker players. You can play with the more…

There's too much that's simply memorisation over skills, deep lines leading you down well traversed paths. Creativity and ingenuity suffer. The only real option if you want interesting games is to make intentionally bad moves so that theory falls apart, and that's only an option against weaker players. Did you watch the world championship this year? It did not at all fit your narrative. The games were very exciting.…

> There were a lot of chances being taken, blunders, and mistakes. All this from 2800-level players.,.

OK, so fucking up accidentally can also make for an interesting game, but that hardly shatters my "narrative".

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#70

Post by quijoteuniv »

hannob wrote: post #37

I've recently started playing chess again a bit (after doing it a bit when I was a teen), and there's an interesting aspect of online chess that I began to realize: When I was young you needed a local opponent to play chess, and that wasn't always easy. Why? Because most people around you were either significantly better (you always loose) or worse (you always win). It's not an interesting game if the outcome is almo…

Imagine when you discover Lichess!
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