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

Chess is booming among teens

polygon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 227 posts

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#161

Post by jacooper »

ranguna wrote: post #138
jacooper wrote: post #11

I visted my relatives recently, and i was shocked. At first I though it was a new clash of clans type of trendy game, but its actually chess! The teenagers have chess.com installed everyhere and are challenging each other nonstop, sometimes with real chess boards too! There's social pyramid starting to form, with one of the younger ones conquering the game with no clear challenger, its football but for people who don…

Is it just me, or is this comment AI generated? > and i was shocked. At first I though (...), but its actually (...)! > The (...) installed everywhere (...) each other nonstop, sometimes with real > There's social pyramid starting to form, with one of the younger ones conquering the game with no clear challenger, its football but for people who don't like football. The paragraph above specifically, it sounds coherent…

In high school usually there is some kind of a social class pyramid built on how good you can play football(not in the U.S.).

The best one is the coolest and so on.

While people who don't play are constantly bullied.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#163

Post by aklemm »

ajonit wrote: post #157
esrauch wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can analyze unlimited games for free on Lichess (both locally in browser and also serverside analysis that I think is donated server time). It lets you play against stockfish bits but they don't have "personalities" like the Chess.com ones do. You also have unlimited free puzzles on lichess (paid on chesscom). Chess.com probably has a better library of learning content if you're into that (much of it paid though)…

>>IMO if you're not paying I can't see why anyone would prefer chess.com over lichess<< For someone like me who has been playing for several decades now, it's the UI of chess.com/app.

And then there’s me who finds chess.com kind of cartoonish and ugly

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#164

Post by aeoliun »

mcv wrote: post #149
cjonas wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it odd that all my friends & coworkers in the tech industry have ended up on chess.com instead of lichess. Even beyond the fact it's totally free (and free of ads), the architecture itself is super interesting: https://lichess.org/@/thibault/blog/starting-from-scratch/NI... It must be one of the best examples of a very large scale implementation of features that are simple and easy to understand

What are the differences? I'm not familiar with lichess, but chess.com has tons of bots at various levels that you can play against, and you can have one game per day analysed by stockfish for free (more costs money). I think that's a pretty good deal.

Differences that I've noticed:

1. Lichess rating is ~200-300 points ahead of a Chess.com rating. Not in the sense that players are better, but an 800 player on Chess.com will probably be 1000-1100 on Lichess.

2. Fantastic analysis tool. Chess.com analysis tends to be a bit funky sometimes.

3. Zen Mode. Not really a pro / con, but it's nice to hide the UI and just have a board on the screen when playing.

4. Free, obviously. No ads.

5. Younger audiences may want to play where their favorite streamer plays, which tends to be Chess.com for nearly everyone unless you're Eric Rosen. Hikaru Nakamura, GothamChess, Magnus Carlsen, Botez Sisters, Anna Cramling, and Chessbrah are all on Chess.com.

6. Chess.com has better puzzles, although limited on the free tier.

I don't have exact numbers on population for both platforms, but if someone can correct me, I'm fairly sure Chess.com holds the majority of players.

Edit: Spelling

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#165

Post by chiefalchemist »

I learned chess as a kid. Recently, having read Annie Duke's "Thinking in Bets" I regret not having learned poker instead. I'll spare you the details here and let Duke walk your through it, but poker as a life still for decision-making is 100x better than the otherwise finite world of chess moves.

Note: I'm not knocking chess per se; just trying to provide context and contrasts with poker.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#169

Post by eitally »

fauxpause_ wrote: post #154
chongli wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Eh. I don’t care about the chess world champions. I’m not playing them. RTS games suffer a similar problem. Until you become extremely proficient, you have basically no room to use novel strategies. You will lose to people with better execution on established strategies. And so you don’t do anything but grind execution and it’s pretty boring. Chess isn’t quite this bad, but I find it pretty boring after a while.

The flip side to your comment, though, is that chess can be highly entertaining for people just getting started, who neither know any established openings or play lines, nor are playing against opponents who do... which describes the vast majority of newcomers to the game.

I would argue that you can get to approaching 1500 ELO without really knowing any theory at all, and just focusing on what "feels" like appropriate control of the board & game dynamics... and again, the vast majority of casual players will likely never move beyond that. But it's still fun, especially when they're able to challenge friends between classes to 3 or 5 minute matches.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#170

Post by eitally »

babl-yc wrote: post #18
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.

Speaking as someone who has gotten addicted to online chess in the past couple years, I think it's a combination of factors: - Short time format makes for intense, fast paced games - Starting a game only takes a few taps, and you can be done in a few minutes - ELO ratings give you a number to obsess over improving, and online matching puts you against even opponents - Instant post-game analysis - Large amount of Twit…

My 14yo son 100% agree with your assessment (and I third it!). :)
Post reply on HN