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The End of the Golden Era of American Chess
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Re: The End of the Golden Era of American Chess
#12Former chess prodigy here. I had the honor of training with Pal Benko in the early 90s when I represented Team USA in the world youth championships. I remember Benko being a real class act, which I can’t say about many of the chess personalities I’ve met over the years. You could tell he was absolutely, passionately in love with chess. In that sense he represented something pure which maybe we’ve lost in this new era…
>> RIP classical chess
Yeah, unfortunately, this is true. But inevitable as you pointed out, as it is with many games that become hyper-optimized due to the rise of computing power (and GPUs being turned into powerhouses as of late).
Fischer did get that part right; that classic tournament chess was dying and/or dead. FRC is a fun variant but the writing's on the wall; blitz/bullet and of course bughouse are all the rage today.
And of course, there's always Jerry to watch [0], who is a pleasure.
Re: The End of the Golden Era of American Chess
#13Former chess prodigy here. I had the honor of training with Pal Benko in the early 90s when I represented Team USA in the world youth championships. I remember Benko being a real class act, which I can’t say about many of the chess personalities I’ve met over the years. You could tell he was absolutely, passionately in love with chess. In that sense he represented something pure which maybe we’ve lost in this new era…
How has computer chess changed how humans play humans? (I.e. when you take the computer out of thr equation).
Offline optimization and study using simulation software.
Re: The End of the Golden Era of American Chess
#14Former chess prodigy here. I had the honor of training with Pal Benko in the early 90s when I represented Team USA in the world youth championships. I remember Benko being a real class act, which I can’t say about many of the chess personalities I’ve met over the years. You could tell he was absolutely, passionately in love with chess. In that sense he represented something pure which maybe we’ve lost in this new era…
How has computer chess changed how humans play humans? (I.e. when you take the computer out of thr equation).
At the amateur level, not much. Other than most amateurs spend way too much time relying on engine evals, and as a result don’t develop their own ability to learn “chess sense”.
Competitive players can now prepare easily for individual opponents, which is cool and used to only be feasible for pros.
For pros, it means that everyone plays the same safe openings, because they’re all “booked up” thanks to engines. Also many super sharp tactical lines have been conclusively decided by engines so can no longer be played. End result is world championships like the last one of all draws, which was just pathetic.
Most of the GMs I’ve asked about this in the last year have expressed that they no longer love playing classical chess because it’s so boring. Hence the rise of legit Chess960 and rapid tournaments at the top level.
Re: The End of the Golden Era of American Chess
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
How has computer chess changed how humans play humans? (I.e. when you take the computer out of thr equation).
At the amateur level, not much. Other than most amateurs spend way too much time relying on engine evals, and as a result don’t develop their own ability to learn “chess sense”. Competitive players can now prepare easily for individual opponents, which is cool and used to only be feasible for pros. For pros, it means that everyone plays the same safe openings, because they’re all “booked up” thanks to engines. Also m…
>> End result is world championships like the last one of all draws, which was just pathetic.
Yeah, this sucks. We've reached local maxima.
Re: The End of the Golden Era of American Chess
#16Well clearly the new chess Masters are no longer players but programmers. That doesn't make the game uninteresting though. A few months ago, one would have thought that we had the best algorithm and that progress would only be slowly incremental for now on... until the approach adopted to best humans at the game of go got applied to chess. Now you have these programs like LeelaChess able to best Stockfish (a program…
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Re: The End of the Golden Era of American Chess
#17Former chess prodigy here. I had the honor of training with Pal Benko in the early 90s when I represented Team USA in the world youth championships. I remember Benko being a real class act, which I can’t say about many of the chess personalities I’ve met over the years. You could tell he was absolutely, passionately in love with chess. In that sense he represented something pure which maybe we’ve lost in this new era…
Am watching the World Cup right now. Before that watched the Sinquefield Cup. Both (so far) exciting events, not sure how you can pronounce classical chess dead.
Bullet, lol---chess without thinking. It's the thinking I like about chess. The carefully-worked-out combinations, brilliant defensive plans, drawing swindles etc. If people like playing bullet, great, but it seems another game entirely.
People complaining here about the draws in the last world championship: the WCC matches are much too short these days, players won't take risks as there's no time to catch up if they backfire. But "shorter, faster" is supposed to cure everything. Anyway, Karpov and Kasparov had a lot of draws, 17 in a row in 1984, in virtually the pre-computer era.
Re: The End of the Golden Era of American Chess
#18If (like me) you're bored by regular chess now, consider trying out the variant 16x16 "Four Kings one War."
It has been turned into Steam game with a free demo : https://store.steampowered.com/app/883680/Four_Kings_One_War...
The AI for this game was coded in Rust, by me. Good luck!
Re: The End of the Golden Era of American Chess
#19Former chess prodigy here. I had the honor of training with Pal Benko in the early 90s when I represented Team USA in the world youth championships. I remember Benko being a real class act, which I can’t say about many of the chess personalities I’ve met over the years. You could tell he was absolutely, passionately in love with chess. In that sense he represented something pure which maybe we’ve lost in this new era…
Am watching the World Cup right now. Before that watched the Sinquefield Cup. Both (so far) exciting events, not sure how you can pronounce classical chess dead. Bullet, lol---chess without thinking. It's the thinking I like about chess. The carefully-worked-out combinations, brilliant defensive plans, drawing swindles etc. If people like playing bullet, great, but it seems another game entirely. People complaining h…
Re classical, if you don’t want to take my word for it, look up the chess24 interview after the last world champs where magnus said it was so unenjoyable he wasn’t even sure if he’d defend his title.
No offense, only people who suck at bullet say it doesn’t involve thinking. It’s the same game, it involves developing and training your intuition. I could teach anyone how to get good, even you... if you were open to learn that is.
(And had the budget or could trade for coding hours :-)
Re: The End of the Golden Era of American Chess
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Am watching the World Cup right now. Before that watched the Sinquefield Cup. Both (so far) exciting events, not sure how you can pronounce classical chess dead. Bullet, lol---chess without thinking. It's the thinking I like about chess. The carefully-worked-out combinations, brilliant defensive plans, drawing swindles etc. If people like playing bullet, great, but it seems another game entirely. People complaining h…
Re classical, if you don’t want to take my word for it, look up the chess24 interview after the last world champs where magnus said it was so unenjoyable he wasn’t even sure if he’d defend his title. No offense, only people who suck at bullet say it doesn’t involve thinking. It’s the same game, it involves developing and training your intuition. I could teach anyone how to get good, even you... if you were open to le…
If you have to say "No offense" to begin a sentence, it probably doesn't belong on HN. And "..even you..if you were open to learn" is in the same vein. I'm not interested in communicating further.
Edit: Gee, lots of downvotes. Not sure why. Should I have said nothing? I thought the way they spoke to me was utterly unacceptable, as I calmly pointed out. My initial points were mostly obvious things everyone in the chess world knows, including the person I was responding to.