191–200 of 320 posts
Is there a well known strategy game where AI doesn't have better chances to win than a human? Is there possibly, math wise, that such games exist? I kind of dislike not having a chance when playing against bots.
If the bot gets to have APM in the 400-500 range and has full map vision, even the top pros will get smoked no contest.
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Probably we differ here on the timespans, thats okay :-) Personally I explicitly do not expect robots to actually have human-like shape but rather be optimized for the thing they do, which can change the energy requirements or otherwise things that might look "unfair" to humans. Usually this is one of the key reasons where different timelines come from in discussions, where people assume that a humanoid robot needs t…
That's moving the goalposts (pun intended :)): having a wheeled robot with an enclosed (ball protection!) basketball holder slide around the basketball court and extend the basketball holder up to the rim would certainly allow it to beat humans, but it wouldn't really be "playing basketball". We engage in sports because they are fun and explore the limits of our physical and mental abilities (or well, go above our li…
The general point I want to make is that it doesn't make sense trying to compare humans with AI (and somewhat soon) robots, because the will outperform everyone. Handycapping them is not a solution either. The "amazing versatility" of humans also will not persist for too long anymore I'd say, therefore the only way to have a real and fair comparison/pit is against other humans in the future.
I like casual chess; as soon as it gets into blitz and studying openings and patterns I tend to lose interest, that sounds like work, not fun. It's like studying the meta instead of actually playing.
A bit of an unhinged, unpopular opinion take: Chess is a very overrated game that's overglorified to the limit and it's an unhealthy addiction for a lot of people and I think modern media needs to stop flaunting Chess as something of a high-horse type of thing. To put simply, I believe Chess is good as something of a brain exercise for when you're younger or if you are a parent and want to develop your child's logica…
I'm sure there's been theory developed for Fisher Random (960) but memorizing that seems like a bigger PITA than for standard chess, because there's literally 960 starting positions to memorize the theory for, as opposed to one. Plus, if you play 960 online, you will not have a choice as to your starting position, it will be completely random. "Oh, I memorized a bunch of theory for starting position 521 and 859, but now I'm faced with position 157, so shit I'm out of luck" said nobody ever.
I do love 960, I play Crazyhouse960 the most as it's very fluid, requires little opening prep as it's randomized, and there's no endgame to solve for. It's just pure tactics and in-the-moment thinking.
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This argument generalises to all sport. If you want to become the best in the world at something then you have to give it 100%. It will be everything in your life. Most people who try to be the best don’t make it. If you’re nearly the best then your life sucks. You’ve spent all of your energy trying for something that’s not going to give you any returns personally.
I suppose it does to a certain extent but most of my experiences were with Chess, Football and Boxing. People say Chess is a sport but it's not really physically-exerting like some other sports or even healthy at all. In terms of other sports, I think football (soccer) is a sport you don't really have to be 100% at, since that sport is somehow globally recognized and profitable so even subpar players can live well of…
Good article. A lot of the comments here give bad advice though, which isn’t surprising because they show a lot of common misperceptions about chess. Jeremy Silman has written a couple of books about what is actually important. Quickly, what worked for me when I started playing on chess.com at age 40 after not playing for over twenty years. My rating at age 17 was 1450. Restarted at 1200, and barely progressed at fir…
Interesting you put "eat" here as your first item. I don't care much about my rating (I play chess to escape stress; not create more of it), but over the last couple years since I started playing, my lichess rating (fluctuating between 1200-1400) appears to have a very strong correlation with my mental health. Of course it's obvious if you think about it, but it's very odd to have this accurate of an indicator with h…
Good article. A lot of the comments here give bad advice though, which isn’t surprising because they show a lot of common misperceptions about chess. Jeremy Silman has written a couple of books about what is actually important. Quickly, what worked for me when I started playing on chess.com at age 40 after not playing for over twenty years. My rating at age 17 was 1450. Restarted at 1200, and barely progressed at fir…
How do you load your games into a chess engine? Where do you play that allows you to export games? And then are you loading into another site or using a local application on your laptop as the "chess engine?"
My philosophy is skill level and rating doesn't affect enjoyment.
Whether I'm rated 700 or 2700, once my rating stabilizes, I win as many games as I lose.
I have the capacity to improve a little with a lot of work, but, eventually my rating will stabilize and once again I'll have equal wins to loses.
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It's still a systematic "issue"... If it is virtually impossible to find a great or optimal move (even given enough time) without having to memorize tons of specific situations first that's kinda annoying. It's a similar thing with competitive programming. At first the problems are solvable by thinking, but at some point you just need to memorize (or even copy paste) a solution that someone else figured out first...…
You can say this about any human endeavour - to learn language, you need to learn idioms. To write, you need tropes, to program you need patterns, etc. Every sport has its plays. I think learning games of past masters in chess is akin to learning culture when studying language. Standing on the shoulders of the giants and all that jazz. Especially since learning openings is not pure memorization of moves - its about l…
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But that’s not surprising at all if you assume every player has a ‘ceiling’ performance they can attain, isn’t it? Higher rated players tend to be closer to their potential than lower rated ones, leaving less room for improvement, in any sport. They also will be more likely to get worse over time because, the nearer to the top, the more roads lead you downwards. You’d have to pick a very peculiar metric to measure pe…
I play competitive games in tournaments. I would disagree with your characterization. Yes, people have a skill ceiling. However, it’s not something you’re ever going to get to by just playing most games. People naturally improve at games when they start playing. Some factors being more familiarity with the game, and making less mistakes. However, people will stall out at different ratings at that point. However, if y…
I play chess and the GM level is above the skill cap of some talented people who have put in dedicated practice since a child and are a full time professional dedicated player as an adult. The median talent at full time dedication for their whole life wouldn't reach that level, and no one who only started the game at age 20 has ever reached that level regardless of natural talent. Some of the most famous players never attain that level, including some full time professional players that are known figures today (like Eric Rosen) and historical chess theory leaders (like Jeremy Silman).
And in practice "just" GM level isn't even good enough to be a top tier player: the top 100 players can trounce the lowest GMs.
I would assume the same applies to any other game/sport that has the cache for people to train at it from childhood like Tennis, Basketball, etc.