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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

#81

Post by tasuki »

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 (used to) play go competitively (European 4dan). AlphaGo took me by surprise, but apart from the occasional cheater, its consequences are mostly great:

- I have a superhuman teacher available anytime, ready to analyze all my games and answer all my questions (though the "why?" question sometimes takes a fair bit for the teacher to explain).

- A lot of widely accepted dogmas in go were shaken, that was just a whole lot of fun.

- Learning joseki (corner sequences) finally makes sense (they used to develop and change every year, which on my level wasn't worth keeping on top of).

- It's a sneak peek into what's coming with AI. I watched the Lee Sedol match live, some of the AlphaGo moves were amazing. The human commentary was enlighteningly wrong: "oh he lost the first game, surely he'll win the next four"

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#82

Post by IAmNotAFix »

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…

On the other hand, the fact that it stays unsolved and isn't predicted to be solved in the near future (and it's not sure whether we'll one day have enough computing power to solve it by brute force) indicates that it probably has a long life ahead. Games only are really ended when they're solved.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#83

Post by yboris »

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…

I took a "study drug" once for fun in college. My friend warned me: "it doesn't focus you on studying, you might end up very meticulously cleaning for a few hours". I ended up playing Nonogram for 3 hours into the night.

On the "focus what's important in life" I feel like everyone should consider Effective Altruism - focusing on the effectiveness of one's pro-social actions first and foremost.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#84

Post by powersnail »

tomcam wrote: post #77

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 cl…

A nerd should have understood that for a game with finite search space, a sufficiently fast brute-force solution will always beat (or not lose to) a smart person. It's the nature of brute-force solution.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#85

Post by [deleted] »

tomcam wrote: post #77

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 cl…

[deleted]

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#86

Post by dorkwood »

wooolfgang wrote: post #7
segmondy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how you do concentrate on things that are not chess and games which you find boring?

I think people try too much to concentrate on things that they do not actually like. As Bukowski wrote, “Don’t Try.”

I've had friends commend me on my discipline before, as if I've spent years honing my concentration skills. The reality is that I just like my side projects. I like thinking about them and playing with them. Everyone's trying to force it instead of giving themselves space to play.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#87

Post by powersnail »

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…

It's easier to maintain long concentration on some things, and harder for other things.

In chess, once you start a game, you don't stop thinking about the game until it's over. And you also tend to be surrounded by an environment---whether it's audience, or a park, or a chess club---that doesn't try to grab your attention away.

It's really easy for me to concentrate on playing music, or just listening to music, for two hour straight. The same for reading books.

But I can't maintain that long a focus when I'm programming. At some point, I'll be waiting the computer to give me feedback, for compilation, tests, or results. There's nothing for me to think about on that code, and my mind goes to something else. I have a list of other stuff that I could fix, so I don't stray too far from programming, and can always go back into it swiftly.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#88

Post by powersnail »

segmondy wrote: post #3
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…

So how you do concentrate on things that are not chess and games which you find boring?

Neil Gaiman said that when he doesn't feel like writing, he gives himself two choices, either sit there and do nothing, or write.

Then, he'll sit there, and after a few minutes, the boredom of doing nothing gets very strong, and he'll be motivated to write.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#89

Post by dorkwood »

slothtrop wrote: post #67
nemo44x wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s about not forcing things. Don’t set a time for when a creative output should be done. Wait for it and let it come to you. “Trying” won’t lead to genius creations; just letting it come to you from spontaneous inspiration and patience.

What I frequently hear from writers is you don't get to decide when inspiration will hit you. To be equipped to deal with it you have to write all the time, mental block or not. It just gets easier the more you do it.

I think a lot of it is to do with what you're paying attention to. If you show up every day to make and think about art, then your brain will stay in that space, and eventually reward you with ideas. If you completely give up and disconnect, then your brain will leave that space. You don't get ideas for things that you never think about.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#90

Post by adverbly »

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).

Give CamelUp a look! Great for kids or bigger groups!

You also might want to give "Liar's Dice" a look - some of the variants are similarly great for bigger groups, and still rely heavily on strategy.

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