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What is Chess? What to think and for how long

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Re: What is Chess? What to think and for how long

#81

Post by 317070 »

fferen wrote: post #79

Something I wonder: are computers better at chess because they can think faster? What if we give a team of top grandmasters 1 day per move, versus like 1 hour for Stockfish. Will they at least consistently draw? To my knowledge, top human vs computer matches these days only use piece odds, not time odds.

No, on long time controls, humans cannot see enough of the tree in some positions. They might be able to push the game sometimes into a position where they can hold if the engine is not set up to prefer complicated positions.

But

This is one of my favorites. On extreme short time controls, humans can handle some really good engines some of the time! Here you have Andrew Tang beating Leela in hyperbullet: https://youtu.be/Wf-wFXRpwgo

Another approach that sometimes works is to be really booked up in dubious lines with an engine that does not have too much time, something Jonathan Schrantz manages from time to time https://youtu.be/FC2P6VUYu78

Re: What is Chess? What to think and for how long

#82

Post by sublinear »

jmmcd wrote: post #69

That is a great title. For many people, chess is not interesting, now that computers are so good at it. But for me, chess is even more interesting now that we have developed (narrow) AI programs that instantiate more and more parts of what humans do when playing. (I know, humans don't play like computers, but we do things like heuristic board evaluation and heuristic game tree pruning.) So in a game, the player is no…

I think chess can be difficult to appreciate for many reasons, but computers beating humans is probably at the bottom of that list, if not on the opposite list of reasons to be encouraged to play as you already explained.

Anyway, I can only speak for my past self and a few people I've known, but it's usually simple why people don't play.

It can be socially unappealing if there's no tradition of playing chess within their circle or that the people that do play might be snobs about it.

It can be difficult to feel encouraged to play since the game itself is complex enough to require more attention than expected and the jargon is confusing. The names of openings, tactics, etc. are not necessarily literal enough, and even when expressed in notation are still vague due to the nature of the game (many variations). For many people there's also a lack of motivation and it just seems unproductive, especially when it becomes clear that winning, even against the weakest AI, isn't common when starting out. Like any game, chess can help improve analytical thinking, but it's abstract enough to not be obvious how. If it's not made a pleasant enough experience, it's just easier to do something else.

Re: What is Chess? What to think and for how long

#83

Post by bachonk »

jjbinx007 wrote: post #32
ronyfadel wrote: post #8

Hijacking the comments to ask: what is the best way to get better at chess? (other than “just” playing matches, I’m already doing that)

Aman Hambleton has an EXCELLENT although very long series on Youtube called Building Habits. He starts at a very low ELO and follows a set of basic rules. He loses several games but his win ratio is high. Once he gets to a higher Elo he has to introduce new rules, and again it doesn't mean you'll win every game but you build good habits by practicing over and over again. And so it continues. Here's the full playlist:…

I tried Aman's videos but found Daniel Naroditsky to be far more helpful in terms of explaining advanced theory and tactics in a way that's easy to understand and practical at any ELO.

Here are some of his playlists: https://www.youtube.com/@DanielNaroditskyGM/playlists

Re: What is Chess? What to think and for how long

#84

Post by amalcon »

fferen wrote: post #79

Something I wonder: are computers better at chess because they can think faster? What if we give a team of top grandmasters 1 day per move, versus like 1 hour for Stockfish. Will they at least consistently draw? To my knowledge, top human vs computer matches these days only use piece odds, not time odds.

An easier way to do this would be to limit the hardware resources available to Stockfish. You can get the 24x time ratio just by giving Stockfish 1/24th of the compute cycles.

That said, 24x is not even close to enough advantage there -- that probably removes less than one ply of depth. Stockfish can read far deeper than any human; you'd need a dramatically larger reduction to compensate for this.

You could probably put Stockfish on a desktop computer from the mid 90's, and expect the team of GMs to win.

Re: What is Chess? What to think and for how long

#85

Post by groffee »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #24
ycombinete wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seneca was of a similar opinion: It would be a lengthy business to mention all the different people who have spent their lives engaged in chess-playing or exercise with ball or the practice of roasting their bodies in the sun. They are not unoccupied when their pleasure form such a busy occupation. No one will doubt that those men are energetic triflers who devote their hours to the study of useless literature - On t…

That's weird, since chess didn't exist when Seneca was alive. Perhaps that's a mistranslation and he was referring to Ludus latrunculorum? [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludus_latrunculorum

Interestingly this has just come up again recently with the 'dahl' controversy.[0]

[0] https://classicalwisdom.substack.com/p/should-we-update-old-...

Re: What is Chess? What to think and for how long

#86

Post by rjbwork »

patrickscoleman wrote: post #77
sadhorse wrote: post #2

"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." Paul Murphy.

This makes me feel unreasonably better about my decision to stop trying to get better at chess. But I do miss those 3-day correspondence games with friends where you slowly get smoked by your better friends over weeks.

Me and my friends play long term board games on boardgamearea.com now. Ticket to Ride, Roll for the Galaxy, It's a Wonderful World, and more. We've usually got at least 2, sometimes many more, going at a time. It's a good time.

Re: What is Chess? What to think and for how long

#87

Post by TechBro8615 »

groffee wrote: post #85
TechBro8615 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird, since chess didn't exist when Seneca was alive. Perhaps that's a mistranslation and he was referring to Ludus latrunculorum? [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludus_latrunculorum

Interestingly this has just come up again recently with the 'dahl' controversy.[0] [0] https://classicalwisdom.substack.com/p/should-we-update-old-...

Catullus 16 is certainly problematic! (It was also the only homework assignment that students begged to complete in my Latin course)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16

Re: What is Chess? What to think and for how long

#89

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

ajkjk wrote: post #70
akuro wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this has made me realise that I am nowhere near as literate as I think I am.

The florid writing is an elitist fad; you can express the same idea in much simpler language without losing any meaning.

So what? Famously, Anna Karenina is about a woman who jumps in front of a train, why bother to read the other 863 pages.

Anti-Oedipus [1] and especially A Thousand Plateaus [2] is about living in rarefied, futural spaces. Deleuze would be the first to be disgusted even at the faintest idea that his writing has any meaning whatsoever: you want meaning? go and live your life, don't read a book, especially not a philosophy book. In What is Philosophy? [3], Deleuze and Guattari give a very straight and simple answer: "philosophy is the art of forming, inventing and fabricating concepts"—that's it, nothing more, nothing less. Why would you hurry to admire a concept, instead of doing it repeatedly, now, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow [4]: do you also not smell a flower because its florid and anyway you could synthesize ionones [5] into a vial, why bother with the flower.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_Plateaus

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Philosophy%3F_(Deleuze...

[4] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56964/speech-tomorrow...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionone

Re: What is Chess? What to think and for how long

#90

Post by plasticeagle »

jmmcd wrote: post #69

That is a great title. For many people, chess is not interesting, now that computers are so good at it. But for me, chess is even more interesting now that we have developed (narrow) AI programs that instantiate more and more parts of what humans do when playing. (I know, humans don't play like computers, but we do things like heuristic board evaluation and heuristic game tree pruning.) So in a game, the player is no…

People spend time running in races against each other, despite the existence of cars.

People spend time lifting heavy weights, despite the existence of forklifts.

People spend time climbing mountains, despite the existence of helicopters.

That a machine can do something better than a human, is no reason to pretend that human to human competition is no longer worthwhile. A pleasant game of chess against a friend is as much a psychological battle as it is a tactical one.

I never played against computers, they could always beat me every single time. What would be the point? I play against humans, for the same reason I have conversations with humans and not with computers - even as they become capable of even that.

I do think that building an AI that does play like a human would be interesting, it's certainly never really been done. But it's interesting because it's an interesting problem to solve, not because playing against such a machine would be any fun.

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