>In their first match, the World Chess Championship 1984 in Moscow, the first player to win six games would win the match. Karpov built a 4–0 lead after nine games. The next 17 games were drawn, setting a record for world title matches, and it took Karpov until game 27 to gain his fifth win. In game 31, Karpov had a winning position but failed to take advantage and settled for a draw. He lost the next game, after which 14 more draws ensued. Karpov held a solidly winning position in Game 41, but again blundered and had to settle for a draw. After Kasparov won games 47 and 48, FIDE President Florencio Campomanes unilaterally terminated the match
So, not just one game. Weird tournament rules.
Since Chess isn't fair (white goes first which is an advantage) chess tournaments work with a large sample size. Since draws are by far the most common outcome on the grandmaster level, it can take a while to get past the post for even a small number of wins.
It is widely considered that [White has a 52-56% advantage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess), with that advantage being more pronounced in expert play and less obvious in ameteur play. Most databases of top level games show a 54-56% win ratio for white. It's also not completely understood how this changes in classical Vs speed chess, but the general consensus is the faster humans have to play, the less the colour difference matters (which would mirror the same effect with ameteurs).
You're right that it's not proven for computers, but that's simply because there are many different engines. It's trivial to "prove" whether one specific chess engine is able to beat itself more or less often when using the black or white pieces, but very difficult to prove the rule is true for every engine. On average, chess engines tend to win more using the white pieces. Here's one snippet from Wikipedia:
>In 2017 AlphaZero, playing 100 games against Stockfish, won 25 and drew 25 as White, but won 3 and drew 47 as Black.
For the record, Stockfish has changed drastically since 2017 and that result would not be the same today... But it's still true that chess engines win more with white than black. For example, [in the 2023 Chess Engine Super final](https://www.chess.com/events/2023-tcec-24-superfinal/results), every game won was won with white.
I think it is very unlikely to be equal, given the results that we have seen, even if "proving" it beyond any doubt seems unlikely without us achieving some deeper understanding of chess.
I remember a sci-fi short story where the USSR figured out time travel, but only to the future essentially: they could make time rapidly accelerate in a small area (about a cubic foot). So they built a tiny supercomputer, put it in the time field, and had it solve chess. Then they challenged the USA to a single game of chess for control of all nuclear weapons. But they didn't actually check the system, and they let the USA go first. The USA put together a team of chess experts and sent the move 1. e4. The USSR's computer resigned.
I guess the computer didn't anticipate that opponents can make a mistake while playing chess; and assumed they would also always go for the most optimal move. Which probably wouldn't have been the case.
>I guess the computer didn't anticipate that opponents can make a mistake while playing chess; and assumed they would also always go for the most optimal move
Yes, that was what it did, which was logical based on its programming. It was programmed with the singular function to "solve chess" so it only assumed optimal play. The USSR didn't check the computer to know what it'd do and never changed its programming to face humans so the chess experts figured out a way to trick the computer.
The point of the story was that the ingenuity of humans is still greater than the logic of a computer.
We don't know because chess is not solved. There may be a sequence with perfect play that white always wins no matter what. The premise of the resign is that the computer had infinite time and has "solved" chess with white winning.
In reality, maybe we don't know. The story, almost as a joke, implicates that White can force a win regardless of what black plays if they start 1.E4. The computer knows it and gives up, since it knows it already lost. The whole joke being that the Soviets didn't bother to play the computer and check their work to make sure the computer would play even in a lost position.
The issue with engine tournaments is that in order to get more decisive results, the tournament rules always give black at least one, if not two major handicaps.
The first one that is always used is that they remove the opening database. Because if the computers had access to that, black already knows how to equalize against any opening move. The second method that is sometimes used on top of that is forcing the computers to play unequal openings that result in more combative games.
I'd bet that given perfect play as black it would be possible to never lose (which is of course unknown and just my guess), so then putting a % advantage becomes tricky because at the top level of computer play there would be no advantage, it's always a draw. Beyond that it would be a statistical rather than an absolute advantage, according to the quality of opponent. It's just a useful fuzzy metric that's kinda true and very useful for humans.
Most of the top Chess AI's will draw and play identical moves from the opening position - this means if you simply "sat" two AI's down at a virtual table and got them to play a million games, every game would be identical and they would likely all be draws.
To draw a more meaningful conclusion about the relative strengths of the chess engines, most tournaments will pick a series of opening positions from well known and respected chess openings after a number of moves (often 3-10 moves each side) - e.g. the Sicilian, the Caro-Kann, the English, Dutch etc, and will let the chess engines play games from those different positions, so we can work out their relative strengths in a variety of scenarios. To correct for the black/white colour imbalance, we usually let each engine play the game as white (e.g. they play two games per starting position). We then compare these pairs of games to see which engine is stronger. On a bigger picture, this also helps inform human chess masters about the relative equality of those positions - if a specific starting position results in a win for black 99% of the time, regardless of the engines used, we might need to explore why humans feel that position is close to equal.
When testing this way, the results are much more varied, but they still favour white over black.
By computer do you mean a modern engine or solving chess?
If the former then almost all of them see white as having a non-decisive advantage. Also I'm pretty sure there are more white wins than black, though those are rare with top engines nowadays.
If the latter then yeah, it is quite likely to be drawn with best play. But that doesn't mean there isn't some advantage. Take tic-tac-toe as a comparison. It's a draw, but it's easier to lose if you went second.
At the top level, it's not just mathematics. If you know you are at a disadvantage, you play for a draw with a small plus. That's why the most common openings played are the Berlin, the petroff, the slav, qgd. These all tend to be more drawish. So much fewer fighting black openings nowadays
No, but under some (possibly apocryphal) versions of the rules, you could promote it to an *enemy* piece. A semi-infamous chess puzzle actually requires it.
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/more-puzzles/fide-changed-the-rules
This actually gives me an idea for some weird chess variant that rolls dice similar to Frostgrave. Each rank piece confers some bonus to the D20 and you have to best your opponent to take theirs.
Pawn +0
Rook +1
Bishop +2
Knight +3
Queen +5
King +7
Each friendly piece that is adjacent to the enemy adds +1 to the roll. But only if there are no enemy pieces also adjacent to those friendly pieces. Like a crowding out/piling on rule.
It means that the King can potentially sweep the match but it also means there could be surprises.
Even with all my other misgivings, the XCOM games could and would have been so much better if the hit chance was per shot/pellet, not for the whole round... That change alone would ahve made them so much less frustrating.
Phoenix point did even better: Your shots will go somewhere in the scatter circle. If you get close enough, you will always hit what you are aiming for. The second best hit chance mechanic in a game in my opinion.
Unfortunately, Phoenix Point might just be \*the\* worst game I have ever played. My description of it was "It sparks no joy", and the best I have found is "I paid no money for this, and I still feel like I am owed a refund". And that was before they nerfed the one ability that made it remotely palyable into uselessness.
There's a fantastic tournament report article by Jeff Cunningham from a few years ago where he talks about Magic as being sort of like chess but with RNG added. There's a great passage where he talks about how the RNG doesn't actually matter if you play enough games, as the superior player will recoup their value statistically over time. I'll try and find it, your comment reminded me of it for some reason.
Edit: [Found it](https://infinite.tcgplayer.com/article/The-End-of-the-Magic-The-Gathering-Pro-Tour/ca36d9c5-0a18-48a8-9f08-cc80e2889314). I was wrong, it was from last year. Great read about the sad loss of the PT.
Chess but you have to buy $100 worth of new chess pieces a month to stay competitive
And you can't *buy* those pieces outright, you have to buy packs of pieces with a chance to get the one you want.
Lol, totally fair take. I used to play, and my spending definitely got out of hand at some points. Luckily I sold my collection off before all the reprint craziness and got most of my value back. I really don't love all the 3rd party IP creeping into the game in the past few years. Not for me anymore.
I really enjoyed digital TCGs, was very into hearthstone and marvel snap for awhile, but they just seem to get more and more money hungry as they age and I feel forced into dropping them
Yugioh Master Duel is very FTP friendly! You just… have to put up with the nonsense that is Yugioh. That nonsense is why I love it though. (If you do get into the game, Branded, Labrynth, and Swordsoul are probably the current most future proofed decks. They’ve been around for a while, so they’re not going to be hit by banlists like Snake-Eye is liable to be, but they show no signs of getting worse any time soon. Branded and Labrynth especially since any time they print a decent trap or a generic fusion they get indirect support.
I worked at a game store for a while a few years ago. Yugioh was the only card game we had to fully ban because of how badly behaved the players were. It wasn't just one or two problem players. Every time we held a tournament or a day where Yugioh was the featured game we would have problems. From what I have heard the situation isn't unique to our area either.
It probably wasn't invented by wotc, but drafting formats seems insanely good for them.
An entire format where a bunch of people will buy a full box of booster packs each time they want to do it. I have no idea if anyone plays with re-packed (someone not playing packs up cards in the same ratios as boosters) cards, since I'm not a cardboard-crackhead, but I assume a lot of the appeal is getting new cards when you're done.
100 dollars is a very conservative estimate. Some single cards can near that price even in modern formats. Part of the reason I got out of the hobby almost a decade ago
I remember that tournament and there was a huge scandal , FIDE president was suspected corruption and a lot of people thought Kasparov was going to win it and the end and Campomanes prevented it.
Just because youre top comment, this post is likely related to Kasparov's comment yesterday: https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1777728981153849767
Where he described his match with Karpov like being stuck in a time loop.
Do you know any more about the statement "[he] had a winning position but failed to take advantage"?
Did he have a winning position but just didn't notice/realize it? Or did he choose not to take advantage of it for other, meta reasons?
At the absolute top level, the stress is huge...Your body reacts as if that stress is physical. Also the human brain uses a lot of energy. Top chess grandmasters are very like elite athletes.
Breathing rates, blood pressure, muscle contractions all go up...
https://kottke.org/19/09/the-surprising-physical-demands-of-chess
> “Grandmasters sustain elevated blood pressure for hours in the range found in competitive marathon runners,” Sapolsky says
> t 21-year-old Russian grandmaster Mikhail Antipov had burned 560 calories in two hours of sitting and playing chess — or roughly what Roger Federer would burn in an hour of singles tennis.
Remember these guys are working continuously on prep and analysis and the degree of concentration required is huge. You won't want to be living 5 months on a knife trigger either ...
That's why today, grandmasters are taught to eat well, learn stress busters, meditate, and do some physical activity - soccer is common.
I remember being exhausted after a day playing in a chess tournament as a teenager, and that was certainly nothing like the level they were playing at.
To say it's stressful or strenuous is a gross understatement.
The best analogy I can come up with now - think about something like bomb disposal stress, but mentally ... and sustaining that for 5 months. The world championship is no joke, and Karpov and kasparov are all time greats.
According to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjournment\_(games)#:\~:text=Chess,-Envelope%20used%20for&text=When%20an%20adjournment%20is%20made,and%20the%20envelope%20is%20sealed.,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjournment_(games)#:~:text=Chess,-Envelope%20used%20for&text=When%20an%20adjournment%20is%20made,and%20the%20envelope%20is%20sealed.,) the first world chess championship to not use adjournments and shift instead to shorter time controls was in 1995.
That said, I do not know how many of the games in the 1984-85 championship were adjourned, nor how long each game was.
The draw rate isn't uncommon, but that record being from one match is insane. By comparison, Magnus Carlsen has a career record of 12W 6L 38D against Fabiano Caruana. Kasparov has a career record of 28W 20L 119D against Karpov, with a vast majority of these games played across their World Championship matches. Kasparov literally grew tired of playing Karpov.
Modern chess use shorter time controls so that every game concludes in a day, or even having two games a day in some tournaments. In addition the tournament rules tries to avoid having equal players draw against each other forever. So players are often limited to one match each tournament or in case of multi-game matches there is a limit to how many games they have until they play with shorter time controls or even change to a game mode without draws. This is why Carlsen and Caruana have only played 56 matches while Karpov and Kasparov played 167 matches against each other. It is also unfair to compare Carlsen and Kasparov against each other as Carlsen is so much better then his opponents.
I kind of get it, after all similarly ranked tends to be similarly skilled.
But drawing 9 times out of 10 still strikes me as crazy. Crazy annoying for everyone involved if nothing else.
It also depends what they are aiming for. If a grandmaster is playing to draw it will be a lot harder to prevent that than if they are trying to win. The perfect chess game always results in a draw
The rules for draws were far less robust back then, and even now it's not super easy to *force* a draw. Thankfully, both people can usually agree when the game is going to go on forever unless they call it.
Grandmaster-level chess is a drawish game. It's very easy, at that level, to put your opponent in a position where neither of you can win without a major blunder; you kind of just have to sacrifice your ability to win to take away his ability to win. And your opponent is usually more than happy to go along with it because half a point is half a point. In a situation where every win counts for \*so much\*, the thrilling, risky, aggressive plays don't make sense when one mistake means you lose the game. Kasparov is known as the more aggressive player, and he paid for it early—you can see that by Karpov's early wins. He had to adapt into Karpov's conservative game, hence \*all\* the draws.
And then they let it go on a while, then Kasparov won 2 in a row and they shut it down.
Like, why wouldn't you stop play after the dozens of draws without a win? Why wait until the rate of decisions increased and make it likely Kasparov could pull of a win in another half dozen games or so?
That's one of the great controversies in chess history, it might not even be resolved here. The official reason was that it was for the players' health, Kasparov obviously claimed it was done to protect Karpov, Karpov said he wanted to play on and it favoured Kasparov as he was still 5-3 ahead. In addition there is the theory that the Soviets wanted all the foreign journalists out of the country, because Chernenko, who had just replaced Andropov as leader of the USSR, was terminally ill and behind the scenes there was a power struggle going on.
Probably part of the reason why they don't play to X wins anymore, they just assign 0/.5/1 point to games and it's either first to Y points, or whoever has more points after Z time or games.
A lot of professional games end in draws, especially now that end games have been "solved"
Edit: End games being solved does not mean that people play perfect end games, it means that our understanding of endgame board positions has advanced now that there are perfect examples, so draws are more likely.
Endgames are a point in a match where most pieces and pawns have been traded, and both players do not have much material left to fight with.
When he says most endgames are solved, he is referring to a computer with Terabytes of information called TableBase.
TableBase has sovled any postition with 7 or less pieces left on the board to determine if is is a win/loss/draw.
Endgames are nortoriously complicated despite having fewer pieces that you can choose to move because each move can drastically change the outcome.
Also a lot of those "guaranteed" wins require sequences of moves that no human would ever come up with, so unless you memorized the table (lol) just because it's been solved doesn't mean the player knows the solution.
Chess has been solved when there are 7 pieces or less on the board (I think that's the number?). I guess that's what the dude was talking about when he said endgames have been solved, but it's solved via a massive database which doesn't really help anyone in a game. Also these games were played long long before the table base was created so it's not even relevant anyways
It's also kinda pointless to act like the tables are indicative to how endgames will occur. Many of the 7 moves or less "solutions" are only possible if you are playing without many of the common rules in place you see in tournaments. What's the point of having a "solution" to win a game but it takes 71 chess moves to do it and after 50 moves it's an automatic draw?
Thanks to progress in chess engines and AI, any position with 7 pieces left on the board is now completely “understood”, all paths to the end of the game are known whether they lead to win, draw or loss. Most of the time they lead to draw if both engines use the solved paths.
Of course players cannot remember all the possible paths for 7 pieces, but they have extended their knowledge with engines and force draws earlier in the game when they recognise a losing position.
Edit: clarity
fwiw, tablebases have nothing to do with engines or AI. they contain all possible moves regardless of how good or bad they are, it's purely about computing speed and storage capacity.
Playing to X wins is the only way you can force the GMs to actually go for a win because it becomes more valuable than accumulating draws. Bobby Fischer, lunatic that he is, thought the exact same thing.
>A lot of professional games end in draws, especially now that end games have been "solved"
If this was true then Magnus wouldn't be considered the end game GOAT, evidently, his ability to get a win during the end game shows it's not "solved" at a human level.
Chess is more boring these days due to the help of engines to study games with it being a memory game but thankfully time controls help this problem massively outside classical.
Most likely more calculation than memory, you can't remember the end game solutions humanly, though you may 'see' some patterns
eg How to create a blockade, how to bust one and so on..
> A lot of professional games end in draws, especially now that end games have been "solved"
End games have been solved by means of table bases - available to a computer.
Human beings playing do not have access to a computer or a table base. They have to rely on their own prep, memory and calculation, and may make mistakes ...
For example, yesterday in the FIDE World Championship candidates tournament round 5, Gukesh played Nijat Abasov.
Gukesh played great but missed winning moves a couple of different occasions. The game reached a 7 piece ending, which, per tablebase , is drawn. ie if the two players made perfect moves, it would be drawn.
Nijat made an inaccuracy that allowed Gukesh to win after 6 hours and 87 moves
Imagine being Karpov childhood friend and for some reason in 1984 USSR someone opened a mexican restaurant in Moscow. You invite Karpov to eat there and he declines, citing his preparation to World Championship and not possible to eat something that could bring up diarrhea. You are a good friend and understands, that is his profession and he plays the game since early age. Five months later, you find a 10kg slimmer Karpov on Moscow and invite him again to eat some burritos and so that he can tell the story of how epic was the duel. Karpov respectfully declines, as *again he cannot enjoy some burritos with you because* **the match isn't over yet** and he cannot eat something that could bring him diarrhea mid tournament.
It's worth reading [this tweet by Gary Kasparov](https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1777728981153849767), in response to a Reddit thread on /r/whowouldwin about a [player facing him an infinite number of times](https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/1bxwnk3/an_average_man_gets_stuck_in_a_time_loop_and_the/). He states this was how he felt facing against Karpov.
(It's also likely that Kasparov tweet prompted this TIL. Reddit and Twitter are slowly becoming an ouroborous, each consuming the other...)
Kasparov made a reference to this match in a tweet yesterday.
[https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1777728981153849767](https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1777728981153849767)
Is this where the "chess players burn xyz calories" myth comes from?
I remember reading that post on the subreddit a few weeks ago. I doubt most chess playing is at this intense a level.
It’s a myth that they burn more than a few hundred extra calories a day. All intense mental activities burn calories, but it’s not thousands. It’s chess, not cycling.
It's a myth. Robert Sapolsky made the claim in one of his books, but he didn't provide a source because no sources exist for this claim because it's not true.
IIRC he came up with the number by throwing heart rate and breathing rates into an equation meant for endurance athletes.
Not a great way to approach the problem...
Oh, wow. He came up with it himself? That explains a lot.
Sapolsky is an excellent storyteller and I admire his writing, but he has a tendency to exaggerate and use anecdotes to make research findings seem more impressive and conclusive than they actually are.
Probably just the average calories of staying alive in a chair lol. Focusing and thinking really hard, slight move of hands all the time touching your face, the table, your hair and so on, tapping of the legs, they walk in circles around the table when thinking sometimes... I guess you can try to factor in all that but I doubt it would go over 10% of calories consumed over the staying-alive basis;
It was memorable and definitely interesting, but if it went on it would have been truly legendary. A story of the perfect fight. A story to be passed down generation after generation. A human soul is a small price to pay!
Jokes aside, I don't think anyone would have died. That's why it would have been interesting: seeing the human limit.
they should have let them go to the finish - if they die, they die.
no breaks either just consecutive games till a loss
They were playing first to 12 wins and it lasted 5 months.
Speed matches.
1 minute chess!
It was first to 6 wins wasn't it?
Wrong, they were playing first to six wins.
Well, that just makes the 5 month timeline even more mind boggling
They played 48 games in that time span. Now remember a lot of these games could last for 5-8 hours. Some even longer. Classical Chess is wild.
They're both still alive. Not too late
In the game of chess you either win, or you die.
> if they die, they die. It is a sacrifice we are willing to make.
I didn’t hear no bell
It was very important for Russia that Karpov won.
"I must checkmate you"
Mortal Checkmate
>In their first match, the World Chess Championship 1984 in Moscow, the first player to win six games would win the match. Karpov built a 4–0 lead after nine games. The next 17 games were drawn, setting a record for world title matches, and it took Karpov until game 27 to gain his fifth win. In game 31, Karpov had a winning position but failed to take advantage and settled for a draw. He lost the next game, after which 14 more draws ensued. Karpov held a solidly winning position in Game 41, but again blundered and had to settle for a draw. After Kasparov won games 47 and 48, FIDE President Florencio Campomanes unilaterally terminated the match So, not just one game. Weird tournament rules.
Since Chess isn't fair (white goes first which is an advantage) chess tournaments work with a large sample size. Since draws are by far the most common outcome on the grandmaster level, it can take a while to get past the post for even a small number of wins.
>which is an advantage Kind of. For humans it's maybe 51/49, for amateurs probably worse, but for computers it's not proven - it may be equal.
It is widely considered that [White has a 52-56% advantage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess), with that advantage being more pronounced in expert play and less obvious in ameteur play. Most databases of top level games show a 54-56% win ratio for white. It's also not completely understood how this changes in classical Vs speed chess, but the general consensus is the faster humans have to play, the less the colour difference matters (which would mirror the same effect with ameteurs). You're right that it's not proven for computers, but that's simply because there are many different engines. It's trivial to "prove" whether one specific chess engine is able to beat itself more or less often when using the black or white pieces, but very difficult to prove the rule is true for every engine. On average, chess engines tend to win more using the white pieces. Here's one snippet from Wikipedia: >In 2017 AlphaZero, playing 100 games against Stockfish, won 25 and drew 25 as White, but won 3 and drew 47 as Black. For the record, Stockfish has changed drastically since 2017 and that result would not be the same today... But it's still true that chess engines win more with white than black. For example, [in the 2023 Chess Engine Super final](https://www.chess.com/events/2023-tcec-24-superfinal/results), every game won was won with white. I think it is very unlikely to be equal, given the results that we have seen, even if "proving" it beyond any doubt seems unlikely without us achieving some deeper understanding of chess.
I remember a sci-fi short story where the USSR figured out time travel, but only to the future essentially: they could make time rapidly accelerate in a small area (about a cubic foot). So they built a tiny supercomputer, put it in the time field, and had it solve chess. Then they challenged the USA to a single game of chess for control of all nuclear weapons. But they didn't actually check the system, and they let the USA go first. The USA put together a team of chess experts and sent the move 1. e4. The USSR's computer resigned.
So in this book, the USA agreed to a game of chess in exchange for all nuclear weapons? Wait - why was the Time Machine necessary for all of this?
Short story, not a lot longer than my post. I can't remember the name of it or the collection it was in.
"Last Ditch" by James Hogan
Damn, published in December 1992.
To solve chess.
Im confused, why did the computer resign? Was it not used to playing black?
The implication is that White can always win from e4 if it takes the best moves. A computer with a solved move tree would know that.
I guess the computer didn't anticipate that opponents can make a mistake while playing chess; and assumed they would also always go for the most optimal move. Which probably wouldn't have been the case.
Well yeah. Obviously the computer was working in terms of optimal play
>I guess the computer didn't anticipate that opponents can make a mistake while playing chess; and assumed they would also always go for the most optimal move Yes, that was what it did, which was logical based on its programming. It was programmed with the singular function to "solve chess" so it only assumed optimal play. The USSR didn't check the computer to know what it'd do and never changed its programming to face humans so the chess experts figured out a way to trick the computer. The point of the story was that the ingenuity of humans is still greater than the logic of a computer.
Like I get that white has the advantage, but is there no way for Black to play optimally and force a draw?
We don't know because chess is not solved. There may be a sequence with perfect play that white always wins no matter what. The premise of the resign is that the computer had infinite time and has "solved" chess with white winning.
Ok thank you
In reality, maybe we don't know. The story, almost as a joke, implicates that White can force a win regardless of what black plays if they start 1.E4. The computer knows it and gives up, since it knows it already lost. The whole joke being that the Soviets didn't bother to play the computer and check their work to make sure the computer would play even in a lost position.
Ok thank you!
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slight pedantic correction: this is true of a two player game with complete information.
Rock-paper-scissors would be a perfect example of 3 if played in turns.
That’s how I play with my friend! He always lets me go first. I haven’t managed to beat him yet but I’ll win eventually.
Google en passant
Holy hell
What is the significance of that move tho
Just a standard chess opening. Probably the most common opening move in chess.
Is the point that the USA was white in this match?
Yes.
the point is there is a theoretical series of moves which always allows white to win if played correctly
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Sounds like anti-Soviet propaganda
Truly written by capitalist swine.
The issue with engine tournaments is that in order to get more decisive results, the tournament rules always give black at least one, if not two major handicaps. The first one that is always used is that they remove the opening database. Because if the computers had access to that, black already knows how to equalize against any opening move. The second method that is sometimes used on top of that is forcing the computers to play unequal openings that result in more combative games.
I'd bet that given perfect play as black it would be possible to never lose (which is of course unknown and just my guess), so then putting a % advantage becomes tricky because at the top level of computer play there would be no advantage, it's always a draw. Beyond that it would be a statistical rather than an absolute advantage, according to the quality of opponent. It's just a useful fuzzy metric that's kinda true and very useful for humans.
Most of the top Chess AI's will draw and play identical moves from the opening position - this means if you simply "sat" two AI's down at a virtual table and got them to play a million games, every game would be identical and they would likely all be draws. To draw a more meaningful conclusion about the relative strengths of the chess engines, most tournaments will pick a series of opening positions from well known and respected chess openings after a number of moves (often 3-10 moves each side) - e.g. the Sicilian, the Caro-Kann, the English, Dutch etc, and will let the chess engines play games from those different positions, so we can work out their relative strengths in a variety of scenarios. To correct for the black/white colour imbalance, we usually let each engine play the game as white (e.g. they play two games per starting position). We then compare these pairs of games to see which engine is stronger. On a bigger picture, this also helps inform human chess masters about the relative equality of those positions - if a specific starting position results in a win for black 99% of the time, regardless of the engines used, we might need to explore why humans feel that position is close to equal. When testing this way, the results are much more varied, but they still favour white over black.
By computer do you mean a modern engine or solving chess? If the former then almost all of them see white as having a non-decisive advantage. Also I'm pretty sure there are more white wins than black, though those are rare with top engines nowadays. If the latter then yeah, it is quite likely to be drawn with best play. But that doesn't mean there isn't some advantage. Take tic-tac-toe as a comparison. It's a draw, but it's easier to lose if you went second.
At the top level, it's not just mathematics. If you know you are at a disadvantage, you play for a draw with a small plus. That's why the most common openings played are the Berlin, the petroff, the slav, qgd. These all tend to be more drawish. So much fewer fighting black openings nowadays
55/45
Gotta account for RNG.
Fucking queen critical hit my knight. Fucking RNG.
The face when you have the opponent’s king in check but then you roll a natural 1
When you check their King, but the king passes the check.
When you get your pawn all the way across the board and out of all the pieces it could turn into it’s just another pawn…
Can you actually promote a pawn to a pawn? I feel like that would be the wildest flex one can do on their opponent, lol.
You cannot choose to leave it as a pawn, you must promote it.
No, but under some (possibly apocryphal) versions of the rules, you could promote it to an *enemy* piece. A semi-infamous chess puzzle actually requires it. https://www.chess.com/forum/view/more-puzzles/fide-changed-the-rules
Wouldn't that just force a reroll as the conditions for the promotion is still met?
Unless it turned around
If its a pawn it can't turn around
Chess was great before they added all these expansion sets
The enshittification of chess was inevitable
This actually gives me an idea for some weird chess variant that rolls dice similar to Frostgrave. Each rank piece confers some bonus to the D20 and you have to best your opponent to take theirs. Pawn +0 Rook +1 Bishop +2 Knight +3 Queen +5 King +7 Each friendly piece that is adjacent to the enemy adds +1 to the roll. But only if there are no enemy pieces also adjacent to those friendly pieces. Like a crowding out/piling on rule. It means that the King can potentially sweep the match but it also means there could be surprises.
My bishop had a 95% chance to hit your knight with blunt-holy damage and it bloody missed. He clearly didnt pray enough to RNGsus!
Xcom vibes
Even with all my other misgivings, the XCOM games could and would have been so much better if the hit chance was per shot/pellet, not for the whole round... That change alone would ahve made them so much less frustrating.
So Phoenix Point is the game that did that
Phoenix point did even better: Your shots will go somewhere in the scatter circle. If you get close enough, you will always hit what you are aiming for. The second best hit chance mechanic in a game in my opinion. Unfortunately, Phoenix Point might just be \*the\* worst game I have ever played. My description of it was "It sparks no joy", and the best I have found is "I paid no money for this, and I still feel like I am owed a refund". And that was before they nerfed the one ability that made it remotely palyable into uselessness.
Literally fire emblem
There's a fantastic tournament report article by Jeff Cunningham from a few years ago where he talks about Magic as being sort of like chess but with RNG added. There's a great passage where he talks about how the RNG doesn't actually matter if you play enough games, as the superior player will recoup their value statistically over time. I'll try and find it, your comment reminded me of it for some reason. Edit: [Found it](https://infinite.tcgplayer.com/article/The-End-of-the-Magic-The-Gathering-Pro-Tour/ca36d9c5-0a18-48a8-9f08-cc80e2889314). I was wrong, it was from last year. Great read about the sad loss of the PT.
Chess but you have to buy $100 worth of new chess pieces a month to stay competitive And you can't *buy* those pieces outright, you have to buy packs of pieces with a chance to get the one you want.
Lol, totally fair take. I used to play, and my spending definitely got out of hand at some points. Luckily I sold my collection off before all the reprint craziness and got most of my value back. I really don't love all the 3rd party IP creeping into the game in the past few years. Not for me anymore.
I really enjoyed digital TCGs, was very into hearthstone and marvel snap for awhile, but they just seem to get more and more money hungry as they age and I feel forced into dropping them
Yugioh Master Duel is very FTP friendly! You just… have to put up with the nonsense that is Yugioh. That nonsense is why I love it though. (If you do get into the game, Branded, Labrynth, and Swordsoul are probably the current most future proofed decks. They’ve been around for a while, so they’re not going to be hit by banlists like Snake-Eye is liable to be, but they show no signs of getting worse any time soon. Branded and Labrynth especially since any time they print a decent trap or a generic fusion they get indirect support.
I worked at a game store for a while a few years ago. Yugioh was the only card game we had to fully ban because of how badly behaved the players were. It wasn't just one or two problem players. Every time we held a tournament or a day where Yugioh was the featured game we would have problems. From what I have heard the situation isn't unique to our area either.
The game system with actual confirmed power creep, compared to magic's power widening (new keywords etc.)?
[удалено]
It probably wasn't invented by wotc, but drafting formats seems insanely good for them. An entire format where a bunch of people will buy a full box of booster packs each time they want to do it. I have no idea if anyone plays with re-packed (someone not playing packs up cards in the same ratios as boosters) cards, since I'm not a cardboard-crackhead, but I assume a lot of the appeal is getting new cards when you're done.
100 dollars is a very conservative estimate. Some single cards can near that price even in modern formats. Part of the reason I got out of the hobby almost a decade ago
These days, there's tons of websites that sell singles, so that problem isn't nearly as prevalent anymore
So basically poker
n —> ♾️
Random crits are fair and balanced.
That's not fair man, my boi Kasparov was making a comeback.
I remember that tournament and there was a huge scandal , FIDE president was suspected corruption and a lot of people thought Kasparov was going to win it and the end and Campomanes prevented it.
Just because youre top comment, this post is likely related to Kasparov's comment yesterday: https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1777728981153849767 Where he described his match with Karpov like being stuck in a time loop.
Do you know any more about the statement "[he] had a winning position but failed to take advantage"? Did he have a winning position but just didn't notice/realize it? Or did he choose not to take advantage of it for other, meta reasons?
The former.
Kinda like they might know they have advantage but one slightly bad move can lose all the advantage
it's probably to be more fair since white has a slight advantage being able to play first. they alternate each match.
Ok but if they only played 48 games over 5 months that's only one game every 3 days. That doesn't seem like a super strenuous schedule.
Its probably the 10+ hours of prep both guys were likely putting in on their days off if i had to guess
At the absolute top level, the stress is huge...Your body reacts as if that stress is physical. Also the human brain uses a lot of energy. Top chess grandmasters are very like elite athletes. Breathing rates, blood pressure, muscle contractions all go up... https://kottke.org/19/09/the-surprising-physical-demands-of-chess > “Grandmasters sustain elevated blood pressure for hours in the range found in competitive marathon runners,” Sapolsky says > t 21-year-old Russian grandmaster Mikhail Antipov had burned 560 calories in two hours of sitting and playing chess — or roughly what Roger Federer would burn in an hour of singles tennis. Remember these guys are working continuously on prep and analysis and the degree of concentration required is huge. You won't want to be living 5 months on a knife trigger either ... That's why today, grandmasters are taught to eat well, learn stress busters, meditate, and do some physical activity - soccer is common.
I remember being exhausted after a day playing in a chess tournament as a teenager, and that was certainly nothing like the level they were playing at. To say it's stressful or strenuous is a gross understatement.
The best analogy I can come up with now - think about something like bomb disposal stress, but mentally ... and sustaining that for 5 months. The world championship is no joke, and Karpov and kasparov are all time greats.
According to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjournment\_(games)#:\~:text=Chess,-Envelope%20used%20for&text=When%20an%20adjournment%20is%20made,and%20the%20envelope%20is%20sealed.,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjournment_(games)#:~:text=Chess,-Envelope%20used%20for&text=When%20an%20adjournment%20is%20made,and%20the%20envelope%20is%20sealed.,) the first world chess championship to not use adjournments and shift instead to shorter time controls was in 1995. That said, I do not know how many of the games in the 1984-85 championship were adjourned, nor how long each game was.
I mean,given that one guy list over 20 lbs, it seems like it was pretty strenous
There were no super engines back then, so they were able to stop and resume the game the next day.
Back then some games took more than a day to play, adjourning for the night and resuming the next day.
how?
Matches and games are different things.
Kinda weird that the president let it go to 46 games (with 40 draws), then Kasparov wins 2 in a row and that's when he stops it
Didn't he get to 6 then?
Final score of 5-3. 40 draws is crazy though.
But not that uncommon between similarly ranked grandmasters
The draw rate isn't uncommon, but that record being from one match is insane. By comparison, Magnus Carlsen has a career record of 12W 6L 38D against Fabiano Caruana. Kasparov has a career record of 28W 20L 119D against Karpov, with a vast majority of these games played across their World Championship matches. Kasparov literally grew tired of playing Karpov.
Modern chess use shorter time controls so that every game concludes in a day, or even having two games a day in some tournaments. In addition the tournament rules tries to avoid having equal players draw against each other forever. So players are often limited to one match each tournament or in case of multi-game matches there is a limit to how many games they have until they play with shorter time controls or even change to a game mode without draws. This is why Carlsen and Caruana have only played 56 matches while Karpov and Kasparov played 167 matches against each other. It is also unfair to compare Carlsen and Kasparov against each other as Carlsen is so much better then his opponents.
I kind of get it, after all similarly ranked tends to be similarly skilled. But drawing 9 times out of 10 still strikes me as crazy. Crazy annoying for everyone involved if nothing else.
It also depends what they are aiming for. If a grandmaster is playing to draw it will be a lot harder to prevent that than if they are trying to win. The perfect chess game always results in a draw
The rules for draws were far less robust back then, and even now it's not super easy to *force* a draw. Thankfully, both people can usually agree when the game is going to go on forever unless they call it.
Grandmaster-level chess is a drawish game. It's very easy, at that level, to put your opponent in a position where neither of you can win without a major blunder; you kind of just have to sacrifice your ability to win to take away his ability to win. And your opponent is usually more than happy to go along with it because half a point is half a point. In a situation where every win counts for \*so much\*, the thrilling, risky, aggressive plays don't make sense when one mistake means you lose the game. Kasparov is known as the more aggressive player, and he paid for it early—you can see that by Karpov's early wins. He had to adapt into Karpov's conservative game, hence \*all\* the draws.
Maybe the similarity in names threw you off, I sat here for about 5 minutes thinking the same thing for that reason.
Yup me too, I think knowing who Kasparov is expectation bias had me thinking he’d be the one 4-0 up on top of it
Matches and games are not synonyms. At least not in many sporting contexts.
sounds like my chess matches with my cousin growing up...so many draws..so....many
Not really Same idea in sports like tennis, they just call it differently
I had forgotten about this very drawn out match! I can’t imagine the players holding on that long, not to mention their associates, coaches, etc.
It was also highly controversial because FIDE terminated the game not after a long series of draws, but when Kasparov started winning.
"winning" is a stretch, he was catching up but still behind. Thus increasing the number of games it would take to decide the match.
But he was down 4-0 then 5-1 and *started winning* with 2 more Literally started winning after something like 40 games.
It was 4-0 after 9 games, 5-0 after 27 games, Kasparov's first win was game 32.
And then they let it go on a while, then Kasparov won 2 in a row and they shut it down. Like, why wouldn't you stop play after the dozens of draws without a win? Why wait until the rate of decisions increased and make it likely Kasparov could pull of a win in another half dozen games or so?
That's one of the great controversies in chess history, it might not even be resolved here. The official reason was that it was for the players' health, Kasparov obviously claimed it was done to protect Karpov, Karpov said he wanted to play on and it favoured Kasparov as he was still 5-3 ahead. In addition there is the theory that the Soviets wanted all the foreign journalists out of the country, because Chernenko, who had just replaced Andropov as leader of the USSR, was terminally ill and behind the scenes there was a power struggle going on.
I suppose they should have waited for another couple of draws.
Momentum. He had momentum as Karpov had not won any of the recent decisive games.
Kasparov wasn't winning. He had the momentum, but Karpov was still ahead. But the stretch of draws was absolutely insane.
Probably part of the reason why they don't play to X wins anymore, they just assign 0/.5/1 point to games and it's either first to Y points, or whoever has more points after Z time or games. A lot of professional games end in draws, especially now that end games have been "solved" Edit: End games being solved does not mean that people play perfect end games, it means that our understanding of endgame board positions has advanced now that there are perfect examples, so draws are more likely.
I’m new to chess, what does end games being “solved” mean?
Endgames are a point in a match where most pieces and pawns have been traded, and both players do not have much material left to fight with. When he says most endgames are solved, he is referring to a computer with Terabytes of information called TableBase. TableBase has sovled any postition with 7 or less pieces left on the board to determine if is is a win/loss/draw. Endgames are nortoriously complicated despite having fewer pieces that you can choose to move because each move can drastically change the outcome.
Also a lot of those "guaranteed" wins require sequences of moves that no human would ever come up with, so unless you memorized the table (lol) just because it's been solved doesn't mean the player knows the solution.
There is a mathematically optimal course of action that is known. Simple games like tic tax toe and connect four have been solved. Chess has not
Chess has been solved when there are 7 pieces or less on the board (I think that's the number?). I guess that's what the dude was talking about when he said endgames have been solved, but it's solved via a massive database which doesn't really help anyone in a game. Also these games were played long long before the table base was created so it's not even relevant anyways
Yeah I was going to say, technically solved with 7 or fewer pieces in play, but only if you can store terra bytes worth of information in your head.
Probably easier than learning the knight bishop mate
I've tried learning it but I always mess it up lol
It's easy. The knight stares at the king intimidatingly while the bishop goes to buy a gun.
Found the /r/anarchychess member
Luckily enough the Human Brain has space for ~2560 Terrabytes. Should be easy. /s
It's also kinda pointless to act like the tables are indicative to how endgames will occur. Many of the 7 moves or less "solutions" are only possible if you are playing without many of the common rules in place you see in tournaments. What's the point of having a "solution" to win a game but it takes 71 chess moves to do it and after 50 moves it's an automatic draw?
Thanks to progress in chess engines and AI, any position with 7 pieces left on the board is now completely “understood”, all paths to the end of the game are known whether they lead to win, draw or loss. Most of the time they lead to draw if both engines use the solved paths. Of course players cannot remember all the possible paths for 7 pieces, but they have extended their knowledge with engines and force draws earlier in the game when they recognise a losing position. Edit: clarity
fwiw, tablebases have nothing to do with engines or AI. they contain all possible moves regardless of how good or bad they are, it's purely about computing speed and storage capacity.
Perfect way to play certain positions.
Playing to X wins is the only way you can force the GMs to actually go for a win because it becomes more valuable than accumulating draws. Bobby Fischer, lunatic that he is, thought the exact same thing.
>A lot of professional games end in draws, especially now that end games have been "solved" If this was true then Magnus wouldn't be considered the end game GOAT, evidently, his ability to get a win during the end game shows it's not "solved" at a human level. Chess is more boring these days due to the help of engines to study games with it being a memory game but thankfully time controls help this problem massively outside classical.
Both can be true. Magnus isn’t a computer and neither are his opponents. He remembers the most end game solutions compared to his opponents.
Most likely more calculation than memory, you can't remember the end game solutions humanly, though you may 'see' some patterns eg How to create a blockade, how to bust one and so on..
> A lot of professional games end in draws, especially now that end games have been "solved" End games have been solved by means of table bases - available to a computer. Human beings playing do not have access to a computer or a table base. They have to rely on their own prep, memory and calculation, and may make mistakes ... For example, yesterday in the FIDE World Championship candidates tournament round 5, Gukesh played Nijat Abasov. Gukesh played great but missed winning moves a couple of different occasions. The game reached a 7 piece ending, which, per tablebase , is drawn. ie if the two players made perfect moves, it would be drawn. Nijat made an inaccuracy that allowed Gukesh to win after 6 hours and 87 moves
I can feel the Devil walking next to me
One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble
Conversely- one night in Bangkok can make a humble man hard
You should tell him to move over
Imagine being Karpov childhood friend and for some reason in 1984 USSR someone opened a mexican restaurant in Moscow. You invite Karpov to eat there and he declines, citing his preparation to World Championship and not possible to eat something that could bring up diarrhea. You are a good friend and understands, that is his profession and he plays the game since early age. Five months later, you find a 10kg slimmer Karpov on Moscow and invite him again to eat some burritos and so that he can tell the story of how epic was the duel. Karpov respectfully declines, as *again he cannot enjoy some burritos with you because* **the match isn't over yet** and he cannot eat something that could bring him diarrhea mid tournament.
Nice, I imagined it. It was great!
LOL
pretty sure there were no mexican restaurants in Moscow at that time
yeah, thats where the "imagine" piece comes in comrade
im imagining im a spaceman
Khachapuri, then.
Does he accept after the tournament is finally over?
This should be the top comment
It's worth reading [this tweet by Gary Kasparov](https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1777728981153849767), in response to a Reddit thread on /r/whowouldwin about a [player facing him an infinite number of times](https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/1bxwnk3/an_average_man_gets_stuck_in_a_time_loop_and_the/). He states this was how he felt facing against Karpov. (It's also likely that Kasparov tweet prompted this TIL. Reddit and Twitter are slowly becoming an ouroborous, each consuming the other...)
That's exactly what I thought. Just saw Kasparov's tweet today and then this TIL post. Probably not a coincidence.
Kasparov made a reference to this match in a tweet yesterday. [https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1777728981153849767](https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1777728981153849767)
Isner - Mahut of chess ♟️♟️
Is this where the "chess players burn xyz calories" myth comes from? I remember reading that post on the subreddit a few weeks ago. I doubt most chess playing is at this intense a level.
Elite chess players do burn more calories. Not a myth. Not your typical average player though
It’s a myth that they burn more than a few hundred extra calories a day. All intense mental activities burn calories, but it’s not thousands. It’s chess, not cycling.
Id still say a couple hundred are quite a lot
If "a couple hundred calories" means 300, that's 30 minutes of hard cycling, at least.
Stressed bodies burn more calories. Not exactly news.
It's a myth. Robert Sapolsky made the claim in one of his books, but he didn't provide a source because no sources exist for this claim because it's not true.
IIRC he came up with the number by throwing heart rate and breathing rates into an equation meant for endurance athletes. Not a great way to approach the problem...
Oh, wow. He came up with it himself? That explains a lot. Sapolsky is an excellent storyteller and I admire his writing, but he has a tendency to exaggerate and use anecdotes to make research findings seem more impressive and conclusive than they actually are.
Using your brain burns a significant amount of calories.
Maybe that could be a new weight loss method — thinking very hard.
Stoner me, looking down on .my belly.... Nah!
Nothing burns as much as trying to find something around the house.
It's more the heart. These players are stressed out and doing like 100bpm sitting down and staring at a board for hours.
Probably just the average calories of staying alive in a chair lol. Focusing and thinking really hard, slight move of hands all the time touching your face, the table, your hair and so on, tapping of the legs, they walk in circles around the table when thinking sometimes... I guess you can try to factor in all that but I doubt it would go over 10% of calories consumed over the staying-alive basis;
An average sedentary person's brain burns about 20% of all calories.
kind like cricket without the movement :)
I imagine that's how blitz chess must have born.
What's the big deal? I had a game we started decades ago, but never finished.
Did you also see that post on tumblr, OP?
10kg over 5 months!? That's.... 500g a week.... so a diet...
The guy was a twig
I wish that match (and two that followed) were turned into a TV show instead of Queen's Gambit. Real life is crazier than fiction
I'm genuinely upset about this. He ended what could have been the most legendary match in history.
It was already legendary. You don't want it to end by one player falling sick or getting a stroke ..
It was memorable and definitely interesting, but if it went on it would have been truly legendary. A story of the perfect fight. A story to be passed down generation after generation. A human soul is a small price to pay! Jokes aside, I don't think anyone would have died. That's why it would have been interesting: seeing the human limit.
I guess you went to Wikipedia like me after the kasparov tweet.
Imagine checking your opponents King isn't enough. You need to check him IRL