[HN Gopher] What is Chess? What to think and for how long
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What is Chess? What to think and for how long
Author : awalias
Score : 136 points
Date : 2023-03-01 12:44 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.alexcrompton.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.alexcrompton.com)
| greenhearth wrote:
| Pretty sure all outcomes of chess games are predetermined.
| emptybits wrote:
| And, yet, unknowable. So we play.
| greenhearth wrote:
| Yes, and somehow throughout my thousands of losses I've never
| grown into a lover of fate.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| My top tip is to only ever play in silence, with nobody and no
| distractions around, sitting or standing upright. These three
| things have added 200 points to my rating.
|
| I also find that noticing from intuition (a strange move by your
| opponent might be a trigger, or a tight position where you want
| to play strategically might be another) when to spend more time
| on a move sequence helps a lot.
|
| Taking a mental note that you spent a bunch of time on one move
| and need to play more quickly is another improvement. But this is
| also an art that comes with experience.
| LVB wrote:
| I was just thinking about this. I've had spells (as recently as
| last night!) when I do want to play, but my mind is pretty
| tired or my mood is off and I end up dropping 50 rating points
| in a session because I'm sort of half-assing it. I should
| probably just play unrated games at these times (or just
| puzzles).
| armitron wrote:
| Precise thought patterns, acronyms, X seconds per move... This
| seems like a terrible, robotic way to play chess, at least when
| it comes to having fun. I've played in excess of 100k games on
| lichess (mostly 3 minutes, some 5 minute and bullet too, no
| increments) with my ELO rating being ~2100 and I don't
| consciously do any of these (whether these or approximations of
| such still take place unconsciously is a different matter).
|
| In fact, I play purely by feel, looking at the board until a move
| "feels right". Similarly for time management, I try not to spend
| more time than my opponent at all times. If my opponent plays
| faster than me, I speed up. If my opponent is slower, I slow down
| but try to maintain a slight time advantage.
|
| This translates to the game never feeling like manual mental
| labor. Instead, it's moves and decisions seemingly streaming out
| of me without conscious control, almost like a superpower I never
| knew I had. It feels great and is a lot of fun.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I would think that you have spent a long time previously,
| thinking about the best move, to learn these habits and
| feelings that come to you instinctively now, yes?
| thefourthchime wrote:
| When you look at the board you are calculating moves though
| yes? You don't just think about puppies and ice cream cones I
| assume.
| armitron wrote:
| Not consciously calculating, there is no effort put into
| minimaxing. I just look at how the board is set up, focus on
| the position, the patterns that the pieces dictate, squares
| that are weak, king position. It sounds like a script but my
| point is that it doesn't take conscious mental effort, these
| are mostly intuitive actions.
|
| Of course I wasn't born that way, I've spent years playing
| chess and it's obvious that these years of playing resulted
| in a calibrated network of weights in my brain that allow me
| now to play by feel. My point is more that I didn't perform
| any structured routines when playing games like the article
| describes. I kept playing and doing tactics training and my
| brain did the rest through osmosis. Which leads me to my
| final point in that tactics and pattern recognition matter
| and I think, having discussed this with many folks including
| club players, that they are the best way to rapidly increase
| one's skill.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > No masters are sitting there counting TSAW TISP on their
| claws! I think this is misguided. A rigorous thought pattern is
| not a cage, it is an x ray. It shows our lion's bones. Strong
| players don't notice their thought patterns - you only notice
| bones when they're broken. The goal is not to think TSAW TISP
| in t, the goal is for good thought patterns to become so
| internalised that they form the skeleton our muscles hang on.
| Bones force our chess lion's muscles to work harmoniously -
| bones make it impossible for muscles to work any other way.
|
| This is about helping new players figure this out. Or about
| helping players with poor time management figure out how to
| build that feeling and unlock the next level for themselves.
| "Play by feel" is unhelpful advice for those people and
| sometimes people are unable to get to the next level by
| themselves and need formal structures like this to figure out
| how to get better
| jrumbut wrote:
| I think I just don't enjoy chess, so maybe all advice is
| wasted on me and I should give up on it for this lifetime but
| I appreciate your sentiment.
|
| Periodically I try to learn, and I know some openings out to
| a handful of moves and have done a bunch of end game puzzles
| and read about some concepts, but that middle area feels like
| a dark forest with no obvious path.
|
| I either make the blunder that sets me up to lose, watch my
| opponent make their blunder, or we survive.
|
| I think a more structured approach to the midgame would help
| me develop some of the sensibilities the grandparent poster
| is talking about. Does that even exist?
| standardly wrote:
| Tactics! Study tactics.
|
| Opening/end game is easier to study since there are less
| possible moves. At mid-game, it helps to apply more general
| concepts. So look for forks, skewers, advantageous trades,
| etc
| jmmcd wrote:
| 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 not only trying to find
| moves, but is trying to prioritise which trees to explore, based
| on heuristics and some sense of value of information, and on the
| relative state of the clock (do you want to go for complications?
| it depends how much time your opponent has left); is aiming for
| an overall "style" of game that suits them but not the opponent;
| and even managing risk (despite the game being deterministic), in
| the sense that different incomplete game trees might have
| different (heuristically-estimated) variances of outcomes.
| powersnail wrote:
| > For many people, chess is not interesting, now that computers
| are so good at it.
|
| But why? I can understand that for a small number of people who
| has the ambition to become the best player, having an
| unbeatable figure looming over you is disheartening.
|
| Most players are never going to become even close to that, and
| they know it. The fact that AI has beaten the best of human
| players should be, theoretically, irrelevant to their interest
| in chess, other than having a novel teacher to learn from. They
| are playing against the same pool of players who are on the
| same level, with or without the the AI advancement.
|
| So I'm genuinely curious, does the chess community see a large
| number of discouraged average players?
| nwienert wrote:
| Chess is actually the most popular it's ever been right now.
| jabl wrote:
| - Chess was in times past seen as the ultimate game of pure
| intellect, where the player with the most of that uniquely
| human trait, intelligence, wins the game. Except that no,
| turns out a tiny piece of silicon the size of your fingernail
| can beat the best player on the planet. So why spend time and
| effort on chess instead of some other game where humans still
| reign supreme (office politics? Cheating on your spouse?)?
|
| - And a variant of the above argument, humans are a tool-
| making species. We make tools to do specific things better
| than we can with our bare hands. So that we can use the tools
| to do the things that tools are better at, and then use our
| own hands/heads on things that humans are better at. So now
| that we have developed tools that are better at playing chess
| than a human, lets move on to another more challenging task.
|
| - And since this is HN, a variant of the above is Larry Walls
| characterization of the virtues of a programmer: impatience,
| laziness, and hubris. We "solved" chess, time to move on.
|
| Of course, all of the above justifications are, in a way,
| justifications against chess as some kind of noble pursuit
| that improves the condition of humanity. If you enjoy playing
| it as a way to spend your free time, go ahead, don't listen
| to all the negative sniping from the sidelines!
| blackpill0w wrote:
| >Most players are never going to become even close to that,
| and they know it. The fact that AI has beaten the best of
| human players should be, theoretically, irrelevant to their
| interest in chess, other than having a novel teacher to learn
| from.
|
| That is exactly what's happening, players learn from engines
| and try to understand why they play this move and not that
| move, and as a result, there are a lot of competing players
| in top level chess, except that players started memorizing
| lines and the opening phase of the game became a bit dull and
| boring, however, this was only another obstacle for players,
| they simply needed to adapt and they did. Magnus Carlsen is
| well known for winning endgames that seem to be a dead draw,
| he keeps pushing and pressing until his opponents make a
| mistake and this is why he has been the world champion since
| 2013 (e.g. game 6 from the 2021 World Championship [0]).
|
| >So I'm genuinely curious, does the chess community see a
| large number of discouraged average players?
|
| No, the Queen's Gambit [1] made chess very popular, online
| chess is at its peak, it's pretty interesting to have world
| champions streaming and seeing them play variations that they
| wouldn't play in real life since they involve too much risk,
| or simply lead to losing positions, but they also make for
| exciting and amusing games.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmQs1KhB948
|
| [1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10048342
| plasticeagle wrote:
| 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.
| tstrimple wrote:
| I honestly think it's amazing the level of dedication people
| can have to things others think are a complete waste of time.
| Somewhere someone is the best in the world at building rice
| sculptures with chop sticks or shooting a bow and arrow with
| their feet or some other weird combination and I love it. The
| chess guy who spends his life dedicated to finding strategies
| which only really work against AI is awesome. There are still
| folks who can beat AI opponents in very time constrained
| games.
| sdwr wrote:
| Yeah, computation time is a resource. Can be seen in some
| starcraft matches, where attention is being juggled and
| distributed as much as actual armies. Feels like there's some
| low-hanging fruit there, it hasn't been studied nearly as much
| as (time-independent) optimal decisions.
|
| Examples of time asymmetry:
|
| -recorded media (TV, movies, books) are incredibly time-
| asymmetric, have 100x / 1000x time spent on creation vs
| consumption
|
| -legal systems built on examples + exceptions, have mapped out
| and tested entire decision trees that defendents traverse once
| sublinear wrote:
| 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.
| keiferski wrote:
| I've always found Deleuze and Guattari's comments on chess vs. go
| to be interesting. Some of the terminology might not make sense
| if you're unfamiliar with their work, but I think you can get the
| general gist:
|
| _Let us take a limited example and compare the war machine and
| the state apparatus in the context of the theory of games. Let us
| take chess and Go, from the standpoint of game pieces, the
| relations between the pieces and the space involved. Chess is a
| game of the State, or of the court: the emperor of China played
| it. Chess pieces are coded; they have an internal nature and
| intrinsic properties from which their movements, situations, and
| confrontations derive. They have qualities; a knight remains a
| knight, a pawn a pawn, a bishop a bishop. Each is like a subject
| of the statement endowed with relative power, and these relative
| powers combine in a subject of enunciation, that is, the chess
| player or the game's form of interiority. Go pieces, I contrast,
| are pellets, disks, simple arithmetic units, and have only an
| anonymous, collective, or third-person function: "It" makes a
| move. "It" could be a man, a woman, a louse, an elephant. Go
| pieces are elements of a nonsubjectified machine assemblage with
| no intrinsic properties, only situational ones. Thus the
| relations are very different in the two cases._
|
| _Within their milieu of interiority, chess pieces entertain
| biunivocal relations with one another, and with the adversary's
| pieces: their functioning is structural. One the other hand, a Go
| piece has only a milieu of exteriority, or extrinsic relations
| with nebulas or constellations, according to which it fulfills
| functions of insertion or situation, such as bordering,
| encircling, shattering. All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an
| entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot (or can
| do so diachronically only). Chess is indeed a war, but an
| institutionalized, regulated, coded war with a front, a rear,
| battles. But what is proper to Go is war without battle lines,
| with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even:
| pure strategy, whereas chess is a semiology. Finally, the space
| is not at all the same: in chess, it is a question of arranging a
| closed space for oneself, thus going from one point to another,
| of occupying the maximum number of squares with the minimum
| number of pieces. In Go, it is a question of arraying oneself in
| an open space, of holding space, of maintaining the possibility
| of springing up at any point: the movement is not from one point
| to another, but becomes perpetual, without aim or destination,
| without departure or arrival. The "smooth" space of Go, as
| against the "striated" space of chess. The nomos of Go against
| the State of chess, nomos against polis. The difference is that
| chess codes and decodes space, whereas Go proceeds altogether
| differently, territorializing and deterritorializing it (make the
| outside a territory in space; consolidate that territory by the
| construction of a second, adjacent territory; deterritorialize
| the enemy by shattering his territory from within;
| deterritorialize oneself by renouncing, by going elsewhere...)
| Another justice, another movement, another space-time._
| rramadass wrote:
| I always found Edgar Allan Poe's take on Chess from _The
| Murders in the Rue Morgue_
| (https://poestories.com/read/murders) interesting;
|
| _The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by
| mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it
| which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde
| operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis.
| Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player,
| for example, does the one without effort at the other. It
| follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental
| character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a
| treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by
| observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take
| occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective
| intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the
| unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate
| frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have
| different and bizarre motions, with various and variable
| values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error)
| for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully
| into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is
| committed, resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves
| being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such
| oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is
| the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who
| conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are
| unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of
| inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left
| comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by
| either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less
| abstract --Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces
| are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight
| is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be
| decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherche
| movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect.
| Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into
| the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and
| not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods
| (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce
| into error or hurry into miscalculation._
|
| _Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is
| termed the calculating power; and men of the highest order of
| intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable
| delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt
| there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the
| faculty of analysis. The best chess-player in Christendom may
| be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency
| in whist implies capacity for success in all those more
| important undertakings where mind struggles with mind. When I
| say proficiency, I mean that perfection in the game which
| includes a comprehension of all the sources whence legitimate
| advantage may be derived. These are not only manifold but
| multiform, and lie frequently among recesses of thought
| altogether inaccessible to the ordinary understanding. To
| observe attentively is to remember distinctly; and, so far, the
| concentrative chess-player will do very well at whist; while
| the rules of Hoyle (themselves based upon the mere mechanism of
| the game) are sufficiently and generally comprehensible. Thus
| to have a retentive memory, and to proceed by "the book," are
| points commonly regarded as the sum total of good playing. But
| it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill
| of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of
| observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions;
| and the difference in the extent of the information obtained,
| lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the
| quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of
| what to observe. Our player confines himself not at all; nor,
| because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from
| things external to the game. He examines the countenance of his
| partner, comparing it carefully with that of each of his
| opponents. He considers the mode of assorting the cards in each
| hand; often counting trump by trump, and honor by honor,
| through the glances bestowed by their holders upon each. He
| notes every variation of face as the play progresses, gathering
| a fund of thought from the differences in the expression of
| certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or of chagrin. From the
| manner of gathering up a trick he judges whether the person
| taking it can make another in the suit. He recognises what is
| played through feint, by the air with which it is thrown upon
| the table. A casual or inadvertent word; the accidental
| dropping or turning of a card, with the accompanying anxiety or
| carelessness in regard to its concealment; the counting of the
| tricks, with the order of their arrangement; embarrassment,
| hesitation, eagerness or trepidation --all afford, to his
| apparently intuitive perception, indications of the true state
| of affairs. The first two or three rounds having been played,
| he is in full possession of the contents of each hand, and
| thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision
| of purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the
| faces of their own._
| akuro wrote:
| Reading this has made me realise that I am nowhere near as
| literate as I think I am.
| kubb wrote:
| To be fair, philosophy is often strong in words and weak in
| content.
| ajkjk wrote:
| The florid writing is an elitist fad; you can express the
| same idea in much simpler language without losing any
| meaning.
| humanizersequel wrote:
| People love to say this, but this is extremely dense
| writing riddled with technical language, written for people
| trained in reading it. You could perhaps eliminate some of
| the jargon, but in doing so you'd have to substitute a
| book's worth of less "florid" writing to get the same point
| across.
| ajkjk wrote:
| "florid" as a word means "excessively complicated", not
| just "complicated". I'd describe this writing as florid
| because it its fanciness and complexity is obnoxious and
| unnecessary. Of course it's my opinion, but yeah, I think
| it's just bad writing, written to sound pretentious on
| purpose, doing a shit job of communicating its point
| because it wants to be inaccessible. You could easily
| write the same thing more clearly in no more space.
|
| I'm not arguing against beautiful writing or technical
| writing; I'm arguing against this thing that was pasted
| above, which is obnoxious, full-of-itself, not-at-all-
| beautiful writing.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| 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_(De
| leuze...
|
| [4] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56964/speech-
| tomorrow...
|
| [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionone
| fasterik wrote:
| There's a word for that, it's called "obscurantism".
| Profound and true ideas can always be put in simple
| language. See Richard Feynman for one example. When
| someone uses a lot of complicated words and sentences to
| make a trivial point, that's a red flag for me.
| csa wrote:
| It really helps a lot if you know the game of go.
| keiferski wrote:
| I wouldn't feel too bad; D&G are notoriously verbose and full
| of references to obscure topics.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| This is also presumably a translation from the original
| French.
| bsaul wrote:
| IMHO the 1950s and 60s were the pinacle of intellectual life
| ( at least in france). Students were actually "fans" of
| philosophical figures like jean paul sartre. The trendiest
| place for youth wasn't a nightclub or a gym. It was the cafe
| de flore, close to "la sorbonne" university, were one could
| hope to see a famous writer have a coffee. Young people would
| spend their saturday skimming through books at "gilbert
| joseph" bookseller.
|
| This is simply gone forever. Whenever i see today's
| celebrities becoming famous via 20 seconds tiktok, or pseudo
| intellectuals debating over twitter, and i think about this
| era that was only 50 years ago, i feel like crying.
| bzhang255 wrote:
| Were you one of those youths or are you just romanticizing
| someone else's past (which you know nothing about) so you
| can criticize a contemporary youth populace (whom you know
| nothing about)?
| humanizersequel wrote:
| I am one of the "contemporary youth populace" and will
| second his comment.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| I thought a lot of fancy words were used, but very little was
| said.
| ronyfadel wrote:
| 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)
| nextaccountic wrote:
| If you are a beginner, studying tactics and doing puzzles.
| Always keep your pieces defended, even if there aren't
| immediate threats: undefended pieces may become tactical themes
| (which means, your opponent might be able to explore this two
| or three moves ahead). Always consider checks first, then
| captures, systematically.
|
| A level up, studying openings.
|
| Always go into a position with a plan (which generally means,
| which squares you want your pieces to occupy). A bad plan is
| better than no plan at all.
|
| The plan must be continually checked with calculation (and here
| is where tactics is useful), and you must be ready to change
| plans if things don't go well.
|
| You need also to study strategic concepts like weak squares,
| pawn structure, pawn majorities. This helps you to quickly
| identify what should be your plan even in a unfamiliar
| position.
|
| If you have trouble winning a game that you should have won,
| study endgames. Specially, if you are ahead of material, try to
| simplify the position (trade pieces to give your opponent less
| chances to come back), and specially simplify into an endgame
| where you're sure you will win.
| 10xDev wrote:
| Reached 1600 chess.com within a year starting from 600 and 2000
| Lichess. What I believe to be more important is how you do
| something rather than what you do. What I mean is, someone can
| play many puzzles or games but if you are just blitzing out
| moves in puzzles even when you haven't calculated to a
| guaranteed advantage then you aren't learning anything. You are
| just exploiting what you have learnt over exploring by trying
| to look for patterns you wouldn't normally look for. Constantly
| even in complex positions people blitz out moves only to
| blunder.
|
| This is why I don't recommend bullet to anyone.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The trap to avoid is memorizing openings!
|
| It takes a ton of time and brainpower, and doesn't make you a
| better player once you're outside your memorized moves..
| brrrrrm wrote:
| Puzzles + learning openings. I highly recommend lichess for
| this
| vikingerik wrote:
| Make sure you do _defensive_ puzzles as well. I 'm fairly
| decent at spotting a tactic to win material a few moves
| ahead, but terrible at seeing one coming from my opponent
| early enough to avert it. I'm not sure what lichess has, but
| definitely look for puzzles where you have to _avoid_ a
| knight fork or some pin or incoming checkmate.
| slm_HN wrote:
| Puzzles are great for learning tactics, but eventually you
| need to learn some strategy and positional play. You'll need
| to read a book or two for this. And don't forget endings!
| genghisjahn wrote:
| Learn end games before opening s. Learn k+q against a k.
| Learn k+pawn against k (how to advance a pawn to promote to
| q). K+r against K. There are others but get those 3 down.
| shric wrote:
| And don't forget to study end games too. I don't think you
| need a strong grasp of opening theory until you reach around
| 2000 (lichess).
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Study and practicing openings. By this I mean you should
| memorise _all_ the lines of an opening; not just the main
| lines. A vast majority of matches are won /lost within 30-35
| moves by a few botched up opening moves.
|
| I don't recommend puzzles that much. They give you mental
| satisfaction. However, it is one thing to think of a good move
| knowing _before hand_ that there 's such a move possible but
| entirely different to recognise that you are in such a
| situation in the middle of a game.
| chongli wrote:
| Studying openings is a waste of time, even counterproductive,
| if you're a beginner who hangs pieces all the time. This
| advice is much better suited to someone hoping to get over
| the 2k rating milestone. If you're below 1k or even mid teens
| then your best bet is just to play a lot (longer time
| controls against better opponents) and study your games to
| look for your blunders, mistakes, and inaccuracies.
| jmulho wrote:
| After you have learned all lines of 1.e4 out to 35 moves, I
| suggest learning all lines of 1.d4 out to 35 moves.
| tosh wrote:
| I tend to agree (& thought similar about puzzles) but I think
| they are effective at training your pattern recognition so
| you more easily find tactics when you play.
| tosh wrote:
| * train various endgames (undervalued) (e.g. Naroditsky's
| videos on endgames: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT1F2nOx
| LHOfQI_hFiDnnWj4l...)
|
| * puzzles for tactics & mates
|
| * learn 1 "easy to execute" opening for each color
| tosh wrote:
| also: go through your games with an engine and reflect on the
| good moves and blunders of yourself but also your opponent
| cglace wrote:
| I'm ~2000 online and got there by training tactics/puzzles and
| becoming really good at a few openings. I would suggest
| learning an opening or two for white and an opening or two for
| black. Kings Indian, modern defense, Sicilian defense, and
| danish gambit are some of my favorites.
| have_faith wrote:
| That depends on how good you are already. Beginners progress
| most by learning not to hang pieces. Up to the ~1000 elo level
| you will win by simply not blundering with little to no opening
| theory. After that the breadth of scope opens up a lot. I got
| to ~1750 over the board almost completely ignoring openings
| beyond move 4 or 5. Watching videos on strategy, how should I
| be arranging my pieces / where do they "belong", and simple
| tactics will take you far. Openings are important, I study them
| more now, but I wouldn't get bogged down by them. Picking up an
| intuition for analysing a position and it's thematic ideas is
| key.
| AndreLock wrote:
| I was a competitive chess player in my youth and am currently
| ~2300 on Lichess. Here are key aspects of any training regimen:
|
| * Tactics - I did thousands of tactics puzzles using a program
| called CT-ART while under a time limit. I would have to
| complete 25 puzzles within 5 minutes while making 0 mistakes.
| If I made a mistake I would have to start from the beginning.
|
| * Core positional concepts - Understanding pawn structure
| (double pawns, isolated pawns, passed pawns, pawn majorities,
| etc.), control of central squares, open files, king safety, and
| so on.
|
| * Endgames - Many players neglect endgames. Master the basics:
| common rook-and-pawn and pawn-only endgames, how to checkmate
| with 2 bishops and bishop + knight, etc. Read Silman's Complete
| Endgame Course, Basic Chess Endings, and Dvoretsky's Endgame
| Manual (for advanced players) to improve your endgame play.
|
| * Openings - Many people have mentioned learning openings, but
| it is generally a mistake for beginners and intermediate
| players to focus on this aspect of their game. It is not
| especially useful for a ~1000-rated OTB player to learn 15+
| moves of theory in the King's Indian Defense only to end up in
| a position where there are slightly better according to theory
| but have no understanding of their position. It is better to
| center your opening repertoire around easy-to-learn openings
| and focus on improving other aspects of your game until you are
| strong enough to handle positions outside of opening theory.
| jjbinx007 wrote:
| 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:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8pZbhjL-fQ&list=PL8N8j2e7Rp...
| bachonk wrote:
| 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
| thefourthchime wrote:
| I liked these tips:
| https://mbuffett.com/posts/chess_improvement_thoughts/
| fferen wrote:
| 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.
| 317070 wrote:
| 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
| gjm11 wrote:
| It's a little debatable whether Andrew Tang counts as "human"
| when playing hyperbullet chess.
| amalcon wrote:
| 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.
| gjm11 wrote:
| 24x is more than 1 ply. Typical branching factor isn't so far
| from 24, and with alpha-beta the effective branching factor
| is more like sqrt(nominal branching factor), and I think
| modern engines are pretty good at pruning and extending the
| tree to make the scaling even better than that.
| Balgair wrote:
| Meta Comment: A lot of the comments here that are about getting
| better at chess seem to boil down to: Do something other than
| bog-standard chess. Mess with time limits, do openings, play
| puzzles, etc.
|
| So, can we get together a good list of websites/apps with links
| that are these 'not-chess' trainers?
|
| I'll start:
|
| https://lichess.org/training
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1349230/5D_Chess_With_Mul...
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.FrameOfMin...
| sadhorse wrote:
| "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.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| The definition of a gentleman - "a man who can play the
| bagpipes. But doesn't"
|
| (unknown attribution but I got it from a scotsman)
| tiffanyh wrote:
| You could say this about anything ... like golf, etc.
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| Heh...good quote. I was in chess club in Jr high, playing lots.
| One day I was about two thirds through a book on chess openings
| and had a major moment of self reflection: what the hell am I
| doing, this is really boring. Luckily for me I was introduced
| to white box original DnD about the same time and that solved
| that problem...
| teachrdan wrote:
| Orthogonally, "Good at chess, bad at life."
| Bootvis wrote:
| Paul Morphy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Morphy
| bsder wrote:
| _Morphy_ not Murphy.
| ycombinete wrote:
| 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 the Shortness of Life
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| 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
| DC-3 wrote:
| Mistranslation is unfair. It's a translation that best
| reflects the spirit of the original. It would be
| distracting to the modern reader to refer to a game which
| would be obscure and unfamiliar, when most likely the point
| of the original text is to invoke a board game which would
| be universally known among the audience.
|
| That said, you are right:
|
| https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/De_brevitate_vitae
|
| > XIII 1. Persequi singulos longum est, quorum aut
| _latrunculi_ aut pila aut excoquendi in sole corporis cura
| consumpsere vitam. Non sunt otiosi, quorum voluptates
| multum negotii habent. Nam de illis nemo dubitabit, quin
| operose nihil agant, qui litterarum inutilium studiis
| detinentur, quae iam apud Romanos quoque magna manus est.
|
| (emphasis mine)
| fasterik wrote:
| >It would be distracting to the modern reader to refer to
| a game which would be obscure and unfamiliar
|
| I find it far more distracting to find a modern term in
| an ancient text that I know the author couldn't have
| known about. It's jarring and anachronistic. I would much
| rather see the original term. I can make a decision about
| whether to spend a minute to look it up (and learn
| something!) or skim over it if the meaning is clear
| enough.
| groffee wrote:
| Interestingly this has just come up again recently with the
| 'dahl' controversy.[0]
|
| [0] https://classicalwisdom.substack.com/p/should-we-
| update-old-...
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| 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
| ormaybethizzy wrote:
| Or maybe Senet
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senet
| jacobmartin wrote:
| Considering that we don't have any history of chess until
| more than 500 years after Seneca's death, in India no less, I
| think it's fair to say that this is yet another example of
| "ye olde translationes" editorializing and using too much
| dynamic equivalence. _latrunculi_ , the word he uses in this
| sentence at the beginning of chapter XIII, must have referred
| to a different game.
|
| Plus, I doubt most people would really agree with _de
| brevitate vitae_. It 's the equivalent of "grind culture" but
| from the first century. Amusing and interesting but probably
| not congruent with now most people want to spend their lives.
| (No shame from me if you do want to live your life that way,
| but it should just be known that this is far from a neutral
| perspective.) For a more balanced view of _otium_ (pleasure,
| relaxation, opposite of negotium, business), I 'd recommend
| the letters of Pliny the Younger.
| ezekiel68 wrote:
| I dunno. Who is to say it is "too much" dynamic
| equivalence? Seems to me the grand intent of the quote is
| preserved for the greater mass of English readers.
| chucksmash wrote:
| Ha, I just re-read this page in this book this morning.
|
| The translation my book used instead of "chess-playing" was
| "draughts."
| geodel wrote:
| Ha, great quote! There is good movie in Hindi about wasted life
| of Chess obsessed protagonists. [1]
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chess_Players_(film)
| dfrankle wrote:
| Well, if you ask me, the ability to play chess well is the sign
| of someone who knows how to make the most of their free time!
| patrickscoleman wrote:
| 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.
| rjbwork wrote:
| 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.
| WJW wrote:
| "Chess is beautiful enough to waste your life for."
|
| -- Hans Ree
| cyrialize wrote:
| Doing a few chess puzzles a day (and aiming to get them correct,
| rather than trying to get through as many as you can) has done
| wonders for my move speed. For example, I recognize forks much
| faster now.
|
| Lichess lets you pick several themes as well, if you want to
| focus on particular situations.
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Where in the app do I got to pick themes?
| Dr_Birdbrain wrote:
| I think this functionality is not available on the app, only
| on the browser version. The browser version runs great on
| mobile, though.
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Gotcha thanks, I exclusively use the app, but for puzzle I
| think I can branch out. I prefer tap to move as opposed to
| mouse.
| 0bit wrote:
| Under https://lichess.org/training on the left side pane
| there is a "Puzzle Themes" link (takes you to
| https://lichess.org/training/themes).
| blastro wrote:
| obligatory lichess.org plug! best site on the net.
| kwikdraw wrote:
| For mediocre chess players like me I recommend trying online
| speed chess for a few months. Bullet chess where each player gets
| a minute total clock is a completely different game where you
| move every half second on average. Aggressive playing is rewarded
| - as long as you get your opponent to waste time thinking. The
| quick play allows you develop a better sense of positioning, game
| flow, and end game tactics. When you return to normal slow timed
| chess games after playing bullet for several months you will find
| that your clock management will be much improved.
| have_faith wrote:
| This is very fun but translates very badly to longer time
| controls in my experience. YMMV though.
| ckaygusu wrote:
| Faster you do something, more you rely on your instincts, and
| instincts alone do not further your game -- or anything you
| strive to be good at really -- you need to be mindfully
| thinking it through.
|
| It might be beneficial to spice things up, but this is in
| general not a good advice.
| kriops wrote:
| This is the opposite of what every coach I've spoken to says.
| Rather: Do tactics, study basic endgames.
|
| Of course conventional wisdom isn't always right, but that is
| the conventional wisdom.
|
| Correct play in longer TCs translate much better to blitz than
| vice versa.
| 10xDev wrote:
| No, in my experience it forms bad habits such as being severely
| prone to going for one turn attacks. One turn attacks may be
| the most common mistake among chess players. Anyone who has
| learnt to calculate deeper and look for nuances within a
| position will crush someone who only knows to go for time
| pressure.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| This is true. But the comment above is true as well.
|
| It depends on who you are and where you are at. I have
| certainly developed a habit for those one-turn attacks you
| describe. But going from short games back to slow chess and
| puzzles has been nice because I learned to manage how to
| think under that pressure.
|
| I'm now learning how to play tennis (another cliche
| gentleman's game, I know). What I'm discovering is that it is
| very similar - there is the simple repetitive and purely
| textbook aspect of hitting the ball at just the right angle
| to make it go where you want. And then there is the energy
| management under time and pressure. So you sort of have to
| straddle this tension between these two and you gradually
| descend into just barely holding it together.
|
| My thought here is that ideal chess is very similar. There
| are the routine strategies, tactics and perfect moves. And
| then there is this raw impulsive fast paced aspect of just
| making the least awful move to just survive what is thrown at
| you with the bits of focus you still have left.
| [deleted]
| huevosabio wrote:
| I love bullet, but I am 100% it has worsened my rapid/classical
| game. It has improved my time management though.
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