[HN Gopher] Complexity physics finds crucial tipping points in c...
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Complexity physics finds crucial tipping points in chess games
Author : pseudolus
Score : 63 points
Date : 2025-01-26 12:30 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| dentemple wrote:
| Okay, but will this research help me get above 700 ELO rapid on
| chess.com?
| skulk wrote:
| No, but 1) don't hang pieces 2)
| notice when your opponent hangs pieces 3) win
| endgames where you're up material
|
| should be enough to get you to 1500.
| BalinKing wrote:
| As a ~900 Elo player, I feel like point #3 is doing the heavy
| lifting here--kinda reminds me of that "rest of the owl" meme
| (not that you're wrong, of course!) :-P
| svachalek wrote:
| When you're up material? Assuming your opponent is in a
| tier to leave pieces hanging, we should be talking more
| than a pawn here, and following the first two rules should
| hold/build that advantage.
|
| At least, as someone not even 900, closing an endgame when
| I'm already winning sounds like the easier part. But it's
| hard to believe that's all it takes to get to 1500, it is
| not my impression that 1300+ players are losing to big
| "whoops" moments.
| thethirdone wrote:
| I would agree the "don't blunder" and "punish opponents
| blunders" are harder than endgame knowledge. However,
| knowing the basics of endgames is actually important to
| closing out games. Specifically, knowing KQvK, KRvK, and
| the "ladder technique" is important.
|
| Without any tactics "take free pieces" probably only gets
| you to around 1200 (chess.com), but if it includes knight
| and pawn forks, skewers, pins, and discovered attacks it
| can get you to 1500. Playing perfectly every game is hard
| though. I would recommend having more chess knowledge
| than just those 3 rules before you really try for 1500.
| BalinKing wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but in an endgame where (for example)
| it's just kings and a bunch of pawns, even a two pawn
| advantage is easy for me to lose--I pick the wrong pawn
| island to support with my king, and I've already lost.
| Knowing good heuristics in these sorts of situations is
| something that takes active study IME--"don't blunder
| pieces" is not sufficient, at least for me.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Not hanging pieces is definitely the hard one!
| rozim wrote:
| practice tactics..don't study openings..
| oyster143 wrote:
| Learning basic variations of even one opening for white and
| for black can be extremely useful. There's not much tactics
| in first moves, but knowing how to set up a solid position
| will help a lot. Just learn basic stuff, no need to go into
| the weeds too much. Also the names of the openings are
| pretty cool
| somenameforme wrote:
| A huge one is also to assume your opponent will make the best
| move. Don't just make one move threats hoping your opponent
| will miss them.
|
| This seems like it should be somewhat more advanced, because
| players at a low level often _will_ miss one move threats.
| But it is basically the first principle from which nearly all
| other good habits directly derive. Why develop all your
| pieces, not bring your queen out early, etc. Why do all those
| things when you know your opponent will often just miss
| something anyhow if you start pecking him with one move
| threats?
|
| It's because if your opponent does not miss those threats,
| then you've likely just made your own position even weaker.
| And as a corollary a one-move threat which improves your
| position is perfectly fine of course, but in that case you're
| not hoping your opponent misses it. I mean you probably are,
| but you _expect_ him to see it. But it doesn 't matter -
| because your position has improved regardless.
| YZF wrote:
| 4) Develop your pieces first. 5) Castle. 6) Don't move the
| queen prematurely. 7) Analyze all your games.
| irjustin wrote:
| At our ELO, games tip back and forth like a metronome, almost
| move to move. Confuses the AI - never can tell who the winner
| is!
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Stop playing rapid until you're well above 700. Play classical
| so you can think about each move long enough to not hang
| pieces.
| rozim wrote:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02333
| somenameforme wrote:
| This sounds like an extremely convoluted way of demonstrating a
| very basic fact, that the authors of the study probably knew
| beforehand. And that's when a player's position has many
| weaknesses (or a high 'fragility score') they're probably going
| to be losing soon. And determining how quickly many pieces can
| attack a given point versus defend it is, more or less, exactly
| how you determine if that point is weak. Publish or perish reigns
| supreme.
|
| A lot of science feels like it's becoming much closer to art
| where you splash a canvas with a few splotches, and then spend an
| hour describing how it's an insightful representation of the
| isolation of the modern world and the struggle against
| depersonalization. At least there you get to then sell it for a
| few hundred thousand dollars, rather than just live to renew your
| contract.
| dmurray wrote:
| One thing chess engines are still bad at is determining which
| positions are difficult for humans to play. If there is a
| sequence of moves where Black has to make the right choice
| every time from several plausible alternatives to reach a drawn
| endgame, but White has plenty of margin for error at every turn
| to keep that situation, the computer will happily evaluate this
| as "0.0" - a draw.
|
| Solving this would allow handicapped computers to play
| interesting games against humans, and it would also be hugely
| useful for strong players preparing opening surprises, but no
| one seems to have figured it out.
|
| Note that this isn't a simple graph theory question of looking
| for how narrow a path through the graph is: the word
| "plausible" is very important above, and a narrow path where
| most moves can quickly be eliminated is one of the easier
| things for humans to calculate.
|
| Anyway, I was hoping this was a step towards solving that, but
| they don't seem to have even tried to apply it there.
| somenameforme wrote:
| For sure, but I think this is really quite difficult even
| with the wildest of hand-waving. Take, for instance, take the
| R+B v R ending. The weaker side has literally two pieces,
| including the king, to move. There are many well studied
| drawing plans, and in most positions literally any move would
| lead to a draw (short of absurd things like hanging your
| rook).
|
| Yet this ending is _extremely_ difficult to the point that
| GMs lose it with some regularity. That stat about 40% of the
| possible positions being forced wins is useless, because it
| includes mostly very weird positions that nobody would
| voluntarily walk into. The overwhelming majority of times
| this ending is entered into, as well as normal moves from
| such, are all textbook draws.
| dmurray wrote:
| > I think this is really quite difficult even with the
| wildest of hand-waving
|
| It's difficult for _computers_! But humans can do it. An
| 1800 armed with computer analysis (so he knows the right
| moves) can say with some confidence "this position looks
| difficult for a grandmaster".
| somenameforme wrote:
| I think an 1800 with computer analysis would never say
| R+B v R looks difficult for a GM without external
| knowledge of the fact that it is.
| dmurray wrote:
| It's hard to isolate the external knowledge. If R+B v R
| came up once every 50 games, every GM and probably every
| 2000 would know it inside out.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| There isn't a GM that hasn't studied RBvB, and most have
| also played numerous games with it.
|
| But it's just very difficult to execute properly. Let a
| 2000 go study it for weeks - he'd still lose it against
| strong play.
|
| People often see chess as just a game of knowledge, but
| in practice it's much more like a skill in that for a
| strong player they'll generally see the right move(s) in
| a position near instantly. The time spent is then just
| comparing and double checking stuff.
|
| This is why you might see in e.g. a press conference some
| journalist ask why the player didn't play 34. Ne5, and
| they'll think for a few seconds, go ooooo wow as they
| rapidly work out the [invariably computer generated]
| idea, and then respond that they simply didn't consider
| it.
|
| This is how players like Magnus are so strong and why the
| time control doesn't really matter - his intuition just
| tends to quickly lead him to better ideas than for other
| players.
| dmurray wrote:
| > But it's just very difficult to execute properly. Let a
| 2000 go study it for weeks - he'd still lose it against
| strong play
|
| I don't agree. People lose this one because they haven't
| looked at it recently.
|
| I would be willing to take this as a bet. Train with the
| computer for weeks, and then I get to defend the endgame
| against a computer or a tricky human. (I'm a bit stronger
| than 2000 but I could find someone else).
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Consider my side of the bet eating crow with a side that,
| if you're right, then you'll have mastered arguably the
| single most important basic ending.
|
| I'd strongly recommend checking out an endgame manual or
| a youtube video on the proper way(s) to draw it. It's
| going to take a lot longer than weeks if you just try to
| learn it through experience.
|
| For further incentivization I can practically guarantee
| you will also gain rating points if you succeed here - it
| really requires substantial 'feel' for how rook and
| bishop can work together (as well as certain stalemate
| tricks and more), and that's applicable far outside just
| this ending - same how learning to mate with B+N really
| improves your feel for how those pieces can collaborate.
|
| But I'm not sure you appreciate what you're getting into
| here. R v R+B makes B+N look like child's play.
|
| Do let me know if you're seriously going to try this. I'd
| honestly just like to know how it goes, and can just hit
| you up in a couple of weeks in some rando thread. It'd be
| pretty awesome if you succeed!
| dmurray wrote:
| > the single most important basic ending
|
| This just isn't right. According to de la Villa (whose
| book is a great trainer on this endgame among others)
| this balance comes up 1 time in 5000, compared to RPPvR
| or PPvP which each occurred more than 10x as often. Ok,
| some of those are trivial, but there are many more half-
| points to be had by studying those.
|
| I have studied this endgame before to the point where I
| was confident in holding it (mostly based on the selected
| defences given by de la Villa, which I reckon cover
| almost all positions), but I confess I didn't practice it
| against a tablebase. I also lost this the one time I had
| it over the board.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| 1 in 5000 seems very off. A quick search has it occurring
| in 1.7% of all games which sounds about right. [1] If he
| indeed said 1 in 5000, it might have been from a database
| with lots of quite low rated games.
|
| There are two reasons I think it's one of (calling it
| _the_ most was a bit of hyperbole) the most important
| basic endings.
|
| One is that it's not only relatively frequent but also an
| endgame that just constantly sees the 'wrong' result.
|
| The second point though is what I already mentioned - it
| really teaches you a _lot_ about how a bishop and rook
| can play together. If you can genuinely internalize that
| ending, your play with these pieces, in all phases of the
| game, would just naturally improve. Again it 's similar
| to the way that the B+N ending can help improve your play
| with those pieces.
|
| I mean sure it's useful to know that R and f+h pawns v R
| is only a [difficult] draw, but that knowledge is not
| very useful outside of that exact scenario.
|
| [1] - https://thechessworld.com/articles/endgame/chess-
| statistics-...
| dmurray wrote:
| That link is the lowest quality article I've ever seen,
| but if it means anything, it seems to mean Rook and
| Bishop vs Rook, but both sides also have any number of
| pawns. Pure RB v R does not come up one game in 60 at any
| level, that's ridiculous. Has there ever been one in a
| World Championship match? Out of 1000+ games I can't
| think of any.
|
| I've had R+F+h vs R several times, and the evaluation of
| it being important to another endgame countless more.
| jampekka wrote:
| "Knowing" something is different from formalizing it into a
| mathematical model. Almost all papers are about relatively
| minor findings at best.
|
| Publish and perish is real though. As are hype and bad
| popularization of research.
| maxmynter95 wrote:
| The insight of this article is less in describing the dynamics
| of chess games than in the fact that you can apply the
| methodology of network analysis, percolation, phase transitions
| etc. to recover them.
|
| This is interesting because both chess and complexity science
| have a long but unrelated history. So it's a bit harsh to call
| this out for "Publish or Perish".
| lubujackson wrote:
| I agree the takeaway of the article is mostly garbage:
| middlegames are complex and hold pivotal moments. But the real
| value is quantifying the "pivotal-ness" of each piece, which
| could have real world uses. How about a chess tutor that can
| instantly highlight the linchpin of any position? This is how
| grandmasters see the board and I imagine just flashcarding
| complex positions with a heatmap of pivotal pieces could be
| illuminating.
| billforsternz wrote:
| It's really difficult to pick my least favourite part of this
| article. Could be this;
|
| "But the game is about more than algorithms, according to Marc
| Barthelemy, a physicist at the Paris-Saclay University in France,
| with layers of depth arising from the psychological complexity
| conferred by player strategies.
|
| Now, Barthelmey has taken things one step further..."
|
| At least AI systems can write slop fairly well. Why do I hate
| this so much? It just feels lazy, underdone, superficial, vaguely
| nonsensical. The magic of chess has little or nothing todo with
| the "psychological complexity conferred by player strategies". It
| has much more to do with aesthetic beauty, and many a great
| writer has illuminated that. It's utterly unsurprising that you
| can model the game as nodes interacting in a network graph (I
| mean essentially that's what it is), and even more unsurprising
| that the complexity of the interactions is higher in the tense
| and complicated positions that do indeed often decide the fate of
| individual games. Note, _games_ not _matches_. If you can 't get
| even the most basic domain terminology correct, you don't deserve
| anyone's attention.
|
| I'll probably calm down in an hour or two.
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