Chess players, how do you deal with a computer being better than any human will ever be?

[Broomstick]

@Little_Nemo

There are plenty of people in this world who are better at playing chess than I’ll ever be. So what? I can still enjoy playing chess even if I’m never going to be the best player in the world.

^ This.

Likewise, I enjoy playing piano although there are many people who play better than I ever will. I don’t have to be the world’s best ever at something to enjoy doing it.

[Chronos]

Shrink it down at the other end, too. For example at some point a significant enough material advantage can be considered a “certain” win.

That’s an even smaller part of the solution space. If you’ve got that much material advantage that the win is that certain, then it’d cost you almost no time at all to just play out that certainty (or, flipping it around, save you almost no time at all to skip it).

What you’re doing is the equivalent of going to a huge quarry, with giant earth-moving machinery like Big Muskie and its brothers, and asking how long it’d take to excavate out the entire quarry… then filling your pockets with gravel and asking how long it’ll take now. Yes, it’ll speed things up, but by an amount that’s too small to worry about.

[What_Exit]

@Little_Nemo

There are plenty of people in this world who are better at playing chess than I’ll ever be. So what? I can still enjoy playing chess even if I’m never going to be the best player in the world.

This sums it up perfectly.

[marshmallow]

Someday machines will be better than humans at everything.

[ekedolphin]

@gnoitall

I’m still better at chess than my cat, though.

<Snip>

“In the ten games we’ve played, she’s only beaten me twice.”

[Junior_Spaceman]

@DSYoungEsq

For me, the issue isn’t that computers play the game better than humans do. As pointed out, lots of people play chess better than I do, and that didn’t stop me from beating my head against them in tournaments.

I stopped playing when it was clear to me that the “solution” was inevitable. And despite any number of impassioned declarations that that’s not true, I maintain nonetheless that computers will “solve” chess, in essence first, then in fact. At that point, I realized that all I was doing was being bad at solving a puzzle (which fact was emphasized somewhat by the increasing depth to which people had to memorize openings thanks to the computerization of opening knowledge).

It sounds like you didn’t enjoy playing chess, and in that case, stopping wasting time on it was definitely the right thing to do.

[DSYoungEsq]

@Junior_Spaceman

It sounds like you didn’t enjoy playing chess, and in that case, stopping wasting time on it was definitely the right thing to do.

Actually, I loved it. So much so that I

1. Ran a chess club in a major city;

2. Ran chess tournaments in that city;

3. Played in tournaments all over Northern California;

4. Was the treasurer for a state chess association;

5. Was on the By-laws Committee for the USCF;

6. Attended and played at three straight US Opens.

But I didn’t like the trend of the computerization; as I said, it was spoiling the game slowly but surely.

[Tabby_Cat]

I got inspired by you guys and played my first game again in 10 years or so. I was unranked and given a handicap against my opponent, and I’m a bit sorry to say that I don’t think I needed that handicap, as the game was a bit imbalanced. Feels nice to know that I’m not all that rusty though!

I have to say that DSYoungEsq really expressed how I feel about the game now. It’s not so much that there are humans stronger than me - I knew that. But the fact that it’s not so much a strategy game, as it is a solvable puzzle, or at least, a puzzle that can be solved better by a machine than a human.

I suppose it’s a bit like a speed multiplication competition. Sure, you could have a competition where 2 persons competed to multiply huge numbers together, but the guy with the pocket calculator wins. Is that really worth competing about then?

Maybe it is? I still don’t know, but I’m coming to the realisation that everything we consider a “game” is likely to be “solved” in this manner, that a computer can play them better than humans, due to the nature of games being easily analysed systems. Does that mean that games aren’t worth playing any more?

Maybe? I guess that’s how humans in Iain Banks’ Culture novels feel. Why bother to think, when a mind can do it far better than you can. Just take whatever pleasure you can in thinking, and stop thinking when it’s not fun any more.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@marshmallow

Someday machines will be better than humans at everything.

Computers will not beat even moderately decent poker players for a long time. If ever. Suboptimal moves in chess will always hurt you. You can’t really bluff in chess.

True AI is not a foregone conclusion.

[Chronos]

Computers are already beating moderately decent poker players. It’s easy to program a computer to bluff appropriately.

[BeepKillBeep]

@Damuri_Ajashi

Computers will not beat even moderately decent poker players for a long time. If ever. Suboptimal moves in chess will always hurt you. You can’t really bluff in chess.

True AI is not a foregone conclusion.

There’s already poker playing AIs that can beat world class players. Look up Libratus. There’s some caveats of course with Libratus but like Deep Blue it is only going to get better for the AI and worse for humans. I have no idea what this will do to online poker but I suspect it will utterly wreck it unless there is some way to detect an AI and exclude it. You might actually get an online poker arms race of he-who-is-armed-with-the-best-ai-wins.

[OneCentStamp]

I’ve been a longtime recreational chess player - chess club in junior high and high school, always have a board ready for a game even today. A few years ago, I got heavily into online chess. I was a decent player who knew his openings (though I personally only use three) and didn’t make many truly boneheaded mistakes - OTB-playing teammates who would know estimated that I was about a 1500.

I ended up stopping because of the preponderance of computer-assisted cheaters. Unfortunately, my level of skill and attention put me into a no-man’s land, as online chess is heavily populated with complete novices on one end, and on the other end with Master-level and above players, or those who use chess engines to help themselves, in spite of them being against the rules. When you can tell not only that your opponent is using a chess program, but which program he’s probably using, yet there’s nothing you can do about it, that’s a demotivator for sure.

I’ve returned to OTB-only, where the only way my opponent can cheat is to rake my eyes or strike me in the groin.

[Chronos]

And there’s the computer’s real unbeatable advantage: It doesn’t have a groin.

[BeepKillBeep]

@Chronos

And there’s the computer’s real unbeatable advantage: It doesn’t have a groin.

Hmmm… I wonder if I should add a groin to my AIs?

beep No. Please. No. beep

[standingwave]

@Broomstick

^ This.

Likewise, I enjoy playing piano although there are many people who play better than I ever will. I don’t have to be the world’s best ever at something to enjoy doing it.

“Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.”
(Henry Van Dyke)
Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[Lemur866]

@marshmallow

Someday machines will be better than humans at everything.

Teach me this thing you hu-mons call… “Love”.

[HeXen]

I used to seriously love Chess, I even beat Shredder 7 on it’s hardest setting once. What bothers me most is that chess has come down to a science with no shortage of demonstrations on how to beat most every encounter. It has kind of ruined chess matches online for me, gone are the days where you had to use experience and thought alone without the use of the internet or letting a computer study the move for you or the countless tutorials of solved situations. If both sides play perfectly then it should end with White winning…that basically tells me that chess is now a solved puzzle. I’d rather play a game that can’t be played to such perfection, that no computer can always win.

[iiandyiiii]

I’m pretty sure we’ve still got Stratego. Since it involves bluffing, I expect it will be a long time before computers can beat the best Stratego players .

[Chronos]

Quoth HeXen:

If both sides play perfectly then it should end with White winning…that basically tells me that chess is now a solved puzzle.

That’s not actually known, and even if it were, it still wouldn’t mean that it was solved. For comparison, it is known that player 1 always wins Hex with perfect play, but it’s only solved for very small boards.

Quoth iiandyiiii:

I’m pretty sure we’ve still got Stratego. Since it involves bluffing, I expect it will be a long time before computers can beat the best Stratego players .

I suspect that the primary reason that computers don’t already beat humans at Stratego is just that it hasn’t gotten as many programmers bothering to try.

[iiandyiiii]

@Chronos

That’s not actually known, and even if it were, it still wouldn’t mean that it was solved. For comparison, it is known that player 1 always wins Hex with perfect play, but it’s only solved for very small boards.

I suspect that the primary reason that computers don’t already beat humans at Stratego is just that it hasn’t gotten as many programmers bothering to try.

Could be, but I think the math of Stratego moves are orders of magnitude more complicated than chess – more pieces, more varieties, more possibilities, etc.