The End of the Golden Era of American Chess

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/09/pal-benko-shelby-lyman-and-chess-bobby-fischer-era/597343/

by merrier • 7 years ago

97 63 7 years ago

diminoten• 7 years ago

I dunno, I feel like "the end of golden era of American chess" is pretty unfair to the amazing things Sinquefield has going on in St. Louis right now, as well as all of the "new" online resources that continue to pop up, and the general penetration chess seems to be achieving in scholastic formats today.

This article seems focused on a handful of luminaries, but I'd argue that a "golden era" of a thing is defined by it's blossoming into popularity and a new kind of explosive growth that thing hasn't previously seen, which (and maybe it's because I didn't grow up with Fischer) feels more like what's happening now.

I don't know if chess is more popular now than it's ever been in America (having read Pawn Sacrifice, I believe Fischer made chess fairly mainstream in America for a time), but it feels like more people are playing chess than ever before in the US, and that strikes me as more of a hallmark of a "golden era" than what this article refers to it as.

georgeoliver• 7 years ago

In a way you can compare it to the "Golden Age" of science fiction, which cemented the genre in our culture, but you can judge its classics on their own merits while also considering them in light of the new works produced in the decades after.

pfdietz• 7 years ago

Reminded of the well known quip: the golden age of science fiction is 14.

lgeorget• 7 years ago

Well clearly the new chess Masters are no longer players but programmers. That doesn't make the game uninteresting though.

A few months ago, one would have thought that we had the best algorithm and that progress would only be slowly incremental for now on... until the approach adopted to best humans at the game of go got applied to chess. Now you have these programs like LeelaChess able to best Stockfish (a program that had been improved over the last fifteen years) after a few months of training. There's definitely a lot more to discover in this game.

mikorym• 7 years ago

a lot more to discover

That is how I understand it as well. Blue Gene used heuristics such as rook = 5 and knight = 3 and there must be many more complex heuristics or direct approaches that you can use once your machine learning methods get enough computing power.

_0ffh• 7 years ago

Yes, still it is astounding how far you can get with relatively simple heuristics and a well pruned search tree. One interesting heuristic, which falls right out of "von Försters Imperative" is: Prefer moves that maximize the number of choices you have in the future, and minimize those of your opponent.

aflag• 7 years ago

I don't know if programmers are the new game masters. As far as I know, bots are not allowed in most, if not all, chess competitions. It's not like we stopped doing the 100m dash after the intention of the bicycle or the car. Those are just other racing categories.

Torwald• 7 years ago

and the "racing category" the grandparent is talking about was initiated by crobots?

soup10• 7 years ago

over the board chess can be a struggle for programmers because we are so used to letting computers do the heavy lifting on calculations that its a struggle to think through tactical situations when you know a simple program would do the trick. It's almost like doing pen and paper arithmetic in the age of calculators.

rjf72• 7 years ago

There's one interesting change I've noticed in chess and in a number of other fields where we seem to be gradually are losing that je ne sais pas we once had. This [1] is a film from 1925, "Chess Fever". For one bit of unspoken context, the smirking gentleman from the beginning (and the one that makes a few recurring appearances) is Jose Raul Capablanca - a person often considered the most naturally talented player ever and who was reigning world champ when this movie was released. Aside from the humor of the movie, I think there's something much more telling. The movie emphasizes chess as a game for adults, that kids can play.

That was published just following the advent of the USSR which would go on to become the world's powerhouse of chess for many decades, arguably continuing to this day. It seems in the west we've gradually started to reverse that adult-based focus for many things, chess among them: it's a game for kids, that adults can play. We've spent an immense amount of energy, and money, getting chess in schools but I'm not sure we've seen anything like a proportional gain in outcome for it.

For instance this [2] is the home page for the US Chess Federation. They chose of all possible pictures, for their lead image, one of an under 10 year old girl playing, and the strong bias towards scholastic/youth chess is present throughout. The only reason I mention this is because I imagine like many when I was a kid I was reached an age (still a kid) where I was gradually repelled by things I perceived as 'kid things' and drawn to things I perceived as 'adult things.' In my case coding was something I perceived as an adult thing, and that attraction ended up playing a monumental role in shaping my life. I'm quite curious if things would have been different had my school been actively attempting to get kids involved in coding.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN6m711ddZk

[2] https://new.uschess.org/home/

mindgam37• 7 years ago

Former chess prodigy here. I had the honor of training with Pal Benko in the early 90s when I represented Team USA in the world youth championships. I remember Benko being a real class act, which I can’t say about many of the chess personalities I’ve met over the years. You could tell he was absolutely, passionately in love with chess. In that sense he represented something pure which maybe we’ve lost in this new era.

That said, let’s be clear. The golden era of American chess, and chess in general, is happening now and only getting better. I give credit to to open-source projects like LiChess and Lc0, tournaments like LiChess Titled where mere mortals get a chance to challenge Magnus, and the rise of chess streaming as a thing.

Heck, I’ll concede that the golden era of classical chess is over. But it’s been over for a while, pretty much since computers advanced opening theory and took all the wins out of classical. RIP classical chess. But for those willing to think on their feet, the golden era of blitz and bullet is here :-)

tus882• 7 years ago

How has computer chess changed how humans play humans? (I.e. when you take the computer out of thr equation).

icelancer3• 7 years ago

Offline optimization and study using simulation software.

mindgam37• 7 years ago

At the amateur level, not much. Other than most amateurs spend way too much time relying on engine evals, and as a result don’t develop their own ability to learn “chess sense”.

Competitive players can now prepare easily for individual opponents, which is cool and used to only be feasible for pros.

For pros, it means that everyone plays the same safe openings, because they’re all “booked up” thanks to engines. Also many super sharp tactical lines have been conclusively decided by engines so can no longer be played. End result is world championships like the last one of all draws, which was just pathetic.

Most of the GMs I’ve asked about this in the last year have expressed that they no longer love playing classical chess because it’s so boring. Hence the rise of legit Chess960 and rapid tournaments at the top level.

icelancer3• 7 years ago

> RIP classical chess

Yeah, unfortunately, this is true. But inevitable as you pointed out, as it is with many games that become hyper-optimized due to the rise of computing power (and GPUs being turned into powerhouses as of late).

Fischer did get that part right; that classic tournament chess was dying and/or dead. FRC is a fun variant but the writing's on the wall; blitz/bullet and of course bughouse are all the rage today.

And of course, there's always Jerry to watch [0], who is a pleasure.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/ChessNetwork/

yesenadam2• 7 years ago

Am watching the World Cup right now. Before that watched the Sinquefield Cup. Both (so far) exciting events, not sure how you can pronounce classical chess dead.

Bullet, lol---chess without thinking. It's the thinking I like about chess. The carefully-worked-out combinations, brilliant defensive plans, drawing swindles etc. If people like playing bullet, great, but it seems another game entirely.

People complaining here about the draws in the last world championship: the WCC matches are much too short these days, players won't take risks as there's no time to catch up if they backfire. But "shorter, faster" is supposed to cure everything. Anyway, Karpov and Kasparov had a lot of draws, 17 in a row in 1984, in virtually the pre-computer era.

mindgam37• 7 years ago

Re classical, if you don’t want to take my word for it, look up the chess24 interview after the last world champs where magnus said it was so unenjoyable he wasn’t even sure if he’d defend his title.

No offense, only people who suck at bullet say it doesn’t involve thinking. It’s the same game, it involves developing and training your intuition. I could teach anyone how to get good, even you... if you were open to learn that is.

(And had the budget or could trade for coding hours :-)

MaysonL• 7 years ago

And in the current round of the World Cup (16 games featuring 32 of the strongest players in the world) at least 6, probably 7 games are decisive: 9 draws. classical chess is not quite dead.

test3333• 7 years ago

to learn chess, go to India

gridspy• 7 years ago

If (like me) you're bored by regular chess now, consider trying out the variant 16x16 "Four Kings one War."

It has been turned into Steam game with a free demo : https://store.steampowered.com/app/883680/Four_Kings_One_War...

The AI for this game was coded in Rust, by me. Good luck!

reacweb• 7 years ago

Many Go players were bored chess players.

pixelatedpr0n• 7 years ago

It looks fun, does it work on Linux using Proton?

websitejanitor• 7 years ago

Also recommended for bored chess players, Shogi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi

krzat• 7 years ago

A bit offtopic: is it still possible to create a Chess/Go type game that is easy for humans but hard for AI? Or are we past that point already?

shagie2• 7 years ago

The game Arimaa attempted to do that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arimaa

V-2• 7 years ago

Is it more computationally complex than Go?

halfarmbandit• 7 years ago

Probably no. The issue with tabletop games is that we can model them with ease. This allows bots to play myriads of games and the ability to look ahead in possible moves.

plopz• 7 years ago

I could see a game like Mao being difficult for AI or really any game with an inconsistent ruleset.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game)

UncleMeat• 7 years ago

There is actually an entire field of general game playing that can be extended to receiving partial rulesets at the start of the game.

bo1024• 7 years ago

It's not clear what it means for a two-player game to be "easy for humans but hard for AI" -- but if you mean that humans can pretty easily beat AI, probably the way to go is a game of incomplete information. For example in hold'em poker, AI have only been able to beat humans in the last 1-2 years.

humble_engineer• 7 years ago

They can beat us at any type of game that doesn't require split second thinking.

yifanl• 7 years ago

Sure, a game where the rules can't be easily codified but understandable by humans would pose a good challenge. I'd like to see a computer play Calvinball :)

alach11• 7 years ago

Humans still reign supreme (for now) at games which emphasize a heavy strategic component with a very large search space. For example, the OpenAI Five can only beat humans at DOTA with a very restricted scope (restricted champions and items).

gosuri• 7 years ago

Pal Benko was one of the world's top grandmasters in the 1950s and 60s, playing in the Candidates Tournaments in 1959 and 1962 and notching up wins against the likes of Bobby Fischer and Mikhail Tal. He achieved that despite spending a year and a half in a Soviet concentration camp and defecting to the US in 1957.

What a legend! RIP

whatupmiked• 7 years ago

Hikaru Nakamura is an American GM that has a pretty entertaining YouTube channel if you are interested in chess.

The End of the Golden Era of American Chess

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