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Comment by binarymax | Hacker News Reader

Who is the 'we' in that sentence? Having spent the majority of my teenage years studying and playing tournament level chess, I can attest that your statement is likely to draw ire among the devotees.

You may as well suggest Baseball players start playing football because of Bill James and Nate Silver.

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Having spent the majority of my teenage years studying and playing tournament level chess, too, I must say that the fact, that computers breezed by the best humans disenchanted me with the game somewhat. I would not play in a tournament where I cannot be sure that my opponents aren't more than straw men for their computers. I suspect chess is on the way down the bicycle lane, as much as it pains me to admit this.

I agree it is disheartening. I stopped playing in tournaments shortly before Kasparov's fateful defeat by Deep Blue. But I still love the game and am always up for playing a friendly match. However the suggestion that we give it up because machines are better is, in my opinion, insulting. If people still want to play in tournaments against humans, then they should be allowed to.

Well, of course, and I still love to play sometimes. But I would not play in any game where the stakes are high enough that I would suspect my opponent to try to pull an Ivanov.

Please don't let stories like this discourage you from playing tournament chess. There are tens of thousands of tournaments each year, and typically just 1 or 2 incidents of cheating. There will always be some element of cheating in any competitive endeavor, whether it's business, academia, sports, video games, etc. If you enjoy chess, play chess! :)

Another way to think about it is why run if a F1 car beats any human runner?

The problem is not that computers are better per se, but that help from computers is getting harder and harder to detect. I would more liken it to the development of doping in the endurance sports.

Excellent analogy.

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