Hacker News Reader

I realized the only way to be a competitive player was to become a human database.

I would have agreed with you five years ago. Today, Magnus Carlsen is known for being less booked-up than most elite players, playing openings just to get in the game, while rated #1 by a significant margin. So maybe there's hope.

Beyond a certain point getting better at chess simply means you got better at chess and nothing else.

No argument there. And isn't that true for most things in life?

Correct. Carlsen has destroyed the preparation/memory junkies. Chess did flounder for a while as everyone started using computers for preparation and helping memorize openings, but it has been made redundant by his style of play.

For it's not so much the database aspect, but the risk-reward curve is awful. You're probably better off pushing your child to become a professional athlete, in those terms (not that I'm encouraging that).

The time commitment to becoming a world class player is such that consumes most of a young person's life.

I was a Master level player by the age of 17, through some talent, supplemented by hours upon hours of studying and coaching. This was not pushed upon me by parents, but more out of my own competitiveness. This is not a prodigious level - you should probably be an International Master by that age to be called a prodigy. I was only a top 10 or so player nationally for my age category, with a 0% probability of making a living or anything close to it from the game.

By the time I reached University, I all but completely abandoned chess. Studying Computer Engineering meant I couldn't devote enough time to it to stay competitive, and real life happened.

Same as you, I will teach my kids chess, and help them get to a certain competitive level, because I do believe that playing chess at a high level improved my brain function in a way that has helped me in other analytical tasks (e.g. engineering), but I won't push them to continue with it beyond a certain point.

If you encouraged you son to do no opening preparation, aside from general principles, encouraged him to turn up at the board physically fit, full of energy, concentration and determination to win instead of tired a sallow from spending all his time studying, then he would be killing it even more. Those other players may now and then score the odd point from their preparation, but usually only against other preparation junkies.

You have to be a walking database to be good at chess the same way you have to be a walking database to be a good programmer: hundreds of patterns small and big, thousands of tricks and some learnt by heart information. After all that comes creativity. Chess is very similar in this respect. As to it not being useful... well one thing is it's competitive activity. That teaches you about winning and losing and dealing with it. All the thing which comes with it: dealing with luck, seeing hard workers coming out on top, realizing you are not very special snowflake and there are hundreds people as talented (or more) than you. It's quite a skill. I am for one very grateful I learnt about it when I was a kid by doing competitive chess.

It's a lot easier to make a living as a programmer than as a chess player. Also, winning and losing as a programmer doesn't apply (except at a hackathon or similar competition).

Winning and losing apply to everything in life. I think people who were exposed to competitive activity as children deal with setbacks way better. That being said chess is not exceptional here - about any sport would do as long as compete, train and are part of the team. As to making a living as a programmer being easier - no argument but it doesn't relate in any way to my post.

"Winning and losing apply to everything in life" is nonsense. As well say winning and losing apply to nothing in life.

Certainly learning to lose is probably a good thing when you are a youngster, but "everything in life" sounds miserable to me, and perhaps only reflects your worldview, and is not in fact an absolute as you suggest.

"If life is a game, aren't we on the same team?" -- Kid President

The saying goes "Good chess players develop their brains, great chess players waste theirs".

As a FM, I prefer that my kids do not study chess but something with more helpful side benefits, programming, math, basketball even piano.

I would have much preferred to become a master at programming that a chess master. A candidate master in programming can make a pretty good living, while a chess master would be living in a park.

It is as Buffet said "Do something that you do not hate for a living".

This makes me sad to read, but I had a similar thought when I was seriously studying chess (I'm only an 1800-1900 player though.) I ultimately abandoned chess, with the occasional blitz match on ICC these days.

I was spending 2-3 hours each night by myself alone and really enjoying it. I was also paying IMs for lessons. I was improving a lot. However, I was alone most of the time and couldn't share my experience with anybody. There was also very little tangible benefit to me other than entertainment and mental stimulation. Two things I can get elsewhere. Since I do have a masters degree in computer science I decided to focus on two things: Software Engineering and Violin.

I took up violin and haven't looked back. I had zero music ability an when I started couldn't read music. It's the same amount of hark work as chess. Like chess, I probably started too late to be anything other than an intermediate player. The difference is, I can play for my wife and my parents. A random person on the street can appreciate what I'm doing. I try to practice only 30 minutes a day.

I also doubled down on software engineering. Instead of spending 2-3 hours playing chess, I spend more of my evenings writing code.

You are so right. When I played a bit of chess I thought I'd teach my future kids chess, kind of like the Polgars. Then I read "Searching for Bobby Fisher" and "The Chess Artist" and completely changed my mind.

Wouldn't overspecialization be common with most pro sports?

Playing sports is great but becoming a swimming world champion, for example, is just hours every day of swimming. Hardly world-changing or helpful outside the pool.

I believe the contention focuses on the difference in how you play against an opponent. In chess, by this contention, ultimately what your opponent is doing has little bearing on what you do. There is a "correct" response to every board position.

Now, I think this is accurate for essentially single player sports. Golf and the like. Many competitive sports, however, you have to adjust what you are doing based on what your opponent is doing. Not just in a "correct" way, but to account for changing circumstances.

Just because this correct response exists (and almost surely it's not unique anyway) doesn't mean it matters. What your opponent does and what his style is has huge meaning in practice and that will remain the case as we are not solving chess in near future and even if we did the solution will be too big to memorize anyway.

I think I agree. Just saying what my understanding of the assertion was. Basically, that there are only so many "meaningful" positions on the board. And at the upper levels, the question becomes more of how many of those positions have you memorized. Not, "how does your opponent play?"

As opposed to a game such as tennis. Where you really have to consider not just what you are capable of against a volley, but what your opponent will do with it.

No, chess is not about memorizing position and most games leave memorized territory fast. I don't know why this idea that chess is about memorizing openings got so much traction, it's nonsense. Top level games are rarely decided in the openings these days (although it happens that someone got nailed but usually it's because choosing very sharp variation and then forgetting the analysis) and there is a lot of play in positions never seen before in most of them.

Top level games are rarely decided in the openings because top level players typically don't make bad ones. :)

Is this akin to saying that top level tennis games are rarely decided by double faults. Likely true, but completely ignores the point that learning to serve over the net correctly is a vital skill. Just as learning a vast repertoire of studied moves and board continuations is key to chess.

In the book How to Choose a Chess Move by Andrew Soltis, Andrew analyzed high level chess games and counted the number of moves into four categories. Here was the breakdown:

1. Forced moves 6% check with a forced move, forced defensive move, etc.

2. Book moves 28% opening moves following the opening book

3. Clearly best moves 30% there's one clearly best move out of all the moves on the board

4. Discretionary moves 36% there are many best moves, so one person would choose one move, but another person could choose a different move, and neither would be "right"

What does this mean for your playing?

It means that there is not always a best move, and so you shouldn't obsess over trying to find it. You have to accept discretionary moves.

This is what gives rise to chess playing styles.

I'm not really sure this disagrees with the assertion, though. Upwards of half of the moves are either "following a book" or "clearly best."

I'm also assuming for a large portion of the remaining "discretionary" moves, there is a "clearly bad" set of moves that should not be picked. This is a large set of things you have to memorize that are not really based on what or how the opponent will play.