Have Chess computers ruined the game?

[Neill Cooper]

I think computer have changed the game, but not ruined it.

First of all, consider the vast majority of UK chess players, those who have not played a graded game in the past year. They have benefited from:
1) Public interest in man vs computer matches;
2) Providing an opponent at any time (be it Chessmaster on your own computer or on the internet such as Yahoo chess)

Then for club players, in addition to the above:
3) Allowed analysis of your own games with a computer expert
4) Provided much improved grading facilities
5) Much improved communication for arranging teams for matches
6) Allowed you to practice tactics
7) Easy access to large databases of games
8) Provided forums such as this one

Downsides:
9) Inappropriate use of computer analysis, both legal (adjournment) and illegal.
10) Restriction on players freedom (the over zealous mobile phone rule, not being able to disappear during a game).

So I much prefer the present state with computers than that when I first started playing 40 years ago.

[Ian Kingston]

I would add at least one thing to Neill's list of benefits: the opening up of new areas of the game for top players to explore and the rest of us to follow. It seems to me that chess is a deeper and richer game now than it was even a decade ago, and while some of that is just a continuation of the game's natural progress, it's been accelerated by computer analysis.

[Dean Madden]

As someone who started playing chess just a few years ago, being able to analyse my games with a chess engine has helped my improvement a lot. If I couldn't use computer analysis, I'd still be making the same old mistakes without knowing I was making them. I guess this applies to juniors too, so hopefully it will produce some good players in the next few years.

[John Upham]

I believe that engines and databases can put some aspiring players (especially juniors) under pressure in various ways.

1. Databases can cause players to concern themselves with what games of theirs are available to aid (or hinder) an opponents so-called preparation. This can cause them to "avoid their opponents preparation" with disastrous consequences.

2. There is pressure to play "best moves" (whatever that means?) in the opening. Many players (who have little understanding of programming) might believe the assessment of positions by engines without question.

3. There is pressure to keep on top of TNs which may or may not happen at move 25+

I suspect that these pressures have no impact on the vast majority of players?

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Martyn.

I noticed too that you asked about chess playing computers
and the lads strayed a bit bringing in computers on the whole.

I too liked the old days when game notes were more chatty.
You played through the notes looking for twists or missed mates.

Now of course game notes are pure and bland.
The analysis is endless and finishes with a +2.69.

Yet a skilful writer like Purdy could say so much more with just one line.
The chess playing computer has killed off the art of annotating a game.

Internet chess is brilliant.
I wish it was around when I was starting out.
Now of course cheating is rife on such sites.
The strong chess computers have ruined that as well.

In the hands of a good player these things are a useful tool
('cept when they decide to write a book)
They know how to use them and can read the positions they
throw up as playable or messy.

To us in the cabbage patch?
I never used a computer to get good (well goodish).
So I cannot tell if it's a good thing or bad thing.

I can tell you this though, every great player
before 1990 got great without one.

Using a computer to look at your games....
Does that really work?
It shows you have missed a mate in three.
What have you learned?
What have you really learned?

Agree Fischer at his peak would have giving Deep Blue + a GM
a good match.
Kasparov though at his peak was a super player.
(Reckon Karpov at his peak would have turned it over).

[PeterTurland]

Hi
I was wondering if it was only me - Am I living in the past?
I used to play competitive chess long before there were any good chess computers.
For me, it slightly ruins the satisfaction of playing and competing.
There are several reasons for this -
If I have put a lot of effort into creating a chess masterpiece, the knowledge that a computer could just make strong moves without any effort, sort of removes most of my sense of achievement.
An analogy would be, if in Chopin's day, there had been a computer which could reel off compositions straight away, would Chopin still have been inspired to create his music?
For me, it ruins the motivation a little.
Also, part of the enjoyment used to be analysing positions, but now it's like the arms race - as everyone uses computers.
The possibility of cheating is now also an issue, which was unheard of when I used to play. The mere possibility and the existence of such strong computers, somewhat dampen my enthusiasm a little - You see, during a game, I always tend to disappear quite a lot - It's just the way I am!!
But now, I might feel a bit more self conscious, or even be accused of cheating if I play a brilliant game or if I beat someone who is a lot better.
So as far as I am concerned, it has dampened my enthusiasm a little as far as competitions are concerned.

Hello,

Nice point, the way out of the morass you are pointing at, is to understand the difference between 'top down and bottom up" thinking.

Bottom up thinking, sees only details, it only sees the minutiae of thinking, top down thinking becomes religious or political or genderised, or philosophy.

The question you should be asking yourself is, is chess good for the human species and do computers facilitate this endeavour?

[Jonathan Bryant]

Internet chess is brilliant.

Indeed. It's easy to forget who difficult it was to actually find out the games that were actually being played. Remember Short losing to Speelman in game 3 of their first match (1988 IIRC) because he didn't know about o-o-o in the Bf4 Queen's Gambit Declined as had been played a week or two before in the Soviet Championship? Now we can watch games live from anywhere else in the world if we so choose.

There's more chess information now for the chess fan than there ever was before. This is clearly a good thing.


On the downside, I do agree with the OP about the potential for cheating OTB by use of computers. I rather fear we're about to find ourselves with a growing problem that could seriously harm the game. Not because I think that such behaviour will ever be widespread, but because it will be impossible to stop. A lot of unpleasantness and suspicion could end up poisoning the atmosphere of amateur chess.

Hopefully I'm wrong about that though.

[Roger de Coverly]

Not because I think that such behaviour will ever be widespread, but because it will be impossible to stop. A lot of unpleasantness and suspicion could end up poisoning the atmosphere of amateur chess.

Looking round at the 4NCL third division this weekend during play, I was aware of the number of laptop computers in use by the "support teams", parents presumably. You have to hope that the convention of not discussing the game with third parties holds, third parties can have some seriously useful opinions when armed with ChessBase, Fritz, Rybka etc, even where their age and ECF grade have similar values.

[John Upham]

With all due respect,
Neill Cooper, John Upham, Jonathan Bryant have answered a different question to the one I asked, which was about 'Chess Computers' and not 'Computers'

My reply was confined to the impact of chess engines and chess databases. Perhaps I needed to be more specific?

[IanDavis]

We can definitely say that something has been lost with the advent of the Chess Computer becoming 'World Champion'. Chess was, after all, once seen as some sort of beacon of human intelligence. Computers were not able to understand the game, they couldn't be programmed to think in the same cunning way the human mind could. The game was some sort of supreme test of intellect. Well of course that isn't true anymore. The best computer programs simply slaughter us.

Chess is still Chess though. (Would that it could be Hopscotch!) An entertaining game; regardless of who is the best player in the world. It's a bit much to suggest that it is ruined by having a silicon based champion.

What might be ruining it is the progressively extending knowledge base, the demystification of the game. Or maybe we could argue that somebody like Staunton ruined it, by bringing an end to the amateur game with his insistence on Seconds.

[Arshad Ali]

In the past, when playing over a grandmaster game, the annotations always gave the impression that they saw so far ahead that their play was almost perfect! and that they hardly made any mistakes. Computers have now clearly shown that that was not the case, and that even the best humans miss an awful lot, especially tactically, and are very far from perfect.

The annotations were often rubbish but they couldn't be tested because the players reading them weren't strong enough to gauge how superficial or one-sided they were. So many of the "classics" have been exposed for what they are. In other cases -- where honest annotators like Keres and Timman have attempted to provide careful analysis -- lacuna and errors have been revealed. Human analysis augmented by the use of chess-playing software and endgame table bases has profoundly enhanced our understanding of the game.

Tactical mistakes are strategic mistakes -- if you miss a delicate tactical point in a sub-variation, that can render your whole plan worthless. Hence the meretricious quality of many of the annotations by Alekhine, Golombek, and Reinfeld, who might give superficial static verbal assessments, backed by a plausible variation or two (or sometimes none at all). Readers would get lulled by the empty verbiage.

In my exceedingly humble opinion, computers have been unequivocally good for the game.

[Arshad Ali]

I too liked the old days when game notes were more chatty.

But often more superficial, just empty verbiage with no insight. Contrast that with John Nunn's analysis, where his words summarise a lot of painstaking detailed work, often computer-assisted.

Now of course game notes are pure and bland.
The analysis is endless and finishes with a +2.69.

Computer-augmented analysis need not be so -- look at the notes of a Nunn, Marin, or Stohl.

Yet a skilful writer like Purdy could say so much more with just one line.
The chess playing computer has killed off the art of annotating a game.

Purdy was content with giving rather abstract and heuristic recommendations that usually stand one in good stead but not always. A concrete approach is required; chess is not formulaic.

I can tell you this though, every great player
before 1990 got great without one.

They weren't "great" in the same sense as the ones of today. Players like Hort, Portisch, Gligoric, Pachman would have been skinned alive by the teenagers of today.

Using a computer to look at your games....
Does that really work?
It shows you have missed a mate in three.
What have you learned?
What have you really learned?

Sure you learn. You learn that all those cunning and crafty strategems you were planning (learnt from the second-rate books of decades ago) were utterly redundant when there was a 3-move mate on the board. You learn to see things a bit more directly and not through the obfuscating lens of third-rate annotators. That's been my experience. Come to think of it, there's an NIC book on tactics -- Forcing Chess Moves, by Hertan -- that tries to make you develop this straighforward "computer vision."

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Ali.

"But often more superficial, just empty verbiage with no insight."

Tarrasch, Tartakower, Nimzovitch, Reti, Chernev, Abrahams, Purdy....

"just empty verbiage with no insight."

"look at the notes of a Nunn, Marin, or Stohl."

Of course there are few modern writers who can capture the moment
and instruct. But these are out numbered by the dross.

Not seriously into the three you mentioned. There are, in my
opinion, much better modern writers on the game. Each to their own.

"A concrete approach is required; chess is not formulaic."

Concrete is cold and drab, it cracks with time.
Setting in stone a page of bland analysis is not instructive
or entertaining and requires very little skill.

A flowered idiom dropped inbetween moves can actually give
a strong hint what was going through the mind of the player
without one computer assisted move to back it up.

It comes down to what you what you want from playing over a game.
I want to be taken on trip with the guide (the writer) pointing
out things of interest, sneaking in a joke, an anecdote.

If some do it to memorise the opening moves and then seek
the ulitimate truth in every move. So be it. It's up to them.

But that sounds too much like hard work and no enjoyment.

Have you never stoped mid-game and flown off on some romantic road?
What if this? Let us try this? Now here is an idea?

The concrete approach stifles the imagination and produces clones.

"They weren't "great" in the same sense as the ones of today.
Players like Hort, Portisch, Gligoric, Pachman would have been
skinned alive by the teenagers of today."

You have cherry picked just four players and comparing
past masters to modern teenagers is silly.

There is a lot more going on than opening preparation
when two good players meet.
Those four had board craft in spades.
And you won't get board craft from a box no matter how long you stare at a monitor.

And please Ali don't quote me grades.
At the start of every game all grades are equal.

So I take your four and raise you Petrosian, Alekhine, Fischer, and Karpov.
And up my sleeve Tal, Capa, Bronstein and Lasker.
I have not even used my trump card. Kasparov.

Now are you going to make the same claim?

I, however, can.
None of these chess players became great players
with the aid of a chess computer. Not one.

"You learn to see things a bit more directly and not through the
obfuscating lens of third-rate annotators.!"

And there are plenty of them about today!

What I was pointing at is that if players run their game through a box
not looking to see what they missed but being shown what they missed
then what have they learned?

They should analyse it themselves looking for tries and shots.
(Just like the great players did before computers).
Surely they got that 'feeling' the 'twinge' that there was something on
and they missed it.

They have to go back to the board and THEY have to find it.
(Just like the great players did before computers).

Then if you want too, drop it into a box.
(Use the box as tool, not as a teacher, not as a crutch.)

But I do confess a computer never help me get any good.
If good players say it has then I believe them.

One thing I will never budge on though.
Studying tactics via a monitor hoping to reproduce
the patterns OTB is a total waste of time.

You have to carve them into your brain in 3D.
(Just like the great players did before computers.).

[Ian Kingston]

If I had time I'd take issue with a lot of this. But one sentence totally misses the point:

The concrete approach stifles the imagination and produces clones.

This is the exact opposite of the truth. Concrete analysis shows us exactly where our lazy assumptions are wrong and where, if we simply dared to imagine another possibility, we might find a better - perhaps more beautiful - move. And when we understand why that move is better, we become better players and get more enjoyment out of the game.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Ian.

You yourself said:

"if we simply dared to imagine another possibility, we might find
a better, perhaps more beautiful - move. "

You have supplied my answer to your argument.

The concrete approach does allow you to do this.
You have to think outside the box and if going against the 'truth'
is what you have decided is the best move. Then so be it.

Like the OP I yearn for the good old days before chess computers.

I take no pleasure in seeing a past masterpiece ruined by these
things finding obscure (and often ugly) defensive moves.

The point being at the time the other human player failed
to find the best move and the winners imagination triumphed.

And that is the point. The game is between two humans.

Do you resign because a player has the better postion?
Of course not, you wriggle and scrap and twist and trap.

Who cares if after the game cold concrete analysis proves you were lost.
OTB you won.
If you had played the best moves in your lost position
then the chances are you would have lost.

You have to face it, and admit, that in certain postions
good chess players will knowingly play not the best move.
They will play the move that sets their opponent the most problems.

A player brought up on concrete analysis has nothing to but resign.
His imagination cannot see a way to possibly win.
The important art of swindling and creating problems for a human
opponent has passed them by.

He has been stifled by the very tool that was meant to turn
him into a good chess player.
The chess playing computer. (the theme of the thread.....remember).

"we become better players and get more enjoyment out of the game."

Never known anyone who has not turned a concrete loss
into a win and not enjoyed doing it.