English Chess Forum

This

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... refuse-die


from Steven Poole - one of us, by the way - is a good read.


I doubt chess is worse than any other area of human endeavour, but we certainly have our fare share of zombie ideas. Unsupported claims about chess and dementia; nonsense claims about the number of chess players in the world; idea that Bill Hartston once turned down a draw offer when half a point would have made him a Grandmaster. There’s a lot of bull**it in and around our game that just won’t go away.

A good one is "chess is on the point of being played out" - around for the best part of a century now.

Matt Mackenzie wrote:A good one is "chess is on the point of being played out" - around for the best part of a century now.

Theory, with the probable assistance of chess engines gets ever wider. To counter that, ideas considered beginner level become viable.

I've seen Basman play with Black a line where g5, c5, Nf6 and Rg8 were played in the opening moves. This was against conventional play by White in the English such as c4, Nc3, d3, e4 etc.

Another example of a beginner idea becoming viable is the so-called Copycat Variation of the Petrov Defence.

Black sacs a pawn for real compensation but normally the line is part of the chess coach staple diet of an example of when copying goes wrong for Black.

John Upham wrote: Black sacs a pawn for real compensation but normally the line is part of the chess coach staple diet of an example of when copying goes wrong for Black.

Players with sufficient tactical ability might be able to make it work for Black. But why take the risk?

See https://youtu.be/C9W2vZNVaRo for detail.

Matt Mackenzie wrote:A good one is "chess is on the point of being played out" - around for the best part of a century now.

That’s related, but a different category to the sort of thing that Steven Poole is talking about, I think.

When it comes down to it what "played out" and "on the point of" means is a matter of opinion. It might or might not be a stupid or just plain wrong belief (or both) but it is still an opinion.

What Steven Poole’s article is referencing is people simply ignoring facts. Or inventing their own 'facts' with zero evidence to back them up.



So, chess is played out? Yes or No? That’s opinion versus opinion

The Earth is flat? (Or: Bill Hartston once turned down a draw offer when half a point would have given him the GM title). Yes or No? That opinion versus fact.


That’s the key difference.

Nonsense!
Both are matters of opinion.
Both are also matters of fact.

There is absolutely no difference. There is a substantial number of 'flat earthers' who have this opinion despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There is an insubstantial number of 'chess played outers' who hold this hoped for ambition despite the overwhelmingly overwhelming impossibility of playing out chess with the given number of elementary particles available for this purpose within the solar system.

It may not be necessary to play out every legal series of moves in order to confirm that neither side can force a win from the starting position. I'm not expressing a view on whether that is true, but computation theory has come a long way.

Related to the subject of why bad ideas refuse to die ...

"Health journalism has a serious evidence problem"
http://www.vox.com/2016/6/21/11962568/h ... d-medicine

NickFaulks wrote:It may not be necessary to play out every legal series of moves in order to confirm that neither side can force a win from the starting position. I'm not expressing a view on whether that is true, but computation theory has come a long way.

Well I will go further than you down this road, Nick. It is not necessary to play out every legal series of moves. Thus, in K and Q v K it can be objectively shown without playing all combinations that (except for some trivial cases) the side with Q can win. This was demonstrated to me to my satisfaction by my father when I was six years of age. Of course, an exhaustive analysis in this case is also not arduous for a computer so the savings in this instance do not affect the demand for elementary particles. To date, however, there has not been any progress to my knowledge of generalised proofs except in the case of highly prescribed scenarios that, like the example given, can also be easily handled by an exhaustive search.

That said, who knows? And I do concede that a probabilistic conclusion might be reached with an overwhelming confidence level. (eg 99.999999947 % certainty that the result is a draw, where the number of nines might easily be increased). Still a long way off.

Michael Farthing wrote:Still a long way off.

Indeed. Although the proving the final result of chess with best play is not at all relevant to the phrase "chess is played out" as cited by Matt above.