Concerns about the death of chess are well established,
having been famously predicted
by legends of the game from José Raúl Capablanca to Bobby Fischer.
But ever since the landmark match in 1997 when IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat
world champion superhuman Garry Kasparov, machines have been firmly in the ascendency.
'I’m always resisting Deep Blue being called an intelligent machine,
it was as intelligent as your alarm clock.'
In the decades since, the mystery of chess has all but disappeared
thanks to the popularity of chess engines, able to predict, analyse and advise far better
than their human counterparts.
'I’m sorry Frank, I think you missed it' Today, the game is booming ...
'Start your clock'.
But the best players are artificial.
So has the computer killed chess?
The game is famously complex, with more possible iterations
than atoms in the visible universe.
The first five moves alone can be played out in:
So how does a chess engine help?
Unlike the hundred million dollar Deep Blue, which used brute force programming
to search its vast database for the best moves in any given situation,
modern software like Stockfish and LC Zero are able to perform
more selective searches, faster - and for free.
But the strongest engines, the Alphazeroes, are the ones who have had no human input.
They've been told to basically just learn chess on their own.
So they come up with these crazy opening ideas.
And of course, the ones that have had no human input are better
than the ones that have.
'It doesn’t have to be perfect,
it just has to make less mistakes than its human opponent.'
Running such an engine alongside a game against a mere super grandmaster,
let alone a normal person, will see you win roughly
100% of the time.
You kind of sense when somebody is cheating, like there's a certain cleanness
to their play, they just beat you very, very quickly.
'I can’t believe it. I’m losing to a rug.'
You see this with any kind of
online game such as poker, so it's not unique to chess.
There's cheating everywhere.
And the big problem with hosting online tournaments was that nobody trusted them.
But the pandemic forced people to have to do it regardless.
So a lot more people started relying on this anti-cheating algorithm.
And the algorithm has gotten very good at detecting cheaters.
There is an irony in the use of algorithms to fix problems created by other algorithms,
but computers have also accelerated the feeling that the variation
and possibilities in the game are being exhausted.
'Checkmate, Checkmate, Checkmate.'
'Dang'
I think when you play against computers it's boring.
It doesn't have a soul.
It does have a very clean quality that is almost destroying creativity.
I think people become too obsessed with chess computers.
You need to be able to switch off and use your own brain.
But the engines have also improved the game.
The engines have benefited us in many ways.
I think the primary one is it's given us access.
Growing up in Brooklyn, I had no access.
But now you have a device in your pocket that you could say,
analyse this, and it will tell you,
you know what, your move is just daft.
They've got a teacher right at their disposal.
Computers have brought a new dimension into chess as well,
they've opened up our understanding of how chess is played.
They're capable of pointing out moves that even very strong players aren’t able to see.
They have radically disrupted the game,
and it's not just in chess. A.I. is disrupting the world.
But to me, disruption is a good thing.
I like change. I think that you're seeing even more interesting chess,
more dynamic chess, crazier chess erupt.
And so it's incumbent on the professional players to deal with this change.
It's kind of paradoxical to think
that this ancient game is being modernised right now
and that even chess, which doesn't change how it's played, has been made
so different just by being put in the digital world.
'He says he’s not dead!'
'Yes he is.'
'I’m not.'
'He isn’t.'
'Well, he will be soon.'
Perhaps what truly kills a game is when perfection is possible
and the outcome predictable.
This hasn’t yet happened to chess, but simpler games like Noughts and Crosses,
Connect Four and Guess Who have been ‘solved’,
even Draughts will always end in a draw if played perfectly.
But people still play these games.
I think it will get solved.
Will that kill it? Not completely,
because I think people will still want to play the game.
But yes, the mystery of chess will be removed.
But maybe that's a load of rubbish anyway.
Maybe it will be exhausted.
But there are so many variants that might become popular in some
twenty second century iteration of chess.
'Your illogical approach to chess does have its advantages on occasion, Captain.'
Solving traditional chess is one thing
but the game is uniquely adaptable, with thousands of unsolved variants
that will keep it one step ahead of the computers, for now.
Right now we're seeing rapid chess, blitz chess in its ascendancy
because people want things quicker.
They want to see mistakes, they want to see drama - so that has taken over.
If you are putting it within these specific constraints of having a classical game
with a specific time format or you are randomising
where the pieces start, it's not about whether humans
can do this better than computers or not.
This is the pursuit of human excellence, same as you have with any other sport.