why is chess considered more intellectual than checkers

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

This is the burning question on my mind.

― ejad, Tuesday, 1 October 2002 22:55 (twenty-two years ago)

cz of remembering how to spell its famous players

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 1 October 2002 22:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm sick of all these chess nuts boasting in an open foyer!!

― Joe (Joe), Tuesday, 1 October 2002 23:03 (twenty-two years ago)

:-0

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 1 October 2002 23:05 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm trying to imagine "Checkers: the musical" and having some alarming thoughts..

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 00:34 (twenty-two years ago)

The male members from S Club 7 join up with Rice to do a musical about old men playing checkers in the exotic location of Idaho.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 00:36 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm a medium-strength tournament chessplayer (USCF 1750) and haven't played checkers in years (and never at anything close to tournament level). I can't speak to the intellects of chessplayers vs. checkers players, but I have no reason to think they're not comparable, though the skills required in each game are probably a bit different. I don't know enough about the subtleties of thought in checkers to compare them to those of chess; I can say that I have a hard time imagining it capable of the richness that chess offers, but that's probably just my ignorance.

I'd repeatedly heard that checkers had been solved, but -- unless this page is out of date -- it looks like it hasn't, so there goes that potential argument. My impression is that checkers-playing computers are almost completely dominant in the checkers world, whereas in the chess world, humans are still making a fight of it, as the upcoming Kramnik-Deep Fritz match will hopefully attest.

Interestingly enough, as far as I know, computers are still way behind humans in Go -- I remember reading that the strongest computer could barely play at club level, though I don't know whether that's still true.

― Phil (phil), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 01:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Go requires different strategies than chess, though. It so happens that algorithms for chess are complex, but not impossible to program. Whereas Go is almost NP-complete (meaning it's impossible to express in an algorithm that will run on any kind of conventional computer). Of course, once we have quantum computers, it'll probably be solved.
Actually, that's a lousy definition of NP-complete- I'll go look up a good one & post it.

― lyra (lyra), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 02:43 (twenty-two years ago)

SCRABBLE ALL THE WAY. Scrabble is interesting because it's an intellectual game (more mathematical at it's highest levels than especially lierary or whatever) but of course it's trademarked. So good, pro/tournament players have a completely different thing going on than with chess etc

― spectra, Wednesday, 2 October 2002 02:46 (twenty-two years ago)

NP-completeness on the web, since I appear to have lost all my textbooks with understandable explanations in them: http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/NP-complete

(The first thing I hit on my bookshelf- Hal's Legacy- has an entire chapter devoted to the history of chess algorithms on computers. Not that technical, but it's a nice read if anyone's looking for an overview.)

― lyra (lyra), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 02:55 (twenty-two years ago)

But scrabble is much more "solveable" at a turn-to-turn level and so computers can really whup ass.

(lyra beat me to the rest of this post)

np-completeness is a criteria for an algorithm, not for a tree of a game but (for example) the algorithim to generate that tree.

np-complete algorithms are all equivalent (reducable) to one another, and the hypothesis is that none can be accomplished in polynomial time [O(n^x) where n is the size of the dataset and x is an arbitrary number] and thus as n becomes large the time to solve becomes huge very fast.

the point isn't that "solving" the go tree is np-complete (though it probably is) but rather that the best possible algorithm on the best possible computer would still take a massive fucking huge amount of time.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 02:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Hence we need quantum computers- do each branch at once!
But yeah, I was sloppy w/ my terminology. All these nice CS things you learn in school, and they are utterly useless in the real world.

― lyra (lyra), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 02:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Except quantum computing could *model* each branch simultaneously but only in suspended wave-form. observe it to see what the model is and boom! you collapse the wave. So you could q-compute for the next move, q-compute to say whether with perfect play either player wins or you draw (most likely, I think), but you couldn't q-compute to get the whole game.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 03:21 (twenty-two years ago)

because there's no pie you can explain by saying it's "checkers pie"

― felicity (felicity), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 04:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Chess is aristocratic, checkers is democratic. Yay checkers!

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 05:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Checkers represents the downfall of true democracy, as at some point in the game a piece is elevated above the others.

― Andrew (enneff), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 05:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Any little boy in America can grow up to be president. Yay for checkers!

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 05:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Because of the cute lickle horsey and the li'l castle and awwww.

dum ty dum ty dum ty dum ty NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! dum ty dum ty

― Graham (graham), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 07:25 (twenty-two years ago)

It's harder to get started at chess (in that it would take longer to explain the rules), which more than offsets the "ooh, little horsies" anti-intellectualism

― Sofa King Alternative (Sofa King Alternative), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 07:50 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm with Spectra. i LOVE scrabble. it's just awesome. i read a great book about scrabble at chamnpionship level, called 'word freak', by ummmmmm... Stefan Fatsis. EVERY scrabble fan should read it, it's a real eye opener.

― g-kit (g-kit), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 08:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Does anyone know of a gd site for on-line chess?

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 09:04 (twenty-two years ago)

no, but i know a good one for on-line scrabble. actually, i think they do chess too, but i've not tried it cos i'm not much of a chess player. but give it a go, they have rankings and ratings and stuff. if the scrabble is anything to go by, it should be good. it's http://www.playsite.com

― g-kit (g-kit), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 09:31 (twenty-two years ago)

and also, why don't people play the dot game, like, outside of middleschool

― ejad, Wednesday, 2 October 2002 10:11 (twenty-two years ago)

If that's the one where you join up dots to form squares then in my case because after the age of seven my mother stopped feeling obliged to let me win every time and started winning by a humiliatingly vast margin each game. Sigh.

― Rebecca (reb), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 19:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah I did mean that game. Now that I think about it, the dot game would probably be incredibly easy for a computer to "solve".

― ejad, Wednesday, 2 October 2002 19:46 (twenty-two years ago)

(Is this really a serious question? Because (a) all checkers are alike*, and (b) any given checker can only affect its immediate surroundings**, whereas (c) chess pieces have specialized movements, and (d) many of them can affect large segments of the board.)

* = okay, some are kinged, but all have kinging-potential, so it's just a question of whether they've gotten there or not

** = okay, you can chain your jumps to affect distant portions of the board, but it's more contextual than inherent in the piece movements

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 19:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I mean, checkers is sort of like chess if there were only pawns.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 19:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, yeah.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 20:55 (twenty-two years ago)

hmm. maybe I should start paying attention in math class.

― ejad, Wednesday, 2 October 2002 22:27 (twenty-two years ago)

The thing with the dot game is that each area of the field of play can be analyzed seperately with relatively basic algorithms -- there's no particular overall strategic aspect to it across the board.

i.e. the possible combinations of lines on a VERY LARGE dot-game would be the same as the possible set of go moves, so its game-tree would be equally large, but it's possible to play the game with simple lookaheads for the next few moves and detection of particular "trap" situations with minimal processor use.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 3 October 2002 02:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Ejad, screw math class & get a unix account that you can do some programming in. It's far more useful.

― lyra (lyra), Thursday, 3 October 2002 04:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Dominoes is more intellectual than all this shit.

― geeta (geeta), Thursday, 3 October 2002 05:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Also, what Lyra said.

― geeta (geeta), Thursday, 3 October 2002 05:04 (twenty-two years ago)

games where you can cheat w/a partner are more intellectual than any other since no computer can win them

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 3 October 2002 05:06 (twenty-two years ago)

like bridge?

― felicity (felicity), Thursday, 3 October 2002 05:47 (twenty-two years ago)

like adultery

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 3 October 2002 07:26 (twenty-two years ago)

haha bierce perfected artificial intelligence ages ago

"Moxon underneath, his throat still in the clutch of those iron hands, his head forced backward, his eyes protruding, his mouth wide open and his tongue thrust out, and - horrible contrast! -upon the painted face of his assassin an expression of tranquil and profound thought, as in solution of a problem in chess"

― bob zemko (bob), Thursday, 3 October 2002 08:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Checkers is more intellectual if you call it draughts.

― Sam (chirombo), Thursday, 3 October 2002 08:43 (twenty-two years ago)

(anyone interested in strategies for that dots-and-boxes game shd check out conway et al's "winning ways (for your mathematical plays)". i think it's in vol 2. this is about as un-geeky as proper maths books get ie it has cartoons in it and stuff like that.)

(nb i'd like to add that it's been a long time since i've read books on dots-and-boxes strategies "for fun". ahem.)

― toby (tsg20), Thursday, 3 October 2002 11:40 (twenty-two years ago)

moxon's assassin = his robot btw

anyay can anyone explain to me that matchstick game/riddle in "l'annee derniere a marienbad"?

― bob zemko (bob), Thursday, 3 October 2002 11:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Charades is nowhere near being solved by computer and is thus the most intellectual game of all.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 3 October 2002 11:52 (twenty-two years ago)

There's some sequence yr supposed to keep up, which I forget, and anyway its a fairly simple mnemonic which "solves" the game.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 3 October 2002 17:16 (twenty-two years ago)

twenty years pass...

The chess governing body are dumb, for one.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/aug/17/trans-women-banned-from-world-chess-events-while-review-takes-place

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 17 August 2023 16:36 (one year ago)

Why the fuck is chess even gender segregated in the first place?

― emil.y, Thursday, 17 August 2023 16:42 (one year ago)

The old argument that men are better at the kind of thinking required for chess.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 18 August 2023 03:15 (one year ago)

Math, spatial relationships, blah blah blah.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 18 August 2023 03:17 (one year ago)

it's probably because male chess players get uncomfortable sitting that close to a woman

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 18 August 2023 03:20 (one year ago)

I googled it when I saw that article (TIL that there is such a thing as “women’s chess”, altho women are not barred from competing in any tournament). Seems like male domination of the game is so total, if only in sheer number of players, that the existence of a women’s division is mainly designed to level out the perception of male dominance? or something

So… kind of understandable when seen from that angle, altho a) weird, and b) excluding trans women from women’s competitions is super weird & just makes the chess world seem even more sexist than it already seems. TERFIDE?

― The land of dreams and endless remorse (hardcore dilettante), Friday, 18 August 2023 12:44 (one year ago)

verging on Saturday Night Live material

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 18 August 2023 13:20 (one year ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.