« Conservative Liberal Fascism | Main | Post-Patriotism » Bobby Fischer18 Jan 2008 02:14 pm I'm pretty sure that at one point my book refers to "chess grandmaster turned nutjob recluse Bobby Fischer" in the present tense so it's a good thing I've still got time for some last minute corrections. Meanwhile, I note that while I've met plenty of people who don't know the rules to chess, I think that out of the set of people who know how to play, I may be the worst chess player in the universe. Comments (39)
Take that you Harvard know it all. I beat Bobby Fischer at chess while delivering a baby-it's part of the reason I was too busy to monitor newsletters put out under my name for so many years. 
Learned to play when I was five, but have always been terribly, terribly disappointed in my game. Bought a Radio Shack computer chess game when I was a teen and have NEVER ONCE beat it, even on the lowest setting. Of course, I gave up about twenty years ago. I thought about giving it to my son, but decided not to take the chance of burdening him with the same resultant self-doubt.
Matt -- given your orthodox liberalism and complete lack of logical skills when evaluating anything (and especially American foreign policy) it is no great shock that you suck at chess. Of course you do. Your lily-white Harvard degree didn't teach you anything about people's motives for doing what they do.
Your lily-white Harvard degree didn't teach you anything about people's motives for doing what they do. Which relates to chess how, exactly? In my experience, zero-sum situations where all parties start with equal resources and information (typified by chess and other board games) are so rare in reality that one's skill (or lack thereof) in such situations is almost useless as a predictor of real-world effectiveness. FYI, my chess game sucks so badly that I bet no one here could lose to me even if they tried.
Is No Surprise serious? I'm sorry to have such a tin ear when it comes to sarcasm. Or not. Anyway, tough crowd. As for chess, I've always been struck by the correlation between excellence at the game and intelligence. Really. I, for example, can't play a lick. Alas.
zero-sum situations where all parties start with equal resources and information (typified by chess) Unless there is a technical meaning of "equal resources and information" that I'm not getting (which is certainly possible), this isn't remotely true of chess. Don't skill and knowledge count as resources and information?
Smarter trolls, please. You could argue that chess breeds a closed mind, blah etc blah, but it's dull analogising. I gravitated over to backgammon. It was David Hume's game of choice, perhaps because a roll of the dice can turn victory into defeat.
Converse -- I may have owned the same Radio Shack computer chess game (about 20 years ago or so). I never beat it either, and have played very little chess since then. That's funny in a way, as it makes me wonder if more people have been turned off than turned on about chess after encountering a software-based opponent.
"...it is no great shock that you suck at chess. Of course you do. Your lily-white Harvard degree didn't teach you anything about people's motives for doing what they do." The only language chess players understand is strength! We must have the WILL to win! We must break the rules and put more pieces on the board! If we need to torture a pawn to get to the queen, then by God we'll torture that pawn!
Unless there is a technical meaning of "equal resources and information" that I'm not getting (which is certainly possible), this isn't remotely true of chess. Don't skill and knowledge count as resources and information? Only in Libertarian Chess, where seasoned experts play against beginners who must figure out the rules as the game proceeds. (This reduces the unnecessary social expense of having to teach people how to play.)
hello: From a game theory outlook, that statement makes perfect sense. It's referring to resources and information within the game itself. For example resources normally means things like number of units, oil, money, that sort of thing. There is such a thing as human capital but it isn't as if there are veteran units in chess or that sort of thing. Information here refers to the fact that there's no "fog of war" or the like. Both sides see the position of all of the pieces. For a board game with unequal resources, see Diplomacy where Russia starts with an extra naval unit. For a board game with incomplete information see Risk where each player has cards they keep face down. For the record I'm a mediocre chess player. I could beat the best guy in my high school chess club on a good day and when he was having a bad day.
Greg -- thanks, I figured it might be something like that.
I think that out of the set of people who know how to play, I may be the worst chess player in the universe.This is impossible, because I am the worst chess player in the universe. On the past four occasions in which I have taught people the rules of the game of chess, I have lost. Let me repeat--I lose to people who are playing chess for the first time in their lives. I am the universe's worst chess player.
In regard to the "equal resources and information" question- I've always thought that chess provides a pretty good illustration of some of the limits of simple economic models in explaining or predicting human behavior. As Greg Sanders says, from a game theorist's (or economist's) perspective, chess is a situation of perfect information. Given that both players know all the rules, and the position of the pieces on the board, an assumption of rationality leads us to believe that both players will make optimal moves. In fact, any player who isn't an expert will likely make moves that deviate greatly from optimality, and a beginner will make moves that appear bizarrely irrational and inexplicable. Thus, if the strategic complexity of a game-like situation exceeds a player's strategic capacity, game theoretic models are worthless for predicting human behavior (even in the presence of perfect information). In the real world, situations like that are commonplace.
I'll hop on the "I suck at chess" bandwagon with an updated method of sucking: Downloading and installing and iPhone app, and getting routinely and soundly beaten. Caught a guy looking over my shoulder on the bus the other day, and I swore I caught a scoff. It's that bad.
Incredibly, I also had that Radio Shack chess machine, and I also never beat it, with the resultant self-doubt. Maybe that was just a particularly tough chess computer!
As a Liberal, I am good at Fascist Chess, where I begin by shooting my opponent in the face and then claiming all his pieces for the Fatherland. Then I give all his pieces excellent healthcare.
I learned to play in the Fischer hysteria days of 1972 when I was a kid, and got to be a fairly good player, occasionally beating people with rankings in the 1700-1800 range, if that means anything these days. (I'm not sure what the ranking system is now.) To get really good you have to develop an obsession and perhaps be a little insane. Fischer was impossibly good and very insane, and I'm sorry he's gone. Anyone looking to pick up the game or help teach a kid how to play could do worse than to find a copy of Fischer's book called "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess." You can get it for a penny on Amazon - just don't get one that's already had the answers pencilled in.
No, no, no! I suck at chess the most of anyone! It seems that there is only one way to resolve this--a reverse-tournament, where whoever loses gets to advance, until there is one loser left standing and we can crown the "Worst Chess Player in the World."
To get really good you have to develop an obsession and perhaps be a little insane. Fischer was impossibly good and very insane, and I'm sorry he's gone. It also helps to have a high IQ. Fisher's measured IQ was above 180. As for chess rankings, those in the range 1700-1800 are quite good. If it makes people feel any better, the computer chess games you buy at places like Radio Shack are rated above 2000. Its much more fun to play against people, though. I used to play blitz chess online all the time, topping out at 1650, before going cold turkey to end the addiction.
To get really good you have to develop an obsession and perhaps be a little insane. Fischer was impossibly good and very insane, and I'm sorry he's gone. He always reminded me of Morphy, the 1st America World Champion, who similarly gave up chess at teh peak of his career to become a full-time nutjob . . .
I was reasonably good at one point, since I had a high school science class where the teacher didn't care. A few of us started playing chess daily during class and I ended up getting pretty good. We figured out that you really don't start learning chess until you stop making bonehead mistakes like not seeing that your piece is directly in the line of fire from across the board. We ended up playing a lot of friendly games where we'd point it out and allow take-back moves. It's also important to play a lot of games where you don't allow it so everyone learns not to do it.
JordanT writes: "We ended up playing a lot of friendly games where we'd point it out and allow take-back moves." Friendly games? Take-back moves? That's blasphemy! Play to kill!
Nobody below Expert Level (2000) knows enough about Chess to say they suck at chess. It's like me saying, as opposed to a Major Leaguer saying, "I can't hit Clemen's fastball."
It seems that there is only one way to resolve this--a reverse-tournament, where whoever loses gets to advance, until there is one loser left standing and we can crown the "Worst Chess Player in the World." All this talk has me wondering if the best chessplayers at winning (the traditional goal) wouldn't also be best able to force their opponents to win (in an attempt to acquire the title of "Worst.") To enforce good faith, then, such a tournament would have to have substantial monetary prizes for the player who actually won the most matches (i.e., the "best" player, or "loser.")
I had been undefeated as a kid until I ran into these guys: http://www.thechessdrum.net/historicmoments/HM_mayjun03.html Then some of them went to my High School and I couldn't even make the team. Dedicated, serious people ruin it for the rest of us.
FWIW, I was in the 1900s for a while. I have beaten IM's, and even then I wasn't sure I was playing Chess. It was:"WTF am I doing, just moving the pieces around?" I celebrate Bobby today. He wanted one impossible thing, and achieved it. Pulitzers & Nobels can't compare. If a ballplayer hit a homerun in every atbat in a World Series, it might compare to his Candidate's performance. Three consecutive Golf Grand Slams. He lapped the field in 1972. Kasparov was a better Chess Player, but never as dominant. And after doing it, there was nothing else for him to do. Any further activity, like curing cancer, could only diminish him. So I don't judge the rest of his life.
Bad as I am at chess, I'm not bad enough to claim superlative badness. I have noticed, however, that when I play myself, whichever side I define as "me" going in loses.
"Kasparov was a better Chess Player" How do you mean that, Bob? If you mean he'd have cleaned Fischer's clock if we could get a time machine and set up a match in their respective primes, then that's probably true of a lot of GM's, just as many of the GM's of Fischer's day would have destroyed Morphy, Lasker, or Capablanca coming in cold to a match with them simply because the later GM's profited from decades of analysis of, among other things, the innovations of Morphy, Lasker, and Capablanca. Or do you mean sopmething else?
I am very good at chess. In fact, I consistently beat people who I know are objectively smarter and more capable than I am. I'm also very good at standardized tests. Therefore, chess and standardized testing should determine relative worth in all contexts.
"Personally, I am nowhere near good enough even to have an opinion about a good player's quality." That is why we have Elo ratings and a lot of time and computer processing spent on historical and normalized Elo ratings. You may not believe you can sanely compare Steinitz, Tal, and Kramnik but the numbers are out there. What the historical Elo ratings show is mostly relative to field or base, but since most chess pros play for 30-60 years there is enough overlap for, I think, the data to have some significance.
Greatest Chess Player of All Time ...Wikipedia All 6 or 7 comparative systems may be full of shit, but it is not as if a lot of time hasn't been spent on the matter, and it seems to me that the results are more credible than say, comparing Ruth to Bonds because the data is greater and more objective.
Well, Matt, likely somewhere in your town there's a place in a park or somewhere with tables where guys go to play chess. That would be Market and Fifth Street in San Francisco. Shut down the blog. Go and learn chess. Do us all a favor.
As for chess, I've always been struck by the correlation between excellence at the game and intelligence. Really. I went to Caltech as an undergrad, and only a handful of my classmates played chess competitively, probably about as many as played Quiz Bowl. I've known how to play since I was a kid, but never developed any particular skill or played competitively. My skill lies in trivia games (the aforementioned Quiz Bowl, beating Ben Stein, narrowly losing to Ken Jennings) and, not coincidentally, taking standardized tests.
"turned nutjob recluse" does not seem an appropriate manner in which to refer to someone suffering from mental illness. Bobby at his best was the best in the universe at the time. There was no close second. The same can be said for others in their time but few, if any, to the same degree. "many of the GM's of Fischer's day would have destroyed Morphy, Lasker, or Capablanca coming in cold to a match". We'll never know of course but anyone "destroying" Capa at his peak in a match is hard to imagine. Lasker and Morphy with some modern openings would also be top world class players today.
OK that's personal. I am the worst chess player in the world. Next time I'm in Washington I challenge you to a game (I'm kind of a groupie and have been looking for an excuse to demand that you meet me)
"Lasker and Morphy with some modern openings would also be top world class players today." But that was my point. I'm sure that if Lasker and Morphy popped up out of nowhere and started playing chess today, they would soon be world champions or contenders. But coming in cold they don't know modern openings. Morphy opens e4. His opponent responds d6. Morphy would look at the Pirc and say "What the fuck?" Being a genius, he might be able over the board to figure out some credible response, but many of the problems he would be facing for the first time have been solved and many things that, on general principles, look like solutions, have been refuted. That's a huge advantage. I heard Fischer tell Dick Cavett that he would beat any of the pre-modern greats not necessarily because he was better than, say, Morphy, but because he knew things Morphy couldn't have known.
"but because he knew things Morphy couldn't have known." Colucci, I consider opening strategy a little more complicated than that. When I was playing, I knew everybody was studying last weeks Gruenfeld so I went back to Steinitz and Rubinstein and won a lot of games. Everything is still played at the IM level, because there is a limit to how much theory a mind can hold. GM's have bigger minds, but you still see an occasional KGD. Humans ain't computers. I admit this could be a controversial, even stupid idea. Now the styles & skills of a Morphy or Steinitz may not work in modern Chess, but that is a more difficult question.
Comments closed February 01, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
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Posted by Jeffrey Davis | January 18, 2008 2:21 PM