Chess (Re: "Advanced" use of virtual worlds? (Re: [MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs))

[Cynbe ru Taren]

James Edward Gray II <chessman at mac.com>  writes:

> I think the fact the chess is an "advanced game" is pretty secure.
> You have people devoting their lives to the study of chess and
> still losing games.  Unlike most games, there is no luck factor
> involved here, it's a true contest of skill against skill.  If you
> sit down across the board with a player who has considerably more
> skill, it's quite likely you'll lose hundreds of games straight to
> them.  Chess is most definitely and "advanced game", and it may
> even be the most advanced game.
 
> As for chess being a "pretty rigid and limited pattern matching
> game", I think we can safely rule that out as well.  There have
> been more books written about chess than any other single topic.
> If all these authors are just trying to get the patterns of the
> game across to us, their doing a pretty bad job of it.  Also, if
> chess were as simple as pattern matching, computers would probably
> be capable of the perfect game, don't you think?  I assure you
> they're not capable of such a thing and the skill they do achieve
> comes from the impressive amount of calculations they can quickly
> make.  While pattern matching is a part of chess, it is by no
> means something we can reduce the entire game to.  I good chess
> player draws on many other areas, including creativity which is
> pretty much a fundamental opposite to pattern matching.

I can't resist chipping in with agreement.

I may be culturally biased here (I was first board on the school
chess team all through high school, and my brother is approaching
grandmaster strength), but I think there's a general concensus that
chess and Go are on a level by themselves.

The Deep Blue team picked on chess because checkers was too easy and
"Go was too hard".  I don't know of any other game which would be
listed as "too hard" these days.

A case might be made for bridge, say, but it is off in a very
different direction.

There are very, very few games which can take centuries of lifetime
study by first-rate minds and remain fresh and interesting.  Among
perfect information games, Chess (including some variants, like
shogi) and Go stand essentially alone in this class.

-- Cynbe, who has maybe been a bit too silent of late on this
list. :)
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