CML
Contributor
Everyone agrees there shouldn't be Monopoly-level luck, but I'm sure there should be more than chess has. We should also yak about different notions of luck:
-Guy gets dealt AA three times in a row while we get KK. We are unlucky here but once both players have wagered everything we would be lucky to win.
-With 2 seconds left, the Pacers back off LeBron and he jacks up a 3 and connects, though he's only (say) 35% in that situation and they defended it well.
-We flood out in a game 3 where we feel we're heavily favored, and maybe we are. He's at 4 as we take one last draw step. It's Warleader's Helix. 'You got so lucky!' he yells.
Many game situations involve multiple kinds and they ought to. There's also the idea of a disconnect between intention and execution (throwing up a 3?) that interests me and that FSR didn't cover. This has always been a point of difficulty for sports video games to approximate, and I believe it exists for intellectual as well as physical attempts.
Anyway, 'My opponent's brain and intentions' are the essence of incomplete information and should likely form the backbone of each game. Luck should be on multiple levels, not "lol Park Place," but this is an obvious idea. The more interesting one I have is that game design is obligated to place this luck on multiple levels -- level 0 (dealt an unbeatable hand), level 1 (dealt an unbeatable hand that gets beat), and so on. This might help explain some of the stuff I typed in other posts.
I played competitive chess in HS (I'm not very good) and so I understand it somewhat dimly, mainly metaphorically. But, damnit, I have played. I think you misapprehend higher-level chess, and I'm stoned, so I'm going to write some paragraphs:
You're right that it requires rote memorization to get to the top of chess, which is a game design flaw chess shares with Magic, but openings are not so important as you think -- calculation is, as is a general strategic understanding of planning and execution and so on. You don't get better by memorizing the Yugoslav Attack, though when you get good you should know what it is. This is OK, though, since at higher levels chess is, as far as I can tell, a good game. It has its flaws, such as the corrupt governing base, the tendency towards Grandmaster draws, the tournament structure, the lack of a community, and the superiority of engines to people. But there is still room for excitement and spectators and aesthetics. Hell, the most "beautiful" games of chess are played by computers.
When chess is decided by brilliancies and subtleties and calculation and foresight and bringing all its concepts together, it's pretty cool. When it is played by anyone who is not quite good, though, or without a long time control (say 90m / side), it will usually be decided by catastrophic mistakes -- mistakes that are "objectively" bad, that computers would reject in a millisecond, and so on. There's too much precision required by Chess. This is by far the most important skill you need to master to progress beyond beginner -- all the ideas about middlegame IQP chances with the c3 Sicilian and the pawn-storm and doubled pawns and pins are fascinating, but they do not matter, they are not of consequence, because chess prioritizes a different and more restrictive and less interesting skill set. There are other things in chess that indicate this truth -- if I walk by two people casually playing chess, I will instantly notice several absurdities in the position, and I can only assume that, if someone much better than me walked by me playing myself, the result would be the same. The better player wins too often in chess, and its ability to support prodigies also points to deficiencies -- chess is a more self-contained world than even the Magic nerd cult, which limits its metaphorical significance -- it's not a compelling or fun way of seeing the world, which I guess is why I majored in literature and not economics. There is little irony in chess, little that compels its players to revise their judgments, and irony is what lets humans tower above mere gods. The Luzhin Defence is a decent novel about this. Anyway, below an elite level chess is just boring, and above that level it's subject to diminishing returns, in my opinion. This may very well come down to a judgment of taste, but none of us have trouble bashing EDH or Grim Mongo Cubes.
The best board game of all time is Scrabble (another Nabokov thing) and it's not close. Computers are poor Scrabble players. Guess why?
-Guy gets dealt AA three times in a row while we get KK. We are unlucky here but once both players have wagered everything we would be lucky to win.
-With 2 seconds left, the Pacers back off LeBron and he jacks up a 3 and connects, though he's only (say) 35% in that situation and they defended it well.
-We flood out in a game 3 where we feel we're heavily favored, and maybe we are. He's at 4 as we take one last draw step. It's Warleader's Helix. 'You got so lucky!' he yells.
Many game situations involve multiple kinds and they ought to. There's also the idea of a disconnect between intention and execution (throwing up a 3?) that interests me and that FSR didn't cover. This has always been a point of difficulty for sports video games to approximate, and I believe it exists for intellectual as well as physical attempts.
Anyway, 'My opponent's brain and intentions' are the essence of incomplete information and should likely form the backbone of each game. Luck should be on multiple levels, not "lol Park Place," but this is an obvious idea. The more interesting one I have is that game design is obligated to place this luck on multiple levels -- level 0 (dealt an unbeatable hand), level 1 (dealt an unbeatable hand that gets beat), and so on. This might help explain some of the stuff I typed in other posts.
I played competitive chess in HS (I'm not very good) and so I understand it somewhat dimly, mainly metaphorically. But, damnit, I have played. I think you misapprehend higher-level chess, and I'm stoned, so I'm going to write some paragraphs:
You're right that it requires rote memorization to get to the top of chess, which is a game design flaw chess shares with Magic, but openings are not so important as you think -- calculation is, as is a general strategic understanding of planning and execution and so on. You don't get better by memorizing the Yugoslav Attack, though when you get good you should know what it is. This is OK, though, since at higher levels chess is, as far as I can tell, a good game. It has its flaws, such as the corrupt governing base, the tendency towards Grandmaster draws, the tournament structure, the lack of a community, and the superiority of engines to people. But there is still room for excitement and spectators and aesthetics. Hell, the most "beautiful" games of chess are played by computers.
When chess is decided by brilliancies and subtleties and calculation and foresight and bringing all its concepts together, it's pretty cool. When it is played by anyone who is not quite good, though, or without a long time control (say 90m / side), it will usually be decided by catastrophic mistakes -- mistakes that are "objectively" bad, that computers would reject in a millisecond, and so on. There's too much precision required by Chess. This is by far the most important skill you need to master to progress beyond beginner -- all the ideas about middlegame IQP chances with the c3 Sicilian and the pawn-storm and doubled pawns and pins are fascinating, but they do not matter, they are not of consequence, because chess prioritizes a different and more restrictive and less interesting skill set. There are other things in chess that indicate this truth -- if I walk by two people casually playing chess, I will instantly notice several absurdities in the position, and I can only assume that, if someone much better than me walked by me playing myself, the result would be the same. The better player wins too often in chess, and its ability to support prodigies also points to deficiencies -- chess is a more self-contained world than even the Magic nerd cult, which limits its metaphorical significance -- it's not a compelling or fun way of seeing the world, which I guess is why I majored in literature and not economics. There is little irony in chess, little that compels its players to revise their judgments, and irony is what lets humans tower above mere gods. The Luzhin Defence is a decent novel about this. Anyway, below an elite level chess is just boring, and above that level it's subject to diminishing returns, in my opinion. This may very well come down to a judgment of taste, but none of us have trouble bashing EDH or Grim Mongo Cubes.
The best board game of all time is Scrabble (another Nabokov thing) and it's not close. Computers are poor Scrabble players. Guess why?
