Human Chess Game Thread

[filthyvermin]

argh, those stupid your mom jokes are really addictive. i need a 12 step program. first step is no deep engine analysis appreciation joke

[PyramidScheme]

Have you guys ever heard me rant about how much I hated Star Trek's Tri-Dimensional chess?

[kokiri]

nope. The floor is yours.

[PyramidScheme]

The writers blatant lack of understanding of what chess was all about drove me crazy.

OK so chess is played on a flat board for like 1,000 years and NOW, because its THE FUTURE, we have to play it on THREE DIMENSIONS, because the ONE DIMENSIONAL version of the PAST isn't SOPHISTICATED and FUTUREY enough for STAR TREK.

Hey Gene Roddenberry, **** you.

If chess ever gets altered to Chess960 because engines have played out the openings, thats one thing. But you're telling me a flat board isn't good enough for Star Trek? What everyone in the future is BEYOND it? That is the clear implication to me and it annoys me. It's the future, we get it. Play Chess the way it's supposed to be played. There was a show like ten years ago starring Kevin Sorbo (I forget the name of it, lasted like 2 seasons), where they played GO on 3 dimensions as well. Glad Gene's vision of ruining classic games made it to the 2000's.


Another thing that was obvious is they never even bothered to have the actors remember actual moves,... or even learn how to play chess, or make any attempt to make the audience believe chess was being played. Kirk and Spock were CLEARLY randomly moving the pieces around which maybe I can live with, but in one episode.

Kirk beats Spock (human intuition > logic+higherIQ,lol) and then Spock plays another game with another opponent.... AND THEY DON'T RESET THE PIECES. I MEAN FOR CHRISTS SAKES AT LEAST MOVE A FEW AROUND TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE YOU'RE RESETTING THE BOARD. Spock won the 2nd game, pretty amazing considering he started the game in checkmate.


There is yet another episode where Spock goes about to prove the ships computer has a bug in it by playing the computer in chess and defeating it 12 times in a row. When he tells Dr. McCoy, McCoy instantly barks, "Thats impossible!" And OK, that makes sense, given how strong engines are now I'm sure it would be impossible for a regular person to beat one in 2300 or whatever year it is. But hold the phone, Spock later reveals he set the computer to play at HIS OWN skill level, ... so the best he could expect is a draw...

Um, wat?

So the implication here is Spock might at times play below his own skill level due to human/vulcan error, but the computer will play flawlessly at Spock's skill level so it would at worst draw. SPOCKS SKILL LEVEL IS FLAWED, YOU CAN'T PLAY FLAWLESSLY FLAWED ANYTHING. Ugh, I hate these people. If you pit 2 engines vs each other that are the same strength, what will they always draw? Morons.

/nerdiest rant ever

[PyramidScheme]

The name of the Kevin Sorbo show was "Andromeda" Featured a not-known actress named Lexa Doig, who I at the time thought was amazingly hot... but I guess my taste has changed.

[kokiri]

have you seen the Next generation equivalent?

edit: forget it, i looked it up and it's not that like chess at all

[kokiri]

in general, i find the star trek take on logic in the form of spock and data mind blowingly tilting. It's like the writers are these arts grads who have utterly no idea about logic at all.

also, it's always fun to read sci fi from the 60s where people are often playing Go because of some new age hippie eastern BS.

[filthyvermin]

Originally Posted by PyramidScheme

/nerdiest rant ever

lol!!! awesome read

[PyramidScheme]

I remember the Next Generation thing you're talking about. Yes that game wasn't Chess but the guy on board the ship that's REALLY GOOD at it as referred to as a Grandmaster so it's supposed to be along the same lines. Anyway I had my issues with this episode to because of moronic continuity issues. Data loses at whatever the **** that game was to the grandmaster and goes on depression tilt insisting his program must be malfunctioning because he is FLAWLESS. (More man > machine bull****)

In an episode later in the series Data loses a game of chess to Counselor Troi. She explains how her illogic defeated his logic (Kirk often did the same to Spock)(blah blah more wo(man) > machien bull****) DATA IS A ROBOT, HE WOULD ANLALYZE ALL MOVES LIKE A ROBOT!! He isn't going to overlook **** because it "seems stupid", THATS WHAT A PERSON WOULD DO!!. Do you people even know what mahcines are? Furthermore if he wanted to be deactivated because he lost to a grandmaster, then he should have wanted to hang himself for losing to Counselor Troi. It would have been laughable for Counselor Troi just to beat a man in chess, but an android? lol Star Trek. Data took this loss perfectly fine.

[PyramidScheme]

In the Scott Bakula show they played on a flat board. I'd like to think they saw the error of the ways but it was more like..

hey guys, we're in the future but its not AS future as the other future!!! omgzmololzolz


They were too busy ruining Star Trek to remember to ruin chess as well.

[amplify]

I was more annoyed by Worf's stupid kid running around and half the plots revolving around O'Brien and Keiko in the later seasons to appreciate logic and game theory errors.

[Gabethebabe]

This position is known and occurred in the game Timman-Tal in 1986. I wonder if white finds the move that Timman played here.

[amplify]

Originally Posted by kokiri

in general, i find the star trek take on logic in the form of spock and data mind blowingly tilting. It's like the writers are these arts grads who have utterly no idea about logic at all.

also, it's always fun to read sci fi from the 60s where people are often playing Go because of some new age hippie eastern BS.

ironically (?) go would be a much better illustration of the kind of man vs machine metaphor since computers still can't play it to the level of humans.

In Star Trek's defense, computers were complete crap at chess in the 60's.

[ganstaman]

Originally Posted by PyramidScheme

I'm 27. So I doubt you're 12.

Hmmm, well it seems I'm likely less than a year younger than you. So didn't you grow up on algebraic notation like I did? Since it's what I used for all my games live and online and it was in the magazines, that's the notation I can most naturally use to visualize a chess game in my mind. Descriptive notation seems foreign to me and takes effort to convert to moving pieces. I figured anyone my age would be the same, but I guess not.

Also, my "15 years" may have been off. I'm not entirely sure how old someone would have to be to have done enough of their chess learning with descriptive notation in order for it to come more naturally to them than algebraic.

I don't really care about this, I'm just curious.

[amplify]

I am 42 and most of the (old at the time) books I first learned out of were descriptive.

I had to convert to algebraic and once I encountered it I never wanted to see descriptive again.