
The End of the Golden Era of American Chess - merrier
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/09/pal-benko-shelby-lyman-and-chess-bobby-fischer-era/597343/
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mindgam3
Former chess prodigy here. I had the honor of training with Pal Benko in the
early 90s when I represented Team USA in the world youth championships. I
remember Benko being a real class act, which I can’t say about many of the
chess personalities I’ve met over the years. You could tell he was absolutely,
passionately in love with chess. In that sense he represented something pure
which maybe we’ve lost in this new era.

That said, let’s be clear. The golden era of American chess, and chess in
general, is happening now and only getting better. I give credit to to open-
source projects like LiChess and Lc0, tournaments like LiChess Titled where
mere mortals get a chance to challenge Magnus, and the rise of chess streaming
as a thing.

Heck, I’ll concede that the golden era of classical chess is over. But it’s
been over for a while, pretty much since computers advanced opening theory and
took all the wins out of classical. RIP classical chess. But for those willing
to think on their feet, the golden era of blitz and bullet is here :-)

~~~
yesenadam
Am watching the World Cup right now. Before that watched the Sinquefield Cup.
Both (so far) exciting events, not sure how you can pronounce classical chess
dead.

Bullet, lol---chess without thinking. It's the _thinking_ I like about chess.
The carefully-worked-out combinations, brilliant defensive plans, drawing
swindles etc. If people like playing bullet, great, but it seems another game
entirely.

People complaining here about the draws in the last world championship: the
WCC matches are much too short these days, players won't take risks as there's
no time to catch up if they backfire. But "shorter, faster" is supposed to
cure everything. Anyway, Karpov and Kasparov had a lot of draws, 17 in a row
in 1984, in virtually the pre-computer era.

~~~
mindgam3
Re classical, if you don’t want to take my word for it, look up the chess24
interview after the last world champs where magnus said it was so unenjoyable
he wasn’t even sure if he’d defend his title.

No offense, only people who suck at bullet say it doesn’t involve thinking.
It’s the same game, it involves developing and training your intuition. I
could teach anyone how to get good, even you... if you were open to learn that
is.

(And had the budget or could trade for coding hours :-)

~~~
yesenadam
If you have to say "No offense" to begin a sentence, it probably doesn't
belong on HN. And "..even you..if you were open to learn" is in the same vein.
I'm not interested in communicating further.

Edit: Gee, lots of downvotes. Not sure why. Should I have said nothing? I
thought the way they spoke to me was utterly unacceptable, as I calmly pointed
out. My initial points were mostly obvious things everyone in the chess world
knows, including the person I was responding to.

~~~
mikekchar
> Should I have said nothing?

I'm hoping you want a reply here, or else I'm wasting my time ;-) I have found
that letting others have the last word is both magnanimous _and_ a great
strategy for extracting myself from conversations with people I no longer wish
to talk to. You seem like the kind of person who appreciates strategic
thinking, which is why I thought you might enjoy that idea.

~~~
abraae
I read HN for civilised rejoinders such as this.

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rjf72
There's one interesting change I've noticed in chess and in a number of other
fields where we seem to be gradually are losing that _je ne sais pas_ we once
had. This [1] is a film from 1925, "Chess Fever". For one bit of unspoken
context, the smirking gentleman from the beginning (and the one that makes a
few recurring appearances) is Jose Raul Capablanca - a person often considered
the most naturally talented player ever and who was reigning world champ when
this movie was released. Aside from the humor of the movie, I think there's
something much more telling. The movie emphasizes chess as a game for adults,
that kids can play.

That was published just following the advent of the USSR which would go on to
become the world's powerhouse of chess for many decades, arguably continuing
to this day. It seems in the west we've gradually started to reverse that
adult-based focus for many things, chess among them: it's a game for kids,
that adults can play. We've spent an immense amount of energy, and money,
getting chess in schools but I'm not sure we've seen anything like a
proportional gain in outcome for it.

For instance this [2] is the home page for the US Chess Federation. They chose
of all possible pictures, for their lead image, one of an under 10 year old
girl playing, and the strong bias towards scholastic/youth chess is present
throughout. The only reason I mention this is because I imagine like many when
I was a kid I was reached an age (still a kid) where I was gradually repelled
by things I perceived as 'kid things' and drawn to things I perceived as
'adult things.' In my case coding was something I perceived as an adult thing,
and that attraction ended up playing a monumental role in shaping my life. I'm
quite curious if things would have been different had my school been actively
attempting to get kids involved in coding.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN6m711ddZk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN6m711ddZk)

[2] - [https://new.uschess.org/home/](https://new.uschess.org/home/)

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diminoten
I dunno, I feel like "the end of golden era of American chess" is pretty
unfair to the amazing things Sinquefield has going on in St. Louis right now,
as well as all of the "new" online resources that continue to pop up, and the
general penetration chess seems to be achieving in scholastic formats today.

This article seems focused on a handful of luminaries, but I'd argue that a
"golden era" of a thing is defined by it's blossoming into popularity and a
new kind of explosive growth that thing hasn't previously seen, which (and
maybe it's because I didn't grow up with Fischer) feels more like what's
happening now.

I don't know if chess is more popular now than it's ever been in America
(having read Pawn Sacrifice, I believe Fischer made chess fairly mainstream in
America for a time), but it feels like more people are _playing_ chess than
ever before in the US, and that strikes me as more of a hallmark of a "golden
era" than what this article refers to it as.

~~~
georgeoliver
In a way you can compare it to the "Golden Age" of science fiction, which
cemented the genre in our culture, but you can judge its classics on their own
merits while also considering them in light of the new works produced in the
decades after.

~~~
pfdietz
Reminded of the well known quip: the golden age of science fiction is 14.

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gridspy
If (like me) you're bored by regular chess now, consider trying out the
variant 16x16 "Four Kings one War."

It has been turned into Steam game with a free demo :
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/883680/Four_Kings_One_War...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/883680/Four_Kings_One_War/)

The AI for this game was coded in Rust, by me. Good luck!

~~~
reacweb
Many Go players were bored chess players.

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gosuri
Pal Benko was one of the world's top grandmasters in the 1950s and 60s,
playing in the Candidates Tournaments in 1959 and 1962 and notching up wins
against the likes of Bobby Fischer and Mikhail Tal. He achieved that despite
spending a year and a half in a Soviet concentration camp and defecting to the
US in 1957.

What a legend! RIP

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lgeorget
Well clearly the new chess Masters are no longer players but programmers. That
doesn't make the game uninteresting though.

A few months ago, one would have thought that we had the best algorithm and
that progress would only be slowly incremental for now on... until the
approach adopted to best humans at the game of go got applied to chess. Now
you have these programs like LeelaChess able to best Stockfish (a program that
had been improved over the last fifteen years) after a few months of training.
There's definitely a lot more to discover in this game.

~~~
aflag
I don't know if programmers are the new game masters. As far as I know, bots
are not allowed in most, if not all, chess competitions. It's not like we
stopped doing the 100m dash after the intention of the bicycle or the car.
Those are just other racing categories.

~~~
soup10
over the board chess can be a struggle for programmers because we are so used
to letting computers do the heavy lifting on calculations that its a struggle
to think through tactical situations when you know a simple program would do
the trick. It's almost like doing pen and paper arithmetic in the age of
calculators.

~~~
EpicEng
Likely more along the lines of "being good at chess is hard", regardless of
whether or not you're a programmer.

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krzat
A bit offtopic: is it still possible to create a Chess/Go type game that is
easy for humans but hard for AI? Or are we past that point already?

~~~
plopz
I could see a game like Mao being difficult for AI or really any game with an
inconsistent ruleset.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_\(card_game\))

~~~
UncleMeat
There is actually an entire field of general game playing that can be extended
to receiving partial rulesets at the start of the game.

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whatupmiked
Hikaru Nakamura is an American GM that has a pretty entertaining YouTube
channel if you are interested in chess.

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test3333
to learn chess, go to India

