Chess-related software is certainly booming as well. My favorite recent addition is OpeningTree[0], a platform that lets you input anyone's Lichess or chess.com username and load a tree of their opening moves. I play in the Lichess4545[1] league and its an incredible tool.
My contributions to the chess community are much smaller. I wrote u/relevant_post_bot[2] for /r/anarchychess and stylochess[3] in an attempt to solve the identity of mysterious super grandmasters[4].
My own contributions are modest. I wrote the shitty little Chess program that Apple gave away on their early Apple II demo game cassette tape and a few years later wrote and sold a Go playing program for the Apple II.
I am going to check out the Twitch Chess ‘show’ mentioned in the article, looks very cool. I enjoy Go webcasts supported by the American Go Association.
I use a very strong Go playing program for practice. I have it rate all of my game moves and for each move show the best alternative. It really helps, and has replaced expensive lessons from a South Korean Go professional I took a few years ago.
I need to find something similar for Chess. I played in the US Chess Open in 1978, and have not played very many serious games since then.
Headline is almost certainly clickbait. While yes chess is increasing in viewership, 4,313 average viewers is hardly taking over Twitch’s 15 million daily viewers. Chess is currently the 29th most popular game on Twitch: https://sullygnome.com/games/30/watched
It doesn't get high viewership, but as a cultural moment for the site, it was huge. Chess posts regularly topped LSF for several weeks, and they remain strong.
It was popular enough that it drew a strong reactionary movement of people complaining about chess posts. You can argue about clickbait, but the view counts (not that #30 is shabby at all) don't do it justice.
Although the article only talks about Twitch chess streamers, Chess on YouTube is booming with streamers like GM Vidit Gujarathi, Samay Raina and Chessbase India channel pulling in an average of 30k concurrent viewers.
GM Anish Giri also streams on YouTube with respectable concurrent viewers.
Although probably an unpopular position I agree with Finegold who is quoted in the article.
Ever since chess became big on twitch, online communities are increasingly filled with drama around Nakamura's persona, other twitch related drama, or just general gamer-community style content that was largely absent before.
The popularity largely focusses on a few twitch celebrities rather than talented players, it does very little to promote chess players who deserve to get more attention for the quality of their play, or just genuinely players who have played for a long time.
I think it does little to foster growth of chess as a sport and is just an opportunity to milk whatever commercial value anyone can out of the attention which I wager will be short-lived, as the twitch crowd moves on to the next thing.
This is particularly ironic considering that Finegold talking shit specifically about one streamer (xqc) has been the biggest chess drama in the Twitch world since this all started. And, of course, that only served to bring more attention from the Chess-specific world to that one celebrity.
The other drama things I can remember have come mainly from the Chess world, too. Chess.com vs chess24 tournament drama. And Nakamura vs Carlsen drama.
The main types of drama coming from Twitch people has been things like sexism in the Chess world and elitism in the chess world.
Additionally, you complain that this only focuses on the few Twitch celebrities rather than talented players... except that if the Twitch world doesn't understand why those players are talented, how will they know they have talent? This was a main criticism of chess tournament streams before chess took off on Twitch; casual viewers didn't understand what the commentators were talking about. Twitch opening up commentary to new players and teaching them why a move is bad/good from a casual viewpoint is only a good thing for the chess world.
If you actually wanted those talented players to get more attention for the quality of their play, you'd welcome this sort of beginner commentary and content. Otherwise, fewer people will recognize their talent. Do note that this takes time; you can't convert beginner chess viewers into more competent viewers in the span of a few months.
If you actually wanted those talented players to get more attention for the quality of their play, you'd reject comments like Finegold's "negative talent" comment. That is so off-putting and toxic, and is one of the primary reasons why people don't get into chess in the first place. There is a shocking amount of elitism in the chess world. And it actually comes off that way in your comment. "No, Twitch viewers are watching the wrong players, they're watching not-as-talented personality players and not the ones I think they should watch instead."
I don't find all of Nakamura's content equally interesting: I don't care so much about PogChamps (I think it's good for chess, but I don't enjoy watching it much). I have enjoyed watching 4 strong players muddle their way through learning 4 way chess, etc. I've enjoyed watching him play odds games with lots of knights and talk about what he'd discovered about these unusual games.
I'm playing more than I used to, and I know a whole bunch of people are picking up the game or playing more as a result of the attention.
Yes, some of the attention may be episodic. Bobby Fischer permanently boosted chess in the US, but the remnants of the boost felt today was nowhere near what it was at peak. Still, things compound: some fraction of those who get interested by chess streams will become people who consume chess content that you personally approve of.
It's worth noting that Ben Finegold is also a streamer and 99% of everything he says is a joke. There's some educational content on his streams, but mostly he hangs out, plays casual games, and insults the audience. It's fun.
that undersells him enormously. he has a hilarious dry sense of humor (a la Leslie Nielsen), which i guess isn't for everyone in the sense that humor isn't for everyone.
That's Finegold. So what? He's wrong. There's a lot of chess audiences, and not all chess is about grandmaster level playing -- some of it is just pure entertainment, and that requires entertainers. Nakamura isn't just training chess talent -- he's creating entertainment and training entertainers.
I'd rather watch Hikaru Nakamura's streaming to any games featuring Magnus Carlsen (unless his opponent is Nakamura). You get the sense that Nakamura is one of the kindest and most generous people around, and he's plenty funny too. Compare and contrast the ways in which Nakamura and Carlsen are going about the business of building chess business. The world champion sets up traditional chess events, such as competitions and tours. Nakamura streams, and not just alone but with other streamers, and makes a show of training xqc even though xqc is mediocre at chess and probably always will be -- this is entertaining!
Either Finegold gets this and is playing his part to add to the drama (entertainment) or he doesn't get it and is missing out on all the fun. Either way he contributes to Nakamura's efforts!
Yes, yes, Finegold makes awesome videos to teach children chess, and he is entertaining in his own way, but there's no need to dump on Nakamura's efforts. Different markets.
The most popular streamers in any game are not necessarily the most talented, but those that are the most entertaining while still being reasonably talented.
In the media industry, it was entertainment the variable that brought the majority of eye balls and popularity.
And I don't understand why people get upset by this.
Twitch, like in any other media, has a wide variety of content: has educational content, has entertainment, has competitive gameplay, etc. Just because some games are competitive doesn't mean you don't have different formats of content around the game.
Entertainment is still the most popular form of content, and that's fine.
That's the internet and life in general. Most things tend to be personality driven unless the person is beyond exceptional over their peers in which case they have merely a larger percentage chance to break through just by virtue of skill alone, but even this is far from guaranteed.
Although it's been a little dead since last time. I have been thinking of reviving it but lichess notifications aren't very good at least the forum system. Many people don't login to their account on a regular basis so it's easy to miss them.
An an email based invitation system seems better. What do you guys think? Is anyone interested in maintaining a sort of a club for HN members so we could include everything like open source experimentation and streaming place [0] from a few days ago?
I just watched Nakamura play chess blindfolded yesterday while holding up a lively conversation. I know that blindfolded chess has been a thing for a long time, but it is always so impressive to me. Any hope that I'd have of keeping positions in my head would be gone as soon as someone talked to me.
Even more impressive were the scrambled games, where the back line pieces were out of order. So he first had to figure out where on the board the pieces actually are – blindfolded.
It's an networking mechanism to send state changes to the other agent and broadcast them to nearby subscribers. It has the side effect of semi-durably persisting the state, too.
Just passing by to signal-boost the creator of Lichess, a single person who, out of frustration with FICS et al., made an amazing product out of the blue, released it under an open source license and delivered an UX that blew its competitors right out of the water.
All it takes one person with skill and generosity to completely change a community for the better. I hope to become one day this kind of person.
Taking over is probably a bit of an overstatement, but I would be thrilled if it grew in popularity. Not only is it a game of thought, but it is a game that I have taught children using nothing more than scraps of paper (to make the board and pieces).
The article mentions a cultural clash. That isn't so unusual for the game. The history of chess can be traced back centuries, with both variations in rules and its place in society. The game survived regardless.
I know this sounds like I'm missing the point, but I'd love to see enhanced clients for chess which graphically pointed out long and short term options for those of us who play casually. That way we could be more like generals choosing among battlefield options, rather than having to memorize openings.
As a somewhat odd example, this would be like the Nintendo DS version of Street Fighter - which allowed you to assign on-screen buttons for common attacks. Rather than having to master a series of button presses and execute perfectly, you could just tap the button and fire off a Hadoken. Would I ever compete at EVO playing the game like that? No, of course not. But it was fun! I still lost a lot, but it was just a deeper game.
I think the same could be done for Chess. Let those of us with mediocre knowledge and skills play the game at the level the masters play at with the help of some AI. Rather than handicapping with time or giving up a piece, let the other player have options to get help from the AI once in a while - say 3 times during the game. Or have it set to not allow blunders without confirmation. There's a lot that could be done to add pleasure to the game.
Forgive me if I sound harsh, English is not my language, but it is an uninformed point of view. 3 AI hints are unlikely to improve your experience of the game, because you probably would have FUBARed your position before. Position is precisely "master level play".
At low level, you don't really need to memorize a ton of openings. As White, you can use an opening that has few possible continuations for the Black, or specialize in weird and perhaps lesser-known opening (Bird, Sicilian first for instance). Whether or not they are viable at high level is not relevant at all. You can have fun with "your" opening - and maybe learn a second one when you are bored of it.
As Black, you might already have guessed that your "strategy" will be a bit different - cause White can throw anything at you as I've explained (that's another reason to choose a weird White opening yourself - at least you know how to answer to that one). With Black, focus less about rote memorization of the opening moves and more on the general principles that guide the opening (control the center, mobilize your bishops and knights, care about your pawn structures, castle quickly). Evaluating your moves and your opponent's according to those criteria is the really interesting part.
In other words, despite all the folklore around Chess, it is not a memory game - not until a high level - but a game in which you interpret general principles (judge a position) all while attacking or defending.
Don't worry about openings yet, at all. Practise basic tactics (pins, forks, skewers, discovered attack, overloading, interference etc) until you almost never fall victim to them, and can spot it quickly when others do.
I'm one of the mediocre players and what's helped tremendously for chess tactics is the book "predator at the chess board" (it's available online) and lichess's puzzles.
> Let those of us with mediocre knowledge and skills play the game at the level the masters play at with the help of some AI.
Correspondance games on lichess.org give you an opening explorer which shows you what masters have played before. (Click on the microscope, then on the book icon.)
Is there a chess game which teaches you well known openings as well?
I use to have a java game on my old Nokia phone once. Never found it again. If I made a certain opening, or did a certain move, it use to tell me that I played that particular move.
Chess.com has excellent commentary and coverage of popular chess events. Not affiliated, but just impressed with the quality of their commentary, making it informative and exciting.
A couple friends and I started a Chess Puzzle app (Chess Puzzle Blitz) and chess.com + COVID-19 is a big reason there has been a massive rally in Twitch. Most players you see on Twitch and that have been talked about in this thread are signed to exclusive twitch streaming agreements by chess.com - Chess.com is very profitable. Downside is it solidifies their position as the dominant online player. Upside is it does make chess more known and watched worldwide.
It's also worth noting that, in general, Twitch chat is less toxic for Chess than other games/categories.
I do peruse Twitch fairly regularly looking for streams that resonate. I'm always repulsed by a "LET'S GO BOYS" mentality which meanders between homophobia, sexism, bullying, hate speech.
Actually most of the pogchamps players have commented how their chat is more toxic when they're playing chess than other games because of the backseating.
Different kinds of toxicity-- mocking people for missing a mate or hanging a piece is tempting (and perhaps stings more than some random's judgment call about whether you played a round well in some non-perfect-knowledge, reflex-drive game). So more of that type of problem, but a bit less of other types like sexism.
I honestly can't stand Twitch chat, nor do I understand it. Where do all these random made up words come from, and how are you supposed to know what they stand for, I simply don't get it.
There's a few streamers I watch semi-regularly, but I always turn off the chat.
I did a Ctrl+F and no one so far has posted about cheating! How can we trust a Twitch experience of chess when actual video game streamers have been caught cheating on Call of Duty et all? This seems rife for abuse. I love chess but I wouldn’t play electronically against random folks since the past 15 years.
I've been playing fairly regularly on lichess and I can assure you that I have not yet met players that were using computers to cheat. Firstly, lichess may have some simple checks for move strength relative to the player's rating. Secondly, I mostly play 5+0 blitz and it's really hard to cheat as the time goes low with no increments
In my thousands of games on lichess I've run into a couple of cheaters, but they are very easy to spot. You also get the rating points refunded once they are caught and removed.
A standard engine is probably somewhere around 3000 strength (better than any human), and the average person who cheats is probably 1000-1800 strength. Within 1-2 games you can easily tell if a 1500 player is magically playing above super-gm strength all the sudden. The player also isn't going to be good enough to not play the computer moves that give them away, because they won't understand them!
Yah, I've played a few games against people that A) played a tricky but objectively weak (memorized) opening hoping I'd fall into traps, B) blundered their whole way around the middle game, hanging pieces like mad, and C) slowed way down and played with 99.9% accuracy through the only, very non-obvious 20 move sequence that could salvage a draw for them. It's pretty obvious. (Often they are slow with the engine, so I flag them during C).
I think lichess has pretty sophisticated techniques to detect cheating. They take it pretty seriously. I’ve played thousands of (non anonymous) games on lichess and I might have played against someone who was cheating once. If you play without logging in, you’ll probably find more cheaters but it’s rare even then.
Real-time fuzzed data isn’t hard to come by when people are hacking memory cheats and DirectX for mainstream games. I hate to be the one to say it, but will we see a 2400 MMR player post his “hack” on HN one day?
I'm sure that people do cheat. I am also sure that almost everyone doesn't cheat. I play 3+2 games, they're very short, and if even 5% of them are against cheaters (and I doubt it's this high) it's not a big deal.
It's growing in popularity for sure. Nakamura's streaming, Magnus's tournament and everything moving online due to covid helped. But I wouldn't call it "taking over" and I doubt it has staying power. How long will the casual fans stick around?
Think of it as a sales funnel. They don't all have to stick around. A percentage of them will, and they might never have come across cheers without this current popularity.
My contributions to the chess community are much smaller. I wrote u/relevant_post_bot[2] for /r/anarchychess and stylochess[3] in an attempt to solve the identity of mysterious super grandmasters[4].
[0] https://www.openingtree.com
[1] https://www.lichess4545.com/team4545/
[2] https://github.com/fmhall/relevant-post-bot
[3] https://github.com/fmhall/stylochess
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/gqlqlz/the_identity_...