Someone should probably break it out to The Atlantic that preparation was a thing far before engines existed, whole books have been written analysing openings and positions which best players have been memorising for as long as the game exists and players have always worked with a whole team to best plan before facing a serious adversary.
The article is a bit silly. I had the feeling reading it that the writer has little understanding of how classical chess is played, nor of poker for what it’s worth.
Preparation has been a thing for a long long time. What hasn't been a thing is the combination of databases and engines. Top players even use supercomputers. The amount of pure grinding has shot up dramatically. Instead of a team of people rattling off lines verbally and debating back and forth, a player can sit at the computer and just hammer out the variations with the computer and see the best engine lines in mere seconds (using a supercomputer).
This is so much more efficient that the only limitation is on how much energy and capacity the player has for rote memorization, rather than how much time it takes for the team of humans to work out the best lines.
More recently I don't think any of the GMs are actually using supercomputers. Powerful computers, yes - but not anything close to supercomputers.
The only two instances I've seen an actual 'supercomputer' mentioned in recent Chess news has been:
* Ian Nepomniachtchi using Zhores (which is questionable given that the institute which runs it [Skolkovo] has Arkady Dvorkovich [chairman of FIDE] as it's chairman). I remember researchers questioning if Zhores was even suitable for the type of calculations which engines care about, so this looks like some PR move more than anything.
* There was a rumour a few years ago that Magnus Carlsen had some secret/private access to a Norwegian supercomputer. No real confirmation of this rumour occurred.
Both AlphaZero and Leela Zero (by their design and very optimal evaluation functions) also require much less evaluation - so they can naturally evaluate further.
Objectively the limits have always been players memory.
Sure, computer analysis has marginally changed how some openings are viewed and sure you can now get an engine evaluation of all the variations of some obscure line in a matter of seconds but novelties remain rare at the top level. Stockfisch is extremely strong because it can play near perfect positional play and can establish micro-advantage through deep calculation not because it fundamentally changed how chess theory is viewed.
AlphaZero might be the sole exception to my point. It did indeed show that modern chess was neglecting some strategical concept but to be honest it was more a rehabilitation of old ideas than a pure novelty.
AlphaZero showed that modern chess was neglecting some strategical concept because engines were. Unlike Go, neural networks play very bold moves but perhaps in a more human than traditional brute force.
But nowadays Stockfish and Leela have both caught up and surpassed AlphaZero.
> As engines became widespread, the game shifted. *Elite chess has always involved rote learning*, but “the amount of stuff you need to prepare, the amount of stuff you need to remember, has just exploded,” Sadler said. Engines can calculate positions far more accurately and rapidly than humans, so there’s more material to be studied than ever before. What once seemed magical became calculable; where one could rely on intuition came to require rigorous memorization and training with a machine.
> Elite chess has always involved rote learning, but “the amount of stuff you need to prepare, the amount of stuff you need to remember, has just exploded,” Sadler said.
> Engines can calculate positions far more accurately and rapidly than humans, so there’s more material to be studied than ever before.
Yes this paragraph is indeed the crux of what I disagree with.
Two sentences later you have this gem: “What once seemed magical became calculable; where one could rely on intuition came to require rigorous memorization and training with a machine. Chess, once poetic and philosophical, was acquiring elements of a spelling bee: a battle of preparation, a measure of hours invested.”
Well, that’s patently untrue. Chess has always been a battle of preparation far before the advent of computer. The rosy paste described just doesn’t exist. High level play has always required memorising books of theory and going through decades of past games. That’s what chess is. It’s a game of pattern recognition and memorisation.
If I wanted to be provocative, I would say that the article seems to imply that computers have turned chess from an interesting game into a boring one while in actuality it has always been boring but with more mystic.
The article is a bit silly. I had the feeling reading it that the writer has little understanding of how classical chess is played, nor of poker for what it’s worth.