CBC "Fifth Estate" on child prodiges in chess...

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  • CBC "Fifth Estate" on child prodiges in chess...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ejKTip0tRQ

    With some shots/interviews with Pascal Charbonneau, Jeff Sarwer (Ray Philips), Fischer, the Polgars, etc.
    (Susan Polgar was NOT the first woman to get a "men's" GM title).

  • #2
    Especially interesting were Saidy's suggestion that chess attracts people with certain mental illnesses, and Pandolfini's statement to the effect that he refuses to coach children whose parents put too much pressure on them to excel. I also liked Fischer telling us that he is not a genius, just a good chess player. Far too often the word "genius" is used with reference to good chess players. Magnus is not a genius, he is simply a great chess player. Let us not flatter ourselves and over-inflate the relevance of a finite board game, no matter how much we love it or are obsessed by it.

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    • #3
      for those curious (as I was) - here is a link to a story about the first woman to be awarded a "men's" GM title:

      https://news.trust.org/item/20201130170326-owkh6

      I would have to poke around to find out who she played during her career ...

      https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?tid=80958

      Of course she won games against male grandmasters. Also of interest may be her Wikipedia entry:

      https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nona_Gaprindashvili

      Last edited by Kerry Liles; Sunday, 21st March, 2021, 11:36 AM.
      ...Mike Pence: the Lord of the fly.

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      • #4
        Is not Cecil Rosner Executive Producer of the Fifth Estate. Surprising they do not have more chess stories:)

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Hugh Brodie View Post
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ejKTip0tRQ

          With some shots/interviews with Pascal Charbonneau, Jeff Sarwer (Ray Philips), Fischer, the Polgars, etc.
          (Susan Polgar was NOT the first woman to get a "men's" GM title).
          Great video, thanks

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Brad Thomson View Post
            Especially interesting were Saidy's suggestion that chess attracts people with certain mental illnesses, and Pandolfini's statement to the effect that he refuses to coach children whose parents put too much pressure on them to excel. I also liked Fischer telling us that he is not a genius, just a good chess player. Far too often the word "genius" is used with reference to good chess players. Magnus is not a genius, he is simply a great chess player. Let us not flatter ourselves and over-inflate the relevance of a finite board game, no matter how much we love it or are obsessed by it.
            What you say about genius versus being elite at chess is spot on. To me, the elite in chess are like robots. They have been trained all their life to play one particular game extremely well. But if you change just one rule (which I am experimenting with right now, see my thread on chess with one rule change) and all their specialized knowledge gets thrown out the window. They might still be strong players of the new game, but no longer elite, at least until they can master all the new opening theory and endgame theory and tactics of the new game.

            This is the characteristic of present day robots. They are programmed to do one or at most a few things very well, better than humans. Change one rule and they have to be reprogrammed. In the case of a perfect information game like chess, even the robot will adapt more quickly than than the human, generally speaking.

            I have long felt that if we teach chess in schools, we should also teach poker. Not using money of course, the only prizes would be chips so that it's not considered gambling. The thing about poker is that it teaches skills that chess doesn't teach. The primary one is how to deal emotionally when you do everything right, play perfectly, and still lose. That is part of the real world which chess does not encapsulate, although in chess you can do everything right and still settle for a draw.

            Another skill poker teaches is patience and variety. The player who is going all-in on most hands is soon eliminated once his or her pattern is detected. Chess can teach patience too, but not so much the variety.

            And one big thing in poker that isn't nearly as prevalent in chess is psychology. Figuring out your opponents (called "reading" your opponents) is as important in poker as knowing your own hand. And a lot of times you have more than one opponent to figure out.

            The skills that poker teaches would go a long way to creating very smart and savvy entrepreneurs and business operators and managers.






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            • #7
              Originally posted by Pargat Perrer View Post
              The skills that poker teaches would go a long way to creating very smart and savvy entrepreneurs and business operators and managers.
              The teaching of poker would also be a good aptitude test. Those more prone to bluffing would likely make the best politicians.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Pargat Perrer View Post

                What you say about genius versus being elite at chess is spot on. To me, the elite in chess are like robots. ...

                I have long felt that if we teach chess in schools, we should also teach poker. Not using money of course, the only prizes would be chips so that it's not considered gambling. The thing about poker is that it teaches skills that chess doesn't teach. The primary one is how to deal emotionally when you do everything right, play perfectly, and still lose. That is part of the real world which chess does not encapsulate, although in chess you can do everything right and still settle for a draw.

                Another skill poker teaches is patience and variety. The player who is going all-in on most hands is soon eliminated once his or her pattern is detected. Chess can teach patience too, but not so much the variety.

                And one big thing in poker that isn't nearly as prevalent in chess is psychology. Figuring out your opponents (called "reading" your opponents) is as important in poker as knowing your own hand. And a lot of times you have more than one opponent to figure out.

                The skills that poker teaches would go a long way to creating very smart and savvy entrepreneurs and business operators and managers.
                I admire that poker players can read a table of opponents but playing all-night games isn't healthy. And most lose lots of money. Bridge may be a healthier social game. Or being in a choir. Physical sports are healthy until stopped by injury. But in all activities, we need balance with non-gaming time. Things like regular sleep, eating, physical activity, sunlight, laughter, cleaning and helping others.

                There are child prodigies in music, math and chess. There is some higher brain processing in chess grandmasters. There is a combination of recognizing geometric patterns, precision analysis and creativity in finding solutions. It's important to learn how to accept losses. Chess also develops concentration, patience, decision making and time management. But is also an ego-driven adrenaline rush and responding to sudden changes by your opponent which requires emotional control.

                When I was young I could sit at home and passively watch Leafs hockey on tv or listen to rock music records. Chess was more engaging. Chess wasn't like robotic one-solution games or jigsaw puzzles. Chess offered choices: queen side or kingside, knight or bishop, pawn trade or push, defend or counter attack, ... It was a battle of ideas and opponents would prove my ego's ideas as ridiculous. And feel satisfied when an unclear tactical attack ended with a pretty mate. Going to the chess club expanded my social circle and exposure to other cultures.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Erik Malmsten View Post
                  There are child prodigies in music, math and chess.
                  Yes, this has always interested me. The connection between math and chess makes sense, they are both cold and purely rational activities. Neither the chess player nor the mathematician is attempting to impart an emotional response in viewers, though these can take place incidentally. But this is precisely what the musician does. The musician organizes sound in such a manner as to create emotional, or aesthetic responses. Yet all three activities produce prodigies. Some theories suggest that the same parts of the brain are involved in all three activities.

                  If Einstein is a genius and Mangus is a genius, then so is Lemmy.

                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_xRRUTzQAw

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Brad Thomson View Post

                    The teaching of poker would also be a good aptitude test. Those more prone to bluffing would likely make the best politicians.
                    Yes, and they would always understand: if you bluff all-in, then once your bluff is called, your game is over. Few politicians recover from having their bluff called (Bill Clinton: "I did not have sex with that woman").

                    It makes sense that ex-politicians brought down in such manner should be able to do well in poker, where there is always another game willing to let you buy in.

                    But I don't think poker "glorifies" bluffing. That's because you cannot get away with constant bluffing. Your bluffing has to be timely and you can even learn to deliberately lose a bluff to set things up for when you actually DO have a good hand: because you bluffed previously and got caught, someone is willing to give you action when you do have a hand. There should be a term for that kind of bluffing, where you actually bluff with the INTENTION to be caught and lose the hand. Maybe a "pseudo-bluff" or something like that.

                    It is interesting to speculate on how the skill of bluffing and even pseudo-bluffing can be useful in the real world. We try and teach our kids to always tell the truth, but is that really a good thing? Can a little white lie sometimes be good, and if yes, how do we recognize it when those situations come along?

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Erik Malmsten View Post
                      There is some higher brain processing in chess grandmasters. There is a combination of recognizing geometric patterns, precision analysis and creativity in finding solutions.
                      I don't feel that there is very much of creativity in chess. Firstly, if there was truly creativity, then all sorts of chess variants would be accepted and welcomed by all chess players, as long as the variant provided the kind of skills you just mentioned, such as recognizing patterns and precision analysis. The fact that serious chess players only want to play standard chess plus maybe one variant, being chess960, is due to the fact that the elite of chess players and the budding elite of chess players have invested years and years of memorization (openings, endgames, middlegame tactics) into the one game of standard chess. If variants suddenly became popular, all those years of work were mostly wasted.

                      Even chess960 is not truly a variant, it only makes the opening setup variable, it doesn't change any rules (except castling).

                      Secondly, the chess search tree is finite. It would take more atoms than there are in the Milky Way to contain it, but nevertheless it is finite. Therefore we can say that the entire chess search tree does exist if only hypothetically, and that means there is an optimal solution, or perhaps many optimal solutions all of which result in a draw. It is well recognized that a win cannot be forced in chess, a win only comes about because of mistakes.

                      But more important is the process itself. Let's pretend that all digital artists created their images pixel by pixel, starting at the top left corner of some particular size of image. Let's say it's the size of an HD TV image, 1080 by 960 pixels. Each pixel can have any 32-bit digital value (RGBA : Reg Green Blue Alpha). So they assign the first pixel a value, then the next, and so on until all 1080 x 960 pixels (1,036,800) have a 32-bit value. Obviously there is only a finite number of possible images. Is it really "creative" to be choosing one of these possible images in this pixel by pixel manner? The choosing of each pixel value is akin to choosing a chess move, the only exception being you don't win or lose, you just keep choosing pixels (moves) until all pixels have been chosen (a chess game of 1080 x 960 plies has been played).

                      But instead, the artist pays no attention to pixels, they use some program like Paint or Photoshop to imitate drawing with brushes and various other artist tools. They are seeing "the big picture" and that does amount to creativity because the end of the process is not after the 1,036,800th pixel is given a value, but the end of the process is when the artist is happy with the big picture. Chess is the pixel-by-pixel process, with hard and fast rules as to when the process must stop. There is nothing in chess akin to painting with brushes. There is only choosing moves.

                      I am not saying that chess isn't a pleasure to play. Of course it is. Part of the pleasure is that we cannot see the big picture. And when the game is finished, it has taught us something and we do see the big picture of that particular game, and we can analyze it to see how it could have turned out differently.

                      Perhaps it is just that some people prefer the pixel-by-pixel form of creativity and some people prefer painting with brushes. Maybe creativity itself has many forms.

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Pargat Perrer View Post
                        I don't feel that there is very much of creativity in chess.
                        I tend to agree, and certainly think that the "creativity" element is vastly overblown. We do not "create" the best chess games/moves, we discover them. We do not invent them, we find them.

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                        • #13
                          Isn't it interesting that Bruce Pandolfini considers Canadian Jeff Sarwer the greatest talent he has ever encountered?

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Hans Jung View Post
                            Isn't it interesting that Bruce Pandolfini considers Canadian Jeff Sarwer the greatest talent he has ever encountered?
                            Often overlooked in this story is the fact that Jeff's younger sister, Julia, was also a world champion.

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                            • #15
                              Actually older sister but you're right she doesnt get the media attention and is often overlooked.

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