On: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

[internet_user]

We are post peak-chess. The interest fell sharply after Kasparov's loss to DeepBlue. I was a member of a chess club, that went from 30 tables to 5 in a span of couple of years.

[narrator → internet_user]

I heard that even grand masters get beaten by cell phone chess games these days.

[internet_user → narrator]

Probably not that far from truth.

Yet I don't see cellphone chess programs make first page, for some reason.

Why is that?

[cjbprime → internet_user]

I heard that cars are pretty good at distance athletics too, but no-one gives them any credit.

[internet_user → cjbprime]

Until they reduce employment.

[mmmrtl → internet_user]

Maybe the same reason you don't see news stories about chess grandmasters beating 8 year olds?

They're out of their class and dramatically outmatched - the cellphone chess programs can't really compete with better resourced chess computers

[Bootvis → internet_user]

Exactly the truth, actually.

[systemspeed → internet_user]

Speaks to the fragility of the human mind. The human collective organism, as it were, instead of rising against the challenge from the machines, decides to shift focus elsewhere. Chess is nowhere close to being a solved game, yet we're already treating it as such.

[patates → systemspeed]

Out of curiosity, when would you consider chess, or any game of similar complexity for that matter, "solved"?

[azeotropic → patates]

When it's possible to predict the winner from an arbitrary board position, given optimal play by both players. Checkers, for example, is solved. Chess and Go are not (even though computers can outperform human players).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game

[internet_user → systemspeed]

We all know those games will not be solved by wetware. At best, a human-silicon hybrid, of some sort.