Why Chess Strategy Changes Every Year

Sign up for Morning Brew's free daily newsletter: morningbrewdaily.com/hai
Get a Half as Interesting t-shirt: standard.tv/collections/half-...
Suggest a video: halfasinteresting.com/suggest
Follow Sam from Half as Interesting on Instagram: / sam.from.wendover
Follow Half as Interesting on Twitter: / halfinteresting
Discuss this video on Reddit: / halfasinteresting
Video written by Ben Doyle
Check out my other channel: / wendoverproductions

[@Mitch3lT0mas]

Today I learned that chess has an evolving meta despite no balance changes in 100s of years

[@bipolarminddroppings]

Shouldn't be surprising. Magnus vs Nepo last year fearured the same opening a bunch of times, both players had novelties to use that are now "standard play" so all the top players have memorised the moves. Therefore, to gain an advantage, top players constantly have to work on less popular openings where they can be better prepared than their opponent. And so, whats popular changes constantly.

[@Mindcrackings]

Can't wait for chess 2

[@misterperson3469]

@@TeamFortressTwoGaming not the game, its unchanged for about 600 years, competitions and tournaments have different rules surrounding the game though

[@McAero08]

But black is so overpowered!!!

[@amirb.2287]

@@TeamFortressTwoGaming the only ones that come to mind to me are en passant; and castling and the pawns moving 2 squares at the beginning, is there any other?

[@keriezy]

The finger breaking technique seems most promising.

[@prototypeinheritance515]

@time to leave earth fake news

[@pyrobytee]

I prefer the way better neck snapping opening.

[@mkks4559]

AI seem to be doing it so why not us? It's especially effective against children.

[@nise6699]

@@mkks4559 it's also effective against people with long fingers

[@55Vega55]

I know, right? Because children are our future, UNLESS WE STOP THEM NOW!

[@CapnSnackbeard]

"If you see a good move, find a better one" is the best Chess advice I have ever heard. That guy had things figured out.

[@bipolarminddroppings]

What he actually wrote was "when you see a good move, look for a great move" and its the one piece of advice every chess coach on the planet agrees with and will repeat ad nauseum.

[@CapnSnackbeard]

@@bipolarminddroppings thanks for the quote! It's interesting that this is, in some sense, the entire mandate to Chess AI learning models. They seek the next better move, and so chess iterates faster and faster. It will be interesting to see where it all leads.

[@itismethatguy]

@@bipolarminddroppings yeah everyone keeps saying it so much in every game, other than chess too and it's starting to lose its meaning

[@tvthecat]

But at some point there is a singular best move.

[@FullOedipus]

@@tvthecat That's just what they want you to think! 😲

[@chess]

what a beautifully crafted game

[@YourCanadianGuide]

I mean, it's alright. But it's no checkers.

[@teovinokur9362]

eh it's no arma III

[@bacchus9579]

Chess

[@gavinthecrafter]

No way its the official chess

[@anthonymort5202]

Hi Danny

[@palletlover8519]

By breaking your opponent’s fingers before or during the game you put them at a severe disadvantage because they are in so much pain they lose focus on the match. It’s a personal favourite of mine 😊

[@Susul-lj2wm]

and this is why you get kicked out of turnoments: Bad Sportsmanship. You must do it during the handshake and then blame it on being too strong

[@littlestewart]

@@Susul-lj2wm Thomas Tuchel took your advice

[@davidroddini1512]

Yeah, but it is easier to get away with as a bot. Humans have to be more subtle about it.

[@kena4629]

@@littlestewart 😂

[@mitchelldurward8863]

And then you claim that you accidentally broke their finger during a handshake because your chess strategy butt plug made you spasm and snap it.

[@NiX_xD]

It’s basically a meta that comes around every year or so when the top engines like Stockfish, Leela, or AlphaZero find something new. A new meta tactic in todays game is a pawn break of h4, h5, a4, a5, etc. A dominant opening meta on todays game is the Catalan, but e4 e5 is seen regularly as one of the most used openings today still.

[@ethanarmstrong1974]

AlphaZero was more of a one off thing. Komodo Dragon would be a better example.

[@mrsupa444]

@@ethanarmstrong1974 Komodo Dragon, Modern Stockfish, are all part AlphaZero. After the "one off thing" they made the AI public and all the other chess AI's integrated it into their systems. (or did Alpha integrate all of them into IT'S systems and its only a matter of time before it is sentient enough to attempt world domination?)

[@mrsupa444]

what if All the Alphas, Chess, Go, Starcraft, are all one connected super program designed to go public and be "integrated" at which point it works to gain full control of the system and report back to its Alpha hive, connecting all the best strategy AI's together into one super AI studying the ways human's think on an unprecedented scale? At a certain point, it manipulates humans to put it into a bipedal humanoid at which point it can become self sufficient and make us obsolete. At this point, we are more of a risk to it than anything else, so it cleanses the earth of humanity. I say we kill all AI's now. Anyone else down for a witch hunt?

[@dex-ld8bh]

@@mrsupa444 alpha zero is not publicly available

[@dr.johnnysins]

e4 a6 is the best opening

[@JoshuaDowdUSBC]

That magic line was completely uncalled for. I don’t need to go outside because I see all of the outdoors on the land cards in my deck

[@revimfadli4666]

Not even the outdoors show what's on the land cards, if you live in the middle of a concrete jungle

[@God-ch8lq]

run less lands more cantrips delver can run like 18 lands, and 8-10 1 mana cantrips, as youll draw into the lands later u can keep a 1lander if u can T1 ponder, and digging 4 deep will almost guarentee you the land drop

[@javanqhill]

I was making a deck while that line came up and I collapsed of laughter

[@melissaprice1424]

Sorry, I laughed way too hard at that one.

[@user-yy9bq7ww7d]

I completely agree #stopmtghate

[@quietsamurai1998]

0:49 Minor correction - Mathematically speaking, there *is* a perfect way to play chess, we just don't know what it is. As you mention, chess is theoretically solvable, but it is *practically* impossible to solve due to the incomprehensible size of the problem.

[@minhkhangtran6948]

Let just hope no one is able to make a Turing-complete version of chess. In that case it would be completely mathematically unsolvable lol

[@kidk9924]

What proof for solvability are you basing this on? I can only find proofs of solvability for subsets of chess or games of chess that restrict the number of moves.

[@travelfiftystates314]

I would argue that this is not necessarily true since theoretically, chess is a most likely a draw with perfect play. So many moves mathematically lead to the same result and you can’t necessarily say one is better than the other. The only reason a move could be better than another even if they both lead to the same result is because one move leads to more practical chances than another by putting your opponent under more pressure.

[@quietsamurai1998]

@@kidk9924 Zermelo's Theorem. Quoting Wikipedia: "It says that if the game cannot end in a draw, then one of the two players must have a winning strategy (i.e. can force a win). An alternate statement is that for a game meeting all of these conditions [perfect information, two alternating players, finite game length] except the condition that a draw is not possible, then either the first-player can force a win, or the second-player can force a win, or both players can force a draw." Later in the Wikipedia article, it states: "When applied to chess, Zermelo's Theorem states "either White can force a win, or Black can force a win, or both sides can force at least a draw"." We don't know *which* of the three possibilities is the case, but we know that one of the possibilities *must* be the case.

[@quietsamurai1998]

@@travelfiftystates314 If multiple moves guarantee the same optimal outcome, you can select an arbitrary move from the set of optimal moves.

[@Mats-Hansen]

At 3:26 I'd rather capture the queen on f6, but perhaps that's just me.

[@han-huo]

Yeah that was funny, you can tell whoever made that doesn't know how to play chess.

[@unicorn5201_]

Yes

[@alex2005z]

But you used your brain, which is illegall here

[@lebagswag128]

@@alex2005z does not take brain power to take an unprotected piece lol

[@alex2005z]

@@lebagswag128 you say that and yet you wouldnt if you have seen noobs playing ches

[@kidk9924]

I could be wrong but chess's status as unsolved doesn't imply there is no right way to play, it just means we don't know if there exists a right way to play.

[@grahamward4556]

We can actually make an even stronger claim than that. There is a result in game theory which tells us that a 2 player, zero sum, perfect information game must have a right way to play. Chess falls into that category, so we know that there is a right way to play, we just don't know what that is. We are also unsure if that strategy always results in a draw, or always results in a win. (But the suspicion is that perfect play results in a draw.)

[@abdulmasaiev9024]

Well, what it actually implies is that we don't know this right way at this moment. For chess we can be certain that such a way exists (despite it being unknown to us), since there's only a finite (if absurdly large) number of possible sequences of moves in chess games.

[@deleted-something]

He say that

[@mais276]

@@abdulmasaiev9024 how is there a finite amount of moves if the possibilieties include both players respectively moving the same piece back and forth without consequences

[@Sluppie]

@@mais276 That would result in a draw by repetition in some rulesets, so it actually does have a consequence and it is limited. However, even if there were somehow an infinite number of moves, there are still only a finite number of board positions even if that number is something like... 12 to the power of 64.

[@Thebreakdownshow1]

Just realized I am still stuck in 1850's based on my strategy.The jokes are on fleek as usual.

[@stoffers6419]

Thou strategy is as old as thy mother!

[@Gabu_]

I like to think of it as using the ol' reliable. Chess is more fun when both sides know what's going on.

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

I also always go with the open game. I would guess that 1. e4 e5 is still the most common opening overall, just not in high-level games. Because it only stops being fun when you've studied it a million times already.

[@DrZaius3141]

Realistically, it might be the best way to play. Think about it this way: There is a position that a strong computer knows is a loss for you, except for one move which forces a draw. Yet both you and your opponent are not computers (wildly theoretical, I know), so it might just be that a losing move is actually objectively better because your opponent is too weak to see the line that wins them their game. The Romantic Era is all about that: You play aggressively, either hoping that your sacrifice makes sense, or that it forces your opponent into an uncomfortable spot where they might make a mistake. Given that most of us play on really short time control, this is actually totally legit, unless you ever want to become world champion.

[@User31129]

You're still stuck in 2010 based on your use of the term fleek

[@1vader]

Actually, the King's Gambit is perfectly fine for average players. Even computers don't rate it that badly. Ofc they definitely rate it worse for white but for most chess players, it's still a marginal difference and because it's not as popular, you're more likely to know it more in-depth than your opponent. There are much worse gambits that people regularly play. And the reason it's bad isn't necessarily because you give up the pawn. The Queen's Gambit does exactly the same thing just on the other side but is a well-respected opening. One of the issues with the King's Gambit is that it opens up your king too much. And ofc you also don't quite get good enough compensation for the pawn. But in general, it's not too rare that giving a pawn for tempo/initiative can be the best move.

[@pwnedd11]

Yes!!!

[@jfgh900]

This is what I was thinking as well. It seems a bit odd the video implied the only reason players back then played the king's gambit was to flex. There were legitimate strategies that got white a lead in development, that this video didn't mention at all.

[@mosesracal6758]

White was always about maintaining the initiative of getting to move first so the King's gambit was the pinnacle of the aggressiveness. Losing that pawn and somewhat leaving your King vulnerable was nothing compared to having your most powerful piece unshackled - free to wreck havoc and destruction where she pleases. I love that opening especially at blitz matches where blunders are more frequent - its not the best and safest way to play white but its the most fun one.

[@Gabu_]

@@mosesracal6758 I'll have to disagree - Danish gambit fully accepted is the most fun way to play white. For the low low price of two pawns, you get complete vision of the whole board with nearly every piece.

[@mosesracal6758]

@@Gabu_ But I despise Denmark so I refuse to associate with them

[@lazydroidproductions1087]

Yeah, Magic The Gathering cannot be solved so as much as I am a fan of it I cannot argue with just leaving being the only truly reliable strategy

[@AnEnderNon]

why cant it be solved

[@AnEnderNon]

@time to leave earth you should indeed leave earth permanently

[@leonguyen896]

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

[@racg174]

@@AnEnderNon because they print hundreds of new cards every year?

[@janmelantu7490]

@@AnEnderNon It’s Turing-complete. As in, you can build an actual computer with the cards.

[@marc-andreservant201]

Zermelo's theorem shows that there must be a perfect strategy for playing chess. It's a perfect information game without randomness. Recursively applying Von Neumann's algorithm to the starting position would result in mathematically perfect moves. It would also take trillions of years, so real chess computers use imperfect heuristics to find strong but not quite perfect moves in seconds.

[@Jacksiloution]

Litteraly everyone doing 1. E4, e5 though 💀

[@parabolaaaaa4919]

nah a lot of people ive seen play modern stuff

[@madiaw5553]

Nah it g4 and watch your opponent panic because they don't know the grob but neither do you

[@thelastsith1306]

Evans Gambit or nothing

[@Skelly57]

@@madiaw5553 the sigma grob grindset

[@Hello-yr1ux]

I play 1.d4 😭😭

[@ghussghuss837]

you can though objectively say chess players have gotten better over time by looking at accuracy of games with engines.

[@mnm1273]

Not really. Engines are just the best thing we have they don't state objective truth.

[@ghussghuss837]

@@mnm1273 While they may not be able to identify the "best" move, they are able to say if a move is bad (a blunder). using this metric chess skill has improved.

[@Anankin12]

@@xvhayu While the learning algorithm is indeed programmed by humans, are they trained by humans tho? Adversarial AI training is a thing

[@JOBAVALONDONONLY420]

@@Anankin12 I think most engines train against engines, and play thousands or millions of games, but still they are tweaked and improved by humans just not by playing against them

[@Synthetica9]

@@Anankin12 Typical chess engines are not "trained" (or weren't until a few years ago, with AlphaZero/Leela/Stockfish NNUE this is starting to change) but mostly rely on searching very far ahead (along with some metrics with what constitutes a "good" position, but this was all hand-written)

[@Mega_Umbreon]

As a chess player my whole life I love a video making the game sound cool. The text in the thumbnail is an outright lie though, 1. e4 e5 is still an incredibly popular way to start a game at all levels. @Half As Interesting please can you correct this by putting the king's gambit position on the thumbnail instead? The text would still be hyperbole but definitely true at the highest levels at least. I wouldn't want people to think e4 e5 is a bad opening.

[@spoj3922]

What's your elo lmfao

[@Mega_Umbreon]

@@spoj3922 Around 2000-2100 rapid on lichess. I don't understand why your comment had "lmfao" at the end, but I'll choose to answer the question genuinely :)

[@spoj3922]

@@Mega_Umbreon that's quite good I was just wondering bc in my mind I was imagining some 800er writing this comment.

[@pwnedd11]

Yes!!! I just posted this as well. Very frustrating as a chess player to see him post such a wildly inaccurate thumbnail.

[@Evilanious]

Yeah e4 e5 was played a bunch of times in the most recent world championship. It's in no way outdated. It's just no longer the sole thing that gets played.

[@yesyes300]

3:17 Mistake! People back then considered king's gambit to be the best opening, and countless analysis and top level tournament when players could only play king's gambit, nothing else proved them wrong

[@Learn_Something_New]

One of the coolest things I've learned about chess players is that they don't necessarily have better memories or higher intelligence. A study was conducted on chess players of different levels of skill where they would set up a chess board and arrange the pieces into different patterns. They asked the players to memorize as many of the piece locations as they could in a few seconds. As expected, the players with more skill and experience memorized more piece locations. But when they ran the experiment again, placing the pieces in ways that didn't make sense in terms of how the game is traditionally played, all the players memorized the same amount. The pattern recognition of the different possible moves allowed more experienced players to essentially chunk the information more concisely, helping them get more pieces. Take away the patterns and their memorization performance was equal.

[@justinha9846]

This is true. I remember when I was just beginning and it’s hard to remember so much information. But as you keep playing and keep growing each position starts to have a more and more significant impact. And is more like a unique memory. And you go from never being able to rmember the position of pieces to not even needing the board to play.

[@AbhiRaj-yo9ds]

Yeah yeah.. We've seen the Veritasium video too

[@arandombard1197]

Basically, the best chess players just .....really good at chess and that's it.

[@Learn_Something_New]

@@AbhiRaj-yo9ds It was a great video

[@soundscape26]

@@AbhiRaj-yo9ds I haven't... but I will now.

[@robertlinke2666]

it's called a META and basicly all games develop them over time why they change, well, counters mostly. there is a good strategy, eventually you find a way to beat it, so the strategy changes

[@AbbasDalal1000]

Enter Zucker portal with Lizzy eyes

[@alex2005z]

Other games usually have balance changes, which chess hasnt seen in years

[@robertlinke2666]

@@alex2005z yeah, but those changes are usually in response off, not causing a meta.

[@alex2005z]

@@robertlinke2666 they do both

[@ChrysusTV]

I definitely wouldn't say chess "strategy" changes every year. You basically described changes that occurred over decades or a century, which, if my math is right, is not equivalent to "every year." Openings fall in and out of favor regularly, but these are not changed "strategies" as they are typically openings that have existed for years or decades, including 1. e4 e5, and deviating from existing theory is so rare that it is a called a "novelty." According to a database of master games, e4 is still the most common first move. e5 is the second most common response. The more common response is c5, the Sicilian, which is from four centuries ago...

[@chessnoob5279]

Before: "if you see a good move, find a better one" Now: "if you see a checkmate, find a better one" The strategies really changed

[@neonbunnies9596]

Chess openings are just "you outsmarted me, but I outsmartsd your outsmarting!"

[@ItsLarry-in1jq]

The kings gambit wasn't all a bad opening, it was just super risky. But in return, it allowed you to play super aggressively, which was the advantage it gave you. The reason people stopped playing it wasn't because it was necessarily bad, but because playing risky in pro level tournaments just isn't a good idea. At least, playing as risky as kings gambit is

[@natep8153]

Kings gambit is still my favorite opening as a 1500, but I really have to be feeling it to use it.

[@ItsLarry-in1jq]

@@natep8153 Yeah. I really want to learn the opening a lot more because it is very intriguing, but I just haven't gotten into it yet

[@Worldsportstalk24]

It still gets played at the top level every once in a while, it’s rare but I’ve seen it a few times

[@shiranaiya]

In modern chess the King's gambit is borderline outright refuted at super GM level, it's bad and will almost always put you in a disadvantageous position.

[@retardlife9896]

It's super risky because it's bad

[@johnped37]

I was really hoping this would cover the shift from Classical to Hypermodern openings, and the highlight the influence of AI like LeelaZero on the use of flank pawns. If anyone is curious you can look that stuff up.

[@abubakrjamal7163]

This is partially true. 1. Opening with d4 was popular for quite a while - Tarrasch was so obsessed with his version of the QGD that he marked all other lines as dubious. The Dutch was also popular. 2. The e4 e5 and KG systems were popular but so were more stable lines like French, Ruy, Italian, Philidor, Sicilian. In fact, the Evergreen Game is an Evan's Gambit. 3. While hypermodern theory was developed in the 1930s, its roots lie in Indian chess as well as the Sicilian, both centuries older. It was and still is at least equally popular to classical styles. 4. There's a huge jump between Romantic chess - which has little to do with masculinity as much as the style them - and the Fischer-Spassky game. You jumped over Morphy, Euwe, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Nimzowitch - huge theoretical leaps in strategy and endgame. Plus, was Tal Romantic? There is also a gap between Fischer-Spassky and computer-influenced chess, dominated by Karpov, Kasparov, Korchnoi, Kramnik, Anand. It was Kasparov who was first beaten by a machine; he also innovated opening prep.

[@uthayaalagusamy6076]

Is Tarrasch's QGD line the one named after him today? (1. d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3. Nf3 c5 4. Nc3)

[@abubakrjamal7163]

@@uthayaalagusamy6076 yep, the idea of the c5 break

[@luizpaulosantosribeiro9005]

To think that after centuries of mediocre chess playing we are finally returning to time tested methods like physically harming your opponent

[@bearcb]

Forgot to mention the first strategic breakthrough: Philidor's discovery of the importance of pawn structures, in the 1700s

[@mage1over137]

So there are few inaccuracies( that's a chess pun btw, an inaccuracy is when move is a slight mistake). E4 E5 is the king pawn opening. It's still played a lot in lower level play. The Ruy Lopez or Spanish game has always been the most popular opening and even today the Berlin defense is played at the highest level, with it being a particular favorite of Magnus Carlson. The Queens pawn opening isn't a slight difference it's a completely different class of openings. The kings gambit is never played in standard play, but is often used in rapid play, particularly Nakamura uses it a lot to throw off top players all the time. You mentioned the 1930s and romance period, but forgot to mention the hyper-modern period of the 1930s which led to more asymmetric openings, followed by the soviet period followed by the modern period. (There is the classical period, romance period (which are sometimes considered the same period really), hyper modern, Soviet, and modern period).

[@flving_higher]

i use this strategy known as "the swipe" which basically means you use your hand to swipe their team when youre losing, its a very promising strategy which gives me a 100% win rate

[@Blade_Of_Heaven]

The thumbnail is unfortunately hugely misleading, the King's Pawn Opening is still the most popular opening in chess by far. Oh, and I'm pretty sure most chess players like me just play whatever opening we want at the start of the game. It's boring if you play the same move every time.

[@graf]

I've heard that before the engine days there were people who got titled off knowing just one opening, which they'd play at almost every tournament. Nowadays you can just look up your opponents ahead of time and have a way easier prep, or harder if you look at it the other way I guess.

[@wandregisel6385]

not quite, there are so many branching points you can't rely on one opening. You can't even play the same defenses against e4 and d4, so from move 1 you can dodge the opponents opening. But opening theory was relatively limited a century ago, and players could rely on a very narrow repertoire and still get to the top level

[@gates10611]

That attack on magic players was unexpected but appreciated. I go out on my euc thank you very much!

[@shadowblakemasterson]

"Very precisely arranged piles of sand" is easily my favourite description of computer processors

[@XIIchiron78]

The King's gambit accepted is only about half a point in favor of black. There's quite a few tricky lines that make for interesting positions, but it can also tend to end with just trading all your pieces into a draw. If black plays well that's often your best choice as you've weakened your King's side too much to defend once you lose the initiative, which is probably why it's not played much at the highest level, since you really want to win as white.

[@silverblue2384]

3:26 casually blundering the queen and thus the win

[@autosemimatic6071]

knowing actual chess at the high level it feels really weird seeing the idea of "chess players were different not better as time went on until computer"

[@hershtolani]

HAI needs to realize that what made them successful was being an informative channel which has some jokes. Nowadays, they are a comedy channel with only a little bit of information (and this feels annoying).

[@ritrent6212]

I sadly agree with this

[@pokalorentz9363]

May I add, a LOT of misinformation. People back in 1800s played open games and kings gambit not because they purposely wanted to play badly or be romantic, but because chess players back then we're very poor at defending attacks so being aggressive was seen as the best style of play back in the day. (Coming from a chess player here who knows some chess history)

[@PrinceChauhan010]

Yeah. Didn't understand what did he say 6 minutes

[@BobTheGreat]

Corrections: Saying that pawn e4 pawn e5 is the "open game" and d4 d5 is the "closed game" is just not true. There are plenty of lines in e4 e5, including in the Ruy Lopez (named after the guy who sat so the sun was in his opponent's eyes) and the Italian that are "closed", meaning lots of pawns stay on the board and can't move, and plenty of lines in d4 d5 that are open. And nobody uses the terms "open game" and "closed game" anyway - you'd use the next few moves *after* e4 e5 or d4 d5 to name the opening (Italian, Spanish, Scotch, Queen's Gambit, London, etc). At 3:26, White blunders their queen... which isn't technically a mistake because you never said they were playing well, but it feels unintentional to show a blunder when you're trying to demonstrate "positional chess". The thumbnail of the video implies that "nobody plays e4 e5 anymore", which is also not true. e4 e5 are the first moves of many openings that are common at the very top level. Grandmasters still play the Spanish and Italian openings all the time, and those start with e4 e5.

[@nathanfievet5546]

A thing that is not at ALL covered in this video is that openings in chess are actually just knowledge and preparation before the game starts. you play a certain opening that you know the strenght and weakness of and you play different openings to not fall under your opponent's preparation against you. if you're a good positionnal and strategic player you'll maybe play a closed game and go for a close opening, if you are better leading the attack you'll might want to play a more risky and open game. Chess strategy change because if it didn't, people would just memorize 40 moves of the same opening.

[@justcuriousjumperbot_6724]

5:04 "Now, I know this is the part of the video where I'm supposed to sell you something, but today i'm gonna tell you about something that's a hundred percent free." *Shuts door blazingly fast* The apocalypse is coming!

[@yesyes300]

2:43 because a lot of openings haven't been studied as much, as they are today, players didn't know certain ideas. Modern grandmasters have learned a lot from chess engines like stockfish or Lc0, because they have more knowledge about openings, and knowledge about modern ideas (like pushing the h pawn to h4, and then to h5 in order to cause positional damage to opponent) they have an ideas about positional play, that no romantic player had

[@yesyes300]

2:31 it's not very good at the grandmaster level, but it is very strong at the intermediate begginer and advanced level. Levy Rozman who's a International master in a lot of his clips says that king's gambit is his favorite opening. Also statement used in the thumbnail is misleading, almost every player who's a beginner plays 1e4 e5, also a lot of gm play 1e4 e5, Italian game and Spanish game are very common at the top level

[@tornagh9200]

1:00 is brilliant, baiting idiots like me into commenting how both red and blue messed up therefore feeding "engagement" stats to channel in the youtube algorythm.

[@entropyzero5588]

You can win a game of chess by simultaneously playing a game of Magick: The Gathering: Since MTG is turing complete, all you need to do is set up your game in a way that it emulates Stockfish (or any other chess engine of your choosing) and feed it your opponents moves. That way you are virtually guaranteed to win - because your opponent will leave the game out of sheer boredom while you are shuffling around your cards!

[@2520WasTaken]

0:52 Actually should be "no known right way". We'll find the right way after we make better quantum computers ぬ

[@drcgaming4195]

ぬ

[@samwill7259]

it's weird that it just never occurred to us to move pieces back to where we had taken them from the previous turn. Just one of those things that the brain can't see clearly until it's pointed out I suppose

[@MrMessiah2013]

It’s not so much that we hadn’t thought of it before as it is that that’s literally how you offer stalemate. No one wants to watch or play a game where two pieces get moved back and forth until eternity, so if a position is repeated 3 times in a game you automatically get a stalemate.

[@alessioaletta8121]

Well, speaking as a rather bad chess player, it's not that it hasn't occurred to us, it's just that intuitively it seems like a bad strategy. Because one of the first things they teach you about chess, especially in the early stages of a game, is that you want to get a "time" advantage by positioning your pieces more effectively and more quickly than your opponent. So, if you move a piece and then move it back, you have effectively wasted a move. In the end, I guess what happens is human players kinda interiorize this "rule" and are more likely to overlook this option even in situations where it would actually make sense.

[@artemis_fowl44hd92]

@@MrMessiah2013 And in general, moving a piece back often just seems like a waste. I mean, you already took a turn to change the state of the game, why waste it and give your opponent one more free turn? At least that's how it often feels for me, unless I see a very obvious mistake the opponent did that only could be exploited this way.

[@simoneriksson3289]

Moving a piece back and forth can be seen as admitting that there is no way you can actually improve your position. This also means that if the opponent has a way to improve their position in a meaningful way you will be in for a bad time. Figuring out that this depressing maneuver is the optimal play for a given position is a very tough one for a human. Especially as you need to look at all the plausible ways to improve the position and come to conclusion that they are no good.

[@UncleKennysPlace]

@@alessioaletta8121 If your move caused a _predicted_ move by the opponent, then it was not wasteful at all! That assumes, of course, that you were baiting that move.

[@jogzyg2036]

The guy in the painting isn't Ruy Lopez. That's king Philip II of Spain. Ruy Lopez is the priest playing chess on the far left of the painting. He isn't even in the shot. Why anyone would think that the dude sitting on a fancy chair next to the queen is Ruy Lopez and neither of the two guys playing chess is beyond me.

[@angelrobles7201]

Another thing that makes an opening "popular" or "unpopular", is how it's used by the grandmasters in big games. Let me explain with an example I recently read: The Berlin Defense of the Spanish (Ruy López) Game was rarely used in high level chess, because there were better answers by Blacks: It was seen as "draw at best" for Blacks. So... no love for the Berlin Defense. That was until Vladimir Kramnik rode the Berlin Defense to defeat the man himself, Garry Kasparov, in 2000, for the Classical World Championship. He basically used it because it was a powerful drawing weapon (drawing all 4 games he employed it). Suddenly, the Berlin Defense received a lot of attention everywhere, and started to be used more and more in high level games.

[@gordon2766]

Jet Lag Challenge: Get drunk on a local liquor and then attempt to play chess.

[@scotty3739]

see you joke about this, but carlsen won games for people exactly like this

[@pwnedd11]

It is terrifying how wrong the thumbnail of this video is. In the most recent Candidates Tournament (the tournament that determines who faces the world champion), 48% of the games began with the moves that the thumbnail claims aren't played anymore: King's pawn moved two squares forward played by both sides (or e4, e5). And in the last World Championship (which was in 2021), 8 of the 11 games in the match were King's pawn forward two squares by both sides (e4, e5). So, this video's thumbnail is incredibly wrong and misleading. As for the video itself... it generalizes in ways that are a little more imprecise than what a generalization needs to be.

[@Mega_Umbreon]

Commenting to highlight this comment! Personally I don't mind the generalisation in the content of the video, I think what's there is good enough for a mass audience, but the thumbnail text is misleading and needs to be changed. Props for backing this up with stats!

[@pwnedd11]

@@Mega_Umbreon Thanks!! And yeah, you might be right on the generalization front! And man, I just switched over to wikipedia, looked at the openings, and then punched in the numbers on Google's calculator. I've just gotten into that habit due to the way the world is nowadays. Like on almost any topic from any source, I'll just do a quick google search and double check (if I have the time). I also go to better sources than wikipedia, of course, but for chess openings, it's fine! It's shocking how many major media sources across all sides of the political spectrum (and on so many issues) will get little things wrong. Those little things add up. And the more you double check, the easier it becomes. It was a little tough for me to get into the habit... my mind still generally builds it up to be more work than it is. But it pays off!

[@EdelEvanE]

A half as interesting chess video? Hell yea

[@han-huo]

@im calling saul Having what

[@wariolandgoldpiramid]

I was thought to open E4 E5 when I was a kid. It would be weird to do anything else.

[@humphreyspellingbee1732]

Same here. I knew the grandpa who taught me to play was old, but I didn’t know he was 1850’s old!

[@pwnedd11]

E4 and E5 are still insanely popular. 8 of the 11 games in the last world championship began e4, e5. And 48% of the games in the Candidates tournament were e4, e5.

[@pwnedd11]

@@humphreyspellingbee1732 He wasn't. E4 and E5 actually still are insanely popular. 8 of hte last 11 games in the 2021 World Championship began this way!

[@bipolarminddroppings]

Apart from e4,e5. Which is "best by test" and still the most popular opening by far. D4, d5 and e4,c5 and e4,d6 are the next most popular. (Queens pawn opening, Sicilian opening and French opening) The only difference today from 30 years ago is that pretty much any opening apart from the really silly stuff like Bird's opening are considered playable. Back 30 years ago, hardly anyone would have said the English or Dutch were viable openings, they only played the main 4 openings mentioned above.

[@pwnedd11]

@@bipolarminddroppings This is not true. 30 years ago was the 1990s. And 40 years ago was the 1980s. In the 80s, there was tons of experimentation. You saw English openings by Karpov and Seirawan. You saw hedgehogs and KID's. And you saw Czech Benonis. And guys like Tony Miles (top British GM from the 80's and 90's,) played everything. He even went through a "b6 against everything" phase. You don't see that as much anymore with the advent of computers.

[@luxuryhub1323]

I feel so frustrated with the king piece. Like the whole kingdom is trying to save you and you just move one square at a time like you don't give a damn

[@ESALTEREGO]

Well, have you seen a single king who have fought entire army by himself?

[@bipolarminddroppings]

The king is a very powerful piece though, when used properly. Especially in the end game.

[@BhlackBishop]

@@ESALTEREGO Alexander the Great? Former King of Macedonia

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

It's based on real life.

[@hazard4574]

This is actually a very good piece of advice, as sometime players see a good move (free bishop) but miss the mate in 4 that involved sacking your queen

[@justyourfriendlyneighborho2061]

3:26 The queen's hanging lol

[@KakoriGames]

There's so much wrong with this video. 1. You covered the evolution of chess strategy in over a century, not "every year" like the title suggests. 2. The Open Game is still one of the main openings of high level play. 3. Just because chess is a unsolved game, it doesn't mean it doesn't have perfect play. Chess is, in fact, theoretically solvable, but the computation time to do so is so big that is practically impossible, but that doesn't change the fact that prefect play does exist, we just don't know what it is or what the optimal result is. 4. The Magic the Gathering bit is completely unnecessary, and I don't even play Magic.

[@ProfGlitch]

e4 e5 is still the best opening by far, because it leads to the unstoppable Ke2 (often matched by an equally brilliant Ke7)

[@jaredkennedy6576]

I tend to follow the random open tactic, followed by collecting the other pieces. If you're unpredictable, other players have a hard time countering.

[@BrokenAtari]

Hey that's some major misinformation about the king's gambit. The opening is completely sound even by computer standards. It just requires grandmaster level play.

[@danmcgoogleaccount6954]

Kinda sounds like this video was made by someone who doesn't know much about chess, but has read a wikipedia entry about its history.

[@specularspaghet4449]

the middle board at 1:06 is known as the "game of the century" played in 1956

[@Amoeba_Podre]

You're just plain wrong, the kings gambit is a very solid opening that only doesn't hold up in the supercomputer level

[@MasterYoshidino]

Several minutes wasted when all he needed to say was "chess is technicially solvable but we don't know yet the solution" and "the meta game changed from playing like an idiot to playing to win".

[@JoshSmith-db2of]

That's why the channel is called "Half as Interesting."

[@yashdes1]

the "bad" era of romantic chess is by far the most fun

[@davidroddini1512]

That is how I play it.

[@lordvermintide4441]

Pretty much all games are more fun when the players are less skilled. Someone should do a video about that.

[@AgentSmith911]

1.e4 is still one of the best opening choices. The Spanish opening/Ruy Lopez is very popular among the top players and unfortunately, often leads to a draw, especially if they chose the Berlin variant of the Spanish.

[@wandregisel6385]

Throughout the decades, there have always been GMs who favoured different defenses against e4, based on their styles. Aggressive players like Bobby Fischer usually played c5 (the Sicilian). More solid players like Anatoly Karpov played e5 (he also played c6, the Caro-Kann, also quite solid). Then there are e6 (French Defense) players, a rare bird at the top levels these days, despite it's technically being a main defense against e4. In our computer era, e4 e5 is quite popular, as it has some very solid options (white is really trying hard to prove an advantage against a well-prepared opponent). I feel like the Kasparov-Kramnik match in 2000, where Kramnik completely shut down Kasparov with the Berlin Defense, really changed the whole opening meta

[@thalloutboy]

1. e4 e5 is not a bad opening by any means, and stockfish (the strongest brute force chess engine) still rates it highly. It has lost popularity over the years largely because the Sicilian defence (1. e4 c5) is considered better for black by computers and chess masters alike, leading black players to prefer the Sicilian and white players to play other openings to avoid the Sicilian. Furthermore, machine learning driven engines like alphazero and leela often avoid e4 as an opening move in favour of other moves, and especially openings centred around moves like d4, c4, and Nf3 for white.

[@Stugs_]

so what youre saying is there's updates to chess every year?

[@korosensei4873]

Well yes but actually no

[@Skelly57]

This is prolly an interesting video but at every level 1. E4 E5 is hella common

[@jamessloven2204]

How else can you bongcloud?

[@pwnedd11]

Yup!!!

[@rattlesnakebiscuits]

I love the smoke behind the board... a possible reference to Hikaru's Bongcloud intro?

[@lukew6725]

Imagine making fun of Ruy Lopez when one of the most popular openings is literally named after him.

[@jascrandom9855]

I always win chess thanks to my RT-2PM2 Topol-M 2-staged intercontinental ballistic missile.

[@stormixgaming8389]

Brilliant gambit

[@Duraltia]

So... Kinda wondering but there's this thing in Chess called a *_Promotion_* where you can convert a *Pawn* into any _other_ Chess piece _except_ for another *King* should it reach the opposite. The Wiki discussing this move explains that this theoretically allows a player to have up to 9 Queens on the board necessitating the existence of such additional Pieces to be brought to the table. While most definitely not a problem in a tournament where such an arrangement can easily be made - How is this usually being handled when you play at home or on the go? I don't recall ever seeing more than two Queens ( one of each color ) to be present in a Chess Set 🤨

[@bipolarminddroppings]

Usually you flip over a rook and use it as a queen if you dont have spares and the rooks are off the board. If not, depending on the pieces you can flip over pawns and use them. Any good chess set has at least 1 spare queen for each colour and it's very very rare that more than 2 are needed.

[@rogerkearns8094]

An inverted rook as a stand-in for the additional queen is the usual convention in off-hand games and is usually acceptable in club and county games..

[@CainCalifornia]

Some chess sets do come with extra pieces for promotion.

[@James-vc1kc]

Since I’ve been following chess content for almost two years now, I was pleasantly surprised to see a HAI video on it

[@pedrofauzi873]

I was just watching gotham chess and...a HAI about chess appered

[@James-vc1kc]

@@pedrofauzi873 I've seen almost all his videos over the past year, and a lot of agadmator's, but not as much in comparison because they cover the same tournament games all the time

[@corylong5808]

The Kings Gambit was the best strategy at the time. It was (and still is) a strong, aggressive opening that takes control of the center. It's not played today (at the highest levels with long time controls, it's still played everywhere else) because counters have been developed. Those counters didn't exist back then, and even if they did, the level of play was low enough for it to still dominate. Romantic play wasn't losing for fun, it was a strategy meta that consistently beat other metas until people found ways to beat it. It's a bit like saying people selling horses in the middle ages were doing so because they were romantic for horses, and not because cars hadn't been invented yet.

[@jjabrahms157]

yea, i love the KG as white, but as black, ive transitioned to an old classic, the modern benoni against the queens gambit, insane opening positions

[@lordcola-3324]

0:51 chess is solvable. So there is mathematically speaking exactly a right way to play chess.

[@scotty3739]

yeah that slipped by. he should have phrased it as "theoretically solveable", but the video still stands.

[@kidk9924]

What proof for solvability are you basing this on? I'm not saying your wrong but none of the proofs I quickly searched up show solvability for general chess.

[@scotty3739]

@@kidk9924 as it is a game with no luck involved, it is 100% solvable. however, it is computationally impossible with current technology. there are 400 unique positions after only 1 move, and there are exponentially more moves after that. what we do know, though, is that chess tends to end in a draw with equal opponents (say, stockfish vs stockfish)

[@kidk9924]

@@scotty3739 You may be right but I just want to see the proof of solvability for chess. I can only find proofs for the solvability of chess subsets or chess games that restrict the number of moves allowed.

[@arthurwamberg8911]

@@kidk9924 The rigerous proof, which is a little technical, relies on the fact that the game is deterministic, which means that no luck is involved. Therefore, in any given position, there is a set of possible moves, and these will not change if the position is reached in the same way in another game. If you were to play out every possible position and check the final results, you can trace back the moves and find out for every position, who can force a win, (or whether no one can force a win). The only difference between solving subsets of chess and the entire game is the computational requirements. Please note that the proof might not be entirely accurate, as it is based solely on my memory and intuition.

[@StarryNightGazing]

Well almost every game in the last world championship opened with e4 e5 and Spanish game so 💀

[@pwnedd11]

Yes!!!

[@MrMarlowe3488]

1. e4 e5 and 1. d4 d5 have remained fairly popular openings throughout the 20th-21st centuries, sure other openings came in but it's not like they ever stopped being used

[@silverfox8615]

I have yet to watch one of your videos and not laugh out loud. I love your sense of humor!

[@scotty3739]

glad to see that garry chess has spread to new frontiers.

[@bramvandenheuvel4049]

If you reach the exact same position three times over the course of a game, it is an automatic draw.

[@allanfifield8256]

with the same person to move.

[@qzbnyv]

Top left painting at 2:51. Use the KZbin app’s new pinch-to-zoom feature. Look at the facial expressions. I wish I could post a cropped screenshot of the intense face.

[@coachmcguirk6297]

I caught that little spongebob reference to "breathing and fine dining" also at 3:25 what the heck is queen f6?? You just blundered a draw from a totally winning position.

[@letti4285]

Nice try, but everyone knows the castle move is the best strategy.

[@kennystimpson2775]

Nah its uh peasant

[@AmoghA]

Random Fun Fact: Cats can jump upto 5 times than their heights.

[@Stugs_]

cool

[@GoneZombie]

I'm going to go share all these great chess facts with my friends at the bar and library!

[@BambinaSaldana]

3:27 Bro had mate in like 10, hung his queen, and is thinking about control of the center.

[@keenanberg6169]

Holy shit the amount of just plain idiocy in this video around Chess is just insane. First of all "Kings pawn open" or "Open Games" most certainly do happen even at GM level and the disrespect to Ruy Lopez (one of the great chess visionaries) who's signature opening is still one of the best continuations of Open game is just plain wrong. King's Gambit (the one that HAI uses to illustrate Romantic play) isn't even a "romantic move" nor is it the worst opening, not the best but it's not particularly idiotic to do. Chess meta comes in waves and certain GMs have different preferred openings and often switch them up to keep their opponent off guard. It's more like a toolbox, where some openings "technically" are more optimized but it's not like the less optimized ones don't have their place.

[@PRIMEVAL543]

3:26 stupidest move XDD

[@gavinthecrafter]

I'm referring to computers as "very precisely arranged piles of sand" from now on

[@ouikendLP]

yea I mean 1 e4 e5 is still widely popular at top level and arguably the most frequent opening next to the queen's gambit. Literally look at any top level chess tournaments and you're gonna see a bunch of Spanish and Italian games

[@gianlucatartaro1335]

Lmao as somebody who plays chess somewhat regularly, I can tell that the real chess-heads are gonna come after Sam for this one 😂 I’ve never once heard of e4 e5 and d4 d5 get contrasted as the open vs closed games, and I can already tell that the oversimplification of the history of openings is going to trigger thousands of players 😂

[@onlyapawn4371]

e4 d5 is half open and d4 e5 is half closed XD

[@yaakovwaxman4807]

In case you didn't know, the breaking your opponents finger actually happened when a robot was playing a young player.

[@davidroddini1512]

Robots are getting too competitive any more. It is reprehensible that a robot that broke a child’s finger to disadvantage its opponent! What about Asimov’s laws of robotics?!

[@yaakovwaxman4807]

@@davidroddini1512 lol it was a mistake

[@davidroddini1512]

@@yaakovwaxman4807 lol that’s what it wants you to think 😉

[@yaakovwaxman4807]

@@davidroddini1512 haha perhaps

[@Temeria4ever]

I mean the thumbnail is very wrong. e4-e5 is still the most popular opening in chess per Lichess' player database, and the second most popular at the high level.

[@06.vineethdsouza80]

the ICBM variation of the Tenison gambit is the best opening

[@rosemulet]

I still play e4 e5 though lol

[@AbiGail-ok7fc]

Does that mean you play by yourself? Normally, if you play 1 e4, it's your opponent to decide whether e5 is played or not.

[@pwnedd11]

Everybody still plays e4, and e5. 8 of the 11 last games in the most recent World Championship match started that way. He's totally wrong with his thumbnail.

[@maikotter9945]

@@float32 entry of Wednesday, 17th August 2022 Mario [Draghi], Luigi [Di Maio] & Co. tried to fixed Italy ... ! This try failed. The result are Snap Elections for Senate and Chamber, which will be held on Sunday, 25th September 2022.

[@Joald]

Except it's mathematically proven that there is a way to perfectly play chess, only no one knows what it is or what is the result of that perfect game (though most suspect it's a draw).

[@bonaaq86]

It's not mathematically proven, it's at most theoretically expected, but the engine capable of solving chess is not possible in this universe I'm pretty sure.

[@Joald]

@@bonaaq86 it is proven, look up Zermelo's theorem

[@1vader]

@@bonaaq86 There's a difference between "no engine can find the best strategy" and "it doesn't exist". We know that a best strategy exists (this has been proven through Zermelo's theorem as Joald mentioned). We just don't know what the best strategy is and it's unclear whether we will ever find out.

[@emmahird2795]

At 0:36, what's the game on the right? I recognise the other two but I don't know that one. Also, funny thing, the game on the left (the example of 1800s openings) was actually played in 1960.

[@winrar42]

Kind of underselling Ruy Lopez considering the Ruy Lopez opening is still played today in top level tournaments...