Is science interfering with the beauty of chess?
The last two world chess championships, the contenders headed for a tie-breaker. A tie-breaker, as the name suggests, is used to break ties when the players have same total number of points after the last round.
Except you are a grand master, or one of those highly rated chess players, sitting for hours watching Magnus Carlson, the almighty world champion, and Fabiano Caruana play so passively may have been exasperating. And Magnus who was defending his world chess championship title agreeing to a draw in a clearly winning position aggrandizes the frustration.
Who doesn’t want a Mikhail Tal on the board?
Mikhal Tal is known for his spectacular, speculative and dramatic chess combination. We know him as the magician. He would sacrifice minor and major pieces, putting his opponent in an uncomfortable position. In such a position, they blunder and he wins.
Chess is pretty easy to learn. Within a few minutes, you will know all the rules of the game and you are good to go. Playing chess involves critical thinking and creativity. It is the perfect combination of science and arts, the beautiful romance between logic and creativity.
Opening theory was the first stage of the “mechanization” of the chess game. At least the first 10 moves are played from memory. Rated players can memorize each and every variation of the opening game and how they have been played by grand masters. I guess we could deal with the predictability of the opening moves but what we didn’t see coming was the choking of its ethos.
Since the development of chess engines, the style of play of the top rated players has changed over the decades. Training with these chess engines somehow nudges these players to think like the chess engines. This is not a bad thing as no one scores for aesthetics, but we lose the art in the science.
The dancer is being untwined from the dance.
