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by jstx1 1361 days ago
What I mean is that the gap between someone who has studied the new opening vs someone who hasn't studied would be huge so players have a much stronger incentive to prepare. And with an engine the new theory comes out immediately, it's not like you're waiting for humans to develop it.

Imagine a match in classical chess between a 2600-rated plyaer who has spent time preparing their classical openings and a 2800 rated player who hasn't prepared at all - the 2800 player will still have a large edge. Now imagine the same scenario for a 960 game where the lower-rated player has spent 4 days evaluating the opening with an engine and the high-rated player hasn't - in this scenario the advantage from the engine prep is much bigger. The mix of novelty + opportunity to prepare is such that from a game theory perspective the whole thing becomes prepare-or-lose if their overall chess strength is reasonably close otherwise.
2 comments
honkdaddy 1361 days ago
Mmm, that makes sense. I think it's easy for people (myself) who've only played at a very amateur (casual IRL games and sub 1200 online) level to make assumptions about how chess must be for high ranked players. Realistically if they're able to decide to resign after only a handful of moves and no captures, we're playing a pretty different game conceptually, even if the rules and setup are identical.

It's nice to think of high ranked players playing chess the way my friends and I do: distracted, stoned, and just sort of improvising, but I'm realizing now that for good players it's waaay more about the prep and theory than just playing by "feel".

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BlueTemplar 1361 days ago
It's interesting, just a few hours ago, I used the chess openings example to explain why some Magic the Gathering players dislike the now very prevalent practice of "netdecking" (using someone else's list of cards, while in theory, the game started out as one where you compose your own list).

In the comments for this video about netdecking :

https://youtu.be/qz0OTiTuQBY

(The main issue IMHO is how it can warp non-competitive play.)

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