[robomartin]

I agree as general points. I'll disagree as it applies to Chess. The only way to escalate the ranks in chess is to become a living database. That transforms people. I've seen it and it's ugly. The chess you learned as a kid was a game. This chess is a very different animal.

Off the top of my head, a profession that requires people to become a human database is something like pharmacology. These folks have to know a lot about a tremendous number of medications. The difference between pharmacology and chess is that the former is actually useful and has a purpose. Once chess becomes "who is the better database" it stops being intellectually or practically useful as far as I am concerned.

[asynchrony]

In my opinion, up to a very, very high level, the importance of opening knowledge is vastly overrated.

The two highest rated players in the world (Carlsen and Aronian, neither of them participating in this world championship match) frequently just aim to get a playable position out of the opening and still succeed in outplaying very strong opposition in the late middlegame/endgame. This despite the fact that it would difficult to find two better examples of "human chess databases".

[adeelk]

> The only way to escalate the ranks in chess is to become a living database.

This happens in any field with significant theory. A chess grandmaster isn’t any more of a “living database” than a mathematician, for example, who spends about twenty years learning theory (from elementary school to Ph.D.) before working on original research. And in chess, just as in mathematics, learning theory is not as simple as memorization.

> Once chess becomes "who is the better database" it stops being intellectually or practically useful as far as I am concerned.

A player who knows some theory will always have an advantage over an amateur, but when the difference in players’ knowledge of theory is negligible, as it is in the top levels, it is strategy and tactics that win games.

I do understand your frustration, as an amateur chess player myself. But telling yourself that you would be a better player if you just spent some time memorizing opening lines is just a cop-out. That won’t make you a better player, it will just put you on equal ground with your opponents.

Edit: heh, coincidentally today’s game speaks for itself.

[koide]

I agree what you say, but chess is not only who is the better database, though. Analytic reasoning (and home preparation) is still what defines who wins among similar "databases".