Failing At Chess Makes Me A HERO - Dog IQ Commentary And Excuses Masterclass
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- Опубліковано 22 бер 2024
- I decided to play Chess, the oldest of the old classics. At first I was pretty much treating it as a joke, then I thought it was actually quite good. But then I looked too deep into the world of Chess theory and decided that actually I hate every fibre of the 'game'. Here's that story, entwined with mad rants about AI taking over the world, and probably some other rubbish.
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Despite having my most insane arguements, this video also has one of the most reasonable comment sections on all UA-cam. This is the magic of chess!
If Devin is playing Chess. Devin should play a fighting game. Probably more fun than Chess.
I wonder what Devin thinks of Shogi?
In the bad old days I actually played soul caliber 2 to the point I was somewhat good, or at least better than other losers at university. As for shogi, all I know if that it seems like a cooler version of chess, but I have never played it. I saw some of that depressing anime about shogi I forget the name of, that's about as close as I've got!
@@OffyDGG Sounds like Sangatsu no Lion. Shogi/Japanese Chess is actually pretty cool.
In contrast to chess, in Shogi you can use pieces you capture as reinforcements. You can place any piece you capture on any free space on the board, with only three exceptions: you can't place two of your own Pawns in the same column, you can't place a Pawn to check the enemy King and you can't place a piece that only moves forward on the last row. This means that there's never going to be a stalemate due to insufficient material, because every piece you lose, your opponent gains and vice versa. You'll probably never get into a situation, where the board is completely empty besides the Kings, because pieces are constantly being placed back on the board.
What's also nice about Shogi compared to normal chess is that there's only three pieces on each side that can move from one end of the board to the other (Bishop and Rook, which are the same as regular chess + the Lancer, which only moves forward in its lane); most move only one square at a time. This means that it's much easier to see what your opponent is planning, because they will have to move a piece (or more likely several pieces) several times, before it gets to where it needs to be.
Another fun mechanic is that promotions happen when a piece moves into, in or out of any of the last three rows of the board. And you can decide to not promote a piece, if it still has legal moves without promotion. Every piece also only has one thing they can promote to. All pieces except Bishop, Rook and the King promote into a Gold General (Gold Generals and the Kings don't promote at all) and the Bishop and the Rook promote into an upgraded version of themselves, where they can move as usual or one square into any direction.
I also want to mention that despite not being able to read a lick of Japanese, I was able to learn to recognize the pieces pretty quickly. The most mistakes I made was forgetting which piece is the Bishop and which is the Rook, when both of them are promoted.
I love chess but I feel the same way. I don't want to learn the mouves
I completely agree with your problem of 'the meta of multiplying numbers.'
Since I was a kid I always had my own unique way of doing it. It was not the 'meta', took a lot longer, and wasn't guaranteed to be correct. However, the brainpower put into it time after time made me very good at solving abstract puzzles and general perception. To me, the people doing the math 'the meta' way are just acting on rote and dogma. At most, they're applying their dogma to a new set of numbers. But its the same dogma. Its not an attempt to actually *do* the math.
I dont like Chess. I dont like how linear Chess is. There's no way to account for different scenarios beyond two clone armies line up, and they always have the same pieces. I dont like how permanent Chess is. You lose a piece and its gone unless a pawn should make it to the end of the lane and be promoted. Despite how strategic it is, I see Chess as being a game of memory and memory recollection, not a game of perception.
I like Weiqi/Go. You can set up all sorts of strategies. Sure you might not be following the best 'meta' but theres lots of room for you to apply your own creativity and perceptive abilities. And all the pieces are equal. And you never run out of them, just of territory you can put them in.
In short, people should not all be computers. Some people can be computers. Chess is a great game, but I don't like it.
In shorter, you and I share the exact same views Devin.
Yes this is basically a much better put version of the vague thoughts I was drifting between while playing and ranting. You have just saved people 1 hour and 40 minutes of my rambling 😁
10/10 - possibly more unhinged than This is Content Bus Simulator 21
- Playing chess is an affront to God
OffyD, 2024
- Chess is just anime in disguise
OffyD, 2024
@@nobubblegums-1899 Devin unhinged ⇒ Anime is an affront to God. Finally, someone said the truth!!
Finally a REAL opinion on this old school hidden gem!
We are one step closer to the coveted Go review.
Chess with house rules is actually quite popular. They're called "variants" and a lot of them are, at the very least, novel enough that you don't need to know their meta, if there even is one.
Also, in my experience, chess really is less fun the more you know how to play it well. I think that's part of why the Grandmaster was complaining about the computation thing. At his level, he needs to memorize or calculate like several dozen moves ahead, with multiple different branches of possibilities for what his opponent might do. For someone at his level, it is actually possible to "solve" chess once they get 30+ moves into a game and there would still be like 20+ moves left to play.
On the other hand, a noob who can only count one move ahead, if even that, can think of the game in terms of strategy and be more creative with it.
I think the problem is, getting frustrated with making bad moves that instantly lose, because then you want to be able to not make bad moves that instantly lose. But if you actually go through the process of learning that, you need to learn to calculate several moves ahead and you won't be able to approach the game with the same creativity anymore.
For me personally, the most fun I've had with chess wasn't actually playing it, but talking about it. For example, one of my core memories is that 15 years ago we were analysing a tournament game someone else in my team had played. In that game his opponent had blundered their Queen, but my team mate ended up not taking it because he thought it was a trap. Even though he could not calculate any way for it to be a trap, he still thought it must've been a trap. That's because the opponent was this grizzly old Chess-veteran and it was my team mate's first ever tournament game. He thought that there's no way such a good player could make such a beginner mistake. And that's like a life lesson that's stuck with me all this time; that even someone with years of experience can sometimes make a beginner mistake.
My favourite part about chess is to talk about important stuff while I play with someone, to use it as a door to have significant conversations. Most games of chess I play with people I care we do not finish them, but engage in a dialogue and forget who's turn was. It makes me feel like two generals that after fighting a skirmish set the terms for a parlee and end up being friends and signing a peace treaty.
Also yes I do understand. Sun Tzu once said “Chess is for chumps” and that’s why Pyrrhus of Epirus was a subpar tactician. A real tactician is a swordsman, a samurai perhaps. Who through the tactical zen of facing even one opponent, develops skills that transcend occupation, making you a better CEO. Or whatever.
Monkeys don’t play chess and this is how we will defeat Skynet.
You’ve really gone and done it haven’t you? A chess commentary. Maybe my Postman Pat NLP idea wasn’t so silly after all.
It was gonna be some kind of weird April fools video, then I ended up having an actual rant to make so it became a certified brainless commentary fest. Postman pat's gritty origin story coming soon on the GameWorldNarratives channel 🔜🔜🔜
Florida man has turned chess into checkers.
Kidding aside, it's amazing how different of a perspective you showed of chess. I've been playing it since I was a kid (I'm not a pro or anything, not a brag). It was a bit like trying to break down the movements that go into walking upright.
To a large extent you are right about there being a strong meta. It is to the point where grandmasters have grown knowledgeable about certain computer moves in openings and lines even if they are not very "human" because anyone who takes the game seriously uses engines to study their games. There is now a distinction often made between "human" moves and "computer" moves. Thankfully this distinction also makes it possible to catch cheaters because the computer has no feelings. It will make the most nonsensical trades as long as it leads to a win in the game.
On the bright side I find low level chess is quite hilarious. The best way to describe it is pandemonium because I am guaranteed to make a huge blunder but my opponent probably is as well. There is satisfaction from working your brain but sometimes the most fun you get out of the game is just your opponent looking like a complete idiot and you capitalizing on it. On the flipside, you get moments where you feel really stupid too.. Chess is either very fun or very demoralizing at least in my experience. But it strikes me as a better experience than this for sure to play against real people.
Anarchy Chess sounds like OffyD's route!
1:29:00 Horse goes take the enemy Pawn in D7, which reveals a check from your Queen. The enemy King has no moves, so either their Horse takes your Queen, after which you move your Horse to F6 (which is checkmate, because the enemy King has no moves and they cannot block or take both of the two pieces attacking it at the same time) or their other Horse goes to E5 to block your Queen, after which your Horse again goes to F6 (which is a checkmate, because it's the same situation as before).
The trick to solving "mate in x moves"-puzzles, is that you have to figure out what move you can make, that only leaves one or two things that are possible for the enemy to make. Not even as in "moves that make sense", but as in "moves that are possible."
In the above example, the enemy only has two possible moves, if you move your Horse to D7. Any other move would leave their King in check.
The best way is to usually make every possible check, because there's usually very few legal moves following a check. And then you look at each of the possible enemy moves following each of your checks, in order to determine if after each of those follow ups you can then get a checkmate (or another check, if the puzzle is "mate in more than 2 moves").
I thought I had stumbled back into This Is Content 😂
Love chess, its partly automatic and partly a game of tricks and traps. There will be inevitable dilemmas and oversights. Trading value of pieces is important and pawn formation matters. Playing computers isn't nearly as fun as playing with humans who make mistakes.
Yeah I think this might be my mistake: playing ai isn't that fun since it gives you fewer opportunities. The real secret is probably to play someone as bad as me!
you need some 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel
Long live Officially Content
Hilarious video, I need insane chess Devin whispering in my ear
I'm only 15 minutes in but I wholeheartedly agree with every point made here. Those same points also serve to justify my laziness and lack of brainpower when it comes to playing chess, but don't mind that. With its fixed starting point and units, chess is like a single "battle" and so given enough time, you can calculate every possible outcome and figure out the optimal move for every scenario. Since everyone and their grandmother has a calculator with them now, it feels more like a contest of memorization or a time sink (emphasis on 'feels like', I'm sure there's plenty of room for skill and intellect, but this feeling always pushed me off). Tangentially that's also why I can't click with competitive RTS, especially AoE2 - too many build orders and hard counters to memorize. Total War gets around this by making the AI worthless - it's all about what you do with your units - which also feels off. I guess my dream for competitive strategy would be a game with simple units, weak counters, and randomized positions. Little investment, little a priori knowledge (e.g. cav is good against archers, everyone knows that), but also little memorization.
Anyhoo, love the devolution of the channel, expecting Minesweeper next!
I agree, and I think that's why when it comes to competitive strategy, I secretly think card games like yugioh or gwent have a winning formula. That being the fact both sides are given hands partially at random, and you don't know what your opponent has / will get. So playings odds and thinking about synergies is most important, which isn't especially time consuming or computational. Gives a sense that there is plenty to get stuck into when it comes to thinking about the game, but ultimately there are no right answers and the creative or playful element remains. I used to follow the competitive gwent scene because I am super cool, and it always seemed very interesting - although I couldn't be bothered to actually play it myself, so I guess that means it can't be that alluring! Something something, maybe competitive games are doomed to produce miserable players one way or another.
1:42:49 Devin says it's my fault, I instantly think of the 1st Narnia movie's 'blame game', and to be honest felt the blame coming from the moment he started to blame things. Yet again great content, how does Devin find these smaller games so regularly.
Criticising the game design of chess might be the intellectual peak of your UA-cam career. Also I kind of agree that chess has little to do with military strategy or most strategy in general outside of the concept of thinking ahead (basically what strategy is anyway)
I can't play chess because as a kid I'd play my dad who would take ten fucking minutes over every move and just thinking about it makes my ADHD brain want to break down screaming!
lmfao I've been playing a lot of Chess lately and I didn't expect this! Thanks for the video Devin I love your content. It keeps me going on hard days.
What do I like about Chess? I like doing the puzzles and seeing these insane strategies that I would never have thought of, or seen in a million years. As for the actual game, it's very mid. Your into the breach gameplay actually got me into Into The Breach, which in turn got me into chess!
could you consider playing some of my old favorites? Majesty: the fantasy kingdom sim, Age of Mythology, Bloons TD 6, Civ 3/4/5/6, Hearthstone Battlegrounds?
Age of mythology is on my list, had it for like 10 years now and still haven't actually played it - true of lots of my games since I am apparently addicted to steam sales and the like. I would also like to play civ 4, that was my first one and I am sure I have rants many years coming in to be unleashed if I go for that blast from the past!
@@OffyDGGCiv4 is amazing and easily the best one, do it now
Damn, this hits close to home. You put words to the way I feel about chess, and pretty much all games with strong metas. It’s just not very fun.
Edit: I will say, programming a chess bot was ‘fun’ though. You see if your ai beats other ais and it save you from having to play chess.
22:56 _it's, it's really, it's just not in our nature to play chess. _*_Playing chess is an affront to God._*
The faithful have spoken!
Speaking of which Devin, check out the English (auto-generated) transcript at 41:11… The algorithm has some questions for you.
The algorithm knows exactly what I was really saying, and I am glad for it. Praise the algorithm, praise devin's beautiful arrangement of porns!
@@OffyDGG LOL
@@OffyDGG By the way, you mentioned game speeds. I had a thought, with the different AI difficulties, perhaps you should scale how much time you allow yourself to make a move relative to their Elo. That is, on low Elo, play a Blitz, whereas spend minutes on each move on higher Elos. Maybe that would make it fair and satisfying.
That's probably what I should have done, it's only that I am too impatient and forgetful to actually do well with carefully considered moves!
For me the most fun i have in chess i when training in Lichess, since that's just an infinite collection of puzzles, you just have to find the best move, no time limit and no necessity to learn opening, that makes it a interesting challenge, since the ELO is calculated for success rate to adjust the difficulty.
Wow, I just watched a 1 hr and 40 minute video. What did I learn?
Well first, I should probably stop procrastinating college assignments.
Second, every time someone beats me at chess, I should be happy that I have not wasted as much of my life, learning how to beat other people at chess.
Third, stalemates are stupid.
Fourth, come the AI apocalypse, the best way to survive is to convince the AI that you both don't want to play chess.
And of course the ultimate lesson: mating is harder than it looks.
1:29:32 After many minutes of staring at the screen, I believe I have found the solution to your mating issue. First you order the horsey to take the left pawn, revealing a check and thus forcing black to take your queen. Then you move the horsey to the space below the right pawn (f6), putting the king under attack by two pieces (horsey and the bishop on b5) of which they can only afford to deal with one, which is mate.
That might just be it. The only thing is that black can put their knight or queen in front of their king, instead of taking your queen, to break that first check. not sure how it might end up after that. In fact, since I am here at my PC, I will go try it right now and report back...
Good news, it totally works! It still doesn't seem like they are forced to take the queen, but the AI does it. Thanks for helping me mate
@@OffyDGG Your reply inspired me to go check it in an engine, which did actually recommend blocking the queen with the f2 knight as the best move for black. However, it makes no difference. Blocking with one of the knights means that the bishop-knight combo attack still works, while blocking with the queen means that the white queen can just take it in turn and enforce a mate because it's protected by the bishop on a3.
At last, ai brings us mating strategies that cannot fail! Good intel. It the sort of thing it would interesting to have the game, where it could give a commentary on why a move is so good.
the solution to your problem is to play against humans who are not very high level (slightly higher or lower than you)
I did it
and it made me happy
To your point about transferable skills... I don't know, man. Gaming in general has very few transferable skills if any. I consider myself good at gaming, and the only thing this affords me is being slightly more familiar with games if I try a new one. The only exception to this might be picking up a new system. For instance, someone good at games would have an easier time learning excel, I believe - because it's no different than figuring out how an item system might work within a game.
Chess, on the other hand... People who are good at chess have above average working memory. That's a marginally more transferable skill, but not by much.
Wasn't really talking about gaming, more about strategy. I think the example I made was that the tactics of swordfighting apply broadly to the tactics of all competition, and I think you can pick up that kind of 'strategy sense' from playing strategy games with a more realistic considerations/degrees of freedom.
But that aside, I would actually say that gaming makes you good at learning systems, as you suggested. That shouldn't be undervalued - there isn't an easy way to get this skill, and it's a compounding advantage in life.
Once you have it, you probably don't notice its effects, you just seem to be 'good at things'. Everything can be optimised in life, and performing a variety of mental tasks under pressure to optimise them gives you a sense of the kinds of things you can do to achieve this in all arenas, almost in the background or subconsciously.
That's why I am willing to assume things like 'people who are good at most games will also be good at, say, changing tyres'. They learn and perform things 'better' because all the moment-to-moment decisions involved profit from there being more broad, evidence-based, and matured instinct behind it from the get-go. And that, I think, is very transferable.
So I say gaming is ultimately just 'practicing doing stuff well', and that stuff grants experience at thinking in all kinds of ways that help with all kinds of other tasks.
I find chess extremely boring in theory but actually playing and exploring it is unexpectedly fun for me. I am in constant search for a strategy game that has good ratio between the extremes of tedium/meaningless obvious choices/ritual clickfest/flavor without substance and bare-bone/brute force/deterministic abstract strategy. Flavorful 4x game without the eternal end-game slog problem would be nice but it's like squaring a circle
Years and years of playing strategy games, narrating descriptions of historical battles, and there you go, your skills are completely useless at the one game that is likely to be used as measure of your strategic prowess in the real world. Certainly more likely than actually commanding troops. I am as salty about this as you are.
The problem with chess is that it's a 1v1 game with hundreds of years of meta and is almost completely symmetric.
All strictly multiplayer games with aged metas are miserable with their meta-remembering and execution focus. At least it's 1v1 so it's not as toxic as league of legends, but still. Some people value the remembering capacity, some people value twitch/apm execution capacity. That's what competitions are about, putting an obscene amount of effort into something so you can outcompete others. And chess has a ton of competition.
If you had the predispositions or previous investment with the strategy memorization you'd probably like it more and become a chess snob. You play AOE2, certainly that game doesn't expect people to learn useless skills like hotkeys memorization, high apm or build metas.
My excuse is to never compete and thus preserve my ego from any potential bruising from a game like chess (even though I'd probably beat you at chess).
Chess is a bad strategy game for pseudo intellectual nerds
its just about memorising the meta and nothing else
I feel that this only applies to the high level, so it was something that made me uninterested in putting more time in. But on the other hand, playing at the lower level I think still has some wider appeal because of players don't know the meta and don't really bother computing moves, ie play as badly as me, then new and emergent situations that could be interesting can still show up amid the chaos. That said, other games do that better, so it's not really much of a reason to play chess specifically.
@@OffyDGG you should try shogi, i tried it while playing yakuza 0 and it already seemed alot less restrictive. the board is 9x9 so theres more space and when you capture enemy pieces you can spend a turn to use them yourself and place them almost anywhere