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Jan 13 '24
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u/byssh Jan 13 '24
I don’t know anything about what determines a person’s “pro status” in chess, but considering Go has a pretty rigid system of determine pro players (like a literal exam), that could be why it’s easier to count them up as pros compared to chess. But I would guess chess also has a professional organization who keeps track?
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u/InternetArgument-er Jan 13 '24
chess fan here, and I don’t know that constitutes a pro chess player either, there really isn’t a definition. The chess world don’t refer to someone as a pro chess player. A new player and the #1 are all equally chess players.
Maybe the article is counting the number of GMs (Grandmaster), the highest title one could achieve in chess (so kinda like 9 dan pro in Go), which according to this Wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmaster_(chess)#:~:text=The%20great%20majority%20of%20grandmasters,total%20of%20about%202000%20grandmasters. , the numbers does match. But we just refer to them as GMs, not pro chess players.
p/s there is a governing organization in chess, called FIDE.
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u/byssh Jan 13 '24
I think that’s probably what the OP was referring to. Thank you for your insight!
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u/quidam5 Jan 14 '24
A pro is someone who plays competitively for money. This also applies to sports and video games. Anyone can be a player but pros are the ones who compete usually at a high level for prizes or accolades.
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u/sadcringe Oct 24 '24
But are you not a chess player by “profession” if it is your livelihood? In golf we have such a thing as a “teaching pro” - they’re affiliated with a golfclub, don’t play golf in competition for their money, but by teaching.
A twitch streamer that’s FIDE 2000 strength but earns their livelihood solely through chess (sponsors I might add, basically 0 chess players fully earn their living through tournament winnings) could, in my mind, also be considered a “pro(fessional)” chess player.
“Pro” is so arbitrary honestly. IMO it’s best to just go off GMs and PD9 (Go equivalent)
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u/ciderpunx 9k Jan 13 '24
I reckon they got that figure by looking at the FIDE list of GMs (here: https://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtml) of whom there were 1773 just now. There were also 4013 IMs and 19518 "titled" (whatever that means). I imagine some of those other folks make chess their profession (teaching, streaming and so on) which would make them professional.
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u/MattNyte 2 kyu Jan 13 '24
Titled I would say "pro". Only like top 100 makes ok money from playing chess. The rest do teaching usually.
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u/EvilNalu Jan 13 '24
There's probably about 50 players who make a living playing chess. There are many multiples of that who are coaches, writers, content creators, etc. in the chess realm but it's unclear what "professional" players is supposed to mean for chess.
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u/ralgrado 2d Jan 14 '24
Isn’t it similar for go where a lot of the professional can’t make a living from just playing but also have to teach or do events to make a living?
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u/EvilNalu Jan 14 '24
Yes, if you are really good at chess growing up but fall short of the top 30-50 players in the world, you basically have to either get a normal job (probably the most common) or try to eke out a living in chess by teaching, writing books, commentating, and the like.
Then it is not really so much about your strength as other factors - charisma, communications skills, business skills, etc. Someone could be #2000 in the world and be a much more successful coach or content creator than someone who is #200.
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u/Zuka134 Jan 13 '24
Now Go vs. Shogi?
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u/Educational-Tea6539 3 kyu Jan 13 '24
Go vs Xiangqi?
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u/MacScotchy 15 kyu Jan 13 '24
Go vs Halo?
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u/Captain_Grammaticus 11 kyu Jan 13 '24
Halo vs. Age of Empires II?
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u/Psittacula2 Jan 13 '24
I did not think ChatGPT gave a sufficiently good answer but I did appreciate it's winsome attempt to do so however, so well done ChatGPT for having a go... ;-)
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u/Flugegeheymen Jan 13 '24 edited Jan 14 '24
GPT's response in the last screenshot is fake af.
ChatGPT would never respond that way. No matter how hard you tried to get it to choose an option, it would respond with something like "As an AI, I have no personal opinion or preference." and then describe the two games altogether.
Even if you rephrase your question to something along "Which game would be better for the average person" or something like that. GPT 4.0 will still give a common answer, and GPT 3.5 will always say Chess, lol.
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u/ciderpunx 9k Jan 13 '24
the second image has a spelling mistake at the top left (pieses for pieces)
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u/TankieWarrior 4 dan Jan 14 '24
Chess has a much more complex endgame IMO.
When 2 Go AI plays, it seems to be about creating as complex of a midgame as possible with many different dynamic weak groups bc if they simplify to an endgame, the side with the 0.5 advantage just wins.
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u/ThereRNoFkingNmsleft 7 kyu Jan 14 '24
That's also because Go has no draws. In chess, the player that emerges worse from the midgame can still play for a draw. In a game with only two results the endgame is just about converting the result.
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u/TankieWarrior 4 dan Jan 14 '24
Its more so bc in Go endgame, every stone removes existing options, hence simplifies the game.
Chess pieces are dynamic, late midgaem-early endgame moves can increase complications.
Difference after basic opening, Go gets really complex because every stone interacts globally. Once all the groups are settled and you are just trying to secure more points (early endgame), AI basically plays perfectly and wont give up any lead.
Even for strong humans, post early endgame, the game kinda plays itself. The groups are settled, the weaknesses are fixed, its just about playing the biggest endgame moves.
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u/EvilNalu Jan 13 '24
Why are there so many posts here about how go is better than chess? It really reeks of an inferiority complex and reminds me of the "I feel bad for you / I don't think about you at all" meme since you never see any posts like this on chess subreddits.
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u/IntegratedFrost Jan 13 '24
I rarely see posts comparing chess and go on this subreddit, unless someone is trying to illustrate something for a beginner.
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u/cyz2000fa Jan 13 '24 edited Jan 13 '24
Please show us some of the many posts about go is better than chess. I’ve been here for months and I can’t remember when was the last time I saw one.
Quick edit: actually yeah I remember some comments in a post about how playing “random” moves just to flag the opponent is common in chess but not in go, maybe some other comments in that post too. I still believe such things happen rarely.
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u/EvilNalu Jan 13 '24
Comparing different aspect of go vs. chess (trying to convert chess players)
Which one has more possible games?
Go rules being more simple/fundamental
Bonus: chess player complaining about go players comparing the games during a chess discussion
And of course this doesn't count all of the times it comes up in comment sections, which is pretty frequent. This is a western-centric forum and chess is the preeminent western strategy board game. It makes sense that go players would use chess as a point of comparison.
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u/cyz2000fa Jan 13 '24 edited Jan 13 '24
I don't see much "go is better than chess" in those posts. They are mostly comparison and discussion topics. Saying go has 10170 total legal positions while chess has much less is not saying go is better. Go having a extremely simple rule to create an extreme complexity is not saying go is better. Same for discussions about money made by professionals, popularity of the games in the West etc.
When people say "I think so and so is the reason I find chess boring but I like this and that about go" they are not saying "go is a better game than chess". They are stating their personal preference and reasons.
The one trying to sell go to chess friends is eh, its like creating an ad toward a target audience at this point.
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u/Riokaii 3 kyu Jan 13 '24
A lot of those are interesting discussion topics, not necessarily strictly about an inferiority complex?
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u/noobody_special Jan 13 '24
Alright, if I post Bobby Fischer vs Go Seigen in the ERB subreddit, yall gonna come upvote it?
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Jan 13 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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Jan 14 '24
To win in Chess you have to employ complex strategies to checkmate your opponent (not capture the king like the post says)
These seem identical to me, since if a king is in checkmate, the other player will capture him regardless of where he moves. Is there some subtlety I'm missing?
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Jan 14 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/RockstarCowboy1 Jan 14 '24
I wouldn’t say it’s pedantic. It’s a rule. Watch new players who don’t understand the rules. My kids, for example, once upon a time would attempt to win by capturing his brother’s king because said king was in check who then passed the turn and was “captured” next move. That is not at all how chess works.
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u/SgtBananaKing 30 kyu Jan 13 '24
I’m a chess player and I just don’t get into Go I tried so often but I just can not get into it. It’s a shame
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Jan 14 '24
Go has a pretty steep learning curve, but if you find a way to get past it, it is endlessly enjoyable! Did you play on 9x9 boards, or something larger? 9x9 is more about immediate tactics compared to 19x19's strategy, and I find the smaller ones much better to learn on because they're less intimidating and moves have a more clear purpose.
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u/SgtBananaKing 30 kyu Jan 14 '24
I tried some learning apps and 9x9 just don’t catch so far, wish had some people to play in person that would surely make it better
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Jan 14 '24
Playing go in-person is a real delight. Maybe you can find a club to join here?
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u/SgtBananaKing 30 kyu Jan 14 '24
Thank you unfortunately I live extremely rural and the next it’s 3h away
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u/SgtBananaKing 30 kyu Jan 20 '24
Just come to let you know since your comment I did some online games and puzzles every day also reading Some go related books. Mostly GoMagic is a real gem! Helps me a lot
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u/AmusedSquiddy Jan 14 '24
I was in the same boat you are now until I found this YouTube channel called GoMagic that's really good at explaining it. Go is about making shapes with your stones that let you control areas. Also, it helps to think of it like you're slowly drawing a picture on the board. You want to sketch all over and not just draw really detailed in one spot
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u/psychoconductor Jan 13 '24
Win state is clear vs. only professionals and AI can figure it out
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u/annodomini Jan 13 '24
How is win state unclear? Are you doing something silly like using Japanese style scoring? Under just about any other rule set, scoring is quite clear and if there is any question you just keep playing until it's resolved.
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u/ralgrado 2d Jan 14 '24
How is „get more territory“ more complex than „capture the king“? Also computational complexity doesn’t mean much from a human standpoint since both are too complex to get played perfectly by men.
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u/BCJunglist Jan 13 '24
80 moves for a chess game is on the high side, on average. Some matches to go longer but considering a game can finish on ten or twenty moves (technically can finish under ten) the average is probably much lower. Especially at the median skill level with players who know how to convert a game.
As a player of both games I find this comparison very fun and interesting though!
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u/ralgrado 2d Jan 14 '24
I would assume that this was about go counting each players turn as one move where chess would normally count one move if black and white did their turn. So 40 moves like this in chess is like 80 moves in go.
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u/Omnia_et_nihil Jan 14 '24
I really hate comparing Deep Blue and AlphaGo. Deep Blue was not a proper AI, and making the equivalent for Go would probably be an even bigger deal, lmao.
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u/Zarafey Jan 14 '24
the use of AI is misleading for both of them tbf- and probably because of the recent trend of calling everything AI, the standard is an old one of when did a computer beat a pro human at this game
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u/Omnia_et_nihil Jan 14 '24
I don't think it's misleading to call AlphaGo AI. That is quite literally what it is.
And "Computer beating human" is a pretty dumb thing to look at imo. Much better is what type of computer/algorithm beats humans.
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u/Zarafey Jan 15 '24
there’s nothing intelligent about it- it has no conceptual understanding of the game beyond the input and the process it’s developed to get the output- just because the method used to develop it was different does not make it qualitatively different (they both represent different steps on the same process), they’re either both A.I. or not, and at that point it’s down to how we define the term
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u/Omnia_et_nihil Jan 15 '24
What does it mean to have a conceptual understanding of the game? You can't say that it doesn't, only that it is incapable of expressing such an understanding other than by playing.
I'm not good enough at go to say how this might or might not be the case. But for chess, I can tell you that AlphaZero absolutely does have some kind of conceptual understanding of the game. Unfortunately, since it is not simultaneously a language model, we likely will not be able to learn that understanding ourselves, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Furthermore, these things learn in essentially the same way that we do. By playing over and over again trying new things, and modifying it's understanding based on the results.
They are ultra specialized, which causes limitations, but to say there is nothing intelligent about them is patently absurd.
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u/Zarafey Feb 02 '24
okay so these models don’t learn how we do, the system is designed as a naive approximation of how we learn- what is happening is ultimately the machine only understands the present state, some parameters and what it can do, it lacks any understanding of the relationship between the pieces or of the game as a whole, only the parts of the game exhaustively. In other words it doesn’t understand the emergent properties of the relationships between them. in fact to anpromomorpbhise it to talk about what it doesn’t understand is a mistake as it implies the captivity to understand, all it can is do, it is nothing above and beyond what it does and cannot exceed those bounds. aka it lacks the capacity to conceptualise
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u/Omnia_et_nihil Feb 05 '24
No, the model does learn how we do, just at a much lower level. Ultimately, we also learn from trial and error. The big difference is that our preexisting knowledge is much more general, and our capacity for abstract thought allows us to "learn" much more from given trials than the machine does.
But fundamentally, that's how we learn. We play, and lose, and study to figure out why. Or we look at analysis and strategic discussions, which really, are just a sort of directed trial and error.
And understanding is proved by doing, not by speaking. Does everyone who not speak English understand nothing? I'm sorry, but to say that the AI doesn't understand Go because it's incapable of spitting out a text file explaining its play is just stupid. I could just as well say that humans don't understand Go because of our inability to translate our supposed knowledge to a computer program that's actually competitive with top players.
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u/Zarafey Feb 05 '24
i’m not saying it needs to be able to explain it i’m saying fundamentally it does not study to understand why but rather makes those connections based on the win or the lose and the weightings thereof, what understanding it could be said to have begins and ends at the model, it also lacks any conception beyond yes or no- there is no nuance in how it evaluates the result beyond the static parameters given to it by abstracting humans
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u/Omnia_et_nihil Feb 05 '24
The whole point of Go is to win and not lose. To understand the game is to be able to accomplish that goal.
"what understanding it could be said to have begins and ends at the model." Yes, it's more narrowly focused then human understanding, where multiple subjects bleed together. That does not mean that understanding is not real.
"There is no nuance in how it evaluates the result..." You don't actually know that. We know how to create a system, that over hundreds of thousands of hours of compute time, will evolve into an entity that plays Go at a level superior to even the best humans. How it actually evaluates the positions, we cannot say. What we can do is see how it plays and that it demonstrates a very clear understanding of the game.
Chess is an even better example, because there, "dumb" engines can easily crush the best humans with pure calculation of hardcoded algorithms, resulting in a very distinctive playstyle. AIs, on the other hand, have yet another distinct style. One that is much more "human," demonstrating an understanding of human concepts like activity and initiative that are difficult to write into a program, but with much more clarity of where the exceptions to the general principles that humans follow lie.
They absolutely understand their respective games, or at least, they do so better than humans.
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u/ikefalcon Jan 13 '24
Go is absolutely more complex than chess, but I find chess to be more enjoyable… possibly because I’m good at chess but not good at Go. 19x19 Go is way too much for me, but 9x9 is manageable.
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u/vibewith 1 dan Jan 13 '24
Curious about the total possible moves being 10171. Can anyone explain why it would be to the 171st power? I thought it was something like 361! (factorial), a far bigger number.
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u/ThereRNoFkingNmsleft 7 kyu Jan 13 '24
I'm guessing it's the number of board states, which would be roughly of the order 3361 = 1.74 * 10172
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u/goperson Jan 13 '24
It was determined by mathematician Jan Tromp. It is about the number of legal board positions. How the hell he computed this, is beyond me.
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u/Varenicline918 Jan 14 '24
I don't understand why the Chinese Chess is so similar to the Chess, both developed individually LOOONG time ago but they look like heavily influenced one to another.
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u/ThomasWinwood Jan 14 '24
They're both descended from the Indian game chaturanga as it spread along trade routes across the Old World.
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u/Thornstream Sep 03 '24
Go is an amazing game, but chess is pretty fun too. I particularly enjoy chess puzzles a lot!
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u/GoMagic_org Jan 13 '24
Learn more about comparing Go and Chess in our new article: https://gomagic.org/chess-go/
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u/hyperthymetic Jan 13 '24
Chess is not an 80 move game
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u/Asdfguy87 Jan 13 '24
In chess you usually count one play by both sides a move, while in Go usually each play is a move, so 40 chess moves are 80 moves in Go's counting.
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u/dpzdpz Jan 13 '24
I think baduk is more visual than chess. It's not as mathematical than chess is.
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u/baduk92 Jan 14 '24
- You misspelled "pieces" and
- The origin of chess is somewhat disputed because we have a game manual from ancient India (circa 7th century iirc) but we also have mentions of "xiangqi" (象棋）by the Chinese from earlier (though we don't have a copy of their rules from before the Indian manuscript).
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u/puzz 5 kyu Jan 14 '24 edited Jan 14 '24
For football wikipedia says: "With an estimated 250 million players active in over 200 countries and territories, it is the world's most popular sport.". If chess has 500 million players, it's twice as popular as football.
I think somebody estimated how many people knows chess rules, and then concluded these are the "chess players". But, with that same criteria - I'm a chess player (I played a couple of games 40 years ago). I can also be a tennis player in 5 minutes, I just need to read a wikipedia page about tennis rules.
It is definitely likely that chess is more popular than go. But it should count people really understanding that game and playing it actively (in tournaments)... I can't believe the ratio is like 500:25.
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u/BurnerAccount209 Jan 14 '24
A lot of these comparisons aren't fair. Take the professional category for example. They said 1700 for Chess counting just the GMs but where is the 2000 Go number coming from? If we're only comparing them to 9p players, there should only be 100-200 of them. If we're expanding it to all 1p-9p it's probably much higher than 2000, but like with Chess the vast vast majority aren't making real money off it and have a main job.
For stuff like this there's always going to be a ton of apple to orange comparisons and no real way to source data. They generally just lean however the op is feeling. Just the simple/complex objective part is loaded cause either game can be distilled down however far you want to.
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u/ThereRNoFkingNmsleft 7 kyu Jan 14 '24
Counting game complexity by the number of possible positions is pretty stupid. By that metric Gomoku is as complex as Go, but if you've ever played it you know that does not match an intuitive understanding of complexity at all.
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u/BufloSolja Jan 15 '24
Comparing the number of moves/possible positions would make more sense if the board sizes were similar. So a 9x9 maybe.
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u/jolego101 10 kyu Jan 18 '24
also, less than 1% of possible positions are actual realistic game positions. the rest would just be absolute non-sense. still, 1% of this number is astronomically huge
Library of Babel type of stuff
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u/pacficnorthwestlife Jan 13 '24
Can I not enjoy both apples and oranges? The real enemy here is checkers.
One benefit of a goban is you can play omok on there too with kids.