Death of chess.

When was the last time you needed to confer with someone regarding the position? If people can use computers during a tournament that is already a tell they do not need you before or after. Even without computers no one is coming along to consistently beat Magnus at the game. I am proud to be part of the last generation of human chess players.

I am still proud of Ding yet it all feels like an afterthought now. I will annotate my study for those to improve. Maybe you will revitalize the game in a way we have never seen before. On the other hand, I will continue to get too old to care. The positive is the game kept me busy. There are better hobbies; there are also far worse ones.

GG.

This period of time does not seem like the death of chess, chess is currently booming right now, and stronger players than Magnus will arise, think about other games, like Goh, if they had computers, they still want the people to play, and that's the same case for chess. Magnus's dominance will soon come to a fall, some player will be able to stop his dominant play, whether that be a bright Indian star, or any young player like Nodirbek Abdusattorov(Pardon me if I spelled it wrong), Alireza Firouzja or even player new to the big leagues like Andy Woodward.

car were invented and running contests still do exist. And there is cheating goin on in that game also but they seem to survive. So will chess.

The best way to look at the issue, in my opinion, is to regard human chess as an entirely separate activity to anything involving chess engines. Humans and chess engines play entirely differently. The engine is a tool which helps when analysing human play, but it's no more than that.

>When was the last time you needed to confer with someone regarding the position?
We always need the help of stronger human players to understand the position. Engine lines don't do that for us. Seeing what the engine regards as the best line with the best moves is insufficient. Instruction (on an individual level or with published work) by strong human players remains a necessity because this, not engine lines, is what helps us understand the game and improve our play.

>Death of chess
Doesn't look that way to me. Players of all levels, from newcomers to the game through club players, district and national competitors, right up to the current Candidates cycle for the World Championship, are as active as they've ever been throughout the many hundreds of years history of the game.
Stop being a party pooper. ;-)

Engine and books...just a tool...

@Clearchesser chess is bigger than ever and still growing. And if you are comparing things to playing against magnus I would say you aren’t even a part of the last generation in that case

@Brian-E said in #4:
> The best way to look at the issue, in my opinion, is to regard human chess as an entirely separate activity to anything involving chess engines. Humans and chess engines play entirely differently. The engine is a tool which helps when analysing human play, but it's no more than that.
>
>
> We always need the help of stronger human players to understand the position. Engine lines don't do that for us. Seeing what the engine regards as the best line with the best moves is insufficient. Instruction (on an individual level or with published work) by strong human players remains a necessity because this, not engine lines, is what helps us understand the game and improve our play.
>
>
> Doesn't look that way to me. Players of all levels, from newcomers to the game through club players, district and national competitors, right up to the current Candidates cycle for the World Championship, are as active as they've ever been throughout the many hundreds of years history of the game.
> Stop being a party pooper. ;-)
@petri999 said in #3:
> car were invented and running contests still do exist. And there is cheating goin on in that game also but they seem to survive. So will chess.

If I understand correctly, your premise is that since computers can beat the best human player, and other human players can't beat the best human player, the game is dead.

Chess engines have been here for a long time now. It was widely thought that chess would die when Deep Blue beat the world chess champion in 1997 (Kasparov–Deep Blue). Further, the Ponomariov vs Fritz game on 21 November 2005 is the last known win by a human against a top-performing computer under normal chess tournament conditions. This was much before Magnus became the world champion. It's been about 20 years since a human beat a computer but chess is still quite popular.

Your second premise is that since no human player can beat the best human player, Magnus, so chess is dead. Historically, in terms of a single peak time, Wilhelm Steinitz had the largest gap ever between a #1 player and the rest of the world, in 1876, with Bobby Fischer having the second-largest gap ever, in 1971. People are still playing chess in 2024, so, we can conclude that just because no other human player can beat the best human player, it will not lead to the death of chess.

That led me to question when a game is considered dead.

One of the simplest answers is that a game is considered truly dead when no one is playing it anymore. That is hardly the case for chess.

Another possibility is that the game is not dead yet, but dying, meaning the number of players playing the game is decreasing over time. Let's explore that assumption.

The COVID-19 period significantly boosted interest in chess. Most of the world was in a lockdown at one point or another and people had to find something to do while being restricted at home. This led to a renewed interest in chess, a game that could be played while being comfortably at home.

If you are not convinced, here are some Twitch statistics for Chess: twitchtracker.com/games/743 (click on monthly)

From the graphs, it is clear that there was a significant boost in both chess streamers and viewers in recent years. Both reached their peak during COVID-19. During the post-COVID era, the numbers have stabilized, however, they are much higher than they were before COVID (at least 2x).

Further, you can see from lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz that there are more than 700k players that played chess on Lichess just this week. There are a lot more players that play exclusively on chess.com, especially players below 1000 elo, which comprises the majority of chess players online.

As per chess.com, for rapid, there are about 9 million active players in the last 90 days. (Calculated from my rapid percentile and rank, Number of active players in the last 90 days = Rank / (1 - Percentile))

You would be hard-pressed to find another board game with this many active players.

So, we can conclude that chess is alive and thriving as clearly indicated by the above statistics.

A game might be popular. That does not mean we do not understand it. The pieces movement does not change during the game. You are confusing popularity with gameplay. Do you really think the inventor of chess did not want us to solve it? I am not talking about perfect moves yet the principle to do well at it. The fact we do not play it perfectly tells us of our flaws. Though at the highest level of chess, humans are walking, talking calculators. Something that I am not a part of. You can read my book since I have a better chance selling it over beating our boy, Maggie.

@Clearchesser The confusion arises because the point you are making in your opening post is not as clear as your chosen name on this site would have us hope for.

You gave your topic the title "Death of chess" and you said in your opening post that you are "proud to be part of the last generation of human chess players". It's natural for people to understand that as meaning that you think people will stop playing chess in a generation.

If you're arguing that people will continue playing chess, but chess will be solved or already is (which you've argued in other threads and I dispute but never mind), I would say "so what?" Tic tac toe is solved, but it's still a pastime for children.