This got me wondering about lionising Go in films. I think I need to start a such a movement amongst directors or screen writers.

I'm hilariously bad at chess. I learned the fools gambit and never progressed.

„The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.“

People need to stop putting chess on a pedestal. Its a game. General intelligence has no bearing. Its a specific skillset you can hone by practice and research, just like any other game.

One of the daftest people I ever met managed to beat 3 of us at once at chess. Would routinely kick my ass every time and it wasn't even close.

The kind of person who absolutely would have injected bleach to cure covid.

True, but 10% is probably higher average than usual.

More about interest than intelligence, honestly.

Im gonna say it… i dont care, im gonna say it!

CHESS 👏 IS 👏 FUCKING 👏 DUMB

The best you can do is lose to a robot. Good job 👍

Guess I'll start with the same disclaimer: I don't think I'm too smart for chess or anything.

I always thought chess is kinda boring. Don't get me wrong, it's fun enough as a novice. It's probably also fun for people who mastered it, I'm not denying that.

However, for everything inbetween, it's mostly about memorizing stuff. You just learn hundreds of openings and how to counter them. From what I've seen, a lot of intermediate players fall apart once they go off-script. It takes years until you're good enough to strategize properly on your own, like a novice would, without some going "That's the 'double helix chin twister'" and beating you.

It's kinda like the problem multiplayer games often have for me. There's a set meta and you either learn it or lose. To experiment yourself successfully, you have to invest a massive amount of time. Experimenting myself is the fun part. I'm don't want to invest hundreds if not thousands of hours before I get to have fun.

Folk always seem to underestimate the effect of training and experience. In a match between two unpracticed players, sure, the more analytically inclined of the two will have an edge. This is true of any game with a strategic component. General intelligence helps but specialist knowledge is better.

Chess is mostly a memorisation game for gambits / openers and subsequent sets of follow-on moves.

After that, it’s mentally simulating the board state a few moves ahead, varying pieces and guesstimating probability of what move the opponent will make. A lot of that you start to memorise, especially since other chess enthusiasts will often play well-known gambits / strategies.

Intelligence often correlates with memory but they’re not one and the same. I grew up knowing a competitive chess player and remember the time they referred to their “hambag” (handbag). English was their mother tongue…

There’s also a similar trope with the Rubiks Cube.

Bonus points is when there’s a game theory department in a movie. Then they all will be masters in any game.

Yeah... everytime I see it in movies I kinda cringe. However it still is an effective narrative tool to say that the person is a stategist or is in a higher tax bracket ( or honestly any quality that the common viewer doesn't have). Even so, I wish writers would stop doing this.

Can confirm, my brothers are both very good at chess. One is smart, the other is dumb as rocks

Disclaimer: not calling myself smart or anything.

I always found chess boring, for some reason. Like, not because it is too complex, but because it isn't complex enough, in a way. As an example, the first time I tried my hand at Medieval II: Total War, I fell in love with all things strategy.

I still can't do chess, though... It's like my mind goes to its happy place halfway through a match and I start making moves just to progress the game and be done with it. Gimme a 4X game, and I'd need reminders to pee every 12 hours.