How to Use ChatGPT in Chess (Without Ruining Your Progress)
How to Use ChatGPT in Chess Training (Without Ruining Your Progress)
“Can ChatGPT play chess?” In Late 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT; that day, the world phased into a new era. Since then, it has quietly entered many areas of everyday life - including chess. The same question was asked in the Chess Community, everyone started asking, “About GPT's abilities to play chess” Bad answer to a good question.
The problem lies not in using ChatGPT in Chess but rather in treating it as a Chess player. Skilful use of LLMs can save time and make better sub-chess decisions, directly influencing the time of chess growth. In this entry, I’ll try my best to address the AI situation in chess clearly and share knowledge based on my experiences with Generative AI like ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. This article is based on my personal experiences as a chess player using LLMs in training. For the past few years, I was chatting with Chatbots, and I discovered a way to not only protect yourself from the potential harm but also from actually getting value from them.
Table of Contents
The Core Mistake — Treating ChatGPT Like a Chess Player
Why ChatGPT Fails at “Playing Chess
Back to Top Examples of Dangerous Use
What ChatGPT Is Actually Excellent At
Planning Training (Its Biggest Strength)
Finding and Structuring Learning Resources
The Golden Rule — ChatGPT is a Chess Assistant, Not a Chess Authority
Good Questions vs Bad Questions
My Personal Workflow With ChatGPT
Step 2 — Ask GPT for Structure
How ChatGPT Actually Saved Me Time
Practical Prompts You Can Steal
Final Thoughts — Use the Tool, Don’t Worship It
The Core Mistake — Treating ChatGPT Like a Chess Player
Large Language Models or LLMs are not Chess Players. That’s the first thing we have to keep in mind when we influence our chess lives. Despite this, we can still turn them into help of some sort, even in chess spheres.
Why ChatGPT Fails at “Playing Chess”
ChatGPT is a text transformer that generates words and texts. Something niche like chess moves are unusual to handle for it; it doesn’t come up in the form of refusing to answer, but rather in a hallucination.
Main offenses include
- Lack of an inside chess engine
- Lack of precise evaluation
- Made up moves, explanations, and evaluation
ChatGPT sounds confident, and without enough chess experience, it’s easy to mistake that confidence for correctness.
If you want to explore this game alongside ChatGPT analysis, click on the links.
Examples of Dangerous Use
I used the word “Dangerous” with purpose. The truth is that even from bad prompts, you can learn something; the problem is that it’s mostly unrelated to the topic you want to dive into, and some advice might harm your chess growth instead of helping it. For example, I always wanted to know how to manage time during a chess game, so I got a list of all popular chess.com time controls and wrote something “How to use time in 15┃10 Chess game” It said things like in the middlegame spend around 20-30 seconds per move, expanding it to a minute in critical positions. I believed it, but now, from my chess experience, that’s a terrible tip; there are plenty of moments when, if you put a limit of 60 seconds, you surpass it, and when you don’t finish your calculations, that can lead to a game-ending mistake.
Every chess tip involves some degree of risk. Examples include:
What ChatGPT Is Actually Excellent At
ChatGPT isn’t great at playing chess. It’s great in chess-related areas. You see, when it comes to pure Chess LLMs make a lot of stuff up, but you can still make use of them in chess, combine a thing that is needed in multiple branches and chessify it. That’s a true strength of Chatbots.
Planning Training (Its Biggest Strength)
This was a game-changer for me. When I began to study chess, I had a lot of information I needed a way to combine it. For myself, it was a headache combining daily time for chess, time for each element, and making a plan logically (You wouldn’t give all the time in tactics to only Monday and Tuesday). I asked ChatGPT using think mode, and it worked. It combined my data to create a fully functional chess training weekly plan; the volume was proportional to the time I spent, just as I had asked. Okay, I have these big goals for now, like Tactics 3 hours and 35 minutes, but what does it mean? So I prompted ChatGPT to add a layer of functionality add tasks using the resources I have now. I had Chess.com Puzzles (Extra Hard and Normal), and Puzzle Battles, which is my tactics counterpart. I repeated the process on every single element, and now it’s clear what to do.
Finding and Structuring Learning Resources
Another useful thing to utilise is the search feature. Using it makes it better to search for learning resources. After addressing the element you want to find resources for, you can go into detail on your own and give concrete data from the resource to Ask ChatGPT how to structure this. I’ve recently bought a chessable opening course, and by providing details about the chapters, ChatGPT navigated the course and gave back a plan on what order learn from it. I’m sure if you provide it with the right data, it can create a pathway in Chess books, courses, or even something like articles can be structured.
Turning Chaos Into Structure
This is my personal favourite. I often find myself involved in complex plans that require careful consideration, and ChatGPT helps them come together in practice. I like the idea of giving ChatGPT data (useful information, such as chess training plan activities, the time of your daily chess play, as much data as you can harvest). Then you can even ask it for some addons like checklists, lists, roadmaps, so you get that extra motivation when your work pays off.
The Golden Rule — ChatGPT is a Chess Assistant, Not a Chess Authority
The idea of ChatGPT as a Chess Assistant, not a chess authority, is powerful and important to remember. In practice, I use GPT as an organiser, not a leader who has the final choice. We cooperate; whoever can do the task better does it.
Good Questions vs Bad Questions
Some questions are better than the others; by choosing the right ones, you can save time, or automate tasks with personalised experiences (Yes, I’m looking at you roadmaps). On the opposite side, you can learn wrong things, decreasing your ability to train and play chess. Here are my picks:
My Personal Workflow With ChatGPT
Now it’s time to go into my way of working with ChatGPT. I am a Sub-1700 Chess.com Player with a decent knowledge of chess surroundings. My goal is to improve at chess.
Step 1 — Define the Goal
The beginning of my workflow. To treat knowledge from ChatGPT, I have to find a good reason. The easiest way to notice this reason is to ask myself: What’s missing in my current chess? Better pawn endgames? Reduction of till? Better converting positions, I have a clear advantage? All those ideas are fine, but they don’t have to be fine; they have to be personal. I look for the single biggest weakness that limits my progress right now. My chess structure lacked structure beyond daily training tasks. So I need to solve this. I see the positives in my mind; it can even help me improve, as multiple learning sources can reinforce my knowledge and help me gain new ones. Then I see potential drawbacks that chess-life can get unorganised really quickly. So my next idea is to create a Chess system in an app. The ClickUp seemed good, there is nothing wrong with similar web-apps, but it seems the easiest to use of them all; it is rather a matter of taste. With that, Defining the Goal is completed.
Step 2 — Ask GPT for Structure
Now I can move towards the use of ChatGPT. I don’t know what branches of chess can have, so I ask ChatGPT: “How to use ClickUp to increase my productivity. I want firstly to get chess off my list, create some basic notes on how to configure this and what to do there overall” I gained basic knowledge by this.
Now it was time to go further.
Next, I want to get into configuring Chess Space. I have an interesting trick to use. I wrote down the config of chess and 9 other areas of life that I want to have in ClickUp, and later used the notes I got from Chess Space to ask ChatGPT to expand them. The answer to the question: Why didn’t you ask ChatGPT for a full config of Chess Space in one go? is simple. It makes ChatGPT more hallucination-proof. ChatGPT has to split its message into 10 different subjects, so it can’t go super deep into Chess Space and only makes basics. Most “inventions” come from ChatGPT going into detail without any sort of knowledge. I pasted ChatGPT's previous config of Chess Space, and I asked it to expand it. Now ChatGPT can go into detail with the fundamentals laid down. I also ask it to be clear so the work with Chess can be intuitive, easy and quick. That prevents it from going into too much detail and hallucinating.
So the Chess has 5 segments for me:
- Training
- Analysis
- Courses & Books
- Media & Projects
- Tournaments
Each segment has exactly three sub-segments.
Step 3 — Verify With Reality
You might think it’s time to implement this, and implement this now, but this is nevertheless more important than the question to ChatGPT itself. Now you have to look through hallucinations, or things that don’t make sense. In the training section, ChatGPT gave three sub-branches:
- Week Training Plan
- Tactical Motifs
- Practice
Week Training Plan makes a lot of sense, and I already have that, so it’s important. Practice also, although I have that in the Week Training Plan, the only reason I kept it is to have different ways to play chess games than the training games on chess.com, I added OTB. Here, with Engines, it isn’t a big priority, but I allow it a few times per month. But Tactical Motifs are pointless, I already train tactics in my plan, and there are no benefits from giving a section to that, so I replaced that with Concrete Things to do. You don’t train tactics for an entire week; you do a bit of puzzles, maybe some puzzle battle. This allows inprecision, and I did exactly what I do in each session of a day (in other words, I gave the resource I will be using during), and now no more excuses, but what am I supposed to do?
To summarise:
Never Trust ChatGPT Blindly
Remember! ChatGPT is a tool, but it’s from those “imperfect” ones, which doesn’t mean there is no point in using it. You just need to be cautious and check facts he’s giving you (As OpenAI states: ”ChatGPT can be helpful—but it’s not always right”). This phrase summarises my point of view.
Concrete Zones
ChatGPT prompts can be categorised into three zones:
- In the Red zone, you can find prompts that aren’t built for LLM. Listening to ideas in this zone can often lead to harm in development as a chess player and rarely provides actual value.
- In the Yellow zone, you can find prompts that are sensible; however, they don’t work well on Chatbots. Hallucinations are common. On the other hand, they provide some value, but only when you listen to specific tips in the output; they’re mostly a side-effect, though it’s not a rule.
- Things change in the Green zone. Here, you can find prompts that can boost your chess either directly or indirectly. Hallucinations still exist, though less in the actual chess knowledge and more in the chess terminology or sub-chess aspects. They can provide a lot of value and solve a person's problem on their own.
How ChatGPT Actually Saved Me Time
I believe that using ChatGPT can boost the comfort of our training. For me, it saved time. The two main reasons are: number one, I don’t need to plan as much as I used to due to my stable one-week cycle that repeats every week and number two, it’s a stimulus less, which means I can put more focus into chess, which means better results.
Less Planning Fatigue
First things first, I experienced Less Planning Fatigue, which meant less thinking about what to train and more real learning and playing chess. As Dawid Czerw once said:
If you're going to do something, do it properly
IM Dawid Czerw
(PL: Jak coś już robić, to porządnie).
I built a training plan with GPT, but it repeats itself forever. That meant no more planning is needed. Before, I would say I spent 40% planning and 60% playing; now I spend around 10% planning (adjusting things) and 90% playing. The chart would look like this:
Better Use of Limited Time
I plan my day with ChatGPT, simple enough, I hand him a list of things to do in a day (and timeframe if needed), and he plans the day hour-by-hour. It prioritises Chess and chess-related activities. In a life where I have to compromise at least some sleep to get extra time for different activities, this comes in handy. Shorter breaks mean extra time, which stacks up in the day, allowing me to gain an additional hour. The recent example is the blog you’re reading right now; if ChatGPT + I didn’t optimise the Daily Plan, you would never have seen this blog in the first place.
Practical Prompts You Can Steal
Now it’s time for: “How can you try this?” Well, I created some practical prompts that you can steal from here without further ado:
- Hand a list of online resources for learning (openings) to use in chess using the search feature
- Summarise this article, and output a list of key chess concepts to use in practice
- Turn this plan into a roadmap using my resource
- What tasks I have unprecised here: and how to make them more precise so they require zero thinking and 100% training
Final Thoughts — Use the Tool, Don’t Worship It
Large Language Models are getting better every day, but despite this, they still can hardly understand chess, and its knowledge. Fundamentally, it's just code and nothing more than a machine. The Tool is meant to be used, not to be worshipped. To summarise, ChatGPT at its core won’t make you a better Chess player, but it can make you smarter, restful and precise. The problem was that it hallucinated too much and gave inprecise info, so we took the right info from it and hired it in the right spheres. Now we can level up our chess with the right methods of working against bad information. I shared what worked for me. If you use AI differently - or you found a better way - leave a comment. I’d love to read it.
By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
