Opening theory and engines are ruining the game.

I believe it´s much a bullet/blitz thing. Those forms of "chess" are not conducive to thinking but rather favours those who have memorized as much of the game as possible. When beginners start playing bullet/blitz memorizing is the only way but it doesn´t lead anywhere.

You mean like playing chess with a dice? I don´t think so.

Not dice. That's just a sarcastic comment from you.

Ballot openings - for example 6-ply - would take away prepared engine lines from the elite players, and make them rely more on their OTB skills. It would be more interesting for spectators too.

Like the dice the ballot would be letting something other than the players decide. I don´t like that. If you percieve this as sarcasm I´m sorry.

When computers became competitive (in the seventies) many predicted that they would "solve" chess and, thus, kill the game. That hasn´t happened yet. And for us humans, well there´s always been memory freaks, savants, rain men etc but they are, even at the GM level, few and far between. For the vast majority of us enjoying the game (who also have other things than chess that occupy our time) engines and memorized are a non issue.

If the world champion title is won by the master with the longest memory I have no problem with that. Should it make the matches less interesting for the spectators that´s a problem for FIDE and the sponsors. I may be odd, but I don´t really think it´s that important to have a world champion. Golf seem to do allright without one.

It's funny how we define cheating. If a player uses an engine during a game, that's cheating.

But if he uses a computer to find lines before a game, memorises those lines and then uses them in a game, that is not considered cheating!

The only difference between the two is the memorisation stage. ))

Look at how things have changed over the decades. Take an example from the "golden age" - Marshall's famous attack in the Ruy Lopez which he used against Capablanca.

That game gave credit to both players: to Capablanca for his amazing OTB skills in refuting Marshall's "cook". But also to Marshall because the development and refinement of that attack was the product of his own creative work and brain-sweat.

Marshall didn't just fire up an engine before he went to bed and then wake up the next morning to find the answer. If a top engine of today had been available to him, Capablanca could never have found a refutation over the board.

The human brain has it´s limitations and every individual player, even the very best, have their weaknesses as well as their strengths.. As long as the players don´t have access to engines during the games they´ll still need over the board skills.

Before he died, Mark Dvoretsky also criticised the modern reliance on chess engines. I remember seeing a quote from him (I can't remember where right now) in which he said, "These days, both players arrive, 'present their dossiers' and depart."

What he meant by this is that player A says, "Here's my computer analysis" and player B says "Here's mine" and they see which computer prep goes deeper and is more relevant. Personal creative play is de-emphasised in such an approach.

In the modern era champions have always prepared. They have used books, coaches, teams etc and now they use computers/engines but still their brainpower is the limiting factor. As far as I know you can´t just connect your brain to an engine and upload countless lines and variations, you have to memorize and the time and energy you spend doing so can´t be spent on improving in other ways. Si I don´t think Dvoretskys sarcastic (?) comment holds true.

Yes, that's true. Things have not yet reached the stage where computer analysis can be taken all the way to the end. But in some major openings it's getting there - the Ruy Lopez, for example.

And even if that doesn't happen, at the elite level if computer analysis can get player A even a small advantage over player B coming out of the opening, that's enough to tip the game in his favour. Of course, he still needs to do some OTB work, but it is the difference between rolling a boulder on level ground instead of trying to roll it uphill.

"Opening theory and engines are ruining the game."

But isn't that a paradise for intuitive players? If you play from memory, intuitive player who understands the game will crush you in the end.

Chessbase, Stockfish 16, they are all good, because they run on your PC, don't drink, don't smoke, don't get tired and you can ask them at 3AM: which moves are best in this position?

If you use these tools as "coaches" who give advice, you can only increase your understanding of the game. Learning moves by heart is idiotic, I agree with that.

But opening theory has always developed, even before the engines, and openings/variations that were once viable have been more or less refuted (but still used with success by lesser players than GMs). The Ruy Lopez have been analyzed for som five hundred years so it´s neither a mystery nor the machines fault that it´s now so thoroughly analyzed that the known lines are exhausting. That was, as far as I´m concerned, the case already in the seventies when I tried to learn the game.

From my knowledge, back in Fischer and Kasparov’s eras, games were still beautiful and tactical and filled with little nuances here and there. You could play the KID without any consequence, you could even try to transpose into the KIA from the e6 Sicilian like Fischer did.

I support analysis. Check what you did wrong, check your mistakes, check your missed tactics. An engine is good for that.

Fischer and Kasparov are, perhaps, dubious examples (regarding the topic of this thread), as they were both known for their deep and extensive opening prep.

Fischer was known to scour periodicals for obscure games to find unexpected lines to unleash on his opponents.

And Kasparov was known for being one of the first top players to use early databases and early chess engines for opening study ...

We'd probably have to go back to the Romantic era if we really wanted to look hard at the games (and players) before considerable opening theory (and subsequent chess engines) began to influence things ...

Yes, Kasparov was the first top player to work extensively with engines. He formed the break with the Fischer-Karpov era.

The home prep of Fisher and Karpov was still human prep. Hence it could still be refuted at the board by a very good player.

It reminds me of a Sherlock Holmes story. Holmes solves a dancing men cipher, and uses it to bring the villain to the scene of the crime. When the villain expresses astonishment at what he did, Holmes replies:

“What one man can invent another can discover.”

These days though, superhuman chess engine lines can't be refuted by humans. If an elite player falls into a line that his opponent researched with a top engine, he has no real hope of finding his way through it.

It's like what I said about the Marshall - Capablanca game in 1918. If Stockfish 16 had prepared Marshall's line, Capablanca could never have refuted it over the board, to the great loss of human chess.

actually has lost some games ...unlike March

I never expected people would respond to this troll thread seriously

The culprit is the notation and recording of games. If we just got rid of that...

The culpritv is the notation and recording of games. If we just could get rid of that...

This discussion is pretty much irrelevant for anyone below IM level--your opponents have not memorized all the lines in their openings 20 moves deep, and won't know how to proceed when you get out of the book. One way to avoid the engines' influence is to play some old lines that no one studies anymore as the give the opponent a slight advantage. That will be offset by the fact that you will understand the line while your opponent will be trying to figure how the engine would respond. They are unlikely to succeed.