Imperfections in Chess' Design

I recently saw the quote, "Chess is something more than a game. It is an intellectual diversion which has certain artistic qualities and many scientific elements." By Jose Raul Capablanca and was naturally confused as Chess should be wholly scientific as it is a strategy game and such a game that can be optimized to a degree that is not possible for a game with any randomness. I then looked up the definition of strategy on Google Chrome to find that a synonym was in fact, military science. This explicitly stated that strategy was a science and proved my argument but still something didn’t sit right with me. I would play my first chess.com game in a few days as I normally prefer the act of playing chess on a physical plane, but I would soon find an interesting feature that piqued my interest on chess.com; the ability to retroactively have the artificial intelligence evaluate your moves and show you both which specific moves you and your opponent did that were perfect and your overall percent of perfect moves. This fascinated me because no matter what I did as an opening move, it never stated that the move was perfect because it didn’t take a piece or avoid being taken itself and so didn’t fit into their strict definition of perfect. Technically there should always be a perfect move. The optimal chess game is a game where both players do the opening move that allows for the most possible options the following turn and continue to evaluate every possible series of events that could be the fault of their next move for each possible move they have access to and choose the move with the highest ratio of winning setups that could come from it to losing setups and every move after would be following the same framework and slowly confounding as the possible options thin and pieces are taken until a victor is decided. What I wasn’t accounting for was human error. Humans don’t have the mental capacity or speed to determine the best move during the limited time they have in a turn and such human mistakes are what keep chess from becoming the hellish automated dystopia that I envisioned. While pawns are so vulnerable and frail that the phrase, you’re just a pawn can effectively explain that you are just a small cog in a much bigger machine and due to chess’ cultural significance makes it a storytelling trope quite common to see but still charming at least to me due to mty passion for chess strategy and theory. Bishops and knights are both vulnerable straight on as to avoid their diagonal and L-shaped movement patterns and rooks are just the opposite, vulnerable from a diagonal angle. Kings are a special case because of the check state and that leaves queens, the only piece that is untouchable. It has no discernible weakness and yet I find myself time and again queen less due to human error, my own mistaking a situation for safe and losing a perfect piece. I don’t see queens as a free exception to imperfection as it plagues the design of chess pieces but rather the strongest by virtue of its maneuverability because they can still be lost and often are to mistakes. Artistic design seeps through the cracks of chess in interesting ways. The advent of not being able to always find a perfect move means that there is freedom of expression through the actions you take when in a position that doesn’t have a clear right move. Even more, there are trades. Trading pieces is an interesting concept because it doesn’t alter the balance of power in the match. It’s real beauty to me is its strength depends on your own confidence in your ability and the level of risks you’re willing to make. To demonstrate this point, I’ll place you in a hypothetical situation; you are being utterly crushed by the vast skill gap that separates you and your opponent, they capitalize on your every mistake and shut down every plan of yours. If you see the opportunity for a trade, you’ll take it. You may not be altering the relative strength you possess but the chance to take a piece, even one from your opponent is too good to pass up and the same is true for the opposite situation where your opponent is the one losing by such a wide margin. The other element of trades that defines them to me is the risks. They are effectively low risk for low reward as compared to the possibility of losing your piece that could have been traded for a better deal earlier or the potential to take their piece without any strings attached. Fundamentally, trading pieces is something contradictory to the objective take of chess that I talked about earlier and solidifies chess in my mind as a hybrid scientific-artistic game which is why there is a subtle difference to the artistic scientists and scientific artists who play chess. I am unabashedly a scientific artist and the fact that chess gives the freedom to have different types of playstyles is a testament to why I love it.

A real scientist knows the importance of breathing now and then.