Chess Meets AI : How Machine Learning is Shaping Modern Chess

Image generated with Midjourney

As we may know, there has been an artificial intelligence boom for a while now.

As the days go by, so many ais enabled technologies and systems are being created

People have different views about AI. Some think it could replace humans in some jobs in the future.

Some believe it is dangerous as it keeps advancing at a rapid rate and could potentially gain consciousness and go Terminator mood on us.

Others, however, see it as one of man's most incredible inventions and believe it to be a great tool to usher in a new era of civilization.

Regardless of how you feel about Ai though, one thing is certain, it is here and here to stay.

Artificial intelligence has had a huge impact in various areas of our lives; heathcare, finance, personal assistants, e.t.c

And Chess is no exception.

Chess Meets AI

Source

It all began in 1997, Deep Blue made history by defeating the then World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match, marking the first time a computer had defeated a reigning world champion in a classical chess format.

This was the beginning of the computer's domination of the game.

Following Deep Blue's success, the development of other chess engines like Rybka and Stockfish further advanced the impact of computers on chess.

Players could more easily spawn up new opening ideas to surprise opponents with. This in turn pushed the boundaries of chess analysis and gameplay

Then came AlphaZero in 2017. Alphazero is a neural network-based AI that, unlike the traditional chess engines that relied on extensive databases and human knowledge, AlphaZero learned and evolved its strategies through self-play reinforcement learning.

It was an awe moment in the chess world. With just a few hours of self-learning. Alphazero was able to beat the world's strongest chess engine - Stockfish convincingly, in a fashion that had yet to be seen.

AlphaZero played with a human-like, creative style, challenging established opening theory and redefining the boundaries of sound chess strategy.

Following the success of AlphaZero, Leela Chess Zero (LCZero) emerged, harnessing the power of neural network-based AI to further advance chess analysis and gameplay. And then in 2020, the Stockfish team introduced the Stockfish Neural Network (SFNN), integrating traditional Stockfish with neural network-based evaluation functions.

These developments have made the strengths of the traditional chess engine way far from any human's possible reach.

How has this affected chess in general?

How Machine Learning is Shaping Modern Chess Openings

In the past, opening chess theories were created from human analysis, with players relying on established principles, historical games, and extensive memorization of opening variations.

However, artificial intelligence (AI) revolutionized the landscape of chess opening theory.

This development has made classical chess a lot more difficult as it is now extremely difficult to gain a clear advantage from the opening.

Master Chess players use these engines to analyze hundreds of possible opening plays in order to stand a chance for an advantage early on in the game.

In fact, the 5 time World Chess Champion, arguably the GOAT Magnus Carlsen relinquished his title because of how stale he felt classical chess had become.

After the candidate has been decided from the Candidates tournament ( a tournament that decides the challenger of the world champion). Both players are given 6 months + to prepare for the world championship match. It is a best-of-12 classical match.

Within this time period, the players with the help of a team have all it takes to be heavily prepared. Causing most of the matches to be infested with so many draws as to some extent its machine vs machine.

This has caused a handful of people to believe that the future of chess is in faster time formats.

Different chess variants like the Freestyle Chess/ Chess960 formally called Fischer-random chess are now being played on the main stage by some of the best players in the world like the just concluded
FREESTYLE CHESS G.O.A.T. CHALLENGE: WEISSENHAUS which plans on becoming a yearly tour.

Source

And for those who do not know, Freestyle Chess is a chess Variant where all the chess officials are arranged at random for every new game. Making it nearly impossible to have opening theories.

As AI continues to evolve and improve, its impact on chess opening theory is likely to deepen.

To some, this is highly detrimental to classical chess and could lead to its death.

To others, AI provides players with new opportunities for creativity, exploration, and strategic innovation in the opening phase of the game. Hence, Classical chess is not dying anytime soon.

What are your thoughts on it?

♟♟♟♟♟♟♟♟♟

Thanks For Reading!