JanMattys
Joined: Feb 29, 2004
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 Posted:
Jun 02, 2026 - 17:53 |
 
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Also, chess, strictly speaking, can't be solved.
I mean, theoretically they could, but for all practical purposes they can't and they haven't. And they won't be. |
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Last edited by JanMattys on Jun 02, 2026; edited 1 time in total |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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Jun 02, 2026 - 18:10 |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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Jun 02, 2026 - 18:20 |
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Theorically, Chess can be solved. That just requires enough calculation power.
The number of possible moves is huge, but finite.
It could not be solved (theorically) only with an infinite number of moves.
In Blood Bowl the same game played over and over again would have different outcomes due to dice.
If you play a Chess game with the same exact moves, the outcome will always be the same.
That's a big difference. |
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steinerp
Joined: Sep 18, 2005
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Jun 02, 2026 - 18:38 |
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@Matt 1st I agree with much of what you are saying Matt. Chess does have a luck factor (1st player) but otherwise is 100% skill based and competitive tournaments usually eliminate that by forcing both players to play both colors at high levels. And at lower levels the color advantage is reduced significantly.
That said I would quibble with 2 things. The minor one is that chess will be solved some day. It is definitely possible that one day a super computer might luck into finding a solved tree but given the insane number of possible chess games excessing the number of atoms in the universe this is a long, long way away. I would argue that any gambit in chess is the equivalent of setting up a cage that requires three dodges. Sometimes the gambit will be accepted and you will win, sometimes it will be accepted and you will lose, sometimes it will be ignored.
There are two main differences. The first is that in Blood Bowl the negative payout for accepting the gambit is immediate rather than multiple turns down the road (positive payout are a mix of immediate and delayed) and that the players have access to additional resources, aka dice, that make accepting a gambit easier but since the resource is limited and the negative payouts are immediate, coach skill is vitally important in deciding which gambits to accept.
@Irgy That isn't how ELO works. ELO is an expected relative win rate. If competitive coin flipping becomes a thing (I hope it isn't) you could implement an ELO system and get players with ELOs 2 points apart easily. You are also confusing skill with luck. If knowing the end result is required to be "skilled" it is impossible to be skilled at anything more complex than Tic Tac Toe. That means that professional athletes, chessmasters, poker players, business people, aka everyone and everything is luck based which I hope we can agree isn't the case. The challenge is defining what makes someone skilled at something. The biggest area where coaches disagree is that some (like me) view dice/risk/reward management as an important skill while others view it as a necessary evil that gets in the way of "actual" skills such as positioning. |
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JanMattys
Joined: Feb 29, 2004
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Jun 02, 2026 - 18:39 |
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| koadah wrote: | See, there's the problem right there.
Only the second post of the year from JanMattys. The year is almost half over. |
"I am become lurker, destroyer of communities" 
Jokes aside, I am pretty much stuck with our private league now and have very little time for anything else. Also, I am getting old and I found out that the forum was getting under my skin. So I just decided to drop my presence and it's been quite the healthy choice.
But I still read you all every now and then. |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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Jun 02, 2026 - 19:36 |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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Jun 02, 2026 - 19:37 |
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| JanMattys wrote: | | koadah wrote: | See, there's the problem right there.
Only the second post of the year from JanMattys. The year is almost half over. |
"I am become lurker, destroyer of communities"
Jokes aside, I am pretty much stuck with our private league now and have very little time for anything else. Also, I am getting old and I found out that the forum was getting under my skin. So I just decided to drop my presence and it's been quite the healthy choice.
But I still read you all every now and then. |
Wise man.
There's not much worthwhile to say but we keep sayin' stuff anyway.  |
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moph
Joined: Sep 16, 2020
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Jun 02, 2026 - 23:34 |
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| Irgy wrote: | There is absolutely luck in chess it's just a different sort of luck. If there was no luck at all then a 1501 ELO player would beat a 1499 ELO player 100% of the time. You just have to be a little bit creative to work out what the luck actually is.
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No, besides the color selection there is no luck IN chess. The luck you are referring to is in the metagame.
Luck in a game are game mechanics that create randomness most commonly dice or a shuffled deck of cards. |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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Jun 03, 2026 - 02:32 |
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I think we're veering dangerously into the territory of free will. Thinking two posts out and getting flashbacks to junior year at State. "Is human error a form of randomizer?" OMG the can of worms that question opens.
Just from a practical perspective, though, I would argue yes. So, I'd submit, would any organization that does a lot of FMEA. That's even more true in a game like Chess where the conventions tend to be restrictive of minor mistakes and can commit a player to their error. What are the odds you'll misfire and reach for the wrong piece?
That's true here too. I tied a game I should have won because of a mental misfire just a couple days ago. Not long before that, I lost a game I ... probably would have lost anyway, but in part because I forgot what turn it was. These aren't strategic errors, doing the thing you thought you were doing is subject to something that can easily be simulated with stochastic means (and we do, for big guys). You carry your own randomizer with you, so it's one of the things we include in the cocktail that goes into "pure result" from our perspective. But that's a convenient fiction: we don't know how all this stuff works, so we're just gonna pretend it's all one thing.
You're just another randomizer, in a certain light. It only looks like there's a person at the helm. Well, there is, inasmuch as the terms "person" and "at the helm" ever apply, but I think you could easily argue they don't. |
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Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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Jun 03, 2026 - 11:36 |
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The human mistakes affect the game for sure but they are not an intended element of the game design.
The game is supposed, in theory, to be played without mistakes.
If I make a blunder, misclick, forget which turn is etc. it's my fault, not an RNG built in the game. |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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Jun 03, 2026 - 18:29 |
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| MattDakka wrote: | The human mistakes affect the game for sure but they are not an intended element of the game design.
The game is supposed, in theory, to be played without mistakes.
If I make a blunder, misclick, forget which turn is etc. it's my fault, not an RNG built in the game. |
Hard disagree. Mental load is absolutely a design consideration, and engineering (and playing) with overload in mind is a big deal. I'm always trying to manage my own nervous load and heap stress on my opponent, and darn if we didn't just have an epic blowout thread series on a new skill that seems mostly to just do that.
When I prep D&D, I'm constantly asking "will they be stressed enough when they get here? Will they be too stressed when they get there?" and I know my flowcharting has to account for things like false impressions, tunnel vision, decisions by committee, etc. The goal is to hit maximum mental load right around the 2.5 hour mark, and the impossibility of engineering that in an emergent mandala with narrative structure means a lot of games (most visibly B/X, CoC, and the World of Darkness) have pressure-generating procedural elements, designed to give players the same willies that lead to failure states.
Blood Bowl, it's the same as a coach. You're constantly trying to put them in places where their programming misfires. That's what tilt is. And yes, that's always been part of Chess too, since the days of Khosrau. It's endemic to human gaming, part of the territory, and you can't not take advantage (or run afoul) of it. |
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Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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