Key definitions
Chess is a game for two people, played on a chessboard. Each player has 16 pieces, including a king. Your aim is to move your pieces so that your opponent's king cannot escape being taken.
highest
being at a point or level higher than all others
(therefore we must define higher and/or high)
High
advanced in complexity, development, (and/)or elaboration
I inserted the 'and/' because if it's all 3, or 2 of the 3, that's not a failure to be high.
Higher means to be that to a greater degree, highest means greatest degree.
form (noun)
one of the different varieties of a particular thing or substance
Intelligence
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The burden of proof Pro had in this 1-Round debate
Parsing together the definitions which Pro failed to provide tells us that Pro ought to prove the following statement true:
A game for two people, played on a chessboard, in which each player has 16 pieces, including a king and the aim is to trap the other king such that it cannot escape being taken (though if not being taken while trapped is a stalemate)... Is, of all forms of intelligence, the most advanced in complexity, development, (and/)or elaboration.
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Chess is not a form of intelligence
On this alone I should win the debate if the voter takes semantics seriously.
The game isn't a form of the ability to learn, understand, and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reason, it's merely a display of that and perhaps exercise that can stimulate the brain for that.
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My opponent concedes that Chess is essentially just pattern recognition with some strategy.
Pattern recognition is not the ability to learn and understand but is memory-based recall that assists not needing to learn and understand nearly as much about what Chess perhaps could be otherwise.
If people are able to bypass needing to learn and understand the depths of where each scenario can go, via pattern recognition, this is not the highest form of intelligence.
Pro later implies this is 'strategy' and that strategy is important.
I will now make my own constructive out of this clash as I actually agree with Pro's original point. Generally speaking, all the grandmasters are separated not by their intelligence itself but raw memory and practise letting them have far more pattern recognition, meaning most scenarios are so familiar to them, they can relax their brains and think more about the game.
This means if you put a genius that's barely played chess vs a medium intelligent person that's played alot and make the time pressure decent enough on both, you're going to find the genius loses almost definitely due to lack of pattern recognition and a slip-up being incorporated. This will happen despite them being able to calculate far, since under time pressure the medium-intelligent person is still having time spare to do that.
Pattern recognition refers to tactics not to strategy. In colloquial English we confuse the 2.
... perhaps the simplest is to say that a chess tactic is a move (or series of moves) that brings an advantage to a player. This advantage can be material, like winning a
piece, or even an attack that results in
checkmate! Richard Teichmann's famous quote that "Chess is 99% tactics" may not be exactly true, but this sentiment shows the importance of chess tactics.
Chess strategy is the purposeful attempt to gain an advantage over your opponent. Unlike
tactics, chess strategy involves long-term goals, usually related to king safety,
pawn structure, space, piece activity, etc.
The combined facts that Pro himself says pattern recognition is the superpower of Chess and that there's a saying "Chess is 99% tactics" implies that instead of actual intelligence at play, we are having the memory-recall aspect of intelligence taking much more weight than understanding of strategy here.
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The very reason my opponent thinks it suits Olympics is because Chess is for competitive nerds that need the thrill of jocks
What chess really is, if it you look at it, is the sports that weak nerds or geeks can play. It's only specifically about pattern recognition and a one-game-with-64 squares strategy.
However, this is not what a true genius would regard as the best way to show themselves to be it, ever. I have never once heard Bobby Fischer himself nor Magnus Carlsen of the modern era say they're GOATs due to their raw intelligence. Bobby Fischer was probably the most arrogant leader while he was ahead and had good reason to be, he said very bad things about Jews and has severe views on women being worse than men in Chess and such (that he watered down before losing his mind and taking up again later with fervor). If Fischer thought he was a genius, he'd have said it, yet he himself did not say this. He was asked what he'd be instead and said an athlete (I can't be bothered to find the specific interview right now).
Here are some highlights of his most outlandish and/or arrogant statements:
He regarded himself as many things, a genius itself wasn't one of them.
In actual fact, Hikaru Nakamura, one of the world's current best bullet and blitz player (fast chess) explicitly says it's wrong to constantly associate intelligence with Chess.
It's debatable where exactly in the top 3-4 to rank Nakamura in blitz and rapid variants of Chess but everywhere regards him as 2-3 or at worst 4.
Now, despite this, Nakamura has come out and shockingly told us that his only (unofficially) tested IQ is 102 (he obviously is higher, but how much higher exactly?)
this is a humorous example of him proving that outside of Chess he does struggle (this is not a skit at all he was genuinely trying):
The reality is that Chess is about visual intelligence and awareness of resource exchange. The whole vibe you can think way past that if you're a genius and crack it down to pure logic is only true for AI supercomputers, not humans.
Chess is a specialist game. You specialise in it, it has not got that many transferrable skills in life because life is full of incomplete information scenarios more like a poker table has. It's not full of complete information like Chess where there's no chaos meaning luck or variance and in real life there are many hidden factors at play.
Chess in real life would work as a transferrable proof of intelligence if we as humans functioned in a world where we literally knew everything about the weather, what people feel, what words to put into a job application or report out of a limited number of moves etc. Instead, we live in a world of chaos with a lot of chaotic options and ways things can go.
You don't just think about logical this takes that piece and that piece then has to go here or there etc, you think damn I don't know where this piece is, that piece may have an agenda against both kings and this knight is currently having the flu but is willing to put in work anyway, though with obvious endurance issues. That kind of thinking and strategising around that would make Chess a far superior game to at least say represents real life intelligence. Instead, Chess is only a specific type of intelligence or 2 and those types are pattern recognition and resource management. They're only represented in a situation where you can see absolutely everything and no luck other than your opponent playing badly is the chaotic variance to factor in.
To get great at Chess you need to only study Chess players of the past, you don't even need to understand why they did what they did, you just need to memorise game after game, opening after opening, endgame after endgame and in the midgame have some nuance but not much. What separates the greatest from the above-average-but-not-that-great is they have excellent pattern recognition skills and memorised a lot.
If you really were a genius, you'd actually resent Chess eventually. Chess limits you to a situation where you can't bluff your opponent, you cannot use your opponent's skills against them ever. There is absolutely no cunning in Chess at the highest level, instead cunning and creative moves work better at the lower levels because misdirection works better against opponents that know or practised less with Chess.
This is simply not the highest form of intelligence, the greats amongst it have never ever said it is either, only those mediocre at Chess say it is.
"The game isn't a form of the ability to learn, understand, and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reason, it's merely a display of that and perhaps exercise that can stimulate the brain for that."
I don't think that the game is only a display of the ability to learn, understand, and make judgements or have opinions that are based on reason, but rather a game of skill and experience. Chess is primarily a display of skill and experience.
Controlling the center is always a problem for me, even if I copy chess masters.
Computer comes up with some trick to make me lose pawn in the center or forces me to trade it.
I simply dont have brain for chess.
I dont even like playing against real opponents because I make such dumb mistakes sometimes.
I play against computer because I can undo moves, but most real opponents would crush me unless they are total beginners.
Thanks for defining the word chess and the word high. I was so confused prior to that definition.
There is some logic you can use. It's not all memorisation.
The computer does not go by pure full game calculation, it knows the highest winrate paths from the situation though and depending which AI it is, has some 3 move ahead type calculation.
Try to analyse which pieces are either threatened now or about to be in 1 move and structure defensively, over time you'll get better at seeing failure of opponents to defend themselves and capitalise on it.
Get your knight and bishops out soon, use pawns to back them up and control the center.
I am very bad at chess.
I lose 9 out of 10 games against computer at highest difficulty.
The one that I dont lose, I dont win either.
It becomes draw due to me repeating moves to avoid defeat.
Its difficult to remember all openings and all counter openings, and all follow up moves.
I guess computer can do it easily.
Thats why I always feel that computer at highest difficulty doesnt make mistakes.
It seems like it knows everything from the start.
And my memory is bad, so I am not really good at chess unless I put effort to memorize everything, which might happen one day.
1-round debate to vote on if any of you care to, appreciated if you do.
oh wait nvm there we go
how do i do that
voting period 2 weeks, argument time 1 day and i'll accept.