"""To evaluate brain activity in players of differing ability, Ognjen Amidzic and colleagues measured so-called gamma-band activity in the brains of 10 grandmasters and 10 amateurs, using a new magnetic imaging technique known as magnetoencephalographic recording. While test subjects played against computers, the researchers studied which parts of their brains experienced gamma-bursts during the five seconds following the computer's move. They found that whereas the amateurs' brains exhibited more gamma-bursts in the medial temporal lobe, grandmasters had more gamma-bursts in their frontal and parietal cortices.

The team proposes that the use of the frontal cortex by the grandmasters�who have memorized thousands of moves� indicates that they recognize known problems and retrieve solutions for them from their memories. Use of the medial temporal lobe by the amateurs, in contrast, suggests that these players are analyzing unknown moves and forming new long-term memories.""" http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brain-study...

I think what your parent meant is that at some point Chess becomes a glorified dictionary lookup. An exercise in memoization.

Many, but not all board games end up being about memorizing which strategies work and which don't. This is especially true in case of deterministic, turn-based perfect knowledge games. Tic-tac-toe has been solved, period. Checkers has been solved. Chess will be next, because it's next in terms of complexity. Go is also a solvable game, but it will take a while.

I think this is the more true the more rigid (deterministic) a game is. Legos and Minecraft are at the opposite end of the spectrum. They even lack a victory condition, but they're all about making new combinations.

Chess may boost analytical skills and foresight up to a point, but as a war game it has become very abstract and detached from reality. It seems to be inspired by the era of melee combat, specified battlefields and powerful rulers.

I agree as general points. I'll disagree as it applies to Chess. The only way to escalate the ranks in chess is to become a living database. That transforms people. I've seen it and it's ugly. The chess you learned as a kid was a game. This chess is a very different animal.

Off the top of my head, a profession that requires people to become a human database is something like pharmacology. These folks have to know a lot about a tremendous number of medications. The difference between pharmacology and chess is that the former is actually useful and has a purpose. Once chess becomes "who is the better database" it stops being intellectually or practically useful as far as I am concerned.

In my opinion, up to a very, very high level, the importance of opening knowledge is vastly overrated.

The two highest rated players in the world (Carlsen and Aronian, neither of them participating in this world championship match) frequently just aim to get a playable position out of the opening and still succeed in outplaying very strong opposition in the late middlegame/endgame. This despite the fact that it would difficult to find two better examples of "human chess databases".

> The only way to escalate the ranks in chess is to become a living database.

This happens in any field with significant theory. A chess grandmaster isn’t any more of a “living database” than a mathematician, for example, who spends about twenty years learning theory (from elementary school to Ph.D.) before working on original research. And in chess, just as in mathematics, learning theory is not as simple as memorization.

> Once chess becomes "who is the better database" it stops being intellectually or practically useful as far as I am concerned.

A player who knows some theory will always have an advantage over an amateur, but when the difference in players’ knowledge of theory is negligible, as it is in the top levels, it is strategy and tactics that win games.

I do understand your frustration, as an amateur chess player myself. But telling yourself that you would be a better player if you just spent some time memorizing opening lines is just a cop-out. That won’t make you a better player, it will just put you on equal ground with your opponents.

Edit: heh, coincidentally today’s game speaks for itself.

I agree what you say, but chess is not only who is the better database, though. Analytic reasoning (and home preparation) is still what defines who wins among similar "databases".