The Game of Chess and The Future

In our times, there has been a shift in the attention of chess lovers from watching grandmaster vs. machine matches to watching chess-playing computers compete against each other to win a set of games. Formerly, people were eager to see who played chess better, whether machines or humans. The change in attitude comes in the wake of the fact that machines consistently won against the best grandmasters in recent chess games.

Most recently, Vladimir Kramnik was defeated by computer super player Fritz v 1.0. It is now apparent that these competitions are useless because computers have a more complete grasp of the possible moves that can be made any time in a chess game. For this purpose, the new machines have been built with enormous storage capacities and speeds which enable them to choose one out of millions of possible moves to make.

Like tic-tac-toe, chess is completely determined by spatial logic. This is the reason why computers play chess games better. Their algorithms are fixed and there is no possibility of making slip ups unless the hardware itself fails. They are not also, subject to the many physical and emotional distractions that hamper concentration in human beings. It is now a recognized fact the computers do a better job in the game than human beings.

Not content with their victories, creators of chess-playing machines plan to make programs that will exhaust all the possible moves for chess games, in this way to make the perfect chess-playing machine. At the rate technology is progressing, this is not a far-off possibility.

The interest of grandmasters in the techniques of machines in playing chess games has been aroused. Experts are studying the machines’ style of playing chess in an effort to gain further insight into the secrets of playing the game.

But the prospects of playing chess games for humans is, by far, not dim. On the contrary, chess has now graduated from being merely a game to be won to becoming a game from which knowledge about correct reasoning may be learned. It is now considered an educational game and has been included in school curricula.

Today, the advantages of playing chess games have been scientifically proven by tens of independent studies conducted all around the world. These advantages have to do mainly with developing the powers of the mind.

One facility that chess develops in humans is the facility for spatial intelligence or the ability to derive logical meaning from the relative positions of objects in the real world.

Administrative skills are also enhanced by chess games because chess players need to coordinate the movement of all their pieces on the board to win the game. Reasoning with accurate logic is another good thing that a chess player can possess.

The future development of chess games is in the hands of programmers who create the algorithms for chess robots. The benefits of chess for the future is for all humans to enjoy by playing chess to enhance the powers of the mind and the discipline of the emotions.
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John Skelly is the owner of Quality-Chess.net, a site where you can find a large variety of top quality chess products including wood chess sets or chess sets and boards