chess or poker

[Gelford]

LOL


And I was beating 2NL finding it kind of unimaginative and deciding that chess is a much better ... yes ... sure

[Shandrax]

There is one other important difference between chess and poker. Due to computer analysis the speed at which knowledge evolves in chess is insane. Certain openings became 100% unplayable while others are subject to a theoretical discussion around move 38. It is not too difficult to see that chess will be analyzed to death very soon - which will prove Capablanca and in an essence Fischer right. That's the downside of complete information. At one point it will be complete. I am afraid that the future of chess lies in that extremely ugly Fischer version which hurts my eyes when I look at the positions.

Stuff like that won't happen with Poker. Even if optimal strategies are known, there is still room to deviate because your opponent doesn't have complete knowledge of what you are doing.

[FreakDaddy]

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LOL


And I was beating 2NL finding it kind of unimaginative and deciding that chess is a much better ... yes ... sure

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play higher limits live.

[dardo]

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Most Grand Masters that I've met seem to border more on savant or rain man kind of mind sets. They are so focused on one particular thing, that they have difficulty putting other complex problems together (generally speaking of course).

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Good post. That's the thing about just analytical thinking. It may look great, but in the end it just serves to annoy the ignorant.

It needs to be integrated in a more general, complex kind of thinking ... broad perspective, strategy, the capacity of taking correct decisions from an infinite number of elements. Something, computers, are still way behind from humans.

This said, I don't think you can't become a real top chess player without being a great strategist ( as well as a very good analytical aptitude).

But I do think most of the good chess players aren't, in opposition with most of good poker players who need the strategy skill just from the beggining and analytical skill is just a drop.

The same you said about chess masters, I can say from mathematicians. Being one of them, I can say that a lot of them have a sharp analitical aptitude but they are far from bright.

regards,

dardo

[Shandrax]

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Most Grand Masters that I've met seem to border more on savant or rain man kind of mind sets. They are so focused on one particular thing, that they have difficulty putting other complex problems together (generally speaking of course).

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Good post. That's the thing about just analytical thinking. It may look great, but in the end it just serves to annoy the ignorant.

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No clue what sort of GMs the above poster knows, I know quite a lot and the absolute majority are normal people. The only real weirdo I can think of is Epishin.

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This said, I don't think you can't become a real top chess player without being a great strategist ( as well as a very good analytical aptitude).

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To become a real chess player you need a good teacher (GM if possible) and you must have certain abilities: You must be able to play blindfold, you must be a fast thinker, you must have an excellent memory, you must have a love for the game and last but not least, you must have the killer insinct.

If you are lacking a single one of these attributes, you will barely make it to FM level.

Funny, but it's possible that the same goes for poker.

[punter11235]

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To become a real chess player you need a good teacher (GM if possible) and you must have certain abilities: You must be able to play blindfold, you must be a fast thinker, you must have an excellent memory, you must have a love for the game and last but not least, you must have the killer insinct.

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Hmm from what I remember Fisher couldnt play blindfold and always had pocket chess-set with him but basically I agree with you.
The real diffrence between chess and poker is amount of knowledge in chess (not only opening theory but general strategical/tactical theory). Its exceptionally hard to become good chess player because you have to study for hours to understand things people discovered for 100 years or sth. In poker the situation is that nobody really knows anything about correct strategy . Some people get some things right, some were lucky to have some things right in their natural style and they crush the game. Poker now is like chess were 120 years ago.. Brave players with great heart for fighting and that little "grasp" demolished the opposition just like the best poker players do today.
Its qutie possible that if poker continues to be as popular as today many theoretical minds will take on it and then we will know how difficult a game it really is.

[Shandrax]

You can trust me that Fischer could play blindfold easily. You will not find a single GM nor IM on earth who can't. With Fide Masters it is not guaranteed. There are 6 of them in my team and one of them is unable to visualize the board blindfold. So much for stats.

Besides that people tend to overestimate the tactical genius in chess. You don't have to play like Morphy or Tal to win. Chess can also be played successfully in a rather dry technical way based on a set of positional rules. If you simply make enough "plus-exchanges", you should be able to grind out a win. Needless to say, that's the style I prefer to use myself. My idols are Capablanca, Rubinstein and Botvinnik.

[Gregg777]

Chess, and it's not even close.

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I am not good at Chess and I doubt I would be good at it because I suspect it might require high innate spatial ability which I score in the bottom.

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Glad to hear this, in the same boat...

[rory]

I am a UCSF expert and I think that chess requires more skill and it is not really close. Think about the myraid of things you consider before you make a move in the middlegame, or the amount of moves ahead you think when you are doing endgame calculations. I used to play correspondence and would spend hours looking at the board before I made one move.

I think if you had three to five minutes to think about each poker decision like you do in a chess game you made it would become fairly clear that chess required more skill.

[rory]

I also disagree with the point that poker somehow requires more emotional control than chess. There is a saying that the hardest game to win is a won game in chess and that is because it is difficult to clamp down on your emotions and not let up throughout the entire game. There is a tendency to relax if you get ahead which is extremely dangerous, especially if the game has been toiling on for four or five hours. Chess is also more mentally taxing because you cannot get up and leave if you are having an off day or you become tired. If you play poker and you realize you are emotional for whatever reason you can get up and go home. When you play chess, you have to fight through your emotion and continue to play well. If you are in a tournament you have to not only play well this game but come back and play well the next game and the next day and so on, or your rating suffers.

The fact that Doyle Brunson can remain very competitive at the highest levels of poker even at an advanced age is evidence that poker requires less skill and effort. The top GMs fall off when they reach their 40s and 50s because their ability to calculate slows down. Look at Bisguier-- he is a GM that a strong master can roll over simply because he does not have the fortitute to play through an entire game at a high level of thought.