Comment by akira2501
1 year ago
There are some who suggest that modern chess is mostly a game of memorization and not one particularly of strategy or skill. I assume this is why variants like speed chess exist.
In this scope, my mental model is that LLMs would be good at modern style long form chess, but would likely be easy to trip up with certain types of move combinations that most humans would not normally use. My prediction is that once found they would be comically susceptible to these patterns.
Clearly, we have no real basis for saying it is "good" or "bad" at chess, and even using chess performance as an measurement sample is a highly biased decision, likely born out of marketing rather than principle.
It is memorisatiom only after you have grandmastered reasoning and strategy.
Speed chess relies on skill.
I think you're using "skill" to refer solely to one aspect of chess skill: the ability to do brute-force calculations of sequences of upcoming moves. There are other aspects of chess skill, such as:
1. The ability to judge a chess position at a glance, based on years of experience in playing chess and theoretical knowledge about chess positions.
2. The ability to instantly spot tactics in a position.
In blitz (about 5 minutes) or bullet (1 minute) chess games, these other skills are much more important than the ability to calculate deep lines. They're still aspects of chess skill, and they're probably equally important as the ability to do long brute-force calculations.
> tactics in a position
That should give patterns (hence your use of the verb to "spot" them, as the grandmaster would indeed spot the patterns) recognizable in the game string.
More specifically grammar-like parterns, e.g. the same moves but translated.
Typically what an LLM can excel at.