Bit of a fluff piece with a weird title. Yes, GMs use "suboptimal moves" in their games, but the main reason is to take their opponents out of prep, and more importantly those lines are also heavily analysed by engines. They are specifically looking for imprecise moves that are only imprecise if the opponent finds the correct line, which could be 10-15 moves deep (so it might not be feasible to do over the board).
And this isn't something new. Magnus has been doing this for a few years now, after getting bored of facing the same over prepped opponents. He has mastered this technique, and showed that he's still the GOAT at mid to late game positions once the opponent is out of prep. But again, he's not doing this "randomly", he's studying when and where he can do it to temporarily get a disadvantage that will sort itself out later in the game. And engines are heavily used still.
Funnily enough, this is how I managed to start beating my best friend at chess, who reliably beat me every game previously for 2 decades.
One day I just started making somewhat random moves (not terrible obviously, but unusual, and which sometimes gave me a temporary disadvantage). This completely messed with his style of play. He was trying to figure out what my grand strategy was I guess and tied himself in knots. From that moment, I could often beat him.
> AlphaZero, the engine that pioneered the “neural network” approach now incorporated into Stockfish
That's simply not true. While stockfish does use a neural net, it's not using the MCTS approach like LeelaChessZero, and only uses the neural net for evaluating a position, not for suggesting moves. And it was only implemented after stockfish lost to lc0 in a computer chess tournament.
Back in the dark ages of high school, our chess coach specialized in this. We would study openings and strategy. Then he would come up with totally off-the-eall moves. And win, of course, because we had no clue how to respond.
Seirawan Chess, Euroshogi, Fischer Random/chess960 (or chess18) or Crazyhouse are other ways to make chess more interesting or less predictable.
In this video Fischer briefly and enthusiastically talks about this topic.
He talks about Fischer Random and he suggests the Capablanca proposal might be even better, and there can be even more creative variants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb7-0R2qg98
I like Seirawan Chess and Euroshogi a lot, next to King of the Hill and other games like Minishogi, Tak, Tzaar and RftG.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 23.0 ms ] threadAnd this isn't something new. Magnus has been doing this for a few years now, after getting bored of facing the same over prepped opponents. He has mastered this technique, and showed that he's still the GOAT at mid to late game positions once the opponent is out of prep. But again, he's not doing this "randomly", he's studying when and where he can do it to temporarily get a disadvantage that will sort itself out later in the game. And engines are heavily used still.
It’s a self reinforcing system. We need a major disruption to move on from it.
One day I just started making somewhat random moves (not terrible obviously, but unusual, and which sometimes gave me a temporary disadvantage). This completely messed with his style of play. He was trying to figure out what my grand strategy was I guess and tied himself in knots. From that moment, I could often beat him.
That's simply not true. While stockfish does use a neural net, it's not using the MCTS approach like LeelaChessZero, and only uses the neural net for evaluating a position, not for suggesting moves. And it was only implemented after stockfish lost to lc0 in a computer chess tournament.
In this video Fischer briefly and enthusiastically talks about this topic. He talks about Fischer Random and he suggests the Capablanca proposal might be even better, and there can be even more creative variants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb7-0R2qg98
I like Seirawan Chess and Euroshogi a lot, next to King of the Hill and other games like Minishogi, Tak, Tzaar and RftG.