Seven Games Review: Chess Knights, Poker Cowboys and the Rise of the Computer Opponent – The Wall Street Journal

In Washington Square Park, they dont agree to draws. The first time I sat down at a black marble table to play one of Manhattans celebrated chess hustlers, I weathered the attack and simplified into a theoretically drawn endgame, at which point both players would usually shake hands. But the time left on my clock was low, and there was $5 riding on the result, so the guy made me prove it: We played until only bare kings remained on the board. Chess might be an art for some, a science for others; most of all, though, it is a fight.

Which is why computers havent destroyed chess, any more than the theoretical existence of a robot that could out-punch Mike Tyson has made hand-to-hand combat irrelevant. People once feared that technology would push the human element aside, after an out-of-form Garry Kasparov lost his second match (he had won the first) against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997. But the professional game is flourishing, and the popularity of chess as a spectator sport surged during the Covid-19 pandemic, with stars such as United State grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura playing online to huge audiences. He has a following of 1.4 million on the streaming service Twitch.

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Seven Games Review: Chess Knights, Poker Cowboys and the Rise of the Computer Opponent - The Wall Street Journal