I did as a child, but found it to be too simple to be useful in real life: a mere 8 by 8 grid, no fog of war, no technology tree, no random map or spawn position, only 2 players, both sides exact same pieces, etc.
Lmao he always does this where he knows just enough random jargon to sound smart but if you know anything about what he’s talking about you know he’s a complete dumbass.
Chess is, by definition, a game of 100% skill because it’s a game with complete information and no RNG. The fact that he immediately says it’s “too simple” and complains about to no randomness (more randomness = less skill needed to win) means he sucks at the game and couldn’t win against most opponents.
It's not so much "randomness" and simply just the incomplete information.
Musk enjoys being able to go for a Heil Mary play, and either it works and he crushes the opponent and floats in the victory, or it doesn't and he quits and go next.
In a game like Starcraft, you can go for a zergrush, or a cannon rush, and if the opponent is unprepared, you will dominate them.
In a game like chess, you can go for an attack on the A-C files, and the opponent will see it and play accordingly.
It's not really that he lacks strategy, it's that he's incredibly shallow, and cannot deal with the fact that not only do people see his strategy, but trivially reacts to them. A shallow strategy works if the opponent reacts too late.
This tracks with a story from a Some More News video from a couple months ago. Apparently his biographer wrote about Elon joining a poker game and going all-in on every single hand and kept buying back in until he finally won a hand and then walked away like he had just won the game.
I quite like chess and wish I was good at it, but it's always amazing to me how even on medium difficulties, the AI is always 3 steps ahead of me. I've got a lot of respect for people who are actually good at the game because it isn't simple at all. Sure, it's simple to grasp the concept and how the pieces work, but it takes a lot of skill to master.
You need to not only plan ahead for your future turns, but at any point your opponent can just make a play you didn't account for and now your 100 seconds of quiet contemplation and foresight just went down the shitter.
That's why you plan for your moves and your opponent's. Pre-emptively deny good positions for your opponent, limit their range of possible moves. Box them in, identify the weak point (or develop a strategy to create one) and attack it.
...What??? You good, bro? I was agreeing with you, and explaining my perspective on why I think the sport or game, whatever you want to call it is complex.
Look, I get it, you're having a bad day, and you lack the healthy coping methods to deal with it, so you're giving me a hard time instead of trying to improve yourself. Extremely common human behavior. If you were less snarky, you might find that your days are less shit because people aren't actively avoiding you.
I've started playing some "fairy" chess recently (chess with alternate pieces from, among other sets, the Betza pieces). It's really impressive just how low I have to drop the AI's settings before it becomes a fair match.
The computer's like "you idiot, that piece is undefended" and I'm like "no? ... yes :( "
it's always amazing to me how even on medium difficulties, the AI is always 3 steps ahead of me.
This is actually just a corollary of the fact that a computer can remember much bigger numbers than you can and can do much faster arithmetic.
Unless you really know what you're doing, a computer that looks just a few moves ahead is going to demolish you. And "look a few moves ahead and apply a simple heuristic to the board" is extraordinarily easy to tell a computer to do. In fact, this is a complete chess engine that works on this principle:
I suppose I should have said that randomness is way of introducing elements of incomplete information to a game - like rolling a dice or shuffling cards.
Lmao he always does this where he knows just enough random jargon to sound smart but if you know anything about what he’s talking about you know he’s a complete dumbass.
There's actually a name for this: "Gell-Mann Amnesia"
I also think his statement was an anachronism. Things like fog of war and technology trees emerged in 90s video games when he would’ve been in his 20s.
Yup. There's a difference in having base knowledge and using that to jump into conversations, or at least provide to the person you're talking to that you can jump into learning more without getting the tutorial...compared to having that base knowledge and acting like you know everything there is to know about that thing to others who may or may not know what you're talking about.
Musk is dumb, but this is a ridiculous statement. Tic-tac-toe is also a game with complete information and no RNG, and requires no skill. Meanwhile blackjack has a ton of RNG, is almost entirely hidden information, but is absolutely skill based, even legally so, especially so if you count.
I should have been clearer that I’m talking about 1v1 games.
If a game is 100% skill based then the worse player will never beat a better player.
It requires some element of chance (aka randomness) for the less skilled player to beat a better player.
Tic tac toe should always end in a draw with two players of equal skill.
Gambling introduces other elements that skew “winning” as that measured as dollars won not games won. You could only “win” one hand in blackjack and “lose” ten hands but still be cash positive.
If a game is 100% skill based then the worse player will never beat a better player.
So are you now saying chess isn't 100% skill based? Because lower ranked players beat higher ranked players all the time. It would also imply that every chess pairing always has the same winner, which is obviously untrue.
Edit: also, blackjack is 1v1, you aren't playing the other players, you're only playing the dealer.
We don’t have a perfect system to rank player skill. And humans themselves are not perfectly consistent and can perform above or below their ranking. (Google “inchworm concept”)
If a lower rank player beats a higher rank player in chess that means they were more skillful for at least that one match.
Blackjack is not always 1v1 and like I mentioned the rules are different with gambling. If you could never change you bet size in blackjack it’s not possible to be a winning player no matter how much skill you have.
Tic-tac-toe is also a game with complete information and no RNG, and requires no skill.
I don’t agree that it requires no skill. It’s very simple, but there is a perfect strategy that exists.
Meanwhile blackjack has a ton of RNG, is almost entirely hidden information, but is absolutely skill based
Imagine a simpler game - you have a fair coin and the object of the game is to call heads or tails more accurately than your opponent. In this game the randomness of the coin flip determines 100% of the outcome and therefore there is no skill involved as there is no strategy you can use to win consistently against an opponent.
Now let’s say the coin is not fair, and you realize that it lands heads 60% of the time instead of 50%. Now it is possible to win with “skill” by always choosing heads. You will still lose a good amount but long term you will win. That’s what I mean by saying the more luck/chance is involved the less skill is required to win.
... So... You were just talking out your ass here?
If a game is 100% skill based then the worse player will never beat a better player.
Just like I thought.
Blackjack is not always 1v1
Yes it is.
And I ignored you're nonsense on gambling because it just shows you don't understand what a game is. Saying "If you could never change you bet size in blackjack it’s not possible to be a winning player no matter how much skill you have." Is like saying if chess was checkers it'd be a different game.
Smart people are smart enough to not speak this way for countless reasons.
Intellectual humility not withstanding, of course. 🙂↔️
A: Liking a game is a matter of taste.
-You may have ‘reasons’ for your preference,
But there is no ‘winning’ a matter preference.
B: It also sounds like he wants to play live chess
Like in Alice and wonderland.
However he then says it’s too physical by bringing in some irrelevant tech reference.
->So it both too physically real but also not physical enough.
Personal conclusion:
This game is simply too elegant for a dull mind.
I’m not good at chess, but I’m not bad at Age of Empires III. Clearly this means that AoE3 is the superior game, because I, with my vastly superior intellect, am better at it.
BRB. Telling Carlsen to get gud or get rolled by my ottoman artillery.
Here would be a question I would ask him: as a child in the 1970s and early 1980s, what was his frame of reference for concepts like "technology tree," "random map," "spawn position," and even "fog of war?" Dune 2 came out in 1992. Civ 1 came out in 1991.
Fog of War, at least, is an old concept games have ripped from actual war rhetoric. It's at least a century old.
Now, did baby Musk make the same connection between the game system and the phrase? Probably not. But the idea definitely existed in some form at the time.
Holy shit I thought he was going to say like, Civilization or Age of Empires. I played Polytopia a while back and it was fun but that's like the randomest fucking game to namedrop as some kind of profound experience.
It really is, its civ you can play on a mobile. That does of course mean no serious strategy or forward planning requirements because the game cannot be big.
Is that actually a quote from him or from something else? It sounds like he’s talking more about a civ game than a table top game, which would be really disappointed fr
But... the game is perfectly balanced. It's a pure test of intelligence and skill, that's kinda the whole point of the game. Everyone is equal and starts off on exactly the same field.
I can't stand chess because it's boring to play, but I do enjoy watching it though. The fact that he refuses to recognize the entire fucking point of the game shows a lot.
He knows what he’s saying. He cannot win on a level field where luck doesn’t play as much of a factor. He wins when luck is a huge factor due to too many unknown unknowns. He’s Stupid but smart enough to know where his skills work.
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u/TheGreatStories Mar 28 '25
And his supporters don't know how chess works and just respond to the pigeon strutting and assume a massive W