Big Data in Chess

As an avid chess player, I have often been amazed by the amount of data that is available. The range of data ranges from players (past and present), openings against their winning percentages (how often you will win, draw and lose when playing a certain opening) to games overall and when positions have been played in the past. Databases have been compiled with so many games, which players are able to study in hopes of improving their own games. But data in Chess goes way beyond this.

A challenge of Chess has always been to find concrete points – or mathematical certainties within a game. One of the first things that players are taught about Chess is the value of the pieces. Though there are keen situational differences, being able to assign a point value to each of them makes in-game decision-making much simpler. Different people will assign slightly different value to their pieces, but one person used advanced data to weigh several different factors against each other to find so called values which are more precise than traditionally-accepted ideas. As Chess games are often as unpredictable as life itself, there will likely be shifts in the way the game is played within the framework of the same rules, so it can still be something subject to change over time. Regardless, Chess is a game that revolves around logic and data.

The article is available at: http://www.sumsar.net/blog/2015/06/big-data-and-chess-followup/