I got a fun thread!

[Emdash]

I can't see how this could turn toxic (last words,) but if it does I will delete! I was watching some vids on youtube, suggested vids, just kinda boring around on a Sat night. MO2 is desyncing and lagging on main so it's like eehhh. Anyway, here is a weird question:

Which game do you think requires more brain power/total skill to be good at: chess or pool? They are both games I like, both I have played very nubbily, but I enjoy them. When you really think about it, though, I think it's pretty close, even discounting the mechanical execution and just going on the physics part, what say you? Sat nite thread. Will check back later to see if anyone answers.

 

[Khulan]

That's actually a really great question.

So after three moves in chess, the amount of permutations of the game state is 121 MILLION. When you play a game of chess, there is basically a 100% chance that nobody has ever played that exact sequence of moves before in the history of the world.

With that being said, it took a hella long time to build a computer powerful enough to win a game of chess against a grandmaster chess player.

While the physics aspect of pool allows for basically infinite permutations (the cue ball could be one one millionth of a millimeter farther ahead and count as a different game state), in practice there isn't much difference between a cue ball being here or being there as long as the path to the next target is unblocked.

I think the killing blow in the question is that a guy can fairly easily build a robot that will absolutely crush any human in pool as long as that person has the engineering skills. A guy can't easily create an algorithm that will crush any human in chess. It takes a team of engineers and scientists at IBM a solid decade and a host of upgrades and refurbishments to do it, and even then it loses 25% of the time.