During the Covid-19 pandemic, me and my tiny group of international friends decided to stay in Maastricht instead of going back home to our respective families. At that moment, we decided to start getting serious about playing Chess out of boredom. More concretely, we all started playing in Chess.com which is one of the most famous apps for playing chess all around the world. The app has as its members some the most famous personalities in the chess community. Ding Liren, Hikaru Nakamura, and even Magnus Carlsen who is considered the best player in history are amongst them.
After loads of practice, I started becoming better and better at chess. Within Chess.com a variety of functionalities can be played. Such as 10-minute games (rapid), 1-minute games (bullet), or even 1+ days games (diary). But amongst all of them, I grew a particular interest in puzzles.
In Chess a puzzle is the scenario that occurs when a player is presented with a completely random position in the board where one and only one good move exists. These puzzles demand more than simply moving pieces across a board; they also call for ingenuity, problem-solving abilities, and awareness of intricate patterns (Generating Chess Puzzles with Genetic Algorithms, 2022). Every time a player succeeds in completing a puzzle within Chess.com your rating (Elo) increases but if you get it wrong it decreases. An Elo is basically a renowned system in which the overall strength of a chess player is expressed. You can see in the image below my Elo rating in puzzles. This one is considered as medium-high in the chess community (2036) and I’m also currently positioned in the 96,8 percentile of all Chess.com players doing puzzles.
Nevertheless, as you can see in the graph my rating (Elo) progression in puzzles has stagnated. One of the main factors for that is that I keep encountering very different puzzles in terms of thematic which are not appropriate for my characteristics as a player. What I mean by that is that Chess.com doesn’t provide me with a tailored training plan for completing puzzles. For example, If I’m struggling with end-game situations (when there are not a lot of pieces on the board) Chess.com should constantly provide me with variations of those end-game puzzles until I understand their intrinsic dynamics. Instead, because puzzles in Chess.com are primarily curated from real games played by humans in the app, this one just provides me with random puzzles that are considered to be in my current level of difficulty or Elo. But it doesn’t tailor them by thematic or player personal needs and weaknesses. In other words, a huge stack of puzzles is stored in the Chess.com database and later sent to all players going through puzzles. Currently, there are more than 570,000 puzzles stored. Chess.com also increases daily its puzzle database by means of an algorithm that “walks” the positions in all the games played within the app until it finds a position that can be thought of as a tactical puzzle. (Team (CHESS.com), 2023)
The integration of generative AI could open new possibilities for puzzle creation and customization, ultimately enhancing the learning and training experience for chess enthusiasts of all Elo levels. As a chess enthusiast, I could benefit greatly from these generative AI tools. They could allow me to practice and improve my game by offering personalised challenges and insights. More concretely the use of generative AI for the puzzle games could provide: (1) More customised puzzles tailored to individual player’s preferences, and weaknesses or areas for improvement. (2) Infinite puzzle variations which would be generated by generative AI based on each player’s style of play, so there would be no need to rely on a limited database (3) Specific aspects of chess and skills would be targeted, such as tactics, endgames, opening positions, etc. (4) Generative AI applied to puzzles in Chess.com could also adjust difficulty more dynamically per subject instead of by Elo, consequently ensuring that players are continually challenged and motivated to progress.
Nowadays, generative AI has already been used within the realm of chess. The introduction of generative AI in Chess was demonstrated with Alpha Zero. An AI that generated new playing positions and forms of understanding the game never encountered before. Therefore, if generative AI was already applied in Alpha Zero, why cannot it be implemented within the puzzles department of the renowned application Chess.com? Why cannot generative AI be used to create new puzzles tailored to each individual player’s needs and that at the same time showcases originality while still adhering to the strategic foundations and aesthetic allure of chess? (Generative AI in the Chess World, n.d.)
Considering the above-mentioned, Chess.com, the prominent platform for chess enthusiasts, could integrate generative AI to enhance user experience. Through AI-powered analysis and puzzle generation, Chess.com could assist players in improving their skills. It could provide tailored puzzles based on a player’s past mistakes and style of playing while continuing to be delivered according to a player’s level in terms of difficulty or Elo level. All in all, generative AI tools could be used to augment the puzzle creation process based on an individual’s gameplay such as in the case of Alpha Zero.
REFERENCES:
Generating Chess Puzzles with Genetic Algorithms. (2022, October 13). PropelAuth Blog. https://www.propelauth.com/post/generating-chess-puzzles-with-genetic-algorithms
Team (CHESScom), C. com. (2023, January 10). How We Built A Puzzle Database With Half A Million Puzzles. Chess.com. https://www.chess.com/blog/CHESScom/how-we-built-a-puzzle-database-º with-half-a-million-puzzles#:~:text=Our%20database%20of%20puzzles%20has
Chole, V; & Gadicha, V. (2020). A review towards human intuition based chess playing system using AI & ML. Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education Vol.11 No 2 (2020), 792-797
Generative AI in the Chess World. (n.d.). Sigma Technology. Retrieved October 21, 2023, from https://sigmatechnology.com/articles/generative-ai-in-the-chess-world/
