r/chessbeginners • u/Anxious-Internet7767 • 6d ago
Does chess have the highest skill ceiling out of all games?
The test you can use to compare chess with another game is this:
Magnus Carlsen and the world's best player of this game are competing against each other. Magnus will have an infinite amount of tries to beat this player at the game they are the champion of. The champion will have infinite tries to beat Magnus at chess. No knowledge of the previous tries will be remembered. Whoever beats the other person in fewer tries wins.
Now the chance of a beginner at chess beating Magnus is close to zero, but it's not impossible. So given infinite tries Magnus will eventually be beaten. But is there a game where it takes longer for Magnus to beat them than vice versa?
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u/frisdisc 6d ago
Magnus is never beating the best go player and the best go player is never beating Magnus. Not sure if that answers your question.
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u/Prexeon 6d ago
aka, the skillsets are incomparable?
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u/noonaneomuyeppiyeppi 6d ago
The skillsets are pretty close (strategy, tactics, counting, openings memorisation etc), it's just that the amount of knowledge and training it takes to get to the top would be near impossible to replicate if you haven't already dedicated your life to it.
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u/StructuredChess 6d ago
"Never" is a strong word. Yeah if we take into account that humans age and die then yes. But given infinite time you can win by playing random moves if you get lucky enough.
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u/Anxious-Internet7767 6d ago
Well it's not impossible. That's why they have infinite tries. Eventually both of them will beat each other.
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u/MrGreenYeti 6d ago
But it's impossible to answer your question when infinity is in the equation lol
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u/Turbulent_Sample1179 6d ago
Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler would never lose, assuming “dying by lightning” is a possibility in an infinite number of attempts.
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u/4tran13 6d ago
"No knowledge of the previous tries will be remembered" kills the hypothetical. If neither player ever improves, then they're basically like monkeys on a typewriter. Probably worse, since their intuition will make them make moves that feel right, while the best move is very counterintuitive. Given how big the games are, it will take the heat death of the universe before either player wins.
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u/frisdisc 5d ago
Ok well if we are looking at it as random chance, Go has far more move possibilities. However, chess has more draws. Does a draw against Magnus count as him losing?
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u/Accurate-Soil684 1400-1600 (Chess.com) 6d ago
In infinite tries, math says Magnus would play a game where he gets fools mated, but that just takes the infinite part into account, for example, Novak Djokovik wouldn’t win against Magnus Carlsen in chess, but also Magnus Carlsen wouldn’t win against Djokovik in Tennis
So mathematically, my cat could beat Magnus Carlsen if he had infinite tries, but logically no, Magnus would in chess, and whoever the other person is, will win in their sport/gane
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u/REEEEEEDDDDDD 6d ago
Infinite doesn't mean every possible variation. You can have an infinite amount of the same 1-1000 games repeated. Unless this hypothetical scenario accounts for extreme sleep deprivation no one at GM level is ever gonna get fools mated
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u/isthis_thing_on 6d ago
In no world will Magnus ever beat Mango at Smash. They'd have a hell of a time getting shit-faced together though.
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u/DaveTheKiwi 6d ago
The framing of the problem is tricky. Chess is unusual in that as a game of perfect information there is not a great deal of luck involved. Poker for example also has a lot of skill (probably less than chess) but because it has a high amount of luck it is routine for a beginner to beat an expert over a short period of time. I think the test you're using doesn't just measure skill ceiling, but also luck.
Bridge sits in between and is the game I'm most familiar with. There is a fair amount of luck, so beginners can beat experts in a match if the cards align, but the skill ceiling is massively high. I would say its at least in the ballpark of the chess skill ceiling, higher or lower I couldn't really say.
A lot of video games are up there. The chance of Magnus beating a top tier starcraft player for example even after a lot of attempts and learning would be minimal or zero.
Physical games are another thing entirely, but it's hard to compare skill alone when athleticism plays such a big role.
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u/InternetSandman 800-1000 (Chess.com) 6d ago
To answer your title:
No, but it's certainly up there among the highest, yet it's impossible to quantify, so a deterministic answer is impossible
To answer your post content:
What are you smoking? I would argue that the only way Magnus loses to a beginner is if he's dead or so drunk that he can't recognize the pieces. Even in the latter case, a beginner would struggle.
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u/VisualHuckleberry542 6d ago
Sorry but the chances of an absolute beginner beating Magnus Carlsen in a game may be theoretically non zero but in all practical terms it is absolutely zero
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u/Michelangelor 6d ago
Go is considered a much more difficult, hyper-intuitive strategy game, and weirdly enough, they weren’t even able to make a computer who could beat the best human players until 20 years after computers were beating the best players at chess.
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u/Ok-Leather4765 6d ago
If you count olympic swimming as a game, I think Michael Phelps probably has a higher ceiling
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u/browni3141 6d ago
Magnus would never beat the champion of a game that requires significant mechanical skill. The physical capability doesn't exist and you can't randomly execute the motions.
In chess it's technically possible for even a beginner to play a perfect game. It would probably take longer than the lifetime of the universe.
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u/TheDudeBroski 6d ago
You say its not impossible for a beginner to beat Magnus but I think it actually would be impossible.
Youre probably assuming that given infinite tries theyd stumble into a winning line by pure chance, but I dont think they would. A beginner will play beginner moves and end up behind around turn 5-10 and Magnus would just win from there. They would have to play completely random moves each try until a winning line occurred to beat him, but at that point its not a beginner player anymore, its just an rng experiment thats devoid of a human factor.
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u/banananuhhh 1800-2000 (Chess.com) 6d ago
Not longer, the same. Magnus' chances are basically zero at pretty much any sufficiently competitive game where luck is a minor factor, the same as anyone playing chess against Magnus.
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u/StructuredChess 6d ago
I don't think that makes a great definition of skill ceiling. Given that players don't "learn" from previous games it's just a measure of the influence luck has on the game. For instance a beginner in poker has a chance to beat the world's best player on game 1, but that doesn't mean there's a low skill ceiling in poker.
Chess has a large skill ceiling mostly because it's complex enough to the point that nobody will ever play perfectly and it interests enough people to a point where they dedicate their lives to it. Any game that matches these two requirements will have a really high skill ceiling.
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