Stockfish Has Ruined Chess

Stockfish finding an even more complex solution to an already beautiful problem is hardly "ruining the game"

Back over 60 years ago, even if a solution took 2 years to process, a faster computer released 1 year later could actually find the solution first. The transition to transistors changed everything.

Hey Nelson, Several people in the comments say that Black has a pawn on a4 but is not shown here. That might be the difference. First time seeing this though.

Yep, searched his name and found the puzzle. There is indeed a black pawn on a4.

My $5 says that Nelson got the puzzle from 200 Brilliant Endgames By: Irving Chernev, which has the puzzle printed without the a4 pawn 😅

There’s a black pawn on a4 in the original puzzle which prevents the queen idea

If you’d like to see the puzzle and how it originally included a pawn on A4, the Arves Chess endgamestudy association has a whole webpage dedicated to the end games of Viktor Alexandrovich Evreinov

A white or black pawn anywhere along a2-a4 fixes this puzzle. (Edit: if the pawn is on a4, it has to be black, because a white one can simply be captured).

@Chess Vibes the video that you made also has a flaw where there wasn't an A4 black pawn.There is a comment which said about this issue and I find out that it is indeed true.

You forgot to put the black pawn on A4.

Hello Nelson! Good news Victor Alexandrovitch didn't make a mistake. In his winning study he put a black pawn on a4 square. Take a look at the picture in Russian Wikipedia related to this person. So Stockfish still didn't ruin chess that much! :)

I let Stockfish analyse the game with the black a4 pawn and it is a win for white, but much more complex. Instead of playing Bf7, black plays h5 to create space for the king. From there it's a mate in 17 for white: 2. f7+ Kh7 3. f8=Q Qc7 4. Qf5+ Kh6 5. Qf6+ Kh7 6. Qh8+ Kg6 7. Qxg8+ Kf5 8. Qf7+ Qxf7 9. exf7 Ke6 10. f8=Q Kd5 11. Qd6+ Kc4 12. c6 e2 13. Qe6+ Kd3 14. c7 Kd2 15. c8=Q e1=Q+ 16. Qxe1+ Kxe1 17. Qc2 a3 18. Bc3#. So even with the black a4 pawn, this is quite a bit of an endgame and imo not really an elegant puzzle.

More like stockfish is UNREASONABLY good at using knights and queens, honestly. Their potential strings of movements/forks are just too complex for humans to grasp 30 moves ahead.

As a complete chess noob, pawn to F7 actually came to my mind first when I saw the puzzle, this is oddly validating lol

The fault lies not in Stockfish, but ourselves. -- Shakespeare, probably

I added the black pawn on a4 that was supposed to be there and stockfish found a way for black to delay it for longer.

My idea was that instead of moving the bishop to block, black can just move the pawn forward that is next to the king. if you check the king now, it can just move. There's no checkmate.

What about: 1.Pf7 - black will attempt to stop the promotion by playing either BxP or Qc8/Qe8 2. Rg4 (discovering check from bishop, black king unable to move, so has to play Pd4) 3. BxP checkmate If black plays 1.... Qa6 then 2. Rg4 check Qxa1 3. Pxg8 (promote to rook or queen) mate

Algorithms only ruin games against other algorithms, if a human is playing against a human - mind games and mistakes will always be part of the strategy

Stockfish is basically the repository of all seen possibilities and variations, as seen through the minds of every great player whom contributed recordable data...it's like the ability to compose wondrous music without ever sounding a note personally. Stockfish is the repository of the artistry, which exists within us.