I’m happy to be B if it’d be useful—mainly because I expect that to require least time, and I do play chess to relax anyway. Pretty flexible on times/days. I don’t think I’d have time for A/C. (unless the whole thing is quite quick—I’d be ok spending an afternoon or two, so long as it’s not in the next two weeks; currently very busy)
I’ve not been rated recently. IIRC I was about 1900 in blitz on chess.com when playing for fun. I’d guess that I could be ~1900 on longer controls if I spent quite a bit of effort on the games. I’d prefer to participate with more of a ~1700 expectation, since I can do that quickly.
So long as I’m B, I’m fine with multi-week or multi-month 1-move-per-day games—but clearly the limiting factor is that this is much more demanding on A and C.
Some thoughts on the setup: It’d make sense to have at least a few fastish games between B and C, so that it’s pretty clear there is the expected skill disparity. Blitz games are likely to be the most efficient here—I’d suggest an increment of at least 5 seconds per move, to avoid the incentive to win on time. But ~3 minutes on the clock may be enough. (9 games of ~10 minutes each will tell you a lot more than 1 game of ~90minutes)
Similarly between A and B.
This should ideally be done at the end of the experiment too, in particular to guard against A being a very fast learner. B improving a lot seems less likely (though possible, if they started out rusty). I don’t think Cs improving should be an issue. But it’s plausible that both the A-B and B-C gaps shrink during the experiment.
A control that’s probably useful is to have A play some games against B with entirely honest advisors. The point here being that it can impose some penalty to have three suggestions rather than one—e.g. if the advisors know different opening lines, A might pick an inconsistent combination: advisor 1 makes a suggestion that goes down a path advisor 2 doesn’t know well; A picks advisor 1′s move, then advisor 2′s follow-up, resulting in an incoherent strategy. I don’t expect this would be have a large effect, but it seems sensible to do if there’s time. (if time’s a big constraint, it might not be worth it)
It’s worth considering what norms make sense for the C role. For instance, if C is giving explanations, does that extend to giving complex arguments against other plausible moves? Is C aiming to play fully to win given the constraints, or is there an in-the-spirit-of-things norm?
E.g. if C had a character limit on the advice they could give, the most efficient approach might be to give various lines in chess notation, without any explanation. Is this desirable?
Would it make sense to limit the move depth that C can talk about in concrete terms? E.g. to say that you can give a concrete line up to 6 plies, but beyond that point you can only talk in generalities (more space; pressure on dark squares; more active pieces; will win material...).
I expect that prototyping this will make sense—come up with something vaguely plausible, then just try it and adjust.
I’d be interested to give feedback on the setup you’re planning, if that’d be useful.
I was thinking I would test the players to make sure they really could beat each other as they should be able to. Good points on using blitz and doing the test afterwards; the main constraint as to whether it happens before or after the game is that I would prefer to do it beforehand to know whether the rankings were accurate rather than playing for weeks and only later realizing we were doing the wrong test.
I wasn’t thinking of much in the way of limits on what Cs could say, although possibly some limits on whether the Cs can see and argue against each other’s advice. C’s goal is pretty much just “make A win the game” or “make A lose the game” as applicable.
I’m definitely thinking a prototype would help. I’ve actually been contacted about applying for a grant to make this a larger experiment, and I was planning on first running a one-day game or two as a prototype before expanding it with more people and longer games.
Oh I didn’t mean only to do it afterwards. I think before is definitely required to know the experiment is worth doing with a given setup/people. Afterwards is nice-to-have for Science. (even a few blitz games is better than nothing)
I’m happy to be B if it’d be useful—mainly because I expect that to require least time, and I do play chess to relax anyway. Pretty flexible on times/days. I don’t think I’d have time for A/C. (unless the whole thing is quite quick—I’d be ok spending an afternoon or two, so long as it’s not in the next two weeks; currently very busy)
I’ve not been rated recently. IIRC I was about 1900 in blitz on chess.com when playing for fun.
I’d guess that I could be ~1900 on longer controls if I spent quite a bit of effort on the games.
I’d prefer to participate with more of a ~1700 expectation, since I can do that quickly.
So long as I’m B, I’m fine with multi-week or multi-month 1-move-per-day games—but clearly the limiting factor is that this is much more demanding on A and C.
Some thoughts on the setup:
It’d make sense to have at least a few fastish games between B and C, so that it’s pretty clear there is the expected skill disparity. Blitz games are likely to be the most efficient here—I’d suggest an increment of at least 5 seconds per move, to avoid the incentive to win on time. But ~3 minutes on the clock may be enough. (9 games of ~10 minutes each will tell you a lot more than 1 game of ~90minutes)
Similarly between A and B.
This should ideally be done at the end of the experiment too, in particular to guard against A being a very fast learner.
B improving a lot seems less likely (though possible, if they started out rusty).
I don’t think Cs improving should be an issue.
But it’s plausible that both the A-B and B-C gaps shrink during the experiment.
A control that’s probably useful is to have A play some games against B with entirely honest advisors.
The point here being that it can impose some penalty to have three suggestions rather than one—e.g. if the advisors know different opening lines, A might pick an inconsistent combination: advisor 1 makes a suggestion that goes down a path advisor 2 doesn’t know well; A picks advisor 1′s move, then advisor 2′s follow-up, resulting in an incoherent strategy.
I don’t expect this would be have a large effect, but it seems sensible to do if there’s time. (if time’s a big constraint, it might not be worth it)
It’s worth considering what norms make sense for the C role.
For instance, if C is giving explanations, does that extend to giving complex arguments against other plausible moves? Is C aiming to play fully to win given the constraints, or is there an in-the-spirit-of-things norm?
E.g. if C had a character limit on the advice they could give, the most efficient approach might be to give various lines in chess notation, without any explanation. Is this desirable?
Would it make sense to limit the move depth that C can talk about in concrete terms? E.g. to say that you can give a concrete line up to 6 plies, but beyond that point you can only talk in generalities (more space; pressure on dark squares; more active pieces; will win material...).
I expect that prototyping this will make sense—come up with something vaguely plausible, then just try it and adjust.
I’d be interested to give feedback on the setup you’re planning, if that’d be useful.
I was thinking I would test the players to make sure they really could beat each other as they should be able to. Good points on using blitz and doing the test afterwards; the main constraint as to whether it happens before or after the game is that I would prefer to do it beforehand to know whether the rankings were accurate rather than playing for weeks and only later realizing we were doing the wrong test.
I wasn’t thinking of much in the way of limits on what Cs could say, although possibly some limits on whether the Cs can see and argue against each other’s advice. C’s goal is pretty much just “make A win the game” or “make A lose the game” as applicable.
I’m definitely thinking a prototype would help. I’ve actually been contacted about applying for a grant to make this a larger experiment, and I was planning on first running a one-day game or two as a prototype before expanding it with more people and longer games.
Oh I didn’t mean only to do it afterwards. I think before is definitely required to know the experiment is worth doing with a given setup/people. Afterwards is nice-to-have for Science. (even a few blitz games is better than nothing)