Playing Chess: Here Comes the WORLD

Chess.  It's one of my many sins.  Don't think I'm nerdy enough for it?  Fine, here's a picture:

That's me.  And that's my state championship
trophy.  Believe me yet?

Yes, okay, haha.  I was the state chess champion.  I'm somewhat invested in this game.  Which is why I was happy when I first realized that there are significant connections that can be made from the game to my assigned topic: participation!

First of all, chess is usually considered a one on one game, right?  Well, maybe you've heard of a simultaneous exhibition?  See the clip: (you don't need to watch very much to get the general idea).

Twenty-two on one?  They never had a chance

Twenty-two games at once is certainly impressive, but it isn't very collaborative.  It still fits the one-on-oneness of your average game of chess, just with one player who's strong enough to be playing twenty plus games at once.  (coincidentally, *much* bigger simultaneous matches have been played, with equally impressive results.  This was just the best I found on youtube) 

GM Anatoly Karpov

Chess often allows for collaboration.  Often, two strong players will team together and collaborate, usually in coach-competitor fashion.  Coaches are often strong, retired players (at the grandmaster level themselves, and sometimes the stronger of the two) who spend time researching opponents for their partner, allowing the partner to focus on chess.  There have also been many games played as team games, where a few weaker masters will team up to try and defeat one strong master, or occasionally a two-on-two match of masters of comparable strength.  (example matches:  this one, this one, or this one)

Now, crowdsourcing.  Don't believe me?  It's actually been happening for sixteen years in the chess world, and it's getting better.  In 1996, when the internet was still young, Anatoly Karpov (then the disputed world champion, a fascinating struggle I won't go into now) played an exhibition game against several hundred players via early chess websites.  It was the first time such a thing was tried, and it wasn't extraordinarily well organized.  In effect, it was a live game, where GM Karpov played a move, then the "world" voted on the next move for about ten minutes, at which point the move with the most votes was played and the game continued.  Unsurprisingly, the world was beaten soundly, because there was no real collaboration.  The next time a "world vs. one" match was tried, discussion was allowed, and a few professional players were selected to post analysis of the different moves and suggest plans.  The game went much more smoothly, and there were chances for a draw, until an alleged hacking occurred, ending the hopes of the world team (which raises the question, who would hack into a chess match?  Really?).  

Chessgames.com...I am a member...and a nerd...

Now, we jump forward a few years.  In 2006, chessgames.com hosted a "world vs. one" match with Arno Nickel, an active chess Grandmaster.  The format was two days per move,  the "World" had several discussion forums dedicated to the game, and any member of chessgames was allowed to participate.  A reputed master and an experienced correspondence chess player, he was a very tough opponent, but four months and hundreds of pages of discussion later, including a bulletin-board style page where lines that were already analyzed could be posted, GM Arno Nickel was the first notable master to lose to the World.  

Since then, there have been several more games, including an Arno Nickel rematch where he managed a draw, and the World team has had great results against surprising players.  In this match (I participated in one or two of them) I think I really saw the potential of crowdsourcing.  It was very well organized, but the organization was largely self-imposed.  Any player who had the time to work on developing ideas and analyzing lines was welcome to participate, and each person chose one line on which to focus, and analyzed a few variations until they were confident that the line was either good or bad.  There was usually multiple people on each line, so few mistakes were made in the analysis.  In the end, the analyzing was so good that the Grandmaster had no chance to surprise us with tactics, meaning his only hope was his "master's intuition," a sort of feel for the game that can sometimes go beyond what we can actually calculate about what will actually be useful later on in the game.  When it comes right down to it, the World was at a level with grandmasters.

So, from these games, I have hypothesized that crowds can perform as well as or better than even the strongest individual chess players, given that they are organized, invested enough to make sure the work they do is valid, and they are assisted by a core of strong players to give them direction.  Does this correspond at all with what others have found about crowdsourcing?

External links--

http://content.yudu.com/A1t744/ChessLifeAug2011/resources/index.htm--look at page 32, where there is an article detailing several of the games I mentioned above.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=29573--a quick list of the chess games played by the world.  If you like chess, feel free to browse, the newer games are all of considerable quality.