Sense and Sensation

Every chess game begins the same, and every chess game--at a certain point--reaches a formulaic ending.  But what makes the game interesting is the cloudy, unpredictable space in between. The Predictability of Chess Study the opening moves played by chess masters over the past 100 years, and you will find that certain moves are made more often than others.  These are the ones that lead to better outcomes or set up certain conditions later in the game. Record these moves, and you could create a catalog--a book--of the most well-known opening sequences of chess games. In fact, this is what the chess community has done, and what separates the truly great chess players from the merely talented ones is that the great chess players have studied the book; they have a memory bank of openings that establish certain conditions in a game.   At a certain point in a game, though, players deviate from the book; they arrive at scenarios that have not been recorded ...