Talk:1112: Think Logically

Cueball is clearly a chess novice as demonstrated by the comic (at the very least he knows what the goal of the game is and how the pieces move), however he lacks higher knowledge of the game (which is gained through education) and is very inexperienced (experience is obviously gained by playing the game regularly). Given his non-expert position he attempts to deliver well-meaning advice as best he can (in this case through "thinking logically"), however the player receiving the advise (a clearly more knowledgeable and experienced player) immediately realises how utterly useless that advise is. Cueball approached the situation by "thinking logically", but his logic was flawed, possibly due to his lack of knowledge. Just because the goal of chess is to deliver checkmate does not necessarily mean that every move must be pushing a piece closer to the opponent's king. The best thing to do would be to first research and study the abundance of chess knowledge out there, practice it and then one can come up with tactics and strategies for every possible position (even if those aren't perfect). Chess is so complex that even if we wished to arrive at the absolute logical move for every position, this would be beyond us most of the time, it is just too complex. Not even computers know the perfect move for every position, although they do come up with great moves through the use of complex algorithms. Note: I thought the explanation given in the "Explanation" section above had some merit (it also explains some things I didn't include), and that is why I did not modify it and instead chose to provide mine here. Let me know what you thought, together we can explain everything.--DelendaEst (talk) 13:01, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Feel free to add your explanation to the actual page if you think it's lacking in information. Wikis are meritocracies, and anyone is welcome to voice their opinions. Davidy22 (talk) 13:21, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

A good explanation. My takeaway was more about Dunning Kruger, and chess just happened too be a convenient backdrop. The expert proceeds to pwn the know-it-all... and even having been pwned, the braggart can't find the lesson in the defeat. But as with Randall's work, YMMV. (Or to paraphrase Euell Gibbons: "ever analyze an xkcd? Many interpretations are possible.") -- IronyChef (talk) 14:52, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Just a quick point on the explanation. Chess is not a perfectly balanced game due to the first move advantage enjoyed by white. This advantage is very small, however, and the pieces themselves are well balanced. Heyart (talk) 13:53, 24 September 2012 (UTC)