-how people prepared for chess game before AI

To become better at chess people used to replay their own games versus their selves or
partners within the same lvl of play to see what they could have done better and learn from
their mistakes to gain knowledge from every game they played in their life.

At the most superficial level, understanding chess theory means having memorized
sequences of moves, and knowing when to execute those moves based on concrete
positions on the board. In other words, certain “triggers” (i.e., concrete positions) prompt
you to take certain actions (i.e., sequences of moves)

Chess theory has been created by reviewing games players have played in the past and
taking what’s best of those games. Players studying other players' games and constantly
improving their knowledge of the game.

It was important to work with other people to share the hardly gained theory knowledge
and to make sure you don’t make mistakes in your calculation when ur reviewing games and
positions over the board. Chess is a very complex game and it's easy to miss the best
move possible or even calculate something wrong when you're only a human and not a
machine.

Introduction to AI
In 1951 turing developed the first chess algorithm on paper, I said on paper because
computers back then weren't strong enough to run it, it missed calculation power. It
was a simple one that could only simulate 2 moves ahead which wasn’t strong
enough to beat any chess player. But it could play a full on chess game.
1989: Deep Though is a chess computer made by IBM which used thousands and
thousands of games that he had in memory to choose the best move from. It is also
capable of simulating the outcome of 12 moves before playing them. This
strength made this computer the first one to ever defeat a chess grandmaster. But it
was still not strong enough to beat the world champion at that time Garry Kasparov
1996 Deep blue is a supercomputer made by IBM which is an upgraded version of
Deep though, in its final form with the help of 256 processors and the equivalent of
100 gb of ram it had the capacity to analyse over 200millions chess positions per
second. It had in memory Thousands of millions of chess games in memory. and
was actually capable of beating the World chess Champion Garry Kasparov 4 to 2 in
a chess match.
Since we humans could no longer compete with the power of any chess computer.

-2008: Stockfish, i will not go in full detail because now super chess engines such
as stockfish are really complex and have the power to do an enormous amount of
calcul in a very brief period of time. but it worked with a database like the others but
added to that it has an algorithm which give each pieces a value and then can
simulate more than 40 moves ahead and proceed to choose the combination of
moves that lead to you having the most value possible still on the board if no
checkmate is possible.
-2017: Alpha zero

It is a chess engine developed by DeepMind, a small company owned by google.

What makes this one special is that it has been developed in deep learning, meaning
that we simply taught him the rules of chess, and then he played 70 millions of
games versus itself during 9hours 40 minutes. At first it played random moves, but
with each new game he understood that the moves the loser played were bad and
the one from the winner was obviously the better one. And then to this date it
became the best player within all humans and chess engines that ever existed
surpassing by far stockfish.

-Every chess player use an AI on a daily basis

Nowadays players analyse all their game thx to the help of computers, their
calculations within the limits of their ability is absolute, a free engine online such
as stockfish is capable of seeing every combination of moves far over 30 moves
ahead even on your smartphone. No human can calculate that far without even
making a mistake.

-Analysing games with AI

So it had become normal for every chess player to look throughout every game you
played using a chess engine, to see what you could have done better and improve
faster without having to spend many hours trying to calculate a series of moves.

-Studying for future games with AI

People use AI when they're studying general concepts of chess because they have
a deeper understanding of it than we do. So they can teach us more about pawn
structure, tactics and which piece to exchange versus which in a certain type of
position.

And the main aspect of using AI when preparing for a chess match is that.

You can now look on the internet all the games your opponent has ever played in
a tournament. So, you can see which move he is likely to use and you can enter
those positions in a chess engine and memorise the best move from the computer
as far as you humanly can do. And if you memorize further than your opponent
what the best moves are, your chance of winning the game increases drastically.
-AI made the game more memory dependant

By that I mean, before AI chess was purely a game of brain versus brain in a
creative and strategic way. Now top level players spend more than 70% of their
training time trying to memorize what the best moves of a position are, given by the
most powerful computer they have, before an upcoming match.

When you face a well prepared opponent you have to pass a thing that we call a
“memory test” where the two players recite their “preparation” which is all the
moves they memorized before playing an actual game of human brain versus human
brain.

for me that's a thing i dislike about what AI has changed in the whess world

-They made us reach level beyond expectation

On the other hand since AI became so much better than humans, the progress we
made thanks to them was significantly faster and now the games we are able to
observe between top level players are nothing like they were 50 years ago. And it's
a pleasure for chess lovers to see such high level games being played.