Emergent complexity in the decision-making process of chess players

• Autores: Chacoma, Andrés Alberto; Billoni, Orlando Vito
• Año de publicación: 2025
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: artículo
• Materia: Complex Systems; Data analysis; Decision-making models; Chess
• Institución: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas

In this article, we study the decision-making process of chess players by using a chess engine to evaluate the moves across different pools of games. We quantified the decisiveness of each move during the games using a metric derived from the engine’s evaluation of the positions. We then performed a comparative analysis across players of varying competitive levels. Firstly, we observed that players face a wide spectrum of the decisiveness metric, evidencing the complexity of the process. By examining groups of winning and losing players, we found evidence where a decrease in complexity may be associated with a drop in players’ performance levels. Secondly, we observed that players’ accuracy increases in positions with high values of the decisiveness metric regardless of competitive level. Complementing this information with a null model where players make completely random legal moves allowed us to characterize the decision-making process under the simple strategy of making moves that minimize the decisiveness metric. Finally, based on this idea, we proposed a simple model that approximately replicates the global emergent properties of the system.
Fil: Chacoma, Andrés Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física del Plasma. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física del Plasma; Argentina
Fil: Billoni, Orlando Vito. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Física Enrique Gaviola. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Física Enrique Gaviola; Argentina