How would you describe Pokemon to a chess fan?

[Yours Truly]

The title says it all really, I had a day dream about arguing about deep blue and why I think Pokemon is as complicated, or even more complicated, as chess.

 

But how would you respond if asked by a well meaning young chess fan that doesn't understand what this Pokemon thing is because he has been living under a rock for the last decade, literally.

[Tartar]

Pokémon is complex, but it's not complicated.

Chess is complicated, but not complex.

 

I should probably explain that. complex refers to the amount of components of a system, while complexity refers to the difficulty of a system.

Pokémon is certainly very complex due to the astounding combination of moves, and Pokémon available, but it's not nearly as complicated as Chess. At any given time there are at most a handful of viable moves one can take, and it's easy to discern which are the best moves. Thus the skill ceiling of finding the optimal move is very low, and the very highest levels of play are more concerned with the psychology of predicting your opponents moves, rather than finding the optimal move like in Chess. 

 

Because of this, it's impossible to compare the two games, since the types of skills involved in the two games are so completely different. In truth, despite loving both Chess and Pokémon, the two games have widely different appeals. 

Edited January 6, 2017 by Tartar

[FairFamily]

"Well pkmn is a game, where one gathers a team of up to 6 creatures to beat the opposing team with his own team of 6. Each creature has it's own stats, 4 moves it can use and an ability. Each turn the players choose a move which the outcome is dependant on the stats and abilities of the fighting creatures and a bit of luck. For each of the moves, abilities and stats the players have a set of options ,specific to the creature, in which the player can costumise in. So in order to win you have to understand your own team but also try to understand and uncover your oppenents and make your moves accordingly. So pkmn adds a layer of uncertainty which makes making predictions in the long term impossible making the game more dynamic and on the fly where as chess has a wider variety of moves and certainty of the outcomes results in the game revolving around long term plans."  That is how I would explain the difference between pkmn and chess to a chess player.

 

Attention computer science incomming

Now for a computer this different. Chess is the easier of the 2 games. Chess is a finite game with perfect information.  Every possible move is known and every previous move is known. The game will also end after a finite amount of moves. Do you know what also qualifies this criteria? tic-tac-toe. That's right chess is like tic-tac-toe but with more possible moves. And it is a lot more moves: Chess opens with 20, tic-tac-toe with 3 and it grows exponentienly after that. This amount of moves just pushes chess towards a problem that can't be brute-fored (check all possible boardstates) and they have to be a bit more creative but once chess is within the range of the hardware boom just tic-tac-toe. Checkers has been analasyd to the point that a computer can never lose. Pkmn however is a finite game with imperfect information. The computer does not know every move the player made so unlike chess where the computer knows in which state it is, with pokemon does not, which makes it conceptually more difficult. 

Edited January 6, 2017 by FairFamily