Chess: A Microcosm of the AI Revolution
The Chess Revolution: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age by Peter Doggers (Puzzlewright Press, 2024)
Reviewed by Brody C. J. Eldridge
$36,100: that's how much Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, one of the greatest chess players of all time, auctioned off a pair of his jeans for in March 2025. Kasparov may no longer be a current player, but these jeans are just one example which proves that chess is still no stranger to politics, pop culture, world defining moments…or controversies.
The value of Carlsen’s blue jeans originates in controversy. During the World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in December 2024, Carlsen showed up wearing a blue pair of jeans, which technically broke the International Chess Federation's (FIDE), dress code. After some back and forth between FIDE officials and Carlsen, Carlsen refused to change his jeans for the match and dropped out of the tournament when FIDE officials refused to let him play.
#JeansGate happened a few months after Peter Doggers released his newest book The Chess Revolution, but it is another dramatic event in the history of chess which reinforces Dogger’s point that chess is more than just a game. Bobby Fischer's illegal game against Boris Spassky. Garry Kasparov versus Deep Blue. The Queen's Gambit. The Hans Niemann cheating scandal. Now: jeans. Chess has it all, and Doggers examines and contextualizes a significant chunk of chess's significant history.
Peter Doggers is a chess journalist and, among many other things, the Director of News and Events at Chess.com. Doggers has had a prominent role in the last 20 years of the chess world, interviewing the greats such as Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov. This vast experience in the chess world adds a distinct flavor to his book: Doggers includes anecdotes from his time which no one else can rival. For example, in 2006, the early days of YouTube videos and chess "vlogging," Doggers recorded Judit Polgár and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov analyzing a game. The insight into two top players going over moves was a luxury at the time (nowadays this is much more easily accessible with the rise of the internet and top tier chess content). The most striking thing about Doggers' video is the effect it had. Two weeks after this video was published, Mamedyarov played a draw against grandmaster Alexei Shirov who was prepared for Mamedyarov's position and "new move:" "Shirov could have known about that important new move because Mamedyarov had shown it to Polgár in my video!" (306). Clearly Doggers' role in the chess world is influential, and it's his experience which differentiates his chess book from others.
Divided into three parts, The Chess Revolution touches upon "Chess as a Cultural Phenomenon," "The Impact of AI," and "The Online Revolution." The first part sets the stage well for those who either do not follow chess closely or are casual but not well-informed followers.
The first part, "Cultural Phenomenon," will probably be redundant if you know your stuff. While most of what is covered can be found in other chess history books, Doggers does take a moment to look at the science of chess and contemporary issues. This includes, among other topics, the effect of face masks on the performance of chess players in games (prominent during the COVID years), and a pressing subject: the role of women in chess. The social science involved in examining the role of women in chess is dense (as it touches upon other problems such as wage gaps and the role of women in STEM), but it mostly revolves around the fact that there are starkly fewer women than men in chess at the higher levels. Doggers effectively covers the studies and factors which might explain why this is. Discussing a 2023 paper, Doggers explains "that parents and mentors often believe girls have a lower potential in chess than boys," he writes "to coaches and parents who are reading this: you need to believe in girls, because your attitude might hinder them from succeeding if you don't" (94).
Perhaps Doggers' most novel contribution to chess literature is in Part Two: "The Impact of AI." Here Doggers provides the history of intelligent machines and the role they have played and continue to play in the world of chess. The great mathematicians involved in furthering the invention of intelligent machines were also interested in intelligent machines' ability to play chess. Charles Babbage, father of the computer, conceptualized an analytical engine in the first half of the nineteenth-century; "an early example of a mechanical computer," as Doggers writes (148). Babbage imagined the role this computer could play in "making an automaton play" chess among other games (150). In the next century, Alan Turing, in his prominent 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," considered whether machines could think. Along the way, Turing imagines how an intelligent machine would respond to a chess problem. Doggers examines this connection between chess and the history of AI, using it as a launching pad for a deeper examination of chess programs and AI's use in chess.
Doggers’ analysis reveals one important aspect of chess as a modern sport: the sport is a laboratory for the AI revolution to conduct its experiments. Part of why chess has played an important role in the history of AI and intelligent machines is that to play chess "perfectly" requires a lot of skill, a lot of "intelligence." So, if a computer can play it perfectly without error, it would then be doing much more than a human can. In 2017, Google introduced "their chess-playing computer AlphaZero" (198). AlphaZero "reached a superhuman level in just four hours of playing games against itself" (198). Doggers quotes FIDE master Mike Klein's explanation of why AlphaZero is impressive:
"This would be akin to a robot being given access to thousands of metal bits and parts, but no knowledge of a combustion engine. Then it experiments numerous times with every combination possible until it builds a Ferrari. All that in less [than half the] time than it takes to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy" (198).
It is impressive, not just that a computer can learn to play chess at a higher level than humans might ever reach, but that it achieved that in 240 minutes. Doggers also delves into neural networks and their use in developing AlphaGo, a program which in 2015 beat the world champion of Go, a game "more complex than chess" (200). This part of the book effectively shows chess's importance in machine learning, while also sharing about the future of AI apart from chess.
Part Three, "The Online Revolution" covers the rise of online chess content, including the history of the most popular chess site: Chess.com. Doggers also looks at how chess streamers, including GM Hikaru Nakamura, IM Levy Rozman, and Alexandra Botez, have effectively democratized the sport. Playing chess live for hundreds of thousands of people, watchable from any device from anywhere in the world, "the streamers are showing that chess is for everyone" (353).
Chess is an ancient game and if you are only interested in its history or already know the full list of world grand champions by heart, then you might not find anything new in this book. But, if you are new to chess, a casual fan, or interested in AI and how chess has affected machine learning, then this book will inform you about the interesting world of one of the world's oldest games (jeans not included, of course). Doggers’ The Chess Revolution effectively covers the contemporary chess scene and brings chess into the wider conversation about AI and rapidly changing technology.
Brody C. J. Eldridge graduated in 2024 from Palm Beach Atlantic University with a BA in English. He is a 2024-2025 Fulbright English Teaching Assistant award winner for the Republic of Georgia.
