Game Changer is the story of Alpha Zero, and how AI came to be the most important tool in high level chess today. It follows the early days of this phenomenal, groundbreaking achievement by the people at Deep Mind, and tells the story of how Alpha Zero has been given the rules of chess, and nothing more, and how it used that simple set of rules to beat the strongest chess engine in existence; Stockfish. It was written by GM Matthew Sadler and WIM Natasha Regan, who had gone through, analyzed, and investigated more than two thousand previously unpublished games played by AlphaZero. They had full access to Alpha Zero’s team of developers and were offered an inside look into how its search works, and tried to explain just how an AI was able to achieve what the rest of the world, Grandmasters and computers combined couldn’t accomplish in more than a century.
As Kasparov puts it: ““Chess has been shaken to its roots by AlphaZero.” 5 years have passed since Game Changer was published. Since then Kasparov’s quote has become more true than ever. Perhaps not so much on “mortal” level, but in GM chess, not consulting chess AI is unthinkable. It has become an essential part of preparation, not just in the opening, but in every stage of the game. The groundbreaking ideas Alpha Zero has managed to come up with seemed absurd, anti-classical, and strange at first. Humans couldn’t justify or understand them. Today they’ve become a part of the norm. You will hear statements such as “…just push h4, h5, Alpha Zero style.” Alpha Zero introduced completely new concepts into every stage of the game. Magnus Carlsen said about the book: “Quite inspirational. I was thinking at several points during the game: how would AlphaZero have approached this?” To hear the World Champion (at the time, in 2019) thinking about how Alpha Zero would play a certain position gives it relevance, and a level of importance that cannot be ignored.
Game Changer dives deep into how Alpha Zero “thinks”, how it manages to emulate remarkably human-like style while being surgically precise at the same time, something neither engines nor humans obviously haven’t been able to accomplish. The book covers a large amount of games, presented in strategically themed chapters which makes Alpha Zero’s ideas easy for humans to categorize and learn. Chapters such as Piece mobility: outposts, Attacking the king: opposite side castling, Attacking the king: march of the rook’s pawn, or the Carlsbad, may have come from a strategy book from the 60s. We get to see hand-picked, carefully curated, and well explained collection ideas by the strongest chess entity today in an easily understandable, easy to read way. Sadler and Regan, with the help of Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind, and the team behind Alpha Zero, have given us a textbook on how to play super-human chess.
I think no chess book has ever been this universally well accepted. From strong players, to coaches and mathematicians, everyone seems to agree that Game Changer is an invaluable resource. One could say that this book alone should be enough to make you a great chess player. In any case, not reading Game Changer, considering how rapidly AI seems to be developing these days, would be a missed opportunity for people trying to improve at chess. Improvement and learning is easy when you’re learning from the best. Imagine being served a manual on how to think like Bobby Fischer in 1972!
