IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2210.08289.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

AI-powered mechanisms as judges: Breaking ties in chess

Author

Listed:
  • Nejat Anbarci
  • Mehmet S. Ismail

Abstract

Recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology use has been rising in sports to reach decisions of various complexity. At a relatively low complexity level, for example, major tennis tournaments replaced human line judges with Hawk-Eye Live technology to reduce staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. AI is now ready to move beyond such mundane tasks, however. A case in point and a perfect application ground is chess. To reduce the growing incidence of ties, many elite tournaments have resorted to fast chess tiebreakers. However, these tiebreakers significantly reduce the quality of games. To address this issue, we propose a novel AI-driven method for an objective tiebreaking mechanism. This method evaluates the quality of players' moves by comparing them to the optimal moves suggested by powerful chess engines. If there is a tie, the player with the higher quality measure wins the tiebreak. This approach not only enhances the fairness and integrity of the competition but also maintains the game's high standards. To show the effectiveness of our method, we apply it to a dataset comprising approximately 25,000 grandmaster moves from World Chess Championship matches spanning from 1910 to 2018, using Stockfish 16, a leading chess AI, for analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Nejat Anbarci & Mehmet S. Ismail, 2022. "AI-powered mechanisms as judges: Breaking ties in chess," Papers 2210.08289, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2210.08289
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.08289
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jose Apesteguia & Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2011. "Corrigendum: Psychological Pressure in Competitive Environments: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1636-1636, June.
    2. Vong, Allen I.K., 2017. "Strategic manipulation in tournament games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 562-567.
    3. Jose Apesteguia & Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2010. "Psychological Pressure in Competitive Environments: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2548-2564, December.
    4. Arlegi, Ritxar & Dimitrov, Dinko, 2020. "Fair elimination-type competitions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 287(2), pages 528-535.
    5. Nejat Anbarcı & Ching-Jen Sun & M. Utku Ünver, 2015. "Designing Practical and Fair Sequential Team Contests," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 871, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 15 Apr 2021.
    6. Martin J. Osborne & Ariel Rubinstein, 1994. "A Course in Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262650401, December.
    7. Julian Schrittwieser & Ioannis Antonoglou & Thomas Hubert & Karen Simonyan & Laurent Sifre & Simon Schmitt & Arthur Guez & Edward Lockhart & Demis Hassabis & Thore Graepel & Timothy Lillicrap & David , 2020. "Mastering Atari, Go, chess and shogi by planning with a learned model," Nature, Nature, vol. 588(7839), pages 604-609, December.
    8. Steffen Künn & Christian Seel & Dainis Zegners, 2022. "Cognitive Performance in Remote Work: Evidence from Professional Chess," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(643), pages 1218-1232.
    9. Csató, László, 2022. "Quantifying incentive (in)compatibility: A case study from sports," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 302(2), pages 717-726.
    10. Kendall, Graham & Lenten, Liam J.A., 2017. "When sports rules go awry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 257(2), pages 377-394.
    11. Anbarcı, Nejat & Sun, Ching-Jen & Ünver, M. Utku, 2021. "Designing practical and fair sequential team contests: The case of penalty shootouts," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 25-43.
    12. Aziz, Haris & Brandl, Florian & Brandt, Felix & Brill, Markus, 2018. "On the tradeoff between efficiency and strategyproofness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 1-18.
    13. László Csató, 2017. "On the ranking of a Swiss system chess team tournament," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 254(1), pages 17-36, July.
    14. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2012. "Tournaments, Fairness And The Prouhet-Thue-Morse Sequence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 50(3), pages 848-849, July.
    15. Peter Backus & Maria Cubel & Matej Guid & Santiago Sánchez‐Pagés & Enrique López Mañas, 2023. "Gender, competition, and performance: Evidence from chess players," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(1), pages 349-380, January.
    16. Giacomo Bonanno, 2022. "Rational Play in Extensive-Form Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-20, October.
    17. Cohen-Zada, Danny & Krumer, Alex & Shapir, Offer Moshe, 2018. "Testing the effect of serve order in tennis tiebreak," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 106-115.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ritxar Arlegi & Dinko Dimitrov, 2023. "League competitions and fairness," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 45(4), pages 1-18, May.
    2. Steven J. Brams & Mehmet S. Ismail, 2024. "Multi-Tier Tournaments: Matching and Scoring Players," Papers 2407.13845, arXiv.org.
    3. Csató, László, 2019. "A note on the UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying play-offs," MPRA Paper 93006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Arlegi, Ritxar & Dimitrov, Dinko, 2020. "Fair elimination-type competitions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 287(2), pages 528-535.
    5. Devriesere, Karel & Csató, László & Goossens, Dries, 2025. "Tournament design: A review from an operational research perspective," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 324(1), pages 1-21.
    6. László Csató, 2021. "A comparison of penalty shootout designs in soccer," 4OR, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 183-198, June.
    7. Karlsson, Niklas & Lunander, Anders, 2022. "The Strategic Jump - The Order Effect on Winning “The Final Three” in Long Jump Competitions," Working Papers 2022:8, Örebro University, School of Business.
    8. Daniel Goller, 2023. "Analysing a built-in advantage in asymmetric darts contests using causal machine learning," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 325(1), pages 649-679, June.
    9. Csató, László, 2023. "How to avoid uncompetitive games? The importance of tie-breaking rules," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(3), pages 1260-1269.
    10. Brams, Steven & Ismail, Mehmet S. & Kilgour, Marc, 2023. "Fairer Shootouts in Soccer: The m-n Rule," MPRA Paper 116352, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. L'aszl'o Csat'o & D'ora Gr'eta Petr'oczy, 2020. "Fairness in penalty shootouts: Is it worth using dynamic sequences?," Papers 2004.09225, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    12. Muhammad Asif & Ali Ahmadian & Muhammad Azeem & Bruno Antonio Pansera, 2021. "A short comparative study on modified Duckworth-Lewis methods," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(11), pages 1-12, November.
    13. Bühren, Christoph & Kadriu, Valon, 2020. "The fairness of long and short ABBA-sequences: A basketball free-throw field experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    14. Bar-Eli, Michael & Krumer, Alex & Morgulev, Elia, 2020. "Ask not what economics can do for sports - Ask what sports can do for economics," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    15. Krumer, Alex, 2020. "Pressure versus ability: Evidence from penalty shoot-outs between teams from different divisions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    16. Mehmet S. Ismail, 2023. "Human and Machine Intelligence in n-Person Games with Partial Knowledge: Theory and Computation," Papers 2302.13937, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    17. Guajardo, Mario & Krumer, Alex, 2023. "Format and schedule proposals for a FIFA World Cup with 12 four-team groups," Discussion Papers 2023/2, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    18. González-Díaz, Julio & Palacios-Huerta, Ignacio, 2016. "Cognitive performance in competitive environments: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 40-52.
    19. Cohen-Zada, Danny & Krumer, Alex & Shapir, Offer Moshe, 2018. "Testing the effect of serve order in tennis tiebreak," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 106-115.
    20. Fischer, Kai & Reade, J. James & Schmal, W. Benedikt, 2022. "What cannot be cured must be endured: The long-lasting effect of a COVID-19 infection on workplace productivity," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2210.08289. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.