>Only ~30 top professionals actually make enough money to have a full career playing chess, maybe a few hundred more can sustain a meager lifestyle with coaching gigs.
replyWas this different before chess computers were invented?
Fully agreed. As someone who both loves chess and works on chess engines... these comparisons to chess needs to stop.
replyThe distinction is mathematician vs mathematics. Mathematics is going to reach new heights beyond the wildest dreams of contemporary mathematicians. But perhaps without the participation of many paid mathematicians.
replyJust sounds dystopian,
replyAnother noteworthy difference is that Stockfish is also gpl.
replyIf there was any real money in it Stockfish would not be the best chess engine.
replyThats not the point, if there were a better proprietary engine stockfish would still be there as a baseline. Anyone can access an engine as good as stockfish to practice against. Are any open models touting mathematical breakthroughs?
replyThere is money in this, so of course the closed models are far ahead. The open models will likely catch up a bit at some point, just as Stockfish caught up to AlphaZero. That being said, there are already a couple. It seems Deepseek has a claimed proof to the "Ziegler's Cross-Polytope Conjecture" [0], but I can't speak to the significance of the result.
reply