On the other hand, the present article seems to me to get some important things wrong. For one, it's not the case that overall white and black win 50% of the time each. More importantly though, if somebody is interested in investigating chess, they will supposedly understand that it's some activity that other (somewhat) intelligent beings are undertaking.

Even if everything seems like a blur, an alien scientist should not be content with dismissing it as uninteresting randomness. More so, if somebody actually starts investigating seriously, they will immediately obtain useful results about the game, results that should almost certainly provide useful predictions about the game outcome (at least better than "it's all random").

I might find, however, some agreement with the spirit of the article. It seems to me that, even though the author doesn't articulate it properly, the idea is that scientists should pursue more fringe theories even if immediate confirmation is lacking. I think there's quite a bit of value in this, as long as your predictions are always checked against reality.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1dgrvlWML4

People have been saying "the players are nondeterministic not the game," but epistemically what is a game with no players?

I play chess seriously in a tournament setting. While it is true the board is revealed, the board is not the game. The board is the operating theater of a game which is entirely within both players minds. People have become overly dismissive with the idea that the game is deterministic because chess engines exist. But chess engines are not even necessarily deterministic because the result of the alpha beta search still vary based on depth and the evaluation heuristic.

Without an evaluation function you cannot even interpret a board position at all. This function is simply not deterministic (unless formalized and then it will be imperfect to situation), and any GM will tell you that some positions are impossible to evaluate.

Additionally there are many times where engines produce suboptimal results until the search space is collapsed by a player like Hikaru. It's not frequent but it definitely happens.

Chess is a game between two Turing machines sharing a tape. Sharing a tape does not allow you to see the state of the machine in each players head. And if you have no players you have no game. This makes chess highly probabilistic in so many senses that using the game theoretic construct of "prefect information game" causes game theorists to seemingly literally not understand it.

Chess is a deeply human game subject to human variance. This is nondeterministic. Poker is also human, in other ways. Anyone who sees chess as deterministic is probably a weak player (less than 2000 fide) and doesn't understand this fundamental aspect of the game. At the higher levels there is even forms of bluffing and swindling, which is fantastic simply because you CAN see the same board and you were still able to manipulate the other player with their own prejudices.

We might one day have octopuses play Chess with us. But there may be other alien games we'd learn from them as well. Or not.

PS: C makes me feel like this too! I just know how the pieces work.

I think I understand the point you are making, but it's not such a clear distinction.

The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed, resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract --Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherche movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.

Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed the calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind. When I say proficiency, I mean that perfection in the game which includes a comprehension of all the sources whence legitimate advantage may be derived. These are not only manifold but multiform, and lie frequently among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible to the ordinary understanding. To observe attentively is to remember distinctly; and, so far, the concentrative chess-player will do very well at whist; while the rules of Hoyle (themselves based upon the mere mechanism of the game) are sufficiently and generally comprehensible. Thus to have a retentive memory, and to proceed by "the book," are points commonly regarded as the sum total of good playing. But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe. Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game. He examines the countenance of his partner, comparing it carefully with that of each of his opponents. He considers the mode of assorting the cards in each hand; often counting trump by trump, and honor by honor, through the glances bestowed by their holders upon each. He notes every variation of face as the play progresses, gathering a fund of thought from the differences in the expression of certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or of chagrin. From the manner of gathering up a trick he judges whether the person taking it can make another in the suit. He recognises what is played through feint, by the air with which it is thrown upon the table. A casual or inadvertent word; the accidental dropping or turning of a card, with the accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to its concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the order of their arrangement; embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness or trepidation --all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of the true state of affairs. The first two or three rounds having been played, he is in full possession of the contents of each hand, and thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision of purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the faces of their own.