Today Chess.com published their “2022 Chess.com Awards Winners.”
“Over 10,000 members chimed in with their votes this year, and Chess.com is happy to announce the winners of the 2022 Chess.com Awards! These awards are an opportunity to celebrate the fantastic year 2022 has been for chess. They are also a way for the community to recognize and reminisce on the great games, moves, players, creators, and other highlights this year brought us.” (https://www.chess.com/news/view/2022-chesscom-awards-winners)
Chess.com writes: “At Chess.com, our members played more than 3.5 billion games throughout the year, and that’s not even counting the over 1.5 billion games played against bots. We’ve also surpassed 100,000,000 members—if Chess.com were a country, we’d be the 15th most populous on Earth!”
Do tell… The ten thousand members who “chimed in with their votes this year…” divided by the one hundred million members tells us only .0001 members did the chiming.
What will be written about is the “Computer Game Of The Year.” (https://www.chess.com/news/view/2022-chesscom-awards-winners#computer-game)
One reads: “Watching top chess engines playing chess is a unique experience. No other chess games are as beautiful—and, at times, chaotic—as engine chess. This year, Stockfish’s unbelievable tactical victory over Leela Chess Zero takes the prize for Computer Game of the Year. Stockfish sacrificed material left and right to roll over its silicon nemesis in a game filled with ideas that no human mind could ever come up with.”
Stockfish vs. Lc0, TCEC Season 23 - Superfinal
Stockfish vs. Lc0, CCC 17 Blitz: Finals
Stockfish vs. Lc0, CCC 17 Blitz: Semifinals
Who wrote that crap? Could it maybe be the collective “wisdom” of Chess.com? Let us break it down by sentence.
“Watching top chess engines playing chess is a unique experience.”
Say what?! Watching “top chess engines playing chess” may have been a “unique experience” way ‘back in the day’ when computer programs were new, but those days ended when Kasparov tanked against one of the programs. Today it is an every day occurrance.
The next sentence states: “No other chess games are as beautiful—and, at times, chaotic—as engine chess.”
One often hears that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” means that everyone’s view of beauty is subjective, and there is no general standard of beauty. What one person finds beautiful, others may find ugly, and vice versa.”
The origin of the saying, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” comes from the author, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (née Hamilton). Hamilton would use the pseudonym “The Duchess” for much of her career. Her book “Molly Brawn,” published in 1878, features the saying in its modern format.
While this might be the first modern appearance of the saying in literature, experts think it has a much deeper root in language. Some experts believe it extends back to at least 3 BC in the times of the Ancient Greeks.” (https://english-grammar-lessons.com/beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder-meaning/)
This needs repeating: “No other chess games are as beautiful—and, at times, chaotic—as engine chess.”
The unnamed person, or persons, who wrote the above obviously have never replayed any game by the Magician from Riga, Mikhail Tal!
No one in his, or her right mind who has replayed the games of Tal would ever write such nonsense. Unfortunately, it continues:
“This year, Stockfish’s unbelievable tactical victory over Leela Chess Zero takes the prize for Computer Game of the Year. Stockfish sacrificed material left and right to roll over its silicon nemesis in a game filled with ideas that no human mind could ever come up with.”
BULL EXCREMENT! I loathe and detest nattering nabobs who sell we humans short. Many of the games of Mikhail Tal prove the obviously ignorant humans at Chess.com wrong.
There follows:
- Stockfish vs. Lc0, TCEC Season 23 – Superfinal
- Stockfish vs. Lc0, CCC 17 Blitz: Finals
- Stockfish vs. Lc0, CCC 17 Blitz: Semifinals
I attempted to click onto the first, hoping to watch the game chosen as the “Computer Game of the Year” but is was not possible. After reading the whole damn article the game was not found. Therefore I did a search and found what may be, or may not be the game in question:
Hi guys! Today I brought a super famous puzzle that I adapted a few more pieces and apparently StokFish can’t solve it. Is that even possible? Only the legend, Mikhail Tal can crack this position. As always, I hope you enjoy the video and have an awesome day!
Armchair Warrior 
My first thought on seeing the title of your post was “Who gives a flying fig about a computer chess game of the year”. I didn’t need to open your post to know that you’d concur with that assessment, and I wasn’t disappointed. You’re totally on target. Tal might not have been able to calculate as far out or as accurately, but his intuition could still cause him to play combinations that a computer would play only if they checked out perfectly. Tal understood that humans don’t defend perfectly, so if he didn’t see a defense they probably wouldn’t either.