Memory and long-range correlations in chess games

• DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2013.09.035
• Publication Date: 2013-09-27T21:32:05Z
• Authors: Ana L. Schaigorodsky; Juan I. Perotti; Orlando V. Billoni
• Keywords: Zip'S Law; ta113; 0301 basic medicine; Physics - Physics and Society; ta114; FOS: Physical sciences; Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph); Interdisciplinary physics; Long-range correlations; Zipf’s law; Interdisciplinary physics; Zipfs law; 03 medical and health sciences; QC Physics; Physics - Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability; Long-range correlations; https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1.3; Interdisciplinary Physics; HA Statistics; ta318; Long Range Correlations; https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1; ta116; ta515; Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an); ta217

In this paper we report the existence of long-range memory in the opening moves of a chronologically ordered set of chess games using an extensive chess database. We used two mapping rules to build discrete time series and analyzed them using two methods for detecting long-range correlations; rescaled range analysis and detrented fluctuation analysis. We found that long-range memory is related to the level of the players. When the database is filtered according to player levels we found differences in the persistence of the different subsets. For high level players, correlations are stronger at long time scales; whereas in intermediate and low level players they reach the maximum value at shorter time scales. This can be interpreted as a signature of the different strategies used by players with different levels of expertise. These results are robust against the assignation rules and the method employed in the analysis of the time series.<br/>12 pages, 5 figures. Published in Physica A<br/>