Champions Showdown: Improving the format

by Macauley Peterson
9/18/2018 – Reflecting on the Champions Showdown in St. Louis, Macauley Peterson pulls a few highlight videos from the commentary webcast and breaks down what appeals to fans of the Chess960 variant, for a look at how the next event like this from the Saint Louis Chess Club could be improved. Chess960 may have its problems gaining traction, but as Peter Svidler notes, there's plenty of space on the chess schedule to try new ideas. | ChessBase via Saint Louis Chess Club YouTube

Endgames of the World Champions from Fischer to Carlsen Endgames of the World Champions from Fischer to Carlsen

Let endgame expert Dr Karsten Müller show and explain the finesses of the world champions. Although they had different styles each and every one of them played the endgame exceptionally well, so take the opportunity to enjoy and learn from some of the best endgames in the history of chess.

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Chess960 is here to stay

Personally, I'm a big fan of Chess960 — ever since first playing it online in the late 90s — and especially after experiencing it over the board at the Mainz Chess Classic Chess960 FiNet Open in 2008. What makes Chess960 so much fun? This question was put to the players at the recently completed Champions Showdown in St. Louis.

Clearly, the main draw is the "absolute freshness" (to quote Peter Svidler) of being able to throw out opening theory. Svidler describes the appeal as "dogfights from move one" and notes that you can expect to find yourself in a "Martian landscape" from time to time. Even Garry Kasparov has been won over:

"People enjoy the best players in the world being so creative from move one...It's still the same — the same number of squares, the same number of pieces — just reshuffling the pieces on the first and last rank, so that you become an inventor again." 

Players discuss the draw of Chess960 (a.k.a. Fischer Random Chess)

Not so fast, argue the naysayers (my own colleagues and readers alike)! The unending quest for perfection in the opening is part of the scientific and artistic merit of (classical) chess. Without it, many players — especially beginners and amateurs — will be lost. The balanced nature of the traditional starting position ("position 518" in Chess960 parlance) is part and parcel of the aesthetic harmony to be found. Disconnecting from centuries of history is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. (And probably a dozen other cliches we needn't mention.)

Veselin Topalov echoes the concern for non-expert players in the video above:

"Professional chess players will adapt to Fischer Random but for the normal chess fan, who only plays on the weekends, it will be a big problem."

Chess960 positions used

All five Chess960 positions used throughout the competition | Graphic: Saint Louis Chess Club

Our February article, "the problem with Chess960", delves into these issues and sparked a huge debate which has put it atop the list of most commented articles ever on ChessBase (albeit mainly thanks to a few super-eager readers).

One proposed compromise solution is to have an "official Chess960 position" selected each year by, for instance, FIDE, that would be used in tournaments for the following calendar year. This would allow players and fans alike to get accustomed to rudimentary opening theory to a far greater extent than the 30-minutes to one hour of lead time given in St. Louis.

Of course, this could well undermine one of the other chief motivations behind the format, that Nakamura points out in the video: The increase in the number of decisive games. The average number of draws across the five 20-game matches was just 8.4 or 42% (58 decisive games out of 100), while in classical chess the draw rate is historically around 50% (see also: "Has the number of draws in chess increased?").

Having more decisive games surely appeals to some readers of our earlier Champions Showdown post (although perhaps more so to those predisposed to exaggeration):

Abraxas79 9/13/2018 07:42
Chess960 has to be the future. Way more exciting to watch than classical chess where 90% of the top games now end in draws. 

Of course, it's also partially a matter of taste:

yesenadam 9/14/2018 09:06
I don't get the "Draws=Bad" thing, at all. As if that's all that matters. You could just decrease the time allowed until the draw ratio is down to your preferred amount, but that would be ridiculous. A decisive game decided by a blunder, error, flagfall etc isn't much fun either. What is bad are boring games where there's no fight. Some players almost never play boring games, some players nearly always do.

Sinquefield is sold

The Saint Louis Chess Club founder and patron, Rex Sinquefield, seems to have embraced the format, although as an amateur player he does find it extra challenging, as this exchange with Maurice Ashley highlights:

Sinquefield: As a club player, it's much more difficult than watching regular chess because you're immediately into all tactics. You're solving tactical problems from the first or second move. And there's no repeat formations — every one is de novo. In regular classical chess you can sit back and say OK I know this opening, I know the strategy, I know what's going to happen for the next 15 or 20 moves. Here you don't know anything. The fireworks start on move one.

Ashley: Seems like the amateurs like having the crutch, having the opening theory that they can lean on, saying at least I know the French, or the Caro-Kann — that gives me some measure of comfort. With this, there are no names for the openings that are going to come out of it.

Sinquefield: Yes, fiddle-dee-diddly-dee — no two openings alike. That's true, they might like that crutch, but after a while, they're going to see how exciting this is. I think it's just wild.

Rex Sinquefield and Maurice Ashley

Rex Sinquefield, being debriefed by Maurice Ashley after the Champions Showdown | Saint Louis Chess Club webcast

Room for improvement

There were two big problems with this year's event from a spectator and webcast producer's perspective. One is just the unfortunate reality of having five rapid and blitz games running in parallel. The show necessarily focused on one game each round, for the most part, which meant fans missed quite a lot of the live action.

The flip side, of course, is you have more great players participating in total and you can always go back and review the games independently, for instance by downloading a PGN of the whole event to replay in ChessBase 14 or Fritz 16.

The other problem is that all matches were decided before the final rounds, and most were not even close heading into Day 4. During the last day's webcast, there was a discussion about how to maintain excitement in the face of blowouts that can occur with a match format:

"It's not fun for the players, obviously, who are getting killed, for the fans [or] for the commentators", said Ashley, who suggested alternatives such as mini-matches played between different players each day, or team Scheveningen style matches (e.g. "USA vs the World"). Knockout matches were favoured by Jennifer Shahade:

"We actually don't have a lot of prestigious knockouts, only the World Cup. And KO actually is that beautiful combination of a tournament and a match — it's exactly the solution to [blowouts] — that you have short matches, so it's almost impossible to get totally blown out because it's so short that if you get totally blown out the match is over".

But Ashley worried about players from abroad (or, for instance, Kasparov) being eliminated too early, noting that having a "losers" bracket is undesirable. In a team event (like the 2011 Kings vs Queens Chess960 experiment) even a lopsided individual game has no negative impact on the dynamics of subsequent games in the event.

Commentators on tweaking the format | Saint Louis Chess Club

I think there's a much simpler option: Just to have the matches end when decided, allowing commentary to focus on matches with more sporting drama. None of the players was mathematically eliminated until the last day, but some of the blitz games in matches that were not close seemed a bit perfunctory.

Picking the position

Jennifer Shahade and Roulette chessIn the video above, there's a brief back-and-forth on how the starting position is — or should be — selected. Jennifer mentions that for Kings vs Queens they actually used a "roulette chess" wheel at one point (she co-created one in 2009, pictured), which I remember well (as the producer of the webcast in those days). It was a fun, if gimmicky, solution. 

Other suggestions were to choose two positions and have players vote on which one to play, or increase the lead time for preparation by revealing the starting position 24 hours in advance. This idea would have the benefit of allowing fans to play the position and conduct crowd-sourced opening research in advance of the professionals' games, while being less extreme than the year-long position approach, which honestly strikes me as a bit antithetical to the Chess960 concept.

But there's also an opportunity to tap into the scholastic mission of the club by having the starting position chosen by school kids, perhaps in the various home countries of the players. This way the position for the next day could become known at approximately the same time each day (say 9:00 AM in the USA or 15:00 in Europe), and video recordings made on-site could document the event for use in the webcast, adding a little more global flavour to the mix.

Kasparov's final thoughts on the Champions Showdown

After getting over the shock of having the wrong initial position at the start of Day 4, Kasparov finished the blitz session of his match with Topalov on a high note by scoring back-to-back wins, which tightened the final score to 10½:9½. Of course, everyone wants to know, will we see Kasparov back at the board again in the future? When asked, he demurred:

"It's not the greatest moment to make any promises, but look it's fun, so again, I'm not here to win I'm here just to have fun...I'm quite happy that we did something I believe historic because it's the beginning of a new era. Innovations and exploration come from St. Louis." 

Kasparov suggests that the URS™ rating (Universal Rating System) should incorporate professional Chess960 games. Will that help drive adoption of the variant outside of these rare exhibition events? Hard to say, but I'd bet the odds are greater than 1/960.

"Classical chess is position number 518 in Chess960"

Links

Macauley served as the Editor in Chief of ChessBase News from July 2017 to March 2020. He is the producer of The Full English Breakfast chess podcast, and was an Associate Producer of the 2016 feature documentary, Magnus.

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Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/17/2018 01:40
One thing is clear: Chess960 has REALLY the potential to trigger off enormous debates!

This article is already n° 4 on the list of the most commentated articles ever on ChessBase (https://en.chessbase.com/mostcomments), behind the previous article about Chess960 (!) and two of the articles written two years ago by GM Seirawan about the World Championship match format!
celeje celeje 10/17/2018 01:37
@ Petrarlsen:

Petrarlsen: "I find very revealing your passage: "without prematurely thinking we are clever enough to make good changes": you talk of Chess960 as if it was something sacred! No, it isn't; it is a new (...a quarter of a century is nothing...) chess variant, and the best service we can do to Chess960 is to take it without preconceptions, to try to make it better. "


That is just plain wrong. Wanting proper data is not making something "sacred". Not having preconceptions means wanting as much experimental data as possible i.e. games. That takes time, unfortunately. The person with preconceptions is the one who thinks no data is required. It's plain wrong to think you can sit like a Greek philosopher without caring about real experimental evidence and decide truths about the game. Greek philosophers thought they could ignore the real world, and they came up with crap like: "The world consists entirely of triangles" or "Only neat numbers exist".
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/17/2018 01:29
@ celeje:

Understood!

But I don't endorse such assertions!
celeje celeje 10/17/2018 01:19
@ Petrarlsen:

celeje: "You fail to acknowledge that there's a whole range of different attitudes. That includes completely irrelevant (and impolite) Fischer-bashing too. "Lazy". "Crazy". etc."

Petrarlsen: "I don't know at all to what you are refering in this passage."

e.g.
Ajeeb007 9/3/2018 12:28: "Fischer introduced this variant due to his half-hearted desire to make a comeback without having to do any work (ie. laziness)."
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/16/2018 10:15
@ lajosarpad:

About Chess480, I thought before that it wasn't really satisfying (...as Chess480 became more present these last days in this discussion, I reflected on it one more time...), but, now, I don't say that it is optimal, but, at least, I think that it is in fact quite correct.

The main element that didn't appear logical to me was that, as in Chess960, frequently, in Chess480, the King can castle toward the middle of the board.

But I think that the situation isn't at all the same as in Chess960: in Chess960, the defining element of the castling is the arrival squares of the King and the Rook. In this context, it is in my opinion just absurd to define an arrival square which can be sometimes nearer to the center and nearer to the corner; if an arrival square is defined for the King in castling, it must necessarily be a square who is considered as safer than the square from which the King comes. So, either it would be considered that the King would be safer in a corner, and castling should bring the King towards the corner, or it would be considered that the King would be safer in the center of the board, and then, castling should bring the King towards the center. But if the King's arrival square brings the King one time towards the center and one time towards a corner, the result is thoroughly illogical.

In Chess480, castling is - as in traditional chess - mainly defined as a two-squares move by the King. The idea is that, as some sort of an "emergency measure", instead of its usual one-square move, the King can make (with the usual conditions, more or less) one time in the game a two-squares move, with the additional element that the Rook comes on the other side of the King to "shut the door".

In this context, I don't find illogical that the King can castle towards the center: in Chess480, castling is simply an "extended King's move", with the addition of the Rook's displacement; in many cases, castling towards the center will not be a good move, but this is a normal situation: when a piece can move in many directions, most of the time, some directions will be good, other less, and some quite bad, so it isn't because the King can make a two-squares move towards two opposite directions that both these two-squares moves will be good moves; it is the responsability of the player to determine which move is good and which is bad. This is not the same situation as in Chess960: when an arrival square is defined, it is supposed to be generally a "safe square", and it must be determined if a "safe square" is in general more a central square or a corner square...

I think that, globally, the difference with the possibilities revolving around the "b/g files castling" is that Chess480's two-squares castling will be in most cases globally less useful than the "b/g files castling" (even if I think that, in most games, castling would nonetheless be used by at least one of the two players). Which doesn't necessarily mean that "b/g files castling" is necessarily better; it is only a different vision of castling.

What do you think about this?

In one or two days, I will also post a new proposal, based on the idea of the "b/g files castling", but featuring much more starting positions that my last proposal.
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/16/2018 09:40
@ lajosarpad:

To elaborate a little what I said in my last post, I think that if a game is, per se and in general, a PART of another game, it cannot at the same time be a PART of a third game; traditional chess cannot be at the same time in this perspective a part of Chess960 and of Chess480.

It would be quite true to say that a part of Chess960 is Position 518, and that Position 518 corresponds to traditional chess. But it would not be true to say that, per se and in general, traditional chess is a part of Chess960. It is Chess960 who is descended from traditional chess and not the opposite!

And I think that, if the "Chess960 world" attaches such a lot of importance to the idea that traditional chess is a part of Chess960, it is because it is in a way the "Founding Myth" of Chess960, that would give it a far greater legitimity than if it was only a variant of traditional chess.

To develop this a little more, I think that this "Founding Myth" is that Chess960 hasn't be really invented by anyone; it has always been present implicitly; even if no-one was conscious of this, it has always been the "root" from which traditional chess comes. So it gives it an enormous legitimity; greater, in a way, that the legitimity of traditional chess itself, because, in this perspective, Chess960 would have always been the REAL game of which traditional chess is only one element between many others.

But Chess480 shows clearly that this "Founding Myth" is only a construct; there would be no reason to think that Chess960 would be more the "root" from which traditional chess comes than Chess480...

So we come back to the "stark reality": Chess960 is not more than a variant of traditional chess.

But this doesn't prevent it to be a particularly interesting variant, which would - provided its problems would be solved - really deserve to know success...
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/16/2018 08:43
@ lajosarpad:

About the question whether traditional chess can be considered to be a part of two sets at the same time, I think that what I expressed was (quite) badly formulated, but that my main idea was nonetheless right.

I will now try to explain it better!

(Reminder - because, on this question, I find it rather easy to "lose track", and to forget the starting point: what was discussed at the start was the fact that celeje affirmed that: "(...) traditional chess is a part of chess960".)

What I meant was that, if traditional chess was to be considered as a part of Chess960, it would mean in fact that the "root game" would be Chess960, traditional chess being only one of the ways Chess960 could be played. But if Chess960 is the "root game" of traditional chess, Chess480 (which is completely different as for castling) cannot be also the "root game" of traditional chess! And I think that this shows that to consider traditional chess as a part of Chess960 is only a fiction; objectively, Chess960 is a VARIANT of traditional chess, based on the idea of a generalization of traditional chess. (And Chess480 is another variant, based on the same idea.) But it is Chess960 who comes from traditional chess, and not the opposite!

- "If I point to a bias which seems to be present, then the debate might be diverted from the topic, even though that is not my intention."

True. It is indeed something that must be taken into account...
lajosarpad lajosarpad 10/16/2018 06:07
@celeje

"lajosarpad did not ever accuse proponents of that. "

Someone being a proponent does not make the person biased. But it might happen that a person is biased and a proponent at the same time. Both Petrarlsen and myself observed a large amount of people who happened to be proponents and biased at the same time. I even emphasized that it is refreshing to speak with you, because you are willing to give us arguments for the opinions which were given like divine revelations by other people. I did not have a chance to debate this with them, but you are open to arguments and capable to put your own arguments on the table. The very fact that others give their opinion with religious fervor does not mean that their opinion is wrong. They just made a poor case for the opinion. You, on the other hand gave us some arguments and I think we have a nice debate, if everyone keeps their calmness. I have seen you have assumed a few things about Petrarlsen, but I do not think they were deliberate. We are all misunderstanding each-other from time to time. And I do not consider you to have any religious fervor. The very fact that you are calmly discussing your opinion with us disproves it. As about biases, I do not know who has what bias. I can only tell you all that I try to avoid any biases on my part.
lajosarpad lajosarpad 10/16/2018 05:57
@celeje

I was referring to this:

"But that's not what you want. You want b/g-file castling with a very restricted set of initial starting positions. That means you don't really care about castling having the K move two squares. "

If someone gives a proposal to something, the person not necessarily wants or prefers it. The person might just contribute with the idea. If X gives a proposal, X finds it acceptable, but not necessarily wants the given proposal to be accepted.

No one claimed that all proponents of chess960 are religious or biased. However, I agree with Petrarlsen that there are many proponents of chess960, who use a lot of excuses just to avoid any changes to the variant. And I found your argument that we have not "enough" knowledge to find out the answers we are looking for. This argument tells me that we should avoid doing any changes until we have "enough" knowledge, but the catch is that there will never be "enough" knowledge. I was quite amused to see once a web developer, who had to guarantee security for a system and there were two security problems. The person used each security hole as an excuse not to fix the other. Even though your argument about we not having "enough" knowledge quite fits into the pattern, but you might genuinely be on the given opinion.

@Petrarlsen

"BUT, obviously, either there are several possible generalizations for the traditional chess' castling rule, or there is only one; if there is only one, it could be conceivable to take traditional chess as a part of Chess960 (even if I wouldn't find this very convincing, in particular because traditional chess is much older than Chess960), but, in my opinion, it stands to reason that, if they are several possible generalizations for Chess960's castling, it couldn't be possible to consider that traditional chess is a subdivision of Chess960 - it cannot be a subdivision of several sets at the same time! "

It can be. The three of us are part of the set of Chessbase readers and part of the set of debaters at the same time. However, besides this, your argument is very interesting and points out the fact that chess is much older than chess960. I think I can put my problem with considering chess as a particular case of chess960 into words now. I find it disrespectful to the game of chess, to its history to consider it to be a particular case of chess960. I think it is more adequate to claim that chess960 is a generalization of chess, which is historically accurate. Also, I agree with you that the two are different games. The way one prepares is different. We can find similarities between table tennis and tennis, but the two are not identical at all. So, globally I agree with you.

"when you notice that someone has a tendency to have a specific bias, it forms a pattern, and, for the future, it makes it easier to understand the problems in this person's reasonings"

Yes, I recognize these patterns as well, but I avoid pointing to them. If someone is bias, then the person might be right for the wrong reason and if someone is unbiased, the person might be wrong for the right reason. If I point to a bias which seems to be present, then the debate might be diverted from the topic, even though that is not my intention.
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/16/2018 05:17
@ celeje:

- "I see no "religious" fervor."

What I see is that for many Chess960's proponents, the fact that Chess960 musn't be modified in the slightest detail is, in practice, taken as a dogma; their opinions about Chess960 work as a system of beliefs - they aren't at all opened to discussion.

- "I see no Fischer-worship."

I remind you that, on this subject, I said: "Perhaps it is because this variant has been devised by Fischer (...)" I didn't say I was sure of it; I said : "perhaps", and it is quite possible that I am wrong (I even rather tend to think that I must be wrong, because I think that, on this type of subjects, you are very probably a quite reliable source).

- "lajosarpad did not ever accuse proponents of that."

Lajosarpad wrote these four passages:

* "There were always powerful belief systems, Katolocisism in medieval Europe, Islam in the Islamic world, Liberalism in the Jacobine era, Communism in the Soviet Union and China, National Socialism in the III. Reich and, for a lot of chess players, the unquestionability of chess960. Without doubt this is unscientific, that is why its proponents have a high chance to be shocked when we even show that we are not convinced that they are right."

* "(...) here I agree with Petrarlsen, we should not make a religion of chess960 (...)"

* "I also observed the dogma that chess960 should be played in an unaltered manner exists, I am not saying celeje is one of the believers of this dogma, but I would not exclude it either."

* "(...) most people I have encountered agreeing with his views were very dogmatic and without arguments."

I think that when lajosarpad wrote these four passages, he meant exactly the same thing that when I used the expression: "religious belief" about some of the Chess960's proponents.

- "Discussion of the game and rules is respectful, but accusations of Fischer-worship etc. are not."

"(...) accusations of Fischer-worship etc. are not." : 1) I didn't "accuse" anyone; it was only a hypothesis; 2) I didn't say that Chess960's proponents were "worshipping" Fischer; this is quite an exaggeration; 3) You consider that what I said on this subject wasn't respectful; this is your opinion, but I don't agree at all with it

- "You fail to acknowledge that there's a whole range of different attitudes. That includes completely irrelevant (and impolite) Fischer-bashing too. "Lazy". "Crazy". etc."

I don't know at all to what you are refering in this passage.
celeje celeje 10/16/2018 04:03
@ Petrarlsen:

Petrarlsen: "If, by reading all the posts by Chess960's proponents under this article and the previous article, you haven't noticed anything special in the way Chess960's proponents react to (respectfully expressed) criticism against some characteristics of Chess960, I really think I have nothing more to add on this subject!... I would just point out that lajosarpad too noticed this, so that I am not alone to have this opinion about this..."

I see no "religious" fervor. I see no Fischer-worship.
lajosarpad did not ever accuse proponents of that.

Discussion of the game and rules is respectful, but accusations of Fischer-worship etc. are not.

You fail to acknowledge that there's a whole range of different attitudes. That includes completely irrelevant (and impolite) Fischer-bashing too. "Lazy". "Crazy". etc.
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/16/2018 03:01
@ celeje:

- "I don't think you and jacob woge do agree on castling."

If I remember well, we didn't completely agree, but essentially because, with his type of castling, there were some starting positions for which castling wasn't possible at all, and I didn't consider this as being optimal.

- "But how does it change the arguments if you have more agreement with someone than someone else thought?"

I would just like not to see my thoughts repeatedly distorted by other commentators...

- "Meanwhile, you seem to think it's okay to imply (wrongly in my opinion) that all people who like a form of the rules you don't like (meaning chess960 as it is now) are like some sort of cult. You repeatedly claim they are having "religious" belief, etc. They just disagree with you. It's not religious belief or Fischer worship, etc. and thinking it is suggests strong bias."

If, by reading all the posts by Chess960's proponents under this article and the previous article, you haven't noticed anything special in the way Chess960's proponents react to (respectfully expressed) criticism against some characteristics of Chess960, I really think I have nothing more to add on this subject!... I would just point out that lajosarpad too noticed this, so that I am not alone to have this opinion about this... And neither of us are opponents to Chess960; we would just like to improve it - we are not at all trying to "bash" systematically Chess960...
celeje celeje 10/16/2018 02:49
@ Petrarlsen:

I don't think you and jacob woge do agree on castling. Do you think you agree with him on castling?

We so far have as castling options
1. "c/g-file" castling
2. "two-square K-move" castling
3. "b/g-file" castling
(4. No castling allowed)

If he preferred 2. (I can't remember, but I'm just reading your quote) and you preferred 3., I don't see how you were in agreement.
Not just that... My _memory_ is that he cared more about whether it was 2-fold, 3-fold or 6-fold moves, etc. -- meaning he cared more about how many moves it would take to do the castling without the castling rule.
I already quoted in these comments what he said about K safety. He does not agree with your ideas on K safety.

But how does it change the arguments if you have more agreement with someone than someone else thought?


Meanwhile, you seem to think it's okay to imply (wrongly in my opinion) that all people who like a form of the rules you don't like (meaning chess960 as it is now) are like some sort of cult. You repeatedly claim they are having "religious" belief, etc. They just disagree with you. It's not religious belief or Fischer worship, etc. and thinking it is suggests strong bias.
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/16/2018 01:39
@ celeje:

- "You misunderstand some things I write. It's not surprising if I do the same."

The first time, it was quite normal. But, this time, it isn't quite the same thing, because 1) I already explained to you quite clearly that I didn't agree with your views about me "wanting" this proposal and because 2) I always insist on this proposal being only an example and nothing more.

I am ready to agree that you didn't do it on purpose, but as it occured two times, it must at least mean that each time you read what I write on this question, you read it with a bias, and don't understand it as I write it.

And your wrong understanding of what I meant was very clear when you said previously: "You and Jacob woge are definitely not in agreement, because you come to different conclusions. You conclude (restricted) b/g-file castling is best. He concludes (restricted) 2-square K-move castling is best." You opposed Jacob woge's and my views as if I was quite a proponent of b/g-file castling, while this is not at all the case.

- "I thought you were perfectly happy with your proposal."

No; I think it is correct, but not more than that. And I will try to propose something better (in my views...) in the following days.

- "Maybe you would be happier if I said "you prefer your proposal & its castling rule to chess960" instead of "you want your proposal etc.""

Yes, this formulation suits me quite well.

- Ideally, I would like to prepare 5 to 10 completely different proposals for the Chess960's castling (so as to permit a real comparison between completely different systems), but to devise all this would be too time-consuming, so I am nearly certain I will never do it...
celeje celeje 10/16/2018 12:59
@ Petrarlsen:

Petrarlsen: " You are nonetheless seriously distorting what I said. "

Never intentionally. Distorting others' arguments is NOT INTERESTING to me.

You misunderstand some things I write. It's not surprising if I do the same. And I don't remember every previous post unless I re-read it.


Petrarlsen: "I absolutely never said that I WANT "b/g-file castling". It is quite the opposite: I have always said that this is only a proposal between, quite certainly, many other quite good possibilities. "

I thought you were perfectly happy with your proposal. No? And I thought you were unhappy with any other proposal that had been made at the time of the discussion. No?
That's the only reason I said you "want" one part of your proposal. Even if you were happy with other proposals or anticipating better proposal in the future, it was your one concrete proposal. I don't see how you can think I was deliberately distorting your opinion by saying you "want" the single concrete proposal you made. But I write this before reading all of your recent posts, so maybe they explain your opinions on your proposal further. I will read them.

Maybe you would be happier if I said "you prefer your proposal & its castling rule to chess960" instead of "you want your proposal etc." I think we should not get too hung up over one word in comments we cannot edit, though.
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/15/2018 10:19
@ celeje (2/2):

But, in Chess960, sometimes castling brings the King in the corner, sometimes towards the middle of the board... Without taking into consideration traditional chess (as, in my opinion, Chess960 is a different game, even if, to a certain degree, it resembles traditional chess), what is the justification for this? What are the ideas behind these King's moves? Why would we consider sometimes that a good "safety move" would be to bring the King toward the middle of the board, and sometimes to bring it toward a corner of the board? In fact, if, sometimes the King moves toward a corner and sometimes toward the center while castling, why would even the King move at all while castling? (It isn't coherent: either, for safety purposes, it is better to go towards the center, either it is better to go towards a corner of the board; if it isn't at all possible to have any idea about this, then castling isn't a "safety move". Or it would be possible to consider, for example, that the only element of castling that improves the King's safety is the Rook's displacement, but, in this case, there should be only a Rook's displacement - the King staying on its original square. And if castling doesn't improve at all the King's safety, the only logical solution would be to suppress castling altogether. Or, last possibility, to find another concept justifying castling than "King's safety", but, for the moment, I didn't read anything convincing in this direction.)

As I already explained previously, there is another problem: Why is that, in Chess960, castling places the King on the c-square for a-side castling, and on the g-square for h-side castling? In traditional chess, this can be explained by the fact that, for castling, the King moves two squares on one or the other side, but, obviously, in Chess960, this is no longer true, as the King can be placed on quite a number of different squares at the beginning of the game. So, what is the reasons for this differenciation between a-side castling and h-side castling?

As we have seen in previous posts, there is also a problem when castling can be played from move one (i.e. when the King is on the d-file and a Rook on the c-file, or when the King is on the f-file and a Rook on the g-file), because, in practice, as this castling is very easy to implement, while the other castling is quite complicated to implement, it is more or less certain that only this castling will be used by the players, which isn't coherent - what is the justification for TWO castlings when only ONE can be used in practice?

So, in my opinion, castling in Chess960 is imperfect. And, quite simply, if it is imperfect, it must be improved!... I already proposed an idea on this subject before, but, when I will have sufficient time for this, I will also propose a new idea. And I think that what would be the best would be to compare it (or any other proposal on this subject) to the present Chess960's castling, to determine if it is better or not...

For me, the main idea shouldn't be to study for years and years Chess960 in its present form, but to try to choose all the best possible solutions to make this game as good as possible, so, for example, if other types of castling would be proposed, they should simply be compared to the present Chess960's castling - if, after careful study, the present Chess960's castling seems to be better than these suggestions, then, it should be kept; if one of these suggestions should appear to be significantly better than the present Chess960's castling, then, this suggestion should be implemented - I don't see why this question should be approached differently...
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/15/2018 10:16
@ celeje (1/2):

There were several things that I wanted to answer you about castling, but I didn't have enough time to write something on this subject before today...

When you say, about my arguments concerning the idea according to which the King would be safer in a corner than in the center: "It seems your arguments are influenced by our beliefs about the traditional starting position.", I think that, logically, Chess960 shouldn't differ greatly from traditional chess on this respect: the positioning of the men changes continuously; what can make the corners safer places for the King than the center must be the board itself - there is nothing permanent about the positioning of the men, be it in traditional chess or Chess960, so it shouldn't be the positioning of the men that should determine whether it is the center or the corners which are safer for the King.

As for this idea that the King would be safer in the corner that in the center, I don't think it is necessary to have an absolute certainty about it; only to know which possibility is the most probable - that the King is safer in the center, or in a corner.

I think it would be necessary to decide what is - in general - the best place for the King between the center or the corners, because it is necessary to give a sufficient degree of logic to castling - castling is supposed to be (in my opinion) a "safety move" for the King, and, to create a "safety move" for the King, it is necessary to know with sufficient precision where the King will be safer.
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/15/2018 08:58
@ celeje:

When I reposted my proposal about Chess960's castling under this article, there also, I clearly expressed that I wasn't an unconditional proponent of this proposal; this is what I wrote to present it:

"Under the previous article about Chess960, I posted one possible solution to Chess960's "castling problem" (for those who consider that there is a "castling problem" in Chess960). I don't think at all that this would necessarily be the best possible solution to this problem, but my opinion is that it is better than Chess960 as it is presently. So I will repost it here ; I would be interested to have the opinion of other commentators on this proposal."

I think that, objectively, I always explained what was exactly my viewpoint about the solution I proposed, and I really don't understand quite well why you insist to affirm that I "want" this solution in particular...
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/15/2018 08:22
@ celeje:

- "I think you misunderstood what I wrote about Petrarlsen (unless you were referring to something else). The only recent writing I made about "what Petrarlsen wants" that I can remember is that he wants b/g-file castling. This is not mindreading, accusations, etc."

You are nonetheless seriously distorting what I said.

I absolutely never said that I WANT "b/g-file castling". It is quite the opposite: I have always said that this is only a proposal between, quite certainly, many other quite good possibilities.

Furthermore, this isn't the first time that you distort what I say on this subject; in the comments under the previous article on Chess960 ("The problem with Chess960" - https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-problem-with-chess960), you already affirmed (about a post by Jacob woge): "You and Jacob woge are definitely not in agreement, because you come to different conclusions. You conclude (restricted) b/g-file castling is best. He concludes (restricted) 2-square K-move castling is best."

And I answered you without any ambiguity:

"For this, you are completely mistaken about my positions. I don't necessarily consider at all that my "b/g-file castling" is the best ; I - subjectively, this time ! - rather like it, but this castling is ONLY an example of a type of castling that I consider as being logical and coherent. Not more than that. (The main reason for which I gave this example of what seems to me to be a globally logical and coherent type of castling is that I generally consider that when you criticize something, it is more or less necessary to propose a solution to the problems that you expose.) And I consider that the Chess960's present castling isn't presently completely logical and coherent, so I consider that my "b/g-file castling" is better. I also consider that Jacob woge's castling isn't completely satisfying, because castling wouldn't be allowed for some starting positions, and, logically, if castling is considered as being an important and good move, it would be better to choose a type of castling that allows the players to castle for every starting position.

But, if, for example, Jacob woge's would improve its idea in such a way that it would become completely logical and coherent, it would really not matter much to me that Jacob woge's castling would be implemented instead of "my" castling... I would in fact find this completely satisfying : the only thing that really counts for me is that the chosen solution would be logical and coherent..."

But, even now, you still don't seem to accept that I am not an unconditional proponent of the solution that I proposed...

So I am not quite convinced, when you write: "So when I write about "what Petrarlsen wants", I just was referring to "Petrarlsen's chessXXX proposal", not accusing him of hidden desires or whatever." As I explained quite clearly that the solution which I proposed wasn't what I WANT but only a possible solution between, certainly, many others, it does seem that you interpret my words as having a different meaning of their apparent meaning; you seem to consider that I absolutely want my proposal to be retained, even if I express the exact opposite...
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/15/2018 07:42
@ lajosarpad:

- "Sometimes a position evaluated to 0.0 is very difficult to play (...)"

Quite true indeed! And our World Champion makes a significant part of his living out of this style of positions!!!

- "(...) in other cases a position evaluated to 2.0 is difficult to win." These good ol' ending positions for which, in top-level tournaments, heaps of people, on live chats, yell one after the other: "A IS WINNING!!!" (Shredder says + 2.0; it is NECESSARILY winning, isn't it ??). And, lo and behold, after 20 or so moves, they suddenly realize to their utmost surprise that, after all, A wasn't winning at all!!

- About the links between Chess960 and traditional chess, I have taken into account your explanations in my last posts to celeje, and I don't think that, for the moment, I have anything to add on this subject.

- "We should try to avoid analyzing each-other and let's stick to the facts and arguments."

I wouldn't at all consider this as being an important part of my argumentation (and far from it), but nonetheless, I maintain that, in my opinion, this is not completely devoid of any interest. In my opinion, this rather resembles to pattern recognition in chess; when you notice that someone has a tendency to have a specific bias, it forms a pattern, and, for the future, it makes it easier to understand the problems in this person's reasonings. BUT it musn't at all be taken as something automatic! Someone can perfectly well be biased in a specific direction quite a number of times successively; this will not mean at all that this person will necessarily be biased in the same way for the next time! So it can be helpful, but it is also necessary to be very cautious with this sort of things, because it can also mislead, if it isn't used with due precautions...

Even if it isn't at all the main thing, psychology counts, nonetheless, and I think that it would be suboptimal to eliminate this by principle of any debate...
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/15/2018 06:47
@ celeje (3/3):

- "You want b/g-file castling with a very restricted set of initial starting positions."

No, I don't want at all anything in particular; only, once more, a castling that is not a bad "copy-and-paste" of traditional chess' castling!

I've already said it previously: the suggestion I maid was only ONE proposal, and as I said recently, I think that at least half a dozen of possible solutions for castling could easily exist, and perhaps much more (in fact, I am reflecting on another possibility, which I will propose in a post in one or two days - but this will not be either MY project for castling in Chess960; the only important thing, for me, is to have a good castling, as in my opinion, the present castling is much too imperfect for it to be satisfying in its present form).

- On the subject of my theory about Fischer being the main reason why Chess960 is frequently considered as being something that cannot at all be modified, I remind you that I wrote : "PERHAPS it is because this variant has been devised by Fischer". The word "PERHAPS" doesn't fit very well with your sentence : "This is again you having very strong beliefs" ; a "very strong belief" expressed with the word "perhaps" doesn't seem to be so strong as that! In fact, I only tried to find a logical explanation for this phenomenon. If this one isn't the right one, then this means that there must be another one, and that I didn't find it...

What I think is factual (I didn't check, but I am nearly sure of this), is that, both in this article and in the previous one ("The problem with Chess960"), not a single Chess960's proponent accepted the idea of even one change to their game, and that I think that you were the only one to have stayed completely correct all the time (many of them seem to prefer imprecations to arguments!). It is experience that tells me that the Chess960's proponents treat their game as if it was something sacred; I have seen it so many times that I know that this cannot really occur by pure chance...
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/15/2018 06:46
@ celeje (2/3):

About the question of the Chess960's castling as a generalization, I didn't specifically reflect on the question of knowing if Chess960's castling was a generalization or not (I said : "(...) what is considered as a "generalization" in the "Chess960 world" is, for me, a swindle (...)"; what I meant was that, generalization or not, it doesn't change anything, and that it is some sort of a "swindle", which I maintain). But I completely agree with lajosarpad's demonstration that it IS indeed a generalization.

BUT, obviously, either there are several possible generalizations for the traditional chess' castling rule, or there is only one; if there is only one, it could be conceivable to take traditional chess as a part of Chess960 (even if I wouldn't find this very convincing, in particular because traditional chess is much older than Chess960), but, in my opinion, it stands to reason that, if they are several possible generalizations for Chess960's castling, it couldn't be possible to consider that traditional chess is a subdivision of Chess960 - it cannot be a subdivision of several sets at the same time!

And Chess480's castling (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960#Chess480 for Chess480, but as you already developed previously some elements about Chess480, I know that you know what it is) is also clearly a generalization of traditional chess in exactly the same way as Chess960 (in fact, closer to traditional chess as for castling, as it is mainly defined by a two-squares displacement for the King).

So traditional chess cannot be at the same time a part of Chess960 and of Chess480. And thus, in my opinion, you were wrong when you said that "(...) traditional chess is a part of chess960".

And what is true is indeed that Chess960 is simply a variant of traditional chess, as, for example, Seirawan Chess.

(I must say that, personally, I prefer Chess960 to be distinct from traditional chess - what interests me in Chess960 is PRECISELY that it is different from traditional chess while being rather easily possible to play by a chess player. This is why I would eliminate Position 518 - for me this is a defect of Chess960 and not something positive at all; I don't want at all to find "a little bit" of traditional chess in Chess960 - I much prefer that these two games would be clearly separated one from the other.)
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/15/2018 06:45
@ celeje (1/3):

- "If it's important for you for the castling K to move two squares, you will prefer the two-square K-move castling."

I have absolutely NEVER said that it is important for me that the King moves two squares when castling! (...because it is not at all important for me...)

(Before anything else, I remind you that the starting point of this part of our discussion was that you wrote : "(...) traditional chess is a part of chess960" and that I disagreed; it is important not to lose track of the element on which we don't agree.)

What I mean about the "King's two-squares displacement element" is only that you cannot say that the rules are the same between traditional chess and Chess960, because in traditional chess, the defining element of castling as a move is that it features a two-squares displacement by the King. And, in Chess960, the defining element of castling as a move is based on the respective arrival squares of the King and the relevant Rook. So, a necessary condition (not sufficient, but still necessary) for it to be possible to say that the rules are the same would be that Chess960's castling would feature a two-squares displacement of the King; without this, it isn't possible to affirm that the rules are the same.

And, in my opinion, the fact that the defining element of traditional chess' castling is that it is a move that features a two-squares displacement by the King isn't AT ALL a small detail, because this is precisely the element that explains why castling is asymmetrical in traditional chess: as the King's displacement is a two-squares displacement, the King's positions will not be symmetrical - c1/c8 on the Queenside and g1/g8 on the Kingside; without this "two-squares displacement" element, this asymmetry would be unexplainable.

And, to say it a little provocatively, as the Chess960's castling is "a bad copy-and-paste" of the traditional chess' castling, it has kept the traditional chess' arrival squares, but without the two-squares displacement of the King, ending up in a completely illogical result: WHY indeed would the castling be asymmetrical in Chess960? The King's two-moves displacement has disappeared, and absolutely no possible explanation remains!
celeje celeje 10/15/2018 03:22
@lajosarpad:

lajosarpad: "@celeje What I told Petrarlsen about you I will tell you about Petrarlsen. We should try to avoid analyzing each-other and let's stick to the facts and arguments. Whatever Petrarlsen wants is not very relevant in our topic"

lajosarpad, I agree we should not try to mindread individuals or groups of people. But I think you misunderstood what I wrote about Petrarlsen (unless you were referring to something else). The only recent writing I made about "what Petrarlsen wants" that I can remember is that he wants b/g-file castling. This is not mindreading, accusations, etc.

Petrarlsen has described his proposal for chess*** instead of chess960 and we have discussed it. I don't know if you missed all the details of his proposal. His proposal was to match his ideas about "logical coherence" of castling, etc. It involved eliminating some positions, but also the castling is "b/g-file castling", i.e. K ends up on those files. (I'm not sure if you missed this last bit, because I'm not sure Petrarlsen described this proposal again recently, or just in the comments we had before under the previous article.)

So when I write about "what Petrarlsen wants", I just was referring to "Petrarlsen's chessXXX proposal", not accusing him of hidden desires or whatever.

Again, I agree we should not try to mindread hidden desires, especially unflattering hidden desires.

I'll read & respond further soon.
lajosarpad lajosarpad 10/15/2018 02:27
@Petrarlsen

You have a valid point in stating that the rules of castling specified in the law are not applied in many of the starting positions of chess960. However, we can formulate a law of castling in chess, which would result with exactly the same result in practice and would not violate the castling rules of chess960. So, while you are legally right, I do not think the argument is very relevant in practice. I agree with celeje that the castling rule of chess960 is a generalization of the castling rule of chess. In the particular case of chess, if we apply the chess960 rule for castling, we reach the exact same result. A particularity can be generalized in infinitely many ways and, given my experience in mathematics and programming, there were quite a lot of cases, when the very specific rules of a particular case were not applicable to the general case. Consider the example of the law of gravity: we can say that the Earth has a gravity force, which makes things fall down, yet, we should not apply this to the more general rule, which does not assume the context of the Earth, but rather inversely, the context of the Earth is a particular case. When we validate a generalization, we need to apply its rules to the particularity. Of course, we can disagree with a given generalization, saying, in this case that castling in chess960 is not following the ideas behind castling in chess and I would agree with you on that, but saying that chess960 is not a generalization of chess on the basis that applying the particular laws of chess on the more general rules of chess960 is something I do not agree due to my concern regarding formal logic.

Another example is the difference between how we multiply real numbers and how we multiply complex numbers. If we apply the rules of multiplying real numbers to the case of multiplication of complex numbers, then we will not find the operation similar in the two cases, yet, it is undoubtably true that the multiplication of complex numbers is a generalization of the multiplication of real numbers. Again, I agree with you that castling in chess960 "feels" very different from the castling in chess, which smells like a suboptimal generalization, but it is still a generalization.

@celeje

What I told Petrarlsen about you I will tell you about Petrarlsen. We should try to avoid analyzing each-other and let's stick to the facts and arguments. Whatever Petrarlsen wants is not very relevant in our topic, since, regardless of his intentions, he may be right or wrong. One can reach a plausible conclusion for the wrong reason, so we should not analyze the reasons. In fact, appealing to motive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_motive) is making us focus on something irrelevant to the topic. Let's assume that all the participants of this debate are objective true seekers. You have plausibly answered Petrarlsen when he was arguing about possible intentions, so I did not consider that me answering that as well would be necessary.
lajosarpad lajosarpad 10/15/2018 02:13
@celeje

"I'm not saying delay for many years for no reason. I'm saying there's no way anyone can claim to have enough knowledge and understanding of the game to try to force artificial changes now. "

We should not try to claim we have "enough" knowledge in order to introduce changes. We do not have "enough" knowledge to avoid changes either, however, we have some knowledge and we need to rely on it. If a starting position is unsound according to our current knowledge, then we need to exclude it from the possible starting positions. If a rule is unsound according to our current knowledge, then we need to change it. Later, if our current knowledge proved to be invalid, then we can issue another change. The game is not something sacred, we need to approach to the rules and the starting positions with critical thinking. Chess does not seem to be solvable in our lifetime and this is even more true for chess960, so not having "enough" knowledge will always be a blocking argument. Idealistically, if we knew the exact evaluation of all the starting positions, then we could exclude some positions which are unfit for our criteria. But we are aware that we will not have exact knowledge in the near future, but this does not mean there are no changes we can already propose and discuss. For instance, Petrarlsen's reasoning about castling in the game is very interesting and we should not discard it just because we do not have "enough" knowledge. We should debate it and reach a conclusion. The Nirvana fallacy is preventing improvements on the basis of an unreachable dependency. The question is not whether we have knowledge. The question is: is the rule of castling okay? Or: Is starting position 234 balanced? These are the questions we need to address and we should not apply to lack of "enough" knowledge. If a rule is changed and the change is wrong, then we will find out, eventually.

@Petrarlsen

I agree with your fine-tuned argument that in the case the result with perfect play is either draw or unkown, then the difficulty to play with a side becomes a very important factor. In addition, we need to note that the difficulty to play is different from the evaluation. Sometimes a position evaluated to 0.0 is very difficult to play, a non-intuitive line must be found and in other cases a position evaluated to 2.0 is difficult to win.
celeje celeje 10/15/2018 06:21
@ Petrarlsen:

Petrarlsen: "Perhaps it is because this variant has been devised by Fischer: people would consider it to be "disrespectful" to Fischer to modify this variant. But, one more time, Fischer, wasn't a god! Yes, he was a genius, but even a genius will not do everything perfectly immediately; a quarter of a century later, we can see things differently than Fischer, and implement the necessary changes in his variant."


This is again you having very strong beliefs about what "proponents of chess960" believe, which are just maybe wrong guesses. I don't see anyone saying that. Even in mild form, it seems only slightly likely for people who knew him personally.

I do see opponents saying the opposite. They hate Fischer and transfer that to the game. e.g. "Fischer was just lazy (so chess960 is stupid)." Or "Fisher was insane." Or "It should never be called FRC because Fischer had all these terrible non-chess views."
celeje celeje 10/14/2018 06:11
@ Petrarlsen:

If it's important for you for the castling K to move two squares, you will prefer the two-square K-move castling. But that's not what you want. You want b/g-file castling with a very restricted set of initial starting positions. That means you don't really care about castling having the K move two squares.
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/14/2018 05:59
@ celeje: As I said before, what is considered as a "generalization" in the "Chess960 world" is, for me, a swindle, which has for object to make believe that the Chess960's castling is the same as the traditional chess' castling.

One more time, in traditional chess, castling is intended to be a two-squares move by the King towards a corner of the board; when it becomes (for example) a five-squares move towards the opposite corner or, worse still, a four-squares move towards the center, it isn't the same move! I must say I don't even understand how this could be discussed...
celeje celeje 10/14/2018 05:29
@ Petrarlsen:

It's certainly true that for the traditional chess starting position (which is 1/960 of the possible starting positions), however you write the rules, the castling is the same. So if you like, I'll say the castling rule (e.g. c/g-file castling, the current chess960 rule, or two-square K-move castling, which is not the current rule) is a generalization of the castling rule, just as chess960 is a generalization of traditional chess.

This is not true of Seirawan chess. It is not a generalization of traditional chess.

Again, the debate here with you is "variant" vs. "generalization". My guess here is that lajosarpad will agree with me on this important distinction (though I won't guess whether he'll prefer "generalization").
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/14/2018 05:22
@ celeje: About castling, the rules of castling in Chess960 are only MADE to appear as if they were the same as in traditional chess. To know if they are really the same, the test is simple: apply the rules on castling of traditional chess to each Chess960 starting position. And this will not work at all for most positions. So the rules are not the same. And you may say that, in chess, the fact that the King moves two square towards one of the Rooks isn't important, but this is only your opinion; the objective fact is that, in the rules as they are now, castling features a two-squares displacement for the King, and that we don't find this at all in Chess960. So, once more, the rules are not the same. It is not because someone says that a black dog is nearly the same thing as a white cat that they will REALLY be similar; this isn't sufficient! Yes, they have four legs, a head, two ears, a tail, two eyes, etc., but, nonetheless, they aren't the same animal!
celeje celeje 10/14/2018 05:08
@ Petrarlsen:

Yes, there's a lot to discuss, including a return to the castling discussion, where there are many things more to discuss. There are "logical coherence" things you haven't considered that prompted my comment.

I'll again be quick here and leave proper reading and replying for later.

Your argument about the wording of the Laws of Chess is not convincing. The wording has been changed many times in cases where the spirit of the law has been unchanged. These cases have just been like legal clarification or re-wording of bad wording from a "legal" perspective. e.g. The promotion rules, sloppily written, don't rule out things that everyone "knows" are not allowed (promote to a King? promote to a pawn? promote to an opponent's piece?).
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/14/2018 03:53
@ celeje :

- "I'd say Petrarlsen's hopes of "logical coherence" of castling & all the rules are an impossible standard, i.e. I don't think any set of rules can achieve his concept."

As for me, I am convinced it could be possible to devise at least half a dozen of castling systems corresponding to these ideas...

- "Traditional chess IS a subset of chess960. It's the same laws."

"It's the same laws."... NOT for castling! Chess960's proponents SAY that these are the same rules, but this isn't true at all!

This is the relevant passage of the Laws of Chess about castling (article 3.8.2):

"This is a move of the king and either rook of the same colour along the player’s first rank, counting as a single move of the king and executed as follows: the king is transferred from its original square two squares towards the rook on its original square, then that rook is transferred to the square the king has just crossed."

Chess960's proponents are rather doing a "magician's trick" with this rule: they try to make us forget (...and probably, for many of them, try to forget themselves...) that it is written: "the king is transferred from its original square two squares towards the rook on its original square", and that this isn't at all followed by Chess960.

And, in my opinion, this an ESSENTIAL part of castling, in traditional chess: the King makes a two-squares displacement toward the corner, in one direction or the other, from its initial central position, so as to find a shelter.

To say that the laws are the "same laws" while in Chess960, the King can leap as a kangaroo at the other end of the chessboard while, furthermore, going sometimes TOWARDS the center and not towards a corner is simply NOT true. (In fact, objectively, this is quite a swindle! I absolutely don't say it against you, because, clearly, you didn't invented this, but, nonetheless, to say that the rules are the same as in traditional chess IS some sort of a swindle...) It would be "the same laws" if the article 3.8.2 was followed in its entirety. And, yes, it wouldn't be possible to keep this rule exactly as it is written in the Laws of Chess, for Chess960. But why??? Precisely because Chess960 is a different game!!!

And, by the way, the situation is exactly the same for Seirawan Chess: most rules are the same as for traditional chess, but with a few differences; there is no difference with what occurs in Chess960...
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/14/2018 03:24
@ lajosarpad:

- "The evaluation of perfect play is very important in my opinion."

I agree with you that, if one side wins with perfect play, this is indeed something quite important.

But, in my opinion, if one side DRAWS with perfect play, this means MUCH less, because human play isn't perfect, and that, if the position is much easier to play for one side, in practice, this side will have much more chances of winning the game...

- "However, his or her person with all due respect is not relevant to the topic." (about celeje)

I agree that this shouldn't be an important part of the discussion, but I nonetheless think that, marginally, some considerations of this kind can possibly help to understand better why the discussion is going in one direction or the other... But it is quite true that there shouldn't be too much of it! And what you said yourself about celeje ("celeje is able and willing to debate his or her views, which is great, most people I have encountered agreeing with his views were very dogmatic and without arguments. I am relieved to see someone actually defending these views with arguments, so kudos to celeje") is quite true; we must give him his due for this!
celeje celeje 10/14/2018 03:07
@ Petrarlsen & @ lajosarpad:

I'll read your comments & reply when I can, so I won't comment properly here before I read them over.

But just a couple of things quickly...

(@lajosarpad:)

I see Nirvana Fallacy is: "Comparing a realistic solution with an idealized one, and discounting or even dismissing the realistic solution as a result of comparing to a “perfect world” or impossible standard."

I don't see how that is relevant to what I said. I'm just saying: don't make premature judgements without collecting enough good data. Which are you claiming is the "realistic solution" and the "idealized solution" in our discussion? (I'd say Petrarlsen's hopes of "logical coherence" of castling & all the rules are an impossible standard, i.e. I don't think any set of rules can achieve his concept.)

(@Petrarlsen:)

We are still disagreeing about variant vs. generalization.
I don't know the details of Seirawan-chess, but it must be "just" a variant. Maybe it was inspired by traditional chess, but traditional chess is not a subset of it. (The history of traditional chess is therefore not directly the history of Seirawan-chess.)
Traditional chess IS a subset of chess960. It's the same laws. You just allow more initial states.


That was a bit more than I intended to write for now. I'll read & reply properly later.
lajosarpad lajosarpad 10/14/2018 12:45
@celeje

In the case of matches if they play the same position with reversed colors, then the problem is remedied indeed, but what happens in the case of tournaments? Will they all play the same position? Or will different players play different positions?

"I think the working hypothesis should be that all positions are fair in the sense of being draws with perfect play."

I do not object, but we should have a mechanism for the case when a serious problem is found regarding a starting position. However, the null hypothesis should be that we do not know enough about these positions and we need to find out whether they are all acceptable. The null hypothesis is the scientifically most probable possibility. The working hypothesis in our case could be the hypothesis you mentioned so tournaments can be played. But we should not confuse ourselves with actually believing the working hypothesis.

"Humans+computers will never prove or disprove it even for traditional chess."

That's quite possible, but I am not sure we will never prove or disprove it. As about the other positions, there might be some motifs of strategic importance we are not aware of yet. All I am saying is that we need to think about them, allocate time and get professionals to help their validation.

"The best evidence is from professional competitive tournament games by the best players."

The best evidence is a mathematically accurate full analysis, but we are not capable to do it yet.

"I'm not saying delay for many years for no reason. I'm saying there's no way anyone can claim to have enough knowledge and understanding of the game to try to force artificial changes now. "

The Nirvana fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

@Petrarlsen

The evaluation of perfect play is very important in my opinion. If with perfect play someone is winning, then all he or she has to do is to memorize a sequence of moves and the main ideas. The opponent will be forced to diverge to a less than perfect variation in order to at least bring the opponent to uncharted territory, actually increasing the objective troubles. I also observed the dogma that chess960 should be played in an unaltered manner exists, I am not saying celeje is one of the believers of this dogma, but I would not exclude it either. However, his or her person with all due respect is not relevant to the topic.

"and many react in a MUCH more extreme way than you!"

I agree. celeje is able and willing to debate his or her views, which is great, most people I have encountered agreeing with his views were very dogmatic and without arguments. I am relieved to see someone actually defending these views with arguments, so kudos to celeje.

"best service we can do to Chess960 is to take it without preconceptions, to try to make it better."

Agreed.

Engines play high level chess960 in comparison to humans. Humans need a lot of time to adapt to the game and humans are even more prone to use legacy logic in their chess960 than engines. Note that any legacy logic was implemented by humans and was left there in the code by humans.

"In my opinion, by adding engine evaluations for the starting positions and by having GMs intervening in the process, the global result would be quite reliable. And, one more time, it would be possible to reevaluate the starting positions regularly, so as to follow the Chess960's engines progress..."

Agreed.
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/14/2018 09:01
@ celeje:

To come back to one of your last posts, when you write that chess engines could play "advanced but flawed chess960", at first view, I don't agree: if it was really significantly "flawed", human GMs could use these "flaws" to beat these engines. And if you mean that they aren't perfect when saying that they are "flawed", obviously, human play must be more "flawed" still, as the computers beat the human players.

I know that you also said about the engines: "they are better because they are crunching brute force through their calculations to high depth as they always do", but, in my opinion, this doesn't change anything; be it by one way or another, they seem to play Chess960 at a very high level, and it doesn't change anything to the level of their play that they do it by calculation rather than by "reasoning". We find the same type of things for human players: a Botvinnik or a Kramnik (at least, the Kramnik of the time of his match against Kasparov - this would probably not be completely true for the present-day Kramnik) rely more on instinct, while a Tal or a Vachier-Lagrave tend to calculate much more; this doesn't make Botvinnik and Kramnik better players than Tal or Vachier-Lagrave; they are just different types of players...

- "The other problem is that right now, if you just have computers playing lots and lots of traditional-chess games to see what happens with traditional chess, they will not reproduce all the current human opening theory. They'll play the same narrow openings over and over again."

In my opinion, by adding engine evaluations for the starting positions and by having GMs intervening in the process, the global result would be quite reliable. And, one more time, it would be possible to reevaluate the starting positions regularly, so as to follow the Chess960's engines progress...
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/14/2018 08:28
@ celeje (2/2):

- "(...) traditional chess is a part of chess960"

In my opinion, this idea is a complete fiction; a construct. The only element that goes in this direction is that position 518 is the traditional chess' starting position. But, in fact, the only consequence of this is that, when the drawn position is position 518, the players will NOT play Chess960, but traditional chess! Indeed, Chess960's main idea (and by far) is to reduce drastically the part of opening preparation in a game, and, with position 518, ALL traditional chess' theory is back! So: 1) it happens very rarely (for 1 game out of 960), and 2) when it happens, it quite defeats the VERY idea of the game, as opening theory will be back in its entirety! In fact, in my opinion, the fact that position 518 is a part of Chess960 is a FLAW in the game - and it is quite revealing that some organizers suppress position 518, when they organize a Chess960 tournament! If this position was such an asset, they wouldn't suppress it! The reality is that when a chess player participate in a Chess960 tournament, it isn't to play 30 moves of theory in a Berlin defense! For this, there a heaps and heaps of traditional chess' tournaments; no need to participate in a Chess960 tournament for this!!

What Chess960 is really is a new variant, based on traditional chess; nothing more and nothing less. But a very interesting variant, because 1) it allows any chess player (including the best players in the world) to compete immediately without more or less any specific knowledge about this variant and 2) it reduces opening preparation to a very small part of each game (...I am nonetheless nearly certain that if many Chess960's tournaments with classical time controls were played between top-level players, there would be some amount of preparation; in my view, this would be inevitable, as it would give an advantage to those who would do it...), thus permitting very easily to play something quite different from traditional chess with very few adaptations. For example, the game of Go is very interesting, and gives something completely different from chess, but, even if you are a 2800+ GM, you will not be able to be good at Go immediately, and you will very probably never be able to play Go at top-level. For Chess960, we have at the same time something quite different, and requiring very few adaptations for the players, and this is quite interesting. But all this doesn't make at all traditional chess a part of chess960! The only aspect that goes in this direction is in fact a flaw in the game!

- "The longer the history the less room there is to make more changes"

Yes, but to consider Chess960 as a centuries-old game is only a construct and nothing more! So this is true for traditional chess, but not at all for Chess960!

For example, to chose a "serious" chess variant, Seirawan Chess (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seirawan_chess), would you consider it as a "centuries-old game" in which it wouldn't be possible to change anything without decades of reflexion? And would the (co-)inventor of the game, GM Seirawan, be forbidden to change anything in his own variant, because it would be considered as a "centuries-old game"?? In my opinion, taken to its logical end, you ideas on this subject end up in something totally absurd. And, nonetheless, it is the same situation: both Fischer and Seirawan invented a chess variant, and, if Chess960 shouldn't be changed before decades, it should be the same for Seirawan Chess (...and, even if Yasser Seirawan had devised his game in such a way that 1 time out of 960, the players would in fact play a game of traditional chess, it would not change anything to the situation...).
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/14/2018 08:27
@ celeje (1/2):

- "I know you're totally convinced that chess960 proponents believe that, but I do not know why you are totally convinced. We would need some sort of mass survey to find that out."

Each time there is a debate about Chess960, Chess960's proponents react that way (and many react in a MUCH more extreme way than you!)... I think everybody knows this, apart from the Chess960's proponents themselves!

- "If they are happy with the current form, that's not the same as them insisting it has to be "fixed for good in its smallest details"."

Yes, it isn't the same thing, but, precisely, it isn't only that Chess960's proponents "are happy with the current form", it is that they refuse systematically to change anything in this game!

- "I'm saying: "Chess960 is very young, so we don't understand it well, so we need to play it more to understand it, without prematurely thinking we are clever enough to make good changes.""

I find very revealing your passage: "without prematurely thinking we are clever enough to make good changes": you talk of Chess960 as if it was something sacred! No, it isn't; it is a new (...a quarter of a century is nothing...) chess variant, and the best service we can do to Chess960 is to take it without preconceptions, to try to make it better.

When an engineer creates a car, and it transpires that the car is very good, but have some serious defects, would you really think that the car's manufacturer would wait for years and years to be quite sure the defects are real ?!? Even if the manufacturer isn't quite certain of these defects, he will try to be proactive, and to make this car better as fast as possible. Or else, he will lose his customers!...

Perhaps it is because this variant has been devised by Fischer: people would consider it to be "disrespectful" to Fischer to modify this variant. But, one more time, Fischer, wasn't a god! Yes, he was a genius, but even a genius will not do everything perfectly immediately; a quarter of a century later, we can see things differently than Fischer, and implement the necessary changes in his variant.

In my opinion, Chess960 is still quite sufficently young for it to be possible to consider that this game is still in its "conception" phase; why would you consider the "conception phase" as finished? Very frequently, when something is devised, improvements are made in the following years; why would it be different for Chess960? In my opinion, Chess960 in its present form is a draft; a very interesting draft, but still a draft. And, for me, most of its current proponents are people who want against all reason to stay at the "draft stage". I find this to be a pity, because the idea behind Chess960 is very interesting, in my opinion...
celeje celeje 10/14/2018 06:48
@ Petrarlsen:

Petrarlsen: "How would you explain that Chess960 - which hasn't even existed for a single quarter of a century - is quite generally considered by its proponents to be fixed for good in its smallest details?"

I know you're totally convinced that chess960 proponents believe that, but I do not know why you are totally convinced. We would need some sort of mass survey to find that out.

And...

1) If they are happy with the current form, that's not the same as them insisting it has to be "fixed for good in its smallest details".

2) Your "hasn't even existed for a single quarter of a century" is used by you as reason that it's likely bad or flawed. I would use your "hasn't even existed for a single quarter of a century" to make a different argument: it means we need FAR MORE TIME with it in this form before we can assess whether it should be "fixed for good in its smallest details".

It's like you're saying: "Chess960 is very young, so it must be flawed, so let's change it now."
I'm saying: "Chess960 is very young, so we don't understand it well, so we need to play it more to understand it, without prematurely thinking we are clever enough to make good changes."

I'm not saying delay for many years for no reason. I'm saying there's no way anyone can claim to have enough knowledge and understanding of the game to try to force artificial changes now.


3) You don't like thinking of it as the same game. We've talked about this before re. castling. But I do think that way, i.e. traditional chess is a part of chess960. That means the history of chess960 is not about 25 years history, but the whole history of traditional chess PLUS about 25 years.

The longer the history the less room there is to make more changes (unless you mean just undoing changes and going back to a previous form).
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