The problem with Chess960

by Frederic Friedel
2/28/2018 – Two weeks ago there was a World Championship — in Chess960, a variant that symmetrically shuffles the position of the pieces behind the row of pawns. The game has gained some popularity since it eliminates the staggering amount of preparation that is required in regular chess. But Chess960 has a few problems that probably prevent it from really taking off. We discuss some possible solutions to these problems.

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What is Chess960?

There is a comprehensive article on Chess960 on Wikipedia, which you can consult on all the details of this variant. Here I will only summarize some of the main points.

In 1996 former world chess champion Bobby Fischer announced, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a new variant of chess that became known as Fischer Random Chess. It employed the normal chess board and pieces, but the starting position of the pieces on the first rank was randomized, with the pawns being placed on the second ranks as in standard chess. The position of the pieces was reflected for both sides.

Fischer's proposal was itself a variant of Shuffle Chess, which was first played in the late 18th century. But it had some additional rules and restrictions: the bishops must be placed on opposite-colour squares, and the king must be placed on a square between the rooks. The game has some fairly complex castling rules, which you can study in the Wiki article.

The name Fischer Random Chess soon turned into Fischerrandom, and after he had introduced this variant into the Mainz Chess Classic in 1991 organiser Hans-Walter Schmitt changed it to Chess960, which reflects the number of different starting positions that are possible in the game. A few years before he died Bobby Fischer consulted me on a possible match against World Champion Viswanathan Anand. In our phone conversations, he referred to the game as "Fischer Random" or, more often, "New Chess".

The typical start of a Chess960 game — note that the h-pawns are undefended

Why does anyone need this new chess variant?

Fischer's intention in introducing the new rules was to eliminate the incredible level of openings preparation that prevails in contemporary chess. In my conversations with him, I admitted that this was a real problem: imagine a world championship in a few years from now, where the two players reel off 28 moves of a known variation, in just a few minutes — and then one of them plays a novelty. His opponent thinks for an hour and resigns the game! Bobby enjoyed this somewhat facetious scenario that justified his introduction of New Chess, where players must devise original moves from the start. Memorizing thousands of home prepared opening lines would be eliminated, and the playing field would be levelled.

I undertook a few public and private 960 experiments with strong players. In the ill-thought-out expectation that human grandmasters would be able to score better than computers, we arranged matches against Alexei Shirov and Vishy Anand, against GM Artur Yusupov, and then Pocket Fritz against Peter Leko and Michael Adams. The results were disappointing, especially for me, rooting for the players and hoping for a reprieve in the man-machine circuit.

But the reality was that as computers grew stronger they had an ever greater dominance against humans. The only chance a strong GM had was to come out of the opening with very good ideas and a concrete plan on how to proceed. Computers, on the other hand, see the position for the first time. But in Chess960 this applies to both sides, and that is far more disconcerting for the human than for the computer.

The disadvantage of Chess960

In human vs human Chess960 games, the players are much more evenly matched. In recent tournaments and matches, e.g. the one a fortnight ago between Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, the strongest players tend to win, using only playing skill and general understanding of the game — as opposed to openings preparation and tricks.

In 2008 FIDE accepted the inevitable and added Chess960 as Guidelines II — Chess960 Rules of its Laws of Chess. Slowly the game gained popularity, though it did not take off the way its devotees hoped. There are some grave disadvantages, which I noticed all too clearly when I attended the Mainz Chess Classic over a decade ago.

Take a look at the above picture, from a rapid chess event played in 2006. In a traditional game Anand and Radjabov have a familiar, very promising position on the board. Aronian vs Svidler, a Chess960 rapid game, has a weird position the players still pondering on move four.

Here's another example: Svidler is still wondering, on move five, if he can move a pawn and not lose instantly, while Anand is pondering his 22nd move in a very interesting position. In the commentary booths, the GMs were discussing Anand's options with great excitement – he seemed to be struggling to equalize with white in a Sveshnikov! They were completely silent on the Aronian-Svidler game, as nobody had the faintest idea of what was going on. I think it was Tim Krabbé who compared commenting on a Fischer Random game to conducting a guided tour of an art gallery that you are visiting for the first time. Very apt.

Another problem is that the Chess960 positions, regarding their winning probabilities, are often asymmetric. We know this for example from a very large number of computer games — over 200,000 played by the Computer Chess Ratings List team in 2005–2008.

There are a few other disadvantages. Traditional chess offers continuity: you see a very nice game in a certain opening or a disaster with it, and you wait for someone else to play it, to see how they fare. That is impossible in Chess960. The same applies to learning from your mistakes: if something went wrong in a game there is no incentive to look for an improvement. You are never going to get the position again.

Starting positions most/least advantageous for White

 
 
 
 

You can move the pieces on the above boards to think about how to start the games. Full data for all 960 positions can be found on this special CCRL statistics page. Some give White substantial advantage, some are simply bizarre, causing players to cringe, and some invite blunders and result in very short games. But many are interesting and exciting.

So what to do about Chess960?

There have been many attempts to improve on Fischer Random and Chess960. For instance, there are suggestions to modify the castling rules, which are not easy to comprehend and quite off-putting. John Kipling Lewis proposed a simplification that results in Chess480 — half the Chess960 positions are mirrors but different due to the complex castling rules, which Lewis avoids. Others have suggested that kings and rooks should start in their usual places, and only the other pieces are placed randomly.

To remedy the problem of biased positions (in which one side has a clear advantage) the suggestion is that Chess960 tournaments should have two games with swapped colours per encounter. But this means you have to halve the time per game or halve the number of games per tournament. Also in the second game players have learned from the first one: the g-pawn is vulnerable and can be easily blundered, as my opponent just did. I must be very careful about that. Or they learn from the clever ideas of the other player and can use them in the second game.

But the main problem of Chess960, in my opinion, is that you start with absolutely no prior information or practice. Preparation has, for more than a thousand years, been an integral part of chess — and greatly appreciated by its adherents. Chess fans swooned over new openings ideas the masters have come up with in-home preparation, and the ideas and strategies that are born of this kind of research have improved our understanding of the game.

The main problem arose in the second half of the 20th century, and especially since the advent of computers and chess databases: openings preparation started to completely dominate chess. Chess960 eliminates this problem, but it does so at the cost of turning off an important aspect of human creativity. Must we do away with all preparation in order to compensate for the exaggerated degree to which it had grown? Or is there a compromise?

Kasparov's proposal

In 2005 (I believe it was) I discussed Fischer Random and Chess960 with Garry Kasparov. He came up with the following suggestion: we select ten interesting and exciting positions to be used in tournaments and allow players to prepare in advance. Immediately before the start of each round, the audience in the hall (or on the Internet) selects one of these ten positions for all games. This provides spectator participation, which is never a bad thing. Players have some basic preparation for all ten positions — they do not have to start the game with a long think about "can I move the c-pawn?" And commentators can come prepared as well.

At the time I was, as mentioned above, talking to Bobby Fischer about his plans for a comeback with a Fischer Random match, and I discussed the ten-position idea with him. He was quite interested in it and we spoke for maybe half an hour, discussing all kinds of details. But then he said: "It is quite a good idea, Frederic. When did you come up with it?" I confessed it was not me but Kasparov, and the tide immediately turned. "No, there's a trick. He has preparation for special positions or something." And that was the end of discussion of "Kasparov10" chess with Fischer.

I also discussed the proposal with GMs playing Chess960 in the Mainz Classic, with essentially the same reaction: interesting, maybe... But when I revealed the proposal came from Kasparov they became very defensive — must be a trick." I must mention that the idea was rejected by some players explicitly because it involved some kind of prior preparation. Clearly they were enjoying the new form of chess where absolutely no homework was involved: you just appeared for the round and used your general chess skills and understanding to outplay your opponent.

One last thing I need to mention: when discussing Kasparov's proposal with FIDE officials, to lukewarm reception, I suggested a more radical approach: the International Chess Federation announces a single Chess960 position, on November 1st of each year. This position is the one that is used during the entire coming year, and on November 1st of that year, a new position is announced. The intention is to allow industrious players to do some fairly profound preparation and produce deep, creative ideas, while not letting them go too far. They know that after the end of the coming year they can dump their entire preparation and start afresh. The best of both worlds? Of course, my proposal was not adopted, and the same applied to Kasparov's ten positions variant. So we are stuck with Chess960 in its current form.

So what do our readers think? We would be very interested to hear your opinions: do you like this chess variant, do you think it is necessary, do you think it cures the problem of over-preparation? And what do you think about restricting the starting positions to 360, or ten, or just one per year? Please tell us in the comment section below.

All photos by Frederic Friedel

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Editor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.

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coldsquid coldsquid 3/11/2023 12:02
[Chess18 introduction, part 2]

Chess960 has been generally well received and is currently the most accepted variant. But critics have identified drawbacks that limit its widespread adoption. The primary complaint is that eliminating opening preparation altogether kills an important and treasured dimension of the game. Another criticism is that many starting positions have gimmicky castling patterns, and positions that feel too far removed from traditional chess. Commenting on Fischer’s invention, Kasparov proposed choosing perhaps 10-20 starting positions from among the 960, allowing for new positions but few enough to be played with sufficient frequency to each develop their own opening theory. Many other players and commentators have made similar criticisms and suggestions.

Chess18 attempts to synthesize these ideas by accepting Fischer’s framework, modified by Kasparov’s suggestion for fewer positions and, by choosing the positions most similar to traditional chess due to identical castling moves, conveniently ending up with a number of starting positions within Kasparov’s suggested range. The rules of play are identical to chess, and the legal starting positions are easy to remember and explain, a crucial consideration for the world’s most popular game.

Chess18 actually expands rather than eliminates opening theory, but expands it so dramatically that it ensures even elite players will be out of their preparation within a handful of moves. (If players were to spread their opening preparation across 18 starting positions, their knowledge of any position would be only 1/18th – less than 6% – of the theory they currently know of standard chess.)

While I believe in the promise of Chess18, until now the potential has been wholly speculative, and I’m excited to finally submit the format for play by titled players at Timber Moose Chess18.

Matt Evans
Utah, USA
March 2023


See event details at timbermoose.com/chess18
coldsquid coldsquid 3/11/2023 12:00
Hi, I'm organizing the Timber Moose Chess18 event featuring a variant we call Chess18, which is neatly aligned with the ideas and solutions identified in this article. Danial Naroditsky, Eric Rosen, Kostya Kavutskiy are among the players. The official event page is at https://timbermoose.com/chess18.

Here's the essay, I wrote introducing and justifying Chess18. All feedback welcome!

(posted in parts to comply with maximum comment length on this forum).

= = = = = =

Chess18 is a hybrid of traditional chess and chess960, an attempt to better balance the virtues and weaknesses of each. Chess18 uses only the 18 starting positions from chess960 that have, like traditional chess, the rooks in the corners and the kings on the e file.

For at least 100 years – Lasker was the first we know – elite players have complained that standard chess was “played out.” Capablanca became famously bored of standard chess and spent much effort developing variants, including a proposal to swap the starting position of the knights and bishops “to inject new life into the game.” Fischer’s rationale for creating chess960 was centered on his complaint that chess was played out and rewarded brute memorization at the expense of creativity and imagination. Kramnik has been experimenting with no-castle chess and other, more radical variants. And when Carlsen disappointed the chess world announcing he would not defend his world champion title, most of his rationale stemmed from the process – months of memorizing computer analysis – being joyless. Clearly, many players want more variety than standard chess.
chessbase99aa chessbase99aa 1/18/2023 02:07
Terrible arguments. One much more valid argument would be the total absence (or uselessness) of opening chess books.
You can't write books like: "How to defeat the Sicilian," because you may never encounter this opening in 1,000 games.
Either that, or you'll find yourself with the current number of books... multiplied by 1,000.
You'd be left with books that deal with the middle game, the endgame, and basic chess principles.
watermelonbiscuit watermelonbiscuit 3/12/2021 09:37
This is literally the worst argument I've ever heard. (1) Classical chess is suffering because of the massive influence of opening theory. (2) The problem with Fischer Random is that you don't have any opening theory. Like, was this supposed to be an entry for a "terrible argument" contest or something?
siddhantx siddhantx 11/21/2020 08:31
there is no problem with chess60 it is the future of chess u people
Cxb3 Cxb3 11/8/2020 05:28
Apologies, no offense intended, but I think all your arguments fall short of exhibiting any major defects in the game. For me, playing Chess lets me pit my experience, skill, and understand of the game, against my opponent. I haven't memorized any openings and thoroughly enjoy the challenges offered through Chess960.
Additionally, I believes it helps mitigate the advantage of white over black just by the nature of the game.

To me, it feels like a more "pure" version of Chess. When Chess began, there were no documented "openings". It was just two opponents seeking to prove that one's strategy was stronger than the other's.
I feel that Chess960 gives us the chance to experience that challenge for ourselves.
hasanelias hasanelias 9/28/2020 01:46
With FRC (Fischer Random Chess) or Chess 960, just fix the castling and it is perfect: https://www.chess.com/blog/HasanElias/a-small-improvement-on-starting-positions-of-fischer-random-chess-or-chess-960

Apart from traditional/classical chess the other three variants that could have a future are:
1. Fischer Random Chess (with the improvement for castling)
2. Chess for Four Players (people can play this in Chess.com)
3. Supercharged chess: https://www.chess.com/blog/HasanElias/supercharged-chess-a-chess-variant
viktor_lives viktor_lives 11/4/2019 10:28
I think the points in the article are valid, but not very strong. Some simply solve themselves by the fact that each player plays both b & w in each position, and that sometimes you will be the one who plays white and therefore your opp can learn from your ideas and mistakes, and sometimes it will be the other way around. So this is not a big deal. The continuity... true but also: so what? The whole point of FRC is to remove that continuity, so it's not a great argument against it. It might be good to somewhat soften the whole weirdness of FRC by allowing some sort of preparation. All the suggestions in the article are fine. Basically, a way needs to be found to temporarily reduce the number of positions to expect, without giving up on them altogether. So, maybe just select 3, 5, or whatever number of positions before a big tournament and allow preparation. Use the positions in a transparent way. I don't think getting the audience involved is a great idea because it opens the venue of corruption or at least of the possibility, which will certainly be an issue when a lot of money is involved and the ranks are very close. Or do this "1 position per year" thing. Maybe it will catch on. Maybe just select the position in the morning, tell everyone and let players prepare for the rest of the day until the round starts. This will also remove the problem of too long thinking on move 3. There are any number of possible solutions. If FRC fails, it will be of other reasons.
hue86 hue86 9/4/2019 04:02
And i want chess rules where pawns can attack backwards diagonals. This is going to blow all you know about playing chess.
sajdragonstudy01 sajdragonstudy01 9/2/2019 08:56
Chess960 is best !! more bludners
stourleyk stourleyk 8/27/2019 04:07
That positions are hard to comment on and that it is hard to draw on one's previous experience are essentially the same criticism- Chess960 is too random. But that's why it was invented: to be just that random.
alinmihai alinmihai 8/12/2019 12:47
And the fact that proponents want all or nothing is understandable: what's the purpose of half baked compromises like 10 starting position or one position per year/semester/trimester if not to revert to some form of preparation & memorization?
Finally, one can exclude those starting position that give a clear advantage to either side. As long as the number of remaining starting positions is reasonably high (e.g. over 100) it's still better than nothing.
alinmihai alinmihai 8/12/2019 12:00
A lot of good points, but the ugly truth is that at a higher level players don't want FRC for the same reason older citizens don't want house prices to drop: they have invested too much in it already.
While the vast amount of opening preparation might be off putting to amateurs and new players, veterans have already done it and don't want all that effort to go to waste, even though it probably doesn't give them much real advantage when matched against equally prepared opponents.
As for the classical starting position being more harmonious than many FRC starting positions, I'd like to suggest a little experiment: teach the rules of chess to a group of kids and give them a new starting position each time. Then after they start to get good at it, introduce them to the classical position, and ask them if they find it much more harmonious.
Bottom line... if I play with friends and family members who don't care much for opening theory (or chess theory in general) I'm fine with classical chess. If I play the computer or people I don't know on the internet, I prefer FRC more and more these days...
Andrey_Deviatkin Andrey_Deviatkin 7/17/2019 06:27
6) "Traditional chess offers continuity: you see a very nice game in a certain opening or a disaster with it, and you wait for someone else to play it, to see how they fare. That is impossible in Chess960."
Here I have to admit I agree with the author. It's a pity for me too. But what can be done? When it comes to Stockfish preparation followed by rote learning, and everything is studied and known to everyone... perhaps the absence of continuity is the lesser evil. I myself used to love opening preparation once. Without engines or with very weak ones like Hiarcs 3, it used to be one of the main attractions of the game. You were discovering untrodden territories with mysteries and doubts all the way long...
7) 'The game has some fairly complex castling rules'
Are they really complex? The whole rule of castling in Fischer Chess can be formulated in one sentence:
the king and the rook (left/right to him) occupy exactly the same squares as in the traditional chess, all the habitual limitations from the traditional chess being applied.
Perhaps the real problem lies not with the complexity of the castling rule, but rather with the computer preparation having taken away the creativity of many players to such extent that they struggle to remember a fairly simple thing? :-)
Andrey_Deviatkin Andrey_Deviatkin 7/17/2019 06:08
3) 'Some are simply bizarre, causing players to cringe...'
This is again too subjective. Someone might cringe at the Caro-Kann and enjoy the Najdorf and the Grunfeld, while someone else might be attracted by the Berlin wall while hating not only the Najdorf but also the Stonewall for a strange reason. This is just a matter of taste and habit. Chess players no longer cringe at ...d6, ...a6, ...b5, ...h5 (!!) without development in the Najdorf, or about the d5-hole in the Sveshnikov, or about some g2-g4 in the Anti-meran, or some Qa4+ - Qh4 at some anti-Grunfeld.
What can be stated is: 'SOME positions cause SOME players to cringe' but certainly no more than that. And this would be true about classical chess, too! "Petrosian's disgusting moves make me cringe", Korchnoj said something like this famously once.
4) '...and some invite blunders and result in very short games.'
This relates to the players' level in the first place. A beginner will find a way to blunder everywhere. Can we say that the traditional position invites the Scholar's mate or Legal's mate? The QGA accepts the Qf3 trick? A decent player will not blunder a pawn en prise or a smothered checkmate, having got used a little bit to the game and given some time to think. And chess was initially a game where the point was to think, wasn't it?
5) 'But many are interesting and exciting.' - see 3. Some players like bishops on d1 and e1, while others would 'cringe' at it, saying that b1 and g1 are much more exciting.
I guess many more statements in the article could be argued with like that. No one knows enough about Fischer Chess yet, as there hasn't simply been enough practice and tournaments, especially over the board and with a slow time control. Time has to give answers and we can just accelerate the process by organizing more slow-mode tournaments. Let me make just two more points:
Andrey_Deviatkin Andrey_Deviatkin 7/17/2019 05:41
Hello gentlemen. I must admit that I had not been attentive while reading this article for the first time. That - or rather certain trigger descriptor(s) and name(s) in combination with the mention of chess960 - caused my angry tweet discussed in the comments.
In fact it's a deep and excellent article, all the more that Friedel was in touch with Fischer himself for years, it turns out. And there might be some problem with chess960 indeed (I prefer to call it Fischer Chess), because its popularity is still far from great, despite the huge events that have taken place recently or are underway (obviously the FIDE World Championship). People still keep asking ridiculous question of how to castle...
Nevertheless, some of the statements are disputable. For example, the following paragraph:
'Full data for all 960 positions can be found on this special CCRL statistics page. Some give White substantial advantage, some are simply bizarre, causing players to cringe, and some invite blunders and result in very short games. But many are interesting and exciting.'
1) I have followed the link and discovered to my surprise that the position where White's score has been lowest is in fact... the traditional setup:
RNBQKBNR 388 26.5% 42.4% 0.26 MB
Then what's the credibility of all those data, I wonder? Was it a proper, reliable experiment with the pairings or time control, number of games for each position matching, etc? Highly doubtful. Rather just a random selection.
2) 'Some give White substantial advantage'
I think this is as true as saying that the Najdorf or the Can or the Winawer or the Pirc 'give White substantial advantage' while the Berlin or let's say the Sveshnikov equalise easily. And many GMs stronger than me have a similar view. In fact I think the setups are all drawn as well as the #518 setup. Anyway, this is disputable. There is not enough evidence to state anything peremptorily, even something about 'a significant advantage'.
Im-3DPG Im-3DPG 2/6/2019 09:14
Chess Is Life & Life Is Chess - It's been said that a Chess Master will win most chess variants because of having more experience. That is true even in life as you gain more experience. 960 is great! It mimics real life. Perhaps one random opening per year is also good, which leaves time to do some homework.
Daggerheart Daggerheart 11/15/2018 01:14
Bobby Fischer did not have an AI at the level that beat Stockfish. The AI can decide how many of the 960 starting setups are even/balanced enough. I guess these will be far less than 960 and over time opening theory will develop for all of them. Still the change will create room for a much higher level of creativity, and add the much needed depth.
Daggerheart Daggerheart 11/14/2018 08:37
Daggerheart Just now
It's all about increasing the depth. The number of draws in the World Champion matches shows the depth is simply not big enough. Using the best AI to find the most even/best setups, and then make an official list of starting positions, between 6-16 (8, 10 or 16 maybe?) sounds like a nice number. Increasing the starting positions using sience (AI), will increase the depth of chess. And solve the main problem.
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 10/23/2018 03:45
These discussions continue on this page: https://en.chessbase.com/post/champions-showdown-improving-the-format.
celeje celeje 10/23/2018 03:45
More discussion at:

https://en.chessbase.com/post/champions-showdown-improving-the-format#discuss
celeje celeje 10/7/2018 09:47
@ Jacob woge again:

Jacob woge: "(I personally tried the same in a match ten years earlier, when my supposedly weaker opponent whipped out the Berlin three times. Hell if I would give up my Ruy Lopez for fear of a sub-optimal variation. I got beaten by the underdog, out of sheer stubbornness, same as Kasparov. "


How do you get these matches?? Even professionals rarely get matches. They have to make do with huge open tournaments, where they play random opponents once each. Even the elite professionals rarely get matches, now that there are no candidates matches. At least they get elite closed tournaments, but that's only two games against each opponent.

Most people won't get the opportunities you describe, so they're not losing that by playing Chess960.
celeje celeje 10/5/2018 03:54
@Jacob woge:
[More comments I didn't see before that maybe appeared delayed in transmission...]

Jacob woge: "A game that begins (but does not end, I suppose?) with the moves 1. a3, h6 as reported. Why would I want to study that particular game? It would have to relate to my own games in some way, as otherwise I would pick a game that does."

I'm not sure what you mean by "but does not end, I suppose?". If you mean they did not agree to a draw after 1 move, yeah, I think they played a full game.

Whether you want to study it depends on whether it had a noteworthy middlegame & endgame. But the point is NOT that you want to study it. The point is that it was a traditional chess game where the GM players sort of PROTESTED against opening theory by playing those moves. This wordless protest against opening theory by professionals is telling us something.
celeje celeje 10/2/2018 12:11
@Jacob woge:
[Didn't see this comment before. Looks like it appeared delayed...]

Jacobe woge: " “If you want, you can give players the position mid morning for afternoon game & they then have e.g. 4 hrs to prepare.”

We may be looking at things from different perspectives. Mine is more personal, and for after hours chess the above makes no sense. What top guns do serves as inspiration. If we play different games at different levels, that will be gone."

But with so many players playing so many tournaments, if you are patient there will be many GM games in each of the 960 positions. The theory must develop, just at 1/960 the speed. It's just that the GMs won't be able to memorize 30-move variations to bash out without thought over the board. You will still be able to get inspiration.
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Ajeeb007 Ajeeb007 9/3/2018 12:28
Chess960 isn't worth playing or watching IMO. Once you toss out chess theory and introduce weird positions the players and spectators lose orientation. This is why the players take long pauses before the first several moves. Who wants to watch or play a game in which you have no idea whatsoever what is going on? Fischer introduced this variant due to his half-hearted desire to make a comeback without having to do any work (ie. laziness).
celeje celeje 4/17/2018 10:55
Here is a comment on another Chessbase article.
Copied here because it's about Chess960, not because I agree or disagree.


"Bobet5 4/4/2018 02:17
Everything is now "mechanistic!"Meaning, from the first twenty-five or thirty moves of any known opening theory along with its variations, from the starting point toward its middle game and onward even to endgame, all chess moves can now be " statistically predicted, " a scenario already forecast in the past by British mathematician and genius Alan Turing. With such an advent of today's modern - day computer technology or artificial intelligence along with its ingenious state-of-the-art chess programs, it is now more than ever can human creativity with its intelligence and logic can be at a terrible loss when pitted to a computer. The human mind who discovered the idea and the technology related to computerization is now on the brink of losing a serious brain game, a chess game to a also man-made machine which he, himself created. If such trend continues for a longtime, then, one day the chess world with its players might find themselves losing their taste and love for the game due to its non-creativity playing against an A.I. who can think millions ahead without getting tired! Sure, no serious chess players would want such day to continue for a long time. How can human chess playing minds with its superlative grandmasters and world champions regain the love, appreciation and dedication to the game, a game which is now "ruled by machine?" Its only by reformatting or reshuffling or arranging the thirty-two chess pieces into the sixty-four square can a chess world with its chess players can uplift its spirit anew. How? It is by "random piece arrangement," with very few chess rules to be amended. I think it is "FISCHER'S RANDOM CHESS," a new piece arrangements in a sixty-four square board in what the FIDE officials and of course, with superlative and ingenious grandmasters must work together so as to regain the game's decency, creativity and originality of the said boardgame."
celeje celeje 4/14/2018 11:11
@ Petrarlsen:

Back to castling soon...
celeje celeje 4/9/2018 08:02
On Bronstein-Fisher chess:

Carl Boor, Ken Neat, Ken Regan, etc. commented here re. Bronstein-Fisher chess.
I agree Bronstein-Fisher is an interesting idea.

BUT 2 possible issues:
1. The starting position for Bronstein-Fisher is empty back ranks & the first moves are placing pieces, so maybe chess pros will think to play Bronstein-Fisher they have to study opening theory for this starting position. Then if they won't want to study Bronstein-Fisher opening theory they won't want to play it at all.
OR
2. Chess pros will play it but they will be very conservative in their Bronstein-Fisher opening whether or not they study this beforehand. Then lots of starting positions are not played even if they are interesting or even better and should be played.
Jacob woge Jacob woge 4/7/2018 04:21
“If you want, you can give players the position mid morning for afternoon game & they then have e.g. 4 hrs to prepare.”

We may be looking at things from different perspectives. Mine is more personal, and for after hours chess the above makes no sense. What top guns do serves as inspiration. If we play different games at different levels, that will be gone.
celeje celeje 4/7/2018 08:56
On preparation:

Frederic Friedel: "But the main problem of Chess960, in my opinion, is that you start with absolutely no prior information or practice."

Jacob woge: "As for shuffle chess in any variation. The one and only advantage is to get rid of opening theory, and get rid of the need to study your opponent and prepare for games.
But that is also its main drawback. ..."

This does not have to be the case. The playing conditions can be made to allow longer preparation time. If you want more prep just give the players more time after the start position is chosen before the game begins.

GM Hammer had the OPPOSITE worry to Frederic in the Carlsen-Naka match. GM Hammer worried the extra hour before the second game with the same position would allow TOO MUCH preparation.

If you want, you can give players the position mid morning for afternoon game & they then have e.g. 4 hrs to prepare. In Carlsen-Naka they could not prepare much with 1 hr, but they did not have Chess960Base. More and more games played means more and more games in Chess960Base. Then 4hrs with Chess960Base does allow a lot of prep but not memorizing 30-move lines like in traditional chess now.
Prep is only limited now because Chess960 hasn't been played enough for there to be many games between top GMs to look at before the game starts.
celeje celeje 4/7/2018 08:36
@ Petrarlsen: No problem. I'll just tidy loose ends & pace the comments...
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 4/4/2018 03:27
@ celeje : I'm sorry ; for the moment, I can't find any time to write on this page... But I will come back to it in a few days...
celeje celeje 4/2/2018 02:22
More on "Folktale history" vs. "Real history":

"Preparation has, for more than a thousand years, been an integral part of chess — and greatly appreciated by its adherents. Chess fans swooned over new openings ideas the masters have come up with in-home preparation." (Frederic Friedel)

Another example of folktale history, not real history.
For more than a thousand years??? Really? This is just made up. Unless someone can find a thousand-year-old manuscript of detailed opening preparation.

"Chess fans swooned over new openings ideas." This is wildly romantic.

No respectable historian would say those things.

But that does not mean we should ignore chess history.
Non-historians make up folktale history. Doesn't mean historians don't know anything about real history.
celeje celeje 4/1/2018 06:49
More on "12-yr-old-girl openings":

("The super-GMs want to avoid giving their opponent an easy banged-out draw with no thought needed over the board. So they play 12-yr-old-girl openings.")

The Candidates tournament showed this. Kramnik & second Giri did not give any amazing novelty in a long tabiya. Kramnik played 12-yr-old-girl openings. His exciting games were not because of his openings.
The commentators thought only a couple of games were boring. They thought one boring game was Shak vs. So because he DID go into opening theory. It became a "memory check" and So passed.


This 12-yr-old-girl-opening stuff is OK. It does not mean traditional chess is over. Because games starting with a 12-yr-old-girl opening can still be very good ones e.g. Kramnik-Aronian. And not EVERY game starts with a 12-yr-old-girl opening.


Traditional Chess and Chess960 can perfectly exist together.
celeje celeje 3/31/2018 01:52
Petrarlsen:"I agree that it isn't because there could be a more important advantage for White in Chess960 in certain positions than in traditional chess that this would mean that these positions should be suppressed : each side have the same pieces' placement, so the general situation is in fact the same as in traditional chess. ... Furthermore, in tournaments, the colors are always determined by some sort of a drawing of lots, so the differences in color don't create an inequitable situation for certain players."

Another thing: in open tournaments, you're not playing the same opponents and definitely not the same opponents with the same color assignments. Who the leaders face is a huge amount of luck. That is FAR MORE "unfair" than the POSSIBLE but UNKNOWN slight theoretical difference in white advantage for a different starting position.
Jacob woge Jacob woge 3/28/2018 08:52
Re-posting ...

On shuffle chess, any variation.

I think the advantage put forward of randomizing the starting position, namely to take away opening theory, is also its main drawback.

What looks like an extension of the battlefield is in fact a limitation. The shuffled game is here and now, and nothing more. No past, no future, just the present.That may or may not be more fun, but I for one find it less interesting.

Preparation is part of the game, and it singles chess out as a board game. This is, in my opinion, why a lot of people find chess attractive. I cannot think of any other board game where you have that option. Scrabble, perhaps, but in chess you can prepare for a specific opponent.

This preparation begins of course with the opening, but it extends into the middle game positions typical for the opening. Little by little you learn and anyone may end up being an expert of his preferred set-up. This becomes home ground, widened by experience.

Chess includes the game of chicken. Do you avoid your opponent's home turf, or do you drive right into the mire, aiming to get the upper hand for good if you can beat him where he thinks he is strongest. Whoever deviates first is chicken. Kasparov did not deviate in time against Kramnik's Berlin and paid with his title. (I personally tried the same in a match ten years earlier, when my supposedly weaker opponent whipped out the Berlin three times. Hell if I would give up my Ruy Lopez for fear of a sub-optimal variation. I got beaten by the underdog, out of sheer stubbornness, same as Kasparov (Only point of similarity (no, the hairdo))).

You may also enter your opponent's pet line in order to even out a difference in strength. Putting yourself in the position of a sitting duck is one way of getting a more interesting game when the match-up is unequal.

Conversely, you may take a half or a full point from a much stronger player if you prepare properly, and he either underestimates you or refuses to vary his game. He will be the sitting duck, when he lazily unrolls the same line he played in 1985, only to realize that the patzer across has done his homework.

All of this behind-the-scenes play is lost in shuffle chess. The battleground has narrowed.

So I am back to where I started. Shuffle chess is chess for fun, like so many other chess variants. If you seek to give it your very best, and play chess for blood, opening study and opponent study is part of it. Both of these are lost with randomized starting position.

But of course we all want to relax now and then. After all, this is not work for most of us. Blitz to the rescue, most commonly.

A game that begins (but does not end, I suppose?) with the moves 1. a3, h6 as reported. Why would I want to study that particular game? It would have to relate to my own games in some way, as otherwise I would pick a game that does.

Time is not to study everything (that's Kasparov again), you have to narrow down the material. I go by 1. Opening, 2. Annotator (Karpov is brilliant), 3. Players involved. Matches are particular interesting, because players repeat variations, and you get more than one take on the same subject.
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 3/28/2018 08:34
@ celeje : Thanks !
celeje celeje 3/28/2018 06:20
@ Petrarlsen: take your time if you like. Or post a bit at a time.
Castling discussion still to come!
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 3/28/2018 05:23
@ celeje : I think it will be possible to me to answer your posts tomorrow... I'm not completely sure, but, at least, I will try !