– No latest theories needed
– No opening repertoire needed
– Just brain versus brain
Thumbs up or thumbs down? 
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Two thumbs up, but not as a total replacement to chess. Chess lives, but this is good in its own right, and they each have pros and cons. I hope Kosteniuk has fun futilely trying to study all 960 opening positions for both colors. Definitely levels the playing field…although some of the positions obviously may be duller than others.
Thumbs up! Love it!
Memorization will be more difficult sure.. but openings will be developed, put into databses, analysed, hashed, cross referenced and eventually you will end up in the same situation.
Even though the number of positions possible in chess is astronomically high, in the end its still a finite number. Computers will eventually calculate to the end of the equation. Its not a question of if, but of when.
Personally I find chess as in plenty complex for my entertainment. I don’t need random starting positions as well.
Computers will never solve chess. The growth rate of the computations is astronomically exponential. The fact that the number of possible chess games is far greater than the number of atoms in the universe precludes any hope of ever solving chess mathematically. Solving each new level of endgame tablebases increases the order of complexity by some insane amount. Five-piece tablebases need about 7 GB of space (with very advanced compression). An estimate of the storage needed for six-piece tablebases is about 1 TB = 1024 GB. If you keep scaling it up exponentially, eventually the processing time and space required reach practical limits and everything blows up. Current opening theory is centuries old, and I don’t think even the insane-looking three-pawns gambit in the King’s Gambit has been solved. All we have are ideas, more from grandmaster study than from computers, about which specific lines give slight advantages, or whatever.
1. e4 still looks like a good move here!
Seems more fair to those without access to training partners, computers etc.
the problem with chess is the draw. get rid of the draw and the problem will be solved.
ramdon solves nothing. it is simply a temporary mind change. but everything is still the same.
randon will give the pro player an even bigger edge. the little guy will suffer even more.
random definitely does not level the playing field. it makes it even worse. much much worse.
Poker is popular because it has a winner and loser on every hand. no draws in poker.
OK folks it is the world championship of poker. there is a million dollars in the pot. there is one more card to deal out. everyone is on the edge of their seat. Oops the players decided to draw and split the pot. the fans are crushed. they are mad. they claim the pros always do that. they always want to take the quick draw. well poker fans dont like it but the pros say it is part of the game and must stay. Poker would just not be Poker if the professionals could not take a draw and split the pot.
OK folks we are in the 7th game of the world series. the 9th inning. it is all tied up. the fans are going wild. Babe Ruth and Lou Gerhig are coming up to bat. the announcer has asked the fans to quiet he has an announcement to make. the Yankees and the Red Sox have decided to end their rivalry and take a draw. all the money will be split and both teams will get world series rings. there will be dual champions this year.
the fans are booing all the players in the stadium. Babe Ruth is coming up to the microphone to talk to the fans. he says. look folks, baseball would not be baseball if the pros could not take a draw.
get real.
Thumbs up!
I disagree, Tommy…
I think fighting draws can be very good. If two players play without any mistakes, then the logical conclusion is a draw. Poker is a game of chance so it’s not really comparable. And comparing skill games, chess is basically implementing “overtime” nowadays, and it’s making for some really bad chess.
The problem with chess is opening-theory burnout. With 960 different starting positions, it’s not based on how much you have memorized vs. how much your opponent has memorized, but it’s a logical battle to see who is the better thinker.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say Fischer Random chess gives the professional players a greater advantage. Could you explain? It seems to me that by spreading their work over 960 positions, it renders preparation worthless, and the casual player who doesn’t study to begin with can then battle on even grounds without any theory.
I like the old idea of adding a row and column to the board, making it 9×9, and then adding a Chancellor to the immediate right of the King. And then the Chancellor piece can move three squares in any direction, either diagonally or straight, then turn one square to the left or right, either diagonally or straight depending upon the initial motion.
What kind of game is that? What are their rules and patterns? Random chess?
I thought hazard has been excluded from Chess.
Ferdyrojo,
No randomness at all. There would be a chess board of 81 (9 by 9) squares instead of 64 squares (8 by 8). Each side would have nine pawns instead of eight. Immediately to the right of the white king, and immediately to the left of the black king, sits one new piece, the “Chancellor”. The Chancellor piece can move one of two ways:
The first method of motion: Much alike a knight (only one square further), three squares either horizontally or vertically, then one square either vertically or horizontally.
The second method of motion: a hybrid between bishop and knight. three squares diagonally from the square which the Chancellor piece sits upon, then one square diagonally either left or right.
Also, the Chancellor passes over other pieces like a knight.
two thumbs up for random chess but it will never catch on. too many people have too much invested in studying openings. people are not interested in throwing all that time and effort away. professionals are not going to support it either, many of them make money by writing opening books or providing lessons on oopenings. more evidence? try to get a fischer random game on icc and compare the time it takes vs a regular blitz game.
Searching Amazon.com for ‘chess960’ will reveal a new book about chess960 (FRC) entitled “Play Stronger Chess by Examining Chess960”.
Myth – that only the opening phase is different between chess960 and traditional “chess1”. Chess1 is incapable of providing most of the early middle game patterns and relative piece alignments that are natural in chess960. The inescapable conclusion is that chess1 has been hiding a lot of proper chess from us all these centuries.
There is a lot more to say – read the book 😉
Alex Yermolinsky mentioned or discussed this book in a recent chess lecture he gave in San Francisco. Yermo told me the book was “quite interesting”.
You are doing great work Susan.
Gene Milener
http://CastleLong.com/