Re: The Future of Chess and Getting It "Unstuck" (potential heresy

On Apr 2, 3:09 pm, "markste...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" <markste...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> Making these occasional changes to Chess that you suggest doesn't
> really make sense.  Not everyone is going to agree on what the changes
> should be, how often they should occur, etc.  The notion of keeping
> Chess "off balance" like this, to prevent anyone from ever becoming
> truly expert at the game is ill fated.  People like to become expert
> at things and they're not going to take kindly to having the rug
> pulled out from under them just when they're approaching grandmaster
> status.

Fischer proposed Chess960.  Seirawan and Harper propose their version
of Chess.   People who are innovators, particularly on the Grand
Master status, get bored at times, and thus propose variants.  Or they
see this and that, and want changes to make things better in their
eyes.  And there are times where people DO want the rug pulled out
from under them, because it beats being bored.  I suggest all this be
accounted for.  You can have one version that is forever pulling the
rug out as a challenge.

> One thing you seem to be getting at here is game tree size.  You could
> play Grand Chess on a 16x16 board but that has four times the number
> of squares an 8x8 board has, which has a monumental impact on the size
> of the game tree.  A relatively huge game tree can create tedious,
> lengthy, difficult games for beginners.  Beginners love Chess.  They
> don't have a problem with it.  It takes a half hour to 45 minutes to
> play and produces a winner almost every time.  But there's a very
> broad range of skill levels in an established game like Chess.
> Experts are so much better than beginners that they wring the game
> out.  Sure you could fix it for experts but at the cost of ruining it
> for beginners.

If there was a fair way to handicap at Chess, that would be well for
the novice and experts.  Go has this.  If it was found, it would work.

> You have Chess960, etc. but this creates problems for
> beginners too.  You can't get started learning a few basic opening
> plays.  Now you have this big, complex range of opening possibilities,
> as well as the problem of randomness (a topic in its own right).

Beginners is an issue with handicapping mostly.

> The only games which are immune to these tradeoffs are scalable games
> like Othello or Rush.  For scalable games you just increase the board
> size a tad for increasing skill levels, gradually varying from 9x9 to
> 11x11 to 13x13, etc.  It's exactly the same game - just a little
> bigger.  Chess is not a scalable game.  You don't have that option
> with Chess.

Mark, I will say Chess can scale by the use of reserve pieces you can
adjust accordingly.  Pocket Mutant, Pocket Knight, Seirawan, and even
the core IAGO Chess game rules (B, C, and M-Class), in the IAGO Chess
System do this.  This approach allows for a migration strategy and to
scale the game, without disrupting the foundation.  It also allows for
players to be handicapped.  You can change what is in the reserve, and
still keep the core game the same.

I would also add that you can add "mutators" to chess and balance
accordingly that way.  Mutators being something that changes the rules
of the game, as you play it.

A main part of what I wrote here is to have a way for the variant
community to be more relevant to the general chess community, as a
source for tested ideas that may be considered.  And, in this, you can
possibly see the future of chess happen.

- Rich