Re: The Future of Chess and Getting It "Unstuck"

On Apr 3, 10:30 pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> I don't mind the thought of adding a new variant of Chess to help to
> address certain perceived problems; if Capablanca, Fischer, Seirawan,
> and the Polgar sisters have all been involved with variants, they're
> not entirely a bad idea. But they're no panacea - especially for the
> issue of the popularity of Chess.

I googled Polgar sisters variants in google and your post here comes
up in the top 10.  Go figure.  Anyone know what variants the Polgars
play?

> You don't need to be an athlete to watch a game of football, but you
> do need to be intelligent to understand a game of Chess. That is where
> the limit to the popularity of Chess comes from, and a change to the
> rules to fix that would only destroy Chess! (Smess, anyone?)
>
> I would love for our society to become more intellectually-oriented.
> Perhaps someday DNA therapy will raise the average level of
> intelligence to that of a genius. But that is in the far future.

Are you saying chess is too complicated for most people?  This line
will be said by some people as a rationalization for it not being able
to be followed, or recruiting new people into it.  It is like chess is
for brains, and not idiots (implying the mass of people, who if chess
actually got decent ratings, would be able to generate enough money to
make it more viable professionally).    Football, the game itself, is
FAR more complicated than chess.  It is compared to chess, because
chess is a simplistic analogy to have people relate to it.  It has
multiple ways you can score in it, a bunch of rules governing how the
pieces on the board can move, more than chess.  It also has multiple
phases, unlike chess.  Yes, football is on TV.  It is because the NFL
made it TV friendly back then.  Had it not done that, it wouldn't be
where it is today.  It would be even less than hockey is.  I believe
that it wouldn't even be necessary to change the basic time controls
either.  Sure, change the scoring a bit, so you get closure, but for
TV, you can do time compression.

This issue of getting on TV and working is im****tant.  The World Mind
S****ts Games, which is like the olympics, but covers chess, etc...
will be in China this year.  The TV rights aren't being picked up in
North American.  The reason?  Because no one has found a way to get
chess to work on TV.  If one feels this is impossible, then one is
going to look at NO chance of chess ever getting recognized by the IOC
as a genuine olympic event.  In addition, without the TV, the other
games going, such as Chinese Chess, Checkers, etc... aren't going to
get the funds needed to get their players to there.  In Checkers,
America is sending TWO players.  This issue is too im****tant to say it
is impossible, or doesn't matter, or everything is fine.  It does
matter.  It actually matters enough that is why I am involved with
this.

> But I have no illusions, unlike our original poster, that this will
> save the world or even boost the popularity of Chess. I just wish to
> offer an alternative that might be less uncomfortable than some of the
> others proposed, as a way to have a kind of Chess without a large body
> of opening theory, should that be desired.

Did you mention this alternative?  I lost it in the flood of posts if
you have.

> Making sure to steer clear of Gothic Chess, I have provided an
> alternate version for the mere 10 x 8 board now, but with only 216
> variants, if it ever did become really popular, I suppose that
> extensive opening theory for each one of those variants would not be
> beyond human ingenuity over time.

As far as I know, Gothic has only ONE set up, which they patented, and
you are locked into.  There is Capablanca Random Chess, with 40,000
openings.  But all this merely adds more the same, like Sammy's "Grand
Chess".  Oh there are plenty of other reasons besides what you said
regarding Gothic Chess.  A lot have to do with being sued for looking
the wrong way.  I am not going to go into details, but the nature
matches the chess.politics newsgroup in its nature.  That is all I
will say.  I may have to deal with the Gothic Chess people sometime
down the road actually, so I could be wrong here in my understanding
of things with them. I just heard a lot of bad stories about it.

> As to making Chess more of a fighting game and less defensive... Pawns
> are the soul of Chess, as Phildor noted. But I have no idea how to
> change the move of the Pawn to change Chess in that fa****on! Partial
> credit for stalemate and bare King might help - or hurt.

The pawns do establish the lines of play and protect.  They are the
foundation of every game.  What I will say is when I have played
around with Zillions and IAGO Chess, the pawn structure gets blow
away.  This results in almost no draws actually.  The trend tends also
to be for black to win more, when you have reserves.  Haven't played
with Seirawan Chess, which forces the Capablanca pieces in early
though, as the Seirawan group didn't want a Zillions adaptation done.

As for the baring the king, that was a victory condition prior to the
mad queen, I believe.  It was considered a minor victory, as opposed
to a checkmate.  What had happened along the way was the mad queen
changed everything and the minor victory was removed, because it was
felt it wasn't necessary.

- Rich