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

On Apr 5, 10:55 am, richardhut...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:

> It wasn't my intention to provide evidence of that.  I guess my
> stating that does show, if someone objects to what I am saying, they
> are only proving my point that such individuals do exist, and believe
> that the current way FIDE Chess is played is perfect.
>
> People have actually written they want to play the EXACT SAME GAME
> that the likes of Kasparov, and other great chess masters in in the
> past played.  If this is what people want, then if you take out all
> references to religion in my post, the same idea stands that chess is
> seen as a perfect game with imperfect people in it.  And that talk,
> sounds like what I hear religious people talk about their religion.

Chess is a game. If you don't like it, there are plenty of other
choices. Checkers, Go, Backgammon, Monopoly... and even Chancellor
Chess, Capablanca Chess, Hexagonal Chess, and on and on and on.

Some people are indeed very happy with Chess as it is. They have
gotten good at recognizing patterns on the chessboard, and have
learned a lot of openings, and so on. So, if another variant of Chess
came along, they wouldn't be that interested.

Many professional chessplayers *do* have some interest in chess
variants. They see them as a useful way to develop their general
tactical and positional skills, especially for the opening phase,
because most of the time, these skills will not be exercised then, due
to book openings, but they're still needed in case the opponent goes
out of book. They wouldn't want a variant to become *the* dominant
game of Chess, though, as it would impair the value of their
investment in learning.

Could Chess change?

A new version could supplant it if that game was much more fun. The
new moves of the Queen and Bishop certainly juiced up Chess hundreds
of years ago, but since then attempts at enlarging the board or adding
a couple of new pieces have pretty much fallen flat.

On the other hand, Checkers changed to a limited extent because it was
seen as getting played out, and so in tournament play, first the first
two moves, and then the first three moves, ended up being picked by a
draw.

There are rumblings of discontent in this area with respect to Chess
as well, but the idea of being required to make opening moves at
random is strongly rejected by most chessplayers. It goes against the
spirit of the type of game they want to play when playing Chess, one
ruled by skill alone.

Fischerrandom is considered as an alternative by more chessplayers,
but since not everyone was happy with that, I came up with my notion
of another way to address that issue, should it be desired to do so.
And now there is Seirawan Chess.

So people looking for an alternative have plenty of choices. And if
not enough people feel there is a problem to make any one of those
choices prominent, I don't see a point in complaining about that. If I
were convinced there was a serious problem in Chess at this time, of
course, it would make sense to raise awareness about the problem.

But it would have to be done tactfully, and raising awareness about a
problem in connection with pitching a particular solution only makes
people suspicious. Not being a famous Grandmaster, I don't expect
people to have any particular inclination to honor me as the savior of
Chess by playing Savard Chess forever more.

It's easy enough to solve the problem of too much opening book with
just about any variant, and Seirawan Chess, Fischerrandom, or my
little notion will all do that on a longer-term basis.

Giving partial credit for forcing stalemate, or even bare king, might
help with too many draws, but it could as easily give White an
advantage big enough to show consistently on the board, which could
lead to very defensive play, making matters in general worse.

But making chess more exciting, in the sense of putting more tactical
fireworks into master games again - that would draw the crowds, but I
do not, at this time, have an idea of how one could achieve that by
means of a chess variant.

The advance from the Romantic era to the Modern era of Chess wasn't
due to more opening theory, but due to a change to a scientific and
objective temperament, an emphasis on winning in the most efficient
way one can as opposed to winning in style. So I think this would
apply to variants of Chess as well as to orthodox Chess.

Changing how people think, and encouraging masters engaged in
competitive play to take unnecessary risks and make suboptimal moves,
seem to me to be *very* difficult tasks, so making the change
_without_ somehow changing the rules of Chess to make the desired
behavior the winning behavior.

Combining a way to introduce variety into Chess with something to
change its balance as well, to push players to take risks to win,
seems like what is needed. Of course, good defensive play by an
opponent means that one can only win by taking risks - but if those
risks usually mean losses, it won't happen.

Another problem is that computers excel at analyzing variations, while
they are not as good at positional play, so improving Chess in this
way might make it more vulnerable to cheating, as if there weren't
enough worries already.

John Savard