Re: "Kasparov Retails Title on a Draw": Does this headline do

On Apr 21, 9:34 pm, Rich Hutnik <richardhut...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> I scanned it quickly.  I am up for anything that will improve chess as
> a game AND as a s****t.  I believe the Chess AS A S****T side has a lot
> of work.  Chess the game is far better off.

I'd class the opening book as part of Chess the game; but that problem
is "easy" to fix - switch to Capablanca chess and so on and so forth.

> Is it that
> they hypermodern school got slapped down by rigidly sound play that we
> got away from wild excesses?

The Chess of the Romantic period, such as La Bourdonnais-MacDonnell,
or Anderssen-Kieseritzky, where games could involve such things as the
sacrifice of the Queen and both Rooks to force checkmate, did get
slapped down by rigidly sound play.

Hypermodern chess - the invention of Nimzowitsch - had to do with
things like controlling the center with pieces, including the
fianchetto of the Bishop (B-N2), rather than the usual P-K4, P-Q4 Pawn
advance. It never really caught on, but it still has some lasting
influence - it remains recognized as a valid way to exert some control
over the center in some situations, but not as unconditionally better
than the traditional way. The chess of Petrosian has been cited as
showing a significant hypermodern influence.

> I would need to study more.  I am not familiar with that.

I'm not too familiar with Go myself, but I had been doing some web
searching to learn some basic facts about it. I created a page about
Go that brought together information on how the rules were different
in China and Korea that was scattered in other places:

http://www.quadibloc.com/other/bo0101.htm

and in that effort, I found out that because Go is scored by the
number of points on the board that you surround, with the player with
the higher score winning the game, it's possible to tweak the scoring
easily, just as it's possible to give handicaps of a few extra stones
to start with.

This is different from Chess, where checkmate is all or nothing - and
pawn odds or Knight odds seriously distort the game.

Because Go had a problem with dull, defensive play - the first player
could always win by a few points at the end - an offset of a few
points, komida****, was brought in, and it did an excellent job of
curing the problem. That's why I tried to figure out if it could be
adapted to the very different situation in Chess.

How can we give a small, controllable, advantage to Black to
compensate for White having the first move - and make it harder for
the game to end in a draw - which are the things that komida**** did in
Go?

Scoring stalemate as a partial win means that fewer games would end in
a draw; since komida**** made OTB draws impossible by including an odd
half-stone as an offset, I also included bare King - and even
perpetual check.

Giving Black a small advantage inspired me to think of scoring draws
and checkmates the old way, equally for both players, but scoring the
partial victories with a bias towards Black, with the bias being
highest for the least of the forms of victory.

Giving Black no advantage, though, for a draw seemed to me to be a way
to encourage Black to play more aggressively; having that advantage
taper off as the game became more decisive might encourage White, in
turn, to also play more aggressively.

I can't guarantee it would work, and the scheme of points would
doubtless need tweaking through experience, but it seemed to me to be
a simple and direct way to encourage more dynamic play, unlike
anything I had heard of before.

John Savard