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As a casual chess player I'm not sure more drawish chess is something we want? I know there has been some exploration into a chess variation without castling wh

by reedf1 5y ago

As a casual chess player I'm not sure more drawish chess is something we want? I know there has been some exploration into a chess variation without castling which apparently can lead to more vibrant aggressive chess due to the king being stuck in the center of the board.

gerdesj 5y ago
To a casual bystander (who at least knows the rules), castling seems a bit arbitrary and so do the other "extras" - en passant et al. What would happen if chess was reduced to purely "normal" piece moves? What happens if pawns lose their initial two square move? Obviously it would reduce the space of potential games by quite a lot but would it reduce chess to draughts/checkers? Shall I pick my own stake to be burned at?
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > To a casual bystander (who at least knows the rules), castling seems a bit arbitrary and so do the other "extras" - en passant et al. Those rules were added in to make faster games. Taking them out would slow the game down, and we've at least a hundred years of the new rules (faster games) being preferred.
  - gerdesj 5y ago
    Would you mind pointing me at a canonical source on that please. Chess is way older than a few centuries, so why do the extra rules sidle in and when?
    - sellyme 5y ago
      > Chess is way older than a few centuries, so why do the extra rules sidle in and when? Not exactly what you were asking, but you may be shocked to learn that Chess has had two significant patches very recently - namely clarifying the rules to prevent promoting a pawn to an enemy piece (sometimes causing a smothered mate), and to prevent castling with a pawn promoted to a rook on the 8th rank (annotated humourously as 0-0-0-0-0-0!!). These patches were seemingly implemented in the late 19th century and 1970s respectively, although it's surprisingly hard to find out precisely when.
      - btilly 5y ago
        Those are obscure. "White goes first" was established in the second half of the 1800s!
        sellyme 5y ago
        > Those are obscure. Obscure, but also completely to do with how the pieces on the board can actually move, which I bet most people would have suspected that we worked out a few centuries ago. The decision of who goes first doesn't really matter, it's a purely aesthetic choice. Similarly there's a lot of regulatory changes to this day around things better described as "playing conditions". But banning 0-0-0-0-0-0 is fundamentally the same category of change as saying "oh and also the queen can move like a knight now", which seems like an absolutely ridiculous thing to have still been refining in the 1970s.
        esrauch 5y ago
        There's no way they would have allowed 0-0-0-0-0-0 or "promote to opposite color piece" in a real game if GMs tried it in 1965. It's only ambiguous wording of the rules that was fixed in 1970, and not actually a capability of pieces.
        sellyme 5y ago
        > It's only ambiguous wording of the rules There was nothing ambiguous about it. There was no possible interpretation of the rules that would have prevented those moves.
        esrauch 5y ago
        IRL games don't blindly execute the rules like video game code: in rare cases it's possible for the rules are poorly worded in a way that would allow something stupid, and yet that wouldn't be actually permitted play by any reasonable player or arbiter. It's happened several times in MtG tournament history for example, where some mechanism was so clearly against the intended rules that the judges just didn't allow it even though it would have worked as a strict reading of the rules (nonsense about actions "between turns" and I recall Yawgs Will exiling as a triggered effect both just getting shut down by judges). The two things you mention are solely gags for funny chess puzzles about what is an obvious oversight in some specific written rulesets, not actually something that would have actually been legal play.
    - lelanthran 5y ago
      > Would you mind pointing me at a canonical source on that please. Chess is way older than a few centuries, so why do the extra rules sidle in and when? It's literally on the wikipedia entries, respectively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castling "Castling was added to European chess in the 14th or 15th century and did not develop into its present form until the 17th century. The Asian versions of chess do not have such a move. " "Castling was added to allow the king to get to a safer location and to allow rooks to get into the game earlier (Davidson 1981:16). " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_passant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_passant "The motivation for en passant was to prevent the newly added two-square first move for pawns from allowing a pawn to evade capture by an enemy pawn.[14]:16 " The two-square pawn move is commonly regarded as being introduced in order to make the game faster/more dynamic.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    "Half Chess": use half the board, eliminate the pawn rows. Much faster.
awb 5y ago
Some famous GMs agree with you: > Some players, including world champions such as José Raúl Capablanca, Emanuel Lasker, and Bobby Fischer, have expressed fears of a "draw death" as chess becomes more deeply analyzed. > To alleviate this danger, Capablanca and Fischer both proposed chess variants to revitalize the game, while Lasker suggested changing how draws and stalemate are scored. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_ches...
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  The 1984 championship, which was played with a first to 6 wins format, had to be abandoned due to draws. It started on the 10th of September 1984, and was abandoned on the 15th of February 1985 after 40 draws and only 8 decisive games. The result was controversial (the championship match would be restarted), and the other alternative formats that have been used are also controversial. Such as the reigning champion retaining the championship if a decisive result isn’t produced, and the current format where they play classical games, then rapid games if it’s tied, then blitz games if it’s still tied, then an “armageddon” game if it’s still tied. The most recent championship match was decided by rapid games, which a lot of people basically considered to be a non-result.
  - kevinventullo 5y ago
    This has always bothered me about soccer. 90+ minutes of somewhat complex team play, positioning, footwork, and endurance… and at the end of it the winner is decided by penalty kicks, which feel like an entirely different game.
    - Tarsul 5y ago
      the problem with soccer is that good ideas to improve the game (e.g. make the time stop like in Basketball: Always when the ball is in play the clock ticks, when the ball is outside stop the clock. This would mean less players on the ground running out the clock with fake injuries) are not implemented due to how the leagues are organized (UEFA/FIFA etc.). Whereas in the NBA every year they change the rules, e.g. the best rule change came a couple years ago where they put the shot clock reset of an offensive rebound to 14 seconds instead of 24 seconds - faster gameplay. Everyone wins. Would also love different overtime ideas played out in soccer, e.g. put players out of the game. When it's 8 vs 8 maybe that leads to more goals in overtime or something... also, there was a time/place where penalties were shot differently (with running with the ball like in hockey), so there exist opportunities to change but as far as I see it there's an unwillingness.
fogof 5y ago
Here is a link https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.04374 https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.04374 to the paper you are probably talking about. Coming from DeepMind (and with Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik as a coauthor), they studied a bunch of chess variants by training AlphaZero to play on them. In addition to no-castling, they also studied variants where pawns can always move two steps forward, and where it's possible to capture your own pieces.
jstx1 5y ago
I don't think we want more drawish chess but ideally we want the outcome of the game to be a function of the players' skill and not of who had the white pieces.

by reedf1 5y ago

gerdesj 5y ago

To a casual bystander (who at least knows the rules), castling seems a bit arbitrary and so do the other "extras" - en passant et al. What would happen if chess was reduced to purely "normal" piece moves? What happens if pawns lose their initial two square move? Obviously it would reduce the space of potential games by quite a lot but would it reduce chess to draughts/checkers? Shall I pick my own stake to be burned at?

lelanthran 5y ago
> To a casual bystander (who at least knows the rules), castling seems a bit arbitrary and so do the other "extras" - en passant et al. Those rules were added in to make faster games. Taking them out would slow the game down, and we've at least a hundred years of the new rules (faster games) being preferred.
- gerdesj 5y ago
  Would you mind pointing me at a canonical source on that please. Chess is way older than a few centuries, so why do the extra rules sidle in and when?
  - sellyme 5y ago
    > Chess is way older than a few centuries, so why do the extra rules sidle in and when? Not exactly what you were asking, but you may be shocked to learn that Chess has had two significant patches very recently - namely clarifying the rules to prevent promoting a pawn to an enemy piece (sometimes causing a smothered mate), and to prevent castling with a pawn promoted to a rook on the 8th rank (annotated humourously as 0-0-0-0-0-0!!). These patches were seemingly implemented in the late 19th century and 1970s respectively, although it's surprisingly hard to find out precisely when.
    - btilly 5y ago
      Those are obscure. "White goes first" was established in the second half of the 1800s!
      - sellyme 5y ago
        > Those are obscure. Obscure, but also completely to do with how the pieces on the board can actually move, which I bet most people would have suspected that we worked out a few centuries ago. The decision of who goes first doesn't really matter, it's a purely aesthetic choice. Similarly there's a lot of regulatory changes to this day around things better described as "playing conditions". But banning 0-0-0-0-0-0 is fundamentally the same category of change as saying "oh and also the queen can move like a knight now", which seems like an absolutely ridiculous thing to have still been refining in the 1970s.
        esrauch 5y ago
        There's no way they would have allowed 0-0-0-0-0-0 or "promote to opposite color piece" in a real game if GMs tried it in 1965. It's only ambiguous wording of the rules that was fixed in 1970, and not actually a capability of pieces.
        sellyme 5y ago
        > It's only ambiguous wording of the rules There was nothing ambiguous about it. There was no possible interpretation of the rules that would have prevented those moves.
        esrauch 5y ago
        IRL games don't blindly execute the rules like video game code: in rare cases it's possible for the rules are poorly worded in a way that would allow something stupid, and yet that wouldn't be actually permitted play by any reasonable player or arbiter. It's happened several times in MtG tournament history for example, where some mechanism was so clearly against the intended rules that the judges just didn't allow it even though it would have worked as a strict reading of the rules (nonsense about actions "between turns" and I recall Yawgs Will exiling as a triggered effect both just getting shut down by judges). The two things you mention are solely gags for funny chess puzzles about what is an obvious oversight in some specific written rulesets, not actually something that would have actually been legal play.
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > Would you mind pointing me at a canonical source on that please. Chess is way older than a few centuries, so why do the extra rules sidle in and when? It's literally on the wikipedia entries, respectively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castling "Castling was added to European chess in the 14th or 15th century and did not develop into its present form until the 17th century. The Asian versions of chess do not have such a move. " "Castling was added to allow the king to get to a safer location and to allow rooks to get into the game earlier (Davidson 1981:16). " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_passant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_passant "The motivation for en passant was to prevent the newly added two-square first move for pawns from allowing a pawn to evade capture by an enemy pawn.[14]:16 " The two-square pawn move is commonly regarded as being introduced in order to make the game faster/more dynamic.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  "Half Chess": use half the board, eliminate the pawn rows. Much faster.

awb 5y ago

Some famous GMs agree with you: > Some players, including world champions such as José Raúl Capablanca, Emanuel Lasker, and Bobby Fischer, have expressed fears of a "draw death" as chess becomes more deeply analyzed. > To alleviate this danger, Capablanca and Fischer both proposed chess variants to revitalize the game, while Lasker suggested changing how draws and stalemate are scored. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_ches...

AmericanChopper 5y ago
The 1984 championship, which was played with a first to 6 wins format, had to be abandoned due to draws. It started on the 10th of September 1984, and was abandoned on the 15th of February 1985 after 40 draws and only 8 decisive games. The result was controversial (the championship match would be restarted), and the other alternative formats that have been used are also controversial. Such as the reigning champion retaining the championship if a decisive result isn’t produced, and the current format where they play classical games, then rapid games if it’s tied, then blitz games if it’s still tied, then an “armageddon” game if it’s still tied. The most recent championship match was decided by rapid games, which a lot of people basically considered to be a non-result.
- kevinventullo 5y ago
  This has always bothered me about soccer. 90+ minutes of somewhat complex team play, positioning, footwork, and endurance… and at the end of it the winner is decided by penalty kicks, which feel like an entirely different game.
  - Tarsul 5y ago
    the problem with soccer is that good ideas to improve the game (e.g. make the time stop like in Basketball: Always when the ball is in play the clock ticks, when the ball is outside stop the clock. This would mean less players on the ground running out the clock with fake injuries) are not implemented due to how the leagues are organized (UEFA/FIFA etc.). Whereas in the NBA every year they change the rules, e.g. the best rule change came a couple years ago where they put the shot clock reset of an offensive rebound to 14 seconds instead of 24 seconds - faster gameplay. Everyone wins. Would also love different overtime ideas played out in soccer, e.g. put players out of the game. When it's 8 vs 8 maybe that leads to more goals in overtime or something... also, there was a time/place where penalties were shot differently (with running with the ball like in hockey), so there exist opportunities to change but as far as I see it there's an unwillingness.

fogof 5y ago

Here is a link https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.04374 https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.04374 to the paper you are probably talking about. Coming from DeepMind (and with Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik as a coauthor), they studied a bunch of chess variants by training AlphaZero to play on them. In addition to no-castling, they also studied variants where pawns can always move two steps forward, and where it's possible to capture your own pieces.

jstx1 5y ago

I don't think we want more drawish chess but ideally we want the outcome of the game to be a function of the players' skill and not of who had the white pieces.