4 ms·

I dont follow the chess world that closely, but could someone explain why chess960 isn't more popular? Its been around for awhile and solves the problem of peop

by knubie 4y ago

I dont follow the chess world that closely, but could someone explain why chess960 isn't more popular? Its been around for awhile and solves the problem of people memorizing opening lines, and boring chess games where the first n moves are predetermined.

3pt14159 4y ago
It may solve opening lines, but it doesn't really solve the general concept of mass memorization. After a few moves more than 960 possible configurations of chess exist from a normal board anyway. And you can say, "oh well but the boards are roughly the same" and that's sort of true, but it doesn't really solve the problem of the people memorizing the tree. It just changes the shape of the tree. It goes from looking like a pine to a maple.
- hyperhopper 4y ago
  Disagree. If you make the the 960 times as wide, people will only be able to memorize 1/960th as deep. So not much at all.
  - 3pt14159 4y ago
    That's not true. In three plies (one sided moves) of chess, there are over eight thousand possible games. By making the game 960 times as wide before you start you're not meaningfully changing the impact of memorization on the outcome of the game. You're just changing how deep you memorize the various trees. You can say, "well then, mission accomplished!" but the reality is that most of the tree memorization goes pretty deep at the highest levels before a new game is found because you're in effect following the games before it or you're blundering, or, at best, gambling if you've found something kinda unexpected and interesting. Put another way, any given top rated chess player has a finite set of possible game memorizations. Introducing a mere 960 new configurations at move 0 is only trading 2 to 4 plies worth of depth to the game. It's more complicated than that, because board positions can be essentially forced and board positions can overlap between pre-configurations, etc. But that's the essence of my argument. You're not meaningfully changing the impact of memorization on the outcome of the game, even if one thousandth sounds like a lot, it isn't really when dealing with permutations.

by knubie 4y ago

3pt14159 4y ago

It may solve opening lines, but it doesn't really solve the general concept of mass memorization. After a few moves more than 960 possible configurations of chess exist from a normal board anyway. And you can say, "oh well but the boards are roughly the same" and that's sort of true, but it doesn't really solve the problem of the people memorizing the tree. It just changes the shape of the tree. It goes from looking like a pine to a maple.

hyperhopper 4y ago
Disagree. If you make the the 960 times as wide, people will only be able to memorize 1/960th as deep. So not much at all.
- 3pt14159 4y ago
  That's not true. In three plies (one sided moves) of chess, there are over eight thousand possible games. By making the game 960 times as wide before you start you're not meaningfully changing the impact of memorization on the outcome of the game. You're just changing how deep you memorize the various trees. You can say, "well then, mission accomplished!" but the reality is that most of the tree memorization goes pretty deep at the highest levels before a new game is found because you're in effect following the games before it or you're blundering, or, at best, gambling if you've found something kinda unexpected and interesting. Put another way, any given top rated chess player has a finite set of possible game memorizations. Introducing a mere 960 new configurations at move 0 is only trading 2 to 4 plies worth of depth to the game. It's more complicated than that, because board positions can be essentially forced and board positions can overlap between pre-configurations, etc. But that's the essence of my argument. You're not meaningfully changing the impact of memorization on the outcome of the game, even if one thousandth sounds like a lot, it isn't really when dealing with permutations.