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< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 4 OF 4 ·
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| Apr-23-25 | | Obvious Troll: "Freestyle." Maybe they should incorporate freestyle rap battles as part of freestyle chess tournaments. I'd love to see them try that. |
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Apr-23-25
 | | saffuna: <Maybe they should incorporate freestyle rap battles as part of freestyle chess tournaments.> Peter Svidler would be rated 3000. |
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| Apr-23-25 | | 1300patzer: I agree with Check It Out about modern appurtenances, especially engines, underlying the rise of this variation. Engines have been like steroids for classical opening prep, allowing too many game-determining surprises that the player can't, or oughtn't, take any credit for. The difference between that use and cheating is hard to describe. Human classical chess is no longer really "human", at least in the opening stage. If you want to see competitive classical chess with no such morally questionable prep advantages, with fantastic play in all three stages of the game, watch the computer tournaments. |
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Apr-23-25
 | | MarcusBierce: Mr. Melad re: most talented.
Some of those players worked like a dog to get where they were. Hard to separate that from their talent. Spassky is worth a mention.
"I consider myself to be an idler, too, but the dimensions of Spassky’s laziness were astounding." ~ Karpov Thank goodness for Spassky he was paired with Bondarevsky! |
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Apr-23-25
 | | Check It Out: One more word on the intersection of classical chess, chess history, engines, and freestyle: the game is more widespread now than it has ever been, and that can only be a good thing. Engines allow patzers to create content that is less error-prone than historical books. They've given analytical players a tool to battle the genius intuition of players like Carlsen through hard work. Freestyle has given players who have don't want to trudge through the opening theory battle of novelties a format to just "get a game." Its unfortunate that the World Champion is no longer the best player in the world, but its still a pinnacle for the best players to strive for, and spectators will always be drawn to the matchups it creates. As for chess history, the real historians will probably side-eye me when I say, I've learned more about chess history and players from this very website than I have from prime source material. |
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Apr-23-25
 | | Dionysius1: Hi <Jamboree>. Yes, I like the sound of "pre-chess" more than Freestyle chess. I haven't tried it yet, but I like it for being self-contained (no-one/nothing else decides the piece positions) and the purity of it (castling isn't possible so it doesn't resolve into classical chess type positions in the early middle game). Having said that - there COULD be a rule allowing castling I suppose? |
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Apr-24-25
| | MarcusBierce: <stone free or die: Here's some more on pre-chess:
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/ch...
I guess, originally, castling was only allowed if K+R were in classic positions.> Not surprised that Bronstein was the first top-GM of record to recommend shuffling the pieces back in the 1940’s. He also had the interesting idea of pawns being able to move backwards, which would create completely different strategies of play. |
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Apr-24-25
| | MarcusBierce: Personally, I like the idea of pre-chess where you create your entire back-rank ahead of time w/o the other player knowing at all. You each give the other a piece of paper with the set pieces of your back-rank at the same time, set-up the pieces accordingly, and play. |
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| Apr-24-25 | | tonsillolith: For an approach like pre-chess, we should certainly expect that players with data science savvy and/or access to strong compute resources would have a significant edge over naive players. With a few hundred hours of steaming GPUs, a computer will be able to help a player choose initial setup much better than poor analog humans. On the other hand, the info about best opening configurations would rapidly become public. And we would have a new, expanded "opening theory". |
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| Apr-24-25 | | Petrosianic: The pre-chess article is in this issue of Chess Life & Review, along with the Bisguier-Benko games. Benko says that the guy he heard about it from said that it came from Bronstein, which should make it worth a look right there. What makes choosing an opening setup difficult is that players place their pieces one at a time. So the best place to place our pieces depends heavily on where the other guy has started placing his. Usually you avoid placing the King as long as possible, so the other place can't focus on it. https://uscf1-nyc1.aodhosting.com/C... |
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| Apr-24-25 | | Petrosianic: I'm looking through these two Pre-Chess articles, and playing over the Benko-Bisguier games. I wouldn't say I like this variant <better> than Fischer Random. But it is handy if you don't have a computer handy to generate a starting position. According to this, the rules say that Bishops must be placed on opposite color squares, and there <is> castling, but only if the King is placed on "K1", and the Rook is on a corner square. According to Benko, Euwe calculated the number of possible starting positions at 4,147,200. As for the name, "Pre Chess", they considered a lot of names, and settled on Pre Chess because the rule changes preceded the opening moves. Benko apologetically uses algebraic in his article, but Bisguier unabashedly uses Descriptive in his, even though it doesn't make sense to name the squares that way. BISGUIER: <I was beginning to understand that the opening principles of pre-chess were not at variance with the orthodox version. Perhaps in pre-chess a small mistake might be more cruelly punished, but the precepts of the middlegame (e.g., beware of placing your King or
Queen in opposition to an enemy Rook) should certainly apply- and the emphasis should still be on controlling the center, either with pawns or pieces.> There are people now who don't get this. I was commenting a while back on how very many Fischer Random games I play against an opponent who hasn't moved a single center pawn by Move 10 or even 20. They only move those pawns to help get the Bishops out, and if that isn't necessary, they don't grasp the importance of controlling the center with them. |
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Apr-25-25
 | | Teyss: <Petrosianic: According to Benko, Euwe calculated the number of possible starting positions at 4,147,200.> That's the second time in my life I dare correct a Maths teacher: there are actually twice as many i.e. 8,294,400. The reasoning is:
* The two Bishops have to be on opposite colours so each has 4 squares: 4x4.
* Other pieces can be anywhere on the 6 remaining squares since there is no restriction about the King being between the Rooks as in 960 so it's 6!
* But the Rooks and Knights are interchangeable so divide twice by 2.
= 4x4x6!/2/2 = 2,880.
And since each side can position pieces regardless of the other unlike 960: 2,880^2 = 8,294,400. Don't know why Euwe divided this number by 2, am I missing something? Wikipedia attributes the invention of Pre-Chess to Maxwell Lawrence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans... |
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| Apr-25-25 | | stone free or die: <<Teyss> That's the second time in my life I dare correct a Maths teacher> I wonder about the other time... |
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| Apr-25-25 | | ColdSong: Just want to say quickly that dissymetric Fischer chess still looks fascinating to me,and is worth a try.There was a match LCzero Stockfish recently if one's interested. |
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| Apr-25-25 | | BxChess: <Teyss...Don't know why Euwe divided this number by 2>. As a former student of a maths teacher who told me that pi was exactly 22/7, I nevertheless found your calculation convincing. Perhaps you could argue that a reflection about the vertical midline of the starting postion is not really a new configuration. This assumes that there is no castling, which would otherwise distinguish kingside from queenside. |
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| Apr-26-25 | | Petrosianic: <Teyss> <Wikipedia attributes the invention of Pre-Chess to Maxwell Lawrence:> Hmm, Wikipedia says Lawrence invented it in 1978. But Benko said that he'd heard of it 10 years ago, which would be 1968. It looks like the two games aren't quite identical, even though Wikipedia says they are. Transcendental Chess has no castling, but it says that on Turn 1, either player can transpose two pieces on their first rank. The way Benko reported it there was castling, but no transposition rule. But none of the four Bisguier-Benko games featured castling, as it's easier to just place your King already castled. |
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Apr-26-25
| | Teyss: Hi stone free or die,
High school, I made a comment on a demonstration. The teacher looked at me like Lawrence Olivier at the child making fun of his back in 'Richard III'. For the rest of the year she made cracks like "If Doctor [my name] sees nothing wrong here..." and "If the Honourable [my name] agrees..." I never spoke again in maths class. Hi BxChess,
Chess-wise it makes sense although not mathematically which was Euwe's specialty. Hi Petrosianic,
Good point, there's probably some subtleties about the exact format. |
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| Apr-26-25 | | stone free or die: <<Teyss> I never spoke again in maths class.> “Ridicule can do much, for instance embitter the existence of young talents; but one thing is not given to it, to put a stop permanently to the incursion of new and powerful ideas.” --Nimzowitsch |
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| Apr-27-25 | | metatron2: <Petrosianic: Hmm, Wikipedia says Lawrence invented it in 1978. But Benko said that he'd heard of it 10 years ago, which would be 1968. It looks like the two games aren't quite identical, even though Wikipedia says they are. Transcendental Chess has no castling> Actually Wikipedia had it wrong there, and the two games are totally different, since in Transcendental Chess the positions are pre-chosen randomly for the players. So Transcendental Chess is like Fischer-Random but without the restriction for symmetry. I think that it makes no sense at all, since one side might get huge (or even winning) advantage without playing a single move. Asymmetry can only make sense if players can't can't see the opponent's position (like poker for example), or if they setup the position of their pieces (like pre-chess) or both (like Stratego). |
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Apr-27-25
 | | beatgiant: <Teyss> I think Dr. Euwe's point has to do with the bishops. Although one is light squared and the other is dark squared by placement on the board, these pieces out of the box are still indistinguishable, so he divides by one more factor of 2 to account for that symmetry. (Hope I got that right and explained it well; that doesn't always come off in my kibitzing.) |
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Apr-27-25
| | Teyss: Hi stone free or die,
Nice quote.
Hi metatron2,
My bad, I read the article too fast, it does say "the beginning positions of the pieces on the back row are randomly determined" which indeed creates an unfair unbalanced position. The mistake arouse from the fact Wikipedia starts with "Transcendental chess (TC) also known as pre-chess" which is wrong and in contradiction with their other article where they indeed attribute the invention of pre-chess to Benko in 1978: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_... Apologies for the confusion. Hi beatgiant,
Hope I'm reading you correctly but you have to consider the potential positions and not how the Bishops are chosen. If we start with the DSB, there are 4 possibilities of course and for each of them 4 possibilities for the LSB which <all> give different positions. If we start with the LSB the reasoning is the same. So in both cases the number of positions for the Bishops is 4x4 without the need to divide by 2 and this has no impact on the placement of the other pieces on the remaining squares. |
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Apr-27-25
 | | Sally Simpson: <tonsillolith> "On the other hand, the info about best opening configurations would rapidly become public. And we would have a new, expanded "opening theory" The odd castling situations open up new ideas for study and problem composers.
Proof games, where the solver has use retrograde analysis to prove a position came from a certain number of moves. One could be asked after five moves to retro back the moves to find the original 960 line up. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof... Sam Loyd proved the quickest stalemate was in 10 moves. 1. e3 a5 2. Qh5 Ra6 3. Qxa5 h5 4. Qxc7 Rah6 5. h4 f6 6. Qxd7+ Kf7 7. Qxb7 Qd3 8. Qxb8 Qh7 9. Qxc8 Kg6 10. Qe6 
click for larger viewThere are now 959 quickest stalemates waiting to be discovered. Immortality is waiting for those willing to take up the challenge. New Fools Mates, opening traps and blunders...from this set up used in Rd.3 in Paris. 
click for larger view1.c4 c5 2.b3 Be5 Black wins the a1 Rook. (The 960 Paris Pitfall!) |
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| Apr-27-25 | | metatron2: Hi <Teyss>
<The mistake arouse from the fact Wikipedia starts with "Transcendental chess (TC) also known as pre-chess" which is wrong> Indeed.. I guess those chess variants are not popular enough to have Wikipedia users that watch the page and correct it.. <you have to consider the potential positions and not how the Bishops are chosen>
Indeed, your calculation actually selects the bishop and its square color and only then picks its actual square, so there are no duplicates there (unlike the case with rooks and knights). It is quite confusing and not very intuitive, so I can see why Euwe (and beatgiant) were confused by that.. -- BTW I read your discussion with Atterdag and boz and CIO regarding the legitimacy of Fischer Random, and while I agree with all your points about the superiority and legacy of the standard chess, I don't agree with your your conclusion. I always loved only standard chess, and always felt that other variants seems so lame compared to it, that none of them never interested me even one bit (I only played some bughouse chess with friends when I was young, but even that one I didn't like much..). However, I think that engines are just forcing professional players away from classical (standard) chess. While us armature players can't really understand it (besides the fact that we see how they all are kind of forced to use long and boring engine variations, in order not to seriously risk losing), I think that the burden of studying all those endless engine lines is just too demanding, boring and takes away most of their time from studying other phases of the game. But classical chess is still the most important and respected variant, and so if we will continue with the path of standard classical chess, we will end up with either: professional chess will die, or classical chess will die. And I don't think that the suggestion of getting shorter time controls that will still remain around the same quality of classical chess will solve the problem. If those time controls will be long enough to remain around the same quality, then the same problems of the endless opening theory will remain. And if they will be shorter with lower quality then we already have that (rapid chess), and it means that classical time controls will die. So Fischer Random seems like the best tradeoff we have at the moment. Obviously we all love standard chess so much more, but sometimes we just can't keep going in the same path that we are used to. We have to adapt ourselves to the changing environment (evolution and all that..). Chess engines gave us lots of good things, but also took away lots of good things. Its just a fact that we have to accept.. So I think that are lucky to have a dominating player like Carlsen pushing Fischer-Random like that. The next step will have to be fide rating for it. Without rating this variant will never be considered a real serious one. |
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Apr-27-25
| | Teyss: Hi metatron2,
We can agree to disagree on Fischer Random. As well as a couple of other topics. <The next step will have to be fide rating for it.> You're right, this will be the breakthrough. If many top players like Carlsen go for FR, FIDE cannot just watch the train pass by and will have to acknowledge its importance, which means we'll have another rating on top of classical, rapid and blitz. Actually we'll have 6 in total: add FR rapid and FR blitz as they're bound to develop one day. Unfortunately that means more players will be attracted by FR since it's more fun to play than to grind through openings and engine preps as you say, and it might mean the end of our noble game as we know it. Classical chess will remain for a few players willing to do the grinding to obtain an edge in the opening like... Kasparov. That said, we cannot exclude opening prep to also develop in FR. Out of the 960 starting positions, divide by 2 as half are mirrored vertically (castling is the same principle on both sides). Pretty sure some players are already running their engines on these 480 positions and trying to understand general principles based on simple factors like the position of the King and Queen, and maybe even memorising a few general lines. With a memory like Carlsen's, it's already an edge. But of course nothing like classical format where lines go deeper. |
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Apr-27-25
| | beatgiant: <Teyss> I sat down and did it slowly and I, too, got 8,294,400, so I stand corrected. Dr. Euwe's number isn't even a perfect square as one would expect, so either he just miscalculated somehow, or he was indeed thinking of the vertical midline symmetry as <BxChess> suggests above. |
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