Really cool to read all these takes. It’s funny how Chess960 means something different to everyone here. For some it’s about competition and big names like Kasparov or Carlsen, for others it’s a way to train pure thinking and creativity. I kinda like that, it shows the format can grow in more than one direction. What I find interesting is that it started as Fischer’s “anti-theory” idea, and now it’s turning into a sort of chess lab where we test balance, new ideas and even teaching methods.
Do you think we’ll eventually start seeing an actual opening theory for some of the starting positions in Chess960? Maybe not full systems, but at least a few patterns or typical setups that players begin to study seriously.
@Professor74 said in #21:
> Really cool to read all these takes. It’s funny how Chess960 means something different to everyone here. For some it’s about competition and big names like Kasparov or Carlsen, for others it’s a way to train pure thinking and creativity. I kinda like that, it shows the format can grow in more than one direction. What I find interesting is that it started as Fischer’s “anti-theory” idea, and now it’s turning into a sort of chess lab where we test balance, new ideas and even teaching methods.
>
> Do you think we’ll eventually start seeing an actual opening theory for some of the starting positions in Chess960? Maybe not full systems, but at least a few patterns or typical setups that players begin to study seriously.
Trying to memorize openings from 960 possible positions would be fruitless for most if not all. There'll surely be common themes that develop, maybe particular pawn structures depending on the setup, maybe specific a or h pawn push ideas, there's really no telling. But theory as we know it, definitely not.
To the general conversation: it should be called Fischer Random. Political biases - no matter how wild Fischer's ideas were - shouldn't detract from his creativity. It's a great alternative to classical chess and Bobby was one of the first and loudest voices about the negatives of opening theory.
@Toscani said in #20:
> Brute force will not solve chess. Chess has 960 symmetrical starting positions. With Asymmetrical starting positions chess has ... 960 x 960 = 921,600 starting positions. This variant is sometimes referred to as Double Fischer Random Chess or Asymmetrical Fischer Random Chess. We have just scratched the surface of how far we are in solving chess.
>
> Let's start by solving just one chess game.
I think memorization is not good in chess, except maybe some masters have to do it to stay competitive.
Less memorization is best other than knowing the standard traps to avoid falling into them.
Maybe when humans have chipsets put into them, then they can have access to all variations in chess and then it will be the end of chess. Hopefully that never happens. Please stay natural.
w chess960
one of my fav variants (thoguh i haven't played in a while)
Chess ought to be a fair game for everyone involved. It just isn't right when someone rattles off moves and wins in a handful of turns just because they've memorized all the fancy opening theories inside out, leaving the other player in the dust.
@VincentPulp said in #10:
> > From a recent interview with ChessBase co-founder Matthias Wüllenweber:
> > If I understand correctly, many of the 960 positions either result in an immediate loss or are very sharp. This would make them ideal for opening analysis and, in theory, it would probably be possible to defeat most of them completely. It would be a fun project, but it would probably completely miss the mark for our target audience.
>
> They've looked into this and it isn't that bad. The 534 position (classical) is about a 0.26 advantage for white. Some 960 positions go as high as 0.42 if I remember correctly.
>
> The article was on lichess a while back.
Chess518 is ~ +0.4 advantage for white with the same engines/amount of time that have analysed the other 959 positions. So it is one of the more unequal positions, 2/3 of 960 positions have a SMALLER opening advantage for white than the standard starting position. The idea about some of them almost losing by force is just nonsense.
@Nordlandia said in #11:
> Well, I reckon the best players are perfectly able to try new things in chess if they wanted to, but they just don't seem to. After all this time pushing for change, isn't it peculiar that they've "only" taken to Chess960, but something like S-Chess always gets put on the shelf?
>
> 960, - It's just like regular chess a dozen moves in. Doesn't exactly rock the boat enough, if you ask me. Chess with new pieces is great fun! It's usually a real tactical puzzle, and you gotta trust your intuition when figuring out piece exchanges.
Chess960 is absolutely not like regular chess a dozen moves in. The pawn structures are totally different, the piece combinations and tactical possibilties are different, according to GM Fedoseev you even get different endgames. Castling is often still possible to both sides, which in chess518 it is almost always clear which side one is castling to.
What I find cumbersome with s-chess is having to keep track of which pieces moved so you know when you can bring in a new one. With chess960 you only need to keep track of if the king and either rook has moved for castling (same with chess518), but with S-chess one has to keep track of all 8 pieces on your and the opposing players' back rank. Not sure if bringing in pieces at any time would be satisfactory (like in Dragon chess).
The trend is only in 1 direction, the problems with chess518 just grow every year. We've seen in the world cup that if someone loses the first game it's almost impossible to come back in the second game bc the other player can shut down the game very quickly. This cannot be solved and wasn't the case 50 years ago. To talk about the hundreds/thousands of years history of chess is off the mark, top players who were playing 100 years ago might not even be interested today bc of the reams of opening theory.
The other bizarre thing is that ALL, literally 100%, of the opening moves played by the top players today are generated by engines. All ideas come from engines. All the sidelines we are seeing are 2nd-4th lines of the engine which players have selected to get out of the first line theory. We see entire games where all the moves of both sides are from engines. If I wanted to see engine-generated moves I could watch computer matches; I'm not interested in human matches where each player has memorised engine output to reproduce.
@krxou you nailed it. At the highest levels, modern chess is essentially a contest in which supercomputers play a substantial role in almost every aspect of preparation and analysis.. One may well wonder where the creative aspect remains.
Regarding Chess960 differing from standard chess after a dozen moves: the top tier of players are so accustomed to the classical starting position that they may naturally steer the game toward something similar. It is certainly not uncommon for a grandmaster game, 10 to 15 moves in, to resemble a middlegame position that could have arisen from the traditional setup.
So i don't necessarily agree nor disagre.
Concerning S-Chess.
There should now be no concern about remembering which piece has been moved previously; the process is simple and straightforward. If you move a piece from the first row, you must make the decision at that time. The earlier state cannot be reapplied if the same piece later returns to, and then moves again from, the first row. It should be similar to a rook. Remembering whether it has moved or not is not a problem.