Come on, who says it's wrote in stone how to play chess ?
To speak candidly, traditional chess can become rather monotonous. Enthusiasts have extensively analyzed opening moves, endgames, and all nuances in between. Furthermore, a little investigation reveals the most effective piece combinations. However, if you seek an engaging challenge, consider playing chess relying solely on your instincts and strategic calculations.
Considering the matter from my subjective perspective, the problem doesn't concern me at all, and that's what I'm interested in.
I know almost nothing about openings, and if I had time I would study them thoroughly; I know almost nothing about endgames, and if I had time I would study them even before the openings. For me, chess is a boundless sea to explore, and even in ten lives I wouldn't be able to explore even a part of it. And one of the things that attracts me about chess is the combination skill + knowledge.
A few days ago I tried chess960 for the first time, just out of curiosity. I found myself with my king on g1, the two bishops next to each other, to the opposite corner of the board, the two knights in the middle. Something of indescribable ugliness, not to mention the ramshackle structure that emerged after a few moves. Nothing to do with the harmonious positions that emerge in any opening thanks to the elegant classical arrangement of the pieces.
Obviously, it's just my subjective perspective. And of course, I'm also exaggerating a little. I fully understand that many are attracted to variants, for various reasons.
In any case, I'm not worried about the future of chess: personally, classical chess will always be more than enough for me. I am confident that there will always be millions of other players I can play with, in the classic way.
I just want to point out that there's something odd going on in the chess world these days. It's like everyone's got blinders on, fixating on the classic game still while other great options are being overlooked for reasons that just don't make sense. it's definitely baffling and they're unwittingly missing the boat.
@Nordlandia said in #33:
> I just want to point out that there's something odd going on in the chess world these days. It's like everyone's got blinders on, fixating on the classic game still while other great options are being overlooked for reasons that just don't make sense. it's definitely baffling and they're unwittingly missing the boat.
What makes you believe it is specific to "these days"? Do you have some data supporting the claim that random variants were more popular in the past? To be honest, I rather suspect that it's exaclty the opposite.
From what I remember, when I played as a kid in the 80's, bughouse was something we only played for fun from time to time (and our coaches didn't like it at all). There were no official Chess960 tournaments, even blitz and rapid tournaments were rare and not really taken seriously. The idea that the world champion title could be decided in a rapid or even blitz game (or "armageddon", FWIW) didn't even come to anyone's mind. Comparing it to today, I don't really don't have the impression that variants and "non-classical chess" would be more marginalized today than it used to.
Honestly, I don't think it was better before, but the main crux is that still the vast chunk gravitates towards classical when things are so well-catered these days that one could only dream of in the 80s-90s. There are neat websites for fairy chess, but they don’t get a lot of traffic. I rarely see titled players hanging out there. When that could have been the case in the first place.
You may call it "better" but that does not make it objectively better. Apparently for most players all those variants are not as attractive as they are for you.
In a similar fashion, I may be sad about vast majority of online games being blitz and even bullet being way more popular than classical time controls. Does it mean that all those people are all "wrong" and they should be educated to see The Truth? No, all it means is that my preferences are a minority and that I have to learn to live with it.
Fischer mentioned that while variations might have some practical hiccups, it's really all about folks being set in their ways and not wanting to try something new.
I am more of a supporter of experimenting with hybrid TCs that correspond more with the times we live in. That is, 60+30, 45+45, 45+20 etc.
My future chess clock vision: Prioritise pondering time to ensure that players are not penalised for the mechanical act of moving pieces.
Feature Request: Build a piece compensation chess clock. After each move, compensation time is added to the player’s clock based on the following principles:
Initiation of Move: +0.2 seconds for the initial response and movement initiation.
Distance Travelled: +0.02 seconds for each square a piece moves.
Material Capture: +0.15 seconds
Short Castling: +0.49 seconds.
Long Castling: +0.51 seconds.
Promotion: +0.42 seconds
Pawn Move: +0.22 seconds
Knight Move: +0.26 seconds
King Move: +0.22 seconds
Bishop/Rook/Queen Move (~n squares): +0.2 + (n * 0.02) seconds
@SimonBirch said in #18:
>Wizarding chess , would be cool xxx
I know right
I would be pretty cool
@PawnRookQueenKing said in #39:
> I know right
> I would be pretty cool
Yeah check #26 id love this ,ya ha ,maybe one day they could do it they can do it on Tele , so one day xxx
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