Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
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Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
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Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#2Fairly small change, just some changes to the initial piece placement.
“All Kings, Rooks, Pawns are in their original locations as chess but other pieces are placed randomly in their first and last ranks, with no symmetry requirement between two sides, with the only restriction for bishops of each side must be on different colored squares.”
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#3The idea of an asymmetric Chess starting position is very interesting, although it does introduce more risk of one side starting with a big advantage (perhaps this has been analyzed).
I also like that in this variant, castling works like normal -- that is one of the most unintuitive aspects of Chess960.
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#4With an asymmetrical setup there has to be cases where one side has a real advantage over the other.
How big is hard to know. Maybe it doesn't matter much.
Chess engines can figure that out empirically.
PS I checked, and this has several mentions before April 1!
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#5Has anyone thought/experimented of a variant that works a bit like the starting phase of Risk: pawns are as they are classically, but players take turns in the beginning phase placing their other pieces in their respective bottom/upper file.
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#6With an asymmetrical setup there has to be cases where one side has a real advantage over the other. How big is hard to know. Maybe it doesn't matter much. Chess engines can figure that out empirically. PS I checked, and this has several mentions before April 1!
It's by Larry Kaufman, so it's safe to assume it's for computer chess rather than humans. If that's the case, it's not a problem; engine matches are usually played as "game pairs" where each engine plays the same position as both White and Black.
Having unbalanced positions could even be better, as you'd be more likely to have a decisive game pair.
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#7I don’t personally think reducing draws would improve the game at all
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#8How does this work? Do players secretly choose their starting positions, or are the starting positions randomly determined?
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#9The idea of an asymmetric Chess starting position is very interesting, although it does introduce more risk of one side starting with a big advantage (perhaps this has been analyzed). I also like that in this variant, castling works like normal -- that is one of the most unintuitive aspects of Chess960.
> one side starting with a big advantage
I have never played this variant of chess, but on the surface it seems that having both bishops on the same color would be a sizeable disadvantage.
The other randomized pieces (queens and knights) can get to any square, so having two knights start on dark squares, for instance, doesn't seem to really matter.
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#10Does this "reduce draws" purely because it randomly gives one side a small (or big) advantage? If so, that doesn't seem to be an improvement at all.
It would be easy enough to test if one side having an advantage is common: have a chess engine play against itself many times using the same setup. The try a new setup. Find out what percentage of the time one side seems to have been given an advantage. (i.e. an advantage that's greater than the built-in one that white has.)
If there's a different reason this reduces draws, what is that reason? If it's simply reducing the reliance on book openings, that's fine, although there are other solutions for that. If there's something in a particular piece structure that reduces draws, what is it?