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Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games

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Re: Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games

#21

Post by rybosworld »

In human play, white has somewhere between 0.25 - 0.5 pawn advantage. There's evidence that at higher ELO's, the advantage declines but it's not clear what the lower bound is.

So for top players (and even more-so for top chess engines), the white advantage isn't enough to translate to a win.

In human play, the top players often need to play suboptimal moves to convert a win. Magnus Carlsen is probably the most famous for doing this. The point is to break away from the well studied lines, and play something that other pros aren't familiar with.

Basically: It's not clear that white's small advantage actually counts for much, at least at the very top tiers of chess.

Changing the game in such a way that white and black odds become even more balanced, would just lead to more draws - which I personally would think makes the game less interesting.

Re: Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games

#22

Post by esquivalience »

rawling wrote: post #7
esquivalience wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This interested me enough to convince me to click through to the article itself. Is your observation allayed by this rule? > Rule 2: a. Moves are tried in both orders, and only moves that are legal in both orders are merged. b. If both moves are legal in both orders but a different game state is reached in each order, neither move is merged.

GP is in response to > All of these scenarios illustrate rule 2a. Rule 2b is in fact irrelevant for chess, because successful moves always commute. in the article.

Thanks, I overlooked that

Re: Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games

#23

Post by 0xFEE1DEAD »

I believe a tactical move blocking strategy could evolve from these rule changes. Imagine we're in a game that's more complex than what's depicted in fig 6 but the rooks are positioned identically. Additionally, there's a white pawn at c5. Wouldn't it then be advantageous for black to make the same move as shown in fig 6? If this move results in an illegal state nothing is lost since the pawn remains blocked. Perhaps this isn't the best example as my chess knowledge is somewhat limited, but do you see what I mean? Wouldn't this tactic allow players to maintain control over two positions simultaneously in certain scenarios?

Re: Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games

#24

Post by js8 »

dmurray wrote: post #19

People get hung up on the unfair White advantage in chess, but actually it's not large enough. In tennis, on every point there's a big advantage to the server. Not because he "gets to go first" but because he gets a second chance in some situations. You can prove this: in high level mens tennis the server wins ~70% of points [0] but on a second serve - equivalent to playing without the second chance - he wins almost…

> This wouldn't be a popular or practical change for human play.

What about Fischer random chess? That could help, no? I heard that even Magnus Carlsen played in some tournament with it.

Re: Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games

#25

Post by moomin »

yuliyp wrote: post #14

Isn't this game with the given conflict resolution rules just broken? But forcing conflicts feels like a way to cause a game to become a draw. Imagine I move my queen next to the opponent's king (with no defense). My opponent's only legal move is to capture it in the next move. Let's say I don't like my chances of winning, so I just keep on trying to move the queen away from that square. Every such attempt results in…

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this and there’s two problems you’ve illustrated: there’s the repeating bluff problem. That can be solved by simply saying you can’t submit the same move that has already been blocked this round.

But that makes the “force draw” problem even worse. I guess it’s a lot more fair to make draws easy to achieve. I don’t know if it’s fun.

Re: Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games

#26

Post by kibwen »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #17

If the point of this exercise is to create a game that removes first move advantage, while keeping the game as unchanged as possible, this is an utter failure. Turning a game of perfect information into a bluffing and anticipation game is not a minor change. It's a fundamental change of the essence of what the game is.

Chess already has an element of bluffing and anticipation, it just happens over the course of many moves.

Re: Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games

#27

Post by vintermann »

dmurray wrote: post #19

People get hung up on the unfair White advantage in chess, but actually it's not large enough. In tennis, on every point there's a big advantage to the server. Not because he "gets to go first" but because he gets a second chance in some situations. You can prove this: in high level mens tennis the server wins ~70% of points [0] but on a second serve - equivalent to playing without the second chance - he wins almost…

The main thing is that people have invested so much in getting good at the game as it is, that they don't want to change it, making so much of their hard work useless. That's understandable, and OK. As long as everyone understands that this is the reason things are as they are.

What's more mystifying to me is that in a weird variant like Duck Chess which has oddly gained a lot of popularity online, where so much of the hard work is invalidated anyway, they don't take the opportunity to fix the starting imbalance. In particular, in that variant it would be so easy: just let the first move be duck only!

Re: Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games

#28

Post by dmurray »

vintermann wrote: post #27
dmurray wrote: post #19

People get hung up on the unfair White advantage in chess, but actually it's not large enough. In tennis, on every point there's a big advantage to the server. Not because he "gets to go first" but because he gets a second chance in some situations. You can prove this: in high level mens tennis the server wins ~70% of points [0] but on a second serve - equivalent to playing without the second chance - he wins almost…

The main thing is that people have invested so much in getting good at the game as it is, that they don't want to change it, making so much of their hard work useless. That's understandable, and OK. As long as everyone understands that this is the reason things are as they are. What's more mystifying to me is that in a weird variant like Duck Chess which has oddly gained a lot of popularity online, where so much of t…

> In particular, in that variant it would be so easy: just let the first move be duck only!

I don't see why that would make a significant theoretical difference. Black plays first and moves the duck, he can block either e4 or d4 (or something offbeat like g6 if what he wants is to get a Modern Defence at all costs) but not the other one. I suppose there's a practical difference where White couldn't specialise in e4- or d4- openings, and Black gets to choose which to face depending on the opponent.

(And in any case, as above, I disagree with the thesis that the imbalance should be "fixed").

Re: Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games

#29

Post by dmurray »

js8 wrote: post #24
dmurray wrote: post #19

People get hung up on the unfair White advantage in chess, but actually it's not large enough. In tennis, on every point there's a big advantage to the server. Not because he "gets to go first" but because he gets a second chance in some situations. You can prove this: in high level mens tennis the server wins ~70% of points [0] but on a second serve - equivalent to playing without the second chance - he wins almost…

> This wouldn't be a popular or practical change for human play. What about Fischer random chess? That could help, no? I heard that even Magnus Carlsen played in some tournament with it.

Right, that's a good example: it's the most mainstream of variants, gets support from FIDE and rich sponsors and world champions, and improves on perhaps the biggest complaint people have about chess - and it still only attracts a few percent of the audience and the participation of the standard game.

Re: Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games

#30

Post by sigzero »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #11

When my grandfather taught me to play chess, he always made me play as Black, and I would get upset because I wasn’t the one to move first. Now I know why

It was more likely (unless he was just a d*ck) that he was making you black because you learn better that way.
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