How does this work? Do players secretly choose their starting positions, or are the starting positions randomly determined?
I think the idea is that you'd play with a chess engine that randomizes the positions for each player.
Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
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Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#42How does this compare 'draw reduction' wise with Chess480 (by John Kipling Lewis) or Chess18 https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/34852/chess480-why... https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1crd700/thoughts_on_...
Or to Really Bad Chess (2016) by Zach Gage?
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the exact mechanic from standard chess The mechanic for standard chess is: (If Rook and King have not moved (and no funny business with pawns promoted to Rook), and none of the three spaces the King is involved with are attacked, and all the spaces between the King and the Rook are unoccupied) King moves two spaces, Rook moves to the space the king passed over. The order is important, at least in tournament play.
Small nitpick: you could replace “no funny business with pawns promoted to Rook” with “and are on their home squares” as there’s no way for a promoted pawn to get to a rook’s home square without moving ;)
Well... if you want to get into really funny business, white could promote to a black Rook on its home square (not valid with current FIDE rules, but older rule sets weren't always specific about the color of the piece promoted to). I don't think you should castle with that Rook, but maybe?
I guess something about being on the squares since the beginning of the game.
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#44The 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 option is bidding with points: player A looks at the position and bids X Or, more simply, player A is shown N random positions, picks one of them and lets player B pick the color.
Or you just run things like duplicate bridge. Everybody plays the same set of randomized boards.
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#45I don’t personally think reducing draws would improve the game at all
Isn't the argument something about how grandmasters are incentivized to play it safe to a draw much of the time, which results in less interesting games?
That is the argument that people make, yes, but if you watch top level chess you’d see that’s absolutely not the case. In the current age of computer prep a lot of games involve extremely sharp lines where one side will make some kind of positional or material sacrifice quite early to secure an imbalanced position based on computer preparation and then the whole game revolves around whether or not they can convert the subsequent advantage in initiative. Removing draws from the game would mean there is absolutely no incentive to ever sacrifice material, making adventurous attacking play a strictly losing strategy at the highest level, to the obvious detriment of the game in general.
Secondly, at other levels one of the most important things is always whether a player can show enough sustained technique to convert some advantage and there’s always a chance for the person who is behind to swindle some draw if the guy who’s ahead can’t do this. This sort of a change would make that conversion technique somewhat irrelevant. The person ahead could just turtle up and guarantee themselves a win.
I know for a lot of people having draws in a game is very unsatisfying to some spectators[1], but the existence of draws in a game changes the strategy a lot meaning a player who is ahead has to press their advantage in order to secure the win and not allow a late heroic rearguard defence to secure a draw. That is (in my view) generally good for the game.
[1] I am a big fan of cricket and this is a common criticism of the game from folks who don’t like it.
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#46How does this work? Do players secretly choose their starting positions, or are the starting positions randomly determined?
I think the idea is that you'd play with a chess engine that randomizes the positions for each player.
I suppose, if you do not have a computer (or do not want to use it) then you might use dice to make the decision. (You can use d20 good enough, that there are 18 possibilities, and if it is 19 or 20 then roll again. Opponent then does the same with their pieces, too.)
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#47Chess and Go are very different in that one is for points and the other is for annihilation. However, Go solved the draw (and first player advantage) with 'komi'. Giving white (the second player) some extra points, I think it's usually around 6.5 points right now. The amount that komi should be is still up for debate and changing, though I think everyone agrees the half portion is good. Though stronger players can no…
Chess 960 was done to address memorized openings and,to a certain degree,the issue of draws. But Chess960's castling mechanism is totally unintuitive. So, Chess 744 was born. The exact mechanic (rook moves to king and king swings behind it) from standard chess is used and all of chess 960's setups that had a rook and the king in a corner were removed. This website goes into detail. There is no better method, IMHO, of…
Could you add a diagram showing how castling works in this?
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chess 960 was done to address memorized openings and,to a certain degree,the issue of draws. But Chess960's castling mechanism is totally unintuitive. So, Chess 744 was born. The exact mechanic (rook moves to king and king swings behind it) from standard chess is used and all of chess 960's setups that had a rook and the king in a corner were removed. This website goes into detail. There is no better method, IMHO, of…
Could you add a diagram showing how castling works in this?
I can later (short on time this morning), and I plan to add diagrams to the website and a video discussing it.
Basically, the rook, assuming the spaces are open and he and the rook havent moved, either moves adjacent to the king (if he isnt already adjacent) and the king moves two spaces around him.
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#49So, this website introduces Chess 744 and addresses the confusing castling issues of Chess 960. Basically, we removed the Chess 960 setups with rook and king in a corner and then used the exact mechanic from standard chess. Rool moves to king (if not already adjacent) and then king swings behind the rook. Here is the site - along with a designated setup for each calendar day. https://sites.google.com/view/chess-744/t…
> the exact mechanic from standard chess The mechanic for standard chess is: (If Rook and King have not moved (and no funny business with pawns promoted to Rook), and none of the three spaces the King is involved with are attacked, and all the spaces between the King and the Rook are unoccupied) King moves two spaces, Rook moves to the space the king passed over. The order is important, at least in tournament play.
Thanks for pointing that out. I will definitely have to reword a few things on our site. Maybe the same 'essential' mechanic, or something to that effect.
The king could still move the same two squares in the direction of the rook, but it might mean that the space is sometimes occupied by the rook or you may be simply jumping over the rook.
Re: Chess324 – A Chess Variant to Reduce Draws
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Small nitpick: you could replace “no funny business with pawns promoted to Rook” with “and are on their home squares” as there’s no way for a promoted pawn to get to a rook’s home square without moving ;)
Well... if you want to get into really funny business, white could promote to a black Rook on its home square (not valid with current FIDE rules, but older rule sets weren't always specific about the color of the piece promoted to). I don't think you should castle with that Rook, but maybe? I guess something about being on the squares since the beginning of the game.
Yeah but now you’re following a path the rules don’t allow so it’s not really necessary :-p