Alternatives to Classical Chess

castling in 960 makes the middle-games post-castling having the same geometric structures of king target placements and standard games.. so the initial omelette that got dropped from above in the obligatory random setup 960, is just a limited duration torture.

What is hard to figure at first is the dynamic pattern, how to clear the bakcrank to allow the castling.
I think one has to imaging the result either standard OOO or standard OO. those spaces have to be cleared first.

It it really very similar to standard. But it is like a nuclear solution to the problem of tournament standard with the long narrow tunnels memorization of moves sequences strategy (the social competition game layer strategy that is).

nuking context repetition stability for all human learning purposes, does the job, but it also kills the practical value of learning about middle plans (before castling for example) postional configurations that could be associated to position informed earlie descisions (not move to move seqeunces).

The existence itself of 960 possible chosen setups for 2 or 4 games set is enough to make that fastforward tree exploration, to be not a very rewarding tournament layer strategy. I suggest but also ask. would that not be the case?

It would be interesting to acknowledge human learning limits, more often in all things chess.

It seems that preferences are on the side of Chess960. It's also my favorite alternative!

@castalethe said in #20:
> Chess960 isn't really suited for classical time control, because of the randomness it introduces in tournament formats. Although no position is crazily unbalanced, some starting setups give White an even bigger advantage than classical chess, while others are equal. This means that, if starting positions change every game, there could be someone who gets luckier than other players (e.g. always getting the best positions as White and the equal ones as Black), and this would give them an edge.

While it's true that some starting positions give white a slightly greater advantage than the original starting position, the advantage is relatively small. According to the Sesse evaluations, the original starting position gives white a +0.22 advantage. The most unequal Chess960 position gives white a +0.57. I doubt that any player in the world would be able to meaningfully take advantage of this out of the opening.

A greater concern might be the practical advantage that white might have in certain positions (where the position is objectively close but for a human, seems like white has the initiative). I doubt this would be such a big problem at the higher levels of chess, because I'm sure the best players in the world would identify such positions and come up with some level of theory for how to defend as black when these positions arise.

> In order to prevent that, you should have every player play each position both with White and Black... but this means that every player, after the first game, could prepare their second game using an engine in-between rounds, which goes against chess960 spirit.

I don't think there's enough evidence of white having a significantly greater advantage in any 960 position (compared to the original) for this to be a concern.

> The only way to solve the problem is to have shorter rounds (e.g. rapid), so that players can immediately play their second game with the same position after their first one, without having time to prepare for it. But I don't see chess960 as a viable alternative to traditional chess in slower time controls.

I think Chess960 is more suited for slower time controls to allow players to fully take in the complexity and nuances of the positions. Faster time controls give less time to analyze, and analysis is more needed in complex and unfamiliar positions.

@dboing said in #21:
> castling in 960 makes the middle-games post-castling having the same geometric structures of king target placements and standard games.. so the initial omelette that got dropped from above in the obligatory random setup 960, is just a limited duration torture.

Not really. Although it king and rook placements are the same after castling, the other pieces are often in different places, allowing an increased diversity of structures and positions than normal chess. At some point the positions might look like normal chess, but that's after the complexity of the start.

> What is hard to figure at first is the dynamic pattern, how to clear the bakcrank to allow the castling.
> I think one has to imaging the result either standard OOO or standard OO. those spaces have to be cleared first.

True, although in some cases castling doesn't even occur.

> It it really very similar to standard. But it is like a nuclear solution to the problem of tournament standard with the long narrow tunnels memorization of moves sequences strategy (the social competition game layer strategy that is).

Idk if it's that nuclear. Almost everything besides the backrank pieces are the same. Castling is a little different (mainly because of the piece placements), but it's a minor change.

> nuking context repetition stability for all human learning purposes, does the job, but it also kills the practical value of learning about middle plans (before castling for example) postional configurations that could be associated to position informed earlie descisions (not move to move seqeunces).

I'm not sure what you mean here. There is still value to generally understanding middle game plans (or plans in general) as well as different positional themes. But there isn't move memorization and an increase diversity of possible positions and structures.

the random blur is averaging the positional assocations at long term, so your learn tastics really.. or so robust long term plans that they are good no matter what the setup. to get setup specific learning.. some basic psychology of learning might need to be considered.. otherwise 960 is a chasse gardées for those already expereinces in standard chess and looking for something exotic. it will stay on the fringe.

I was also wanting to emphasize the similarity. the deeper the game the less initial position signature. ulitimately no pawn all pieces are reversible movers.. shake it a lot.. you won't remember the initial omelette.

sure other pieces might linger in the back rank. but isnt often development about activating pieces sleeping in the back.. approximately. grosso modol. and also on average random setup.

yes the averaged plan is all that might be learnable at the depth of the peusdo random walk in 960 backranks.

I think we should start being serious about the specifics of intuition building and also theory building. Not just just the alreadey expert. but the learning process.

otherwise 960 is going to be only accessible to people who already master some standard.. exotic to them, noise to the others (at the many game learning scope).

I have said enough. this post and last are opinionated.. I think if someone if happy with status quo, they will always find arguments.. It is already there... I am going to learn more about endgames.. common to all 960s.

as in standard.. caslting does not have to occur.. i was giving coarse ideas for the ones not familiar.. I won't argue in that direction. I am not 960 expert.. I won't be more than a tourist there.. if some people have really had some human geometric classification work, then i find it interesting. but random gets in the way of that.. people resort to engine evaluations, from engine that backrank agnostic becaues they are exhaustive search desing. calcultatoin machines. I am not interested in calculation. I am curious to learn about standard plans from the stable difference over many games from controlled mutations of the back rank...

eventually i will return to lichess "from position" or find a way to keep some old games that i would find by luck and ask a rematch (it keeps the setup, and lichess don't go fix that). Doing rematch twice gets you back to the same setup and color, if needed.. just have to be lucky to get a good setup that helps contarst some elements of backrank configuration with resprect to stantard. or other 960s .. What if i wanted to just permute some pieces and choses which.. there exist a setup that would have it, how many trials of lichess 960 should i do before having that chance.. Or take any 960. when could i expect to find it back again, so my previous experience is still lingering is some part of memory.. this is where learning at many games level happen.

if not consoligated over human time scale, nascent long term associations and the spurious ones won't be sharped and will fade.

This is so basic.. and so ignored.. not just in 960. We have the extreme opposite of woodpecker which seems to be about move sequence execution optimization (depending on the diversity don'T want to argue that ), clearly that method is based on some time scale of re-exposure as basis of learning. what the objective of learning does not matter.

time proximitiy of contexts to learn from is crucial.. and what about spaced repetition. another basic educational knowledge.

Giving up now.. sorry for my degrading writing skills..

960!
two kings will be disasterous, by the way

@Zane2007 said in #22:
> It seems that preferences are on the side of Chess960. It's also my favorite alternative!

Omg someone from Japan! :D So cool!

Well I'm not sure if players really are in favor of 960, it's mostly weaker players that like it, stronger players rather dislike it. When I was 400 points lower than today I was all about 960 aswell.

I don't know what's the best alternative but it's not the No Castling Chess because it is like the regular chess only worse.

@CheerUpChess-Youtube said in #28:
> Omg someone from Japan! :D So cool!
>
> Well I'm not sure if players really are in favor of 960, it's mostly weaker players that like it, stronger players rather dislike it. When I was 400 points lower than today I was all about 960 aswell.

There are plenty of strong players in favor of 960, including GMs and top players in the world.

Is Levon Aronian a weak player? He says he hopes it replaces the old chess. www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/z5i1qv/levon_aronian_says_he_hopes_fischer_random/

Magnus has spoken highly of it as well.

Bobby Fischer is arguably top 5 of all time and he created it.

I don't think strength is a predictor of your feelings towards Chess960. I think it scales more with your desire to be creative over memorizing openings.