Kasparov: Sofia Rules are "natural" for future WCC matches. Proposes fixed 960 tournaments

[Do it Right]

Originally Posted by KyleJRM82

Forgive me for the slippery slope fallacy in advance, but once people get bored with 960, I look forward to the randomization of win conditions (because technical endgames are solved, boring and just require memoriazation, right)? Then, when the simple tactical patterns are realized to be many variations of the same simple, memorizable themes, we can randomize piece movement too.

I don't think it's people getting bored with classical chess or even that it's getting 'solved through memorization', but that theory is allowing some players to completely dilute the competitive aspect of the game in certain events. The Anand-Gelfand match was a perfect example. Both players were content to roll out 25 moves of theory and go home if their analysis matched. That paired with the fact that both players out of book play showed they were performing at a relatively low level (likely due to mutually poor form) certainly goes to show that they were doing this as some sort of implicit collusion since they both seemed to believe that their best bet of winning was to simply get to the rapid/blitz games.

But it's not like they wouldn't have gone for the jugular if the opportunity arose. Chess 960 in that match would have simply ensured vastly more opportunities for just that since rattling off 25 moves of theory would basically never happen. They would have to be playing on their own from move - what 5? That would create a higher quality competition and also retain what I suspect Kasparov was referring to as the tension of the match.

FIDE is already actively engaged in "rebranding" the world championships after the latest match (http://www.chess.com/news/quotrebran...mpionship-1793). Can you imagine 'rebranding' after something like Fischer-Spassky 72 or K-K 84, etc? The tension of those matches was at a boiling point and kept everybody on the edge of their seat and resulted in an incredibly high level of chess being played.

[KyleJRM82]

The disinterest and dissatisfaction with the last WC match pre-dated the boring play.

Each of the two matches you cited had at least one player who could easily make a credible claim to being the best player in the world, and an opponent who could seem a credible threat or obstacle.

Carlsen-Anand, or even Aronian-Anand, could have played a theory-heavy, draw-heavy match and it would have been received much better than the one that was played.

[Do it Right]

Ahhh but in a way does that not come down to tension? In Carlsen-Anand you'd be looking forward to every game just to see what would happen - an inherent tension. In Anand-Gelfand there was no inherent tension since very few people were particularly interested in what Gelfand would bring to the table BUT the players themselves further exacerbated that lack of tension themselves by also seemingly showing a mutual disinterest in the match. They didn't want to fight - just to casually test each others preparation and then decide the world championship in tie breaks. That brought the match from an inherently low state of tension to basically none. Even the match sponsors seemed to realize this as they all but replaced the streaming coverage with lengthy art discussions instead.

960 would have helped ensure tension in the match. There would be no way to credibly copout of playing. It was never going to be a match to go down in history, but the match itself took it to the extremes and ended up its own punchline. With 960 I'm not sure that would have been possible. Obviously you're not going to turn Anand-Gelfand into Fischer-Spassky, but the idea is to at least make it a match people would be interested in watching.

[EGarrett]

Originally Posted by KyleJRM82

While the fallacy is definitely there, I don't think the difference is as big as you think between the scenarios.

You'll have to show me where the complaints are about the win condition of chess. Because what we're proposing here is addressing a single common complaint, not changing things willy-nilly as you would if you started doing other things to the game.

I'm going to go from fallacy to exaggeration when I say that not one person would ever play Chess960 that wouldn't have also played real chess.

I would. I think you underestimate how important accessibility is to the spread of an activity, no matter how sophisticated it may or may not be. That's one of the reasons why poker is so popular. High school students can play it on a Saturday, and while they CAN study poker books if they wish, it's not an overwhelming requirement, it's more about being aware of the situation in front of you in the moment. At the same time, also, at the highest levels, the mental battle involved is incredibly sophisticated. It's not a "dumb" game by any stretch. I think that's why the phrase "minutes to learn, a lifetime to master" describes so many great games. Low barrier to entry, great depth of strategy. To compete well at chess, studying openings is a significant barrier.

[EGarrett]

Originally Posted by KyleJRM82

And I'm just the opposite (and as we know, these sorts of discussion are really just parallel rationalizations for what we each find to be our gut opinions on the matter).

When the commentator calls out "Sicilian Grunfeld Berlin," what you see as a boring intro to the actual game, I see as the essential flavor.

We know the the game will follow a certain style, with certain goals and certain types of results being likeliest, but still with opportunities for difference. We can see how the old SGB has evolved since some old master, long dead, first discovered a key opening principle and invented it. We can compare it to a rich history of past SGB games, played by various masters past and present. We can even remember the time that we played against an SGB in a club level tournament game with $20 in prize money on the line.

I acknowledge this. The years spent studying and playing chess in the standard position must definitely provide a richness of experience in seeing games that casual fans don't share. What are your feelings about the other thread (if you haven't posted in it yet), about whether chess is fundamentally an academic activity or a competitive one?

A chess game is like a great Tarantino movie. Sure, you can enjoy it for the blood and guys and spectacle, but it becomes a lot more enjoyable if you are steeped in the history of film and understand the shared language the director is trying to portray.

The dominance of Chess960 would strip all that essential history from the game, leaving a hollow shell of what once was. The competition would still be there, and I guess that's enough for some, but I think those people underestimate how much they'd be taking away from the rest of us. It would be the pokerization of chess, and I mean that perjoratively.

Well, if I am a casual fan who is an advocate of 960, and you are a player who has spent years studying the game and gets extra enjoyment out of it because of it, I would have to try to pitch it to you like this.

If 960 were adopted as the "main form" of the game, there would still be a lot of appreciation from certain positions that comes up from experience (like how poker tournament players know short-stack strategy, chess players still know general philosophy in closed-games, certain types of endgames and so on).

We would still have other games to study in different positions, except instead of looking up games by, say Closed Sicilian, you could look them up by position number or even a class of similar positions from the 960 variations. There would probably even still be general theory about each position, there would just be much less of it and much more of "you're on your own" over the board, and more room to try different things you see. There's much more of you in each game and much less of what other people have put there.

Also, there is a lot to be gained from the added appeal and accessibility. With the help of the internet, entire regions of the world could see high-level players emerge simply from their own desire, even if there is a lack of a chess program that finds them in their youth and gets them set studying...similar to how great poker players can pop up almost anywhere now. After every World Championship game, there would be a lot more potential analysis and argument that could be done about the opening strategy used by the players in the position.

The computers would still aide here, but they would lose much of their "end-all be-all" authority for arguments...and I think there's a lot of people who would like that too...as the computers are chopping away inevitably at the traditional game with only a few centuries of time left before they kill the academic aspect completely.

Ultimately also, with more people playing, there is more interest in the game, more eyes on the high-level matches, leading to more advertising and more ability for players to make a living.

I do agree of course that some of the "depth" of the experience for a group of players may be lost, but when we take into account what could be gained, I think it weights more for the change.

[KyleJRM82]

I still think you are massively, massively overestimating the appeal that could be generated.

If you strip the historical continuity away from chess in an attempt to casual players who just want a competitive 1-on-1 game, why would anyone want to play it over, say, Starcraft or poker?