Chess960 is severely misunderstood.

I posted the following analysis in a group thread and got a very positive response from some readers, so I thought I would post it here in the subject-specific forum. I hope you enjoy it.

Chess960 is severely misunderstood. It is not a variant. Rather, chess is a special case of Chess960. You have a one in 960 chance, if you are randomly selecting the starting position, of getting normal chess, which you will then play just as you would in a conventional game. In this respect, chess960 is merely a generalization of chess. As a mathemetician, this is a very familiar construct to me. Just as you can generalize from the integers to the rational numbers, and from the rational numbers to the real numbers, you can generalize chess as chess960. At each level you get an additional infinite set.

Almost all of the criticisms about the unsatisfying "character" of some starting positions and the invalidation of aesthetic considerations are meritless for a few reasons:

1) There is no significant history of serious competitions, so it is not possible to determine how master players with an interest in winning will exploit a given position.

2) Computers are quite bad at openings, but even given that, there have been no serious attempts to analyze the positions. Even if it is impossible to learn very much (relatively speaking) from this kind of analysis, it hasn't even been seriously attempted.

3) People have a very strong psychological tendency to force new information into frames of reference they are accustomed to. People become accustomed to the eccentricities of the "standard" opening position through decades of exposure. In the case of titled players, they may scarcely have any memories that predate their familiarity with the standard opening position, since most have been playing since near-infancy. Furthermore, most of these players have spent many thousands of hours studying opening theory, so they are psychologically predisposed to create reasons to retain a system that rewards that hard work, instead of one that invalidates it 959 out of 960 times. Despite this, some of the top players (Nakamura, et al) thoroughly support 960.

4) Some of the criticisms about chess960 are really criticisms about randomization and its effect on the planning and opening theory that is presumably required to produce beautiful, aesthetically pleasing games. There are two rebuttals to this: a) Aesthetic beauty can be and has been the realm of composers, and the question of whether or not it necessarily belongs in competitions, per se, is an open one. Even so, there are plenty of top level games that are ugly, stodgy, and boring. I think it's likely that these games would actually become more pleasing if opening theory were dispensed with. b) The generalization of chess to new starting positions does not depend upon randomization. I think these two concepts should be separated. The fact that 960 positions can be played does not necessitate that we always select one at random. That is, there is no reason that a 960 championship can not select, one year in advance, a position that will be played at the premier event. Naturally, most other events would adopt that position, and players would develop opening theory for that position over the course of the year. This would reward originality and begin to tell us about the patterns inherent in all similar starting positions. One could even, say, base the opening position on the last three digits of the calendar year. In this way, people could prepare decades in advance. This would be a glorious expansion of creativity in opening theory, and probably teach us a lot about the principles of the standard opening position as well. This kind of selection is done by less demanding games such as Mah Jong, were certain tile sets are selected by the national orginaztion for each year to be included in play by members.

I could go on and on. My point is that most people haven't thoroughly examined this subject before deigning to pooh-pooh something that not only they but everyone knows almost nothing about (because of its sheer combinatorial complexity).

Best regards.

Well said Bauta I agree with almost everything you have said. Randomisation is a deeply logical thing to do. All 960 positions are very playable. Selecting a subset of those positions is merely a socially preferenced but arbitrary set of value based choices full of biases to prefer positions that play and look like chess would. Randomisation cuts through all the bias.

Bobby was a deeply logical chess genuis in everything to do with his life long love of chess. It was an act of genuis to risk his reputation to publicise Chess960 knowing that people would ruthlessly try to find a bad position when he knew there was none. It was also couragous to risk his reputation on randomisation sticking to his realisation that it is the most logical approach that cuts through human bias. I doubt any other player in history would have had the courage or the vision - certainly not Kasparov.

You are a mathematician-scientist. Another reason why people don't like Chess960 is that it uses inductive reasoning when people prefer deductive reasoning in our particular anglosaxon culture. They prefer it because in our culture, deductive theories can be purchased in the market place and consumed. Inductive theories cannot - hence Chess960 undermines the maximisation of profit which is what the chess industry tries to do.

Here are some references for the readers:

Chess960 is not a variant:

• http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess960-chess-variants/could-we-please-stop-calling-chess960-a-variant
• https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/3oo5bc/whats_stopping_chess960_from_becoming_more_popular/

Chess has existed for well over a thousand years with essentially the sme starting position, even though the power of some pieces has changed. Altering the set-up is a variant of historic chess.

All the math in the world will not contribute one iota to game rooted in culture and history. Your argument rests on a false premise that a game can be described mathematically without reference to its origins and traditions. To vary from traditions is what makes Chess960 a variant. It is an alternative way of initiating a game deeply rooted in culture.

The traditional arrangement of the pieces is deeply rooted in the metaphors that give the pieces their names. Hence, when you alter this arrangement, you are changing the culture of chess and the ways that chess reflects the culture of its origins and transmission.

Chess480, not as sexy, not as big, but the truth.

Ziryab, that is a great answer and I agree with you that it is a variant of historical-cultural chess. Where I disagree with you is that is not a reference to chess tradition. In Chess960, every time you walk up to the board - you have to think over the board exactly as the very first players of chess did. I would argue that Chess960 is closer to traditional chess than chess is today.

Also, is there anything wrong with changing culture? It should change all the time. Change is normal.

Also, I think you are implicitily confusing mathematics with culture. It is logically incorrect for a politician to declare that the social past is irrelevant and that we are in a new world order (as Bush did). It is logically correct to select randomisation as the tool for deciding what position gets chosen in a complete set of possibilities. 

Chess was not discovered in nature. It was created and transmitted in culture. When one learns the moves in order to play, one also learns the patterns and logic of the traditional set-up, and also the opening tableaus. By arranging the pieces randomly to excise these tableaus, you have uprotted the game from its culture.

That was Fischer's purpose when he promoted the game. He was singularly lacking in culture despite generally good manners until his madness became too severe.

Everything that Bush and his ilk have declared about the past and its relationship to the present is indefensible. 

David I agree with you. That said, Ziryab has made progress in explaining that Chess960, while not a variant of mathematical chess, is a variant of historical-cultural chess. It is a cultural variation.

Ziryab, I think you are implying that Chess960 is post-modernist. I agree with a lot of the rubbish post-modernism comes up with - but Chess960 is not one of them.

Excuse me if I am wrong but I think you are not a fan of post-modernism and neither am I.

But Chess960 is actually Bobby's honest attempt to return Chess to its traditional origins where players played over the board. Chess960 is actually more traditional than Chess is. The chess game you believe is traditional - no longer exists. It is gone. All that remains is a facade. Players don't play chess like they used to at all.

Bobby Fischer realised that and that is why he said his famous quote that "Chess has been dead already for 200 years". Bobby is thinking of chess going way back before 200 years. He was a supporter of tradition, not a critique of tradition. Chess960 is as close as we can get to those traditional roots.

The other thing that is implied is that Chess960 would destroy tradition somehow. That is a false argument too. Chess still exists after Chess960. All of the games of Chess still apply. Even the reasoning behind chess applies in chess960. Both of them co-exist without any historical-cultural-social loss. You can only understand that when you realise Chess960 is not post-modernistic at all.

The opposition preparation/mind is a false dichotomy.

Zyryab: "Your argument rests on a false premise that a game can be described mathematically without reference to its origins and traditions."

Actually, it can be completely described without reference to its origins and traditions. Computers play chess with eachother all day and people watch. Are you saying that, in fact, computer chess is not chess? And does this mean that people should stop using computers in analysis? Computers analyze chess without knowing anything about its tradition, or even what tradition is, or...anything at all. Obviously, if this is chess, then chess is entirely describable by mathematics. Of course, that isn't what I said at all, it wasn't my "premise," so you're barking up the wrong tree. I was merely making an analogy between the process of generalization from one abstract domain to another.

Also worth considering is that children who can't read and know nothing about the history or culture surrounding chess can play, enjoy, and excel at chess, which means that chess itself is a discrete subject completely separate from those topics. Which brings me to my next point:

Zyryab: "The traditional arrangement of the pieces is deeply rooted in the metaphors that give the pieces their names."

This is a rather ponderous statement, considering that the "metaphors" that give the pieces their names have changed over its history from its Indian origins up to medieval Europe, and that even today the pieces have names that mean completely different things even just in the Western European languages! Jesters, chariots, castles, elephants, runners, messengers, archers, on and on and on. An awful lot of variation for such "deeply rooted" metaphors. But even if your statement were true, it wouldn't have anything to do with the substance of the argument. 

In short, I enjoy the rich history and tradition of chess. It is important and fascinating. But it can be studied by people who know nothing about the actual game of chess, and vice versa. 

I have published scholarly articles that embrace the postmodern in history and literary criticism. A teaching assistant of mine described my approach to United States history in the classroom as deconconstructionist.

I don't really have a problem with chess960, although I play it rarely. However, I find it an interesting variant. I much prefer loser's chess and Seirawan chess as far as variants go. Classic chess is my passion. Variants are useful teaching tools and diversions.

Having said all of that, the mathematical approach set forth by bauta in the original post is compelling. From that point of view, the assertion, "chess is a special case of chess960", is sensible. Hence, I was compelled to point out the deep roots of chess in culture and history, as well as its expression of them.

The soil in which these roots are nourished, however, are not separate from chess. Chess is history as much as it is rooted there.

You are expanding my point with this observation, not refuting it.

It is precisely this diversity across times and cultures that roots chess to history and history to chess.

Your point about computers playing the game without any sense of its culture shows that when chess is reduced to a mere game it can be divorced from culture. However, it then loses much of its interest. 

I agree with Kramnik:

"I think if [a young player] wants to succeed, then it`s necessary for him to pass mentally through all the chess history. I can`t explain this from the position of logic, but in my opinion it`s quite necessary to absorb all the history." Vladimir Kramnik 

Ziryab: 

Your argument was that the metaphors were deeply ingrained within the position and thus immutable. My refutation is that the metaphors themselves are entirely inconsistent, so there is no immutable relationship between their positions and their cultural signifiers. Are you now saying that even though all the metaphors are completely different they somehow match up with the position such that it can not be modified? If so, why can't the converse be true?

Ziryab: "when chess is reduced to a mere game it can be divorced from culture. However, it then loses much of its interest. "

First, you have just conceded my point that, yes, the game and the culture are discrete. Second, where the interest lies is a matter of opinion, and you are entitled to yours. I hope you don't approach your academic duties by conflating "interest" with "relavence." I like baseball and I can tell you some of the greatest players are those with the least interest in knowing anything about the history or culture of the game. Many of them are thoroughly uneducated. It doesn't prevent them from playing excellent baseball. The history and culture are handled by writers and historians and that is important work on its own. Conversely, we don't expect historians to be good at baseball, and we don't pretend that because they aren't good at baseball, they have no business writing about it.

But I won't go on any further about this particular straw-man argument. Expanding a game doesn't invalidate its history or culture. No one is going to forget about traditional chess. It has nothing to do with the arguments I presented. Has the navy's rich history and culture been destroyed because there are now submarines in it? It is a preposterous notion that I don't see any evidence for. In fact I'm sure there are infinite ways that future authors could document the cultural and aesthetic shift to a wider chess. People often mistake a failure of imagination for the end of history.

I'm not saying that 960 is necessary, unavoidable, or even necessarily good. I'm just saying it is misunderstood.

DavidIreland3141: "Learning Mathematics, they took us through the evolution of mathematical  thinking over the last several hundred years. It did provide perspecive, doesn't mean it was the best way to teach current knowledge."

I agree with you. This is a great point. It's nice to learn the history. It is interesting and rich and rewarding. But ultimately, a square is a square. An imaginary number is an imaginary number. You don't have to know a single thing about it beyond its definition to be on equal footing with any mathematician. I find Pythagoras fascinating. But the fact is I don't have to know one thing about him to fully understand and apply his famous theorem about right triangles. And it burns me up that people who aren't interested in math make unfounded assumptions, full of hubris, that buttress their belief that math is some kind of hollow bean-counting without aesthetic or humanistic value. They use phrases like "merely mathematical." Math is just about the most elegant and perfect product of human intellect. Pursued purely out of curiosity, it has paradoxically created the modern world. I don't discount history, or literature, which I read avidly, or indulge in my ignorance of those topics, so why do people think they can proudly declare their disinterest and disdain for mathematics and presume to pontificate on what it can and cannot accomplish or describe?

16  Math is just about the most elegant and perfect product of human intellect.

Litterature could be equal in elegance, adding the heart and human feelings in Camus or Kierkegard intellect, it gives the top of intellect, Medal Field okay,top, and with words it is >>.

I love Fermat theorem, few words, three lines, I love more the demonstration : a whole book with plenty of magic words, and pictures, fascinating are WORDS used in mathematiques : congruence, fractal,ellipse ....WORDS!

Demonstration can be false or true, the book is magic. 

Concerning 960, they are 960   X more powerful than regular chess. Too many money, studies, russian haegemonia, INSTITUTIONALIZATION in classic chess to let 960 be THE 1st legal RULE OF CHESS. 100 years more, sorry Bobby. 

The earth rotates around the sun, this is obvious and needed 2300 years to be admitted, letal risk involved for Galileo !

I believe bauta is incorrect on 2 of his points.

Point number 1 & Point number 4 which I have highlighted in red text.

I can refute point number 1 with a mere sentence.

The way a Master player will exploit a given position is the same way they do any other game by attacking the weaknesses.

As for point number 4.

The idea you can not have opening theory in Fischer random chess is rather redicilous is it not?

There are only 960 ways the pieces can go.

A person can look at the 960 ways and than start adding theory to them?

Opening theory is a set of moves you plan to play in the opening.

Some lines in chess have 3-4 moves as a starting position.

Are you saying a person can not try and do same approach to 960 chess?

Fischers idea was to create Fischer random as a way to side step a persons preparation.

However, you can not prevent theory!

+1  

960 give incredible acrobatic positions after only two three moves, with no knowledge of routines for both players to cope with. just unbelievible; it is almost impossible to play automatically, as we can see on regular, and it is really more attractive AT THE BEGIN the suspense starts. For the beginners, they have to be immediately without the feeling of a certain safety. For big masters, they have the choice to dedicate their life to Grunfeld, or to open mind a maximum, more, and face pbs not on 21th moves, but start. 

960 is the future, no doubt about it.

surely not 

if we coud dare some comparizon, we'd said Glenn gould playing 99% BACH is interesting, Horowitz playing everything Bach and Liszt and Chpin etc ....seems more attracting, Barenboim bing AND pianist AND dirigent is >>. 960 are to chess what Barenboim is at Gould. 

yes

X_PLAYER_J_X:

I think perhaps you misunderstand me. My point (1), about master players exploiting different initial positions, was to argue against the notion that some people have proposed, which is that many 960 positions are inherently bad, obviously unbalanced, or will lead to ugly games. My point was, there is simply no evidence to support those allegations, because we have not seen a lot of very good players play them. When we have, those players can demonstrate and explain why or why not those positions are unsound or horribly unbalanced. Then we can argue about it. It took decades to demonstrate that certain opening lines were unsound. It will take some time to determine the character of 960 opening positions. But it is certainly premature to ridicule their validity with almost no data.

As for the other point (4), I think you are in complete agreement with me. I do think that opening theory can be developed, and I think that some people who are fond of opening theory want to attack 960 for precluding it, when I think that is not an indispensable feature. Inasmuch as theory refers to principles rather than rote memorization, it is certainly possible. Beyond that, detailed lines from specific opening positions are possible and could be developed as I outline in my original post.

I do not see how I misunderstood you?

Master players exploit positions by attacking the weakness.

If no weakness exist in the position, they try to create/provoke weakness.

Than they go back to attacking the weakness.

I do not see any connection between a master exploiting a position and the other factors you listed.

You say people claim 960 chess positions are inherently bad, unbalanced, or ugly games.

You say they have no evidence to support the above allegations which may or may not be true.

However, What support or evidence do you have that says there is a connection?

I will give you an example of what I mean.

I will use one of the things you listed "Ugly Games"

Now what is the connect between a concrete chess principle with a visual appearance?

For example:

A master player can attack a weakness and yet the game could still look ugly. lol

When a person says they think the game is a "Ugly Game"

It is a visiual opinion lol.

How do you expect to change there opinion?

Your agrument is a little silly because you are saying a master player can exploit a position which is a Sexy Game or Ugly Game.

However, lol that really doesn't matter?

You know I am not trying to laugh.

I don't want to be rude or anything but your stance is a little funny.

Like I could say the opinion I love the color green and hate the color pink.

Than you could ask me what supporting evidence do I have to show I hate the color pink.

Than I could show you a picture of my closet were my T-shirts are and you will see no pink T-Shirt which will be my supporting evidence.

I mean techinically speaking they could do the same thing.

They could say the games are ugly and the supporting evidence they will use is the fact they don't play any Fischer random games.

You know I have a feeling you need to rethink your stance on this position.

Tackle the beast from another vantage point maybe.

If you want them to change there mind on the games being "Ugly"

Than show them "Sexy" Fischer random games.