Embarassment and Frustration

#21:

"dear sir,  A cat closed its eye  and told "oh! the earth went dark !!" . I am sorry to say that you  are the cat. open your eyes and ideas. please donot blame the game."

"one who takes a dog by the ears Is he who passes by  meddles with strife not belonging to him."

I'm not heeding the above proberb, but consider your own comments:

"I also fault the fact that this setup is a bit of a fluke to allow someone to get mated in three freaking moves.  I mean, c'mon. How flukey is this set-up?   the moves I made would not have allowed mate in three in normal chess. This outcome really ****** me off...c'mon... three moves for mate, all made by the knight???  ...There's probably hundreds of other people out there that could have made that mistake.  Help me before I say "kiss my ***" to chess960"

Of course the above was edited, but the general tenor of your entire post was "Help me figure out this absurd game."

He was probably just quoting an ancient Indian proverb, not blatantly insulting you.  You could have just responded, "Maybe if I had actually closed an eye it would have helped."

A good idea is to look at the position carefully before you make any move at all in 960. You just can't play the opening automatically there, and generally I think 960 should not be played at blitz speed.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that, while in the standard position every pawn is defended by a piece, and every piece is defended by another piece except for the Rooks, this is is often not the case in 960. So you need to watch for early tactical sorties but among experienced 960 players these don't work and are rarely tried. Generally the opening principles from standard chess can and should be applied in 960. Think about it even in standard chess there is this weak field f7 that is only defended by the King, and there is the Scholar's mate, but we soon learn how to avoid it.

 I would like people to add to the conversation. The tone of the post is that there must be many people who are trying out chess960 but may run into the trap of going on autopilot on their opening, and not consider the initial strengths and weaknesses of the opening position.  Most of us are used to the openings we've studied and instinctively know the strengths and weaknesses of the position of a normal chess board, and when making a transition to chess960, there may be a tendency to fall into a trap like I did with this game.

I want the conversation to add to helping to determine what players should immediately consider in their opening position before making a move.

Please do not post if you are going to make comments on what I should have done, whether literally or proverbally. I know I should have kept my eyes open for what the knight was doing. I admitted that fact in my initial post. And that's the entire point of this thread. How does a player used to chess make a transition to 960?

Add to the thought process or stay out of it.

 Yup. Good point.

Does anyone think of 960 as a purer form of the game?

One of the reasons this game does intrigue me is that there is no way to study openings (which I find tiresome and frustrating). You truly have to rely on your skills in developing pieces and a plan of attack without memorizing lines of openings or studying obscure ideas to throw off your opponent. It seems to rely more on a thorough analysis of the entire game, instead of relying on memory of an advantageous position.

Thoughts?

"Does anyone think of 960 as a purer form of the game?"

I think maybe its a truer form of chess, possibly.  Or at least I'll make that argument for the moment.

As I mentioned previously, virtually every 960 game it seems  there's a a bishop or queen in a corner at the start, meaning an entire long diagonal is controlled after 1 opening move and you virtually never see that sort of long diagonal control so early (if at all) in standard.  OK, you do have fiancetto in standard obviously, but it takes a few moves to get into it, and not everyone does it. [Actually its 67% of the time in 960 - just figured it out.] So in 960 in over 2/3's of the games both players have 1 or more fiancettoed bishops or queens at the very start of the game.

But there will be many other persistent, recurring, extremely common themes in 960 which you virtually NEVER see in standard.  I'm just extrapolating from the example I just gave (considering the existence of other pieces) but it has to be  a provable fact.

correction:  its 75% of the time in 960 (not 67%).    1 - ((4/7)x(3/7))

I learned a few things by having Fritz 8 pick some random start positions, trying to figure out the best moves, and then getting Fritz 8's opinion. 

The positions where Fritz 8 thought white's edge was biggest, there was a rook on one of the center files such that white oppened with e4 or d4 (not the row with the rook) and if black copied, white moved the other center pawn (with the rook behind it).  Conversely, if on move 1, black tried to move the rook pawn, white either took, then attacked the rook, or just pushed the pawn, hemming in a knight.  Probably totally unclear, but the bottom line is I found the excercise interesting.   

ArtNJ, if Fritz 8 will look at a 960 starting config and assess the advantage for black or white you should list the results somewhere for all 960 configs.  (Run a batch file or something).

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Just to continue my idea from #28,  In 1/3 of all 960 configs the two knights start out adjacent to one another.  I wouldn't know off hand how such a configuration would effect the game, but it seems reasonable to assume it will in fact effect the game in a potentially identifiable way.  So iow,  a potential theory for exploiting adjacent opening knights on either offense or defense exists.  And of course that knight arrangement never occurs in  the opening in standard.  So my point would be there would be innumerable recurring themes in 960 not found in standard.  Just pick some identifiable property of an arbitrary opening 960 config (e.g. "two adjacent knights",  "a bishop or queen on a long diagonal", etc.) and even if it doesn't occur in standard, it will occur in a large percentage of other 960 configs.  So anyway 960 - a truer form of chess, let's say.

Atos, I don't know if I should say this but...despite you being a pain at times, I generally agree with your sentiments and how you put them.    That said, please continue to stay away from me.

This kind of suprises is why I like it so much. Start thinking outside the borders. Besides that,laugh about this game.I would have given the opponent a nice trophy for this.

I sense a certain ambivalence here.

Let me help you.  1.  I often agree strongly with your comments and then I notice the irritant who posted them.  2.  I still don't like the irritant. 

looks like Afaf must have a crush on Atos...  isn't that how this works?

Ok flags.  You don't have a crush on me.  you have an unhealthy obsession.  Don't you even know when not to show up? 

Looks like the title of the thread is appropriate after all.

I think 960 will be the eventual rescuer of chess when humans get closer to solving the game, and take away the burden of heavy preparation which will become increasingly dominant. However, to me at least, there seems to be a certain harmony to the starting position of chess as we know it, you know, bishops can be fianchettoed, knigths can develop controlling key squares yet not block the central 2 pawns, bishops & queens having possibility to check the king, and probably a lot of more nuances that I'm unable to tell or notice myself. So, in that sense, I would say 960 isn't the purest form of chess, but the current starting position could be an ideal 960 position.

wait, i don't when NOT to show up.  but, show up whom? is the question. silly jet setter.

stop denying who you love Afaf.  it's showing thorugh the interwebs.

you're so easy to rattle.

philidor_position:

"However, to me at least, there seems to be a certain harmony to the starting position of chess as we know it"

[Not to belabor all this, but no one's forced to read it I guess.]

I wouldn't deny that if [American] football teams were told "You can have one and only one offensive lineup so decide what its going to be once and for all that will be it", I'm sure they would look at it very carefully and decide what is the optimal offensive lineup (spread, split backfield, wishbone, whatever). (And furthermore imagine they were told that the lineup must be symetrical - no unbalanced lines,  3 WR's to one side etc.)

But that wouldn't mean its preferable to have one and only one lineup.  But the standard chess opening may be optimal among symetrical lineups and if you're only allowed one lineup.

"I think 960 will be the eventual rescuer of chess when humans get closer to solving the game, and take away the burden of heavy preparation which will become increasingly dominant"

Don't know if you meant chess or chess960 had to literally be closed to "solved".  To continue my train of thought from #28 and #30,  chess960 should proceed by examining the commonalities among various positions.  So take for example  the game from the OP.  What are some of its attributes:

"Queen or Bishop on Long Diagonal"  - that's 75% of all 960 games

"two knights adjacent"  - thats 33% of all 960 games 

But there are many other properties it has:

"At least two of the same pieces on adjacent squares"

"each rook one removed from a corner square"

"King and Queen not adjacent"

"bishops not  symetrical"

There would be scores of such identifiable properties. Each of the aforementioned properties would also occur with very high frequency in 960 opening positions.

So one way to proceed with 960 theory (in fact I think someone's probably already doing it)  is to study 960 openings with one given property (say, "knights starting on adjacent squares")  and just find the commonality in exploiting such an opening configuration regardless of where the other pieces are.  And there will be some degree of tactical commonality  among all such starting configs.

But the next move would be to take  properties that each occur a high percentage of the time and study openings that have those two properties combined.  So if property A and B on their own each occur 50% of the time, then together they occur 25% of the time in a 960 opening.

But to play a bunch of games in 960 with one specific property would be enough to develop a theory regarding that property (And I'm probably reinventing the wheel, here.)

But this is an entirely different approach than would be applicable in standard chess.  Given any property of the standard chess opening, 100% of all standard chess openings have that property.  So instead it seems 90% of all standard openings have to do with e4 or D4 or one of two knight  moves (or a pawn move for fiancetto).

You lost me at American football.

You mean football960?

I didn't get that far.