Article on Seirawan Chess

Just curious what members here think of this version of chess. Has anyone played this? What are your thoughts?

Article was found at this website: http://www.langleychess.com/resources.aspx/#why_s_chess

  The idea of adding pieces to chess is hardly new. “Chancellor chess”, which introduced a rook-knight on a 9x9 board, was proposed in 1889 by Ben Foster, an American. The rook-knight (as the “Centaur”) apparently dates back to 1617. The bishop-knight has a long pedigree as well, and in the 1920s Cuban World Champion Jose Raoul Capablanca proposed “Capablanca chess”, adding both pieces (the “Chancellor” and the “Archbishop”) on a 10x10 board.

The motivation behind all the proposed reforms of chess have been the same – rather than becoming a test of skill, imagination and creativity, chess had become a matter of knowledge and technique. Capablanca’s pessimistic view that chess was “played out” some 80 years ago¹ was shown by the subsequent development of chess to be premature and unjustified, although in retrospect Capablanca was prescient and his views were hardly deserving of the ridicule they received. The feeling that chess was played too much by rote has been shared by many players for many years.

With the advances and elaboration of opening theory and the advent of the internet, databases and chess-playing computer engines, Capablanca’s intuition has been vindicated, just as it has been in so many of his games. At the highest level, new moves are seen only after 20, 25 or more theoretical moves are played, if they are seen at all. A player who knows the theory of an opening will beat a player who doesn’t. Preparation and memorization count for more than skill and ability. Players no longer have to work things out, even before the game – computers will do that and the player’s job is to memorize the results.

Many players, especially younger players, quit chess not because they no longer enjoy playing, but because there is so much emphasis on studying and memorization that they can’t afford the time to keep up with those few players who do study intensely. For kids, chess becomes too much like school, and for adults chess becomes too much like work. From being a interesting, challenging and social game, it becomes a burden.

Prohibiting adjournments (so that computer analysis can’t be used for ongoing games), faster time controls in tournaments (to pressure players into making mistakes) and other stopgap measures can’t fully revive chess. What is needed is something new, to put players on their own resources again and allow them to experience the joy of discovering new aspects to an ancient game.

Capablanca almost had it right, but the variations of chess proposed to date have had the significant drawback of requiring an expanded board. This creates several problems.

From the theoretical point of view, the size of the board affects the relative value of the pieces, the most obvious example being that a larger board decreases the power of the short-range knight and king relative to the other pieces. Pawns also can’t come to grips with the opposing forces as readily, and the pawn structures familiar to experienced players disappear. Conceptually, an expanded board throws out the baby with the bathwater.

From the practical point of view, an expanded board means that existing boards become obsolete and have to be replaced. In addition, more pawns are needed. This makes upgrading existing sets much more cumbersome and expensive, and creates an unnecessary barrier to the acceptance of the improvement.

“Seirawan chess” does not require a new set or board – only four additional pieces. The game starts as a normal chess game. The players will not be disoriented. But the placement of the pieces on squares vacated by the existing pieces changes the game and creates innumerable possibilities which render all existing opening theory open to reexamination and opens up many new possibilities as well. Players who understand the principles of opening play will do well, while players who rely primarily on memorizing variations will find themselves in trouble. For the foreseeable future, computers won’t be part of the game and human thought will once again be essential to understanding the game. We won’t know all the answers, whether in the opening, middle game or endgame.

Seirawan chess, by introducing two new pieces, makes chess fun again!    
(¹) For example, Capablanca was quoted in the Charleston Gazette on February 12, 1928: “In chess today everything is known to great players. There are no new moves, no new tactics to consider. If the game is to grow it will have to be modified.”

"For the foreseeable future, computers won’t be part of the game"

This is true so long as you can't foresee beyond about a week. It would take no time for computer programmers to integrate the new pieces into existing programs. The increased search space due to the greater number of moves mean the computers wouldn't search to the depths they currently do, but in principle these pieces are not different from existing pieces. Computers would be exploiting dazzling new tactics before humans could even think of them. 

Has anyone seen Chess^4?  I have a Chess^4 set and we've found that it's at least four times as complicated as conventional chess (I'd say much more than that), and it's great to be able to play team chess because if you have two experienced players (although experienced players of regular chess may find the differences  harder to get used to) and two inexperienced players, because each stronger player can team up with a weaker player.

When my brother and I were younger (he was around 7 or 8 and I was closer to 11 or 12), we used to play an interesting version of chess which we invented and which can be played with any chess set and board.  In our version, the pawns are set up normally, but each player is free to set up his/her back rank however he or she wants to.  This can lead to some very interesting situations-especially if one or both players set both their Bishops on the same color, making it possible to double Bishops to form a battery (much like Rooks), but making it impossible to use two Bishops in tandem to hem the opposing king in during the endgame.

Was there a rule for adjusting your setup once you saw you're opponent's?

On further consideration, I wonder what argument there is to be made for Seirawan chess over Fischer Random Chess / Chess960. The latter is so highly variable that it would probably defy any attempt at useful memorization of openings by a human player, thus keeping the game fresh indefinitely.

I happen to think Seirawan's idea is kind of cool, but I don't think it's the best answer to the problem addressed in the article.

By the way, does anyone know why or how Yasser Seirawan chose the names he did for those two pieces? I find it strange that a man who was born in Syria to an Arab father assigned the name "elephant" to a piece that sometimes moves like a rook, when the Arabic word for the bishop piece is fil (elephant). One would think that the hawk would move like a rook and the elephant like a bishop. Then again, he started playing chess well after his family left Syria, so maybe the fil thing never took hold in his mind.

I'm for it.

Just imaging the movements of the actual animals, elephants seem like straight ahead movers (I don't picture an elephant changing directions quickly) while hawks give an impression more like a diagonal (when diving).

For those just generally interested in chess variants, check out this site that has hundreds and hundreds:

http://www.chessvariants.org/

Although nothing will supplant chess in my heart, I like variants as well for the new situations they present.

Amy

can't wait to start playing this variant.just bought a S chess set from the house of staunton...I'm wondering how my mates will react to it when I take the set to the club

Given that the game has been out for two years and there is no major database for the game yet, that is perhaps a bit of an overstatement. Computers will certainly get involved, but not until the game achieves more popularity. Which may not happen in the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, I like to think of S-Chess more as the first example for a family of games (X-Chess?). You have some extra pieces that can be dropped into starting squares, but you can change what those pieces are. Someone posted about using the champion and wizard from Omega Chess instead, and Stagerlee suggested adding and amazon (knight + bishop + rook) to the hawk and elephant. Once the concept is accepted, you can start mixing up the sideboard peices, and keep the computers (and memorizers) on their toes.

thanks for introducing me to this very intersting chess variant