Chess 960 improves evaluation?!

I've been trying to work on my ability to evaluate positions and I'm thinking that perhaps 960 is a good try at this especially at my level. By ensuring different imbalances from the very beginning of the game I feel that the training in this aspect starts from the very beginning and that the end analysis might be even more instructive. Perhaps this targets evaluation more than classic chess.

I think exercises (say # games/week) with this would be beneficial in certain aspects of the game and by no means believe that it can improve your game without the correct number of classic chess games to compliment it.

Of course the numbers of how many games is healthy for one's chess seems to be very subjective.

What are your thoughts on this matter?

I would think it would help with evaluation. You can't rely on memorization with opening theory as each game has a different start position. This will force you to think more before each move. Looking at the board to know where your pieces and your opponents pieces are placed. How it would be best to push your pawns and develop pieces. What are the advantages and disadvantages.

It should help if you're playing longer time controls and analyzing your games. As it would be if you did the same for standard chess. How many games you should play depends on how it affects the quality of your games. Whether you have enough time for each game and to analyze those games. As for the correct ratio of games, it would depend on playing enough of both to see improvements.

It seems that we agree.

There are usually more inherent weaknesses in the positions so my opening usually revolves around a correlation of attacking them, developing my pieces and fighting for control of the center. I'm sure there is much to be improved on my Chess960 opening play but it is really interesting seeing how people protect themselves from the perdicaments of their given position.

By the way, I can't find a way to analyze my Chess960 games using the chess.com computer other than on the phone app. Is there a way to do this on the computer site?

I'm not sure about chess.com evaluation but be very careful about taking computer evaluations seriously with Chess960. Quite a few positions are so unusual that both human players and computers biased to standard chess struggle with evaluation. In my experience, Stockfish is the best evaluator of Chess960 by a significant margin. When I'm studying a 960 position I usually estimate my own evaluation and find that more often than not Stockfish agrees as if it had better human eyes. This is both because Stockfish is a more generic engine, and because it sees deeper and more quickly. Both Houdini and Komodo are both specialists at standard chess and their evalutions in Chess960 suffer as a result. That is why Stockfish is the current leader in the CCRL competion for Chess960 (http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404FRC/)

Awesome. Thanks.

I find it peculiar that the peak ratings for 960 are higher.

It looks like Stockfish has a Chess960 Elo of 3474.

That's actually an interesting topic. 

When you evaluate bizare positions in chess, perhaps even some that you haven't seen before in classic chess if you are an inexperienced chess player (e.g. some of the crazy positions resulting from the dutch), do you feel that your response is factored by intelligence or by chess knowledge?  I personally believe it to be the latter. I feel like there is still too much in common for there to be a huge difference as far as how you go about evaluating a position with one or the other. Your chess knowledge would still dictate the choices you make and I feel this becomes way more evident as the game goes on and the players get to build their positions around what the board is telling them. The reasons intelligence doesn't play a huge factor in classic chess, namely intuition, still hold true for the most part in Chess 960 in my opinion. As far as even players go though, in terms of ratings, I can see how a noticable difference in intelligence might actually be one of the deciding factors.

I'm glad you brought this up.

I can understand how people get stronger in chess by memorizing positions that have commonly occured during their games of classic chess but I digress. Let me talk about my thought process on what seems to be an evaluation vs intuition topic. Evaluation is the more appealing aspect to chess in my metality because it seems to fall into the realms of "scientific theory" if you will. Perhaps it could even be dubbed as more computer-like chess, which would seem to require an absured amount of mental capabilities. Intuition is a less appealing but most likely an even bigger factor of one's chess prowess. I find this less appealing because I think it is harder to link this to intelligence in my opinion.

By taking random positions to evaluate and find a plan, I feel like you are simply using another tool such as tactics trainer to sharpen the related subject. The more advanced you become at chess the more this tool loses value most likely and of course tactics trainer far outlasts chess 960 as far as that is concerned.

I welcome feedback on my opinions as I really enjoy debates of this nature.

you get 1800 blitz rating without intelligence. That means you are a cheater.

No well knowledged player say ,"Chess is not game of intelligence, it is language"

Basically, how I see it, is just like bb-gum. In chess960 there are a lot more types of evaluation questions that can be asked that will never crop up in old chess. So if you are only interested in old chess, there is nothing to gain from studying 960. For me personally, I value adaptability, flexibility and greater diversity of types of positions, so playing Chess960 is a no-brainer for me, it is much more interesting without all the work memorising openings.

I figured that stick with classic chess would be the theme for the replies but thought this to be somewhat intriguing and worthy of a debate and exploration.

I deleted it because it was a bad example of the point about evaluation. This thread is about evaluation which is different to strategising. 

Here is the position again black to play and white has castled O-O-O:

It's a bad example because this position is highly strategical, less need to evaluate. A better example would have a lot more balance in it for both sides and a variety of different possible strategies. Chess960 is full of them but in this example, I'd say it is just simply black to win.

There is evaluation in the position above, largely to do with king safety. If black can ensure his king is safe where it is, white is going to be in trouble as you have already started to see.

Ok, maybe I was wrong, maybe it is a good example of evaluation? White looks nice and organised! The thing I do like about the above example is something you don't see in old chess, black is at an advantage because he hasn't committed his knights yet! (at least that is how I see it).

Here is for me a much more difficult evaluation:

White to play no-one has castled:

Incredibly, the best Chess960 engine in the world thinks that black has a better position by nearly 1/2 a pawn! How is that?

Thinking about whether Chess960 helps with evaluation, I haven't played old chess in nearly five years, I think I've forgotten how lazy players get in it because they can be comfortably with memorisation and familiarity. In Chess960, evaluation is so ingrained into you by sheer necessity that I think I've underestimated how much easier it becomes through the forced practice 960 requires.

Back to the position above, black has loose pawns on a7, f7 and h7 which white can exploit in only one move, yet Stockfish likes black! Amazing.

The endgame was way more difficult than I thought it would be...

I thought this game involved a lot of evaluation (and blunders of course).

K_brown, I like the position once the queens are exchanged off at move 19 - very unusual to have a knight right in the corner with a bishop that is blocked in both with the enemies pawns and it's own pawns.

bb_gum excellent thoughts there about white's position. I see where you are coming from and in that respect yes black does look to be better.

Yeah, that position is pretty neat.