Improving One’s Position Is…

I hope the opening poster doesn't play golf.  He'd double-eagle a par 5 and kick himself because he didn't get it in 1.

The further this conversation continues, it seems like Heisman is saying less and less and less, to the point where he is not saying anything about chess that we haven't learned elsewhere.

1. I don't mind. I am a proud member of USCF, with a card and everything. My summer plan was to travel about 120 miles one way this summer to attend the nearest USCF event in Los Angeles. My health and pending pay cut as a California music teacher sadly precluded me from attending this event, so, at this very moment, I am an unrated player. I envy folks in towns rich in chess activity. If there was a club in the tri-city where I live, I'd be there most every night playing OTB and would have had a rating many months ago.

2. I am a college educated man with about 60 chess books that were purchased in under one year, many of which are classics with great depth. This is my new hobby, and with any hobby I've had over my 50 years, I go into it all the way.

3. Would I tell a child that no matter what, "that horn aint never going to sound any better than it does right now".

I've been a band and orchestra teacher for 25+ years and have told children that on numerous occasions!   Yep. I tell them to take the horn back to the music store because even I can't make it sound any better. It's broken!

Unlike chess, playing a musical instrument is not a zero sum persuit. Music behaving like chess would be down right depressing. 

My students experience any one of three possible outcomes:

1. Students play better today than a few days ago because they applied my favorite word - practice. 

2. A brass player is worse than he was a week ago because he did not practice his lip slurs, thus his lip got out of shape and his sound has regressed to that of what we call "toilet tone".

3. The student sadly makes no progress, nor gets worse. This is a common senario for the gifted and talented who rarely practice. They get lazy.

Steiner

If I had those eyes, I would say yes, it does make Kasparov's game worth less because Topalov started losing the game, likely on turn 1 when he failed to play a dynamically equalizing move to Kasparov's 1. e4 or 1. d4. Kasparov didn't win the game, because if he was facing best play, he would have drawn or lost. Topalov lost the game is only fair judgment. The fact that Kasparov won in dramatic fashion only highlights the dramatic degree to which Topalov blundered from the very beginning.

I do play golf and once eagled a par 4. I drove the green and sunk a downhill 35 footer with a slight right to left break for a 2!  I marked the ball and have it in my trophy case. And no, I didn't kick myself for not making a double eagle on that hole. Now that would have been awesome.

thumps up for your article, great post...

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This has been an interesting exchange of ideas. Too often it seems, forum discussions turn into personal attacks and personal challenges. This has been refreshing.

I agree. It's been a healthy and polite exchange of ideas. The experts that have posted, and I'm not one of them, have presented outstanding arguments. Thanks!

Hi!

See http://www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles358.pdf

"Steinitz, Zermelo, and Elkies"

Every time I broach this subject I get arguments (despite, or maybe because of the fact that it is a theorem proven via game theory about 100 years ago), so I enlisted the help of Harvard math professor and USCF master Noam Elkies :)

I also brought it up in my book "Elements of Positional Evaluation".

- Dan H

The reason you get arguments is because you are looking for them -- You link your generally clear expository prose to what is an obfuscatory and essentially false point.

You explain midway thru your article that when you say the "position" cannot be bettered you mean "position" in a specialized sense -- of course the position can bettered in the sense of more mobility or better king safety you say -- what you mean is the evaluation of the position. A position can be assigned a value +1 (win) 0 (draw) and -1 (loss) ... this evaluation (if there were anyone or anything actually capable of giving it) does not change unless someone makes a mistake.

This is not really a difficult point. (And as I've mentioned in earlier posts, it is at bottom a tautology: "Correct evaluation is correct." ) It only becomes difficult when in this one small section of your article you hazily refer to "evaluation" and in the rest of the article you insist on refering to the "position" and "improved positions." This use of 'position' is misleading but it allows one to formulate the shocker: you can't improve your position.

Now you sit back and shake your head at the poor nummies who don't get it, and you wave around the names of academics for whom the points being made here are about as challenging as counting to ten with your fingers. It all strikes me as fundamentally insincere.

By the way I've been (and still am) a band/music teacher too; almost 30 years.  Teach/taught Jazz Band, college music theory and history,  jazz arranging and improvisation...And, I still disagree with your basic premise. Sorry, but I do :)

The reason evaluation cannot be improved is that the evaluation already incorporated the move (or moves) that improves the position. If it were the other side's turn in an identical position, the evaluation would likely change significantly.

I had my suspicions raised with the name polydiatonic. I'm still not sure what it means when those two words are made into one. I know what the words polyphonic and diatonic both mean, but polydiatonic?

Oh my! You have the job I would love to have at this stage in my life! I had a great time at North Texas State University (now UNT) back in 1978-1982. I played guitar in the 3 O'Clock Lab Band and greatly enjoyed the teachings of Dan Haerle, Jack Peterson and Rich Matteson. I received a jazz arranging scholarship funded by Henry Mancini from Leon Breeden - the founder and director of the largest jazz program in the U.S. at the time.

Dan Haerle taught a great class on jazz music theory and improvisation. I still have his books.

Jack Peterson taught jazz guitar and I played in his jazz guitar big band - 5/5/5 plus bass and drums. I started out in the band covering the first trombone part - reading bass cleff! I graduated to the sax section where the lines went by very fast.

I first met Rich Matteson in 1976 at a Stan Kenton Jazz Clinic in Sacramento, California. Rich was playing his euphonium in a classroom with me and a few others hanging around and he played some melodies that were foreign to my ears. I asked him what he was doing as I had my ear pressed up against the bell, and he said he was playing Bebop. Well, that forever changed the course of my life!

I went twice to the Stan Kenton Jazz Clinic and had my own big band arrangements played and recorded by his band as I directed. All students had this opportunity to have their charts played. It was so cool and I still have the recordings.

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I see NM Dan Hesiman made a post.

@musikamole -- Oh my! You have the job I would love to have at this stage in my life! I had a great time at North Texas State University (now UNT) back in 1978-1982. I played guitar in the 3 O'Clock Lab Band and greatly enjoyed the teachings of Dan Haerle, Jack Peterson and Rich Matteson. I received a jazz arranging scholarship funded by Henry Mancini from Leon Breeden - the founder and director of the largest jazz program in the U.S. at the time.

Dan Haerle taught a great class on jazz music theory and improvisation. I still have his books.

Haerle's Aebersold play along cd's are my favorite -- I know they're just compositions for student play along, but I really like them! He seems great. (i flail at jazz guitar... another happy dilettante playing bad chorus after bad chorus with Aebersold cds.)

It's obviously a draw with perfect play   considering the drawing margin of endgames, it takes a special case where the equivalence of a fraction of a pawn is enough to carry a win.  This is already known.

The first move advantage is not worth as much as a pawn, this is also obvious and already known.

I think we can already come to a conclusion quite easily.  Can we prove it by mapping every possible game?  No.  Is it unproven but obvious?  Yes.

Steinitz wrote, "In fact it is now conceded by all experts that by proper play on both sides the legitimate issue of a game ought to be a draw, and that the right of making the first move might secure that issue, but it is not worth the value of a pawn" (The Modern Chess Instructor, xxxi).

Although 32 piece EGTBs do not yet exist, and even if they could be generated, there are not enough atoms in the universe to store the data, Steinitz's assumption remains credible in the absence of a final solution to the game. Computers have worked out all possibilities of tic-tac-toe, as have most ten year olds that enjoy the game. We know that tic-tac-toe is a draw with best play; we believe that chess is as well. Hence, the best move simply maintains the equilibrium.

It is not depressing that I cannot improve my position, but it is worth knowing. The theory is simple and yet seemingly beyond comprehension (there is certainly plenty of evidence that not everyone comprehends the point here). In practice, one has a simple philosophical decision: should we begin a game knowing that one of us can win only if the other plays miserably? Steinitz offers a practical observation:

"Both parties are placed on a perfectly equal footing on starting, as regard the forces and their respective powers, and the same rules regulate the movements or actions of the combatants. It is, therefore, purely a battle of the reasoning qualities that decides the issue in a game of chess" (The Modern Chess Instructor, xxvii).

Let's reason together, and when I make a subtle error that causes your emotions to thwart your reasoning capacity, leading to a more serious error, I will prevail. If not, we will draw.

Even accepting the (unproven, but seemingly likely) assumption that correct play on both sides leads to a draw, it doesn't follow that we cannot make moves that improve our position. Correct play may (and likely does) consist in making moves that improve one's position.

Black's position is worse than it was at the start because he made mistakes by moving his knights back and forth. White's position has improved only because Black failed to develop, not because White developed.

I think this is a misunderstanding. Relative to your opponent, your position doesn't become any more superior to theirs (with perfect play!), but this isn't because neither side isn't improving their position (keep in mind, here by improving the position I mean getting the pieces active, gaining space etc, which is not what the original position features). It's because both sides are improving their position at the same pace, when white may maintain his opening advantage but nothing more.

Depends on your point of view. You could argue that it's not that black's position got worse, it's that white's position got better while black didn't similarly improve, making his position more inferior to white's than it was at the start. So relative to white's position, black's position got worse, but objectively, black is just as underdeveloped as he was on move one.

Yes, you seem to define improving one's position as not actually improving it, just making it more superior to the other side's position. Correct? I think many people are talking about the position itself getting better or worse. If black had played correctly no side's advantage or disadvantage would increase, but that's not because neither side strategically improved their position, it's that they both did equally.