Comments by MarkThompson

The Mammoth is almost the same as a Giraffe in Congo, except that a Girffe
cannot capture when making a King's move.

'But clearly, Fide chess is approaching a crisis. It could soon be renamed
'Opening Study Chess'. It's becoming ridiculous. I think there are two
ways of meeting this challenge. (1) Follow Capablanca's proposal and
increase the board size, or (2) introduce a form of drop-chess along
Burmesian lines, as my own proposal Swedish Chess.'

I think there is an option (3), or at least (2b), which is what I've
called 'Mercenary Chess'. Let us start a world CV organization that
maintains a catalog of pieces, perhaps a bit less inclusive than the
Piececlopedia, but with a price for each piece, measured in points. (The
organization should have some system for monitoring the empirical value of
different pieces based on their observed usefulness in tournament play, and
adjusting prices periodically based on what they learn.) Each player starts
with 1000 points, or perhaps it should be 100 points per file on the
rectangular board chosen, and the players start the game by alternately
purchasing their starting pieces and dropping them on the board. Such a
system would be amenable to handicapping, by giving one player a few more
points than the other. Equal players might decide to give Black a few more
points to compensate for moving second.

This idea has been proposed in various forms by several people. I think I
heard that Bob Betza was first, calling an idea very much like this one
'Generalized Chess.'

I'm not convinced that these tournaments really identify a 'best player
in the world' (most of the time), or even that there is such a thing
(most of the time). If you were to apply statistical theory to the results
and calculate a confidence level, I doubt that the hypothesis that
'Kramnik is better than Topolov' would get anywhere near the 95%
confidence that's considered standard for scientific purposes.

Would it make sense to put a filter on the comments to disallow messages
with the subjects 'Bill', 'Hillary', and 'Bush'? If it's a robot
spamming us this way it might not be smart enough to adapt.

I love the idea of buying pieces for each game, and wish someone would
implement this on a server. (Wouldn't that be a terrific attraction to
add to the growing gamesmagazine-online website, for instance!) That's
the only idea for a CV I've ever heard that would actually merit being
forecast as 'the future of Chess.' 

The piece values and the players' budgets for hiring their armies would
have to depend on the size and shape of the board, right? And probably on
the relative strength of the players -- one thing that strikes me as
especially appealing about this concept being its usefulness for
handicapping.

I rather doubt that we're going to address the problem of the future of chess. It will either evolve into something new and worthy without anyone's planning it, or it will go softly into the night as checkers and bridge seem to be doing.

The chief problem chess faces, in my opinion, is Scrabblization. By this I mean that chess has become a game like Scrabble, in which an enormous amount of rote memorization has become almost as important, or perhaps even more important, as strategic and tactical intuition -- and this is especially so for one making the move from casual amateur to serious tournament player. Like lovers of checkers and bridge, experts who have invested that effort are emphatic that they're glad they did. But that doesn't attract others to follow after when there are plenty of other strategy games without so much 'book' where they can hope to excel just by having a knack. 

This is just my partly-informed opinion based on remarks I've heard from better players, so I readily admit I could be completely off-base -- I'm no expert at chess. But if I'm right, then chess has gone so far down the road  toward Scrabble that, at this point, I'm suspicious that those who are experts have acquired a distorted view of the game during their years of study. Reading whole books devoted to variations on a single line of play, memorizing openings out to twenty moves, is certainly not what the inventor of Chess had in mind.

This is why I think something like the random-array or (better still) the player-selected-army variants are the likeliest future for chess, if it's to have one at all.

'Oswald Spengler writes ...'There is not, and cannot be, number as such. There are several number-worlds as there are several Cultures.... Consequently, there are more mathematics than just one.''

Then for Spengler, what would be the point of discussing mathematics, since what one mathematician says might be true for his culture but not for his audience's? Similarly, to the extent that his idea applies to chess variants, what is the point of having a forum on them? (The underlying philosophical issue, as I recall from my undergraduate days long ago, is expressed succinctly as 'whether truth is one or many.')

I believe Spengler's viewpoint is more popular among sociologists and certain modern philosophers than it is among mathematicians, who tend to be Platonists, at least with regard to mathematics.

I don't think symmetry really shows that both sides start out equal,
though it may give that visual impression. In most CV's one side still
moves first and has an advantage thereby, which may be large or small
depending on the whole set of rules. To compensate for this it might
actually be better to have a somewhat asymmetrical setup -- something
like, if you have a balance scale in which the fulcrum is a bit closer to
one of the pans, then you would NOT achieve balance by putting the same
weights on both sides, but by overloading the side closer to the fulcrum.

I notice most of George Duke's criticisms of Omega Chess are the theoretical kind: weak pieces, low piece density, piece components have been done before, mathematical analysis... But no one understands game design well enough to be able to substitute theory for experiment. It doesn't matter if a game SHOULDN'T be fun according to the Duke Theory, what matters is whether it IS fun. I'm curious about how many games of Omega Chess George Duke has played, and I'd be more convinced by his review if he would cite particulars from those games that led him to consider Omega Chess uninteresting.

The game is long and builds slowly, no doubt about that, but whether that's good or bad is a matter of taste. Some people like movies starring Bruce Willis, others prefer novels by Charles Dickens.

link

This is a real DEATHBLOW to computer-using German people, because it makes no distinction 'between, for example, a password cracker and a password recovery tool, or a utility designed to run denial of service attacks and one designed to stress-test a network.'

What may be worse, 'While making life more difficult for security consultants and sys admins, the new laws will, paradoxically, make it easier for police to use hacking tactics in gathering intelligence on suspects.'

link

Please try to avoid Germany's becoming a totalitarian country. Until this law is rescinded, I promise to drink no more Beck's--nothing but Heineken and Guinness. I hope you'll do the same.

'what conceivable chess piece the millions of serious FIDE players would
accept as a replacement'

If you're seriously asking this, I'd suggest you drop by your local
chess club and find out. Conduct an informal survey. But I predict you'll
be disappointed if you expect more than 10% of them to consent to any
change to FIDE whatsoever, even to play as an amusing variant, and even
those wouldn't want to hear talk about a 'replacement' for FIDE.

I think the next evolution of chess, if it's to have one, will have to
attract players mostly from people who aren't serious FIDE players.

Hey, lay off the early-20th century Indiana Legislature! The bill in
question wasn't their own idea and it wasn't worded as flagrantly as
'pi shall be 3.2', it was the work of a crank mathematician who produced
a long, turgid manuscript of bad results, some of them indeed implying that
pi would have a value other than the true one. He sent it to his local
state rep, describing it as a set of wonderful new discoveries, which he
would graciously allow Indiana to use -- for free! -- if only they passed
this bill. The legislators moved the bill along because it was appeared to
be more trouble than it would be worth to read it, which it doubtless would
have been. A visitor who knew something about math clued them in on it and
they spiked it. But even if the visitor hadn't done so and the thing had
been enacted, no harm would have been done, other than embarrassment to my
fair state's reputation -- which has evidently not been avoided in any
case.