spicing up chess with no castling?

[Kirby]

Saw this chess article, which was a little bit interesting to me: https://www.chess.com/article/view/no-c ... -alphazero

I'm not that up to speed with chess news, but the gist seems to be that, with computers being so strong, chess tournaments are getting a little bit more boring. Everyone can play the same openings that they researched with AI, and they play conservatively. There end up being a lot of draws. The author suggests a variant of chess with no castling; basically changing the rules a little bit to spice things up and make things more exciting.

I think it's an interesting idea, but I'm a little skeptical: wouldn't no castling chess eventually have the same fate (i.e. folks would learn what the computers think is the best play for no castling chess, and it'd be a similar situation to standard chess)?

I wouldn't say that we've gotten to the same point in go - I still think games are pretty exciting - even in games where folks play all of the 3-3s first, right at the start of the game. And there aren't draws in go, so I suppose that's different, too.

But I wonder if there's some similar application to go - not that I'm convinced that no castling chess is necessarily going to solve a lot of problems in the long run... What do you think?

[jlt]

Chess: Fischer random chess

Go: Yin-Yang Go

[Bill Spight]

Shogi, anyone?

No castling, no blocked pawn positions, and paratroopers!

[hyperpape]

I read the article as two separate claims, both of which are interesting:

1. No castling chess would feature a wider variety of openings
2. No castling chess prevents a player from opting for a safe "drawish" game

They both matter, but the second one seems the most significant.

Even if there's a set of predictable openings, preventing one player from looking for an easy draw will make for more interesting games. The combination of set openings and draws means that a player can play from their opening book for around 10 moves, then there's just a short window where they have to work to avoid danger, then the game is a draw. The set openings contribute to the problem, but the real worry is that there are just too many early positions that head to draws. Extending the window of danger makes for more suspenseful games.

P.S. I should just say: I'm double-digit kyu level in chess, this is based on reading articles, commentary on a few recent matches, etc.

[Knotwilg]

The more a game reaches the point of being solved, the more boring it obviously gets. Go has made a leap forward but is nowhere near the situation of chess. Even before Deep Blue, I found international chess already problematic in its amount of draws. They "solved" it by going for speed, introducing more randomness and errors in the actual games, which probably reduces the amount of draws but not necessarily in favor of the player who has a better understanding of the game, rather those who perform better under high pressure, not to say the luckier one.

Not knowing much about chess, I don't see how forbidding castling would solve that. It may temporarily bring the chess world back in time, but sooner or later it will catch up, fueled by the bots. Essentially no-castling means less options, so the game becomes even more predictable, just temporarily less researched.

Go too has made an evolution to faster games, but not to induce randomness, rather because of the attention span of the audience, much like Cricket has introduced faster games than the test games which spanned several days.

Go has great potential though: it can expand the board size without affecting the nature of the game. That will throw us back into unfamiliar ground and also increase the number of possibilities. As the centre grows larger, it will restore the balance of corner-sides-centre which we have seen evolving to ever greater importance of the corners.

[lightvector]

Removing options does not necessarily mean the game becomes more predictable, if the options are ones that that players out of self-interest use to *increase* predictablity and safety of their position, in a tactical/strategic way.

A way that no-castling would conceivably help in the long-term would be if it turned out that no-castling games in practice turned out to be much sharper due to the king safety difference, such that draws remained much less likely at high levels even after opening theory re-stabilized.

But it's not obvious how one would be able to measure that in advance for long-term human play (bot evidence would at best be of limited use). And justifications on solely the basis of mixing up opening theory seems like a transient patch.

[zermelo]

Removing castling could be a great way to have fewer draws. I doubt it will catch on because every good chess player has spent half of their lives learning their opening repertoires and strategies, and most of that effort would go to waste after the change.

[ez4u]

I can see the possibility of a ban on castling leading to sharper games. I have wondered for the last few years whether bots could be used to test the effect of changing stalemate to a loss instead of draw and also turning 3-time repetition into a loss instead of draw (basically some kind of ko rule for chess?). There would be fewer draws but would White end up with too great an advantage?

[Uberdude]

Removing options does not necessarily mean the game becomes more predictable,

And an easy demonstration of this is a new go variant "boring go" I just invented. As well as having the choice to play a stone on the board according to current rules of Go, the player may press the "I want a draw" button. Every game now ends in a draw despite more choices.

[Javaness2]

My gut feeling is that this article is total junk.

The advantages do not stop there. The no-castling restriction means that players cannot rely on memorized patterns; they are forced to think creatively from the beginning. Even if a player wants to force a draw, it is nearly impossible to control everything. Plus, this variant makes it practically impossible to play it safe, even as White, because it is so much harder to find a completely secure place for the king. Finally, it also levels the playing field, so that amateur players have a better chance at playing against more seasoned opponents, who often memorise opening theory.

I mean we already know that switching between Chess and Shuffle Chess does not have much effect on the probability of who is going to win the game. It does not significantly level the playing field. If you want to level the playing field, just bring back Odds chess. The hyperbole about being practically impossible to play it safe, the lie (well at least gross simplification) of no pattern memorisation. Junk through and through.