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The Full Chess
Preface
This article presents a simple idea: to eliminate the proverbial advantage of the first move that White has in the game. And that is to start the game by a randomly selected first move out of 20 available and possible first moves.
The selecting device/algorithm could easily be incorporated into the electronic chess clock so that, when a player of black pieces or an arbiter pushes clock to start a game, it also randomly chooses the first move for White and shows it on the display.
Nowadays top players spend almost all of their time working on openings with a few first moves that promise the most advantage for White. But this advantage simply wanes as the game progresses into middlegame (provided that Black finds the best moves) as experience tells us. Fischer once saidthat "1.e4... is best, by test". And the chess engines seem to confirm this. Yet throughout the history of chess Black always managed to find responses that counterbalance the advantage that White supposedly had after that move. Today, the theory behind 1.e4... is developed to such an extent that White cannot get a tangible advantage in games opened with this move anymore and that explains the recent shift toward the next best move - 1.d4. (By the way, recently I've read somewhere that Fischer and Spassky eventually agreed that 1.d4... is a better first move than 1.e4... in that the d4 pawn is still protected by the Queen, while e4 pawn requires protection.)
The question is, what do the elite players do? Do they play a game or do scientific research?! And why they are so preoccupied with just a few first moves, neglecting all other possible first moves?
The answer to these questions is buried in the undue privilege that was arbitrarily given to White, namely, the privilege of having a choice of that first move, which promises him most advantage. It is this privilege coupled with the advantage of making first move that puts Black under heavy strain at the beginning of the game limiting his options to defense, rather than attack, and defines the strategy of the game for both sides,thus stifling and biasing the game from the very first move.
If the first move made by White should be chosen randomly by lot, then the strategy of both sides would vary in each game, providing fair and equal chances for White and Black to an attack or defense. By taking away this privilege from White we will tap into full potential of Chess that remains hidden from us today due to a pernicious influence of that privilege.
Why do we have 20 possible moves to open the game? Why do we never use a good half of them? What's their inner meaning? Why are they there, in the first place?! And, if they are there shouldn't they be utilized somehow?
We will never be in a position to answer these questions until we play those first moves in real games often enough to gain an adequate experience. We will never play those first moves until the privilege of choosing the best first move will be taken from White. A sort of "catch 22", isn't it?
So far, our knowledge of Chess may be compared to that of a proverbial elephant, of which we touched a certain part and think that that's what the whole creature looks like.
The Full Chess
Bobby Fischer was one of the first people who recognized the dead end we are reaching in Chess. And his "Random Chess" was an attempt to remedy the situation. But, it was too radical, almost revolutionary an attempt. It ruined the harmony inherent in chess between pieces and pawns in the initial position and made obsolete and redundant most of the knowledge acquired in Chess so far. Actually, Fischer invented another game, which has its own merits but is too complicated and cumbersome in use.
These days I've heard a similar idea from the former, multiple times Women World Chess Champion Maya Chiburdanidze. She wants players to skip the first 4-15 opening moves and start the game from certain positions, which would be drawn by lot for each board just before the game. While her idea has a merit of eliminating preparation before the game and thus spare the mental and physical resources of the players for the game itself, it limits the chess game by taking away the opening moves, which doesn't seem right, since the opening stage of game is an integral part of it.
The first such tournament ever is in progress right now (2016) in the capital of the Georgian republic.
In response to the idea of Maya Chiburdanidze the GM M. I. Dvoretsky reminded us that ten years ago he had proposed an idea of choosing randomly first moves both for White and Black, which were to be made only by pawns advanced for one square, in order to cut off players from home preparation and study of openings...
In my opinion, all these attempts at reforming Chess in one way or another are premature. First, we need release the full potential of Chess, which is described in this article, hopefully solving the game with improved parameters of chess engines gained from new experience. Only then attempts at reforming the game will be justified.
There were also some attempts to shorten a time control (the amount of time agame is played), which are still continuing. But such measures inevitably deteriorate the quality of chess game by increasing the probability of mistakes and outright blunders. Besides, we already have rapid and blitz with shorter time control, why do we need shorter time control in classical games?
Here is a fresh idea from an ordinary chess player to boost the declining interest in chess! Though not as revolutionary as Fischer's "Random Chess", it is still radical enough to eliminate the advantage of the first move that White has in the game and equalize the chances of Black and White. Start the game by a randomly selected first move out of the 20 available and possible first moves. The selector of the first moves could easily be incorporated into the chess clock, so that when a player of the Black pieces or an arbiter pushes the clock to start a game, he also randomly chooses the first move for White.
All by itself, there is little (almost negligible) advantage or disadvantage in any of the first moves. According to my somewhat older version of engine Rybka2.3.2a (2900+ rating) the evaluation for the 20 possible first moves lies within the range from +0.22 to -0.26 at the depth of 22 moves.
But the advantage of the first move becomes tangible when the player of White pieces is allowed to choose the first move among many available. It's proven statistically that White wins roughly 60% of the decisive games. Why give this privilege to White? Does he deserve it?!
At the same time often the real gems are played at the club level chess games, started with most unusual moves! Here is one such game that starts with 1.Nh3!?
Hugh Edward Myers – Tirso Alvarez
Santo Domingo, 24 December 1966
Amar Opening/Paris Opening1 Nh3 d5 2 g3 e5 3 f4 Bxh3 4 Bxh3 exf4 5 O-O fxg3 6 e4 gxh2+ 7 Kh1 dxe4 8 Nc3 Nf6 9 d3 exd3 10 Bg5 dxc2
[IMG]
11 Qf3 Be7 12 Qxb7 Nbd7 13 Bxd7+ Nxd7 14 Bxe7 Kxe7 15 Nd5+ Kf8 16 Nxc7 Nc5 17 Ne6+ Nxe6 18 Qxf7 mate.
http://chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/Pos … ician.aspx
Hugh Myers (1930-2008), opening theoretician
chessbase.com
The chess world has lost a particularly creative player and prominent exponent of unorthodox openings. Hugh Myers was a true chess lover: an author, theoretician and magazine editor who wrote a gripping autobiography and made a memorable contribution to chess politics. Four of his entertaining games are presented here. <a href="[Post:view_link]">In memoriam.</a>
Can anyone prove conclusively that 1.Nh3... is not a viable move that has all the rights to exist?! I don't think so. Why then are we deprived of the possibility to see this move in other games and play against it ourselves in tournaments?! The IM John Watson told me the story of the Life Master Brian Wall, who played all of the first 20 possible moves in real tournaments games! In this age of steadily declining interest in our game this is the way to go, I think.
Here is another story. Sometime in the late 1980s I'd managed to buy the "64" magazine, quite accidentally. Usually, it was very hard to get your hands on it in Moscow, Russia at those times. And in that issue were published a couple of tiebreak games played for the Australian Chess Champion title of that year by two Masters. In the first game Black answered 1...h5!? to the 1.e4... and won the game! And the second game White started with 1.a4!?..., followed with 2.h4!?... and easily drew the game! I was stunned; had never seen anything like that before! And there was a short commentary by GM AlexeySuetin, saying something like, "Hey, fellows, there is something in these openings! We need to pay closer attention to them!"
I was eagerly awaiting the next issue of "64" expecting a vivid discussion of these openings by other GM's but was greatly disappointed finding nothing in it. I bought several following issues of "64" but to no avail. It seemed like everybody just ignored those stunning openings.
One evening I decided to play those openings against my partner in chess with whom I'd been on a fairly equal footing and, to my surprise, I won three games in a row! Since then 1.a4!?... became my favorite move for White. I call it an "Australian Opening". I won enough games in this opening and drew with players having ratings 500+ more than mine to be quite confident in this move! Even the ex-World Champion GM Alexei Shirov, to whom I had a privilege and opportunity to show some of my games starting with this move, had to acknowledge eventually that this first move 1.a4... does not yet spoil anything provided one makes the right moves afterwords. And isn't the game of chess all about making the right moves?! To my surprise, even the current World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen played this move once, 1.a4!... in an official Blitz World Chess Championship game against Teymur Rajabov (2750+rating) and won the game to boot! Yet, it is an anathema for most players. That's how the ex-US Champion, author of chess books and trainer summed it up for me: "1.a4?? - gimme a break!..."
The limited, unfair Chess
In Chess since time immemorial White has an advantage over Black which is attributed to the fact that White makes the first move. It was accepted as a matter of fact - after all, one side had to start the game. While this advantage is of negligible value in the game between casual players, it becomes tangible when more skillful players play the game, who learned how to make use of and exploit this advantage. Nowadays, with the advent of computers, which can calculate variations for up to 30 plus moves in advance, this advantage of the first move has grown enormously so that the chess game becomes a more and more biased and unfair enterprise. It's proven statistically that White often wins over 60% of all decisive games.
Besides, every single game played by top GM's nowadays almost instantly ends up in computer databases of their rivals. These databases contain millions of games and this fact gives the players an advantage of purposeful home preparation for a particular opponent, since he now uses very limited amount of first moves, playing White. Hence so many draws, which spectators hate to see.
And, take for example a game of backgammon. There are white and black pieces also, but who begins the game is decided by lot. Moreover, making the first move in backgammon doesn't necessarily guarantee an advantage. The former World Chess Champion A. Karpov loves the backgammon game! So do many other renown chessplayers...
In order to better understand the advantage which White has over Black due to the privilege of choosing the first move I'll quote from the last article of GM Varuzhan Akobian in the March 2013 issue of Chess Life: "Given the fact that White has the first move, he dictates and limits to a large degree, Black's feasible responses. At the grandmaster level, having the white pieces constitutes a considerable advantage such that Black is typically trying to equalize and expecting to draw. White is able to dictate play as he starts the game with the initiative and has some control over what type of play will ensue: positional or sharp. Having white allows a player to take full advantage of preparation and even a grandmaster is also generally significantly more confident with White."
And GM Akobian's own performance in the U.S. Chess League of the 2012 season proves that. From the White side, his PR was 2898 (three games), from the Black side, 2449 (two games). The difference being well over 400 points of rating! In fact, all this difference in performance rating is due solely to the privilege of having a choice in the first move and not from the fact that White makes the first move.
Can we let the White get off scot-free with such a huge advantage in the game anymore?! The declining interest in our game despite all the palliative measures taken up to now, unequivocally tells us - no! Besides, this privilege stifles the game of chess.
Chess has more, much more to offer for us! But right now the game is confined to a few opening moves with enormously developed theory behind them. And that frustrates an ordinary chess player, nips in the bud the interest of many of them to study the vast amount of theory in order to become a decent player. After all, this is a game and not a sheer science!
This trend of specialization tends to go to extremes. Once I happened to meet the GM Varuzhan Akobian at one of the tournaments and asked him, what he thinks about the move 3...d5!? in Scotch Game. And he replied that he is a 1.d4... and not an 1.e4... player, therefore, he has nothing to say about that particular move. It seems odd to me that the elite GM cannot answer questions pertaining to openings with moves other than his "pet" one. Isn't it ridiculous that this privilege of choosing the first move allows one to skip a vast amount of knowledge in chess and still become an elite player?! There is no doubt that GM Akobian or any other GM for that matter would have to show more ingenuity in winning his games if he would have been deprived of that certainty of playing his "pet" move.
I am a big admirer of Magnus Carlsen! I think, he is an outstanding chess player, best of all times, so far. I'm inclined to think that he is not just a genius in chess, but simply genius, as Fischer once said about himself. And I'm afraid that he may retire from chess even at an earlier age than Garry Kasparov did having achieved and accomplished everything in nowadays chess, unless we tap into full potential of chess. Geniuses need challenge, after all!
I'm glad to see him winning so many games! But, frankly speaking, I do not watch his games and do not follow them. I'm tired of seeing one and the same openings in which one may expect a novelty somewhere between 20th and 30th move, often of dubious quality. While these games are of great interest to elite players, they are almost of no interest to us, ordinary players, who are the majority. And that's how an ever widening gap is created between the elite players and the rest of us.
Nowadays chess game is a limited and biased enterprise, i.e., unfair. At best, we conducted a long and thorough experiment so far, which enabled us to see finally that we are fast approaching the dead end. Our chess engines, however advanced, are far from solving the game and will never be able to do that, since the evaluation criteria built into them are based on our limited knowledge and understanding of chess so far; therefore, they are not very accurate and reliable in the long run. No chess engine has yet proved the certainty of a win for either side in a game started with any of 20 possible first moves.
Shouldn't this tell us that moves which we are willfully ignoring now are all valid and viable moves deserving our attention and study?!. Besides, we know too many examples of renowned chess players losing their games in less than 22 moves, starting the game with the popular moves they played before many times. And my chess engine evaluation study shows that not one single move out of twenty possible first moves loses the game in 22 moves. Moreover, the evaluation of position at the depth of 22 moves is very close to equal! So, we should look for a culprit somewhere else, and not be afraid of playing first moves we haven't played so far.
It's your wits, stupid! - Isn't that what chess engines implicitly suggest to us every day now, winning games from any one of us, even from the world chess champions?...
The potential of Chess is enormous! And that's what frustrates the human mind. That's why we, having learned a certain part of said potential, are afraid to venture further into the unknown and prefer to deal with what we know. It is our timid nature that limits us, confines us to a few opening moves in Chess that we have happened to learn so far.
In the last Candidates 2012 Tournament well over half of the games (35 out of 56) were started with one move, namely, - 1.d4. Another quarter of games were opened with 1.e4, the most popular and studied move in history of chess until recent times and remaining nine games were opened with only two other moves - 1.Nf3 and 1.c4.
Sure, it was more like a competition of home analysis and preparation rather than real games in this tournament. Small wonder that 55% of the games ended up in a draw, while White won 15 out of 25 remaining games (60%) and Black won 10 (40%). Although the tournament was one of the most interesting ones in the last half century it attracted little public attention. Just about 100 spectators were present at the venue daily. General public has little interest in science as such but they would love to watch a real game played here and now!
Or, take a look at the just concluded Bilbao Masters top elite tournament, in which 24 out of 30 games (80%) were started with two most popular moves, namely, 1.d4 and 1.e4. Just 5 games started with another move 1.Nf3 and only one game was opened with yet another move 1.c4.
There were only 7 decisive games altogether, of which White won 5 (71%) and Black won 2 (29%). Over three quarters (77%) of the games ended up in a draw!
If it would not have been for Magnus Carlsen's spectacular performance, who had five decisive games out of ten, the tournament would have been a total disappointment for spectators, despite the special measures taken to increase the output of the decisive games, like the Sofia Rules and a different scoring system.
Isn't it obvious that something more drastic than mere palliative measures needs to be done quickly to save the chess game from falling into oblivion?!
The full and fair Chess
It is said that chess game includes in itself elements of art, science and sport. This is, undoubtedly, true. The secret of the nowadays decline in chess popularity lies in proportion of each element in the game. Science belongs to a home laboratory and what public wants to see is art and sport.
And the right way, in my opinion, is not in hurting science in any way, but in doing the catch-up work in other elements, i.e., art and sport. This can only be done by releasing chess game from the clutches of science, which dominates now the top level of chess; thus not only stifling the other elements but Chess itself, narrowing its boundaries of development.
This can be done by realization of full potential of Chess, that is, acknowledging equal rights of every possible first move in a game to exist and have a fair chance to be represented on the board. Only by playing the full chess we may be certain that we are on the right path to the truth, hopefully solving the game eventually.
By switching to the Full Chess we will come to the era of long awaited Renaissance in Chess, where there will be the whole fun-fair of new "immortal" and "evergreen" games for which we are longing now.
Since every possible first move will have about 5% chance to appear on the board at every given game it will be impossible to guess the first move before the game; therefore, instead of spending hours and days in preparation for a particular opponent, as GM's do now, they will concentrate their efforts on study of all aspects of game in general and play the games using more of their wits and brains than memory. And this, in turn, will boost public interest in tournaments, because people love the unpredictability of outcome of the game and prefer to see a real fight rather than a demonstration of long lines prepared well before the game.
Isn't it a disgrace of today's chess when some players agree to a draw without making a single move of their own but simply reproducing on the board their home analysis?!
But first, we need to take that privilege from White, which White has at the beginning of the game due to arbitrarily awarded choice of the first move. By removing this handicap from Black we will enable him to fight for a win from the first move in games opened with certain moves; instead of trying to equalize and draw the game as he does now, unless White makes mistakes that allow Black to play for a win.
Mistakes happen and will happen no matter what, they are inevitable; that's how outcome of many games are usually decided. But the handicap which puts Black in an inferior position at the start of the game must be removed. Why won't we give equal chances to Black to apply pressure to White from the first move? After all, no game is won or lost by any of the first possible moves - that must be clear for us from the experience of the past. White will still have to move first but whether the first move will be to his advantage or not will be decided by lot.
And I wouldn't put too much trust in those numerical evaluations of the first moves given by the engines, for, as I said before, the criteria built into the chess engines by us, humans, were based on our limited and biased experience so far. They will certainly be corrected in the future, after we gather more of a reliable experience. With the proposed change no knowledge will be lost that was acquired up to now. But we will wide open door for more new knowledge in chess, which is long due to us, for the game is in stagnation now as the testimony of ever widening gap between elite players and the rest of us indicates.
As new tournaments take place in the future we'll need to introduce another title, namely, Full GM (FGM), Full IM (FIM) and so on, which would certify that the bearer of it is sufficiently proficient in openings beginning with any of the first moves. And these titles could be earned in tournaments with randomly selected first moves. We don't need to change anything at the popular level of chess. At club level, parks and beaches chess is still popular as ever. It's only at the professional level, where the theory is developed that we need change. Since devoting all the attention to a few opening moves and neglecting others inevitably leads us in the wrong direction in chess, the dead end of which we are reaching now.
My other more doable suggestion would be to start organizing ChessEngineTournaments with the randomly selected first moves. This will enable us to catch a glimpse of what is ahead before we start implementing the idea into human chess world.
Conclusion
I don't expect my idea to gather momentum any time soon. Rather it's a dream at this stage, which I believe one day will come true, because the idea is right. Arthur Schopenhauer once said: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed and, third, it is accepted as self-evident."
We are at the first stage of this process now in chess. It may be that the Chess game as we know it now should wither away and die before the Full Chess will be born, that I don't know.
Dixi,
Alex
