Author: Mike S.
Date: 12:09:55 05/30/03
Go up one level in this thread
On May 30, 2003 at 12:46:56, Reinhard Scharnagl wrote:
>>> Shuffle chess = without FRC Castling rules!
>
>> But how would shuffle chess be uninteresting and FRC great and marvellous
>> if the only minor difference are some strange castling rules?
>> That's what really surprises me about your FRC campaign.
>
>The castling rules are not at all strange. The resulting positions of castling
>king and rook are identical to those in normal chess.
>
>So classical chess is completely included in FRC as one of 960 posible starting
>positions.
Classical chess is included in Shuffle Chess *too*, when you apply the standard
castling rules to it.
IMO it's a big illogical mistake, to think FRC is superior to Shuffle just
because of these strange castling rules - and yes, IMO these *are* strange no
matter if they are easy to learn or not. After playing thousands of classical
chess games for decades, nobody will be able to see those castlings
*intuitively*, like the standard castlings. A nightmare for every experienced
human player, and a big *disadvantage* of FRC in my opinion.
It's really a pity that you have chosen FRC and not Shuffle for your idea
(because I think your intention fits to Shuffle as good as to FRC; it's is a
very good approach to examine an engines general opening abilities).
Here are some advantages Shuffle has, over FRC:
- much more starting positions
- easy castling (standard rules would be sufficient), or simply no castling when
K/R are not on the standard positions
- all engines can play Shuffle chess already ("shuffle specific" or general
opening knowledge could still be added)
So, instead of long waiting that a few engines are rewritten to be able to
FRC-castle, you could already run endless Shuffle tournaments with a lot of
available engines incl. all the pros, for example to see which one understands
general opening principles better, etc.
In practise, FRC *is* a chess variant - just like Shuffle is - because it
contains elements the classical chess doesn't contain. Inclusion of classical
chess doesn't make it a non-variant of it :-)
You would have much better chances to raise interest for your FRC-ideas, if you
wouldn't limit it to FRC (which most engines can't play), but apply it to
Shuffle chess. Furthermore, there is virtually no chance IMO, that professionals
will include FRC castling in their engines: Because it's known that castling
rules carry a big danger of program bugs - and during the time to implement and
test that, the competition may make their engines 5-10 elos stronger...
Believe me, most people are not interested in that FRC castling... it has no
appeal at all. My suggestion would be, don't sacrifice 80% of possible replies
to your idea and 95% of possible engine research just for that FRC castling.
The difference to Shuffle is so small, in terms of chess quality to expect...
sometimes, a compromise achieves much better practical results.
Also, experiments can be limited to Shuffle/FRC positions where K+R are on the
standard squares and the bishops are on different square colour. I found 18
positions which meet these conditions (which I've used in my own Shuffle
experiment already).
mfg.
Michael Scheidl
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