Author: Reinhard Scharnagl
Date: 13:52:24 05/30/03
Go up one level in this thread
Hi Michael,
On May 30, 2003 at 15:09:55, Mike S. wrote:
>Classical chess is included in Shuffle Chess *too*, when you apply the standard
>castling rules to it.
FRC is applying the standard castling rules (as it understands that). But
Shuffle Chess normally has no castling at all.
>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.
There is NO PROBLEM AT ALL with castling because all post castling situations ar
identic to the positions of normally castled king and rook.
Indeed there is a problem: to convince some fanatic Shuffle Chess fans for FRC
castling to be as easy as it is.
>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).
The pity is that you still keep favorizing Shuffle Chess.
>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
Shuffle Chess starting positions has to be counted only half each because of
symmetrie. Having variations with no castling possible at all will show clearly,
that this is not a game of chess anymore.
>- all engines can play Shuffle chess already ("shuffle specific" or general
>opening knowledge could still be added)
This argument seems to hold, but I don't want to help to establish that wrong
approach, only because to support some possible 'lazy' programmers. I want to
have it all - may be slowly but fully convincing then.
>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.
On one side you are right, it would be fine to have that early switch of
thinking, but the other side is, that this would be contraproductive by reducing
the efforts to implement the full FRC idea as often as possible.
>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 :-)
It is a form of COMPLETING classical chess by the full downward compatible FRC,
and therefore I also suggested the neutral name 'FullChess' for 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...
You are right, implementing full FRC castling is not easy at all. But it is
necessary for to get a real chess like game. And what would that be a sort of
professional which should not be able to implement such clear castling rules:
[http://www.rescon.de/Compu/fullchess3_e.html] .
>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.
There might be a risk. So I have to convince interested persons to do the RIGHT
step towards FRC. This is, why I am writing answers to such messages like yours.
>The difference to Shuffle is so small, in terms of chess quality to expect...
>sometimes, a compromise achieves much better practical results.
So jump over that small difference, and the next one will also join.
>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).
I think, those positions are useful. But for me the main work now is to convince
more chess programmers to support FRC, too. Now after one year of expanding my
homesite and arguing in newsgroups there suddenly are three engines supporting
FRC (probably according also to a lot of other reasons), but now I am convinced
for a lot more to come soon.
Regards, Reinhard
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